Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a successful theatre director. After an acclaimed production of Death of a Salesman, he receives a seemingly limitless bursary, which he puts towards a lavish production in an endless warehouse facility in New York. The production? His life, including life-size sets. As he puts it, "something true, something tough". As time goes by, he casts himself, his now estranged wife and daughter, his production assistant, who then go on to cast further versions of themselves. The sets grow bigger and the lines between life, performance and dreams become blurred.

*****

It is impossible to categorise or pigeon-hole this film, other than to say it is from the mind of Charlie Kaufman, acclaimed writer of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and directing here for the first time. As always, Kaufman has no interest in cliche, predictability or convention, crafting instead a genuinely unique piece of work that is confusing, rewarding, moving, affecting and human. In different hands, we might have subtitles or subtle colour-coding to mark the passing of the years or the shift between "real life" and "performance". Instead, we have nothing more to go on than our own concentration and the gradual receding of Cotard's hairline. We find ourselves watching a scene, suddenly realising that we must be a decade or more on from the last scene and yet the experience is not frustrating or disconcerting. As you immerse yourself in the film, you simply lose yourself in the experience of overlapping realities and subjectivity.

As mentioned in the synopsis, Cotard casts someone as him in the play of his life, but that person then starts to play the role of a director, casting someone else for him to direct. Cotard's wife leaves him, taking their daughter to Germany and all of a sudden the daughter is grown up. Cotard's new partner, who goes from manning the box office to being his production and casting assistant, buys a house that is on fire, though we are never told why. Cotard begins a romance with the actress cast as his production assistant, although she also has eyes for the actor cast as Cotard. If this all sounds hopelessly confusing (and I have probably got some of it wrong, which won't help) then it is and it isn't. It can at times be difficult to keep track, but that is sort of the point. We are supposed to be unsure as to what is real and what is not, as Cotard himself takes a role in the play, as a cleaning lady.

In the end, this is a film to be seen and experienced rather than explained. Just as it is hard to explain the effect of watching Nolan's back to front Memento, so is it hard to explain the effect of Synecdoche, New York. It is like dreaming, but also like experiencing the harshness of real life. It is melancholy, but so touching and affecting. Hoffman's performance, like every other performance in the film, is beyond over-praise. He is simply sensational. After breath-taking performances in Happiness, Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Hoffman has exceeded even his own peerless standards. How he did not even get nominated for an Oscar is beyond me. He should have scooped up every award going.

I have only seen the film once and will need to see it again, perhaps a few times. It is superb, one of the best of the last few years. As Cotard himself says, Kauffman has crafted "something tough, something true".

Burke & Hare

Burke & Hare are from Northern Ireland and find themselves in Edinburgh in the early-ish 1800's, trying to eke out a living. Edinburgh physicians are beginning to make great progress in the study of anatomy and fresh corpses therefore become very valuable to them. Hare (Andy Serkis)'s wife runs a guest house and when one of the residents dies in the night, he and Burke (Simon Pegg) make a quick £5 from Tom Wilkinson's Dr Knox for the body. Although they manage to come across a few opportunely dead bodies for further revenue, Burke has fallen for Isla Fisher's Ginny and wants to finance her ambition of putting on an all-female version of The Scottish Play, requiring considerably more income than the odd dead body hear and there. Burke & Hare therefore embark on a scheme of mass-murder in order to keep food on the table and increase Burke's chances of wooing Ginny.

*****

Critical opinion has been divided on John Landis' return to the realms of black comedy. Some have lambasted it as witless, some have enjoyed its jaunty tone and the easy rapport of the principal actors. Whilst it undoubtedly cannot compare to either the comedic quality of Landis' Trading Places, Coming To America and Animal House, or the horror/comedy blend of An American Werewolf in London, it is unfair to write it off simply because it is inferior to some genuine masterpieces. It goes without saying that black comedies are exceedingly tough nuts to crack. Plenty have succeeded (Dr Strangelove, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Shaun of the Dead, Bad Santa, Slither and Fargo to name but a few), but that still leaves films like Observe & Report, Very Bad Things and Nurse Betty that are either pitched wrongly, or cannot work out how to see their premise through. Burke & Hare in no way belongs in the exalted company of the former category, however it does at least keep the tone even throughout, maintaining laughs, plenty of gore and bone-crunching and even raising a smile during the final exchange, which follows a public hanging.

These are not easy balances to maintain and that Landis manages it at all is commendable. Where he perhaps fails is in not grabbing our attention, our interest or our sympathies. It becomes difficult to care one way or another about their enterprise, aside from generally frowning on mass murder as a money-making scheme. Pegg is endearing and genuinely funny, but I found it difficult to get past indifference as to whether he won Ginny or not. Hare, who by all accounts was a genuinely unpleasant man (this is after all a true story) is well played by Andy Serkis, who always has a glint of the devil in his eye when he smiles, but there needs to be sense of the tension within them, that as good as it is to be making money, there is something innately wrong in what they are doing.

In the end, Landis clearly isn't interested in making a judgement call on Burke & Hare, which is fair enough, but with historic characters rather than a fictitious one (like, say Tyler Durden) something more than simply "this was them, this is what they did" is needed. Even in a film intended to be a fairly slapstick comedy, we need something a little less superficial.

In the end though, this is good, entertaining stuff. Not a classic by any stretch, but not a turkey either. You will laugh and occasionally wince, but probably forget why you did a few days later.

Red (2010)

Bruce Willis is Frank Moses, a retired CIA black-ops agent who livens up his week by ringing up pensions administration, pretending not to have received his cheque and then casually flirting with the clerk on the other end of the line. One day, some fairly intimidating men in black jump suits come to his house intent on killing him, setting Frank on the run to find out who wants him dead and how to stop them succeeding. He hooks up with Mary-Louise Parker, the afore-mentioned clerk, as well as several of his also-retired CIA buddies, including sniper Helen Mirren, lunatic John Malkovich and cancer-ridden Morgan Freeman. They track a cover-up leading to the highest levels of government and a conspiracy of silence best completed by killing them all.

*****

Red is (either as or despite what you have heard) a lot of fun. It's not going to make history, it doesn't have anything sensationally new to offer, but what it does, it does well. The plot is pretty conventional stuff and although some of the action sequences go for relatively unfurrowed ground (shooting an incoming missile, stepping out of a car as it spins out of control), it is mostly a lot of what we have often seen before. But that is no bad thing in this case. The film has a relaxed ease about it, with the main actors interacting effortlessly, performing well within their considerable acting expertise. There's a terrific punch-up between Willis and Karl Urban's rising CIA star, a very funny face-off between the retirees and Richard Dreyfuss' corrupt defence contractor and Ernest Borgnine almost walks off with the whole film as a mild-mannered CIA record keeper.

It wasn't a film that left me checking my watch, wondering when it was all going to end, it was well-paced, well-acted, well-executed and kept me entertained throughout. Of course anyone could name several similarly-themed films that are much better, but that is beside the point. Red (Retired: Extremely Dangerous) is a great watch for a Friday night, fairly forgettable in the long run and gives us Malkovich shouting, "Old man, my ass" after blowing up a rocket-launcher wielding middle-aged woman. Which is a good thing.