OBIT - CURTIS HANSON

Yesterday, the 20th of September, Academy Award winning filmmaker Curtis Hanson died, aged 71. He was an acclaimed and widely-celebrated writer, director and producer, with a litany of classic titles and lesser-known gems to his credit, and will be very sorely missed by regular moviegoers and cinephiles the world over. Often lauded for his portraits of masculinity in his film works, Hanson was also responsible for some of the most perceptive films about women in recent Hollywood. He had a remarkable run of films from the early 1990s, directing The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The River Wild, L.A. Confidential, Wonder Boys, 8 Mile and In Her Shoes consecutively. He received three Oscar nominations for 1997's L.A. Confidential, winning alongside Brian Helgeland for Adapted Screenplay, and was also a Golden Globe, BAFTA, EFA, PGA and Cannes Palme d'Or nominee, and a Critics' Choice, LCC, LAFCA, NBR, NSFC, NYFCC and WGA award winner. Hanson's final film was 2012's Chasing Mavericks, from which he departed as director mid-production due to heart surgery; he retired from filmmaking due to a reported diagnosis of Alzheimer's. This is a tragic loss for all of Hanson's loved ones, and for the international film community as well.

REVIEW - LEGEND (BRIAN HELGELAND)

A film built around a gimmick, a gimmick disguised as innovation. Tom Hardy plays both Kray brothers, the London gangsters from the 1960s whose story is likely no more remarkable than those of any other real-life career criminals adapted for the screen for decades now. This trick, admittedly not particularly well-achieved through dodgy effects work, and the London setting, also questionably recreated with artificial backdrops and cramped, styleless interior design, seems to be all that Brian Helgeland has to distinguish Legend from countless similar films, and his lack of directing expertise shows through in an unimaginatively-helmed attempt at constructing a crime saga that's legendary in its own right. With plodding pace, Legend recounts the Krays' experiences with a disinterest that suggests Helgeland simply expected gravitas to spring from nowhere to redeem his vapid work, and it doesn't. We just progress from one scene to the next, all ambiguity stripped of what was surely a most complex situation, that we might know without doubt where we're being led - Legend slips into a groove early and stays there throughout, and the forced immediacy of a few sizzling sequences can't rescue it from this turgid trough. Yet those sequences are, indeed, sizzling, as much as Tom Hardy's brilliant performances as Reggie and Ronnie. Even as the film offers nothing new, Hardy holds your attention and your admiration alike, and embraces the film's comedic and dramatic elements with glee in his intense portrayals. He's there to facilitate a gimmick, certainly, but he ends up elevating that gimmick. It's not innovative, it's barely even interesting, but it's a long way better than it ought to be, and we've Hardy to thank for that.