Movie Review: The Trip to Greece

The Trip to Greece **** / *****

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom.

Starring: Steve Coogan (Steve Coogan), Rob Brydon (Rob Brydon), Kareem Alkabbani (Kareem), Marta Barrio (Yolanda), Cordelia Bugeja (Steve's Ex Wife), Richard Clews (Steve's Dad), Justin Edwards (UK Agent), Rebecca Johnson (Sally), Claire Keelan (Emma), Timothy Leach (Joe), Harry Tayler (Young Dad), Michael Towns (Alexander), Tessa Walker (Chloe).

 

For the fourth, and apparently final, time in the last 10 years, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon hit the road together, travelling through a different country apparently to eat at fancy restaurants so they can write a magazine piece for The Guardian. No, that doesn’t make much sense, but no, it doesn’t matter at all. The reason to see these movies – and keep seeing them – is to watch these two gifted comedic actors, playing versions of themselves as they try to one-up each other, get through their mid-life crisis (or not) and show off their insecurities. Each movie in the series is good – but it’s one of those series where the sum is greater than the individual parts. It’s always nice to revisit these two – always fun, always funny, but increasingly, the films have become more serious as well, more willing to explore more than just the insecurities of middle-aged, rich, white male entertainers. The last film, The Trip to Spain, left Coogan on a dark road in Africa, being confronted by extremists – all because he wanted to have a “real” adventure, not just the safe ones he had been going on with Brydon for years now. In The Trip to Greece, mortality is a focus – Coogan’s dad is sick during the trip, and he receives updates on his health, while hiding it from Brydon – and everyone else. Brydon, who has always been slightly more secure and together, at least compared to Coogan, starts to feel a little more of the creep of middle age as well. He started his family later than Coogan – whose kids are grown, while Brydon’s are still young. His wife is younger him as well. And he doesn’t want to lose her.

 

All of this is sprinkled throughout the last chapter of this series – The Trip to Greece – as well as some other moments that puncture the bubble of these two men playing with, and off each other. They like to needle each other, although Coogan, the more famous of the two men, is also more thin skinned. He bristles at the idea of being classified as a “comedian” – even when Brydon points out his BAFTA nomination was for playing a comedian (which leads to the pair doing a funny bit – Laurel and Tom Hardy, which I think I could have watch forever). Brydon has always just felt more comfortable in his skin – more comfortable with his position in life, his career, etc. Coogan is always striving for something else – something just out of reach.

 

The pair, of course, need each other. They need to have that audience, the validation that they give to each other. It’s why they keep coming back together again. There is a certain comfort level between the two of them that has grown through these movies. To be honest, I could go on watching more installments of The Trip every three years for the rest of Coogan and Brydon’s lives. Each new chapter continues to be funny, even if the pair do repeat some bits (perhaps, especially because they do) – and because each new chapter finds them in a slightly different phase of life, running away from slightly different problems, confronting something new. Taken separately, each of these movies is good. As a whole, this series is something altogether more special – perhaps the crowning achievement of the careers of Coogan, Brydon and director Michael Winterbottom. Before Winterbottom made these films, he made one of the worst of his career – The Road to Guantanamo, about some friends who unwittingly found themselves in the American prison for terrorists, through a series of what could be called a comedy of errors. It was about people who didn’t really know what they were getting themselves into – who were blinkered from the outside world. It also didn’t really work – it was a fiction/documentary hybrid, and Winterbottom never found the right tone. Oddly, with The Trip movies, he seems to have accomplished something similar. He has always shown the difference between Coogan and Brydon, and the restaurant workers preparing their meals. Over the course of the series, he’s gradually allowed more and more of the outside world to intrude on the proceedings – here there is even an acknowledgement of the European refugee crisis, done in a comic way.

 

As an individual chapter in this series, The Trip to Greece is better than the other three chapters. But as a capping off of this decade long project, it makes you appreciate just what the trio here has accomplished. If this is indeed the last chapter, then I’ll miss the series. If they decide to do more, I for one, couldn’t be happier.

Movie Review: Greed

Greed ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom.

