Cast: Jay Mohr, Julianne Nicholson, Josh Charles, Andy Richter, Lauren Graham, Bryan Cranston, Matthew Davis, Helen Slater
Seeing Other People begins with Ed (Mohr) and Alice (Nicholson) head over heels in love and recently engaged. Everything is going well… until Alice spies one of her friends having sex with a waiter at their engagement party. This leads to Alice wondering if her relationship with Ed would be stronger if they were able to sleep with other people before they get married, in a kind of “let’s get it out of our systems” kind of way. Alice also believes that she has missed out on a wider range of sexual experiences, and feels a little disadvantaged. Ed is initially reluctant but agrees to go ahead with Alice’s plan, and they both begin to date other people.
At first, it all goes smoothly, with Alice seeing, but not sleeping with, Donald (Davis), and Ed also finding it difficult to actually have sex with someone else. Their own sex life improves as a result, but soon Alice’s intimacy with Donald becomes a wedge that drives them apart. Alice and Ed’s growing estrangement has a knock-on effect on Alice’s sister, Claire (Graham) and her husband, Peter (Cranston). Both unhappy with their marriage, they begin to search for their own fulfilment, using Ed and Alice’s example as either a guide or a warning of how to proceed. Meanwhile, Alice and Ed’s friend, Carl (Richter) is so lovelorn he doesn’t believe he will ever find the woman of his dreams. It’s only when he meets Penelope (Slater) that he begins to believe otherwise. What follows for all is a somewhat bittersweet look at the perils of getting what you wish for.
Seeing Other People starts off well, and once you get past the basic implausibility of the idea that two committed people would deflect to such a course of action – and the scene in which Alice convinces Ed her plan will work struggles to maintain a real sense of “this could happen” – there’s a certain amount of fun in trying to work out how things will progress, and what the eventual outcome will be. Partly this is because the script by husband and wife team Wolodarsky and Maya Forbes shies away from the standard rom-com tropes and tries hard to make the situations its leading characters find themselves in as difficult to extract themselves from as possible. It also creates an environment where the way each character expresses him- or herself is rarely pain-free, but is equally humorous at the same time. This is a difficult juggling act, and Wolodarksy gets it right most of the time (he also contributes a funny cameo as a pushy salesman).
He’s helped by an enthusiastic cast led by Mohr and Nicholson. Mohr has a boyish vulnerability that is pushed to the fore here, while Nicholson’s gamine appearance underscores Alice’s naïve willingness to put her relationship with Ed in jeopardy. The supporting cast shine too, with Graham and Cranston on great form as a warring couple whose dislike of each other borders on the pathological. On a warmer front, the developing relationship between Carl and Penelope is handled sweetly without it becoming too saccharine.
On the production side, the photography by Mark Doering-Powell matches the main characters’ moods throughout, while the music – the usual mix of contemporary songs and original score – highlights each prevailing mood to good effect. Wolodarsky directs with a great eye for the foibles of modern relationships, and manages his cast, and the material, with aplomb.
Rating: 7/10 – an adroit romantic drama that overcomes the absurdity of its central premise by focusing instead on the pros and cons of getting what you want… and regretting it; well-acted and with a script that heads off predictability with ease.
Originally posted on thedullwoodexperiment website.
Cast: Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Amy Poehler, George Takei, Colm Meaney, Keith David, Dan Fogler, Jimmy Hayward
With an opening sequence reminiscent of Chicken Run (2000), Free Birds has scrawny, unliked turkey Reggie (Wilson) trying to convince his fellow meals-in-waiting that being picked for “turkey paradise” isn’t as great as it sounds. When the US President arrives at their farm to choose that year’s Pardoned Turkey it’s Reggie’s luck to be chosen. After adapting to a lifestyle spent watching TV and ordering in pizza, Reggie ends up being coerced into helping fellow turkey Jake (Harrelson) who is determined to travel back in time to the first Thanksgiving and ensure that turkeys are taken off the menu forever. Using a time machine called S.T.E.V.E. (Takei) that is hidden underground at Camp David, Reggie and Jake travel back to 1621 to the Plymouth plantation and meet up with the local turkey colony led by Chief Broadbeak (David). With the planned Thanksgiving feast only days away, and the turkeys being hunted by cruel Myles Standish (Meaney), it’s up to Reggie and Jake to convince Chief Broadbeak and his daughter Jenny (Poehler) to take the fight to the settlers.
While it’s high concept storyline and Back to the Future-style plotting offers nothing new, Free Birds tries its best to entertain, throwing in a few clever jokes and keeping it light. It’s not too demanding, and for children below the age of ten it should be diverting enough but there’s a lack of charm that seriously hurts the movie’s chances of broadening its audience. The storyline is weak and underdeveloped, and there’s too much reliance on Reggie’s verbal schtick to pad out the uncomfortable dialogue. With many of the ideas and speculations from Robert Zemeckis’ trilogy trotted out like badly tuned homages, Free Birds also proves derivative rather than referential, leaving the underused Takei to save the day as the time machine.
The characters are painted with broad brushstrokes, leaving the cast with too much work to do to make the audience connect with anyone. Wilson plays Reggie like a nerd with a persecution complex, rarely deviating from the standard vocal patter he uses in live action movies. Harrelson is saddled with a bigger problem playing the loveable lunkhead Jake, a character so one-dimensional it’s amazing the actor manages to add some light and shade to his performance. Takei aside, the rest of the cast make next to no impression at all, and the roles could have been played by anyone without any significant improvement or change. With the script proving so undercooked, it’s often a relief to see that some ideas – the Hazmats, the President’s narcoleptic daughter – have managed to find their way in to alleviate matters.
Visually, Free Birds looks colourful and richly detailed but the movie lacks that zing that computer animation can bring to the big screen. The time travel sequences look like they were filched from an Eighties animated movie, and the backgrounds don’t always look convincing. That said, there are some stand-out sequences, the attack on the turkey’s hideout being one of them, but on the whole the movie isn’t visually strong enough to grab the attention; there’s not enough going on in the frame to fully occupy the viewer.
Hayward orchestrates the various elements with a lack of flair that keeps the movie treading water for most of its running time, and while he has a strong background in animation – he directed the much better Horton Hears a Who! (2008), as well as working on several Pixar movies – it’s a shame he’s let the material (co-written with Scott Mosier), and what appears to be a limited budget, get the better of him.
Rating: 5/10 – not the complete bust it sounds like but definitely one for a younger audience; a chore for adults then but leavened, thankfully, by some quirky humour.
Cast: Danny Trejo, Mel Gibson, Michelle Rodriguez, Amber Heard, Demian Bichir, Sofia Vergara, Charlie Sheen, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Cuba Gooding Jr, Walton Goggins, Vanessa Hudgens, William Sadler, Tom Savini, Jessica Alba
Arriving three years after its title character’s debut, Machete Kills opens with Machete (Trejo) and Agent Sartana (Alba) intercepting a weapons deal between US soldiers and members of a Mexican drugs cartel. When their plan goes awry and Sartana is killed, Machete finds himself approached by President Rathcock (Sheen) to return to Mexico and find and, if necessary kill, cartel boss Mendez (Bichir). Mendez is threatening to launch a nuclear missile on Washington D.C.; if Machete stops him, all of Machete’s past sins will be forgotten and he will be granted immediate US citizenship.
In Mexico, Machete finds himself captured by Mendez, who reveals he’s being backed by a mystery American who’s provided him with the missile. This turns out to be Voz (Gibson). Machete escapes with Mendez in tow and they head for the border but not before Mendez has put out a bounty on both their heads to the tune of $20 million. With pretty much all of Mexico after them – plus face-changing super assassin La Chameleon (Goggins, Gooding Jr, Gaga, Banderas) – and the added problem of keeping Mendez alive (his heartbeat is connected to the missile’s arming device; if he dies the missile will fire), Machete has to get Mendez over the border and to Voz’s hideout in order to stop the missile from being fired. Voz, though, proves to be a megalomaniac who can see the future (oh, and he’s also built an “ark” in space – once the world is destroyed by the nuclear missiles he’s got primed to be launched, and the dust has cleared, he and his followers will return to Earth and start a new, better society; there, got all that?) With the help of old friend Luz (Rodriguez), Machete attacks Voz’s HQ just as he’s having his launch party. Will Machete save the day? Will Voz’s evil plan be thwarted? Will there be a higher death toll than most Arnold Schwarzenegger movies from the Eighties? (If you’ve answered yes to all three, then give yourself a pat on the back.)
As deliberately and casually over the top as its predecessor, Machete Kills is a riotous mix of primary colours, ear-crunching sound effects, limb-slicing violence, boys-with-toys style hardware, visceral humour, cheesy dialogue, unsubtle in-jokes, scantily clad gun-toting females, and the repository of Mel Gibson’s worst ever screen performance. Rodriguez’s kitchen sink approach to the material works well over all, and he certainly wins points for inventiveness, but after ninety minutes the lack of subtlety begins to wear very thin indeed. Fortunately he’s helped out by a committed cast who all seem to relish the chance to kick back and go with the absurdity of it all. Except for Gibson, who plays Voz as if he were a villain in a Bond movie: all urbane chat and modish amusement. He’s about as convincing as cottage cheese on steak. That said, Trejo is still an awkward watch, his acting chops as wayward as a leaf in the wind, but it’s all about his physical presence, and Rodriguez uses him cleverly throughout, making Machete almost a force of nature.
For fans of the character, Machete Kills will reinforce their love for the character, though newcomers may wonder what all the fuss is about. Some of the early scenes lack pace, and Rodriguez stops one too many times to introduce new characters or reintroduce old ones. The action scenes are fun on an arcade game level, and give rise to all manner of violent, gory deaths (if I mention the words “intestines” and “helicopter blades” you might get an idea of how inventive Rodriguez is in this department). Pretty much every woman in the movie is required to wear figure hugging and/or flesh-revealing clothing, including Lady Gaga (unfortunately, it doesn’t work for her as much as it does for, say, Sofia Vergara); sexist it may be but it’s as nothing compared to the casual racism that runs like a disquieting undertone from beginning to end (is American citizenship really such a great prize for a Mexican?). Of course, there is a degree of irony here too, but it’s not quite as prominent as, say, Vergara’s crotch gun.
Away from Trejo and Gibson, the performances are much better, with Bichir a highlight as the schizophrenic Mendez: one moment a raging psychopath who thinks nothing of having his ward Cereza (Hudgens) killed as an example, the next a compassionate rebel determined to bring down the cartels. Bichir switches between the two personalities with ease, often in the same line of dialogue, and his performance bolsters the movie every time he’s on screen. Rodriguez, Alba and Savini reprise their roles from Machete, and of the four actors portraying La Chameleon, it’s Gooding Jr who impresses most.
At the beginning of the movie there’s a trailer for a forthcoming Machete feature, Machete Kills Again… In Space. It appears to be a joke trailer but by the movie’s end it’s more of an accurate prediction of where Machete is heading next. If and when that movie appears, let’s hope there’s a sharper script and less erratic direction. With most, if not all, of Rodriguez’s movies there’s a feeling that he’s trying to bombard the audience with all sorts of diversions and trickery so that we don’t see the holes and the flaws in the plot or the storyline. It’s evident here, and while Machete Kills is entertaining on a superficial level, the fact that there is no depth to it at all doesn’t help things.
Rating: 7/10 – a mixed bag (as usual) from Rodriguez with some stand-out moments and a firm sense of how ridiculous it all is; a popcorn movie for those who like their popcorn drenched in blood and free from logic.
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake, Garrett Hedlund, Adam Driver, Stark Sands, Jeanine Serralles, F. Murray Abraham
The Coen brothers have led a remarkably charmed cinematic life, making quirky, offbeat movies featuring all sorts of weird and wonderful characters in all sorts of weird and wonderful situations. Part of the fun to be had from watching a Coen brothers movie is that you never quite know what’s going to happen next; the Coens are so unpredictable there’s always that element of surprise in every movie, even something as outwardly formulaic as The Ladykillers (2004) or True Grit (2010). It’s a real surprise then, to find that the main character in their latest melancholy opus, Inside Llewyn Davis is, to put it mildly, a bit of a shit.
The movie is set in Greenwich Village, New York in 1961. Davis (Isaac) is a folk singer, eking out a career in clubs but without a clear idea on where he’s heading. He doesn’t have a place to live, so he sofa hops from place to place, trying the patience of friends and acquaintances, and never really repaying their kindnesses to him. He scoffs at the performances of others, including folk duo Jim (Timberlake) and Jean (Mulligan), but fails to see the weakness in his own abilities, weaknesses exacerbated by the recent death of his singing partner. Davis is horrible to just about everyone around him, foisting his unhappiness on them with all the fervour of a man trying to offload his troubles as fast as he gains them. His relationship with Jean becomes complicated when she tells him she’s pregnant and he might be the father. But Davis is so wretched she would rather have an abortion than give birth to a child that might be his. While he tries to deal with that issue, he’s also trying to deal with having lost his friends, the Gorfeins, cat. (When he takes a replacement cat back to them, it leads to one of the best lines in a Coen brothers movie ever.) Taking a chance he can kick start his solo career in Chicago, Davis travels with proto-beat poet Johnny Five (Hedlund) and musician Roland Turner (Goodman) to audition for promoter Bud Grossman (Abraham). What he learns there has the possibility of changing his life.
From its darkened, confessional-style opening at the Gaslight Café with Isaac proving himself to be a passionate vocalist, Inside Llewyn Davis is a fitting tribute to the era when folk music was at a turning point (see the singer who follows Davis on stage at the movie’s end). As well, though, it’s a clever, witty and engaging look at a man for whom Life is a constant struggle, but only because he hasn’t developed the ability to be happy. Thanks to a terrific performance by Isaac, Davis isn’t entirely the angry curmudgeon he appears to be. There are glimmers of hope throughout the movie that elicit the audience’s sympathy for him, and if he buries those glimmers almost as soon as they pop up, it’s still enough that they happen for him. Davis is like the black sheep of the family or the troubled friend you secretly like – despite all the times they upset you or let you down – and hope Life will eventually be kind to. For Davis it’s all about the music, the only thing he truly cares about, and around which his life revolves; without it he would be a truly broken man.
Once again, the Coens have chosen a strong supporting cast for their leading man, with Mulligan’s angry turn a standout, and Goodman close behind as the disabled, anecdote spouting Turner. It’s good to see the likes of Driver and Sands given the chance to shine in small, beautifully realised roles, and Abraham too, albeit in a smaller though more pivotal role (and obviously fitted in between episodes of Homeland). A wintry New York looks cold and yet somehow vibrant thanks to crisp, striking photography courtesy of Bruno Delbonnel, and the period detail is subtly evoked by Jess Gonchor’s production design and Deborah Jensen’s art direction.
What is less obvious from this review so far is the humour that permeates the movie. Davis may be an awkward, unlikely source of merriment, but the Coens weave comedy into the somewhat solemn proceedings with deceptive skill. There are laughs to be had, and they’re scattered here and there in the script like precious jewels. And then there’s the music. Perhaps closest to O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) in terms of dramatic importance, the music in Inside Llewyn Davis is extremely well chosen, both for reflecting the state of Davis’s life, and for providing a candid view of the folk music scene at the time (check out the wonderfully daft Please Mr. Kennedy, an ode to world peace performed by Isaac, Timberlake and Driver that amazes as much as it amuses). As already noted, Isaac has a commanding vocal style, and his deep, rich, melodic delivery suits the material well; it’s hard now to imagine anyone else in the role.
Rating: 9/10 – a richly detailed movie that delights and impresses in equal measure; confident, absorbing, and wickedly funny in places, Inside Llewyn Davis confirms once more that when it comes to off-kilter, the Coen brothers are in a class of their own.
Cast: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, Sean Bean, Liv Tyler, Christopher Lee, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Andy Serkis, Karl Urban, John Noble, David Wenham, Miranda Otto, Bernard Hill, Brad Dourif, Ian Holm
I know, I know, this is a bit of a cheat, three movies for the price of one and all that, but how can you possibly separate the greatest trilogy ever made?
There have been enough superlatives heaped on Peter Jackson’s finest hour(s), and while I’m tempted to add to the pile, I’m going to restrain myself and keep to the personal aspect that makes these movies mean so much to me. And besides, everyone already knows how brilliant they are (sorry, couldn’t help it).
My first encounter with J.R.R. Tolkien wasn’t via The Lord of the Rings or even The Hobbit. It was through a friend of mine who was into fantasy art; at his home one day he showed me a picture he’d drawn of a wizard (you can guess which one). He told me the wizard was one of the main characters in a book he’d read. He handed me a battered copy of The Hobbit and advised me that if I was going to read it I ought to be prepared for it to be a bit child-oriented. And me, being a 14-year-old with ideas of being older in my outlook, declined his kind offer and went home instead with the first issue of a new sci-fi magazine called Starburst.
A year later, Ralph Bakshi’s version of The Lord of the Rings was released but I didn’t see it. My friend the artist did and he thought it was quite good but he also mentioned it wasn’t the whole story. I thought, “what’s the point of that?” (not knowing then of Bakshi’s plan to finish the tale in a second movie).
And then, in 1981, two things happened that brought me into the fold, so to speak. My girlfriend at the time was reading The Lord of the Rings and would spend whole evenings working through it; she thought it was “the best book” she’d ever read. She asked me to read it but I was still hesitant (I was working my way through Dickens at the time and fantasy fiction wasn’t high on my (slightly pretentious) list of genres to read). And then on March 8 (a Sunday) the BBC began broadcasting a radio adaptation of Tolkien’s novel in thirty minute episodes that had me glued to my stereo every Sunday for the next twenty-five weeks. I read the book in between episodes, keeping up with the adaptation. By the time the broadcasts ended on 30 August I was a Tolkien fanatic. Now I read The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion. I raved about the books to anyone who might listen, and later tracked down Bakshi’s movie on video (not as bad as I thought it was going to be; the live-action based animation is actually quite visually arresting).
I re-read the books, revisited the radio adaptation when it was re-broadcast in hour-long episodes in 1982, and generally looked upon the whole mythology that Tolkien had created as being one of the most incredible literary works I’d (eventually) come across.
When it became clear in the late Nineties that a large-budget adaptation of The Lord of the Rings was being planned, with Peter Jackson at the helm, I felt a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. First of all, it was going to be a live action adaptation, and even though Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994) had proved he could direct something with a bit more depth than say, Braindead (1992), I still had my doubts. As the scope of the project became known, the more I wondered if, and how, Jackson was going to pull it off. And over three movies!
Now, thirteen years on, and with Jackson giving us The Hobbit as well, we all know I needn’t have worried. The Fellowship of the Ring was like the best Xmas present anyone could have. Its mix of the intimate and the grandeur of Middle Earth, and the level of detail, along with the sheer excitement of the action sequences made for one of the most rewarding cinematic experiences of my whole movie-going life. In the first two weeks of its release in the UK I saw the movie three times. When The Two Towers was released a year later, I was itching to see it, especially after watching Fellowship‘s extended version the day before (Jackson’s idea to give us longer versions of each movie on home video was a stroke of genius). I came out of seeing The Two Towers overwhelmed and buoyed up by the emotional depth that infused the movie, and by the sheer spectacle of the Battle of Helm’s Deep (I couldn’t see how the Battle of the Pelennor Fields could be any better or more exciting; what did I know?). The following year passed too slowly, waiting for The Return of the King to be released. When it finally did, I can remember hearing the opening music and feeling a shiver run through me. Please, Mr Jackson, please, I remember thinking, please have got this right. And did he. The Return of the King was an incredible achievement, a massive undertaking in its own right, and the culmination of a saga that had built to this monumental, emotionally-charged conclusion with barely a (hobbit) foot out of step along the way. (And to those people who feel the movie should have ended with the coronation of Aragorn, the movies have always been about the characters and their journeys; to not see them make their farewells and re-take up their lives would have been a disservice to both them and the audience.)
The Lord of the Rings trilogy remains a phenomenal achievement, with stand-out performances – who can forget Gollum’s schizophrenic argument with himself in The Two Towers? – stunning location photography; a script that never lost sight of the emotional cores of its characters; confident, breathtaking direction from Peter Jackson; special effects that served the story and didn’t overwhelm things; and most of all, the creation of a wholly believable world where all this could happen. But again, it’s the emotional element that makes the trilogy work, that keeps all of us who fell in love with the movies coming back time and time again, to revisit Middle Earth in all its glory and grandeur. For many years, a friend and myself would take a day out to watch the extended versions right through, revelling in being able to spend time again with old friends such as Samwise Gamgee and Gimli, son of Glóin. This trend has (sadly) lapsed in the last few years, but as an added memory to the original, wonderful experience of seeing the trilogy unfold over three magical Xmas’s, it’s easily the next best thing. Going back to Middle Earth is, in its own way, a little bit like going back home after a long journey away…and what would Frodo and Sam say to that?
Rating: 9/10 – a stupendously impressive piece of filmmaking, bold, inventive, gripping, and with an emotional intensity few fantasy movies ever manage; just as there is only One Ring, Jackson’s enduring achievement means there is only One Trilogy.
Cast: Jay Hayden, Tori White, Scott Lilly, Kathryn Todd Norman, McKenna Jones, Andy Stahl
Low-budget often means minimal resources. It can also mean inventive outcome. Such is the case with State of Emergency, a movie that, at face value, is a zombie movie but which never uses that word once to describe the victims of a chemical plant explosion.
After a tense prologue, we see Jim (Hayden) and his partner Emilie (Jones) running across open countryside. Emilie is bleeding from a wound in her side. As they rest under a tree, Emilie dies. Jim carries her body to a nearby stable block where he hides out. Up tip now the audience doesn’t know what’s happening, but whatever it is, it can’t be good. It’s only when Jim is attacked by another man that we begin to realise what’s going on, and the possible reason why.
Later, Jim meets a couple, Scott (Lilly) and Julie (Norman), who have taken refuge in a warehouse; with them is a young woman called Ix (White). They have plenty of food and water, and weapons; feeling safe, they have decided to wait for help to arrive. And all the while, “people” are gathering outside the warehouse… That’s the meat of the movie right there: the anxious wait for help to arrive while a growing threat gets nearer and nearer.
Full marks to writer/director Clay for making State of Emergency such a compelling movie. It’s difficult enough to put a fresh spin on the zombie genre, but he pulls it off. Not referring to the affected as zombies helps tremendously; after all, in the real world, if something like this was to happen, would we even call them that if we didn’t have George A. Romero to thank? And where Clay really comes up trumps is with the committed performances of his cast. Hayden does exceedingly well with his everyman role, projecting the right amount of vulnerability alongside a steely determination to survive. Lilly has the more difficult male role, his character trying to be braver than he is and almost dying because of it, but he’s equally good even though he has less screen time. As Ix, White plays defensive and scared mixed with an entirely credible teen obnoxiousness before she strikes a rapport with Jim; the scene where she opens up to him is one of the movie’s best.
As for the affected – remember, they’re not zombies – Clay has another good idea: if there’s no one around for them to attack they mostly stand still or walk in whatever direction (apparently) takes their fancy. When they do spot someone, they charge at them, snarling. This one-two combination of stillness and berserker speed is disconcerting; when it happens to Jim at the stables it’s a shock, even though Clay has set things up so the audience knows something nasty is about to happen.
With a clear nod to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), State of Emergency lacks that movie’s rising hysteria and ghoulish shock moments (there’s no daughter in the basement), but it does ratchet up the tension. The siege elements are handled with aplomb and Clay shows an aptitude for quick, yet concise characterisation. Jim is someone the audience can identify with, as are Scott and Julie, and when they are put in danger, the movie lacks that sense of detachment that you’d find in most other zombie movies. (I’ve seen quite a few zombie movies in the past year, from Zombie Farm, a more traditional, voodoo-based effort, to World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries, a poor sequel to the original Zombie Diaries, and they all suffer from the same two problems: characters that you don’t care about, and – this bugs me the most – zombies who suffer from disfiguring facial injuries from the word go – I mean, how does that work exactly? You die, come to as a zombie and wow! your jaw’s hanging off by a tendon or two. Here, the affected have bloodshot eyes and what looks like a bad case of necrotising fasciitis – and that’s it, no missing bits, no decomposing limbs or extremities. Memo to other would-be directors of zombie movies: make sure you watch State of Emergency first.)
Rating: 7/10 – a tense, effective “zombie” movie that keeps you hooked from start to finish; well-acted and free from the usual absurdities/deficiencies that otherwise seem endemic to the genre.
Originally posted on thedullwoodexperiment website.
Cast: Carole Lombard, Preston Foster, Cesar Romero, Janet Beecher, Betty Lawford, Richard Carle
Enamoured with ambitious would-be executive Bill Wadsworth (Romero), Kay Colby (Lombard) can’t wait to marry him. However, she doesn’t reckon on Bill’s boss Scott Miller (Foster) who also loves Kay and will do anything to come between the two lovebirds. Scott offers Bill a promotion in Japan; when he takes up the offer, Bill leaves behind a disappointed Kay and a delighted Scott. He makes every attempt to woo Kay and get her to give up Bill but Kay remains committed to her (now) long-distance relationship.
Scott “coincidentally” runs into Kay at every opportunity, but his persistence has the opposite effect at first, causing Kay to resent his attentions. As time goes by, Kay begins to soften but remains Bill’s girl. When Scott makes a calamitous mistake and Kay refuses to have anything further to do with him, he takes the advice of employee, Brinkerhoff (Carle) and brings Bill back to the US. Brinkerhoff tells Scott it will only be a matter of time before Kay realises she’s with the wrong man and loves Scott after all. When Bill returns, he’s even more ambitious than before, and sure enough, cracks begin to show in their relationship.
A light, frothy romantic comedy, Love Before Breakfast coasts along on Lombard’s considerable charm, and even softens Foster’s tough guy image in the process (though it’s hard not to imagine what William Powell or Clark Gable would have made of the role). As the battling pair, Lombard and Foster don’t always display the necessary chemistry, but what they have more than makes up for the complete lack of it between Lombard and Romero. Beecher is good as Kay’s mother, always supportive of Scott’s pursuing her daughter, and unwilling to indulge her daughter’s tantrums.
The script by Herbert Fields, from Faith Baldwin’s short story Spinster Dinner, contains some witty one-liners, and provides a lot of fun to be had at Lombard’s expense. There’s a steady pace maintained by director Lang, and the movie is always engaging and enjoyable, with Lombard displaying the comic timing that made her a star. If it’s ultimately predictable and tries a little to hard, it’s also pretty much irrelevant as there’s so much in the movie to be enjoyed.
Rating: 7/10 – a (very) minor gem raised up by the peerless Lombard, and scripted to just the right running time, Love Before Breakfast is cheerful and fun throughout; worth it just for the sight of Lombard and Romero getting drenched on a yacht.
