Mindscape

For F*** Magazine

MINDSCAPE

Director : Jorge Dorado

Cast : Mark Strong, Taissa Farmiga, Brian Cox, Indira Varma, Noah Taylor, Clare Calbraith

Genre : Thriller

Run Time : 99 mins

Opens: : 8 May 2014

“Journey into the body” movies like Fantastic Voyage and Innerspace can be fun, but it’s often “journey into the mind” films that are truly intriguing and trippy. In this psychological thriller, Mark Strong plays John Washington, a “memory detective” working for the agency Mindscape. He has the ability to take subjects back into their memories and has used this skill to solve several crimes. Reeling from the loss of his wife, he takes a job from Mindscape boss Sebastian (Cox) to help 16-year-old Anna Greene (Farmiga) break her hunger strike. What appears to be a simple job soon becomes unpredictable and dangerous, as John tries to figure out if the girl is a helpless victim or a sociopathic mastermind herself, all while memories of his late wife intrude into his mind.

Mindscape is the feature film debut of director Jorge Dorado and is produced by Jaume Collet-Serra, director of Orphan, Unknown and Non-Stop. Collet-Serra co-founded studio Ombra Films as a platform for promising Spanish directors to make English-language movies, akin to what Luc Besson did for France with his studio EuropaCorp. Also known as Anna, Mindscape aims for a Hitchcockian flavour but comes off feeling more like a 90s erotic/psychological thriller, a tamer Basic Instinct meets The Sixth Sense. If we’re talking more recent films, there’s a tinge of Red Lights and Trance here too. Dorado creates a good deal of atmosphere, but he relies on tried and tested suspense movie tricks such as disorienting editing, recurring visual motifs (clocks, staircases, roses), slow focus pulling, and a score featuring what sounds like the string section of an orchestra having a collective seizure.

Sibling team Guy and Martha Holmes’ screenplay is filled with awkward, clumsy chunks of exposition and some unnatural dialogue, but the set-up does pull one in and the mystery is initially engrossing. As can be expected of this genre, there are several twists and turns and while there isn’t an outright preposterous cop-out, it’s still far from truly satisfying. Still, there is a valiant attempt made at characterisation and like with a good page-turner, this reviewer wanted to keep watching to find out how it all plays out. Films featuring a Lolita figure can end up feeling trashy and exploitative, and Mindscape doesn’t feel too cheap and schlocky in that way.

Mark Strong is one of those actors who gets typecast as villains in Hollywood films (hence his inclusion in Jaguar’s “Good to be Bad” advertising campaign) but his intensity and presence give him more range than a string of baddie parts suggests. As the “memory detective” plunged into the skeletons-in-closets-filled world of a wealthy and powerful family, Strong’s mix of wariness and vulnerability is quite convincing. The interplay between him and Taissa Farmiga is quite fun to watch. Farmiga bites into her meaty role in an entertaining fashion, her portrayal of the disturbed Anna Greene reminiscent of many a Saoirse Ronan performance. Anna is part Cole Sear, part Catherine Tramell (or is she?) and Farmiga gamely unravels the Gordian knot that is the character before the audience and is mesmerising at it. Brian Cox doesn’t really do much in his supporting role.

This neo-noir mystery film falls back on many conventions of the genre, substituting “psychologist playing head games with a mysterious female client” with “memory detective playing head games with a mysterious female client”. Strong and Farmiga work well with each other but ultimately, Mindscape is more convoluted than complex and while its game of “who’s manipulating who?” is intriguing in some places, it’s tiresome in others. It’s a twisty whodunit that busies itself with old stylistic tricks and lacks a sensational pay-off.

Summary: Taissa Farmiga is captivating and Mark Strong plays against her well, but Mindscape feels too much like any number of psychological thrillers even with its sci-fi-tinged setup.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

The Bling Ring

For F*** Magazine

THE BLING RING

Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Katie Chang, Israel Broussard, Emma Watson, Taissa Farmiga, Claire Julien, Georgia Rock, Leslie Mann
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 91 mins
Opens: 12 September 2013
Rating: M18 (Drug Use and Coarse Language)

Celebrity lives have always held a certain fascination for us hoi polloi. Since the golden age of movies, the luxury and glamour enjoyed by the stars of the silver screen has been the source of many a fantasy. From Broadway Brevities and Society Gossip to Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to TMZ, we seem to have been taught “who needs a private life when material pleasures are no object?” The Bling Ring, based on actual events, follows a posse of teenagers who take the fantasy a step further, endeavouring to live the celebrity lifestyle by way of burglary.

Shy new kid Marc Hall (Broussard) arrives at a Calabasas high school and gets swept up into the world of his new friend Rebecca Ahn (Chang). He is promptly introduced to drugs and larceny, plunging headlong into a risky, exciting new existence. Rebecca’s friends Nicki (Watson), Nicki’s adopted sister Sam (Farmiga) and Chloe (Julien) soon join in the “fun”. Motivated by boredom, bravado and a magpie-like love for shiny things, the group embarks on a serial burglary spree, the likes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green, Audrina Patridge and Orlando Bloom numbering among their celeb victims.



This variety of “true crime” story with its frivolous trimmings seems like the perfect fodder for a Lifetime movie of the week – in fact, one already exists, 2011’s made-for-TV Bling Ring. Sofia Coppola’s take on things is, as can be expected, an artier affair. The director, inspired by Nancy Jo Sales’ Vanity Fair feature The Suspects Wore Louboutins, presents a heady world of youthful abandon and a callous disregard for consequence. However, one gets the feeling that she has held up a mirror to society, but all society seems interested in doing is gazing into that mirror, applying lipstick and preening.

Does The Bling Ring glamourise the illegal activities its protagonists are shown partaking in, or does it critique and examine it? It feels more like the former than the latter, but then again, this comes off as one of those “ah, but that’s how it was intended” movies.

“This is really shallow and vapid!”

“Ah, but that’s how it was intended.”

“I can’t bring myself to root for these characters!”

“Ah, but that’s how it was intended.”

“This movie seems to be trying to say something, but I have no idea what!”

“Ah, but that’s how it was intended.”

The fascination with Bonnie and Clyde-type stories is something that’s mentioned in the film, and “young people doing dangerous things”-type flicks such as Natural Born Killers might come to mind. Thing is, The Bling Ring is to Natural Born Killers what a Chihuahua is to a Pitbull. The frothy frivolity with which the whole thing is coated means any message the movie tries to get across, it ultimately doesn’t. The film focuses on the superficial acts of the breaking and entering bouts without delving into any profound impact it might have had. Perhaps that’s what Coppola was aiming for, less of a polemic and more of a casual observation. This approach will pull some viewers in but will just as easily turn others off.



One of the main draws for the general audience is definitely the casting of Emma Watson. While Katie Chang’s Rebecca is ostensibly the female lead, Watson handily steals the show, at once mesmerizing and intensely annoying. The actress nails the grating vocal cadence of Alexis Neiers, the real-life person on which her character is based; commanding the screen with an air-headed confidence. Props must also be given to newcomer Broussard, whose turn as the naïve neophyte inducted a world of flippant wrongdoing is remarkably natural.

Do the Hollywood Hills Burglar Bunch deserve the Sofia Coppola treatment? Probably not. The film doesn’t so much analyse the obsession with celebrity in the age of social media and the reckless impulses of privileged youth so much as it waves it in front of the audience. Sure, the movie’s nice to look at and isn’t shallow and vapid in that mass-produced bubblegum pop way – but it still is shallow and vapid.

SUMMARY: There might be something worthwhile lurking beneath the surface of the rich kids doing dumb things, but Bling and you’ll miss it.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong