Side Effects (2013)

Steven Soderbergh's allegedly final film is a strange kind of hybrid. It starts out as a critique of the pharmaceutical industry, and of the mental health profession more widely. America is a self-professed nation of medicinal consumers - if it has a name, there's a pill for it - and taking a scalpel to the surface of this vast market is a fascinating premise. But Soderbergh is all the while laying the groundwork for what actually turns out to be a psychological thriller, with a lot of unexpected strands sparking simultaneously as it winds its way to a conclusion.

What it does deliver on unequivocally is a great performance from Rooney Mara, who took on the daunting task of playing Lisbeth Salander in the US remake of the Swedish hit a few years ago. She rose to the challenge then, and she rises to it now, easily the most convincing in this all star cast. Emily, her wide-eyed, slightly haunting heroine  is suffering from severe depression after  her fraudulent husband (Channing Tatum) returns from jail. Channing Tatum never really seems to act - he just kind of is - and for that reason he's almost quite good, in a very naturalistic way. Following a suspicious car accident, Emily seeks help from Dr Banks, Jude Law at his best, slightly smarmy self in the role of patronising psychiatrist. He prescribes her something fresh from the laboratories, Ablixa, and you just know it's going to be a disaster. What follows is a bizarre series of somnambulist outings, several fraught consultations, and a bloody murder with a kitchen knife. Catherine Zeta-Jones enters the fray as another paragon of virtuosity from the medical profession; actually, she looks kind of creepy with giant glasses and unnervingly slick hair. I'm such a fan of her performance in Chicago I'd probably forgive her anything but I'm not sure she quite fits this role. Her voice, with its syrupy transatlantic drawl, is a bit distracting and she sounds more like she's doing voiceovers for M&S than giving serious medical advice.

All these elements make for a slightly confusing narrative and the interrogation of the pharmaceutical industry is somewhat lost. It turns out not to be about the pills Emily has been prescribed; rather, Soderbergh delights in unraveling the world of Dr Banks as he slowly realises he's been played. I was a bit disappointed by the 'big twist' - it was neither shocking nor particularly well constructed.

However, Side Effects is a beautifully shot film and we sail through a world so cleanly imagined, with such smoothness and depth of colour, that it feels uncannily like a drug commercial. It is an interesting, if not brilliant final outing from Soderbergh and it certainly showcases some impressive acting talent from Mara. I left the cinema a little more suspicious of the pills we are all prescribed but equally, and more worryingly, of the people who are prescribing them.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Mulholland Drive is a difficult film to write about. It is an electric flight from cinematic convention presented as a chilling murder mystery. It has all the appearances of taking you along with it, albeit in a slightly surreal arc, but then we reach the 'Club Silencio' and are told it is all an illusion. And for director David Lynch, this really does mean it is all an illusion. Notoriously, the film's second section unravels the structures of the first, presenting the audience with the same cast but different characters. Yet it is not just the names that have been switched. Whilst Los Angeles is presented as a sun-drenched, starry-eyed city of angels in the opening half; the second is darker, moodier and lacks the dreamy flow of its predecessor. I use the word 'dreamy' carefully, for this is very much a film about dreams and, in many ways, a film of dreams. For Lynch is fascinated by the power of fantasy and often it is fantasy that shapes his cinematic reality. When his apparently naive, optimistic female lead says chirpily, 'now I'm in this dream place,' we should take it as a warning. Beneath the luminous fabric of this Hollywood setting lurk some painful, unfulfilled desires.

The plot is initially constructed in a way that is not wholly unconventional: the mysterious victim of a car-accident (Laura Harring) staggers from a limo on Mulholland Drive, overlooking the glittering lights of L.A., down into the city searching for a haven. When she is found by Betty (Naomi Watts), a fresh-faced ingenue from Deep River, Ontario, we discover that she is suffering from amnesia and can recall nothing of her former identity. Taking the name Rita, after Rita Hayworth, she and Betty attempt to piece together the events leading up to her accident. This is a basic outline but it is far from comprehensive. The narrative is peppered with odd incidents: a chain of phone calls repeating the line 'the girl is missing' reach a dead end; a pallid young man tells a friend about his nightmare before confronting a hideous monster outside a Winkie's branch; and an arrogant young director (Justin Theroux) finds his film taken completely out of his hands by a pair of mafia-types who are very, very particular about their coffee.

Forgetting the plot non-sequiturs, this film is captivating as a result of the atmosphere Lynch builds. It is intensely unsettling. Temporal conventions are circumvented and events shaped in a kaleidoscope of uncertainties and anomalies. It is all held together in an astonishing performance by Naomi Watts, who showcases great range in her Jekyll and Hyde-style portrayal of Betty and Diane. In one memorably disturbing scene, her face morphes in a single moment from adoring and hopeful to depraved desperation. Her Academy Award must have got lost in the post.

