for TRIBUNE 2.Dec:’The Descent Pt2′ [5/10], ‘Me & Orson Welles’ [6/10], ‘The Merry Gentleman’ [2/10]
The Descent – Part 2
Director: Jon Harris
Me and Orson Welles
Director: Richard Linklater
The Merry Gentleman
Director: Michael Keaton
Can there possibly be anyone out there who's an ardent fan both of (a) the current teenage heart-throb best known for playing Troy Bolton in the High School Musical franchise and (b) the wayward 20th century genius who gave us Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and a certain radio version of War of the Worlds? If so, this hypothetical individual will feel Christmas has come a little early if Me and Orson Welles – in which the heart-throb (Zac Efron) is the "Me" and one Christian McKay plays Welles – arrives at their local multiplex.
Set over the course of one implausibly incident-packed week in November 1937, and based on Robert Kaplow's novel, Me and Orson Welles follows greenhorn high-schooler Richard (Efron) as he stumbles into a supporting role in Welles' radical Broadway adaptation of Julius Caesar. He's cast as a lute-player in a scene which, as the director airily informs him with his trademark jocular, high-falutin' intellectualism, is there to "humanise" the character of Brutus.
And the movie goes to considerable pains to "humanise" a man who, during his lifetime, seldom missed an opportunity to inflate his own (unique) life-story to mythical proportions. It's a process that has continued posthumously over the last 20 years, thanks to various biographies and fictionalised appearances in movies.
The last similar variant was Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock (1999), much ballyhooed at the time of its release but now – justifiably – somewhat forgotten. Time may be slightly kinder to Me and Orson Welles, a rather less ambitious venture which is mainly worth seeing for the strong acting ensemble: appealing Claire Danes (back in the greasepaint-and-stardust mode of Stage Beauty), Eddie Marsan (as John Houseman) and Ben Chaplin (acerbic comic relief as a self-regarding but self-cripplingly neurotic George Colouris); James Tupper as an amusingly goatish Joseph Cotten; and rising-starlet Zoe Kazan, notably underused as Richard's perky prospective girlfriend.
Though nominally the lead, the ever-game Efron is inevitably overshadowed by McKay, a big-screen debutant from Bury who nails Welles' distinctive vocal intonations – rumbling baritone with a hint of a Mephistophelean chuckle – and gets by passably looks-wise even if, at 35, he's in theory a decade and a half too old for the part. Because Welles was, astonishing as it now seems, barely 21 in November 1937 – making him only a couple of years older than our wet-behind-the-ears hero, whom he invariably patronises as "Junior."
The bizarre (real-life) disjoint between Welles' calendar-age and his vaulting creative precocity is never really examined, Holly Gent Palmo's screenplay being much more concerned with (fictional) Richard's painful sentimental education. Observing at first hand how exploitatively Welles – whose sexual appetities evidently match his gastronomic and intellectual voracity – abuses his position of power, Richard glimpses the idol's clay feet at the same time as he starts to grasp his own limitations: his future doesn't hold much prospect of what Welles likes to call "images of magnificence."
Director Linklater must also, umpteen pictures into his prolific and unpredictable career, now be coming to terms with his own strengths and weaknesses. Having reaped hosannas in many quarters for his Philip K Dick adaptation A Scanner Darkly (2006), Linklater has stumbled commercially and critically to the extent that his 1993 masterwork, Dazed and Confused, seems like a lifetime ago.
Me and Orson Welles is competently handled – you'd certainly never guess it was actually shot on the Isle of Man – but essentially a minor affair, one that's been knocking quite innocuously around the film-festival circuit since premiering at Toronto in September 2008. It's only now being given a spin in cinemas, cashing in on Efron's popularity and positioning McKay for "awards-season" consideration – both aims understandable, but a tad optimistic.
If Me and Orson Welles has been lingering in distribution limbo for some time, it's decidedly fresh goods compared with Michael Keaton's directorial debut The Merry Gentleman, which first saw the light of day at the Sundance Film Festival almost two years ago. Starring Keaton himself as a consumptive, conscience-haunted hitman, Tom Bastounes as the cop on his trail and Kelly MacDonald as the witness who ends up being romanced by both men, it appears on our screens in an opportunistic attempt to make the most of its "seasonal" backdrop – even if only the first half takes place around Christmas-time.