Written by: Michael Winterbottom and Sean Gray.

Starring: Steve Coogan (Sir Richard McCreadie), Isla Fisher (Samantha), Shirley Henderson (Margaret), David Mitchell (Nick), Asa Butterfield (Finn), Dinita Gohil (Amanda), Sophie Cookson (Lily), Jamie Blackley (Young Richard McCreadie), Shanina Shaik (Naomi), Jonny Sweet (Jules), Sarah Solemani (Melanie), Tim Key (Sam), Asim Chaudhry (Frank the Lion Tamer), Ollie Locke (Fabian), Pearl Mackie (Cathy), Kareem Alkabbani (Kareem). 

 

Perhaps the superrich have simply become impossible to satirize. In real life, many of these billionaires – like Elon Musk – already seem like cartoon caricatures of the elite and out of touch, that to try and make them oversized and cartoonish is impossible. Still, I do think that a better satire of the superrich could have been made other than Michael Winterbottom’s Greed – whose main character is named Richard McCreadie, which of course it takes very little to turn into Rich McGreedy. That’s basically the level of satire going on in this film. That it works as well as it does is a testament to the skills of Steve Coogan, and his supporting cast among them Isla Fisher, Shirley Henderson, Sophie Cookson, and Jamie Blackley. But the film never quite comes off as the fuck you to the superrich that it was clearly intended to be.

 

Coogan plays McCreadie, who has become a billionaire in the retail space in England – opening, and closing, one clothing franchise after another. Mostly its cheap clothes, and the franchises don’t last – but he is able to make a lot of money for himself and his family, before they collapse. The film attempts something like The Big Short, but is more akin Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat, as it explains the various ways McCreadie makes a lot of money out of companies, that aren’t making a lot of money. He sells off the land his stores sit on for huge sums of money, then leases the properties back. He then borrows money on the value of the company that is no worth a lot less because they don’t own the land, and filters it back to himself. The companies worth plummets, but his personal worth soars.

 

The film is built around the preparations for McCreadie’s 60^th Birthday party – which will be in Greece, and based on Gladiator, so he’s building his own temporary coliseum. His various family members come to see him – the ex-wife (Fisher) he clearly still loves, but left for a younger woman anyway. His reality TV show daughter (Cookson), whose show is as scripted as any on TV. His son, Asa Butterfield, who doesn’t really like anyone, etc. McCreadie has been embroiled in some scandals – and the A-listers keep dropping out. But he forges ahead anyway.

 

Coogan has made a career out of playing rich assholes – including versions of himself for Winterbottom in The Trip movies (the fourth, and apparently final one, is coming out this month). He certainly makes McCreadie into an asshole – we see flashbacks to him as a younger man screaming at underlings, and his immense wealth hasn’t made him any nicer. What Coogan is always able to do though is show the sad, pathetic man inside – the real person behind the asshole mask. He does that here to some extent as well – but it also kind of clashes with the over-the-top nature of the film.

 

As a director, Winterbottom is both wildly prolific, and wildly uneven. He has collaborated well with Coogan over the years – The Trip movies, 24 Hour Party People (which was Coogan’s more dramatic breakthrough after a successful comic career on TV, The Look of Love (which I didn’t actually see) and best of all, for me anyway, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. He’s also made some brilliant literary adaptations – Jude (1996) and The Claim (2000) are probably his two best films for example. But for every great film, there is one that doesn’t quite work. Greed is one of those unfortunately. It’s all just too obvious to really cut close to the bone, and too broad to be really funny. A film like this is a tight rope act – and this time, Coogan and Winterbottom don’t pull it off.

Movie Review: The Trip to Spain

The Trip to Spain *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom.

Written by: Michael Winterbottom.

Starring: Steve Coogan (Steve), Rob Brydon (Rob), Claire Keelan (Emma), Rebecca Johnson (Sally - Rob's Wife), Justin Edwards (Greg), Kerry Shale (Matt), Marta Barrio (Yolanda), Margo Stilley (Mischa), Timothy Leach (Joe), Tom Clegg (Busker), Kyle Soller (Jonathan).

 

There are now “Trip” movies, all directed by Michael Winterbottom – the prolific English director, who seems to be slowing down a little bit now (perhaps having concluded he’s just about accomplished the goal of having a film of every genre) and starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing versions of themselves, and the drive around a country, stopping at various, amazing looking restaurants apparently for “magazine pieces” and generally riffing with each other. The comedians are competitive, but mainly friendly and by this third film, they’ve more or less settled into a routine. Yes, they can still grate on each other’s nerves, and play games of one upmanship – but they more or less understand each other, and give each other enough slack.

 

We’ve seen them in North England in 2010’s The Trip and Italy in 2014’s The Trip to Italy, and now, of course, we see the pair of them in Spain. Coogan is the bigger international star of course, and has the ego to prove it – not least of which because he received an Academy Award nomination for co-writing Philomena a few years ago, a fact he will mention to anyone if given half to chance. He’s also the more neurotic and insecure of the two of them still sort of struggling with his now 20-year old son, and an affair with a much younger woman, who happens to be married to someone else. Brydon has a young family himself (at 50, he says he snuck them in under the wire), and while the movie gets a laugh in the opening scene as Brydon surveys his life – including his crying 2-year-old – before immediately agreeing to another trip, he seems pretty comfortable and happy in his domestic life, and in his marriage.

 

The films don’t strain for any sort of relevance really – they know they are more or less meaningless, and an excuse to watch these two comedians riff with each other. The dueling impressions have become infamous – and while nothing here matches the brilliance of their Michael Caine’s in The Trip to Italy, there are good moments here where they compare Mick Jagger’s and David Bowie’s. There is a (very) one near the end where they start doing dueling Roger Moore’s – trying to impress two of the women who have shown up to help them through a photoshoot – and Coogan eventually tries to impress them with his knowledge of Spain – only to have Brydon just keeping going and going and going (and going) with his Roger Moore, which goes from hilarious to painfully awkward more than once. The movie only really hints at darker things that in their both of their minds – particularly Coogan’s – who is more apt to get hurt or embarrassed and sulk away (“He doesn’t like to be told things he thinks he knows” Brydon offers a young man who offends Coogan with travel advice).

 

The ending of The Trip to Spain is a little strange. I thought that movie was pretty much ending because Brydon and everyone else apart from Coogan are return to England – but Coogan stays for a little, and then travels farther. I don’t quite know what to make of it. But I do hope that Coogan and Brydon take another trip at some point. While you would think the charm of these films would have worn off by now, it really hasn’t.

Movie Review: The Face of an Angel

The Face of An Angel
Directed by: Michael Winterbottom.
Written by: Paul Viragh based on the book by Barbie Latza Nadeau.
Starring: Daniel Brühl (Thomas), Cara Delevingne (Melanie), Kate Beckinsale (Simone Ford), Lucy Cohu (Caroline), Genevieve Gaunt (Jessica Fuller), Ava Acres (Bea), Rosie Fellner (Katherine), Sara Stewart (Sarah), John Hopkins (Joe), Sai Bennett (Elizabeth Pryce), Peter Sullivan (James Pryce), Alistair Petrie (Steve), Corrado Invernizzi (Francesco), Valerio Mastandrea (Edoardo), Andrea Tidona (Pubblico Ministero).

