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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

thedullwoodexperiment

Monthly Archives: January 2015

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Brian O'Conner, Crime, Dominic Toretto, Drama, Hijackings, Jordana Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker, Race Wars, Review, Rob Cohen, Street racing, Thriller, Undercover cop, Vin Diesel

Fast and the Furious, The

D: Rob Cohen / 106m

Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Rick Yune, Chad Lindberg, Johnny Strong, Matt Schulze, Ted Levine, Ja Rule, Vyto Ruginis, Noel Gugliemi, Reggie Lee

In Los Angeles, a gang of thieves are hijacking trucks using heavily modified Honda Civics. Sent undercover to find out who is behind the thefts, cop Brian O’Conner (Walker) infiltrates the street racing scene, making a particular impression at Toretto’s Market where he flirts with Mia Toretto (Brewster). This angers Vince (Schulze) who is attracted to Mia and is part of Dominic Toretto (Diesel)’s crew (Dominic is the focus of Brian’s investigation). Vince and Brian fight but Dominic breaks it up. Later, Brian turns up at a street race and bets his car’s pink slip that he can beat Dominic, but he loses. The police arrive to break up the event and Brian sees a chance to get into Dominic’s good books: he helps him get away.

They find themselves in territory controlled by Dominic’s old rival, Johnny Tran (Yune) and his cousin Lance (Lee). Johnny blows up Brian’s car, leaving him to find a “ten-second car” for Dominic. He finds a wrecked Toyota Supra and brings it to Dominic’s garage where he starts to restore it; he also begins dating Mia. Evidence points toward Tran being responsible for the hijackings, but a raid on Tran’s property reveals the goods Brian has seen there to have been legally purchased. With Tran no longer a suspect, Brian begins to believe that Dominic and his crew are responsible.

A street racing event, Race Wars, sees Dominic’s friend, Jesse (Lindberg) lose a race with Tran. Jesse flees with the car he should have handed over. Tran demands Dominic find the car and bring it to him, but Dominic is less than accommodating. Instead of looking for Jesse, Dominic and his team (who are the thieves), attempt a heist in order to help get Jesse out of Tran’s debt. But the heist goes wrong, and when Vince is badly injured, Brian breaks his cover to get him help.

Brian later attempts to arrest Dominic but he’s interrupted by the return of Jesse, who is killed by Tran and Lance in a drive-by shooting. Dominic and Brian both go after them, and it leads to a desperate chase through the streets and Brian making the toughest decision of his police career.

Fast and the Furious, The - scene

Back in 2001, the idea that this modest, straight-shooting actioner would spawn six sequels, and that they would be increasingly successful – so much so that the fifth sequel in the series, Fast & Furious 6 (2013) would gross over $750 million worldwide – seemed an unlikely one. The cast weren’t exactly household names, the director had made a modest success of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993) but again wasn’t very well known, and the concept of street racing as a backdrop for criminal activity involving high-speed cars didn’t sound that exciting.

And yet the movie was – and remains – a pleasant surprise, not quite as high-octane as some of its successors, but (if it’s at all possible) more grounded and less reliant on being over the top. The car chases and vehicular action sequences are all well-staged and expertly choreographed, but there’s a lot of attention paid to the characters, and their milieu is entirely credible. With the groundwork providing a solid basis for the action, the movie is free to examine notions of brotherhood, loyalty, respect, and most of all, family, with Dominic in the role of pater familias.

All this offsets some of the sillier aspects of the script – Brian’s superiors behave like they’ve had a collective tyre iron shoved somewhere uncomfortable, and make noises like spoilt children; the final heist is attempted on one of those long American roads that no one else travels along – and helps make the movie more than just a collection of scenes that car fetishists will replay over and over again. The cars are spectacular, and the street racing scenes do have a raw energy to them, but it’s the growing bromance between Dominic and Brian that takes centre stage and proves the most enjoyable element, as the gruff, laconic mechanic-cum-street-racer-cum-hijacker takes the foolhardy policeman under his wing and welcomes him into a world he barely knew existed. It’s a little too neat that Brian keeps Dominic out of jail and places his own career in jeopardy, and Brian’s reasons for doing so are never adequately explained, but within the confines of the movie it still, somehow, works.

As ever, Diesel does brooding with his usual menacing insouciance, while Walker is all tousled curls and winning smile, but not quite the fully formed character the movie needs (though this is due more to the script by Gary Scott Thompson, Erik Bergquist and David Ayer than Walker’s actual performance). On the distaff side, Rodriguez is as ballsy as you’d expect, and Brewster provides a softer contrast, though in most respects their characters serve as eye candy with dialogue (again a problem with the script). Of the supporting cast, only Schulze makes any real impression, and it soon becomes clear that none of the rest are going to return in later instalments.

Similarities to Point Break (1991) are pretty obvious, but The Fast and the Furious is still its own thing, a turbo-charged action movie that Cohen has fun with, changing gears with gusto and setting up several moments where the audience can say “wow!” and not feel embarrassed immediately afterward. There’s a terrific score by BT that fuses industrial, hip-hop and electronica and perfectly suits the movie’s mise en scene, as well as providing a propulsive background to some of the car sequences. And if not all the car stunts seem likely, it’s worth bearing in mind the physics-defying absurdity of some of the movies that followed.

Rating: 7/10 – a solid, unpretentious beginning to the franchise, The Fast and the Furious is one of those guilty pleasures guaranteed to put a smile on your face – every time; fast moving and tense, the movie aims for thrills and spills and doesn’t disappoint.

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Ex Machina (2015)

30 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alex Garland, Alicia Vikander, Artificial intelligence, Domhnall Gleeson, Drama, Oscar Isaac, Review, Robots, Sci-fi, The Turing Test, Thriller

Ex Machina

D: Alex Garland / 108m

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac, Sonoya Mizuno

Caleb (Gleeson) is a computer coder who works for a large corporation owned by Nathan (Isaac). He wins a company raffle that involves spending a week at Nathan’s home, which is located in the midst of a vast countryside estate. On arrival he is given a key pass by an automated door system, and finds Nathan inside working out. Nathan soon reveals that he has been working on an experiment and that Caleb is there to conduct the Turing test on a robot with artificial intelligence called Ava (Vikander). Caleb’s job is to determine whether or not Ava could pass for human.

That night Caleb discovers that the TV in his room is actually a monitor that allows him to view Ava in her room. There is a power failure and Caleb is unable, temporarily, to leave his room; when he does he finds Nathan has been drinking and not in the best frame of mind. The next morning, Caleb is awakened by a Japanese girl called Kyoko (Mizuno); she doesn’t speak English, a benefit for Nathan as he can speak freely about his work. Caleb spends time with Ava and as they begin to get to know each other it becomes clear she is flirting with him. During another power failure Ava warns Caleb not to trust Nathan, and that he has been lying to him. As Ava begins to make herself more attractive to Caleb, he begins to wonder if Nathan has made this part of her programming all along.

Nathan lets Caleb see his laboratory, where he made Ava and mapped out her brain function. He insists Ava’s responses must be genuine, and reminds Caleb that if they are then the results of the Turing test must be positive. Later, Nathan gets completely drunk and when Caleb takes him to his room, he spies some cupboards and what looks like an “observation” room. When Caleb asks what will happen if Ava fails the test, Nathan is blunt: she will be updated and her memory will be erased. Caleb is upset by this prospect, and when Nathan gets drunk a second time, Caleb uses Nathan’s key pass to enter the observation room. There he sees footage that shows Nathan has been building robots like Ava for some time. He also looks in the cupboards and finds the discarded robots hanging up like old suits. When Caleb has his next meeting with Ava he tells her he has a plan for both of them to escape, and asks for her help. She agrees, and the next night they put the plan into operation.

Ex Machina - scene

Working from an original script, writer/director Garland has fashioned an intriguing sci-fi thriller that asks the question, can an artificial being truly possess human qualities, particularly real emotions. In asking that question, Ex Machina quickly becomes a guessing game for the audience, or as an old advert used to put it: is it live or is it Memorex? The answer, despite some wrong-footing and a few twists and turns in the narrative, is no, but with a caveat: there’s no answer to the further question of how Ava comes to fake the emotions she does display.

It’s unfortunate for what is otherwise a skilfully constructed and intelligent science fiction drama that when we first meet Ava she’s as self-assured and poised as she is at the movie’s end. This leaves the audience feeling that she’s been playing Caleb all along, and that the whole notion of the Turing test is irrelevant; if Nathan is as brilliant as he seems to be, he’d know already how far her development has taken her. And why go to the trouble of getting Caleb to visit him (the raffle is rigged) when it’s also clear that as clinical trials go, the parameters are so loose? In the end it boils down to who is the most manipulative – Nathan or Ava.

This conundrum aside, Garland shows a keen appreciation for his subject matter, creating a robot concept in Ava that makes physical as well as an aesthetic sense, and which allows the viewer to be reminded that she is, ultimately, a construct, not real and not able to function in the same way as humans, and even if latex skin is applied where and when necessary. This keeps the audience at a distance from her, while making Caleb all the more curious about the possibilities should she pass the Turing test. It’s a neat balancing act, and one that Garland keeps up throughout, even if he’s forced by his own script to step down from it by the expected denouement.

The look and feel of the movie is very Seventies, the austere, below level laboratory complex a maze of plain walls and functional furniture. Only Nathan’s own personal living quarters look and feel like part of the “real” world. In the end, the coldness of the laboratory area reflects Ava’s personality, and at the same time acts as a catalyst for her and Caleb’s escape – in such drab surroundings and being so confined, is it any wonder she wants to leave?

The motivations of all three main characters remain constant throughout, with Caleb’s naive, white knight demeanour expertly exploited by both Ava and Nathan, while creator and created share an antipathy toward each other that borders on hatred (on Ava’s part) and disdain (on Nathan’s part). All three actors give excellent performances, with Vikander warranting particular merit for the fine line she treads as Ava, making her both remote and alluring at the same time. Gleeson handles a role that could have been completely vanilla in comparison, but his pale features generate a mass of conflicting feelings and thoughts throughout. Isaac is the blunt force object of the trio, his stocky, powerful frame proving as muscular as his mind. As with Ava it’s a shame that Nathan operates at the same level for the duration of the movie, but it’s a compelling performance nevertheless.

Ex Machina - scene2

Garland proves to be a confident, accomplished director, gauging the performances with aplomb, and staging each scene with an economy of style and movement that greatly enhances the somewhat stoic pace and increasing tension. He’s aided greatly by cinematographer Rob Hardy and production designer Mark Digby, creating a futuristic environment for the science fiction aspects along side the wider marvels of the outside world Ava is so keen to see. There is the occasional narrative stumble – at one point, Caleb becomes convinced he’s like Ava and takes a slightly extreme approach to finding out one way or the other; Ava’s need to recharge her batteries would seem to preclude a proper escape – but on the whole, the script avoids the usual pitfalls such material engenders and has enough sense not to push things too far in terms of what Ava can do. That she is recognisably human by the movie’s end (at least to look at) is the movie’s ultimate triumph, reminding us that how we look on the outside is not as important as how we feel on the inside.

Rating: 8/10 – a sci-fi drama fused with metaphysical elements, Ex Machina is the first time in ages where science fiction themes have been treated with respect and intelligence; still, it’s not for everyone due to its pace and lack of perceived action, but on an emotional level it’s definitely punching above its weight.

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All Relative (2014)

29 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Affair, Comedy, Connie Nielsen, Drama, J.C. Khoury, Jonathan Sadowski, Marital problems, Relationships, Review, Romance, Sara Paxton, Weekend fling

All Relative

D: J.C. Khoury / 85m

Cast: Connie Nielsen, Jonathan Sadowski, Sara Paxton, David Aaron Baker, Al Thompson, Erin Wilhelmi, Liz Fye

Harry (Sadowski) is still getting over the break up with his fiancée – after a year has gone by. He’s continually encouraged to meet new women by his best friend, Jared (Thompson), but he’s afraid to take the plunge. One night, while out bowling with Jared, Harry meets Grace (Paxton); they hit it off but when he walks her home she reveals she’s seeing someone. They part as friends. Later that evening, Harry is in a hotel bar having a drink when he meets Maren (Nielsen). She’s in New York for the weekend and interested in “having fun”. They have sex in her room, but agree that it’s all purely physical. Over the course of the weekend, Harry tells Maren about Grace and she encourages him to call her. Harry and Grace meet up but she still treats him like a friend. When Harry is next with Maren, Grace texts him urgently and he goes to her, but not before Maren has made clear her disappointment with Harry’s reaction.

A month later, Harry and Grace are on their way to meet her parents. He’s nervous as Grace’s father, Phil (Baker), owns the architectural firm where he’s applied for a job. But his nervousness turns to outright dismay when Grace’s mother turns out to be Maren. With cracks in Maren and Phil’s marriage apparent from the beginning, and both Harry and Maren worried that one of them will tell Grace about their weekend together, the visit becomes bogged down by arguments and misunderstandings. When Harry is persuaded to stay over he finds himself giving marital advice to both Maren and Phil in which he preaches the values of listening and honesty – two things he’s not doing with Grace. When he finally decides to tell Grace about his time with her mother, Maren pre-empts him and sends Grace a text from his phone that ends their relationship but without mentioning their affair.

Unaware of what Maren has done, Harry is told by her as well that Grace no longer believes in his commitment to their relationship and she has ended it. Harry goes back to New York City, but doesn’t give up on Grace, or their relationship, and does his best to win her back.

All Relative - scene

There’s a point about two thirds into All Relative where Maren and Phil sit down and discuss their marriage and where it’s all gone wrong. It’s a long scene, well acted by Nielsen and Baker, but not as dramatic as it’s meant to be, and it’s a good example of the movie’s inability to make the serious parts of the script really dramatic, and to make the humorous parts really comedic. It’s an awkward mix, made more awkward by the movie’s frankly unbelievable sequence of events once Maren and Grace’s relationship is revealed. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but writer/director Khoury clearly hasn’t worked out how to make Harry’s predicament even remotely credible. And with a conclusion that feels more like a compromise than a realistic outcome, All Relative deprives the viewer of a fully rewarding experience.

Which is a shame as the movie could have been a lot sharper and a lot wittier. The initial scenes between Harry and Jared are handled with a pleasant whimsicality that bodes well for the rest of the movie, and Harry’s bashful approaches to Grace are cute without being overly cringeworthy. It’s all pointing to an enjoyable rom-com with an indie slant, and with the introduction of Maren, an indie rom-com with a slight hint of danger: will Harry have to choose between the two new women in his life?  Alas, any edge is pushed to the kerb as the movie enters farce territory with Maren’s reaction to Harry’s arrival. Nielsen’s performance teeters on the overblown at this point (and is a good indicator as to why this is her first “comedy”), but the script, on its way to being completely schizophrenic in tone, helps her out by reining in her outlandish attitude, but only by making her a relative figure of sympathy. As the movie progresses, Maren veers between being cunning and manipulative, and sensitive and thoughtful, but this inconsistency hurts both the character and the movie.

However, Maren’s uncertain personality is nothing compared to Harry’s unnecessary insistence on being truthful. Only in the movies would someone take another person at their word if they said, let’s be completely honest about everything. Harry’s need to reveal all about his fling with Maren often feels like the character can’t get by without the occasional bit of self-flagellation; here, his need provides the movie with what little real drama it can muster, but it feels forced purely by virtue of its repetition. It also leaves Harry sounding like an emotional misanthrope, as if by being completely honest he’ll be better than everyone around him (even if he doesn’t say this outright). Sadowski looks uncomfortable throughout, as if he’s realised that Harry is a bit of a dumbass and he’s decided to act accordingly (to be fair, the script does paint him that way).

With only Grace and Phil given anything remotely reminiscent of a believable personality or character, All Relative falls back too many contrivances and there-for-the-sake-of-it moments to make it all work. Khoury relies heavily on his cast to make the material more effective but alas they can’t, and while Paxton and Baker come out of things with their reputations intact, sadly, Nielsen and Sadowski give mannered, uneven performances that are often uncomfortable to watch. The movie is also quite bland in its look and feel and there’s no appreciable zing to proceedings, events and occurrences happening with what appears to be a frightening lack of consideration or interest on Khoury’s part (and that’s without taking the viewer into account).

Rating: 4/10 – let down by a script that can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be, All Relative staggers along without making the audience care about its characters or what happens to them; too awkward to work effectively, the movie runs aground with indecent haste and never recovers its forward momentum.

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Memory of the Camps (1945/1984)

27 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alfred Hitchcock, Atrocities, Auschwitz, Belsen-Bergen, Dachau, Documentary, Holocaust, Mass graves, Review, SHAEF, Sidney Bernstein, Trevor Howard, True story, World War II

Memory of the Camps

Original title: German Concentration Camps Factual Survey

No director / 58m

Narrator: Trevor Howard

Compiled from footage shot by combat and newsreel cameramen, Memory of the Camps was meant to be shown to German prisoners of war as a caustic reminder of the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Thanks to problems connected with post-war shortages and international cooperation, the movie’s assembly foundered and with two other, completed, documentaries released in the meantime – along with a change in policy that led to the authorities feeling such a project was now inappropriate – it’s only screening was in rough cut form in September 1945 (and without a working title).