Cast: Jon Gries, Kyle Davis, Erin Cahill, Devin McGinn, Steve Berg, Matthew Rocheleau, Michael Horse, Michael Black
A short time after his son disappears inexplicably, Hoyt Miller (Gries) agrees for a team of paranormal researchers to spend time at his ranch in an effort to explain what happened to his son. The team, led by Sam (Berg), include veterinarian Lisa (Cahill), security and surveillance expert Ray (Davis), investigative journalist Cameron (McGinn), cameraman Britton (Black) plus media technician, driver, cook and resident bitch Matt (Rocheleau). Over the course of the next few days, Hoyt and the team experience all manner of weird phenomena, including strange lights, ghostly apparitions and loud, ear-splitting noises. As things get increasingly weirder, Matt leaves after getting injured, and exhorts everyone else to do the same. Nevertheless the rest all stay until events spiral wildly out of control…
Yet another found footage movie – and don’t we need even more of them? – Skinwalker Ranch at least tries to do something different by virtue of its location and the cause of the weird phenomena: this time around it’s (probably) aliens. Taking some of the folklore surrounding UFO sightings and bending it to fit the storyline, the movie begins well enough, with comments from several locals about the boy’s disappearance, and with each character clearly defined and the team’s goal(s) clearly marked out. McGinn invests these early sequences with the intention of making the audience identify to a degree with Hoyt and the team, but as the movie progresses that identification peters out as they all behave either stupidly or strangely, or both.
Skinwalker Ranch fails to address the same conundrum that undermines all found footage movies: when does someone pay heed to the danger around them and drop the ruddy camera? That said, the movie gets extra mileage out of the fixed camera set ups the team employ around the ranch, and the open spaces make for an unexpectedly eerie visual theme. But there’s still too much running with the camera. By now we’re all aware that jostling the camera and/or employing interference is often a way of hiding an effect – here most effectively done in the barn sequence involving Hoyt’s dog – but this knowledge further undermines the effectiveness of the “fright” scenes. Pulling off an apparently in-camera effect is half the fun of watching these movies – the girl being hoisted up in the air by her hair in Paranormal Activity 2 anyone? – but there’s little fun to be had now, there’s no sense of anticipation or dread either here, or anywhere else these days.
The movie takes an unexpected turn into Hound of the Baskervilles territory for a while before returning to its alien abduction theme, and the decision by Matt to leave after being thrown through the air is refreshing, but these aspects aside, there’s nothing really new here, just the setting. A figure still passes by a window in the background but isn’t seen, one of the characters is forced to do something terrible by unseen hands, bright lights flash on and off for no discernible reason, and when the culprit is revealed there’s no element of terror, just a relief that, at last, things must be coming to an end. And even though another side trip into the past where evidence comes to light that the organisation Sam works for – MDE – has been involved in previous strange events in the area, ticks the potential prequel box, this subplot leans more heavily in the direction of demonic possession than alien abduction, and actively lessens the effectiveness of the story as a whole.
Making his feature debut, McGinn copes well enough with the demands of the genre, but proves a better actor than director. Gries is convincing throughout, and the rest of the cast do their best to flesh out characters that are largely stereotypes. The location is the movie’s main strength, and is used tellingly, creating what little credible tension there is. But more annoyingly, you never discover why it’s called Skinwalker ranch.
Rating: 6/10 – not the worst found footage movie, but not the best either, Skinwalker Ranch has some good ideas but they’re too often fumbled in the quest for the next scare; ultimately, a shallow experience and one that doesn’t follow through on its initial set up.
Cast: Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence, Louis C.K., Jack Huston, Michael Peña, Shea Whigham, Alessandro Nivola, Elisabeth Röhm
Small-time hustlers Irving Rosenfeld (Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Adams) have made a success out of an investment scam that involves Sydney posing as an English aristocrat with British banking connections. They become so successful that they soon attract the attention of ambitious FBI agent Richie DiMaso. DiMaso gives them a choice: either be prosecuted or help him go after local mayor Carmine Polito (Renner) who he suspects of being corrupt. Not really having a choice, Irving and Sydney go along with DiMaso’s plan, only to find the plan mutating beyond the scope of exposing Polito’s possible corruption. Soon the Mob is involved and DiMaso’s ambitions are jeopardising both the scam he’s set up, and their lives. With Irving’s wife, Rosalyn (Lawrence) causing unexpected complications as well, it’s up to Irving and Sydney to come up with one more scam to save their necks.
Apparently based on the ABSCAM scandal from the late Seventies – where the FBI attempted to expose corrupt politicians and senators by dressing up as Arab sheikhs and offering them bribes for a wide range of illegal requests – American Hustle is a weird movie in many ways. It celebrates Irving and Sydney’s love for each other while at the same time eulogising Irving’s faithfulness to his wife and adopted child. The movie also presents their investment scam as essentially victimless. This sets up DiMaso as the movie’s villain-in-residence, and encourages us to root for Irving and Sydney from the very beginning, and while pretty much every movie under the sun has a protagonist that the audience is supposed to identify or empathise with, the fact that Russell so blatantly overlooks their criminal tendencies – other than as necessary for the plot – is immediately disarming: we’re actively complicit in their criminal behaviour. Where’s the moral ambiguity?
While Irving and Sydney are clearly “nice” criminals, Richie is the “bad” cop: manipulative, self-aggrandising, violent, and arrogant. He attempts to come between Irving and Sydney, shows his impatience at every turn, and due to his eagerness to get ahead, rarely makes the right move when part of the scam is in progress. So bad is he, it’s almost funny, as if he’s an unfortunate composite of every bumbling FBI agent ever portrayed on the big screen. Rosalyn, initially dim-witted and somewhat agoraphobic, develops into a player overnight, eventually “showing” Irving the way out of their shared predicament. She’s a brash, outspoken character who never once rings true except when lambasting Irving for getting involved with Sydney. And then there’s Carmine, a well-meaning politician whose naïveté gets him into so much trouble, and so quickly, you wonder how he ever managed to become mayor in the first place. These are the main characters that Russell has admitted he cared more about than the story.
With such a focus, it’s a relief then that the performances by all concerned are uniformly excellent. Bale, sporting a hideous comb-over and a beer gut, gives one of his best performances as the love-struck, hen-pecked, slightly less clever than he thinks Irving. With each scene he peels back another layer of a man who at first seems one-dimensional and hollow, but who is actually heartfelt and loyal to those he cares about. It’s a carefully structured performance and reminds anyone who might have forgotten that Bale is as adept at playing ordinary characters as he is damaged or vengeful ones. Adams offers equally good support – and a decent British accent – as the emotionally torn Sydney, battling her burgeoning feelings for Richie before realising he’s using her as much as she’s used her marks in the past. As the wildly out of control Richie, Cooper excels, adding to the kudos he gained from The Place Beyond the Pines with a controlled yet seething reading of a man with too much ambition for his own good, and a frightening lack of empathy or understanding of the people around him. Renner has the least showy role, but manages to breathe life into a character who, at first, lacks any depth. As the movie progresses, his need to help the people is shown as a personal crusade and his inevitable downfall a sad indictment of the collateral damage that can occur in these situations. And lastly, there’s Lawrence, possibly the finest actress of her generation, imbuing Rosalyn with a vulnerability and tenacity that more than make up for the deficiencies in the characterisation. She’s nothing short of miraculous.
With such a concentration on the characters, rather than the story or indeed the script – there’s a great deal of improvisation throughout – American Hustle ultimately falls short of its potential. The story and plot are predictable, with any quirks that may have been part of the real-life scam ironed out in favour of more time with Irving and Sydney and Rosalyn and Richie and Carmine. Russell directs with his usual flair, and while his focus may have been misguided, the look and feel of the Seventies is recreated effectively – those clothes! – and the structure of the movie is almost flawless. Danny Elfman’s music, along with a carefully selected soundtrack, helps heighten the mood of the period and complements Linus Sandgren’s warm-toned cinematography, while Judy Becker’s production design provides a subtler evocation of time and place than most “period” pieces.
In essence, this isn’t the polished gem that most would have it but more of a rough diamond. Russell is incapable of making a dull movie, but he nearly pulls it off here. This is a character piece, not the crime drama the trailers and the advertising make it out to be, and while there’s always room for a character piece, with this movie’s background, more attention to those aspects would have made the movie a stronger, more interesting watch.
Rating: 8/10 – with a great cast – and one notable cameo – keeping things from being too dull, American Hustle doesn’t quite make the grade as a modern classic; absorbing and awkward to watch in equal measure, there’s another movie in there somewhere but not the one that Russell wants us to see.
Cast: Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen, Jerry Ferrara, Romany Malco, Roger Bart, Joanna Gleason, Michael Ealy, Bre Blair, April Billingsley
Four friends – Billy (Douglas), Paddy (De Niro), Archie (Freeman), and Sam (Kline) – are reunited when Billy is set to get married in Las Vegas. For three of them it’s a chance to escape from the mundanity of their lives and live a little. Paddy is still mourning the death of his wife after a year; Archie is living with his son, yet being treated as if he’s too fragile to be trusted even to look after his granddaughter; and Sam is dying a slow death from boredom in a retirement community in Florida. Meanwhile, Billy is marrying 32-year-old Lisa (Blair), and while he’s outwardly happy, it becomes clear he’s not as committed to the idea as his friends might have expected. Friends since childhood, the four come together despite Paddy’s animosity towards Billy for not attending his wife’s funeral, and declare they’r going to party “like it’s 1959”. With a burgeoning romance developing between Billy and lounge singer Diana (Steenburgen) that threatens to undermine his marriage plans, as well as his friendship with equally smitten Paddy, it’s up to Archie and Sam to keep things on track, and ensure everything goes as smoothly as possible…if they can.
As close to a vanity project as you’re likely to get these days, Last Vegas plays like a fever dream for the geriatric community. With none of its star quartet below the age of sixty-five, seeing them behave as if they were still teenagers is alternately disquieting and off-putting. Douglas is the lonely Lothario, afraid of getting old and losing out on love and companionship altogether. De Niro is the devoted husband bereft at losing his wife and retreating from life. Freeman is the supposedly frail grandfather who whose life is governed by his ill health (not that he displays any of this in the movie). And Kline is the bored retirement dweller who feels his life and any excitement is behind him. Frankly, if I was the same age as these guys and I felt they were supposed to represent my age group, I’d want to punch their lights out.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel young again when you reach a certain age and the things you took for granted have become the things you have to think about before you do them. But here, all the initial complaints about getting old are soon left behind once everyone’s in Las Vegas, and they can start to “party like it’s 1959”. Archie busts some serious moves on the dance floor, Sam nearly gets to use the condom his wife has given him (so he can get over his “depression”), Paddy realises his wife wouldn’t want him to hole up in their apartment for the rest of his life, and Billy finds true love with Diana having come to terms – quickly – with his loneliness. Tonally, Last Vegas is one of those “have your cake and eat it” movies where it’ll all come right if you remain true to yourself, and don’t lose sight of who you are. It’s a wish fulfilment movie with no sense of irony or its own absurd premise.
It’s a good job then that the movie delivers on the laughter front. There are some belly laughs to be had, mostly related to Freeman, and the movie has a good time making its characters look foolish before it makes them out to be super-cool. The script by Dan Fogelman does its best to wring laughs out of the situations the four friends find themselves in, rather than completely at their expense, while most of the supporting characters are there mainly to show how ageist we are as a society, and to be humiliated (see Dean, played by Ferrara).
Of the four leads, it’s Freeman and Kline who come off best but that’s because they’ve got slightly more to work with (and Kline can do this sort of thing in his sleep). Douglas looks uncomfortable, as if he really would like to be marrying a 32-year-old, while De Niro is just uncomfortable to watch. Despite the number of comedies he’s made in the last twenty years, De Niro still fumbles the ball when it comes to humour. Here he looks like the guy who not only doesn’t get the joke, but isn’t even aware that a joke’s been told (it doesn’t help that Paddy has to remain angry with Billy for most of the movie). Steenburgen does well as the singer with a heart of gold, but isn’t given much to do other than listen to the travails of the four friends, or warble a couple of songs. Of the rest of the cast, only Malco stands out, as the organiser of Billy’s stag party.
The movie is adequately directed by Turteltaub, and there’s fun to be had from seeing a slightly different side of Las Vegas than the one normally seen, but without the committed performances of its leads, and the better-than-expected humour in the script, Last Vegas would be a waste of time and effort. That it partially succeeds is therefore a surprise, and a pleasant one at that.
Rating: 7/10 – worth seeing for Freeman and Kline alone, and the rare sight of De Niro having a DJ’s crotch thrust at his face repeatedly, Last Vegas works a lot better than you’d think; no awards winner, it’s true, but a pleasing diversion nevertheless.
Cast: Lionel Atwill, Lucie Mannheim, Steven Geray, James Mason, Leslie Perrins, Allan Jeayes, Michael Lambart, Kathleen Gibson
In Ireland in 1921, two army majors, Sangye (Atwill) and Challoner (Philip Strange), are caught in an ambush by Republican rebels. With the attack over, and both men the only survivors, Challoner turns on Sangye and threatens him over Sangye’s affair with Challoner’s wife. He also reveals that Sangye is the real father of Challoner’s daughter. Sangye is remorseful but when Challoner tries to shoot him, he’s forced to shoot first, killing Challoner. Sangye covers up his crime, but is unaware that the doctor who saw to Challoner’s body has identified the bullet that killed him as coming from Sangye’s gun.