If you’ve seen the previews for Michael Winterbottom’s The Face of an Angel, you will be forgiven for thinking that what he has made is a “true crime” story about Amanda Knox – the now infamous case where an American University student in Italy was charged with murdering a British University student she lived with – a trial that, along with the appeals process, dragged on for years (even after this movie was completed). That is what the trailer for the movie is selling – the story of two people, played by Daniel Bruhl and Kate Beckinsale, who investigate the crime, and find there is a lot more than meets the eye. It’s smart of them to sell that movie – as it’s far more commercial than the one Winterbottom has actually made – which uses the Knox case to examine media ethics, and focus on a director who is having a midlife crisis, a few years early, after his divorce – who wants to know if it’s even possible to make a movie about this case that tells people what the “truth” is, when there are so many unanswered questions – and how shameful it is that no one seems to care about the victim, only the accused killer. He starts to lose track of reality as he slides into cocaine use, and paranoia – and a growing friendship with a pretty, British student around the age of the two girls involved in the case. On one hand, I admired The Face of An Angel for attempting to do something entirely different with the true crime genre – essentially by questioning the legitimacy of the genre in the first place. On the other hand, what Winterbottom has done in The Face of Angel doesn’t really work at all, and is more than a little hypocritical, as he uses the Knox case to draw people in, and then admonishes them for being interested. Not only that, he admonishes people for making money on the case, when unless he did the movie for free, so he has. While he says it’s a shame that no one pays attention to the victim of the crime – a legitimate problem with true crime – he doesn’t spend much time with her either (far more than the killer, true, but it’s still a tiny fraction of the movie as a whole). I believe the intentions behind the movie were good – but the execution is way off.

The film stars Daniel Bruhl as Thomas, a filmmaker who hasn’t made a film in a few years, as a few projects have fallen apart, and he has sunk into depression as his wife has left him for another man, and taken their daughter to live in L.A. He has accepted an offer to write and direct a movie about Jessica Fuller (the Knox stand-in), and is in Sienna, Italy to watch the appeal (this being the first appeal, after she was convicted, not the most recent appeal, after she was acquitted). His guide to Sienna, and the case, is Simone Ford (Kate Beckinsale), a British reporter stationed in Italy, who covers the case for a host of newspapers and TV networks. She is one of many reporters, who follow the case, write magazine articles and books about it, and then go on TV and analyze every aspect of it – including the seemingly mundane things like what Fuller wears to court every day – and what those clothes mean. Thomas will eventually get two other “guides” as it were – Eduardo (Valerio Mastandrea), an Italian blogger, and general scary guy, who says he knows the “truth” behind what happened – and who Thomas eventually becomes to suspect is involved more than he lets on, and Melanie (Cara Delevingne), a British student and waitress, around the same age as the two girls involved in the case, who can show them the world that they lived in.

The Face of An Angel is a rather scattershot and confused movie that shoots off in all directions at one, and seemingly loses track of the plot at various points. One minute, we’re finding out details about the case, then we’re discussing Dante, then Thomas is accusing the reporters of being parasites, then he’s having sex with Simone, then he’s worried about his own daughter, and then he’s doing a lot of cocaine. Winterbottom never settles on any one subject long enough to truly explore it. As a result, the movie never really lands its punches. Is it wrong to make a movie about this case? Is it wrong to write about it? Is Edoardo involved? Is it responsible to start throwing crazy theories around, when we haven’t really solved the case yet?

In short, the movie throws everything on the screen, hoping that something will stick – and one thing does. That is Cara Delevingne’s performance as Melanie – the young British student who befriends Thomas, and shows him the world of parties, bars and clubs in Sienna – and the foreigners who inhabit them. I have to admit I was worried the moment the movie introduced Melanie into the movie – because I have seen so many movies where the older man falls into bed (perhaps love) with a younger woman and finds himself, that I worried that was where the movie was going. Refreshingly though, Thomas and Melanie’s relationship starts out plutonic – and stays that way – even when, late in the movie they go on a road trip together, and even share a room. Delevingne, who is the rare model turned actress who can actually act, does play Melanie more as a symbol of innocence than a real character – a stand-in for the victim of the crime, and for much of the running time, the film doesn’t know what to do with her – having her accompany Thomas on various trips – and then just disappear. But as the movie goes along, she starts to leave more and more of an impression. While Thomas is a schizophrenic character – bouncing from one extreme to another, and everyone else is barely a character at all, Melanie becomes the heart of the movie. If there is a reason to see the movie, she’s it.