Plans to revisit the movie in 1946 failed to happen and in 1952 the footage was “inherited” by London’s Imperial War Museum. It wasn’t until the early Eighties that anyone looked at the various reels and realised the importance of the material. As a result the five reel rough cut was shown at the 1984 Berlin Film Festival – with the added title Memory of the Camps – and then in 1985 on the PBS Network in the US with Howard’s narration added. (In 2015 an expanded, restored version with additional modern day footage titled Night Will Fall was shown as part of the Holocaust remembrance events surrounding 27 January, the date when Auschwitz was liberated by the Russians.)

The movie is a straightforward, no-holds-barred piece of cinema verité, unflinching in its depiction of the depravity carried out at fourteen locations (ten camps and four sites of atrocity) and beginning with Belsen-Bergen. The film that was shot then and the images that were recorded are heartbreaking, with hundreds of sick and emaciated internees struggling to comprehend the change in their fortunes or too far gone to understand it at all. Inevitably, there are the bodies, thousands of them everywhere, unattended, cadavers made of skin and bone, their faces like stretched parchment. The sheer scope and number of the deceased is difficult to comprehend, each pile of bodies looking like the worst example you’ll see… until the next one.

The Allies – mostly the British – are shown providing much-needed aid and comfort, but the bodies are the greater problem, their decomposition providing a fertile breeding ground for typhus and delaying the dispersal of the internees from the camps. In an ironic (and possibly contemptuous) turn of events, the Allies made the camp guards do most of the disposal work, getting them to handle the corpses and fill the mass graves with them. Shot so dispassionately at the time, this particular footage is harrowing to watch, as decomposing body after decomposing body is carried, or in some cases dragged along, to the pits that will be their final resting places.

Memory of the Camps - scene

The movie stays at Bergen-Belsen for some time, relaying the extent of the horror perpetrated there and the wretched conditions the inmates endured. It shows us the gas ovens, the infrastructure that made it all happen, and the survivors venting their anger on the guards and lackeys who had so recently tormented them. By the time the movie leaves Belsen-Bergen the viewer is so shell-shocked there’s a danger that footage from the rest of the camps – including Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Majdanek – won’t be as distressing, but nothing could be further from the truth. Each camp throws up its own unique horrors, and each visit adds to the mounting, inescapable conclusion that the Nazis’ Final Solution should never be downplayed or allowed to fade from memory.

Overseen by producer Sidney Bernstein, Memory of the Camps was meant to be the movie to be shown to German POW’s after the war. It was a prestige production, with Bernstein calling on the likes of Alfred Hitchcock to assist on the project – Hitchcock gave advice on how the footage should be assembled – as well as future British cabinet minister Richard Crossman to work on the commentary. Despite the setbacks it suffered, and even in its rough cut form, the movie is still incredibly powerful even today, and carries a horrible weight that reinforces the importance of its content. There are dozens of close ups of the faces of the unknown dead, each one a sad reminder of the millions of people who not only lost their lives but who will never be remembered.

Howard’s narration is a masterpiece of studied melancholy, his normally rich tones subdued by the details he has to recite. There are moments where he pauses for a second or two, not so much for deliberate effect (the movie doesn’t need any help in that department) but more out of a recognition that what he’s saying is almost beyond belief. The movie also includes long stretches where Howard remains silent and the images speak for themselves. When these silent passages occur, leaving the viewer alone with the horrors on screen and their own thoughts, it’s almost a relief when Howard resumes his narrative.

Good as Howard’s voice over is however, it’s still the visuals that carry the most weight, acting like random gut punches and leaving the viewer overwhelmed by their barbarity and callousness. With more recent acts of genocide having appeared on our TV screens it’s disturbing that the shameful acts carried out by the Nazis can still have such an effect on people over seventy years on. But in a strange way, that’s a good thing…

Rating: 9/10 – even in its incomplete form, Memory of the Camps is a gruelling, crushing reminder of how callously and deliberately the Nazis exterminated an astonishing eighteen million people; traumatic to watch, but if it wasn’t then its message would be lost completely, and that would be as unacceptable as the camps themselves.

For all the nameless victims who should never be forgotten.

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Mandrake, the Magician (1939) – Chapter 4: The Secret Passage

27 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Al Kikume, Columbia, Doris Weston, Drama, Lothar, Magician, Mandrake, Mill River Inn, Norman Deming, Platinite, Professor Houston, Radium machine, Regan, Review, Rex Downing, Sam Nelson, Serial, The Wasp, Thriller, Warren Hull

Mandrake, the Magician

D: Sam Nelson, Norman Deming / 17m

Cast: Warren Hull, Doris Weston, Al Kikume, Rex Downing, Edward Earle, Forbes Murray, Kenneth MacDonald, Don Beddoe, John Tyrrell, Sam Ash

Narrowly escaping from the collapsing radio station (and without a scuff mark between them), Mandrake and Betty return to her home. With Dr Bennett and Webster present he lets them know that he’s going to focus his investigation on finding Regan, the man who impersonated Professor Leland. He heads over to his friend Raymond’s magic store to see if he has any information but Raymond draws a blank. Coincidentally, Tommy Houston is there for a junior magician’s meeting, and is met by Betty. After Mandrake has left they overhear two of the Wasp’s gang in the store talking about Regan. Tommy hides in the boot of their car and learns Regan’s whereabouts.

He manages to jump out of the car without being seen and makes it back to Mandrake’s apartment where he tells Mandrake where he can find Regan, a place called the Mill River Inn. Mandrake and Lothar head there straight away and ambush Regan just as he’s about to go on stage. While Lothar ties up Regan and takes him back to their car, Mandrake disguises himself as Regan and performs his act. But the Wasp’s henchmen find out about Mandrake’s presence at the inn and arrive to take Regan away. Megan escapes from Lothar and Mandrake is attacked by the Wasp’s men. They corner him at the top of a staircase and force him over the railing and down on to a mill wheel that rotates downward with Mandrake unconscious on it.

vlcsnap-00005

With a bit more purpose about it, Chapter 4: The Secret Passage has the shortest running time so far (and the first three minutes are a recap of Chapter 3), but it at least shows Mandrake being a bit more proactive than in the last episode. It’s still heavily reliant on coincidence and people overhearing other people in order to propel things forward – if the Wasp’s henchmen weren’t such blabbermouths Mandrake wouldn’t find out anything – and contains a couple of obligatory fight scenes (Mandrake takes on three goons in his apartment and only thinks to involve the police when he’s caught two of them). And it gives Downing, as Tommy, a chance to get involved as well, after spending the first three episodes largely in the background (and looking bored).

At the Mill River Inn, Mandrake’s magic act involves a tablecloth that deposits a lot of cutlery on the floor, a basket of flowers that appear from under it as well, and a variation on the Indian rope trick (which is strangely ineffectual). It’s a reminder of the character’s background, or day job, but the tricks shown are more in line with Tommy’s junior magician group than someone who’s meant to be the world’s greatest magician. It’s the first episode where the Wasp doesn’t make an appearance on the big TV screen in his gang’s hideout and instead, literally, phones in his orders, and there’s no car chase in the countryside. And while it’s Mandrake in peril at the end this time, it’s probably a fair bet that he’ll wake up just in time to save himself.

Rating: 5/10 – another solid entry that, briefly, gives Mandrake the upper hand, Chapter 4: The Secret Passage doesn’t feature a secret passage, and doesn’t give any further clues to the Wasp’s real identity (though the word “moustache” might give it away); still ticking over, the serial meanders ever onwards in search of a more exciting series of events to satisfy its audience.

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Ninja Scroll (1993)

26 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Anime, Dakuan, Devils of Kimon, Drama, Emi Shinohara, Feudal Japan, Futaro Yamada, Genma, Jubei Kibagami, Kôichi Yamadera, Kogera, Review, Samurai, Shogun of the Dark, Stolen gold, Takuan Sōhō, Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Ninja Scroll

Original title: Jûbê ninpûchô

aka Jubei Ninpucho: The Wind Ninja Chronicles; Jubei the Wind Ninja

D: Yoshiaki Kawajiri / 94m

Cast: Kôichi Yamadera, Emi Shinohara, Takeshi Aono, Daisuke Gôri, Toshihiko Seki, Masako Katsuki, Shûichirô Moriyama, Ryûzaburô Ôtomo

In feudal Japan the village of Shimoda is wiped out by a mysterious plague. A team of Mochizuki ninja are sent by their chamberlain, Sakaki Hyobu (Moriyama) to investigate but are ambushed by a giant whose body is made of stone. He kills them all except for Kagero (Shinohara), the only female in the team. The giant, Tessai (Ôtomo), intends to use her for sex but is interrupted by a lone samurai called Jubei (Yamadera). Jubei Blinds Tessai in one eye and he and Kagero escape. She continues with her mission to discover the reason for the plague at Shimoda village, while Jubei finds himself pursued by Tessai; they fight a second time and Jubei is able to defeat him.

Afterwards, Jubei meets Dakuan (Aono), an old monk working for the government who  tells him that Tessai was one of the Devils of Kimon, seven supernatural entities under the control of Genma Himura (Gôri). Jubei is shocked as he had killed Genma five years before. Jubei was part of a ninja team led by Genma, and he was betrayed by him when Genma attempted to steal a horde of gold from his Lord; Jubei is shocked because Genma was beheaded. Dakuan informs him Genma now has the ability to reanimate himself, no matter how he’s killed. He also tells Jubei that with the death of Tessai the remaining Devils will seek him out to exact their revenge. Dakuan tries to hire Jubei to help him but he refuses; unwilling to accept his answer, Dakuan then poisons Jubei with the promise that if he assists the monk he’ll be given the antidote and a hundred pieces of gold.

True to the old monk’s warning, the remaining devils attack Jubei in turn. He defeats them, and as he does he learns that the gold that Genma tried to steal was on a ship that was sunk in a storm on the coast near to Shimoda village. He and the devils are in the process of recovering the gold. Jubei is rejoined by Kogera and also learns that she has a special gift: as her master’s poison expert her body is so full of toxins that she is immune to them; if anyone gets too close to her they run the risk of being poisoned themselves. Together, and only occasionally aided by Dakuan (who is using them as a distraction), they track the devils to Kishima Harbour where the gold is being loaded on to another ship. Once on board, they plan to sink the ship, but Genma and a remaining devil have other ideas.

Ninja Scroll - scene

Viewed over twenty years on from its debut, Ninja Scroll is still an exciting, vividly hand drawn (no CGI here) animated movie that stands head and shoulders above the majority of similar movies that have followed in its wake. It’s violent, unafraid to throw in some sexual activity (one scene is a little uncomfortable to watch), has a thin streak of malicious humour, and has some of the best choreographed fight scenes witnessed in an anime movie.

The storyline is almost classical in its simplicity, although the feudal politics might have some viewers reaching for the pause button if watching at home (good luck if you’re in the cinema). With its background of warring shogunates and treacherous clan retainers and double crosses, the history surrounding the gold and its whereabouts can be a mite confusing. But Kawajiri keeps it all brief enough to be ignored if the viewer wants to go that way, and concentrates on the clashes between Jubei and the devils, and his awkward romance with Kogera. Each of the showdowns features a devil with a particular way of fighting, from Tessai and his stone-like body to Yurimaru (Seki) and his command of electricity, and each makes for a continually compelling (and dangerous) series of foes for Jubei to defeat. It’s to Kawajiri’s credit that these encounters go such a long way to making the movie as successful as it is. The romance between Jubei and Kagero is equally well constructed and played out, its unrequited nature having a greater emotional depth than is usual, and the two characters’ scenes together add an extra punch to proceedings and benefit immeasurably from the voice talents of Yamadera and Shinohara.

The lone samurai figure is a staple of Japanese feudal fiction, and while Ninja Scroll is an homage to Futaro Yamada’s Ninpōchō novels, there’s much here that resonates beyond the source material. The themes of betrayal, honour, sacrifice, revenge and greed lie heavily on the narrative, but are complemented and enhanced further by aspects of love, duty, loyalty and compassion. All these add up to a storyline that is rich in potential, and which is used by Kawajiri to extremely impressive effect. He’s aided by an equally impressive voice cast, with Yamadera and Shinohara being superbly abetted by Aono (in a role that’s a homage to the famous Japanese monk Takuan Sōhō), Seki as the most debonair of the devils, and Gôri as the malignant sounding Genma.

The animation in Ninja Scroll is often stunning to look at, even if some of the imagery doesn’t always maintain the high standard set by surrounding scenes or shots – the hornets controlled by the devil Mushizo spring to mind – but this is a minor gripe in a movie that offers arresting image after arresting image (it’s a rare movie that can boast a death caused by head-butting). Again, Kawajiri assembles and orchestrates the material with undisguised skill, and is ably supported by Hitoshi Yamaguchi’s redolent cinematography, and the editing expertise of Yukiko Ito and Harutoshi Ogata.

Rating: 8/10 – an iconic anime that has stood the test of time (and what seems like a million and one imitators), Ninja Scroll has all the ingredients of a rousing samurai drama – and then some; bold, inventive, and endlessly enjoyable, it’s one animated movie that you just know will never be bettered by a live-action version.

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Trailer – She’s Funny That Way (2015)

25 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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On the surface, She’s Funny That Way looks like a bright and breezy romantic comedy with a great cast and a classic screwball scenario. But what makes this movie one to watch out for is the (hopefully) welcome return of Peter Bogdanovich, making his first movie since 2007’s Tom Petty documentary Runnin’ Down a Dream. If the material is even halfway reminiscent of Bogdanovich’s superb What’s Up, Doc? (1972) then this should be a sheer delight – and hilarious to boot.

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Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

24 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman, Comeback, Drama, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Michael Keaton, Movie star, Naomi Watts, Play, Raymond Carver, Review, Riggan Thompson, Superhero, Theatre production, Zach Galifianakis

Birdman

aka: Birdman

D: Alejandro González Iñárritu / 119m

Cast: Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Lindsay Duncan, Bill Camp

Desperately needing a comeback to boost his flagging, almost moribund career, actor Riggan Thompson (Keaton) is attempting to trade movie stardom (as the action superhero Birdman) for theatrical respect by adapting a story by Raymond Carver for the stage. Thompson is director, writer and star of the production, and as the first of three previews approaches he finds himself without a second male lead. One of his cast, Lesley (Watts), says she can get legendary Broadway actor Mike Shiner (Norton) to take over the role. When he does, Thompson finds himself challenged constantly by Shiner’s view of the piece. Stuck with him, Thompson also has to deal with his best friend and lawyer Jake (Galifianakis), his girlfriend Laura (Riseborough) (who’s also in the cast), and his daughter, Sam (Stone), a recovering drug addict who’s working as his assistant.

Through all this, Thompson is tormented by the voice of his movie alter-ego, Birdman. The voice is disparaging and keeps urging him to give up the stage production and make another Birdman movie. During the first preview, Shiner takes method acting to the extreme and drinks alcohol on stage so he can be really drunk when his character should be; Thompson hides it but Shiner stops the performance and castigates Thompson in front of the audience. Afterwards, they go for a drink together and Shiner continues to undermine Thompson’s confidence. Returning to the theatre, he has a row with Sam that further upsets him. The next night’s preview goes well, though this time Shiner criticises Thompson’s decision to use a prop gun in the final scene, and says it’s not convincing enough; afterwards, Shiner and Sam run into each other on the theatre rooftop.

Thompson’s mental state deteriorates over the next twenty-four hours, as Birdman’s comments become more aggressive. Thompson runs into famed (and feared) theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Duncan) who makes it clear she hates “Hollywood celebrities” who think they can act, and promises to “kill” his production. He gets locked out of the theatre and has to walk through Times Square in his underwear. And on the day of the final preview he has an hallucination where he flies through the streets of New York City. That night he takes a real gun on stage with him for the final scene.

Birdman - scene

Lauded for its complex, single take tracking shots (all cleverly done but tiresome to watch after a while), Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a bold, enthralling look at one man’s last, desperate chance to regain some semblance of pride and meaning in his life. It mixes (literal) flights of fantasy with a gloomy kitchen sink drama, injects pitch black humour when you least expect it, and gives Michael Keaton his best role since – unbelievably – Jackie Brown (1997). It also has a razor sharp script with some great dialogue – “When I dreamed of Broadway, I never pictured the elk antlers.” – inspired direction from Iñárritu, a claustrophobic backstage setting that increases the notion of characters trapped by their fears and insecurities, and superb performances from all concerned.

And yet… it’s not quite the all-round triumph that it appears to be. Despite the script’s inventiveness and shrewd construction, there’s something askew about Thompson’s predicament and the way in which he deals with it (or doesn’t, depending on your view of things). He can’t connect with his daughter, and while this may not be a surprise, it’s yet another example of the child being wiser than the adult, something we’ve seen so many times before even Iñárritu can’t add anything new to it. His relationship with Shiner is based on desperate need but grows into admiration, even when Shiner gives a poorly considered interview to the press. His girlfriend, Laura, tells him she’s pregnant, but he reacts as if she’s just told him something banal and uninteresting. The only real emotion he can display is anger, demonstrated in the tirade he subjects Tabitha Dickinson to, and the trashing of his dressing room. Thompson is otherwise at a remove from everyone and everything around him, failing to engage except on a superficial level, and clinging on to a shred of self-belief. He’s a man who wants to go back to old glories but knows that he’ll lose even more of himself; the play is his last chance for personal redemption.

By having him indulge his superhero fantasies though, Iñárritu’s script offers Thompson a way out that seems designed to give the movie an element of magical realism, but also takes it in a somewhat predictable direction. As a result, the final shot is a disappointment, supporting as it does Thompson’s increasing psychosis and jettisoning any attempt at making the movie a more considered and thought-provoking look at an actor in the midst of having a breakdown. Keaton is nothing short of astonishing in the role, his constantly beleaguered expression and downtrodden body language giving full articulation to Thompson’s state of mind, and every numb or painful feeling and emotion registering on his face so, so clearly. (It’s tempting to define Keaton’s performance as a comeback, but it’s so much more than that; and roles like this don’t come along very often.)

