DOWNSIZING A REVIEW AND THE BRILLIANCE OF ALEXANDER PAYNE!! DIGRESSIONS ON INDEPENDENT CINEMA AND WO

Good people -it's been a nice holiday break over Christmas and now it's time to update our informative, irreverent and erudite cinema site. I must say it's been a rather barren period of cinema releases in the past few months! There have been few films to pique our interest and amongst the inundation of publicity with regards to the latest Star Wars movie (much ado about nothing as it's decidedly average) some good films have been submerged!

Maybe the most interesting is Alexander Payne's "Downsizing”. I along with quite a few other "cineastes" believe that Payne may be the best director of the last ten to fifteen years! In many ways we live in the age of the "brainless blockbuster" which means it's a lot more difficult for iconoclastic, talented "auteurs" to assemble a body of work. I was a huge fan of "Hal Hartley" -a great director who carved a brilliant, independent filmmaking niche in the 1990s and early 2000s with great films like Fay Grim and Trust. These films were entertaining, droll masterpieces on the human experience peppered with smart, philosophical insights.

Problem being in the "age of the blockbuster" even a modest budget of say 2 million (average for Hartley) was incredibly too much. Now Hartley in the main makes digital movies himself, financed via "Kickstarter”. A real travesty as we are victimised by the latest asinine and brainless blockbuster. I’ve only seen one in the last couple of years that I liked -"Wonder Woman" and soon I'll write about the waste of money that was the latest "Star Wars”. So even though Hartley has been marginalised by the vagaries of crass, opportunistic, dumb current cinema Todd Solondz still keeps on carrying on.

Maybe without the pomp of the brilliant "Happiness" and "Storytelling"(and sadly without the now deceased brilliance of the actor Phillip Seymour Hoffmann) Solondz is still around crafting intelligent, edgy, philosophically acute films often abrasive of the American condition. Todd, please do a film on Donald Trump, no one could do a better job of placing the vain, stupid, vacuous Trump in the modern vain, vacuous American commercial landscape!!

I know someone out there is ready to point out that Woody Allen is still making films almost yearly in a similar style to Solondz and Hartley. I was a huge Allen fan - some of my most exciting formative film years were consummated with the brilliance of Sleeper, Annie Hall and Manhattan. But I saw these films in the early 2000s, and they were made in the 1970s!!Allen has been hugely influential to American cinema and especially intelligent, philosophical cinema, but it's been the law of diminishing returns, in terms of quality for years now!!Mind you, such is the dearth of quality cinema that I religiously go to nearly every new Woody Allen movie. Average "Woody" is still light years ahead of 90 percent of modern film!

So who's left? I’ve been immensely excited by Nicholas Winding Refn - the Danish director of the brilliant Drive(starring Ryan Gosling).For the first time in many years, I was absolutely captivated by this 2011 film which was incredibly exciting and as close to modern film-noir as you can get! It looked incredible on the big screen and deserved it's prize at Cannes! Since then Refn has been sturdy and interesting, if a little too dependent on strong screen violence to underpin his movies, but he's a definite talent!!

But for sheer virtuosity, is there anyone better than Alexander Payne? I have never laughed so hard at the movies as I did back in 2004 when I took a chance and saw a film called "Sideways”. I was more taken in by the great reviews rather than the plot which seemed a little trite. A story of two 40 somethings brilliantly played by Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden-Church who go to the "Santa Ynez" wine country before Church gets married! I bonded with this movie because it's supremely smart and wickedly funny. Since then, I’ve devoured every Payne film enjoying just about everything!

Payne has a knack of attracting quality actors (maybe it's the great writing and general intelligence of his films) and incredibly in the same year Sideways was released (2004) so was About Schmidt with the mercurial Jack Nicholson. This is a tour de force acting performance by Jack in About Schmidt. He is brilliance personified. And I’ve since seen Election starring the underrated Matthew Broderick, this 1999 film gem is perhaps the greatest film satirising the American high school election process! Brilliant and a must see for anyone interested in quality, intelligent cinema! Come to think of it Alexander, please make a film on Trump along with Todd Solondz (ha-ha)!!

So before I touch on Payne's latest "Downsizing" I must mention "The Descendants" and "Nebraska”. The former starring George Clooney is set in Hawaii and is about as commercial a film as Payne has made. It’s still smart but it's more episodic, soap style story grossed nearly 170 million dollars and it's terrifically engaging, if a little derivative! Nebraska, on the other hand is Payne back in "less commercial mode" as his titular character played by Bruce Dern takes a road trip along with his son from Montana to Nebraska to claim a million dollar sweepstakes prize! I think the Descendants was better and with a similar budget to Sideways of 15 millionish it grossed a comparatively modest 25 million. Sideways grossed a huge 130 million!

In "Downsizing" Payne has gone creatively bonkers to great effect! Starring Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig as a couple who shrink themselves to reinvent their stressed lives. They decide to decamp to "Leisureland" through an ingenious process of shrinking to about 5 inches. Variety magazine called the movie "playful, spectacular, mischievous and audacious". I concur wholeheartedly! Some have disliked the movie for it's apocalyptic view of climate change! That is harsh, as I believe the evidence of climate change is overwhelming and any movie that touches on the matter is important!

The film is peppered with inventive visuals. I loved the massive spatulas that lift the miniaturised Damon from his hospital bed; the massive sized crackers and countless other examples! The shrinking of the people is a novel premise to tackle overpopulation. In one scene you see a whole years rubbish accumulated in just one small garbage bag! So whilst this is social satire with sci-fi elements, it posits the world we live in, a world stuck by climate change and overpopulation and crass consumerism...and I detected sly digs at Trump. Very subtle, but they are there. And the mega-talented Christoph Waltz plays a madcap Serbian hedonist to hilarious effect! This is a great film, not quite brilliant, a little too idiosyncratic for it's own good, but I loved it. And in it's ingenious exposition of a "downsized" world the mercurial Alexander Payne further adds to the perception that he is the greatest chronicler of the modern human condition in film.9 out of 10!!If you haven't watched any Alexander Payne films please start, maybe with this one or Sideways. Life is joyous, but it's also too short to only watch commercial rubbish like Star Wars. Payne is "food for the brain" and "nourishment for the soul"!!