People have a lot of different theories about what the second half really means. The most popular seems to be that it is a version of 'reality,' rendering all that precedes it a construction of Diane's dreaming subconscious. But I think what Lynch tries to represent in the later part of the film is more (or less) than reality. It is reality without the possibility of the dream; a hopeless, sad kind of longing. But it is none the less engrossing for all its elusiveness, and the final shot of the rising smoke should perhaps discourage too much narrative-based theorising: it is, after all, a film that thrills in smokescreens.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

The road of no return is a frightening prospect in this thoughtful, unsettling film from Sean Durkin. Elizabeth Olsen's performance as Martha, a young woman trying to find her way back from a life in an abusive commune, strikes just the right note of defiant vulnerability. There's something uniquely sinister about cults, which is why they make such rich material for psychological thrillers. Martha's lingering feelings towards the people she has fled remain importantly ambiguous and we are slowly drawn into her fear at the prospect of being discovered, which is perhaps perversely touched by a longing to be found.

The cult in question is headed by Patrick, a cunning and charismatic individual played with savage edge by John Hawkes. His ability to sexually manipulate his followers is made chillingly evident from the outset as he renames the women who join him: Martha becomes Marcy May. Durkin's use of flashbacks crucially muddies the waters to retain the elusive aura surrounding the commune. We are never quite sure why Martha joined or why her escape met with the response it did. There are large gaps in the narrative, most intriguingly where her previous life is concerned. Her older sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) is married and successful, and holidaying in an idyllic waterfront home when Martha calls out of the blue after years of absence. Initially supportive and concerned, her behaviour towards Martha jars more obviously as the film progresses. Something is not quite right; she seems oddly uninterested in finding out what happened to her clearly damaged younger sister, and we have to wonder why she never made a more concerted effort to find her. Ted (Hugh Dancy i.e. Mr Clare Danes), Lucy's slightly self-satisfied British husband, is another strange character in this decidedly unnerving mix. As viewers, it is hard to shake off the feeling that Lucy and Ted would rather Martha had never descended upon their shiny, sunlit existence, and their patience seems, at times, perfunctory.

Part of the reason this film is so successful in its aim to disturb is the fact that there is no safe world waiting for Martha after she escapes. Indeed, the very term 'escape' is called into question: the dark shadow of a 'secure unit' hangs over the later part of her time with Lucy and Ted as they become increasingly cold towards her erratic conduct. Perhaps the most frightening prospect for Martha Marcy May is not that Patrick and his 'family' will find her, but that they won't even bother looking.

The Shining (1980)

Pauline Kael, in her review for the New Yorker, saw The Shining as a crude, clumsy examination of man turned back into ape; a regressive step in Stanley Kubrick's cinematic endeavours, which had seen the birth of the Nietzschean Star-Child at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Certainly, The Shining is an endlessly slippery film. It refuses to conform to the tropes of horror, and when it does employ them, it is usually for subversive purposes. The remote hotel in the mountains is not the dark, Gothic motel of Psycho, but a strangely well-lit, labyrinthine mansion of kaleidoscopic carpets and sharply defined corridors. Shelley Duvall's weepy, wifely Wendy is not quite the shrinking violet she seems, but we're never sure whether to laugh at her or keep our fingers crossed for an escape. Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance is so obviously mad from the outset that Kubrick does away with suspense early on, but what he leaves in its absence is much more interesting. He wants to find out what lurks beneath the superficial scares of the horror film; what is waiting for Danny, and us, at the heart of the maze?

There are very few real frights in The Shining - Kubrick is far more concerned with building an atmosphere of interminable repetition and claustrophobia. Maze images dominate the film's architecture, from the patterns on the hotel floor and the network of corridors through which the Steadicam stalks Danny, to the literal maze looming vast and unmappable at the side of the hotel. One of the many deliberate errors in Kubrick's work is the 'model maze' in the hotel lobby, which bears little resemblance to the actual structure it is claiming to represent. All this serves to heighten the sense that the Overlook Hotel is watching its residents, trapping them in its seemingly ordered grounds. As Wendy muses whilst being given a tour, 'the whole place is such an enormous maze I’ll have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs every time I come in.’ Her Grimm's fairytale reference is unknowingly apt, as this winter in the mountains descends into every child's worst nightmare of parental malevolence. 

The problem some people have with The Shining is the sense that, at times, it seems to parody its own purposes. Nicholson's facial expressions are so excessive, so explicitly a caricature of psychosis, that he rages through the hotel as a kind of tragicomic clown, and it's tempting to chuckle when, armed with an axe, he utters the immortal line: 'Honey, I'm home!' However, Kubrick revels in this kind of generic playfulness. The Shining is parodic only in the sense that it sometimes mocks the tradition it has been born from. Ultimately, Kubrick doesn't need static television sets, home-videos of houses at night, or shower scenes gone awry to generate unease. The brilliance of this film rests in the depth of its structure. We are led through a maze of uncanny repetitions and dead ends and we are left to wonder if it is really a mirror Kubrick has placed at the centre, one of the many mirrors into which Jack leers knowingly during his descent into uncontainable madness.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

The contenders for this years Best Picture Oscar were a curious mix: there were two films about slavery, one a severely elegant biopic; the other a gruesome experiment in comic violence Tarantino style. There were two films about secret agents attempting to infiltrate dangerous Middle Eastern countries, with Ben Affleck and Jessica Chastain respectively taking the roles of the all American heroes in Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. But there was only one film that juxtaposed mental illness, football and a dance competition.