The rest of the cast, with the exception of Norton, have their moments but aren’t really called upon by the script to match, or even come near, Keaton’s acting masterclass. Stone plays Sam as a young woman trying her best to pull her own life together and without taking on her father’s problems in the process, and succeeds in making her both tough and still assailable. Watts and Riseborough share an intimate moment that comes out of left field, but are otherwise kept in the background, along with Ryan who appears twice to remind Thompson of what he’s lost. And Galifianakis, looking thinner than usual, plays Jake like a needy best friend, his conscience having been removed at some point to allow him to deal with Thompson on a necessarily abusive level. All give terrific portrayals, but with Iñárritu’s script so focused on Thompson’s troubles, it’s almost as if they have walk-on roles. Only Norton makes an equivalent impression to Keaton’s, Shiner proving to be the kind of narcissistic monster  whose arrogance overrides all and sundry. His scenes with Keaton are nothing short of breathtaking.

Iñárritu directs with undeniable flair, and makes each scene detailed and immersive, layering the narrative with precise emotional undercurrents and orchestrating the camera movement with élan. If the subtleties of the script occasionally get lost amidst the barely disguised symbolism, and some of the dialogue is a little too florid at times – or pretentious: “Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige.” – then it’s in keeping with the theatrical setting. As mentioned above the use of long tracking shots stitched together to make the movie seem like one continuous take, while inventive, becomes distracting and then tedious very quickly, and is sabotaged by the events of the movie taking place over several days, making the aimed-for continuity an impossible achievement. Still, Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is first class and there’s a percussive jazz score by Antonio Sanchez that is likely to divide audiences into thinking it’s either hugely complementary to both the action and Thompson’s mental state, or hugely intrusive and overbearing (this reviewer holds to the former).

Rating: 8/10 – excellent work from Keaton and Norton, and a bravura production combine to make Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) one of the most fascinating movies of recent years; sadly, the decision to include some unnecessary fantasy sequences, and a handful of under-developed supporting characters, holds the movie back and alters the movie’s raison d’être to no good advantage.

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The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

24 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Charlotte Le Bon, Drama, France, French cuisine, Helen Mirren, Indian cuisine, Lasse Hallström, Le Saule Pleureur, Maison Mumbai, Manish Dayal, Om Puri, Review, Romance

Hundred-Foot Journey, The

D: Lasse Hallström / 122m

Cast: Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, Charlotte Le Bon, Amit Shah, Farzana Dua Elahe, Dillon Mitra, Aria Pandya, Michel Blanc, Clément Sibony

Fleeing Mumbai after the loss of their restaurant in a fire that also claimed the life of their matriarch, the Kadam family – Papa (Puri), sons Mansur (Shah), Hassan (Dayal), and Mukhtar (Mitra), and daughters Mahira (Elahe) and Aisha (Panda) – first seek asylum in England but find their new home unsuitable for running a restaurant. They head for Europe, and while travelling through Europe, find themselves stranded in a small French village, Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, when their van breaks down. Helped by Marguerite (Le Bon), one of the locals, they spend the night there. In the morning, Papa notices an abandoned building that’s up for sale. A quick look at the premises reveals the perfect site for a restaurant.

However, the site is directly opposite Le Saule Pieureur (the Weeping Willow), a Michelin star restaurant owned and run by Madame Mallory (Mirren). She is less than happy to see the Kadam’s open their own restaurant, and does all she can to sabotage their efforts to make Maison Mumbai a success, including buying all their menu’s main ingredients at the local market. This leads to a culinary war of attrition between Madame Mallory and Papa as they try to outdo each other. But Maison Mumbai flourishes, thanks to Hassan who has the makings of a great chef. He begins a romance with Marguerite and starts to learn how to cook French cuisine, albeit with infusions of spices and different flavours.

One night, Maison Mumbai has graffiti sprayed on its outer wall and its interior is fire-bombed. Hassan chases off the culprits but suffers burns to his hands and legs. Madame Mallory fires her chef (who was responsible for the attack) and voluntarily cleans the graffiti; this leads to a rapprochement between her and Papa. Hassan sees a chance to put his culinary skills to the test and “auditions” for Madame Mallory by getting her to make an omelette under his instruction (Hassan has learnt from Marguerite that this is the way Madame Mallory tests any potential new chefs). She recognises his skill and he accepts a job in her kitchen. Papa is dismayed by this turn of events, but not as much as Marguerite, who cools toward Hassan and their relationship becomes more adversarial than romantic. Hassan’s food is a success and with it comes the possibility that, thirty years after gaining her Michelin star, Madame Mallory will attain her second.

THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY

Adapted by Steven Knight – writer/director of Locke (2013) and Hummingbird (2013) – from the novel by Richard C. Morais, The Hundred-Foot Journey is a feelgood movie that ticks all the boxes on its way to a predictably life-affirming finale, but which remains entirely likeable thanks to the breeziness of its set up, a handful of pleasing performances, and the sure hand of Hallström at the tiller. It’s not a movie to change the way anyone sees the world (though it might inspire some budding chefs out there), but rather is the cinematic equivalent of a comforting three-course meal.

Movies about the importance of food and how it can bring people together occupy a distinct dramatic sub-genre, and The Hundred-Foot Journey (the distance between both restaurants) is just as aware of its responsibilities to the audience as any other culinary-based drama. So we have lots of lovingly filmed shots of food being prepared, tasted and eaten, along with satisfied grins and knowing smiles (though thankfully no one actually rubs or pats their belly). This movie’s own particular hook, the fusion of French and Indian cuisines, isn’t focused on as much as you might expect. It’s a bit of a one-way street, with French dishes being given the upgrade treatment, as if they’re on the way to becoming moribund. At one point, Hassan adds spices to a recipe that’s two hundred years old and when Madame Mallory challenges him, his reply is to imply that perhaps it’s about time the recipe should be changed. And yet there’s no attempt to take Indian cuisine and introduce any French influences. (It’s a brave movie that is willing to say that classic French cuisine needs shaking up.)

The various relationships are handled with an appropriately genial approach, the initial animosity between Madame Mallory and Papa leading to mutual respect which in turn leads to their dancing together (and we all know what that leads to). Mirren is haughty and imperious, and pulls off a passable French accent, though it’s like watching her as the Queen but in charge of a restaurant instead of a country. Puri is as curmudgeonly as ever, but with a big heart beneath all the business bluster; it’s a softer version of his role in East Is East (1999), and like Mirren he goes along with the tried-and-trusted nature of the material. As the ever-experimenting Hassan, Dayal imbues the character with an earnest, willing-to-please demeanour that doesn’t quite gel with his desire to succeed. It’s an agreeable performance that again meets the needs of the movie, but could have been beefed up (excuse the pun). Le Bon at least gets the chance to act against expectations, Marguerite’s antipathy towards Hassan’s success being the only example of a character not behaving as anticipated.

Hallström assembles all the various ingredients with his usual lightness of touch and keeps things from becoming too sentimental (though there’s a liberal amount of sugar sprinkled throughout). The drama is affected as a result – Hassan’s burnt hands and his quick, virtually pain-free recovery become almost incidental to what follows, the clash of cultures barely resonates – and remains superficial from start to finish, the various setbacks and problems the characters have to deal with proving too easy to overcome on every occasion. The movie is beautifully lensed by Linus Sandgren (though some of the matte effects are a little too obvious for comfort), and the French locations provide the perfect backdrop for the action (viewers with a good memory will recognise Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val from 2001’s Charlotte Gray). And A.R. Rahman’s score adds energy to the proceedings, but isn’t enough to offset the dependable nature of the story.

Rating: 5/10 – there are other, better culinary dramas out there – Babette’s Feast (1987), The Secret of the Grain (2007) – but The Hundred-Foot Journey doesn’t aim as high as those movies and treads a more predictable, well-worn path instead; everyone does just enough to make it entertaining but by the end you’ll be wanting more than it’s menu is able to provide.

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Mini-Review: The Calling (2014)

23 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Canada, Crime, Donald Sutherland, Drama, Ellen Burstyn, Fort Dundas, Gil Bellows, Jason Stone, Literary adaptation, Murder, Religion, Review, Serial killer, Susan Sarandon, Thriller, Topher Grace

Calling, The

D: Jason Stone / 108m

Cast: Susan Sarandon, Gil Bellows, Ellen Burstyn, Topher Grace, Christopher Heyerdahl, Donald Sutherland, Kristin Booth, Ella Ballentine, Jane Moffat

Asked to look in on an old woman as a courtesy, Fort Dundas police inspector Hazel Micallef (Sarandon) finds the woman has been murdered, her throat cut and her mouth manipulated to make it look like she’s screaming. With help from fellow detective Ray Green (Bellows) she begins to investigate the murder but when another victim is discovered in similar circumstances, she begins to suspect a serial killer is responsible. She asks for help on the case and is sent Ben Wingate (Grace), an officer from Toronto; he’s a bit wet behind the ears but eager to help.

As previous victims are identified, Hazel discovers a religious aspect to the murders. She consults with Father Price (Sutherland) who tells her of a biblical portent that relates to the belief in the resurrection of the dead through the sacrifice of twelve willing individuals. Further murders occur but clues lead to a man named Simon (Heyerdahl); they also show the trail he appears to be taking across the country and the way in which he chooses his victims. Armed with this knowledge, Hazel takes a risk and sends Wingate to the home of Simon’s next intended victim…

Calling, The - scene

Pitched somewhere between Fargo (1996) and Se7en (1995), The Calling is a serial killer movie that, like many others before it, takes a biblical angle and makes it sound preposterous. It’s always difficult to provide a religious-minded serial killer with an entirely plausible reason for their actions, but this movie, with its otherwise cleverly constructed script by Scott Abramovitch (based on Inger Ash Wolfe’s novel), has a hard time making Simon’s motive credible, and fares even less well when it comes to the sacrificial elements – why does his victims have to be killed so horribly? It’s all too confusing and muddled to work properly and hampers a movie that goes about its business with a moody, unrelenting seriousness.

There’s a sterling performance from Sarandon as a detective with a drink problem, but even she can’t avoid comparisons with Frances McDormand in Fargo – though her level of world-weariness is more pronounced. Bellows and Grace offer solid support, as does Burstyn as Hazel’s over-protective mother, but it’s Heyerdahl who makes the most impact, his portrayal of Simon both unnerving and chilling in its quiet intensity. One scene with the daughter of a waitress is so unsettling it’ll stay with you long after the rest of the movie has faded from your memory. Stone directs with the eagerness of someone making their first feature (which he is), but reigns in the desire to show off and throw in everything including the kitchen sink. He has a pleasingly straightforward approach to framing and composition, and isn’t afraid to embrace some of the more awkward plot developments (basically, anything involving Sutherland). It’s a confident outing for Stone, but sadly, it only gets him so far.

Rating: 5/10 – an interesting premise that’s let down by its own explanation, The Calling is left feeling overcooked and underwhelming; fans of this sort of thing will see the final scene coming from a mile off, while anyone else will have lost any initial enthusiasm once Hazel consults with Father Price.

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Oh! the Horror! – The Remaining (2014) and Lemon Tree Passage (2013)

22 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alexa Vega, Apocalypse, Australia, Casey La Scala, David Campbell, Horror, Jessica Tovey, Lemon Tree Passage Road, New South Wales, Review, The Rapture, Urban legend, Wedding day

The horror movie double bill is an old staple of movie-going, from the days when Universal used to offer monster “mash-ups” of their favourite creatures (and which were often advertised as providing “twice the fright”), through to the radiation-derived monsters of the Fifties, to Hammer’s doubling up on their own brand of Gothic horror. These days, the horror movie double bill is largely forgotten in cinemas, and the good old days of the horror all-nighter is virtually a thing of the past (except at Halloween… sometimes). But thanks to the joys of DVD and Blu-ray, those days can be recreated at home (though as we’ll see from the movies below, not always so successfully). With that in mind, and with the faint whiff of nostalgia hanging in the air, welcome to the first in an ongoing series of reviews that will feature horror movie double bills.

Remaining, The

D: Casey La Scala / 88m

Cast: Johnny Pacar, Shaun Sipos, Bryan Dechart, Alexa Vega, Italia Ricci, Liz E. Morgan, John Pyper-Ferguson

It’s the wedding day of Skylar (Vega) and Dan (Dechart). The celebrations are in full swing when suddenly the sound of a loud trumpet is heard and several of the guests drop dead on the spot, including Skylar’s parents. Pandemonium ensues, along with what seems like an earthquake, as the ground ruptures and buildings collapse. The newly married couple, along with their friends Tommy (Pacar) and Jack (Sipos) go in search of Jack’s girlfriend Allison (Ricci), who left the reception earlier on. Skylar is convinced that what is happening is the Rapture, when God calls all pure souls to Heaven while those that remain begin to endure seven years of Tribulation.

A priest at a nearby church, Pastor Shay (Pyper-Ferguson), confirms Skylar’s belief but her friends question why he hasn’t been claimed. This leads to all of them, in their own ways, questioning their belief in God and their individual faith in Him. As they continue to search for Allison, Skylar is badly injured; when they find Allison, they all head for the nearest hospital to seek medical help for Skylar. Once there, it becomes clear that the Rapture is now claiming the lives of those who refute God’s existence, putting everyone at risk. And with that knowledge, each of the friends has a difficult choice to make in regard to their future.

Remaining, The - scene

The Rapture is proving to be a resilient modus operandi for horror movie makers at the moment, with The Remaining the latest in an unconnected series of movies that take this particular Biblical warning (from Revelations if you want to check it out) and seek to show the end of the world as spectacularly as they can. This movie is more apocalyptic than most and features winged demons who carry off certain members of the cast as required, along with collapsing buildings and the kind of devastation that causes insurance companies to go bust overnight. It’s turgid stuff, crammed with moments of po-faced seriousness, its characters stopping every five minutes to question their religious values and Christian beliefs. While there’s no doubt some people might stop to do this, the idea that it would be a group of young twenty-somethings is never quite convincing enough.

Forged out of a desire to see what it would be like to make a global version of Paranormal Activity, La Scala has created a movie that’s similar in scope and approach to Chronicle (2012), but with a cast that can’t match that movie’s group of actors for experience and intensity. The use of found footage interspersed with traditional camerawork is often annoying (though necessary), and the inclusion of overwrought scenes of peril – while often impressive given the movie’s budget – grab the attention but seem designed to add some much-needed eye candy to a movie that’s been filmed throughout in as bland and unexciting a style as possible. The movie ends with a scene that contradicts its own raison d’être, but does at least prohibit the idea of a sequel (so that’s one benefit of the world ending).

Rating: 5/10 – even for this particular horror sub-genre, The Remaining is a movie that often makes you wish you’d been taken by the Rapture right at the start; still, it does try its best, and while some viewers will quickly express their dissatisfaction at the friends’ behaviour, there’s enough here to warrant a look, and it’s nowhere near as bad as Left Behind (2014).

Lemon Tree Passage

D: David Campbell / 84m

Cast: Jessica Tovey, Nicholas Gunn, Pippa Black, Tim Phillipps, Andrew Ryan, Tim Pocock, Piera Forde

American backpackers Amelia (Black), Maya (Tovey), and her brother Toby (Pocock) meet Aussie mates Oscar (Ryan) and Geordie (Phillipps), and after spending an evening with them, are invited back to Oscar’s house, where he lives with his brother, Sam (Gunn). Geordie has told them the story of Lemon Tree Passage, a stretch of road nearby where the tale goes, if you drive fast enough you’ll see the ghost of a man who was killed there several years before. Deciding that it’ll be a good idea to see if the story is true, all five travel out to Lemon Tree Passage and put the legend to the test. On their first try they see a bright light that appears out of nowhere and follows them along the road before disappearing. When they try it again, but with Geordie left at the roadside at the spot where they first saw the light, things take a strange turn.

Geordie disappears, and the rest of the group begin to experience strange phenomena happening around their car. Maya begins to have strange visions of a young girl called Brianna (Forde) who may or may have not been killed in the woods that surround them. Supernatural events continue to occur, and Sam is drawn to the area as well, leading to a revelation and a confrontation that proves to have nothing to do with the ghost of Lemon Tree Passage, but which is far more dangerous.

Lemon Tree Passage - scene

Taking as its basic premise the real-life urban legend of the ghost of Lemon Tree Passage Road in New South Wales, Campbell’s debut feature soon abandons its spooky set up in favour of a more convoluted and awkwardly presented storyline involving a murdered teenager, possession, revenge from beyond the grave, a lot of aimless wandering in the woods, tepid scares, and ridiculous plot developments. The reason for all this is sound enough, but in the hands of Campbell and co-screenwriter Erica Brien, is extrapolated into a complicated mess that cries out for some well-judged simplicity. Lemon Tree Passage is yet another movie where strange things happen either out of context, or because the script can’t come up with anything else to help move the plot forward more effectively.

With a script that undermines itself at every turn, it’s unsurprising that the cast are unable to elevate the material, or do anything with it that will improve matters. There are a handful of deaths – though why they should be happening is never explained – and a couple of shocks that are signposted too eagerly to have any real impact; it all leaves the viewer suspecting that Campbell and Brien took the idea of the ghost, didn’t know how to take it further, and instead, came up with the revenge tale that’s seen here. As it is, Campbell shows some promise as a director, creating a creepy menace in parts, and of the cast, Tovey fares better than the rest (but not by much). There’s a good deal of padding in the movie’s final third as the story unravels, and Sam King’s cinematography is rarely atmospheric enough to make up for the script’s deficiencies.