Winterbottom is an interesting director – one who bounces from genre to genre, with mixed success. He has made some great comedies – the Trip movies with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (not to mention Tristham Shandy (2006) with the two, which is even better), good sci-fi in Code 46 (2004), a great period drama in Jude, one of the best modern “snow” Westerns in The Claim (2000), and some interesting biopics like 24 Hour Party People (2002), and political thrillers like A Mighty Heart (2007). But he’s also made quite a few movies that aren’t nearly as successful – a documentary hybrid The Road to Guantanamo (2006), which takes an interesting, complex story and makes it one sided, an adaptation of a great Jim Thompson novel The Killer Inside Me (2010), which skimmed the surface of one of the greatest noir books of all time, Trishna (2011), an adaptation of Tess of the D’Ubervilles set in India, which features a blank female lead and a schizophrenic male one, and probably worst of all, Nine Songs (2005), which flashed back and forth between concert footage and (real) sex scenes, that had nothing to say about either. The exciting thing about Winterbottom, is you never know what he’ll do next – and he often makes very good movies. But by being so schizophrenic, I’m not sure he ever perfects anything – he’s just off dashing to something else. He’s one of the most prolific directors of his generation, and often quite good – but other than The Claim and Jude, I’m not sure any of them are great. The Face of An Angel is much like his career in microcosm – it skims the surface of its material, and then moves on to the next. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t – and then it’s off on something else. It’s frustrating, because I think had he spent some more time on the screenplay stage, he may well have made a fine movie. Instead, what he’s done is made a movie about a filmmaker who doesn’t know what movie he wants to make – and essentially filmed that confusion. It’s interesting – not very good – but a fascinating failure.

Movie Review: The Trip to Italy

The Trip to Italy
Directed by:  Michael Winterbottom.
Written by: Michael Winterbottom.
Starring: Steve Coogan (Steve), Rob Brydon (Rob), Rosie Fellner (Lucy), Claire Keelan (Emma), Marta Barrio (Yolanda), Timothy Leach (Joe), Ronni Ancona (Donna).

The Trip to Italy is the third movie this summer – following Chef and The Hundred-Foot Journey – which could be described as food porn. The difference between this film and those two other films is that for me at least, I actually enjoyed the film itself – and all that delicious looking food was an added bonus, and not the main show. A follow-up to The Trip, where Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon played fictional versions of themselves, travelling through North England stopping at restaurants along the way for a series of articles for The Observer, The Trip to Italy has the exact same premise, except, obviously, this time they’re in Italy. In the first film, not to mention Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story from the same director (Michael Winterbottom), which also cast Coogan and Brydon as themselves, found the two as rivals. Coogan, in particular, was rather petty and small in those previous films – he is the more famous of the two (especially outside England, where Brydon is barely known at all) – yet Coogan still seemed somewhat jealous of Brydon, who was much more comfortable in his own skin, and much more comfortable being known as a comic actor instead of anything else, while Coogan dreamed of being the star of a Coen brother movie. The rivalry is still present in The Trip to Italy – but it’s much more muted. The two have settled into an fairly easy friendship – and even when Brydon gets offered a role in a Michael Mann movie, which clearly makes Coogan jealous, it’s never really remarked on – instead it’s all done with looks from Coogan, and a few back handed compliments.

The movie is at its best when it’s just Coogan and Brydon alone – either at one of the various restaurants they eat at, or alone in the car (where they are often singing along to Alanis Morissette) and the two of them are just basically trying to make each other last. The pair break out their greatest hits – dueling Michael Caine impressions for example – with great results, but also adds some new material in it as well. The two like an audience – and late in the film when they have one, they go even bigger, trying to top each other, and get bigger laughs from their appreciative audience.

I think the movie works a little better than the original The Trip – perhaps simply because the scenery in Italy is better than in Northern England, but also, I think, because the movie seems a little more relaxed. Coogan and Brydon aren’t trying quite as hard this time to one-up each other, and instead work together as a great comic team. Also, in the last film it seemed like the Steve Coogan show, with Brydon as little more than a sidekick, but this time they are given equal weight (or perhaps a little more on Brydon). The original film had a subplot about Coogan’s domestic difficulties – and this time it’s Brydon’s turn. He seemed content with his marriage in the last film – this time, a few years and a child later – it’s not quite that simple.