It was difficult to know what to expect from Silver Linings Playbook. A comedy in which Bradley Cooper (of The Hangover fame) plays a man suffering from bipolar disorder might seem on the surface to be a difficult sell. Yet the presence of Jennifer Lawrence on any promotional material must now be enough the fill the seats. It's not every 22 year old actress who can earn an Oscar nomination from something as bleakly powerful as Winter's Bone and then step into the role of Katniss Everdeen (with only a very small slip up the stairs to collect her Academy award). She shines, or rather pouts her way to perfection, in the role of Tiffany Maxwell, the neurotic and promiscuous widow who teaches Cooper's Pat Solitano how he might start to live again after losing what seems like everything. The bargain they strike is this: she will contact his estranged wife for him if he agrees to be her partner in an upcoming dance contest. Neither of them is especially rhythmically gifted and the rehearsal scenes afford some of the biggest laughs.

The reason for this film's success is undoubtedly the standard of acting on display. David O' Russel's cast is sublimely chosen, with Robert De Niro putting in a particularly funny yet touching turn as Pat's equally unhinged father. The small, neurotic tics that make up the patchwork of every character subtly show how fine the line between sanity and madness ultimately is and it is left to the viewer to make the final diagnosis. The burgeoning friendship between Pat and Tiffany is handled very well by Cooper and Lawrence, who both manage to strike the right note between humour and unease in their portrayal of a relationship that only makes sense to those inside it. A 'date' scene in the local diner results in Lawrence morphing from a stance of slightly cold aloofness into a full on display of violent hysteria, at which Cooper seems, like us, both amused and rather frightened.

In a way, this film perhaps suffers in part from the size of its ambitions. It tries to be edgy, meaningful and light-hearted simultaneously, which creates some problems in working out a conclusion that justifies its premise. Yet it is certainly entertaining, and repeatedly succeeds in managing its balancing act with dexterity, humanity and class. One of the best, and most honest, films of the year: I would have given it Argo's Oscar.

Sideways (2004)

I came across this mellow, sometimes self-satisfied but often touching, comedy the other week when indulging in my very own glass of pinot noir. I quickly realised just how limited my vocabulary is when it comes to wine. Sideways, the surprise success of 2004 from Alexander Payne, has a plethora of adjectives at its disposal when the theme returns (as it consistently does) to this subject. Wine is at its cinematic heart; in fact, it often feels like the film itself might be tipsy as it rolls through the Californian valleys with Miles and Jack (Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church). The general atmosphere throughout is one of dreamy intoxication and, despite the odd 'drink and dial,' it's undoubtedly a pleasant world in which to briefly indulge.

Miles is the kind of character life likes to gently deflate: he is middle-aged and divorced, two of the things struggling writers, whilst constantly complaining, masochistically enjoy. He is also a wine fanatic and passes off his alcoholism as a refined academic pursuit, knocking back the glasses at various vineyard tastings with comments like 'there's just the faintest soupçon of asparagus' (hopefully not). On the other hand, his best friend and companion on this asparagus-infused stag week is Jack, a serial womaniser and sort of-actor, terrified of settling down with his rich Armenian-American fiance. They make an odd pair, and Giamatti and Haden Church play wonderfully with this dynamic, particularly at the moments when Jack has to respond to one of Miles' many woeful monologues. The scene where Miles bemoans the fact he cannot possibly commit suicide before he's even been published (to which Jack responds: the guy who wrote 'Confederacy of Dunces' killed himself before he was published) is priceless.

Along the way on their oneophilic voyage, the two men meet Maya (Virginia Madsen), a beautiful and quietly intelligent waitress, and Stephanie, a wild single mother played by the always brilliant Sandra Oh. Whilst Miles attempts to connect with Maya through the art of slightly patronising but beneath the surface touchingly vulnerable conversation, Jack wastes no time in starting an affair with Stephanie in a bid to live life to the full before his wedding. Inevitably, these couplings lead to moments of hilarity, heartbreak and tenderness; occasionally all three simultaneously, and Payne creates moments of wonderful subtlety in his exploration of two men of a certain age struggling to commit.

It gets off to a slightly slow start, but no doubt, as Miles says contemplating his glass of swirling red, we just have to let it settle. The cinematography certainly helps with this: California is shot in all its heady, sundrenched glory by Phedon Papamichael, and it's very hard not to google winetasting trips on the west coast as soon as the credits roll. But you don't, partly because you've already got a bottle chilling in the fridge, but partly because this film is ultimately at its most effective when its characters, not its places, are at the fore, stripped to their funny, fragile selves not by the devilish influence of drink, but by each other.