Rating: 4/10 – a good idea that’s left by the wayside in favour of a confused, improbable plot, Lemon Tree Passage is a disappointing entry in the urban legend horror sub-genre; absurd and unnecessarily confusing, it struggles to make sense throughout and has too many WTF? moments for comfort.

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Wild (2014)

22 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

1100 miles, Cheryl Strayed, Drama, Hiking, Jean-Marc Vallée, Laura Dern, Literary adaptation, Pacific Crest Trail, Reese Witherspoon, Review, True story

Wild

D: Jean-Marc Vallée / 115m

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Keene McRae, Michiel Huisman, W. Earl Brown, Gaby Hoffmann, Kevin Rankin, Brian Van Holt, Cliff De Young, Mo McRae

While resting at the top of a hill and seeing to an injured toe, Cheryl Strayed (Witherspoon) sees one of her boots tumble to the bottom of the hill. Angry at this unfortunate event, she picks up her other boot and throws it after the first one. From there we flashback to her arrival at a motel and her preparations for the beginning of the 1,100 mile walk that is the Pacific Crest Trail. Setting out alone as a way of healing herself following the end of her marriage to Paul (Sadoski), the death of her mother, Bobbi (Dern), and years of promiscuous, drug-related behaviour, Cheryl’s pack is too heavy, and she needs a ride to the start of the trail, which she finds at a gas station. Once on the trail she begins to relive memories of her childhood, her mother, and her adult life, all jumbled together in a way that confuses her or makes her sad.

Along the trail she meets a variety of people, all of whom help her in some way, either by passing on good advice – fellow hiker Greg (Rankin) – by helping to lighten her pack – Ed (De Young) – or by giving her food – Frank (Brown) and Annette (Hoag). As she tries to make sense of her memories, and the events that have led her to walking the trail, Cheryl becomes more and more proficient at hiking, and more and more aware of how much her life has seemed to lack control. She remembers precious times with her mother, a free spirit who remained positive despite an abusive marriage. And she begins to remember the illness that caused her mother’s death and the effects it had on her, and her brother, Leif (Keene McRae).

The hike throws up some obstacles and encounters that Cheryl has to overcome. A detour due to heavy snowfall proves to be just as awkward as the actual trail, while an encounter with two hunters leads to an uncomfortably tense confrontation with one of them, and the loss of her boots leads to her walking fifty miles in sandals wrapped in duct tape. The hike also throws up emotional problems surrounding the period after her mother’s death, and her marriage, as well as the events that led to her deciding to walk the trail in the hope of putting her life back together.

Wild - scene

At first glance, Wild is a collection of disjointed, disconnected, randomly assembled scenes that fail to resonate with each other, and which appear to have been put together by someone whose idea of editing is to chuck each scene up in the air, see where they all land, and then connect them by virtue of which one is closest to another. But to presume that is to miss out on the virtues of one the best edited movies of 2014 – or any year – and which creates its own rhythm, a steady rise and fall that takes each stretch of the trail and cleverly complements Cheryl’s progress on the journey with the progress she makes in dealing with the issues that have brought her there.

It’s a breathtaking accomplishment, with Cheryl the touchstone connecting it all, as her initially frayed and jumbled thoughts gradually straighten themselves out and she – along with the audience – begins to understand the motives and emotions that saw her life crumble and shatter and become self-destructive. As she comes to terms with all the emotional baggage she’s carrying with her (and on top of her “monster” of a rucksack), Cheryl gains an inner strength she’s never had before, and an inner resolve that will ensure she reaches the end of the trail, and a new beginning. In the hands of screenwriter Nick Hornby, this is powerful stuff, with few punches pulled and fewer trite explanations given for Cheryl’s behaviour after Bobbi’s death.

Witherspoon is on fine form here, portraying Cheryl in a way that’s moving and sensitive throughout, imbuing pre- and post-hike Cheryl with two distinct personalities, the first of which is best summed up as unwittingly hostile in her scenes with Bobbi, and self-deprecating in her scenes with Jonathan (Huisman), who she has a one night stand with at the end of the trail (it’s almost like she’s giving herself a reward). As well as an impressive emotional performance, Witherspoon also puts in a tremendous physical performance, making it seem as if she really has walked 1,100 miles in search of the answers to Cheryl’s problems. Witherspoon is a seriously underrated actress, despite her Oscar win for Walk the Line (2004), but here she shows just how effective she can be, juggling grief, sorrow, pain, frustration, regret and anger with a studied intelligence that is quite remarkable.

Making Wild after the success of Dallas Buyers Club (2013), Vallée takes the linear narrative rulebook and throws it out of the window, creating a rich, evocative tapestry of scenes that dovetail and flex around each other with a precision and accuracy that few other directors would attempt, let alone succeed in pulling off. It’s virtuoso stuff, ambitious and bold in its construction, and it makes watching the movie like putting together a jigsaw puzzle: at times frustrating because some of the pieces won’t fit, but when they finally do, everything is that much clearer and precise. Vallée also draws a superb performance from Dern, another actress who has become underrated in recent years, but who plays Bobbi with passion, subtlety and a sound understanding of her failings as a wife and a mother.

The Pacific Coast Trail itself is beautifully filmed by Yves Bélanger, the California, Oregon and Washington locations providing a vivid background to Cheryl Strayed’s trek, and as mentioned before, the whole thing is edited with incredible exactitude by John Mac McMurphy and Martin Pensa. Vallée orchestrates everything with skill, and a visual dexterity that makes Cheryl’s journey so mesmerising to watch.

Rating: 8/10 – Witherspoon and Dern are superb, and the construction of the movie, and its visual splendour, make Wild a fantastic achievement; heartfelt, and demanding of the viewer’s close attention, it’s a movie that weaves its hypnotic spell in scene after scene and proves completely rewarding.

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Super Duper Alice Cooper (2014)

21 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alcohol addiction, Biography, Bob Ezrin, Dennis Dunaway, Documentary, Drug addiction, Glen Buxton, I'm Eighteen, Michael Bruce, Neal Smith, Reginald Harkema, Review, Rock music, Sam Dunn, School's Out, Scot McFadyen, The Earwigs, The Spiders

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D: Reginald Harkema, Scot McFadyen, Sam Dunn / 98m

Alice Cooper, Shep Gordon, Dennis Dunaway, Bob Ezrin, Sheryl Cooper, Neal Smith, Bernie Taupin, Elton John, Dee Snider, Iggy Pop, John Lydon, Ella Furnier

Charting the life of Alice Cooper from his pre-teen days growing up in Detroit to his comeback gig on October 31st 1986 – after five years of dealing with drug and alcohol addictions – Super Duper Alice Cooper is a respectful, non-critical look back over the early successes and later disasters of a career spanning nearly fifty years (although the movie doesn’t venture beyond Alice’s comeback gig).

As a child, Cooper – then known by his real name of Vincent Furnier – suffered from asthma and often needed an inhaler. On his doctor’s advice, he and his family moved to Phoenix. (The change of scenery, though, didn’t prevent a bad case of appendicitis that nearly killed him.) In high school, Cooper met Dennis Dunaway; they had a shared interest in art, and soon became best friends. When their high school put on a talent show they decided to form a band called the Earwigs and play songs by the Beatles. They enlisted Glen Buxton to play guitar and they were a surprise success (even though Cooper and Dunaway didn’t really know what they were doing).

Landing a regular gig at a local “rock ‘n’ roll teenage dance club”, the band changed its name to the Spiders, and began expanding their repertoire to include songs by the Yardbirds and others (at one point they even opened for the Yardbirds). Moving to Los Angeles in 1967 in an attempt to make it big, the band fell in with the GTO’s, über-groupies who lived in the basement of a log cabin owned by Frank Zappa. Through the GTO’s, they created a new look for themselves and changed the band’s name to Alice Cooper. They enlisted Shep Gordon as their manager and Zappa produced what was to be their first album.

Unable to make much headway in L.A., the band landed a festival gig in Detroit that saw them finally find their audience. At another festival in Toronto a now infamous incident involving a chicken saw their stock rise that much higher. But without any hit records, they were unable to capitalise on their new-found fame, until Gordon met with, and persuaded, Bob Ezrin to work with them. Soon, they had a big hit with a song called I’m Eighteen, and the band was on its way to super-stardom. A string of hit albums and ever more outrageous stage shows followed, but with it came a dissatisfaction amongst the rest of the band that led to Cooper going solo in 1975.

At the same time, Cooper’s drinking was beginning to get out of hand. As he pursued his solo career, a spell in rehab led to a brief resurgence in his career – which wasn’t proving as successful as when Alice Cooper was a band – but he soon swapped alcohol for drugs. From the late Seventies through to the early Eighties, Cooper’s deteriorating health and appearance led to a series of albums that Cooper can’t even remember recording. Finally, he went back into rehab, and in 1986 made a successful return to the music scene with a new album, Constrictor, and a concert tour that reminded everyone of what a prodigious talent he was (and continues to be).

Super Duper Alice Cooper - scene

Flirting with hagiography at times, Super Duper Alice Cooper is a biography that has the full support of Alice Cooper and pretty much everyone he wants the viewer to hear from (except, of course, Michael Bruce). While Cooper is open about his drug and alcohol addictions, it shouldn’t come as a surprise as he’s gone on the record about them on several occasions – and in more ways than one: listen to From the Inside if you need to know more. What’s left is a collection of nostalgic reminiscences about the early days of Cooper’s career when he was still more Vincent Furnier than Alice Cooper.

The inevitable transformation from tee-total pastor’s son to booze-addled rock star is shown as an unavoidable side effect of rock and roll, and while we all might buy into that on some level, the movie’s real focus is on the good times had by all; even the infamous concert in Toronto when Alice threw a live chicken into the audience is treated like it was an awesome moment, though not one that was “healthy for the chicken”. The band’s on-stage antics, some of which look very bizarre and unrelated to the music being played, appear to have been thought up (or more likely improvised) more for effect than any real “let’s-put-on-a-show-and-wow-the-audience” approach. It does make the viewer wonder how on earth the band became such a success.

But while the very early days are treated with a detailed and cheerily nostalgic air, as the band becomes famous the movie moves away from anecdotes about the group and, as happened in real life back in the early Seventies, the focus becomes Cooper himself: his fame, his solo career, and his eventual bouts of alcohol and drug dependency. The break up of the band is glossed over for the most part, and while Dunaway gets to express his disappointment at the end of his friendship with Cooper, it’s a rare moment where criticism is allowed to be heard. Otherwise, unless it comes from Cooper himself – and even he isn’t that self-critical – there’s not a dissenting voice to be heard to provide some balance.

It’s a shame as Cooper’s career has always been varied, both professionally and personally, with as many ups as downs, but throughout there has been a commitment to the music that has kept him going. The movie touches on this on occasion, but seems determined to spend more time relaying as many showbiz anecdotes or celebrity encounters as it can possibly squeeze in.

The look of the movie is very stylised with an impressive amount of archival and contemporary footage mixed together with a great deal of pizzazz, along with attention-grabbing graphics, overlays and 3D effects. Images are tweaked and adjusted and manipulated in so many different ways it becomes distracting, and the decision to employ voice overs rather than talking heads is a mistake as it makes it difficult sometimes to work out who’s saying what. And then there’s the inclusion – the very repetitive and oversold inclusion – of scenes from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), which are there to highlight the fact that off-stage, Cooper is a million miles from the twisted, macabre dilettante he plays on-stage (after the umpteenth clip you’ll want to raise your fist and yell, “Enough already! I get it!”).

Rating: 5/10 – visually engaging, and with a predictably great soundtrack, Super Duper Alice Cooper peeks under the lid of Cooper’s career but only tells the viewer half of what it sees; there’s a lot more to Cooper’s career than is revealed here, and the lack of balance leaves it feeling more like a Cooper-sanctioned vanity project than the warts ‘n’ all documentary some viewers might be expecting.

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Mandrake, the Magician (1939) – Chapter 3: A City of Terror

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Al Kikume, Columbia, Doris Weston, Drama, Lothar, Magician, Mandrake, Norman Deming, Platinite, Professor Houston, Radium machine, RBS Radio Station, Review, Sam Nelson, Serial, The Wasp, Thriller, Warren Hull

Mandrake, the Magician

D: Sam Nelson, Norman Deming / 19m

Cast: Warren Hull, Doris Weston, Al Kikume, Rex Downing, Edward Earle, Forbes Murray, Kenneth MacDonald, Don Beddoe, John Tyrrell, Sam Ash

With Betty in a lift that’s hurtling out of control, and Mandrake and Lothar left to face a room filling up with steam, it looks as if the Wasp has finally won. But Mandrake turns off the steam and the lift’s automatic brake kicks in. The man who tried to abduct Betty is captured and Mandrake takes him back to his apartment where he holds him captive. He returns to the home of Professor Houston where he tells Webster and Dr Bennett that he plans to interrogate the man the next morning; the Wasp’s men, led by Dirk (Tyrrell), learn of his plan via the transmitter they have placed at Houston’s home.

The next morning, Mandrake begins to interrogate the Wasp’s henchman with the use of some of his stage props, frightening the man into talking. But as he does he’s killed by a blowdart fired through the window by another of the Wasp’s gang. The Wasp then devises a plan to kidnap Mandrake by arranging for a man called Regan (Ash) to impersonate the famous stage hypnotist Professor Leland. He calls on Mandrake and hypnotises him. But Mandrake is aware of the deception and only pretends to be under  Regan’s influence. Through this he learns that Betty has been given news that if she goes to the RBS radio station control room she’ll gain some information about her father. It’s a trap, though, with the Wasp intending to use the radium machine to blow up the station.

Mandrake escapes from Regan with the aid of Lothar and they rush to the station. The magician makes it to the control room just as the Wasp targets it. As the building collapses around them, Mandrake and Betty are trapped in the control room with no way out.

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With three chapters down and nine more to go it’s obvious that the writers are going to be content to keep things ticking over, and that it’s likely to be some time before the storyline is advanced any further from where it is now. It seems that as long as Mandrake gets into at least a couple of punch-ups, and there’s a car chase that takes place outside the city on predictably deserted roads then all’s well and good. And yet, in a strange way, it is good. Already, watching each chapter is like catching up with a friend you haven’t seen for a while. And Hull has a deceptive charm about him that makes Mandrake’s cock-sure sincerity as pleasing to watch as it must have been to play.

There are some strange moments to be found, though. The main one is the Wasp’s decision to lure Betty to the radio station in order to kill her. There’s no attempt by the Wasp to put pressure on her father by threatening to do all this – the Wasp just does it (and with no preamble). And having the man with the blowdart clambering around on the ledge outside  Mandrake’s upper-storey apartment proves laughable rather than thrilling (and lucky for him that Mandrake always keeps a window open). Other questions remain: how long will it be before the transmitter is found, and when Betty and Mandrake escape from the collapsing radio station, will it be with barely a scuff mark between them? Stay tuned, folks, to find out!

Rating: 5/10 – a little more encouraging, though still keeping things in a holding pattern, Chapter 3: A City of Terror is another engaging episode full of unlikely twists and turns and crazy developments; worth watching if only for the “brilliant” scene where Mandrake outlines his plans to his male associates, while the lone woman (Betty) says nothing and is left to play with a pencil.

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Foxcatcher (2014)

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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1984 Olympics, 1988 Olympics, Bennett Miller, Channing Tatum, Dave Schultz, Drama, Foxcatcher Farm, John E. du Pont, Mark Ruffalo, Mark Schultz, Review, Steve Carell, True story, Wrestling

Foxcatcher

D: Bennett Miller / 130m

Cast: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Michael Hall, Guy Boyd

Brothers Mark and Dave Schultz (Tatum, Ruffalo) are both wrestlers who have won gold at the 1984 Olympics. Despite his achievements, Mark lives in the shadow of his brother, and also lives alone while Dave has a wife (Miller) and two children. When Mark is approached by John E. du Pont (Carell), heir to the du Pont family fortune, and offered the opportunity to train at du Pont’s estate as part of a wrestling team called “Team Foxcatcher” (after the estate’s name), he accepts. Du Pont urges Mark to enlist his brother as well, but Dave declines the offer, wanting to keep his family where they are.

Mark begins his training, and in the process he and du Pont become friends. At the 1987 World Wrestling Championships, Mark wins gold. Shortly afterwards, du Pont coaxes Mark into taking cocaine. As Mark begins to take it more and more, du Pont becomes more open about his relationship with his mother (Redgrave), which is adversarial; she believes that wrestling is a “low” sport and doesn’t want him involved with it. But with this new openness comes a gradual change in du Pont’s attitude towards Mark, and when Mark and the team take a morning off from training to watch MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), du Pont is hostile and tells Mark that he’ll enlist Dave any way he can.

Du Pont succeeds and Dave and his family move onto the estate. Mark takes it badly and keeps to himself, pushing everyone away. At the preliminaries for the 1988 Olympics, Mark fares badly and loses his first match. He reacts by trashing his hotel room and going on an eating binge. Dave finds him and gets Mark exercising frantically to remove the excess weight; du Pont tries to help but Dave doesn’t let him. Mark manages to make the Olympic team but by then du Pont has left, having learnt that his mother has died. When Mark returns to du Pont’s estate after finishing in sixth place at the Olympics, he makes the decision to leave. Dave and his family remain, however, Mark’s brother having negotiated a deal with du Pont that allows him to train and still enter competitions.