Sixteen years later, Sangye is now Major-General Sir John Sangye VC, and in charge of a fort located on the West Coast of Africa. With him is his ward, Challoner’s daughter Belinda (Gibson). Feeling that the events in Ireland are far behind him, Sangye is unsettled by the arrival of Major Carson (Perrins) who appears to know what happened all those years ago. In turn, Carson who has travelled to the fort in the company of local businessman’s wife Diana Cloam (Mannheim), is related to Captain Heverall (Mason), one of Sangye’s junior officers. Heverall and Diana are attracted to each other but vow to remain friends for the good of her marriage to jealous husband Martin (Geray). Carson has no such qualms, and actively pursues her. This leads to a misunderstanding that results in Carson’s murder. When it’s revealed that Heverall stands to inherit a fortune as a result of Carson’s death, he is arrested and put on trial by a military court. With Challoner’s murder about to be exposed, and Heverall’s life at stake, Sangye determines to unmask Carson’s killer, and by doing so, redeem himself.
A quickly made drama that belies its low budget, The High Command, once past its awkward exposition-heavy opening, settles into a predictable yet entertaining groove that’s bolstered by a measured performance from Atwill, and fine supporting turns from Mannheim (Miss Smith in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps) and Jeayes as the Governor who must reluctantly accept the evidence of Sangye’s guilt. It’s actually good to see Atwill at work here; he’s a much underrated actor who deserves far more credit than he’s usually given. As the outwardly composed but inwardly tortured Sangye, Atwill proves a good fit for the part, and rewards the producers for their picking him for the role. Allied to Dickinson’s fluid direction and focus on the emotional undercurrents anchoring the plot, Atwill displays a capacity for vulnerability that most other roles he played didn’t allow him to reveal.
In an early role, Mason is less than convincing as Diana Cloam’s love interest, while Geray narrowly avoids chewing the scenery to tatters as her embittered husband. The subplot involving Sangye being Belinda’s father is left aside in favour of Heverall’s trial, and the introduction of comic relief in the form of trial witness Miss Tuff (Drusilla Wills) almost overshadows the drama of the situation. The identity of Carson’s killer is obvious despite a half-hearted attempt to make it a mystery, the cast contend well with appropriately clipped and/or stilted dialogue, and the minimalist art direction proves occasionally distracting (would a fort be this sparse with its fixtures and furnishings?). With so much clashing going on, Dickinson ably holds it all together with his usual sense of restrained intimacy and a keen eye for the social and military hierarchies and how they commingle.
The High Command adequately reflects the prevailing attitudes of its time and fares well when exposing the hypocrisies of its main characters; pride is a theme that recurs throughout the movie, and the consequences of having too much pride are keenly observed. The script by Katherine Strueby, Walter Meade and Val Valentine from the novel The General Goes Too Far – a much better title – by Lewis Robinson calls for less histrionics than might be expected, and allows the cast to inhabit their roles instead of get bogged down in the usual stuffed shirt theatrics. Otto Heller’s photography is occasionally a little soft but otherwise well-framed, and the music by Ernest Irving ably supports the action.
Rating: 6/10 – raised up by good performances and clever direction, The High Command works best when focusing on Atwill and Mannheim; a minor gem well worth seeking out.
aka The Cage Fighter: Pride vs Honour; The Red Canvas; Submission
D: Kenneth Chamitoff, Adam Boster / 102m
Cast: Ving Rhames, Ernie Reyes Jr, John Savage, George Takei, Sara Downing, Ernie Reyes Sr, Maria Conchita Alonso, Ken Takemoto, Gray Maynard, Frank Shamrock
Primarily funded by martial arts school owners and their students, Art of Submission aims to show the other side of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), namely the dedication and the respect that fighters have for the sport and for each other. On that level it succeeds, but two main creative decisions undermine the message the movie wants to make.
The story centres around Johnny (Reyes Jr). He’s a hothead who wants to get ahead in MMA but without first paying his dues or according the people around him the respect they deserve, including his father (Reyes Sr). His trainer, Gene (Rhames) acknowledges his talent but insists he works his way up to fighting in a paying match. Johnny has money problems and tries a variety of schemes to solve them without success. When he and Gene’s daughter, Julia (Downing) have a child together, he tries to earn some easy money and winds up in jail.
At this point it’s all been so far, so predictable. Rhames does his gruff mentor routine, Reyes Jr looks slightly weird with long straggly hair, the supporting cast come and go in various subplots, and the few fight sequences are edited to within an inch of the fighters’ trunks. Family loyalties are strained, Reyes Jr pouts a lot, steroids are used, and prison awaits, though not in the way Johnny expects (he’s been offered a job as a prison guard more than once). With Johnny inside, Art of Submission becomes a different movie altogether.
Coincidence and contrivance come thick and fast from this point on as Johnny meets Warden Rask (Savage). Rask sees Johnny’s potential and arranges to have him released to take part in an MMA tournament organised by Krang (Takei). It turns out Krang knew Rask – and Gene – during Vietnam, and… you know what, watch the movie and find out; it’s far too convoluted to recount here. This narrative overkill hurts the movie from here until the end, and while it’s not confusing as such, it does lead to there being too many scenes that fail to advance the plot, and in turn, reduce the amount of time that could have been spent on the qualifying rounds and the tournament final. Let’s just say that Krang is the villain of the piece, performance-enhancing drugs are involved, the various subplots are tidied up neatly, and the outcome of the final is never in doubt for a moment.
As well as the convoluted plotting, the other decision the filmmakers made that hurts the movie is with the editing. At one point, Johnny’s father ends up in hospital in a coma; the sequences that follow are a badly stitched together montage that merge in and out of each other, stopping the viewer from making complete sense of what’s happening. The dialogue in these sequences is also overwhelmed by the score, making it even more difficult to work out what’s going on (though to be fair, the copy of the movie I saw may have been the problem). Elsewhere, the editing appears random, with shots chosen not so much for their relevance to the action as for their framing, and to show off the various camera angles that mire the look of the movie. All in all, the last half hour seems to have been edited by someone with ADHD (my apologies to co-editors Boster and Jamie Mitchell if either one of them actually has this condition).
All of which leaves the fight scenes. Choreographed by Reyes Sr, these are in keeping with regular MMA bouts: short, brutal bursts of physical punishment that leave you wondering how these guys stay upright for as long as they do. What makes the bouts even more impressive is the participation of real MMA fighters (Maynard, Shamrock, ‘Crazy’ Bob Cook, Kim Do Nguyen et al). Knowing that the moves and the blows are real makes all the difference. (However, the manic editing still makes it look like the bouts were shot from over thirty different camera angles and in four second bursts.)
Art of Submission isn’t the best MMA movie in the world, but the level of behind-the-scenes authenticity does keep it from being a complete letdown. The cast do their best with a script that resorts to muddled cliché more often than not, and the direction by Chamitoff and Boster is serviceable if uninspired. Rhames coasts, Reyes Jr tries too hard, but the bouts save the day.
Rating: 5/10 – an uneven attempt at promoting MMA despite the involvement of several well-known participants, and not helped by crudely drawn characters; fitfully absorbing, but overall, one for the fans.
Originally posted on thedullwoodexperiment website.
Cast: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott, Shirley MacLaine, Kathryn Hahn, Adrian Martinez, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Patton Oswalt, Sean Penn
Working as a negative accounts manager (responsible for photo negatives sent in by contributing photographers) at Life magazine, Walter Mitty (Stiller) has led a largely unremarkable life. Unmarried, with few friends, Walter is devoted to his job, but with the recent arrival of Cheryl Melhoff (Wiig) at the magazine, he finds himself smitten. Upheaval also arrives with the news that the magazine is being cancelled in favour of an online edition. Brought in to oversee the closure of the magazine and staff lay-offs, Ted Hendricks (Scott) picks on Walter, having caught him day-dreaming in the office. When noted photographer Sean O’Connell (Penn) sends in a series of negatives, with one being his preferred choice for the final cover, Walter is horrified to discover he can’t find it. With the final issue a matter of two weeks away, Walter decides to track down O’Connell and retrieve the missing negative.
Walter enlists Cheryl’s help in finding the elusive O’Connell. A clue leads Walter to Iceland, where a drunken helicopter pilot (Ólafsson) tells him O’Connell is heading via trawler to Greenland. He catches up with the trawler at sea but O’Connell has already left the ship. Arriving in Greenland, Walter learns that his quarry is headed for a local airstrip. As he gets there, O’Connell’s plane takes off… and a nearby volcano erupts. With no further leads to help him follow O’Connell, Walter is forced to return to New York. Back at work, he’s fired by Hendricks. Depressed, Walter visits his mother (MacLaine) who tells him O’Connell came to see her a few weeks before. She also provides him with enough information to help Walter decipher another clue he’s picked up during his travels. Travelling to the foothills of the Himalayas, Walter finally catches up with O’Connell and the mystery of the missing negative is solved.
From its trailer, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty could be mistaken for another comic fantasy à la Stiller’s Night at the Museum movies, but thanks to a sharply observed script by Steve Conrad, and a sure hand at the helm from Stiller himself, nothing could be further from the truth. This is not just an excuse for humorous fantasy sequences designed to prop up a patchy script, but a carefully thought out, intelligent, affectionate account of one man’s emergence from his own shell. Walter is a terrific creation, a recognisable person with recognisable hopes and dreams, and a genuinely nice man who’s self-confidence is only evident when he’s at work. His attraction to Cheryl is handled beautifully, his longing for a relationship played with adroitness and charm. And as Walter’s adventures bring him further into the real world, and away from the fantasy world he slips into so easily, the acceptance he finds from the people he meets brings him a series of personal rewards. By the time he confronts O’Connell, Walter is a changed man, able to deal with anything Life can throw at him (and which comes in handy when he later confronts Hendricks).
It’s a wonderful, nuanced turn from Stiller, subtle, skilful and affecting in equal measure, and a joy to watch. It’s a life-affirming performance, ably supported by a well-chosen supporting cast headed by Wiig, and Stiller proves a confident director, marshalling the disparate elements of the script with verve and evident ease. Penn is a great choice for the errant photographer, and Wiig adds several shades to a character she has played similar versions of before. The only false note amongst the performances is Scott’s but that’s because his character is written as an obnoxious prat from the beginning; it’s the script’s only misstep.
The movie is often gorgeous to look at as well, especially when Walter is trekking through the foothills of the Himalayas; as he walks along the top of one particular ridge the panorama behind him is simply breathtaking. But even amongst the offices of Life magazine, Stiller’s compositions are pleasing to the eye and far from perfunctory, a testament to the effort he’s made in presenting a movie that has a unique visual style throughout. He’s ably supported by cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh and editor Greg Hayden, and there’s a wonderful score replete with songs courtesy of José González.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is that modern rarity amongst Hollywood movies, an uplifting, feel good, life-affirming romantic drama that isn’t queasily sentimental or emotionally over-the-top, and which doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s worth watching a second time for the subtle bits of business Stiller peppers the movie with, and for the pleasure of spending the best part of two hours with someone you’d be happy to call your friend.
Rating: 9/10 – a triumph for Stiller and his very talented cast and crew, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty deserves to be seen over and over again; a winning, multi-faceted experience that will keep a smile on your face for hours after seeing it.
Cast: Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif, José Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Wolfit, I.S. Johar
We’re at the halfway stage and so far I think I’ve got some pretty good choices for my Top 5: all are classics, all have stood (and continue to stand) the test of time, and all of them have had a profound effect on me as an individual and not just as a film buff.
I first saw Lawrence of Arabia on TV in the late Eighties. It was one of those movies I’d lifted from my trusty Halliwell’s Film Guide as a must-see, and while I’d seen a few other epics up ’til then – Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), and Lean’s own Doctor Zhivago (1965) – what really impressed me as the movie unfolded was the sheer size and scale of everything; even on a tiny portable TV in my bedroom this movie was astonishing in its scope (and it was a panned and scanned version as well – how terrible is that?). There was so much to marvel at: the desert landscapes that seemed to stretch away into infinity, the shot of the attack on Aqaba with the tribesmen hurtling towards the city defences in that long panning shot that took in so much visual information it almost seemed impossible, the sense of mountains so tall and imposing that the characters appeared like ants in relation, and towering over it all, a performance that stands as one of the greatest in cinema history: Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence.
I was familiar with O’Toole, had seen him in a few films, including The Lion in Winter (1968) and The Night of the Generals (1967), and while I’d thought him a good actor, very intense in his approach, I hadn’t marked him out as an actor to follow (unlike his co-stars Alec Guinness and Claude Rains). Seeing him as Lawrence I began to realise I was watching something special, something beyond normal screen acting; here was a performance that not only made you forget there was an actor in front of you, but – and I know this is supremely silly – gave the impression that they’d somehow found the real Lawrence and plonked him down in the movie and asked him to recreate those scenes from his life being filmed. O’Toole wasn’t just astonishing, he was breathtaking. When he was on screen he was hypnotic, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. If the camera cut away to another character, I wanted it to come back to Lawrence as quickly as possible. If he wasn’t in a scene at all, I wanted that scene to end as quickly as possible so I could see him again. (It sounds a bit creepy, I know, but this was a revelation to me, that an actor could be this good; I’m not even sure I’ve seen another performance as good since.)
As with Stanley Kubrick and Abel Gance and Marcel Carné (sorry, Terry Jones!), here also was a director with complete mastery and control over the material. Lean did things in terms of composition and lighting I’d never seen before, things I’d never even considered could be done. His use of natural light alone was impressive. Watching Lawrence of Arabia now, over fifty years on from its release, there are shots that have never been replicated by other directors and/or cinematographers. Lean was truly a cinematic painter, an artist concerned as much with light and shade as character and emotion and motivation; he could fuse these elements together to make an organic, complete representation of the subject at hand, and their environment. In Lawrence of Arabia this makes for filmmaking of breathtaking beauty and accomplishment.
