Movie Review: Le Week-End (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Shot digitally by Nathalie Durand, Le Week-End is a cut above the usual romances directed by Roger Michell (Notting Hill). The freedom offered by using a lighter, more mobile camera has also loosened Michell up creatively. It's no wonder Le Week-End reminded the director that there's a whole history of lighter, run-and-gun cinema that stretches at least as far back as the French New Wave.

Movie Review: Closed Circuit (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

True to its title, Closed Circuit begins with a view of a London marketplace through a closed circuit camera. Gradually, the view changes from that of just one camera to two, then four, then eight, multiplying exponentially with each new conversation the cameras pick up from shoppers strolling through the street market. In this age of global terrorism, this is what life is like in one of the most wired-for-surveillance cities in the world. And director John Crowley's split-screen effect underscores how difficult it is to keep track of multiple information flows simultaneously. Just when you think you've gotten your bearings a truck pulls into the market, stopping illegally in front of one complaining vendor and occupying an increasing amount of visual space in each camera angle and therefore the entire screen. You don't have long to surmise something's wrong before the truck explodes, killing all of the innocent bystanders discussing their mundane life events minutes earlier.

Dispersing the Cloud (Atlas)

by Tony Dayoub

Six distinct but loosely related stories are told during the nearly 3-hour running time of Cloud Atlas, the New Age-ey, science fiction-flavored romance directed by the Wachowskis (The Matrix) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). The most compelling gimmick the film offers is its unique casting in which the principle actors in its ensemble play different roles in each of the stories. In this simple way (really only possible in film and theater), Cloud Atlas reinforces an idea explored in the 2004 source novel by David Mitchell, best described by the movie's pivotal character, Sonmi-451:

Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime, and every kindness, we birth our future.

The repetition of familiar actors influencing successive stories with varying impact is one of the most attractive ideas explored in Cloud Atlas. But it is also one of its most frustrating flaws because you soon find yourself scanning the periphery of every scene to see if you spot the next recurrence of someone changing his/her appearance to—not always successfully—blend in with the demands of the plot fragment at hand. It takes you out of the movie. It is undeniable, however, that Cloud Atlas—at over $100 million, perhaps the most expensive independent picture ever made—is a monumental achievement of some kind. What follows is my attempt to unravel some of the more distracting/confusing elements of the film... to create a liberating mini-guide, if you will. that should allow the viewer to more closely follow this fantasy's more pertinent themes.