While not quite as unappetising as last week's prize turkey Nativity!, The Merry Gentleman is nevertheless so undistinguished in almost every regard that it likewise belongs in any rundown of 2009's most inexplicable and undeserved cinema releases. Among films which first appeared on the festival-circuit in 2008, by the way, it's especially regrettable that no UK release-slot has been found for Helena Trestikova's Rene from the Czech Republic, Ruben Ostlund's Involuntary from Sweden, or Sylvie Verheyde's Stella from France. (Are arthouse audiences really so subtle-allergic?)
The main problem is Ron Lazzeretti's script, a self-consciously quirky confection that combines low-key romance, police-procedural thriller and character-based drama in increasingly clunky, cliche-ridden and pretentious fashion, hampered by some thuddingly unconvincing dialogue. The latter defeats even an actress as spirited and appealing as McDonald – who, in the latest of a long series of ill-advised career-choices, plays an expat Scotswoman whose low self-esteem is the result of suffering domestic violence at the hands of her lowlife Yank husband (Bobby Cannavale, wasted.)
"You might just be the sweetest man I've ever met!" she trills, after Keaton's perpetually coughing-and-spluttering 'Mr Logan' (he's never referred to as anything else) has performed some gruff but twinkly-eyed act of kindness. By this stage the pair have "met cute" after she's ended up under a Christmas tree and he (coincidentally passing by) has pulled her out from under it – precisely the kind of daft contrivance on which the whole screenplay depends.
Shot by UK telly veteran Chris Seager in drab shades of dour blue-grey, the film is set in an unnamed American city which looks so anonymous one presumes it's yet another example of a Canadian metropolis doubling for more expensive locations south of the 49th parallel. But no – that really is Chicago, it's just that Seager and company have managed to find the least characterful quarters of the architecturally-renowned Windy City.
And though it allegedly runs only 97 minutes, The Merry Gentleman proceeds with such leaden dourness that it feels like sitting through one of the notoriously protracted speeches by the area's politicians – this combination of world-weary grit and religiose gloop making for a decidedly unappetising mixture. One is tempted to conclude that Keaton shouldn't give up the "day job" – but even as an actor he seems on relatively poor, mannered form – a little bit of his grumbling, pinched taciturnity goes a very long way indeed.
Just enough space to mention that rare thing this week – a brand-new new film! Not that The Descent Part 2 is exactly a beacon of freshness or originality, being essentially – and unashamedly – a retread of 2005's surprise box-office hit The Descent. Memorably taglined "Chicks with picks", the first picture was another example of writer-director Neil Marshall's workmanlike skill with the horror genre, in which half a dozen cave-exploring women stumbled across a murderous underground humanoid species with gore-splattered results.
Four years later, the sequel picks up – just like the best 1970s and 80s shockers – pretty much exactly where the last one left off, with a survivor (most unwisely) going back into the darkness for further confrontations with the "Crawlers."
Marshall is present only as Executive Producer this time – he's moved on to the slightly grander-sounding Centurion, starring Michael Fassbender, Dominic West and David Morrissey. In The Descent Part 2, however, toplined by returnees Shauna MacDonald and Natalie Mendoza, the only relatively famous face on view is that of Douglas Hodge – a very long way from La cage aux folles as a butch rescue-party member, and who at least treats the grand guignol shenanigans with a commendably straight face.
There's enough gore to satisfy the gore-hounds, a sufficient quota of "boo!" shocks and gross-out ingenuity to entertain teenage popcorn-munchers, and a smattering of troglodytic technical-speak to amuse anyone familiar with such terms as "boulder-choke." But very little to detain anyone else.
Neil Young
24th November, 2009
written for the 2nd December issue of Tribune magazine
THE DESCENT – PART 2 : [5/10] : UK 2009 : Jon HARRIS : 93m (BBFC) : seen 2nd October 2009, Empire cinema, Great Park, Birmingham (press show – 62nd CinemaDays event). [12/28]
ME AND ORSON WELLES : [6/10] : UK/USA 2009 : Richard LINKLATER : 114m (BBFC) : seen 1st October 2009, Empire cinema, Great Park, Birmingham (press show – 62nd CinemaDays event). [13/28]
THE MERRY GENTLEMAN : [2/10] : USA 2008 : Michael KEATON : 97m (BBFC) : seen 2nd October 2009, Empire cinema, Great Park, Birmingham (press show – 62nd CinemaDays event). [5/28]