When I first saw the movie, and as I usually did, I raved about it to friends, even though I knew the subject matter and the movie’s length would put them off. But one friend did see it (though some time later), and reported that they’d really enjoyed it but was surprised that the movie ended with the attack on Aqaba; he’d really wanted to find out what happened next. I tried to keep my laughter to a minimum as I explained he’d only seen the first part of the movie.
I’ve seen the movie now around a dozen times, and each time it captivates me and mesmerises me in equal measure. The last time I saw it was at the London Film Festival in 2012. It was the first time the recent 4k restoration of the movie had been screened in the UK, and as a surprise, the festival organisers had arranged for two people connected with the movie to say a few words before the showing started. Those two people turned out to be Anne V. Coates, the movie’s editor, and none other than Omar Sharif. From where I was sitting I was only about six feet away from them both, and while Sharif spoke about his experiences making the film, several times he looked directly at me as he spoke. (To say I walked out of that screening on cloud nine would be an understatement.) And the movie looked tremendous, ravishing and beautiful in a way I’d never seen before, having never seen it at the cinema, only on home video or DVD. It took me back to that first showing on TV, as I saw a movie I thought I was familiar with, but realised I hadn’t seen really properly in all this time.
For me, Lawrence of Arabia is the epic to end all epics, the grandest piece of filmmaking ever committed to celluloid. Like the other movies I’ve discussed so far, it opened my eyes to what was possible in cinema, and its lustre hasn’t dimmed after all these years. It’s also the most beautiful movie I’ve ever seen.
Rating: 9/10 – a movie that mixes the epic with quieter, more intimate moments, and with skill and considerable brio; Lean’s masterpiece and O’Toole’s finest hour.
Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Lydia Wilson, Lindsay Duncan, Richard Cordery, Joshua McGuire, Tom Hollander, Margot Robbie, Will Merrick, Vanessa Kirby
On his 21st birthday, Tim (Gleeson) is let into the big family secret by his dad (Nighy): that the men in the family can time travel. Disbelieving at first, he follows his dad’s instructions and finds it’s all true; he travels back to a fateful New Year’s Eve party and finds he’s able to change some of the things that did or didn’t happen. Tim’s dad further explains the rules: they can’t travel back beyond their birth, they can’t travel forward in time, and they can only travel back to places and events that they can picture in their mind or can remember.
Tim initially uses this gift in order to rewrite awkward moments where he makes embarrassing mistakes, such as squirting a large amount of sun cream over sister Kit Kat’s friend Charlotte (Robbie). Tim’s crush on Charlotte leads to his discovering that no matter how hard he tries, and no matter how many times he manipulates the past, he can’t make someone fall in love with him. Which is just as well because when he meets Mary (McAdams) it’s love at first sight for both of them. But when Tim makes a choice about returning to the night they met and does something different, he finds himself having to woo her all over again as that “something different” has meant they haven’t met (still with me?).
What follows is a series of events and situations requiring Tim’s intervention in the past, some to good effect, and one, involving Kit Kat (Wilson), that has a disastrous consequence requiring Tim to make a difficult reconsideration. All the while, Tim and Mary’s relationship grows stronger, and their friends and families benefit from Tim’s gift.
At the heart of the movie is the relationship between Tim and his dad, a paternal romance that Curtis makes more of than the romance between Tim and Mary. It’s uncomfortably sentimental and cloying at times, and Curtis only just manages to avoid it being completely off-putting, a testament to his skill as a writer, and the performances by Gleeson and Nighy, who portray the close bond the characters have with accomplished finesse. If you like your romantic comedies with a little more bite or a little less mawkish, this isn’t the movie for you. If, however, you don’t mind a couple of hours of breezy, effusive, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed romanticism, then this is definitely the movie to see.
Curtis directs capably if unspectacularly from his own script, and there’s a raft of great performances from the likes of Duncan (as Tim’s mum, acerbic but touching); Cordery as a slightly simple, less aggressive version of Four Weddings and a Funeral‘s Mad Old Man (as played by Kenneth Griffith); McGuire as the hapless Rory, Tim’s colleague; and the ever excellent Hollander as Harry, the scathing, egotistical playwright Tim lives with for a while. As Tim’s first love, and potential moment of weakness once Tim and Mary are together, Robbie does well with a slightly underwritten character (actually more of a plot contrivance), and McAdams, here channelling the spirit of Andie MacDowell (and that’s not a bad thing), breathes life into a role that could have been relentlessly and annoyingly perky in the hands of some actresses.
But when all’s said and done the movie belongs to Gleeson and Nighy. Gleeson, still probably best known for playing Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter movies, steps out from behind that particular shadow and gives a charming, instinctive performance that makes all the absurdities of Curtis’s script – and there are many – far more acceptable to an audience as a result; he’s credible in a way that draws in the viewer and makes Tim seem like a really good friend whose telling you this really good shaggy dog story. And Nighy is just as excellent: diffident, amused (and amusing), relaxed, spontaneous, and a joy to behold. He embraces the character’s foibles and makes virtues of them, grounding the movie also, and having a lot of fun at the same time. It’s a performance made to look so easy you could be forgiven for thinking he wasn’t even trying.
The absurdities of the script can be overlooked because Curtis knows funny, and he uses the absurdities to punch up the humour rather than to drive the story forward. That said, a couple of subplots help pad out the running time unnecessarily, and if Tim uses his gift three or four times too often, by the movie’s end he comes to a much delayed conclusion about the real benefits of time travel, and this offsets the repetition. Curtis is a clever writer, a little under-appreciated for his movie work, but this is a clever movie, with a very clever cast, and a very clever central conceit.
Rating: 8/10 – ignore the naysayers, About Time is another quintessentially English movie from Richard Curtis that entertains from start to finish; blessed with a great cast and enough laugh-out-loud moments to shame a truckload of other comedies, this is a movie that radiates good will and is all the better for it.
When seventeen-year-old Carrie White (Moretz), already a social misfit at the school she attends, has her first period and doesn’t realise what’s happening, her fear and confusion leads to her classmates throwing tampons and sanitary napkins at her, and yelling at her to “plug it up”. This humiliating event is filmed by the worst of her tormentors, Chris Hargenson (Doubleday), and is later posted on the Internet. Stopped by their teacher Ms Desjardin (Greer), the girls are punished by having to stay after school and do repetitive exercises. Chris rebels against this and ends up being suspended; this means she will miss the upcoming school prom. Angered by what she feels is a terrible injustice, Chris vows to get even with Carrie (though not with Ms Desjardin).
For Carrie, her problems don’t end at the school gates. Her mother, Margaret (Moore), governs their lives according to her strict religious beliefs. Carrie tries to explain how terrified she’d been when her period started, but Margaret, her beliefs skewed by a pathological fear of sexual intimacy, berates her daughter for “becoming a woman” and locks her in a closet. Carrie’s anger surfaces and with just her mind she causes a jagged tear to appear down the centre of the closet door. With both mother and daughter realising there is going to be a shift in their relationship – and in Carrie’s favour – a tense line is drawn, and Margaret, now wary of the daughter she has controlled so easily until now, fears for both their futures.
While Chris plots her revenge, another of Carrie’s classmates, Sue Snell (Wilde), ashamed of how she behaved, tries to make amends by persuading her boyfriend Tommy (Elgort) to take Carrie to the prom instead of her. Tommy is initially resistant to the idea but eventually agrees, and asks Carrie if she’d like to go with him. Surprised but flattered (even if she doubts his sincerity to begin with), Carrie agrees. At the prom, and as part of Chris’s revenge, Carrie and Tommy are crowned Prom King and Queen. As they bask in the applause and approbation of their peers, Chris and her boyfriend Billy (Russell) drop two buckets of pig’s blood down onto Carrie and Tommy. The shock and the humiliation is too much and Carrie, using her nascent telekinetic powers, proceeds to take her revenge on everyone there.
Updated in minor ways for a new decade, Carrie plods its way uncomfortably from one leaden scene to the next, never fully convincing and never fully engaging the audience. As a remake it fails to justify its existence thanks to two main problems, both of which are insurmountable: Peirce’s direction and Moretz’s performance.
Peirce – still best known for Boys Don’t Cry (1999) – here proves a bad fit for the material, her approach leading to a curiously flat, matter-of-fact retelling that never takes off or impresses that much. It’s as if she’s decided to film events at a remove, keeping a distance between the audience and the characters so that any empathy the viewer may have is kept from flourishing. For a story with such a strong, emotional resonance, and centred around the age old topics of bullying and female empowerment, it’s even more surprising that Peirce has been unable to connect with the themes inherent in the script. This extends to the performances as well, which – Moore and Moretz aside – are perfunctory and/or lethargic.
Moore is a great choice for Margaret White, and expresses the religious paranoia that has blighted her life, and her daughter’s life, with a real sense of conviction. She’s like a coiled snake, biding its time until the right moment to strike. Moore is the best thing in Carrie but it’s effectively a supporting role and so she’s not on screen enough to make a difference.
Someone who is on screen too much, though, is Moretz, a moderately talented young actress whose rise to stardom on the back of the Kick-Ass movies has meant her being given more praise than is deserved, and who is cruelly shown to be lacking the acting skills needed to portray a character such as Carrie White. She may be the right age but the part requires an actress who is both older and more experienced. Moretz does her best but she’s just not up to it. She isn’t at all convincing as a put-upon teenager, and when required to show the pain and discomfort her life at home has engendered, there’s barely anything for the audience to latch on to. Worse still is the wide-eyed, “did-someone-just-goose-me?” stare she adopts for her telekinetic rampage; if it was intended to make her look scary then someone wasn’t checking the dailies.
With Peirce’s feather light touch on proceedings and Moretz’s underwhelming performance putting the movie at a disadvantage from the risible opening to the even more risible denouement, Carrie fails to meet its audience even halfway. The script is serviceable enough but there’s a lack of effort all round: even Carrie’s destruction of the prom is done half-heartedly, leaving a feeling of “was that it?” in the air. In horror terms, this has to be the biggest disappointment of 2013.
Rating: 4/10 – yet another poor adaptation of a Stephen King novel/short story/laundry list, Carrie lacks the brio and energy needed to carry it off; turgid in the extreme and saved only by Moore’s creepy performance and a sequence that wouldn’t look out of place in a Final Destination movie.
Cast: Justin Timberlake, Ben Affleck, Gemma Arterton, Anthony Mackie, Michael Esper, Oliver Cooper, Christian George, Yul Vazquez, John Heard, Bob Gunton
Supporting his financial outlay at university by acting as a facilitator for an online gambling organisation, Richie Furst (Timberlake) is ratted on to the Dean (Gunton) who gives him an ultimatum: either quit or be expelled. Richie’s response is to bet all his remaining money on an online gaming site; when he loses it all he suspects the game was rigged. When he finds proof, he determines to travel to Costa Rica – where the site is based – and show the site’s owner, Ivan Block (Affleck), what he’s found. Grateful for Richie’s information, he offers him a job which Richie accepts. Now living the high life, Richie begins to woo Ivan’s personal assistant (and ex-lover) Rebecca (Arterton). While Richie enjoys his new lifestyle, things begin to crumble around him. He is targeted by FBI agent Shavers (Mackie) who tells him Block is a scam artist. Two of his friends who came to work for Block on Richie’s recommendation begin to find strange anomalies in the way Block’s site is run. When one of them ends up beaten to death, Richie finally begins to realise the enormity of the situation he’s got himself into.
Advertised as a thriller, Runner Runner certainly has thriller elements, but largely this is a crime drama that keeps the actual crime so far off screen that it might as well not be there. That Block is running a scam seems of little consequence against the effect it has on Richie; the movie concentrates almost exclusively on how Richie is betrayed time after time, and then how he retaliates. There’s a larger story here with the possibility of a much wider drama being explored, but the script by Brian Koppelman and David Levien keeps things restricted to Block’s empire, with occasional side trips to island enforcer Herrera (Vazquez), the man Block has to pay in order to keep his business running.
What doesn’t help is the incredible naïveté that Timberlake is forced to adopt due to the laziness of the script. For someone attending Princeton, Richie is possibly the dumbest student you’re ever likely to meet. He falls for Block’s spiel hook, line and sinker, and even when he’s tricked time and time again, he still carries on as if Block’s assertions are just “part of the job”. Even when he realises how much trouble he’s in he tries to escape back to America, something agent Shavers has already told him would not be permitted. And then, when he agrees to help the FBI and the Costa Rican police bring down Block, he’s suddenly able to turn the tables just…like…that.
Making online gambling interesting is something the movie also fails to achieve, and a few over-the-top parties that Block hosts aside, there is little glamour here. Costa Rica is a beautiful country but you wouldn’t know it from the glimpses you get of it, and Arterton, who has a pouting attractiveness, is relegated to the sidelines for most of the movie. So what you end up with is a movie that looks and feels bland and uninteresting, and as a result, ends up disappointing its audience in almost every scene.
Furman directs with an indifference to the material that makes you wonder if he saw the problems ahead of time and decided just to take the pay. Timberlake sleepwalks through most of his scenes, while Affleck looks embarrassed by some of the dialogue he has to (try to) give credibility to. Arterton is wasted, Mackie tries too hard and gives a one-note performance, and Heard is saddled with a character so similar to his role in Sharknado (2013) it’s almost embarrassing. With no one trying very hard either in front or behind the camera, Runner Runner is doomed to fail from the very first frame.