Eight years pass. Mark becomes a teacher, while Dave continues to live on du Pont’s estate. Du Pont watches an old promotional video he had made that includes a glowing endorsement from Mark. He decides to pay Dave a visit, but what happens when he gets there proves to be as shocking as it is unexpected.

FOXCATCHER

There are several moments in Foxcatcher where the viewer sees John E. du Pont sitting – usually in profile so as to show off the impressive prosthetic nose Carell sports – staring at nothing we can see with his heavy-lidded gaze, and giving the impression of a man wrestling with his own problems. These are metaphorical moments that prove to be literal, and taken as grim foreshadowings of what happened in 1996, are all the more effective. But these moments are also indicative of the problems that beset Foxcatcher‘s script – by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman – from the outset: how do you link someone’s behaviour from one time period to another (even if the gap is less than ten years), and how do you show a causal link between the two?

If the movie never really resolves the issue then it’s not through want of trying. The story of the Schultz brothers and their involvement with John E. du Pont is like a modern day fairy tale, with Mark Schultz as an unwitting Little Red Riding Hood and du Pont in granny clothing as the Wolf. Mark is shown as a little backward, certainly aloof, and so clearly in need of approbation that his decision to accept du Pont’s offer is a foregone conclusion. He’s a man who sees a new comfort zone open up to him, but is so enamoured he doesn’t see the potential downfall of such an arrangement. His trust in du Pont’s philanthropic nature is touching but naive, and by accepting his hospitality he’ll lose what little sense of himself he has. It isn’t even about being impressed; it’s about being acknowledged.

Tatum, in his most challenging role to date, plays Mark like a wounded child, somehow bereft of feeling but yearning to be better at his life. It’s a role you might not consider him as being the first choice for, and while he does come perilously close to Lenny from Of Mice and Men territory at times, he reins in that impulse to provide a carefully considered and subtle portrayal of a man struggling to deal with newfound impulses and a relationship that deforms from friendship into abuse. His hurt features, like those of a child told off for something but not knowing what it is he’s actually done, are often heart-rending because of how confused Mark is feeling.

As du Pont, Carell is excellent, portraying him with a detachment that makes his attempts at friendship doomed to failure at every turn. He can impress, and he can persuade, and he can maintain a polite façade, but inside he’s empty, unable to connect to other people in a way that’s meaningful or rewarding. He’s on the outside looking in, but with no clear desire to go inside; it’s as if he purposely keeps himself apart from people so as not to have to deal with such messy problems as feelings and emotions. Carell holds all that in but you can see it in his eyes, the inability to empathise with other people, even his mother, and most importantly, the pain it causes him (even if he would never admit it). It’s a virtuoso performance, restrained, drained of surface emotion and terrifying.

There is equally fine work from Ruffalo as Dave. He’s the normal guy, the guy with a wife and two kids and a steady job. It’s not surprising that du Pont doesn’t understand him, or that he can’t reconcile his feelings about him. Ruffalo, sporting a receding hairline that surprisingly suits him, is the movie’s most relatable character, and he uses Dave’s quietness and good sense as a counterweight to the instability shown by Mark and du Pont. It’s a confident, almost effortless performance, and one that acts as a touchstone for the audience; he’s a welcome relief from the psychodrama going on elsewhere.

It’s a good thing that the performances are so good, because otherwise Foxcatcher would play out at a pace even more stately than it does already. At times it’s a painfully slow movie to watch, with Miller adopting a painstaking, but also despair-inducing approach to scenes that numbs the mind and has the viewer wishing he’d get a move on. The more measured the scene, the more likely it is to feel twice as long as it really is, and with the script barely moving out of first gear on most occasions, Miller seems unable to inject any sense of urgency into things (with the exception of Mark’s need to rapidly lose weight at the preliminaries – then it’s practically a thriller by comparison with the rest of the movie). It may well be a deliberate choice on Miller’s part, but it hurts the movie in ways that will leave some viewers cold.

Rating: 8/10 – a rewarding movie ultimately, Foxcatcher risks a lot in its (true) tale of a multimillionaire and a wrestler and their unlikely relationship; hard-going, but with a trio of knockout performances, the movie serves as a timely reminder that gift horses are not always what they seem.

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Big Eyes (2014)

18 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Amy Adams, Art, Christoph Waltz, Drama, Keane, Margaret Keane, Paintings, Review, The Waifs, Tim Burton, True story, Walter Keane

Big Eyes

D: Tim Burton / 106m

Cast: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Krysten Ritter, Jon Polito, Jason Schwartzman, Terence Stamp, Delaney Raye, Madeleine Arthur

In 1958, Margaret Ulbrich (Adams) leaves her husband and moves to San Francisco with her nine year old daughter, Jane (Raye). She is an artist, and paints portraits of young children with enlarged eyes; her work is original but not successful. She has a stand at a street market for artists, and it’s there that she meets fellow artist Walter Keane (Waltz). Walter paints street scenes set in Paris but is as unsuccessful as she is. They begin seeing each other and Margaret discovers that Walter is actually a realtor and not a full-time artist. When Margaret’s ex-husband tries to sue for custody of Jane by arguing that Margaret is unable to support her properly, Walter suggests they get married. Grateful, but already falling in love with him, Margaret agrees.

With Margaret still painting her waifs (as she calls them) and Walter trying to sell his own paintings, neither is making any headway until Walter hits on the idea of renting some wall space at a jazz club owned by Enrico Banducci (Polito). When a woman shows an interest in one of Margaret’s paintings instead of one of his own, Walter accepts an offer for it. A fight with Banducci over being situated by the toilets makes the papers and leads to increased demand for Margaret’s waifs. Soon, sales are soaring, but Walter takes credit for Margaret’s work, telling her “lady art” doesn’t sell and that people already think he painted the waifs anyway (because he’s not tried to clarify matters).

Margaret goes along with Walter’s fraudulent selling of her paintings, and they become richer and richer, eventually opening their own gallery. When sales slow, Walter hits on the idea of mass printing the paintings as posters, and their fortune increases even more. But Margaret becomes increasingly uneasy about the deception she’s a part of, and the ease with which Walter seems able to hoodwink everyone. Even when she changes her style and paints new pieces, Walter insists she carry on painting the waifs, but with the proviso that she never tells anyone that he’s not the artist; even Jane isn’t to know. Again, she goes along with Walter’s wishes.

In 1964, an altercation with a drunken Walter results in Margaret leaving him and taking Jane (now played by Arthur) to Hawaii. She begins to rebuild her life, and becomes a Jehovah’s Witness. Through their teachings she reviews her life with Walter and determines to finally tell the truth about her paintings and Walter’s role in their success. She reveals everything on a radio show, and when Walter finds out he opts to hit back via the press, arguing that Margaret is of unsound mind. Margaret sues him for slander and takes him to court, where Walter ends up having to defend himself. At stake is credit once and for all for her artwork.

Big Eyes - scene

An odd combination of drama and low-key whimsy, Big Eyes takes the true story of Margaret and Walter Keane and their rapid rise to fame and fortune on the back of her talent for painting and his talent for promotion, and makes it a largely enjoyable – if occasionally unbelievable – tale of manipulation and deceit. Making his most straightforward movie yet, Burton dials back on his usual fantastical approach – except for one fantasy sequence set in a supermarket – and allows the script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski to unfold at a deliberately sedate pace that keeps the audience involved but proves repetitive in terms of how often Walter intimidates or bullies Margaret into continuing to paint her waifs.

It’s a problem the movie never properly overcomes. Margaret acts as an accomplice for too long for it to be credible, and if it wasn’t for the fact that this is a true story, her reticence and complicity would appear too unlikely for comfort. As it is, the script focuses instead on Walter’s gift for self-betterment, and shows just how easy it was for him to popularise Margaret’s work. Trapped in a relationship that she feels there’s no way out from, it’s not until she discovers that Walter can’t paint at all that she begins to find her footing, and her empowerment drives the movie’s last half hour.

It also leads to one of the most bizarrely staged court cases in movie history. It’s at this point that Burton loses control of Waltz’s performance, and the movie goes all out to provide as farcical a conclusion as you’re likely to see all year (or any other). Up til now Waltz has mugged and grinned his way through the movie in an effort to showcase Walter’s charm and public good nature. But it’s so off-putting the viewer becomes glad when he’s not on screen. It also makes the viewer wonder if anyone was ever paying attention to Waltz’s interpretation, so completely off the wall is it. Next to him, Adams opts for pained disappointment and resigned looks, and imbues Margaret with a vagueness of character that she never fully shrugs off or replaces.

The script for Big Eyes tries its best to make Margaret’s art more relevant than it actually is – only art critic John Canaday (Stamp) is allowed to offer a voice of reason – but this is about one woman’s decision to be recognised and not kept in the shadows by her domineering husband. As a result, some scenes lack focus, while others seem included as padding rather than as a way to bolster the narrative. Burton directs as if he hasn’t quite connected with the material (which is strange as he commissioned the real Margaret Keane to paint a portrait of his ex-wife Lisa Marie), and while the movie is boosted by some beautifully framed and lit camerawork by Bruno Delbonnel, it’s effectiveness is undercut by some choppy editing and a score by Danny Elfman that doesn’t quite enhance the drama.

Rating: 6/10 – a mixed bag of a movie with a memorable performance (for all the wrong reasons) by Waltz, Big Eyes takes a true story and downplays the seriousness of what was, basically, a massive fraud perpetrated on the American public; drily humorous in part, but also dramatically undercooked, this unusual tale would probably have worked better as a documentary.

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The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom (2014)

17 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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China, Chuan-Shan, Drama, Fan Bingbing, Fort Luna, Huang Xiaoming, Jacob Cheung Chi-Leung, Jade Rakshasa, Literary adaptation, Martial arts, Review, Vincent Zhao, Wudang, Wuxia

White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom, The

Original title: Báifà mónǚ zhuàn zhī míngyuè tiānguó

D: Jacob Cheung Chi-Leung / 104m

Cast: Fan Bingbing, Huang Xiaoming, Vincent Zhao, Wang Xuebing, Ni Dahong, Tong Yao, Shera Lee, Cecilia Yip, Yan Yikuan

China, 1620. The Ming dynasty is drawing to a close and corruption is rife in the Imperial Palace. Zhuo Yihang (Xiaoming) is appointed leader of the Wudang clan and travels to the Imperial Palace to pay tribute to the Emperor and present him with two red pills as a sign of his fealty. On his way, he discovers a cave where he encounters a mysterious young woman without a name (Bingbing). He tells her that when next they meet he will have a name for her. At the same time, the Chuan-Shan army, led by General Jin (Zhao) are busy suppressing the peasants, most of whom are starving. When the Emperor dies, supposedly poisoned by the red pills, his heir is too young to rule, leaving his chief advisor, Wei Zhongxian (Dahong) in control.

Following the new Emperor’s coronation, a team of specially trained soldiers called the Secret Squad are sent to capture a notorious bandit called Jade Raksasha (Bingbing) who, with her gang, is based at a hilltop fortress called Fort Luna. The fortress is also the target of Huang Taiji (Yikuan) who knows its strategic importance; he needs to capture it before he can march on the Palace. At Chuan-Shan the Governor discovers that several dozen of his people have died from typhoid. Jade and her sister, Coral (Lee) attack the Governor (who also happens to be Yihang’s grandfather) and warn him not to continuing oppressing his people, but in the meleé, Jin takes adsvnatage of the situation and kills him, blaming it on Jade. Coral is captured though Jade rescues her with the help of Yihang. At Fort Luna, the typhoid takes hold but Yihang finds a cure. He also realises that Jade is the young woman he met in the cave;  true to his word he gives her a name: Lian Nishang (Silk Fairy).

With the aid of three masters from the Wudang clan, the Secret Squad infiltrate Fort Luna and demand Yihang returns with them to face charges of poisoning the previous Emperor. To avoid unnecessary bloodshed he agrees but not before he’s promised Lian that he’ll return one day, and that she need have no fear because she is his woman. At the Palace, Yihang is persuaded to help Zhongxian by taking the head of a rebel leader to his army as an example of what will happen if they side with Jin. The Wudang masters are outraged and refuse to acknowledge him any more. Word reaches Lian of what Yihang is doing, and that when he returns to the Palace he is to marry Zhongxian’s daughter Tingting (Yao). She goes to the Palace and confronts him but Yihang rebuffs her. The Palace guards try to capture her while she deals with the shock of Yihang’s betrayal and her hair turns white, but Tingting intervenes and she and Yihang are allowed to leave.

When they return to Fort Luna, Lian’s illness is such that she needs a special remedy from the Infernal Cave; Yihang makes the attempt to get it. He proves successful, but with Huang Taiji’s army fast approaching, a deal is made with General Jin’s forces, without anyone realising that Jin has already made a deal with Taiji and is set to betray them.

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The fourth big screen adaptation for Liang Yusheng’s wuxia novel, Baifa Monü Zhuan – the previous three are Story of the White-haired Demon Girl (1959), White Hair Devil Lady (1980), and The Bride With White Hair (1993) – The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom is a flat, mostly perfunctory retelling of the classic story, and a movie that struggles to make its central romance as compelling as it should be. Partly, the problem is that Bingbing and Xiaoming, while obviously a lovely couple, lack the kind of chemistry that would make their characters’ passion for each other so believable. As it is, they circle round each other like predators rather than ardent lovers, and their initial meeting in the cave appears redundant when placed next to Lian’s usual daily routine of rescuing abused peasants and beating up Chuan-Shan soldiers.

The convoluted politics of the time are another barrier to the average viewer’s enjoyment of the movie, with alliances and political bartering leading to various changes of allegiance and casually arranged alliances. It’s not a complicated set up, but it does feel forced at times, as if the makers felt they needed to add several twists and turns to keep things fresh (Yihang’s betrothal to Tingting is one such “twist”, and one that makes no sense at all). The fact that five screenwriters worked on the script isn’t exactly a good sign, and once the basic premise is set up, the movie’s middle section slows things down interminably as all the various elements are either sidelined in favour of the aforementioned underwhelming romance or are played out at a pace that promotes an unfortunate ennui in the viewer.

With the plot and storylines proving so dreary and lacklustre, Chi-Leung is unable to boost things to a level where continued interest is guaranteed, or the performances rise above the bland or uninspired level they operate at throughout. Bingbing and Xiaoming’s lack of chemistry aside, they deliver portrayals that lack consistency and depth, while Zhao as the villainous Jin is more of a double-dealing bureaucrat than a brutal general, and can’t even manage a decent condescending sneer when needed. Of the rest of the cast, perhaps the best performance comes from Yao as Tingting; she plays the part with just the right combination of apparent fragility and heartbreaking misfortune.

As for the action scenes they’re effectively choreographed, but rely too much on CGI and old-fashioned wire work to be truly spectacular. Some Western viewers may be upset by the treatment that a number of horses are subjected to in these scenes, and there are moments where the movie is unexpectedly gory (though there’s nothing that’s too disturbing). With the usual amount of panoramic vistas and sweeping camerawork mixed in with appropriately dust-blown peasant holdings, the look of the movie benefits from Lin Guohua’s often exquisite photography, and the overall recreation of 17th Century China is one of the few areas where the movie, thankfully, gets it right.

Rating: 5/10 – irritating and humdrum, The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom is a movie where only “just enough” is done to keep the audience interested; somewhere between well-mounted and tedious, it aims for epic but achieves only a fraction of that, and never feels like it’s going to amount to much more than being an also-ran in the history of wuxia movies.

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Whiplash (2014)

17 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Andrew Neiman, Core drummer, Damien Chazelle, Drama, Drumming, J.K. Simmons, Jazz, Melissa Benoist, Miles Teller, Music, Paul Reiser, Review, Shaffer Conservatory, Terence Fletcher

Whiplash

D: Damien Chazelle / 107m

Cast: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist, Austin Stowell, Nate Long, Chris Mulkey, Damon Gupton, Suanne Smoke

At the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory of Music, nineteen year old Andrew Neiman (Teller) is an aspiring jazz drummer who wants to be the best in the world, as good if not better than Buddy Rich, his idol. He attracts the attention of tyrannical conductor Terence Fletcher (Simmons) who is looking for a drum alternate for his band. At a concert where the band is performing, the core drummer loses his sheet music and is unable to play the next piece from memory. Andrew steps in and, to his mind, becomes the new core drummer as a result.

Andrew subsequently begins a relationship with Nicole (Benoist), but after a handful of dates he takes the view that their relationship won’t work because he has to dedicate all his time to perfecting his drumming, and she will eventually become resentful of this. He tells her this quite bluntly and they break up. Meanwhile, much to Andrew’s surprise, Fletcher replaces him with another drummer, Ryan (Stowell). A few days later, Fletcher becomes emotional in class when referring to an old pupil of his who has passed away. This display of emotion is unexpected, but Fletcher soon reverts to his usual aggressive ways when he introduces a new piece and neither Andrew, Ryan or the original band drummer can maintain the right tempo. Eventually, Andrew gets it right and retains his role as core drummer ahead of an upcoming concert.

On the day of the concert, Andrew is late to the rehearsal because his bus breaks down and he has to hire a rental car to get him there. He’s also left his drumsticks at the rental office; he retrieves them but on his way back his car is hit by a truck. Despite suffering a head injury and a broken left hand, he makes it to the concert in time to take part but is unable to play properly. Fletcher calls a halt and tells Andrew he’s done. In a fit of rage, Andrew attacks him in full view of everyone there.

