While many mawkish middle-of-the-road melodramas are lazily referred to as "heartbreaking", few films are as genuinely deserving of that epithet as Carol Morley's Dreams of a Life (2011, Dogwoof, E). An insightful account of the life and death of Joyce Vincent, a vibrant young woman who lay undiscovered in her flat for years after slipping through the cracks in an increasingly alienated, isolated society, this sobering cocktail of drama and documentary is at once engaging and enraging, enthralling and appalling.
Interweaving soul-searching contributions from Vincent's friends and lovers with hauntingly dreamy reconstruction footage, Morley paints a fable-like picture of a fractured personality, seen in tantalising glimpses through the memories of those who (never really?) knew her. Audiotape recordings of Vincent's voice (she was a promising singer) prompt uncanny reactions from the interviewees, her ghost-like presence haunting the proceedings, which play out like a melancholy modern reworking of A Christmas Carol; the fact that Vincent died wrapping seasonal presents for her not-so-nearest and dearest lends a further air of tragedy.
Impressively, Morley avoids any exploitation of either her subject or her interviewees, allowing everyone to express their evidently honest amazement that something so unutterably sad should have occurred unnoticed in their midst. Behind it all lurks the spectre of domestic violence, reminding us how easily women in all walks of life can be cut off from social support networks by abusive relationships. Yet, miraculously, Dreams of a Life never feels like a preachy social drama; rather, it inhabits that strange netherworld on the edge of wakefulness in which the sleep of reason brings forth monsters.
Like all great baseball movies, Moneyball (2011, Sony, 12) isn't really about baseball. Based on Michael Lewis's page-turning account of the Oakland A's controversial attempts to buck the big leagues using strategy rather than star power, this riveting non-sports drama finds co-writer Aaron Sorkin doing for pitchers and hitters what The Social Network did for keyboard jockeys.
At the heart of its charm lies a chalk-and-cheese relationship between Brad Pitt's voluble jock team manager and Jonah Hill's nerdy, number-crunching accountant, together figuring a way to knock the opposition out of the ballpark with stats rather than cash. The result is a super-likable triumph-of-the-underdog tale, which manages to skewer the hideous economics of America's touchstone game without ever dispelling its cinematic magic.
Pitched somewhere between the anitipodean horror of Wolf Creek and the cold-blooded "realism" of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, first-time director Justin Kurzel's Snowtown (2011, Revolver, 18) is a deeply unsettling dramatisation of the John Bunting murders, which terrorised southern Australia in the 90s. Owing a deadpan debt to Chopper, this mortifying movie centres around Daniel Henshall's smiling, patrician psychopath, a narcissistic maniac with delusions of avenging angel grandeur, who feeds upon family insecurities to fuel his insatiable death wish. It's a terrific performance, initially beguiling, increasingly unbearable and horribly believable. DVD extras include a director's commentary, deleted scenes and a featurette on the original Snowtown murders.
In the seductively wonderful Weekend (2011, Peccadillo, 18), writer-director Andrew Haigh and leading players Tom Cullen and Chris New evoke an emerging love story that blends the tender uncertainties of Before Sunrise with the goofiness of Gregory's Girl and fragments of the sexual frankness (verbally at least) of Taxi zum Klo.
An award-winner at several high-profile lesbian and gay film festivals, this succeeds on a universal level and deserves to be embraced by audiences of all orientations. Honest, charming, funny and poignant, this was one of my favourite films of last year.
The main problem with The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011, Paramount, PG) is that the hi-tech, whizz-bang performance-capture animation techniques of the feature have a hard time living up to the more old-fashioned charms of the opening credits. There's a sense of incoherence, too, in the attempt to wrestle a number of Hergé's sources into one rather sprawling adventure, in which characters such as the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost-voiced Thompson and Thomson get somewhat lost in the mix. You're left with a series of spectacular setpieces, individually memorable but collectively forgettable.
In the alternative universe of Resistance (2011, Metrodome, 15), the failure of the D-Day landings has resulted in the Nazi occupation of Britain, leaving it to a group of plucky resistance fighters in the Welsh valleys to defend the motherland. Intelligently adapted from Owen Sheers's novel, Amit Gupta's surprisingly gritty war pic uses a nostalgic fantasy thriller narrative to raise very contemporary questions of the politics of collaboration and resistance. Among the strong performances from a sturdy ensemble cast are a reliably solid turn from the mercurial Michael Sheen and another eye-opening showing from rising star Andrea Riseborough.
From the moment the apparently urban couple at the centre of Wreckers (2011, Artificial Eye, 15) arrive at a dilapidated rural farmhouse in need of roof repairs, there's a strong sense that everything is going to go horribly Straw Dogs at any moment. The arrival of upmarket Benedict Cumberbatch's apparently unhinged country bumpkin brother (Shaun Evans) doesn't improve the outlook for Claire Foy's vulnerable wife, whose presence sparks the sharpening of unburied axes.
Director Dictynna Hood's southern gothic-inflected slice of Badlands-style neo-noir scratches away at the strange silences through which apparently tight-knit communities hide dark and dangerous secrets. The increasingly overwrought story may not quite add up, but there's enough broodingly oppressive atmosphere to compensate for the narrative blips.