Rating: 4/10 – a silly, shabby drama with pretensions toward being a thriller, Runner Runner is the cinematic equivalent of roadkill; a low point for all concerned that will be hard to beat.
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’o, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson, Adepero Oduye, Paul Giamatti, Garret Dillahunt, Brad Pitt, Alfre Woodard, Scoot McNairy, Taran Killam
In 2013 the movie that drew most people to the cinema was the third solo outing for Marvel’s high-tech reboot of the Tin Man, Iron Man 3. That movie was fun, a well-made piece of confectionery that was hyped, trailed and previewed to within an inch of its life. Enjoyable as it was though, it was still the equivalent of a Big Mac and fries, offering a quick fix for the Geek Squads and providing little or no nourishment for anyone not au fait with Marvel’s plan for Cinematic World Domination. But if 2013 is to be remembered as the year a man in a can was seen by more people than any other movie, what of that other way of remembering any given year: by the movie that was easily the best the year had to offer.
In some years, that “choice” has been easy. In 1930, All Quiet on the Western Front. In 1945, Les enfants du paradis. In 1962, Lawrence of Arabia. In 1974, The Godfather Part II. In 1993, Schindler’s List. And in 2013…a movie most of us won’t see until 2014. A movie called 12 Years a Slave.
Directed by McQueen from the account written by Solomon Northup, a free man living in New York with his wife and two children in 1841, 12 Years a Slave is a devastating account of one man’s abduction into slavery, and his subsequent experiences on the plantations of Louisiana. Northup is an accomplished musician, well-respected, and flattered when two members of a circus troupe approach him to join their company. He journeys from New York to Washington with them only to wake up after a night’s drinking to find himself in chains and told he is now a slave; his name is also denied him and he is told he is to answer to Platt. At first he finds himself at the mercy of (the ironically named) slave trader Freeman (Giamatti), until he is sold, along with a woman called Eliza (Oduye), to plantation owner Mr Ford (Cumberbatch). Ford is in the process of adding extra buildings to his land, and has a master carpenter Tibeats (Dano) who oversees the construction. Northup impresses Ford with his engineering skills but soon makes an enemy of Tibeats. Before long, Tibeats pushes Northup too far and Northup beats him with his own whip. Tibeats swears revenge against Northup and returns with two men; they proceed to hang Northup but are stopped by Ford’s overseer, Chapin (J.D. Evermore). Although Chapin stops Northup from being killed, he leaves him hanging from the tree with his toes barely touching the ground to save himself from being strangled; it’s only when Ford returns at the end of the day that he is cut down. But Ford’s leniency comes at a price: he must sell Northup on in order to save his plantation from Tibeats’ wrath.
Where Ford has been a considerate and compassionate man, Northup’s new owner, Edwin Epps is anything but. He has his slaves whipped if they don’t make the daily quota for picking cotton, and when his wife complains that he is paying too much attention to one of the female slaves, Patsey (Nyong’o), he tells her coldly that he will see the back of her before he will rid himself of Patsey. Northup becomes Patsey’s confidante, and he does his best to keep Epps from bothering her, but it doesn’t always work. It’s only when a carpenter named Bass (Pitt) comes to work on the plantation, and speaks of equality, that Northup takes courage and explains his situation. Bass agrees to help him, and some time later, Northup is freed and reunited with his family.
From the outset, 12 Years a Slave grabs the attention and keeps its audience riveted. The topic of slavery is one that has been only fitfully addressed in cinema, and while movies such as Amistad (1997), and Amazing Grace (2006) have taken a political approach to the issue, there hasn’t been a movie that has looked at it from both the financial side of things, and the actual day-to-day living experience. Throughout the movie it’s made clear that slavery is a business, and a lucrative one for people such as the trader Freeman, and for the plantation owners who invest in slaves as a means of reaping huge profits. Against this wellspring of money, a slave’s life is worth nothing at all, and the movie delivers this message on several occasions. When Northup is on tiptoe trying not to hang, it’s heartbreaking to see the other slaves carry on with their tasks as if he isn’t there; only by going about their business can they add value to their lives.
12 Years a Slave is also quite graphic in its depiction of the violence endemic in slavery, with one on-screen whipping being truly horrifying, and its the casual nature of it all that the movie depicts so well, along with the hateful racism that fuelled so much of it. Early on, before Northup is placed with Freeman, he is beaten with a paddle. The scene is shocking both for what happens to Northup, and for the sustained nature of the beating. Epps’s wife throws a decanter in Patsey’s face, her racism mixed with jealousy and injured pride. There are other moments where violence escalates from nothing, and there is a palpable sense of the violent undercurrents that were prevalent during this period. If the movie presents these aspects unflinchingly, then it is to show the full horror of the constant threat of injury or death that slaves experienced. (And to anyone who feels these scenes were unnecessary or uncomfortable to watch, then you are missing the point. The life of a slave was far worse than anything depicted here, and by showing us the things that we do see, the movie reinforces the fact that, so far removed from both those times and those circumstances as we are in our daily lives, we can easily fail to realise how terrible slavery actually was.)
Thankfully, in amongst the brutal violence and the despair there are quiet moments of hope to offset the horror. Northup’s relationship with Patsey is affecting and desperately sad at the same time, and shows how two people can still retain a measure of their humanity despite existing under appalling conditions. Thanks to both Ejiofor and Nyong’o, their scenes together are both emotionally charged and riveting viewing.
The heart of the film is Ejiofor’s towering performance, a career best that is breathtaking to watch as he depicts a man who somehow retains his dignity and his sense of self through twelve years of degradation and terror. Ejiofor holds the attention in every scene he’s in, deflecting focus even from Fassbender, whose performance as Epps is mesmerising in its intensity. The audience is drawn to Ejiofor as their moral compass and guide; without him, the movie would be a series of vignettes without a central point of reference. He displays a clear understanding of the emotions that governed Northup’s reactions and response to his situation: the despair, the anger, the resignation to his plight, the fear, the barely acknowledged hope of regaining his freedom, the sadness, the sense of loss, and most effective of all, the will to survive. It’s a magnificent achievement.
As already mentioned, Fassbender is on brilliant form as the tortured, torturing Epps, adding layers to a character who could have been portrayed more matter-of-factly and with less attention to nuance and interpretation. His performance is mercurial, adding a sense of uncertainty to Epps that makes his unpredictable nature more dangerous. His scenes with Ejiofor are akin to an acting masterclass. In the various supporting roles, Dano stands out as the mealy-mouthed, insecure Tibeats, all puffed-up pride and coiled hostility, while Cumberbatch continues to impress as the fair-minded, socially conscious Ford. Paulson also impresses as Mistress Epps, her eyes never once betraying any emotion other than disgust. And making her feature debut, Nyong’o is superb as the object of Epps’s lust, imbuing Patsey with an inner strength and determination that offsets the cruelty she receives at the hands of Epps and his wife.
This is McQueen’s third feature – after Hunger (2008) and Shame (2011) – and serves to reinforce how talented a director he is. His control of the material is confident and assured, and he elicits strong performances from everyone in the cast. In conjunction with cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, McQueen places the camera in exactly the right place in each scene, framing the action expertly and with close attention to the physical and emotional requirements of each set-up. His decision to make 12 Years a Slave has proved to be a wise one, and the way in which he’s overcome the difficulties inherent in telling such a complex story is compelling.
12 Years a Slave is a harrowing, disturbing look at a shameful period in US history, and while some people might say that we don’t need to see the barbarity of the times to know it was evil, a reminder as powerful as this one is should always be welcome. With stand-out performances, an insightful, intricate script courtesy of John Ridley, and a score by Hans Zimmer that perfectly supports the emotional and dramatic moments in the film, 12 Years a Slave is a movie deserving of everyone’s attention.
Rating: 9/10 – a modern masterpiece, with much to say about the nature of evil as the will to survive it; an engrossing, deeply moving account of one man’s journey through a contemporary hell and his eventual salvation.
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly, Lily Collins, Nat Wolff, Kristen Bell, Logan Lerman, Liana Liberato, Michael Goodwin
Three years after his wife, Erica (Connelly), left him, acclaimed writer William Borgens (Kinnear) is still convinced she will come back to him, even though she’s remarried. To make matters worse, he hasn’t written a word since Erica left. All he seems able to do is spy on his ex-wife in the hope he’ll see some evidence that her marriage isn’t working, and engage in casual sex with one of his neighbours, Tricia (Bell). The break-up has affected their children in different ways. Daughter Samantha (Collins) refuses to have anything to do with her mother and wants her father to move on with his life. Son Rusty (Wolff) still sees his mother and has no animosity toward her at all.
With William not writing anything, it comes as a surprise to learn that Samantha is about to have her first novel published. Both William and Rusty are initially frosty about the news, William because it’s not the same book he helped her with before, and Rusty because he’s struggling to find his own voice as a writer (he likes fantasy fiction and is a huge fan of Stephen King). With Samantha’s return home from college, the family dynamic alters considerably, with no doubts that her novel will be a success leading William and Rusty to question their roles as writers. For Rusty it means experiencing life more fully, leading him into a relationship with substance abuser Kate (Liberato). William tries to put the past behind him but without much success until Tricia tells him he shouldn’t be settling for the kind of relationship he has with her. Samantha, however, is fiercely opposed to getting close to anyone, as she fears the same thing happening to her as it did to her parents. Despite this, she meets and begins a relationship with Louis (Lerman).
As the various relationships deepen and become more serious, with unexpected consequences for all concerned, the Borgens, including Erica, find their family dynamic being tested at every turn.
While it’s true that Stuck in Love is a little light on real drama, and the emotional crises the characters have to deal with are far from original, the movie is still a pleasure to watch, and is rewarding in many other ways. The chemistry between Kinnear and Connelly is affecting and effective in equal measure, with both actors playing off each other with practiced ease. There’s a scene where they meet at a shopping mall, and while the dialogue is mainly functional, the underlying charge given to their meeting is all down to how they look at each other, and their body language. Wolff shines too, imbuing Rusty with a restless, nervous energy that transforms over the course of the movie (from one Thanksgiving to the next) into a more relaxed, easily maintained confidence. As the initially self-repressed Samantha, Collins does well in a role that could have been more vapid than vital, and she copes equally well with the demands of being remote from her mother and fully engaged with her father. As the love interests, Bell is all business and tough love, Lerman is sweet but under-used, and Liberato shows promise as the wayward Kate.
The interaction between the characters is well handled, and thanks to first-time writer/director Boone, there aren’t any awkward moments where motivations can be questioned or behaviour impeached. The family scenes feel natural, and if some viewers are put off by the idea of yet another slice of middle class neurotic navel-gazing, then that would be a shame, because Stuck in Love is sharp, observant, knowing, and above all, intelligent. The comic elements fit comfortably alongside the dramatic elements, and the East Coast locations are a good fit for the story (as well as being beautifully photographed by DP Tim Orr).
Rating: 8/10 – a genuine pleasure to watch, with great performances enhancing an already great script; an indie movie with a warmth and a feel good factor all its own.
Cast: Dorian Harewood, Ray Wise, Roy Scheider, DeLane Matthews, Ed O’Ross, John Toles-Bey, Clint Howard, Don Swayze, Richard Foronjy, Steven Barr, Blake Gibbons, Mallory Farrow, Keith Coogan, Bill McGee
An unabashed mash-up of Con Air and Under Siege 2 but with a tenth of either movie’s budget (or inventiveness), Evasive Action pits con-with-integrity Luke Sinclair (Harewood) against prison big wheel Enzo Marcelli (Scheider) during an attempted escape from the train carrying them both to a new prison. Sinclair is doing time for the murder of the man who killed his wife and child, while Marcelli’s crime is never revealed; he’s just a very bad man. Sinclair’s integrity is shown by his refusal to admit remorse for his crime at his parole hearings; Marcelli’s evil nature is shown by…. well, he queue jumps in the prison yard.
Once Sinclair and Marcelli, along with additional convicts Tommy (Toles-Bey), Ian (Swayze), and Hector “The Director” Miller (Howard, on Steve Buscemi psychopath duty), are on the way to San Diego and their new “home”, what has been up-to-now a fairly unremarkable thriller with some daft dialogue, moves quickly into the outer reaches of low-budget silliness. With the aid of accomplices Vince (Foronjy) and Joe (Barr), Marcelli et al are freed from the high-tech (but actually low-tech) carriage they are being transported in. With a plan to rendezvous with a helicopter and flee to Mexico, it’s up to Sinclair and plucky train employee Zoe (Matthews) to save the day and thwart Marcelli’s (slightly) evil plan.
Evasive Action starts promisingly but soon resorts to desperate measures to keep itself “on track”. With the convicts taking over the train, Zoe manages to contact the police; soon Sheriff Blaidek (Wise) is heading to intercept the train and save the day. What follows is a series of incidents that demand such a massive suspension of disbelief, the viewer is in danger of self-inducing a migraine. For example, Blaidek commandeers the helicopter and orders the pilot to get him onto the train; Sinclair jumps from the train and reconnects with it after travelling across the desert on foot before reaching a town and stealing a motorbike; and the train company has only one worker, Anthony (Coogan), who can help the police keep track of where the train is headed and/or located (and he’s inexperienced).
As an action thriller, Evasive Action sets a robust pace once the train sets off but the audience is unlikely to connect with any of the characters. As Luke, Harewood is earnest and just a little bit stuffy; plus in the fight scenes it’s clear he hasn’t squared up to anyone since he was probably five. Wise acts like a man who hopes no one he knows will see the movie, while Matthews shows no fear, merely a kind of mild exasperation at what she has to go through. It’s left to Scheider to raise the acting bar but even he can’t salvage a character so underwritten he has to resort to snarling his way through the movie as a way of keeping him interesting.