A few weeks pass. Andrew has been expelled. He learns that the pupil who passed away actually killed himself, and his family are blaming Fletcher, saying that his abusive behaviour caused their son’s depression and subsequent suicide. Andrew agrees to anonymously testify for them and Fletcher is dismissed. Months later, Andrew runs into Fletcher at a bar. Fletcher explains his reasons for behaving the way he did and says it was because he wanted to help his students be the best. Before they part, Fletcher invites Andrew to sit in for the drummer in his band at a festival concert. Andrew agrees, but just before the concert begins and with Andrew sitting behind his drum kit, Fletcher tells him he knows Andrew testified, and Andrew realises the first song is one he doesn’t know and doesn’t have the sheet music for.

tn_gnp_et_1011_whiplash

Based on writer/director Chazelle’s own experiences in high school, Whiplash paints a compelling portrait of intense dedication and monstrous manipulation. It’s an elemental battle of wills, with neither Andrew nor Fletcher giving any quarter, nor expecting any. The irony of it all is that both characters are as “bad” in their own way as each other: arrogant, overly self-confident, uncompromising, narcissistic, unfeeling, and committed to pushing each other as far as they can. It’s a dance, one with domination as the ultimate achievement, and they spar and fight with undisguised aggression. (If this is what band practice is really like, then best take a stab jacket and helmet.)

If Andrew learns to behave like Fletcher then the potential has been there all along, and rather than retain a spark of humanity against the onslaught of Fletcher’s callous teaching methods, by the time of the second concert he’s become an even darker version of Fletcher, dismissive of his rivals’ talents and so arrogant that he believes no one else can match him. It’s all credit to Chazelle that at this point in the movie it’s Andrew who’s clearly the monster, and not Fletcher (the clues have been there from the beginning, from the way he treats his family and Nicole). Pulling such a switch is an audacious move on Chazelle’s part but it works magnificently; instead of being appalled at Fletcher’s angry reaction to Andrew’s being late, the viewer is appalled by the degree of Andrew’s arrogance.

From there, however, the movie has a problem it never really recovers from. With both men removed from the confines of the conservatory the movie bleeds tension with every passing minute, and the urgency and drama of the first hour are replaced with a less involving period where Andrew tries to move on with his life before he and Fletcher meet up again. Then it’s on to the crowd-pleasing finale that we’ve all been waiting for (and it is well worth the wait). Chazelle redeems himself here and with editor Tom Cross, assembles one of the most exciting and breathtaking musical sequences ever committed to film.

Much has already been made of the performances, and justly so. Teller displays a maturity and confidence that removes any idea that he’s only good for rom-coms, and nails the various turbulent emotions that Andrew experiences in his efforts to be the best. It’s a breakthrough performance, riveting and compelling, and Teller is nothing short of brilliant. The same is true of Simmons, making Fletcher repellent and vicious and uncaring and horrible, and sounding like the long-lost cousin of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket (1987). It’s a mesmerising performance, and Simmons inhabits the role with a reptilian intensity that is both shocking and dismayingly funny (“I can still fucking see you, Mini-Me!”). Both actors are at the top of their game, and Chazelle capitalises on their efforts to the full, knowing just when to keep the camera on either one of them, and showing a judicious use of close-ups.

The musical scenes are shot with a close attention to the physical detail of the performances, with each cymbal crash or high note or trombone thrust highlighted by the editing, making each song a visual experience as well as an aural one. Sharone Meir’s detail-rich photography is almost a character by itself, and captures every bead of sweat and drop of blood that Andrew loses. But in a movie where the music is such an integral part of the story and plot, it’s the two compositions, “Whiplash” by Hank Levy, and “Caravan” by Juan Tizol, that stand out, two perfect choices to show how much Teller achieved through practicing four hours a day for two months, and which are fantastic compositions all by themselves.

Rating: 8/10 – with both Andrew and Fletcher removed from the conservatory, Whiplash grinds to an unexpected halt and takes too long to recover (but when it does it’s as impressive as in its first hour); with two stunning central performances, and a visceral ferocity to the drumming sequences, this is a powerful, gripping movie that plays like a sports movie and displays just as much unfettered testosterone (and that’s a good thing).

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The Whip and the Flesh (1963)

17 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Christopher Lee, Dagger, Daliah Lavi, Drama, Horror, Italian movie, Kurt Menliff, Mario Bava, Murder, Review, Sado-masochism, Tony Kendall, Whipping

Whip and the Flesh, The

Original title: La frusta e il corpo

aka: Night Is the Phantom; What; The Whip and the Body

D: Mario Bava / 91m

Cast: Daliah Lavi, Christopher Lee, Tony Kendall, Ida Galli, Harriet Medin, Gustavo De Nardo, Luciano Pigozzi

Returning home after a period away due to his involvement in the death of a servant girl, Kurt Menliff (Lee) receives a less than warm welcome from his father, Count Menliff (De Nardo), his younger brother Cristiano (Kendall) and his wife Nevenka (Dali), nor from their servant Giorgia (Medin) whose daughter, Tania, was the servant girl who died. Despite this, Kurt intends to reclaim his title, as well as to rekindle the sadomasochistic relationship he had with Nevenka (they were originally to be married before the scandal with the servant girl forced Kurt to leave). One evening, while Nevenka takes a stroll on the beach, Kurt intercepts her. He whips her as a prelude to sex; afterwards, Nevenka realises she is still in love with him. When she doesn’t return from her walk on the beach, Cristiano instigates a search for her and she is found on the beach, but unconscious. Meanwhile, Kurt has returned to the castle unaware of what’s happening, but while in his room, is killed with the same dagger that Tania committed suicide with.

Following Kurt’s death, Nevenka begins to have visions of him. He visits her in her room and once more flogs her. She becomes ever more fearful, and ever more convinced that he’s alive. Then, the Count is found dead, killed by the same weapon as Kurt and Tania. Nevenka tells Cristiano that Kurt has come back from the dead and is seeking revenge on all of them. With the appearance of muddy footprints leading from Kurt’s tomb to inside the castle, and Nevenka’s increasingly unstable behaviour, the possibility that Kurt has returned from the grave becomes more certain, until Cristiano determines to open Kurt’s coffin.

Whip and the Flesh, The - scene

One of Bava’s most effective movies, The Whip and the Flesh has bags of atmosphere, a deceptively simple plot, great performances from all concerned (bearing in mind the melodrama inherent in the story), and a visual style that makes great use of half light and shadows. It’s also a deliberately paced movie that allows the horror to build to a crescendo, giving Bava the opportunity to create a fever dream that’s both delirious and oppressive.

Locating the action in and around a lonely castle on a cliff next to the sea, the script – by Ernesto Gastaldi, Ugo Guerra and Luciano Martino – adds a sense of isolation to proceedings that in turn makes each development in the story that much more forbidding and grim. It’s as if the characters were all trapped, doomed in a way to remain there until their fate is decided. Kurt’s death, so surprising both for how soon it occurs and because he’s played by Lee, the second lead, is unsettling because there is no human involvement in it (at least none that the audience sees). And even though his death is attributed to another character at the end, it makes better sense that this is another example of revenge from beyond the grave, and that Tania’s ghost is responsible. Unfortunately, the script doesn’t take this approach, but with Kurt’s death the movie does become a potent mix of ghost story, whodunnit and psychosexual drama.

Making Nevenka the focus of each strange event that follows gives Bava the chance to indulge in some creepy set pieces, such as Kurt’s first visit to Nevenka’s bedroom, a chilling, drawn out sequence that combines the sound of approaching footsteps, the ominous turn of a door handle, and the sight of muddy boots appearing out of the shadows. It’s a sequence that’s so moodily effective that it has the effect of putting the viewer on the edge of their seat, and just as anxious as Nevenka to see what’s going to happen next. What we see next is perhaps the movie’s most horrifying moment of all, as Kurt’s ghost stands by her bed, his figure in silhouette for a second or two before revealing he has a whip. On the page it may not sound so frightening, but in the movie it’s shocking, as much for the effect of seeing the whip revealed, but also for the implications that come with it. Just that sequence alone is a masterpiece of direction and editing.

With Bava so firmly in control of the material, it gives him the opportunity to coax some better than average performances from his cast. Lavi, an actress employed usually for her decorative appeal rather than her acting ability, here makes an indelible impression as a woman whose masochistic tendencies lead to fear and paranoia, and self-induced erotic imaginings. It’s a performance that’s more controlled than it appears, and anchors the movie to great effect. As the cold and sadistic Kurt, Lee imparts more in a look than some actors can convey in a five-minute monologue. Always an imposing presence, he commands attention in every scene he’s in, and though his appearance diminishes as the movie progresses, he leaves an indelible mark on the movie that adds to the cloying atmosphere of the movie’s final third (it’s sad that his lines, even in English, were dubbed by another actor). Kendall, making only his second movie, downplays the usual melodramatic heroics expected of his role, and makes Cristiano as wretched in his own way as all the other characters. And as his true love, Katia, Galli is not as vapid or as wishy-washy as virtuous love interests often prove to be, but makes the character sympathetic without being tiresome.

There are some flaws, though, with certain scenes feeling truncated or not fully developed. One such scene involves the discovery of the dagger in Katia’s room by Giorgia; it could have been a tense, dramatic moment that introduced an element of doubt about the character, but it’s over before it can go anywhere. And it’s never explained as to why the dagger is kept in a glass cage with Tania’s blood still on the blade. But these are minor caveats in a movie that makes great use of its castle setting, with its rooms and corridors proiving wonderfully creepy in the way that only old castles can be, and supported by a lush, romantic score courtesy of Carlo Rustichelli that shouldn’t complement the action but in a strange way, is entirely appropriate.

Rating: 8/10 – for many, Bava is a director who can do no wrong, and on this evidence they’re absolutely right; tense, unnerving and making no apologies in its depiction of what would have been ascribed as aberrant behaviour, The Whip and the Flesh is a stylish horror that remains as effective now as it was over fifty years ago.

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Two Night Stand (2014)

16 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Analeigh Tipton, Blizzard, Comedy, Max Nichols, Miles Teller, One night stand, Online dating, Relationships, Review, Romance, Romantic comedy, Sex

Two Night Stand

D: Max Nichols / 86m

Cast: Analeigh Tipton, Miles Teller, Jessica Szohr, Scott Mescudi, Leven Rambin

Megan (Tipton) is unemployed, single, and getting on her roommate’s nerves. She prevaricates over getting a job, and won’t go out and meet new people, preferring to stay in the flat and waste her time. Pushed to do something different she signs up to a dating website but doesn’t arrange to meet anyone. One night she’s finally convinced by Faiza (Szohr), her roommate, to come out with her and her boyfriend, Cedric (Mescudi). But the evening backfires when she sees her ex-boyfriend with his new partner. Upset and angry, she goes home and decides to “get her own back” by meeting one of the men on the dating website. She chooses Alec (Teller) and goes to his apartment where they have a one night stand.

The next morning, a few wrong words leads to an argument and Megan leaving the apartment – but not the building; overnight a blizzard has deposited three feet of snow against the door of the building, and Megan can’t get out. With little choice but to return to Alec’s apartment they slowly, but with some effort, begin to make the best of a bad situation, and get to know each other a bit better. They discuss their views on relationships, and sex, and decide to be brutally honest with each other about how they were during their one night stand. Over the next day, their relationship improves but stalls when Megan finds a closet full of women’s clothes and learns that Alec has a girlfriend, Daisy (Rambin). Alec explains that Daisy is away but the reason Megan is there is that he found a break-up note Daisy had written but not given him. To get back at her, he joined the dating website. Angry, and with the snow having abated enough, Megan leaves.

When Daisy returns home, she finds a note that Megan had written, while he reveals her note to him, and they split up. Later, on New Year’s Eve, Megan is arrested at a party for breaking and entering; while she and Alec were together they broke into his neighbour’s apartment to find a toilet plunger. Alec has planted Megan’s note there in a bizarre attempt at getting back in touch with her as he can’t stop thinking about her, but when he tries to bail her out she refuses to budge. It’s only when Faiza does that she is released, but Alec isn’t giving up…

Two Night Stand - scene

As an attempt to do something slightly different with the rom-com format, Two Night Stand is an awkward mix of the refreshing and the inevitable, as it plays around with an established formula to sometimes winning, but equally distracting effect. Playing Russian roulette with the concept of honesty in a relationship, the movie tries to show that while it’s a wonderful idea in principle, in practice it’s prone to so many pitfalls you might as well not bother.

In rom-coms we’re used to seeing characters hold back on their feelings, or mistrust their partner’s motives, or skirt uncomfortably around the heart of a particular matter, and Two Night Stand does its best to waive all that aside and focus on two people who try to be open and honest from the start rather than finding out the truth about each other much later on. It’s a neat spin on the traditional idea that new partners set out to impress each other at the beginning and present the best version of themselves (only to relax into their usual personalities when the relationship is established). Of course, that kind of grandstanding is essentially unavoidable, and both Megan and Alec still try to impress each other, fanning that spark of attraction that has brought them together in the first place. They’re a match for each other – not that they realise this so much, though – but they have to endure some trials and tribulations before they work this out (and as usual one of them has to be persuaded by the other). It’s standard fare, pleasingly done, but nothing we haven’t seen a thousand times before.

The performances are above average, with Tipton shrugging off her supporting actress mantle and grabbing a lead role with gusto. She’s a gauche, intuitive presence on screen, gangly but with her own peculiar physical grace, and she makes Megan an appealing person to spend time with, insecure, clumsy, self-reliant despite any apparent real experience of life, and despite her reluctance to commit to romance after breaking up with her ex. As she navigates the troubled waters of internet dating, and the Alec’s murkier motives for doing so as well, Tipton maintains an honesty that befits the character and makes her entirely credible. Teller keeps it real as well, investing Alec with a self-protective, evasive veneer that is at first off-putting, but which becomes entirely understandable once Daisy’s note is revealed. He portrays Alec like a man caught between doing what’s right and what’s wrong, and not caring either way. It’s a winning performance, light-hearted when it needs to be, earnest at other times, but always carefully balanced so that Alec’s never too obnoxious or too offhand.

Good as their performances are though, neither Tipton nor Teller can compensate for the narrative version of jumping through hoops that the movie indulges in in its final third. It’s almost as if the script – by Mark Hammer – doesn’t really know what to do with Megan and Alec once she leaves his building, and the manner in which they’re reunited is so contrived as to be incredible. Not even Nichols, making his feature debut, can compensate for the straight up absurdity of the situation, and the result is a movie that goes from mostly entertaining to full-on bizarre in a matter of minutes. Bereft of an organic conclusion, Two Night Stand trusts to the standard emotional outpouring by one of the characters, and the equally standard (blanket) acceptance of same by the recipient. Trust and early love are resumed, and everyone lives happily ever after… probably.

Rating: 6/10 – bright and breezy, with some tellingl insights into modern relationships peppered throughout its first hour, Two Night Stand benefits from two sterling performances and a largely theatrical presentation; heartfelt and amusing for the most part (if not entirely original), the movie runs aground in the final third and never recovers.

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John Wick (2014)

15 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Action, Adrianne Palicki, Assassin, Chad Stahelski, David Leitch, Dead wife, Drama, Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Revenge, Review, Russian Mafia, Thriller, Willem Dafoe

John Wick

D: Chad Stahelski, David Leitch / 101m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters, Adrianne Palicki, Toby Leonard Moore, Daniel Bernhardt, Omer Barnea, Lance Reddick, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Bridget Moynahan

Having lost his wife, Helen (Moynahan), to an unexpected illness, retired assassin John Wick (Reeves) receives a posthumous gift from her: a puppy called Daisy. They begin to bond, and Wick takes her with him when he travels anywhere. At a gas station one day, Wick encounters a trio of Russian gang members; their leader, Iosef (Allen) asks to buy his car but Wick rebuffs him. Later that night, the trio break into Wick’s home, beat him up, kill Daisy, and make off with his car. While he recovers, Iosef takes the car to a chop shop run by Aurelio (Leguizamo) but he refuses to have anything to do with Iosef or the car. Wick visits Aurelio and learns that Iosef is the son of his former boss, Viggo Tarasov (Nyqvist). When Viggo finds out what his son has done, he’s less than happy; he tells Iosef that Wick was the best hitman in the business, not the boogeyman, but the man you sent to kill the boogeyman.

Viggo attempts to placate Wick but has no luck. He sends a hit squad to kill Wick at his home but Wick despatches them all. Viggo then puts out an open contract for $2 million on Wick, and approaches Marcus (Dafoe), Wick’s mentor, directly; Marcus agrees to take the job. Meanwhile, Wick checks in to the Continental, a hotel run by Winston (McShane) that caters to assassins. Wick learns that Iosef is being protected at a nightclub called Red Circle. He goes there but is stopped from killing Iosef by the intervention of Viggo’s enforcer Kirill (Bernhardt). Wounded, he returns to the hotel where he is attacked by fellow assassin Ms Perkins (Palicki). Overpowering her, he forces her to tell him where Viggo keeps both his private papers and the bulk of his personal cash.

The papers and cash are in a church vault; Wick burns it all. When Viggo arrives, Wick ambushes him and his men, but Kirill uses an SUV to knock Wick unconscious. Taken to an abandoned warehouse and tied up, Viggo remonstrates with Wick over his idea that he could ever lead a normal life. He leaves Wick to be killed by Kirill, but things don’t turn out as he expects.