The film is perhaps a little too long, perhaps takes a few too many detours, and tries a little too hard at times to go a little deeper than a typical comedy, and perhaps has too many conversations about Roman Holiday (1953). Yet these distractions are all at least amusing – the film is never less than pleasant, and often much more. The Trip to Italy has more laugh out loud moments than any Hollywood comedy so far this year (at least of the ones that come immediately to mind). Director Winterbottom, who has pretty much made every type of movie imaginable, is smart enough to stay out of the way of Coogan, Brydon and the gorgeous scenery and food. I hope this isn’t the last trip Coogan and Brydon take together.

Movie Review: Trishna

Trishna
Directed by: Michael Winterbottom.
Written by: Michael Winterbottom based on the novel by Thomas Hardy.
Starring: Freida Pinto (Trishna), Riz Ahmed (Jay), Anurag Kashyap (Himself), Roshan Seth (Jay's father), Kalki Koechlin (Herself), Neet Mohan (Sandeep), Harish Khanna (Vijay), Aakash Dahiya (Avit), Meeta Vashisht (Trishna's mother).

Michael Winterbottom is one of those directors that you never really know what he’s going to do next. He has made period pieces, comedies, documentaries, modern dramas, a Western, a science fiction film, even a film that combined music and actual sex scenes. His films have taken place in countries around the world, from America, to the Middle East, to England and everywhere else. He is one of the most prolific directors working today – and when he is on the top of his game, he can also be one of the best.

For his latest film, Trishna, he goes to India, and decides to adapt Thomas Hardy’s novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and place it into modern India. Winterbottom has had success before adapting Hardy – my personal favorite film of his was The Claim, his McCabe and Mrs. Miller inspired Western based on Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge.  Unfortunately, Trishna is nowhere near as good as good as The Claim. Winterbottom makes a few crucial mistakes in this adaptation – the biggest being combining the two men from Hardy’s novel into one character, which causes him to seem rather schizophrenic at times. The other major problem is the casting of Frieda Pinto in the lead role. She is too much of a blank slate in the film – far too passive. While I understand the character requires subtlety to be effective, Pinto plays it far too cool – coming across not as a woman trapped by her circumstance, which is what she should be, but as not a very bright woman who does nothing to save herself.

Trishna is the eldest child in her family, who helps her father run his small business. They do not have a lot of money, and when he gets into an accident, the family wonders how they are going to make ends meet, Trishna has caught the eye of Jay (Riz Ahmed), a rich kid who has been raised in England, but has returned to India to help run his father’s hotels. He offers Trishna a job – but certainly has other things on his mind. She knows this, but takes the job anyway. This begins her descent – powerless and trapped with Jay, who after all has all the money, so he has all the power in the relationship. But Trishna – not once, but twice – decides to return to Jay when she doesn’t have to. And this seals her fate.

The movie really has two main problems. The biggest one is that the audience is never really able to get a handle on Jay. By combining the two lovers in Hardy’s novel – the cruel rich man, and the kind but jealous small minded poorer one – actor Riz Ahmed is given a nearly impossible role – and he just cannot pull it off. From one scene to the next, we never know how Jay is going to be – how he is going to treat Trishna. And once he truly reveals his real colors – and lets the cruelty take over, he descends so quickly that I never really bought it. The other major problem is Pinto’s performance as Trishna. I know that she was trying to be subtle here – trying to play the woman who cannot speak up, who is powerless and just needs to go along with what the rich Jay wants from her. But there is a difference between subtle and blank. This is the type of role where you have to read the emotions from Pinto’s face – because she is never ever able to vocalize her complex emotions. But too often, I got nothing from Pinto’s face. She is breathtakingly beautiful, but there seems to be very little going one behind her eyes. We should be reading pain, torment, conflict in those eyes – and instead we get nothing. While we feel sorry for Trishna on a human level, we should be emotionally devastated by this performance, and I never was.