Jacobs’ direction lacks focus and substance (he’s better known as a producer, albeit of movies such as Vampires Suck and Disaster Movie), and the photography by Ken Blakey too often resorts to shaking the camera in order to make it look like the train is moving. The script plays fast and loose with its own timescale, and makes Passenger 57 – another movie it’s been partially cloned from – look like Oscar-bait. The movie looks bland and lacks any kind of zest. And the movie’s big set-piece moment, when the train crashes through a terminus at high speed, is reduced to three poorly achieved shots involving model work.
While Evasive Action does try hard to entertain its audience, what you’re left with is a sense that this was a movie that was made quickly so as not to burden its cast and crew any more than it had to. And whoever came up with the poster design has made it look as if Scheider is some kind of spy dealing with terrorists (maybe), or, as some reviewers might put it, is “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. (Well, yes he is, but only in the “whoops-I-should-have-passed-on-this-one” sense.) All in all, the best thing about the movie is that it moves with a sense of urgency, even if that urgency is to get things over with as quickly as possible.
Rating: 4/10 – saved from a lower score because its very inoffensiveness is a kind of relief from the madness of most direct-to-video releases, but only worth a view if every other variation on Con Air is unavailable.
Originally posted on thedullwoodexperiment website.
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Nina Foch, Hugh Marlowe, Jayne Mansfield, Albert Dekker, Howard St John, Ellen Corby, Edward Platt, Jan Merlin
When ace district attorney Victor Scott (Robinson) gains a conviction in the case of wife murderer Edward Clary (Star Trek’s DeForest Kelley), he couldn’t be more pleased as it maintains his impressive run of convictions. Clary is sentenced to be executed but as he goes to the chair, a death bed confession by another man proves Clary’s innocence. Alerted to the confession, Scott tries to halt the execution but is too late. His professional reputation in tatters, Scott takes to the bottle. Self-pitying and pushing away anyone who might help him, particularly his assistant Ellen Miles (Foch), Scott eventually pulls himself together but determines to take on only defence cases from then on. In the process he falls in with local gangster Frank Garland (Dekker). Scott defends Garland’s men when they end up in court, and on one occasion goes to extreme lengths to gain an acquittal. Soon he begins to regret the course he’s chosen and tries to extricate himself from Garland’s clutches. And then Ellen ends up on trial for the murder of her husband Ray (Marlowe), giving Scott a chance to redeem himself for the mistake he made with Clary, and ensure that Garland is brought to justice.
A remake of The Mouthpiece (1932), Illegal is a fast-paced courtroom drama with fine performances (though Foch can be a trifle stiff at times), and an early appearance for the buxom Mansfield. Some of Scott’s motivations are a little bit hazy, especially when he begins working for Garland, but Robinson, consummate professional that he is, doesn’t allow this to interfere with the need for pushing the story forward. As Garland, Dekker is a great foil for Robinson, and gives a firm reminder of why he was such a reliable supporting actor in the Forties. There are a number of twists and turns, a mole in the DA’s office who must be uncovered (though the culprit is revealed early on), the usual lack of a romantic involvement for Robinson (he never did that well with the ladies), and some typically hard-boiled dialogue chewed on with relish by the largely male cast.
Directed with flair by Brit-born Allen (also responsible for The Uninvited – see review posted on 31 October 2013), Illegal is a legal potboiler that still retains a great deal of charm and is a pleasant enough way to spend an hour and a half. On the downside, the sets are quite drab – evidence of a tight budget – and the photography is perfunctory, composed largely of medium shots. It’s mostly predictable too, but this isn’t a drawback, and while there’s the odd misstep along the way (which might cause a grimace), the movie is an acceptable addition to the genre. Plus there’s a great score from the ever-reliable Max Steiner. There’s always an in-built reassurance with this type of movie, and if you’re a fan, you’ll be pleased you caught up with it.
Rating: 6/10 – minor problems with production values aside, Illegal benefits from a committed turn by Robinson and assured direction by Allen; not a classic but enjoyable nonetheless.
Cast: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, Santino Fontana, Alan Tudyk, Ciarán Hinds
With many a nod to Tangled, Frozen is the story of two sisters, Anna (Bell) and Elsa (Menzel), young princesses in the fairytale kingdom of Arendelle, who seem to live an idyllic lifestyle until Anna is hurt by Elsa’s “gift”: the ability to create snow and ice just by touch alone. Anna nearly dies; this leads to Elsa hiding her gift and devoting the rest of her life to living a quiet, almost monastic life away from other people (including Anna). When their parents die, it is Elsa who becomes Queen. On the day she is crowned, events transpire to reveal her gift to the people, who are horrified. Urged on by the treacherous Duke of Weselton (Tudyk), Elsa is forced to flee the kingdom and take refuge in the snowy mountains, but not before her gift has covered her kingdom in ice. There she fashions a castle for herself and determines never to return to her kingdom or her people.
Unperturbed by the revelation of her sister’s gift, Anna determines to find her, heading into the mountains by herself. She soon finds herself lost and without transport, but is rescued by Kristoff (Groff), an ice harvester who agrees to help her (with the aid of his trusty reindeer, Sven). Meanwhile, the Duke of Weselton has sent two of his men to kill Elsa; they form part of a party led by Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, whose romantic eye has fallen on Anna (he leads the party in order to find her after she goes looking for Elsa). They all reach Elsa’s hideout at the same time only to encounter a snow monster created by Elsa, as well as a snowman named Olaf. Olaf tags along with Anna as she seeks to convince her sister that there is still a place for her in the kingdom. But treachery ensues, and the fate of the kingdom rests in Elsa’s “gifted” hands, and Anna’s forgiving heart.
Overloaded with songs in its first half – the first of which is hard to understand – Frozen is a fine addition to the list of animated Disney Classics. With richly drawn characters, often breathtakingly beautiful animation, a terrific voice cast, and memorable scenes throughout, the movie is a visual treat. The storyline packs an emotional heft and the script is clever and well-constructed. There are the usual Disney themes of a family in crisis, unselfish love winning out, the importance of being true to yourself, and being kind to others, and while these are all timeworn aspects of virtually every Disney movie (animated or otherwise), there’s a freshness here that keeps the familiar material interesting, and the audience’s attention throughout.
Ably directed by Lee and Buck, Frozen succeeds because it takes the aforementioned Disney values and puts a pleasing modern spin on them, even if the story feels like it’s taking place a couple of centuries ago in some mittel-European kingdom. The movie is funny, sad, dramatic, action-packed, romantic and affecting, with fine performances from Bell and Menzel, and a great supporting turn from Gad as Olaf the endlessly upbeat, glad-to-be-alive snowman. There’s what appears to be a cameo from Tangled’s Maximus (see Prince Hans’s horse at the quayside), a pleasing and convincing relationship between the two sisters, a couple of unexpected twists and turns, and a satisfying comeuppance for the main villain.
Rating: 8/10 – another absorbing, engaging hit from Disney, with glorious visuals and the required amount of laughs; even more impressive in 3D.
NOTE: I saw Frozen with my daughter. She’s nineteen, loves animated movies, and has probably seen Disney’s Beauty and the Beast more times than is actually good for her. She thought Frozen was wonderful. For me, though, what was wonderful was that she and I can still go to the movies together and both let our inner child out to play for a couple of hours. I hope we can carry on doing that for a very long time to come.
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Tony Danza, Glenne Headly, Brie Larson, Rob Brown, Jeremy Luke
Jon (Gordon-Levitt) is young, brash, cocky, and with his buddies, more comfortable rating women out of ten than engaging with them on a more meaningful level. Although Jon has a lot of one-night stands, he finds the sex unfulfilling; often, once the women he’s with are asleep, he’ll go and fire up his laptop and masturbate to online porn. For Jon, this kind of sexual activity is more rewarding than the real thing, and it dominates his life and his attitude to relationships.
When he meets Barbara (Johansson) in a club and she rebuffs his advances, he finds himself intrigued by her, and what begins as a chase to get her to sleep with him soon becomes more serious as Jon realises he has stronger feelings for Barbara than he would have thought possible. When Barbara agrees to go out with him, she tells Jon the only thing she asks for is complete honesty; if he lies to her their relationship will be over. Unable or unwilling to give up online porn, it’s only a matter of time before Jon slips up. Will their relationship survive? Will Jon change his ways to keep Barbara in his life, or will Jon’s addiction to porn continue to hamper his emotional growth?
The answers to these questions are all answered by a film that is only notionally edgy, and wants to argue the question of men’s use of porn from the perspective of both camps: the one where it’s okay (but not in a relationship), and the one where it is completely wrong altogether. There’s a middle ground but for the purposes of this movie, first-time writer/director Gordon-Levitt focuses on the absolute wrongs and rights of the issue. It makes for a starker, more clear-cut approach to the material and the characters reactions to porn, but at the same time, makes anticipating the outcome a little too easy. Jon sees porn as the answer to all those unhappy fumbles one night stands often end up becoming, where a lack of awareness of each other’s likes and dislikes can lead to disappointment all round. Jon wants solid, satisfying sex every time; once actual people are involved, well, there’s the problem.
As a critique of modern sexual etiquette, Don Jon takes a mainly male point of view and leaves the female perspective largely undeveloped. While Jon – thanks to well-written and conceived voice overs – expresses his feelings, however stunted, Barbara is less accessible. She believes in love, that much is obvious, and she relishes the type of romantic chick flick where true love conquers everything, but aside from the need for honesty she remains the deus ex machina required to bring Jon up short and get him to rethink his approach to women and sex. And to further help him, Jon meets Esther (Moore) at night school. She catches him watching porn on his phone, but isn’t fazed by it; instead, the next time she sees him, she brings him some porn DVDs to watch. As their relationship begins to broaden, the audience is left to wonder if Esther will free Jon of his predilection for porn, thus allowing him to grow as a person and begin to trust in relationships.
Putting aside the issue of porn and its mass consumption by men whether in or out of a relationship, Gordon-Levitt’s main focus seems to be on the emotional distancing that can arise out of such a dependency. When we first meet Jon he’s not actually that likeable. He has a boyish charm, sure, but his attitude is off-putting and offensive. He works hard, goes to the gym where he works even harder, meets his buddies at the weekend, goes to church each Sunday with his family (and where he confesses the number of sexual liaisons he’s had), and all the while treats women like accessories. As the movie progresses, and his relationship with Barbara becomes more and more important to him, his weakness for porn proves too much. It’s at this point that, much as the audience might not realise it, Jon becomes more sympathetic. We’ve all been in situations where we can’t help ourselves and we do the wrong thing even though we know it’ll get us in trouble, and it’s the same for Jon. He just can’t resist the lure of unattached, unemotional sex. When Barbara discovers he’s been lying about porn, you can’t help but feel sorry for the guy, but only because you begin to realise that, thanks to his avoiding commitment for all this time, he just doesn’t have a clue.
It’s a clever twist on Gordon-Levitt’s part and offsets the likelihood that Don Jon is going to be pro-porn all the way through. As it is, the porn on display is unlikely to upset any but the most prurient of viewers, and the movie is far from explicit. On an emotional level, Gordon-Levitt’s script provides the necessary number of beats to show Jon’s burgeoning awareness of the benefits of a fully committed relationship, and the performances are effective and well-judged (Danza, as Jon’s father, is a stand-out). (Though as already noted, Johansson isn’t given a great deal to work with.) The script is clever, laugh-out-loud funny in places, and each scene is tooled to produce the maximum effect. As a director, Gordon-Levitt displays a confident approach to his own material, and handles the cast with supportive aplomb; he also knows when to keep the camera on a particular character, something of a lost art these days. The movie is attractive to look at, boasts a great score courtesy of Nathan Johnson, and while it ends somewhat abruptly, certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Rating: 8/10 – uneven in places but awash with good intentions, Don Jon isn’t quite the challenging movie it might appear; it is heartfelt though, and marks Gordon-Levitt as a writer/director to watch out for. Oh, and despite what you might believe, this is a perfect date movie.
Though Saul Zaentz was a producer, it may surprise people to learn that, over a period of thirty-one years, he only produced nine movies. But among them are some of the finest movies made in the last forty years: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984), The Mosquito Coast (1986), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), and The English Patient (1996). That’s not a bad record.
Zaentz came to producing after a long stint at the influential Fantasy Records, first as a salesman then later on as a co-owner, and before that he started out in life as a gambler. With these two experiences it makes a certain kind of sense that Zaentz would do well in Hollywood. He was tenacious, invested his own money in his productions (often leading to his owning those properties), and often had final cut.
He surrounded himself with some of the most talented writers, directors and actors available – Peter Weir, Anthony Minghella, Jean-Claude Carrière, Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis to name but a few – and took the kind of risks that other producers would steer well clear of. As a result he was a three-time Oscar winner (for One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest, Amadeus (my personal favourite of his movies), and The English Patient.
He was one of the last, great independent producers. If there is any regret to be had with his passing it’s that he didn’t come to movie making a lot earlier; think how many other fiercely intelligent movies we could have had the privilege of seeing if he had.