John Wick - scene

A revenge movie with a distinctive visual style, John Wick is a huge breath of fresh air in a genre that often feels stodgy and underwhelming, and which often relies on rapid cross-cutting and headache-inducing editing tricks to give energy to its action scenes. This definitely isn’t the case here, with directors Stahelski and Leitch’s background as stunt coordinators bringing an impressive edge to the fight sequences, as they bring a whole new meaning to the phrase “gun-fu”.

Even more impressive than the action is the world created by the directors and writer Derek Kolstad. It’s at such a remove from our own world that it seems to operate independently, with its own rules and hierarchies. The Continental is a case in point, an establishment that allows no “business” on its premises, and inflicts the severest of penalties if that rule is ignored. It’s a world where respect and a person’s reputation carry as much caché as money, and where John Wick has the most respect of anyone. It’s also a world that appears bleached of positive feeling, where people hide behind polite, expressionless façades but are quick to display fear, anger and mistrust. And it’s a criminal underworld that mixes old-fashioned codes of conduct with a modern disregard for them when necessary. Against this, Wick acts like an old time vigilante, dismantling Viggo’s business and men with grim determination and no shortage of inner rage. And even though he’s not as invulnerable as he once was, he’s still the ne plus ultra of assassins.

With the world he inhabits so clearly defined, Wick strides through it like a colossus, giving Reeves his most commanding role for years. After non-starters Generation Um… (2012), Man of Tai Chi (2013) and 47 Ronin (2013), it’s good to see Reeves back on form, playing Wick with a taciturn, single-minded demeanour that suits him perfectly as an actor. His brief scenes with Moynahan also show convincingly the other John Wick, the loving husband and all-round “normal” guy. It’s a great performance, and one that’s given more than adequate support by the likes of Nyqvist, Dafoe and Palicki, all relishing their roles and the wonderfully expressive dialogue Kolstad has provided them with. The cast are obviously having a great time with the material, and it’s not surprising that this helps boost the audience’s enjoyment as a result. The interplay between Wick and Viggo is particularly effective, operating on several levels at once, and imparting more emotion than would normally be expected.

As for the action scenes these are tremendously shot and edited, full of fluid tracking shots, and with Reeves in the thick of it all, punching, kicking and blasting away with vicious, yet detached intent, and shooting more people in the head than probably any other hitman in movie history. One extended sequence, at the Red Circle nightclub, is as inventive and as thrilling as any action sequence in recent memory. Using their experience as stunt co-ordinators, Stahelski and Leitch (who thanks to the Directors Guild of America isn’t credited on the movie), keep the fight scenes breathtaking and immersive, and there’s not one moment during any of them where the viewer isn’t fully aware of what’s happening and who’s doing what to whom (something that Taken 3, for example, avoids doing throughout its disheartening running time).

In keeping with the overall mise en scene, the production design by Dan Leigh helps to reinforce the idea of a separate world where all this takes place, and is gloriously lensed by Jonathan Sela. The action is complemented by a pulsing, propulsive score by Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard, and at times feels like it could be another of Wick’s opponents.

Rating: 8/10 – a modern day noir thriller that doesn’t pull its punches and has an emotional core that resonates throughout, John Wick is a wonderful surprise; with not an ounce of fat on it, and one of the tightest scripts of recent years, this is an action movie that constantly surprises and rewards in equal measure.

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Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014)

14 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Akhmenrah, Ben Stiller, British Museum, Drama, Fantasy, Father/son relationship, Golden tablet, History, Lancelot, Owen Wilson, Review, Robin Williams, Sequel, Shawn Levy, Steve Coogan

Night at the Museum Secret of the Tomb

D: Shawn Levy / 98m

Cast: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais, Dan Stevens, Rebel Wilson, Skyler Gisondo, Rami Malek, Patrick Gallagher, Mizuo Peck, Ben Kingsley, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs

Egypt, 1938. A team of archaeologists discover the tomb of Akhmenrah (Malek). They also find a golden tablet, but are warned that “the end will come” if the tablet is removed.

New York, present day. The Museum of Natural History is having an evening gala. Night security guard Larry Daley (Stiller) has arranged for some of the exhibits, including Teddy Roosevelt (Williams), Attila the Hun (Gallagher), and Sacagawea (Peck), to take part. Aware that the golden tablet that brings them all to life is showing signs of corrosion, Larry is unprepared for how it affects the exhibits during the gala; they run amok and the event is a disaster. Larry learns that the prophecy, that “the end will come”, means an end to the magic that brings the exhibits to life, and that the only way to stop it is to take the tablet to the British Museum in London. The museum holds the bodies of Akhmenrah’s parents, and it’s his father, Merenkahre (Kingsley), who can stop the tablet from losing its magic.

Larry arranges for the tablet and Akhmenrah to be shipped to the British Museum and takes his son, Nick (Gisondo), along with him. When they reach the museum they find that Teddy, Attila and Sacagawea have stowed away on the journey, along with Dexter the monkey, Jedediah (Wilson), Octavius (Coogan), and Laa (Stiller), a neanderthal who looks like Larry. As the museum’s exhibits start to come to life, they head for the Egyptian exhibition, but find themselves attacked by the skeleton of a triceratops. Luckily, they’re saved by Sir Lancelot (Stevens) who agrees to help them. An encounter with a nine-headed Xiangliu statue provides some unwanted danger, but eventually they reach Akhmenrah’s parents, where Merenkahre reveals that the tablet needs to be exposed to moonlight to restore its powers. However, believing it to be the Holy Grail, Lancelot steals the tablet and flees the museum in search of Camelot. Larry et al chase after him, but the tablet is close to losing its power altogether.

Night at the Museum Secret of the Tomb - scene

And so, the law of diminishing returns rears its predictable head and helps bury yet another fantasy franchise. While no one would say that the Night at the Museum movies are anything other than pleasantly diverting, what this second sequel lacks is the manic energy of the first two, and a script that makes the barest attempt at providing a credible storyline. Hardly any of it makes sense, from the idea that “the end will come” if the tablet is removed from the Akhmenrah family tomb in the first place, to the idea that Larry would take his son along with him to London (they’re having “issues”), to the conceit that the British Museum has only the one guard (who is stationed in a gatehouse and not inside the actual building), to the notion that Lancelot would mistake the tablet for the Holy Grail, to the judgment that everyone can get back to New York before the sun rises – from London… in the middle of the night… It’s like someone chucked a whole sticky mess of ideas at a wall and these were the ones that didn’t slip to the floor.

With the script having gone AWOL from the beginning, it’s left to director Shawn Levy to make the most of a bad set up, but for the most part he’s AWOL as well. The opening sequence in Egypt has a sub-Raiders of the Lost Ark feel that makes it the most interesting part of the movie, but it’s probably because it doesn’t take place inside a museum. Still, it has an intensity that’s missing from the rest of the movie, and Levy at least ensures a minimal sense of wonder at the tomb’s discovery. From then on it’s business as usual, with Gervais’ museum head acting all prissy, Coogan highlighting Octavius’s homosexual leanings, Dexter getting to urinate on someone (this time Jedediah and Octavius), Williams dispensing kind words and wisdom as if Roosevelt was the sagest exhibit of them all, the Easter Island head saying “dum-dum” as if that was still funny by itself, and a set of dinosaur bones that just want to play if given the right encouragement. It’s lazy with a capital L-A-Z-Y.

The same is true of the performances. It would be foolish to expect the cast of a second sequel to bring their ‘A’ game to things, but watching some of them going through the motions is not only dispiriting, but embarrassing as well. Stiller all but sleepwalks through his role as Larry, bringing not one new quirk or character trait to the table, and mugging for all he’s worth as Laa, the comedy neanderthal. In support it’s business as usual for all concerned, with Williams smiling from beneath his moustache at every opportunity, Gallagher playing Attila as a great big softie, Peck kept on the sidelines as Sacagawea, Wilson and Coogan reprising their “good buddy” relationship (and which sorely needs some antagonism added back into it), and Malek remaining as bland as ever. Even Crystal the Monkey is subdued this time around, as if even she can’t be bothered. Only Stevens rises above the paucity of the material, his preening, carefree Lancelot proving an unexpected treat. (As for Rebel Wilson’s in-all-ways frustrated security guard, well, the less said the better.)

A bittersweet farewell to Teddy Roosevelt aside – and would that even be true if it weren’t for the sad death of Robin Williams last year? – Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb scampers along like a young child wanting to be noticed but not really knowing how to go about it. Lacking in anything resembling a “wow” factor, even the special effects don’t have the same impact as before. But thanks to some splendid cinematography by Guillermo Navarro, the movie does look good, which is something at least.

Rating: 3/10 – poorly executed, and as devoid of life as the exhibits it animates, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb is yet another unnecessary sequel that tries too hard to make up for its deficiencies; when the level of humour is to have an Egyptian pharaoh ask someone to “kiss my staff” then it’s time to let the golden tablet corrode for good.

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Mini-Review: Taken 3 (2014)

13 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Action, Dougray Scott, Famke Janssen, Forest Whitaker, Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Murder, Olivier Megaton, Review, Sequel, Thriller

Taken 3

D: Olivier Megaton / 109m

Cast: Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Dougray Scott, Sam Spruell, Leland Orser, Jon Gries, David Warshofsky, Don Harvey, Dylan Bruno, Andrew Howard, Jonny Weston

When Bryan Mills (Neeson) receives a visit from his ex-wife Lenore, it’s because she wants to let him know she still has feelings for him, and that her marriage – to Stuart St John (Scott) – is on the rocks. Bryan tells her that they can’t be together while she’s still married. Stuart pays him visit as well and asks Bryan to stay away from Lenore while they try to sort out their marriage; Bryan tells him he will.

The next day, Lenore asks to meet Bryan at his place. When he gets there he finds she’s been murdered. The police arrive and try to arrest him but he escapes. He tells his daughter, Kim (Grace) what’s happened and vows to find Lenore’s killer. The police, led by Inspector Franck Dotzler (Whitaker), pursue Bryan while he tries to figure out the reason for Lenore’s death. He learns that Stuart has hired personal bodyguards and, fearing Kim is in danger from Lenore’s killer and Stuart is somehow involved, he abducts Stuart and learns that he owes a lot of money to a Russian gangster named Oleg Malankov (Spruell), and that Lenore’s death was probably to make Stuart pay up. With the help of his ex-CIA colleagues (Orser, Gries, Warshofsky), Bryan goes after Malankov, intending to kill him.

Taken 3 - scene

And so, the law of diminishing returns rears its predictable head and helps bury yet another action franchise. It shouldn’t really be a surprise, as this was a movie that wouldn’t have been made if 20th Century Fox hadn’t wanted it in the first place. With that decision made, and with Neeson unwilling to star unless no one was actually “taken”, you can see how the project was doomed from the start. As it is, no one could have been prepared for just how little effort was going to be put in by all concerned. From the lazy, credibility-free script by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, to the wayward, unfocused direction by Megaton, to the headache-inducing, rapid cross-cutting of the action scenes, to the (mobile) phoned-in performances from a cast that should know better.

Just how bad is it? Two examples: Lenore is killed by having her throat cut, but when Stuart has to identify her at the morgue she clearly has a scar where the cut should be. And despite being “trapped” in an underground car park full of police, Bryan escapes with ease by driving through them all and exiting the car park – which the police haven’t thought to cordon off or block. There are plenty of other moments where the unfortunate viewer will be shaking their head in disbelief, and plenty of other moments where they’ll be wondering if it can get any worse – the answer is yes, it can.

Rating: 3/10 – a sad conclusion to an otherwise entertaining if always far-fetched action franchise, Taken 3 is a spectacular misfire that often defies explanation; if there is to be a fourth movie – and Neeson appears to be keen on the idea – then maybe the tag line will be It Really Does End Here… Probably.

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Mandrake, the Magician (1939) – Chapter 2: Trap of the Wasp

13 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Al Kikume, Columbia, Doris Weston, Drama, Lothar, Magician, Mandrake, Norman Deming, Platinite, Professor Houston, Radium machine, Sam Nelson, Serial, The Wasp, Thriller, Trap of the Wasp, Warren Hull

Mandrake, the Magician

D: Sam Nelson, Norman Deming / 20m

Cast: Warren Hull, Doris Weston, Al Kikume, Rex Downing, Edward Earle, Forbes Murray, Kenneth MacDonald, Don Beddoe

Fighting one of the Wasp’s henchmen at the home of Professor Houston, Mandrake narrowly escapes death when the radium machine ignites a hydrogen tank. As he recovers, the henchman makes off with the radium machine. He and Lothar go after them in their car but it breaks down, sabotaged by the Wasp’s men using part of a magician’s trick. Mandrake has the sale of such an item traced – by his friend Frank Raymond (Beddoe) – to an Egyptian-looking man, and learns his address. But the Wasp is aware of Mandrake’s progress and sets a trap for him.

At the Egyptian man’s home, Mandrake is ambushed but manages to escape using a tear gas bomb. The Wasp’s gang, knowing he’ll be heading back to the home of Professor Houston, try to listen in using the radio transmitter they’ve hidden there, but it’s not working. One of the gang is sent to fix it. Shortly after he arrives, and while hidden, Mandrake reveals he has a small amount of platinite that he plans to place in his private bank vault later that night. Knowing the Wasp’s man is there, he also gives details of the route he’ll take.

Expecting to be intercepted, Mandrake allows himself to be captured. Followed to a building in the city by Lothar and Professor Houston’s daughter, Betty, he’s tied up and held in the basement. He frees himself and a fight ensues, one that Lothar joins while Betty waits in the lift that has brought them down to the basement. As the fight continues, one of the gang tries to abduct Betty in the lift, but when a power board is damaged it sends the lift hurtling upwards out of control.

vlcsnap-00001

Chapter two in the series can be fairly accurately described as filler. With Professor Houston and his radium machine having been taken, Mandrake has the flimsiest of clues to follow and both encounters with the Wasp’s men leads to a fight – with all the usual flailing fists and poorly executed rough and tumble. It’s the first chapter where Kikume gets involved in the fisticuffs, or rather his very obvious stunt “double” does; it’s fun to see Lothar transform from portly middle-aged man to a youthful, slimmer version with more physical dexterity.

There’s a brief car chase that was obviously filmed on a deserted studio lot, and the Wasp continues to give his orders via a giant TV screen, relaying information that points suspiciously to his identity being one of three people involved in helping Mandrake. It’s already easy to guess who it is, but that’s part of the fun, and keeps things interesting, seeing how long it will be before the Wasp’s true identity will be revealed. What the casual viewer might also be waiting for is the point at which Betty and her brother Tommy show any real concern about their father’s abduction, instead of being blithely reassured by Mandrake that he’ll be all right.

Rating: 5/10 – while not advancing the storyline in any way, and dialling down the peril, Chapter 2: Trap of the Wasp still has plenty of energy and vigour; a stepping stone then to the next chapter, which from the advanced trail, looks much more exciting.

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Into the Woods (2014)

12 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Anna Kendrick, Cinderella, Drama, Emily Blunt, Fairy tales, Jack and the Beanstalk, James Corden, Johnny Depp, Little Red Riding Hood, Meryl Streep, Musical, Prince Charming, Rapunzel, Review, Rob Marshall, Stephen Sondheim, Witch

Into the Woods

D: Rob Marshall / 125m

Cast: Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Lilla Crawford, Daniel Huttlestone, Tracey Ullman, Johnny Depp, Christine Baranski, Tammy Blanchard, Lucy Punch, Mackenzie Mauzy, Billy Magnussen, Simon Russell Beale, Joanna Riding

In a fairy tale world, a baker (Corden) and his wife (Blunt) are longing for a child, while Cinderella (Kendrick) wishes she could find a way out of the endless drudgery that constitutes living with her wicked stepmother (Baranski) and her two horrible daughters, Florinda (Blanchard) and Lucinda (Punch). Nearby, Jack (Huttlestone) and his mother (Ullman) wish for their fortunes to improve, and Rapunzel (Mauzy) spends time with her prince (Magnussen) against the wishes of her “mother”. All these characters wish for better lives, and all of them find ways to achieve what they want – but not in the ways they expect.

The baker and his wife are informed by their neighbour, a witch (Streep), that she placed a curse on his family line after his father stole from her garden (including some beans). But if they can find a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold then the curse can be lifted in three nights’ time when there is a blue moon. They meet Jack who is on his way to market to sell his cow and buy it from him for a handful of beans the baker has found in his father’s coat. Meanwhile, Little Red Riding Hood (Crawford) encounters the Wolf (Depp) who takes her grandmother’s place. The baker saves her and as a reward, gives him her cape.

Jack returns home with the beans but his mother is angry with him and throws the beans on the ground. Cinderella attends the Festival at the castle of the Prince (Pine) and he becomes besotted by her. She leaves at midnight and meets the baker’s wife, but the baker’s wife doesn’t realise until too late about Cinderella’s golden shoes. The next day, a giant beanstalk has grown in Jack’s garden; he climbs it and returns with five gold coins that he uses to buy back his cow. But the baker’s wife has lost it in the woods. However, she overhears the two princes talking about the women they love and she learns about Rapunzel and her golden hair. She takes some of the hair and by chance she and her husband find the cow. That night she tries to wrest a shoe from Cinderella as she flees the castle again but fails. The next day, a giant descends the beanstalk after Jack steals a golden harp from him; Jack chops down the beanstalk and the giant falls to his death.