The film is beautiful to look at though. Of course, India can be beautiful if you shoot it properly, and that is precisely what Winterbottom does. Had the performances been better, the visual look would have made a nice off set to that – the beauty of the upper class hotels and neighborhoods where much of the movie takes place, to counteract the pain and torment of the story, could have made for a great film. But Winterbottom cannot get what he needs from the two lead actors. And so Trishna remains a hollow film – great to look at, but with not a lot going on behind those images.

DVD Review: The Trip

The Trip ***

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom.

Starring: Steve Coogan (Steve), Rob Brydon (Rob), Claire Keelan (Emma), Margo Stilley (Mischa), Rebecca Johnson (Sally), Dolya Gavanski (Magda).

You’ll notice that The Trip has no credited writers, and that is because the film is largely improvised. Michael Winterbottom got Steven Coogan and Rob Brydon back together, following their comic triumph of Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, and essentially just let the two of them loose. They are stuck together for a weeklong trip through Northern England, going from one fancy restaurant to another in order to review it for The Observer. Coogan was supposed to go with his girlfriend, but she backed out at the last minute, and after phoning around, the only person he could get to come along was Brydon, who he has a love-hate relationship with. The two playoff of each other brilliantly, but they are also competitors. And while Brydon seems completely comfortable being “just a comedian”, Coogan dreams of bigger things. He wants the Coens to build a movie around him. But that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. So now, he’s stuck in a car with Brydon, fighting with his girlfriend on the telephone, and wondering how the hell he got here. And Brydon is just having fun doing impressions.

I’m sure in real life, Coogan and Brydon are better friends then this movie makes them out to be. And I’m also sure that Coogan isn’t quite as petty as he plays himself to be in this movie. But yet, the movie still feels relaxed and realistic. Not being British, I never saw Coogan as Alan Patridge, but apparently it was huge over there, and as a result, it has typecast Coogan as a comic actor. He views himself as more than that, and is bitter than he doesn’t get better roles, and bitter still that Brydon doesn’t seem bitter at all at being labeled a comedian. Much of the movie is taken up with the two doing dueling impressions – Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Woody Allen, Roger Moore, etc – and although Brydon is quite clearly the more of the two mimics, Coogan won’t admit it, and continues on trying to top him. If he’s going to be just a comedian, than damn it, he’s going to be better than Brydon at it.

There is no story to speak of in The Trip. The movie is essentially a series of conversations between these two men – in the car, in various restaurants, at local tourist spots, or wherever they happen to be. The movie does take brief interludes to see the two men separate – talking to their significant others or children, and contrasting the way Coogan seems distant from his girlfriend and his son, and how easily Brydon and his wife get along. Coogan also has a lot of luck with barmaids and waitresses and hotel clerks and photographers, but then Brydon isn’t even trying.

The movie is about fame more than anything else, and in that way, it reminded me of Ricky Gervais’ brilliant show Extras. Maybe it’s a British thing, but both Extras and The Trip are really about how these two men get what they want, and are still not happy with it. Gervais’ character in Extras was pissed that his comedy became a hit with him in a silly wig, when he wanted to work with Scorsese. Coogan is pissed that he isn’t seen as a serious actor. And then there’s Brydon, just happy to go along for the ride. Perhaps the films best scene has Coogan trying to talk an old woman into letting them into a museum, even though it’s 5 after 5, and getting nowhere, and then seeing her light up when he’s meets Brydon. The look on Coogan’s face is funnier than anything I’ve seen in a long time.

The film was directed by Michael Winterbottom, who seemingly has worked in every genre known to man. He has made some brilliant films like The Claim and Jude, and some awful films like The Road to Guantanamo and Nine Songs, but the biggest thing is keeps working. Science fiction, Westerns, noir, documentary, neo-realism, comedies even movies with real sex, he just keeps churning them out, and even when they’re failures, they’re at least interesting ones. Through two movies with these two actors, he has made relaxed and hilarious comedies about fame. I have no idea how accurate or inaccurate the portraits in Tristram Shandy and The Trip are to Coogan and Brydon, and there is not doubt both are terrific sports at poking fun of themselves, but that doesn’t much matter. They work well together, even when, as in The Trip, there is absolutely no plot to work with. I hope this isn’t the last time these three get together.