Cast: Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Christina Applegate, Meagan Good, James Marsden, Josh Lawson, Kristen Wiig, Dylan Baker, Judah Nelson, Greg Kinnear, Harrison Ford
Nine years after Ron Burgundy’s first outing, the news anchor with the salon quality hair is back, still unrepentantly sexist, still with an ego the size of San Diego, and still oblivious to the chaos he causes around him. Happily married to Veronica Corningstone (Applegate) and sharing the lead anchor spot with her at the World Broadcast news station, Ron’s life is devastated when news boss Mack Tannen (Ford) promotes Veronica to lead anchor and fires Ron. Forcing Veronica to choose between him and her promotion, she chooses the job and Ron leaves her and their son Walter (Lawson). After a stint at San Diego’s Sea World, Ron is approached by Freddie Shapp (Baker) to come work for Global News Network and be part of the first ever 24-hour news channel. Ron agrees on the proviso that he can assemble his own news team. He tracks down Brian Fantana (Rudd), Champ Kind (Koechner) and Brick Tamland (Carell), and with his team around him, he sets about regaining his position at the top of the news tree.
The success of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, a slow-build process fuelled by home video and extensive word of mouth, brought with it the fans’ desire for a sequel. On its own merits, the first movie can be seen as a “happy accident”, an uneven mixture of stupidity and witlessness that was nevertheless funny at the same time. Ron was crass and boorish in a “who-let-the-moron-out?” kind of way, while his news team almost matched him low IQ for low IQ. Carell, then still climbing the comedy ladder, was endearing as the intellectually challenged Brick, Rudd was boyishly charming as Brian, and Koechner was – intentionally? by accident? – the funniest of all of them as Champ Kind, a man who has never heard a woman speak before. Ferrell created a fantastic character, a vain popinjay with delusions of adequacy, and milked the character for all he was worth. The performances made the movie, and over the years, have firmly lodged themselves in our collective comedy memories, so much so that we remember them with excessive fondness.
Sadly, that’s how they should have remained. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues trades heavily on our love of the characters but holds them in a kind of developmental stasis; in nearly ten years they haven’t changed a bit. Ron is still vain, Brian is still the scent-fixated ladies man, Champ is still the least developed of the four, and Brick is still an idiot. Veronica, having challenged Ron’s supremacy in the first movie, is demoted back to the same role again. The secondary characters are used as a foil for the news team’s shenanigans – not least Kristen Wiig’s uncomfortable turn as Brick’s love interest, Chani – and even Ron’s nemesis at GNN, Jack Lime (Marsden), is given little to make him a serious rival for the news anchor crown. And as with the first movie, Ron’s “story arc” is that he learns not to be so self-centred.
A re-tread then rather than a true sequel, Anchorman 2 arrives with a tremendous weight of expectation and reveals itself as more of a vanity project for Will and the gang (including director/co-writer McKay). There are laughs but as most of them are repeats of gags and scenes from the first movie, it’s hard to look upon them as anything but nostalgic or, worse still, lazy. Add the awkwardness of Carell’s performance – the line between exploiting Brick’s “disability” and treating him kindly is crossed time and time again – plus two sequences that inflate the running time beyond what’s necessary, and a recurring sense that the script was a first draft, and you have a movie that never quite gels in the way its makers had hoped. There’s an attempt at lampooning the public’s appetite for sensationalist news but it’s only briefly explored, and whatever criticism is implied by the need for ratings success over quality content is given short shrift also.
The movie does have a professional sheen to it, however, and the technical side of things is adequately handled but there are times when it even has the feel of a TV show. Ferrell acquits himself well, despite the limitations of his own script, and is ably supported by his cast mates. McKay directs ably enough, and the soundtrack throws up a few Eighties gems despite itself. And as for the final, cameo-studded battle of the news stations, what starts out as a glorious free-for-all, ends up as a let-down with a poor ending…and this is, ultimately, the main fault with the movie: scenes begin strongly but soon peter out. Once or twice in a two-hour movie is forgivable, but not all the way through. With this much talent involved, a better return would have been expected.
Rating: 5/10 – a huge disappointment and a perfect example of when cherished, much-loved movies should be left to stand alone; uninspired, derivative and overlong.
Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Sue Jones-Davies, John Young
I was going to write just four words to describe how I feel about Monty Python’s Life of Brian: The. Funniest. Film. Ever. (And then have it in Latin*.)
Although I do subscribe to that opinion – and suspect I always will – even that bold assertion doesn’t do justice to a movie that makes me laugh out loud every time I see it, and which is the one movie that I can quote whole chunks from. To me it is the perfect distillation of what Monty Python could do when they were firing on all cylinders: witty, iconic, bombastic, satirical, acerbic, perceptive, dry, ironic, crazy, and just plain daft.
Like a lot of people in the UK, I saw Life of Brian when it first came out in cinemas. Or, at least, in the cinemas that were allowed to show it. Thirty-nine local authorities (councils) either banned the movie outright, or gave it an X certificate (meaning for over 18’s only), thereby denying the movie to part of its target audience, the over 14’s. Luckily, my local council wasn’t as draconian in its outlook as some others, and on the first Saturday after the movie was released, two friends and I trekked to our local fleapit to see this cause célèbre.
We weren’t disappointed. I’ve since seen movies where the audience has been laughing loudly throughout, but that afternoon in that cinema (the ABC Basildon), there was a reaction of such intensity to the humour shown that I’ve yet to experience it again, or even come anywhere close to re-experiencing it. We laughed until it hurt…and then we laughed even more. Here was a movie that just didn’t let up. The number of gags was astonishing, and the momentum the Pythons maintained across ninety-four madcap minutes was incredible. And the range and breadth of those gags was simply breathtaking. Who else but the Pythons would portray Pontius Pilate with a lateral lisp? Who else but the Pythons would base a whole scene around the correct grammatical spelling of a phrase in Latin (“People called Romanes they go the house? This is motion towards, isn’t it, boy?”)? Who else but the Pythons would keep asserting that crucifixion is either “a doddle” or not as bad as it seems? Who else but the Pythons would have a short sci-fi interlude involving Brian aboard an alien spaceship? And who else but the Pythons would top it all off with row upon row of crucified men and women all singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life? The answer is easy: no one.
I was already a fan of Monty Python and had enjoyed their TV outings, as well as Monty Python and the Holy Grail (although I found that movie a little too rough around the edges). I knew the Pythons could be silly and in Life of Brian there were moments of inspired silliness, but this seemed altogether more grown up, more considered, as if the team had decided to infuse their unique brand of comedy with an added depth. The satirical elements were brilliantly done, highlighting the hypocrisy and shallow-mindedness of religious followers, as well as adopting an heretical stance regarding the Church. The political aspects were deftly handled, poking fun at revolutionary groups (“The Judean People’s Front! Splitters!”) and skewering the pomposity of left-wing political idealists (any scene where Reg and the People’s Front of Judea endlessly debate how to move forward). All these elements were fresh as well, giving the movie an edge of originality that added to the movie’s overall effect.
Of course, Life of Brian isn’t just about the script or the historical detail or the amazing visual look of the movie. It’s about the characters, the larger than life caricatures and personas we’ve come to know and love: Brian (Chapman), the plucky everyman mistaken for the Messiah but in reality as rattled as anyone would be when confronted by a worshipping crowd; Mandy (Jones), Brian’s mother, a coarse, dentally-challenged harridan with loose morals (“You mean you were raped?” “Well, at first.”); Pilate (Palin), the slightly effeminate Roman leader with little sense of how ridiculed he is; Reg (Cleese), the contemptuous, shop steward-like leader of the People’s Front of Judea, and the first to hide when the Romans (or Brian) come knocking; Stan (Idle), who wants to be called Loretta and who wants to have the right to have babies (“Babies? You can’t have babies! Where’s the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?”); and the Gaoler’s assistant (Gilliam) who knowingly looks at Brian and tells him, “I know where you can get it if you want it”. All played to perfection, and firing off lines of dialogue with superb timing.
Since that initial screening, and as with 2001: A Space Odyssey, I have endeavoured to watch Life of Brian at least once a year since its debut on home video. Up until a few years ago, myself and the friend I took to the IMAX five times last year, would put together 36-hour movie marathons; Life of Brian was always the closing movie (and the one we never slept through any part of, no matter how tired we were). As with the other movies in my Top 10, it’s a movie I can watch over and over and still find something new in it each time, even though it’s the shortest. It can cheer me up if I’m down, it can make me smile just by thinking about it – I’ve been smiling the whole time I’ve been writing this – and thirty-five years on it is still as impressive and hilarious as ever.
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Susan Sarandon, Josh Lucas, Keith Carradine, Bill Pullman, Graham Beckel
Beginning with a major plot twist that most movies would leave until the final reel, Peacock is a small-town drama that focuses on notions of family and identity, as well as what it can mean to be part of a small-town community.
Murphy plays John, a painfully shy/socially awkward bank clerk who has managed to keep himself to himself in the year since his mother passed away, despite the best efforts of neighbours and some of the customers at the bank. He lives in a large house next to the train tracks; when a carriage jumps the rails and ends up crashing into his back garden, narrowly missing him, his life becomes more complicated than he could ever have wished, leading him to discover things about himself that he would rather not have known.
Peacock is a beguiling movie, with Murphy’s performance firmly at its heart. He shows the complexity of the character and the fragility of John’s mental state with an ease that is hypnotic, keeping the viewer glued to the unfolding events and eliciting sympathy at every turn. It is a bravura piece, and the movie is worth watching for his performance alone. It’s great to be able to add that he is more than ably supported by Sarandon, Pullman and Carradine, whose characters all want something from John, and use their apparent concern for him to advance their own causes. Lucas serves as the nearest John has to a friend, while Page plays Maggie, a figure from his past who further adds to the problems he can’t seem to shake. It all leads to a desperate climax with John sacrificing everything in order to be able to carry on.
There is much to admire in Peacock. Aside from the quality of the acting – unsurprising given the cast involved – the cinematography by Philippe Rousselot is perfectly framed throughout and at times shows an almost painterly eye. The editing, by Sally Menke (on her last film) and Jeffrey M. Werner, keeps the movie expertly paced, and the production design, especially with regard to the darkened interior of John’s home, is faultless; this is small-town America as even non-Americans will recognise it.
Director and co-writer Lander, making his feature debut, has a good eye for the nuances and undercurrents of small-town life, and manages everything with the confidence of a director with many more films under their belt. He also knows how to keep a scene moving and when to switch focus from character to character. And lastly, a mention for the score by Brian Reitzell: it ably supports the various emotional arcs of the characters and adds an appropriately melancholy touch to the proceedings.
Rating: 8/10 – a touching drama that becomes a character-driven thriller at the end but which remains grounded in credibility throughout; a minor gem.
Originally posted on thedullwoodexperiment website.
In 2013 I saw 106 movies at the cinema, from Gangster Squad to Frozen. On the whole I think it’s been a good year, just above average in fact, and a definite improvement on 2012 (you could say I was far more choosy back then).
There have been some turkeys – I Give It a Year and The Hangover Part III spring to mind – and some nice surprises: Danny Boyle’s Trance (as gleefully misleading a movie as you’re ever likely to see); Warm Bodies (a rom-zom that makes a virtue out of its sweet nature); and Kill Your Darlings (the treacherous early days of the Beat Generation featuring Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg).
There were movies I wanted to see but missed through bad timing and/or lack of opportunity: Carrie, The Way Way Back, Only God Forgives, and a couple I actively avoided: the Coen Brothers-scripted Gambit, and R.I.P.D.
The actual cinema-going experience improved during 2013, at least for me personally. Here in the UK there’s a cinema chain called Cineworld (see image above). They operate a monthly subscription service. For a fixed fee each month (currently £18.90) you get a membership card that guarantees you a free ticket to as many movies as you can manage each month, and a healthy discount on food and drink purchases. It’s a great idea, and without it I definitely wouldn’t have seen 106 movies (probably nearer 60-70). For me, a trip to the cinema can mean seeing 4-5 movies in one day (and all the hot dogs I can eat).
I also travelled quite regularly to the British Film Institute’s IMAX screen in London. The IMAX screen is approximately 20 metres high by 26 metres wide and is easily the best way to see a movie, particularly a blockbuster like The Wolverine or Pacific Rim. It’s also a great way to treat someone for their birthday: I took one of my friends five times during 2013 (to see Iron Man 3, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Man of Steel, Thor: The Dark World, and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug), and enjoyed a couple of visits with my daughter as well (The Lone Ranger and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire).
Working out which were the best and the worst of 2013 hasn’t been too difficult, although I will admit that one movie could have fallen into either camp; I don’t know if it’s just me but each year there’s always one movie that I can’t decide whether I love or hate. This year it was Frances Ha. Thankfully, other movies have come along to ensure it doesn’t end up in either list, and ultimately I’m glad because my final feeling on the movie is that it’s neither very good nor very bad, just okay (which is almost a condemnation in and of itself, I know).
Anyway, here they are then, the Best and Worst of 2013. If I’ve trashed a movie you thought was wonderful, then please accept my apologies here and now. If I’ve praised a movie you thought was a total pile of what Americans call “horse puckey”, then that’s easier to deal with: get over it, it’s just my opinion. Now, where’s that 20th Century fanfare…?
So, there you have it, two seafaring tales at the top of the 10 Best, and three sequels in the 10 Worst (that’s as much analysing as I’m prepared to do). I like preparing end of year lists, but this is the first time I’ve shared them with a wider audience. I hope they stimulate some discussion, even an argument or two (that’s healthy, right?), and if you feel the need to comment, please do.
I hope everyone out there has a great 2014, and that we all find at least one more movie that clings to us and enriches our lives when we least expect it.
To those particularly wonderful guys out there who are following this blog, and also those who’ve taken the time to record their liking of a specific post, may I also add a big THANK YOU as well for being there, and supporting me; it means a lot to this still fledgling blogger.