DVD Review: The Killer Inside Me

The Killer Inside Me ** ½
Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Written By: John Curran based on the novel by Jim Thompson.
Starring: Casey Affleck (Lou Ford), Kate Hudson (Amy Stanton), Jessica Alba (Joyce Lakeland), Ned Beatty (Chester Conway), Elias Koteas (Joe Rothman), Tom Bower (Sheriff Bob Maples), Simon Baker (Howard Hendricks), Bill Pullman (Billy Boy Walker), Brent Briscoe (Bum / Stranger), Liam Aiken (Johnnie Pappas).

Casey Affleck has such a sweet, young baby face that it makes his performance as a sexually sadistic psychopath in The Killer Inside Me all the more chilling. Outwardly, his Sheriff’s Deputy Lou Ford seems like the nicest guy you could possibly want to meet – with his shit eating grin, his constant barrage of clichéd speech and his slow, Southern drawl, he seems like a perfectly normal, if somewhat hokey 1950s Texas lawman. But behind all that exterior is a cold, cruel man who he doesn’t want anyone to see.

Based on Jim Thompson’s 1950s novel, that apparently Stanley Kubrick was such a huge fan of that he hired Thompson to write The Killing for him, The Killer Inside Me as a novel is one of the most chilling books ever written about the mind of a psychopath. Keep in mind that it was written long before psychiatrists starting studying psychopaths, and it is even more remarkable at just how eerily good Thompson’s novel is in its details. Told entirely from the point of view of the psycho in question – Lou Ford – the novel places us directly inside his mind as he murders his way through his small Texas town, and it is completely chilling.

But something has been lost in the translation from book to screen, and Michael Winterbottom’s movie just doesn’t quite feel right. Affleck is amazing as Ford, a man whose violent, sexual relationship with a prostitute (Jessica Alba) reawakens his dark desires that he had long since suppressed, and thought he was over. His violent tastes start to consume him – not just when he’s with Alba, but when he’s with his sweet, naïve, innocent fiancée (Kate Hudson) as well. He comes up with a plan to hopefully rid himself of the demons once and for all – and it involves murder – but once that is done, he has to continue killing, more and more people, to keep from getting found out. By the end of the film his demons have completely consumed him.

Winterbottom is one of those interesting directors who seems at home in pretty much any genre – from costume dramas (Jude) to sci-fi (Code 46) to documentary (The Road to Guantanamo) to heart rending dramas (A Mighty Heart) to goofy comedy (Tristan Shandy) to Westerns (The Claim) to art porn (9 Songs). He wants to try every genre imaginable in his career. In The Killer Inside Me, he has made a hard boiled, Southern noir, and gives the film a dark look, and the whole thing seems sort of surreal – kind of like a film noir directed by David Lynch. I liked the visual look of the film that harkens back to the past. The violence in the movie is harsh, unrelenting and somewhat sickening – but then again that is how it should be in a film like this. The charges that the film is misoganystic are ridiculous, because just because its main character hates women, it doesn’t mean the film does.

The problem with the movie I think is that Thompson’s novel doesn’t really lend itself to the movie treatment. Its strength is that it traps the reader inside the mind of a psychopath and doesn’t let them go. The fact that the other characters in the novel aren’t fully drawn out makes sense in a novel – after all, he doesn’t really have any feelings, and views people just as a means to an end to get what he wants out of them. That works in the book, but in the movie it is unsatisfying. It’s not that Jessica Alba or Kate Hudson are bad in the film – they really are about as good as they can be given what they have to work with – but Ford sees them merely as objects, and the screenplay by John Curran doesn’t develop them, or anyone else any further.

It must be said though that Casey Affleck truly is great in the lead role – and he does an amazing job at showing us behind the mask that his character has spent a lifetime building up. It is a haunting performance. But the movie remains slightly distant in every other sense. Absent the true inner workings of a psychopath, that the books long passages allowed us to glimpse, this is just another neo-noir that decides looking cool was more important than anything else. It’s a shame, because there is greatness in the movie, but the overall effect is lacking.