With just the one item to procure, the baker’s wife intercepts Cinderella on her return from the castle. She offers her a bean in return for a shoe but Cinderella declines the offer and the bean is discarded on the ground. Instead the baker’s wife offers her own shoes as trade, and Cinderella’s shoe is hers. With all four items collected, and after a couple of minor problems are solved, the witch removes the curse. The baker’s wife falls pregnant, and Cinderella and her Prince are finally united. But on the day of their marriage, their happy-ever-after future is shattered by the arrival of the giant’s wife who has travelled down the second beanstalk and means to destroy everything unless the person who killed her husband is handed over.

INTO THE WOODS

A conflation of well-known fairy tales blended together in a wraparound story that allows them to occur concurrently, Into the Woods is, superficially at least, a cleverly devised adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s original musical. With a screenplay by Lapine, and with changes and song omissions fully sanctioned by Sondheim himself, you could be forgiven for thinking that the movie is in safe hands. It has a great cast – most of whom have a proven track record with musicals – an Oscar-winning director at the helm (along with an Oscar-winning cinematographer, costume designer, and production designer), and a high recognition factor to boot. It’s well-staged, has a great deal of charm, and is often knowingly funny. But with all that, Into the Woods is a disappointing adaptation that badly loses its way once the curse is lifted and Cinderella marries her prince.

The movie’s problems are threefold. The first is that it’s curiously uninvolving, with none of the characters really making much of an impact. The witch (played with gusto by Streep) is too sympathetic to be truly threatening or frightening, while the baker and his wife appear at odds with each other on too many occasions for the viewer to be convinced they’d make good parents in the first place (at least the baker realises this about himself). Cinderella keeps running away from her prince, but without the usual stipulation of her magical transformation expiring at midnight, she loses all credibility for her actions. Little Red Riding Hood is the kind of precocious brat you hope does get eaten by the Wolf, Jack doesn’t appear to have two brain cells to rub together (‘magic” beans for a cow – even in the original story, really?), the Wolf is more creepy uncle than woodland predator, and the Prince is shallower than a puddle (though he is self-aware: as he tells the baker’s wife, “I was made to be charming, not sincere”).

The second problem is that with so much to fit in, the movie becomes more and more congested and strangely repetitive at the same time. The baker and his wife have the same argument at least twice, as does the baker and Jack, as does Jack and his mother. The same encounters happen in the woods over and over, but mostly to drive the narrative forward to the next musical interlude or the acquisition of the next object. Nothing seems to happen organically; it’s like a fairy tale greatest hits movie with songs. As a result of all this cramming, some storylines and characters are given less screen time than others, particularly Rapunzel who’s only in the movie to provide one of the minor problems mentioned when the curse is lifted (and whose hair grows back remarkably quickly after the baker’s wife cuts it off).

And lastly there’s the whole structure and content of the movie’s second half, with the notion of “happily ever after” quashed completely. After a first half that was at least intriguing to see how all the stories would intertwine, Into the Woods becomes a different movie altogether as the implications of past decisions make themselves felt, and a huge helping of regret all round is the order of the day. It’s a darker half to be sure, and it shows some characters making some uncharacteristic decisions and acting on impulses that previously weren’t part of their make up. Whatever the reason for this darker, gloomier conclusion it doesn’t work, and the songs reflect this, becoming more introspective and melancholic. And what few attempts there are to leaven the gloom with humour, fall flat on their respective faces. It’s a struggle to get through, and any viewer who does should reward themselves at the end of it.

At the helm, Marshall shows a distinctly uncertain approach to the material, his usual sure-footedness missing here and leading to scenes that don’t have the impact they should have, and songs that lose their way in the staging. It’s a movie that struggles to find its own identity, and despite the obvious talent involved, rarely hits the mark. Of the cast, Streep and Crawford come off best, though Ullman runs them a close third (and seems to understand the requirements of the material better than most). Pine is miscast, while Corden seems to be taking part in another movie altogether, and Kendrick looks embarrassed throughout. Depp plays the Wolf like a character from a Tex Avery cartoon, Blunt is earnest and bland, and Huttlestone dashes about to little effect. It’s a cast that’s pulling in different directions and rarely meeting in the middle.

The look of the movie is heavily stylised, which leads to the forest scenes becoming an awkward mix of location photography and interiors, and the Prince’s castle looking like two thirds of it has been created (and with a cursory attention to detail) in a computer. And there’s an incredibly strange moment when Little Red Riding Hood, having been eaten by the Wolf, finds herself in his stomach, a stomach that is represented as a room overrun by drapes (even on the floor). Why? Who knows. But it sums up the movie completely: unfocused and with too many questions left unanswered.

Rating: 4/10 – a movie that proves that pedigree is no guarantee of excellence – or even mediocrity at times – Into the Woods is a mish-mash of familiar fairy tales and post-modern deconstruction that never gels; sporadically entertaining, marginally successful, it’s a movie that’s difficult to take seriously, especially when the characters end up being menaced by Miss Jones from Rising Damp.

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The Imitation Game (2014)

11 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

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Alan Turing, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bletchley Park, Christopher, Code breaking, Drama, Enigma, History, Homosexuality, Joan Clarke, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Morten Tyldum, Review, True story, World War II

Imitation Game, The

D: Morten Tyldum / 114m

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, Charles Dance, Mark Strong, James Northcote, Tom Goodman-Hill, Steven Waddington, Alex Lawther, Jack Bannon, Tuppence Middleton

Manchester, 1951. A robbery at the home of maths professor Alan Turing (Cumberbatch) leads to the police, particularly Detective Robert Nock (Kinnear), having suspicions that he is hiding something.

1939. Turing arrives for a job interview at Bletchley Park. He is aloof, humourless, arrogant, and quickly stirs the ire of his interviewer, Naval Commander Denniston (Dance). On the verge of being thrown out because of his behaviour, Turing mentions Enigma, the “unbreakable” encryption device being used by the Germans; if it can be cracked, it will turn the tide of the war in Britain’s favour. Impressed, but still against his better judgment, Denniston hires Turing. He becomes part of a team that is headed by chess prodigy Hugh Alexander (Goode), and includes cryptographers John Cairncross (Leech) and Peter Hilton (Beard), though there is friction from the start as Turing prefers to work alone; instead of trying to decipher the hundreds of messages they intercept each day in the hope of breaking the code, Turing works at constructing a machine that will be able to analyse and decode the 159 million million million possible settings the Enigma machine uses.

Denied the funds to build his machine by Alexander, Turing approaches Denniston but is rebuffed. He gets a letter to Winston Churchill via MI6 overseer Stewart Menzies (Strong) and ends up in charge of the programme at Bletchley Park. He fires part of the team but then realises they need more staff. He has a difficult crossword puzzle published in the newspapers; anyone who solves it is asked to attend a further test/interview at Bletchley. Through this he meets Joan Clarke (Knightley), who proves to be a match for him intellectually, and despite some resistance from her parents, he arranges for her to work on the project.

1951. Nock gains a copy of Turing’s military file, only to find there’s nothing in it. He tells his superior, Superintendent Smith (Waddington) that he believes Turing could be a Communist spy. Smith allows Nock to investigate further.

1940. Turing arrives at the hut the team uses to find Denniston and some MPs going through his desk. Apparently there is a spy at Bletchley, but the search reveals nothing out of the ordinary, though Denniston makes it clear his suspicions lie firmly with Turing. Tensions between the group are heightened as Turing spends more and more time building his machine and isolating himself. Joan tells him he needs to be more friendly otherwise he won’t get the help he needs. He does so, and a little while later receives a suggestion from Alexander that is beneficial. A confrontation between Turing and Denniston leads to the rest of the team backing him and his machine (against the threat of being fired); Denniston tells them they have a month to prove it works.

With the month nearly up and no progress made with the machine (named Christopher after Turing’s schoolboy friend), Turing finds himself talking to Helen (Middleton), one of Joan’s friends, and someone who intercepts the German messages. She reveals that her German counterpart always uses the same phrase in their messages. It proves to be the breakthrough Turing and the team have needed. Now, instead of searching through all the possible settings, Christopher only has to search for ones that contain words that they know will be in the messages. They test their theory… and it works. But that isn’t the end of it, and a terrible decision has to be made. And in 1951, Nock discovers that what Turing is trying to hide isn’t that he’s a Communist spy, but that he’s a homosexual.

Imitation Game, The - scene1

There are two things that can be said about Alan Turing: that without him the Germans could well have won the war, and the circumstances of his post-war life led to a terrible tragedy. It’s to The Imitation Game‘s credit that it explores these aspects of his life with both candour and a lack of sentimentality. Exploring for the most part his work at Bletchley Park, the movie doesn’t ignore his formative years, nor the events that led to his untimely death in 1954, but its the way in which each part of his life is integrated that makes the movie so effective. The different periods dovetail with precision, Graham Moore’s intelligent, well-constructed screenplay – albeit one that contains a great deal of invention (the character of Nock and his investigation for example) – picking out the highs and lows of Turing’s life with exemplary attention to detail.

The importance of Turing’s work during the war can’t be stressed enough; historians have gauged that breaking the Enigma code shortened the war by at least two years. The size of the problem, the sheer enormity of it all, is given due importance, and the various setbacks add to the tension, but it’s the movie’s focus on Turing and his team that adds immeasurably to the drama. Turing is portrayed as an arrogant boor, dismissive of anyone less intelligent than himself (and that’s most people), and so single-minded in his pursuit of a solution to the Enigma code that his arrogance increases tenfold. His interaction with Alexander is initially antagonistic, but the growing respect they gain for each other is handled with care and sincerity, and brings Turing out of his shell. As well there’s his relationship with Joan, as unlikely a collaboration as could be imagined during the war, but as richly rewarding for each other as it is for the viewer (and beautifully played by Cumberbatch and Knightley).

Turing is brought to life by an amazing performance from Cumberbatch, immersing himself completely in the role and proving mesmerising to watch. Moore’s script allows for a lot of humour in the movie’s early scenes, mostly at the expense of Turing’s humourlessness (and Denniston’s apprehension at his behaviour). Both actors relish their sharp, witty dialogue, and while it all helps to make Turing more sympathetic than he would be otherwise, it also serves to introduce the Enigma project in such a way that the seriousness of the situation, when it becomes more pronounced, doesn’t leave the audience missing the humour. And the drama reaches a peak in a scene where the terrible consequences of cracking the code means a heart-rending decision has to be made that affects Hilton’s brother. It’s a chilling moment, with victory swiftly replaced by despair, and perfectly highlights some of the difficult decisions that have to be made during wartime.

In terms of biographical continuity, the movie flits between 1926, the war and 1951. Turing’s time at Sherborne School, where his friendship with Christopher Morcom leads to the first intimation of his homosexuality, is given weight by the later use of “Christopher” as the name of the code-breaking machine. It also paints a rather amiable picture of boarding school life and shows the younger Turing struggling to come to terms with his own emotions and the love he feels for his friend. These scenes are the equivalent of the kind of rosy childhood memories we all think we experienced but which in actuality were probably worse than we remember, but they serve as a way of showing how disappointment and regret have allowed the older Turing to become so haughty and withdrawn. The post-war sequences, almost entirely invented for the movie, give a passing hint at how Turing may have died but then states at the end that he committed suicide, which was the official cause of death at the time, but which has since been revealed to be not entirely conclusive.

It’s these distortions and fabrications of the historical period that, inevitably, do the most harm to the movie, and while a degree of dramatic licence is to be expected in a drama “based” on true events, the range and number of historical inaccuracies is worrying.  In truth, Turing was not as disliked as the movie shows, and he did have a recognised sense of humour. He didn’t lead the team at Bletchley Park, nor did he write a letter to Churchill asking for funds to build his machine (which in reality had already been designed in 1938 by Marian Rejewski, a Polish cryptographer). Clarke’s involvement was not as pronounced as shown in the movie, and Hilton had no brother, while the character of Helen is entirely fictional too. It’s understandable that these aspects of Moore’s script are there to enhance the drama, but when you have a true story of wartime heroics to tell, the need for such embellishments – or falsehoods if you will – seems unnecessary. And Turing’s homosexuality, while not overplayed, is treated somewhat like an unfortunate character trait, with everyone at Bletchley aware of it but ever so respectful at the same time – one wonders if that would really have been the case.

Imitation Game, The - scene3

Despite issues with the script, the cast are uniformly excellent. As mentioned above, Cumberbatch is mesmerising, portraying Turing’s strength of will and sense of purpose with such skill and confidence that the character’s quirks and odd physicality seem entirely natural. He dominates every scene he’s in, causing his co-stars to up their game considerably; as a result The Imitation Game contains a raft of performances that are so good it may well be the best acted movie of 2014. Knightley is appealing as Joan (even if she bears no resemblance to the real Joan Clarke), and plays her with a determination and inner strength that matches Turing’s irascibility and overcomes it. Goode, Leech and Beard, as Turing’s main collaborators, all get their chance to shine but it’s their group scenes and their interaction with each other that work best. Kinnear has an awkward role that he copes well with, as a detective representing our modern approach to the adversity that Turing suffered after the war; it’s the one role that doesn’t entirely convince and seems shoehorned into the movie to make the point about how badly Turing – a war hero – was treated after hostilities ceased. And Dance and Strong, as the twin faces of the Establishment, provide effortless support throughout (as you’d expect).

Fresh from his adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters (2011), Tyldum displays an appreciation for recent British history, and handles the complexities of the story in such a way that nothing seems too intellectual to understand. He keeps the action very contained, focusing instead on the characters and their personalities, showing how people from often very different backgrounds could, and did, make such a vital difference in how the war was eventually won. The various periods of Turing’s are recreated with admirable authenticity (some wartime scenes were actually shot at Bletchley Park), and are lensed to very good effect by Oscar Faura. There’s also a subtly evocative score by Alexandre Desplat that enriches each scene it plays over or supports.

Rating: 9/10 – despite taking a huge number of historical liberties, The Imitation Game is gripping, thought-provoking, ambitious movie making, and one of the finest dramas of recent years; with stellar performances from all concerned – including Cumberbatch’s career-defining turn – this (mostly) true story scales new heights in the genre of historical drama, and can’t be recommended highly enough.

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The Red Balloon (1956)

10 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Albert Lamorisse, Belleville, Blue balloon, Drama, French movie, Magical realism, Ménilmontant, Paris, Pascal Lamorisse, Red balloon, Review, Short film

Red Balloon, The

Original title: Le ballon rouge

D: Albert Lamorisse / 34m

Cast: Pascal Lamorisse, Georges Sellier, Wladimir Popov, Paul Perey, Sabine Lamorisse, Michel Pezin

On his way to school one morning, a little boy, Pascal (Lamorisse), finds a red balloon tied to a railing. He takes it with him to school where he asks the caretaker to look after it for him until classes are over. The boy then takes the balloon home with him, but his mother releases it out of the window. However, instead of floating away, the balloon (which seems to have a mind of its own) merely hovers outside the window where the boy can see it.

The next morning Pascal calls to the balloon and it follows him as he heads off to school. He makes several attempts to grab the balloon but it keeps itself just out of reach. At school the balloon manages to get into his classroom which causes an uproar and the principal locks Pascal in his office; the balloon meanwhile has floated off. Reunited at the end of the school day, Pascal and the balloon head home, and encounter a little girl (Sabine Lamorisse) who has a blue balloon. The blue balloon reacts in a similar way to the red one, and follows Pascal until he can elude it. But then he encounters a group of boys who, urged on by jealousy, chase Pascal and try to destroy the red balloon.

Red Balloon, The - scene

A simple yet wonderfully filmed piece of magical realism, The Red Balloon is a movie that appeals to the child in all of us. Made in the post-war Belleville area of Paris, the movie serves as a record of the area during the Fifties before it was torn down and redeveloped. As Pascal travels from home to school and back again, the often austere backgrounds serve to highlight the enchanting nature of the story and the unlikely possibility of a red balloon with a mind of its own. It’s a tribute to Lamorisse’s vision though, that the balloon doesn’t feel out of place, even when you can clearly see various Parisians reacting to it with amusement and surprise.

Whimsical it may be, but the movie is also a poignant reminder of the innocence of youth and the power of the imagination. Pascal represents the inner child we all cling on to as adults, his acceptance of the balloon as natural as breathing. Seeing him being followed by the balloon and stopping every now and then to try and catch it is like seeing two friends playing a game together. It’s carefree and irreproachable, a gentle yet effective expression of the simple joys childhood can bring when everything around us excites our curiosity. It’s also no surprise that Pascal’s headmaster doesn’t view it in the same way, punishing him for what he sees as insubordination instead of youthful exuberance. Lamorisse is saying – quite rightly – that we should hold on to as much of that youthful exuberance as we can as adults; otherwise, how terrible will our lives become?

With the introduction of the gang (which leads to the balloon’s ultimate fate), the tale darkens, but necessarily so. Lamorisse is clever enough to realise that the innocence of youth doesn’t always last, and that some children lose it sooner than others. The gang are youth corrupted, their mean-spirited actions and envious behaviour the flipside to Pascal’s purity of mind and heart. They want to destroy the red balloon out of malicious spite, to see Pascal as defrauded of his decency as much as they have been. It’s one of Life’s hard lessons, that not everyone is as nice as you’d like them to be. And for a child like Pascal it’s possibly the hardest lesson to learn.

Lamorisse isn’t prepared to leave Pascal downhearted and dejected, though. As if further proof were needed that there is indeed magic – real magic – in the world, Pascal is given succour in such a wonderful, compassionate way that the movie’s conclusion gives the viewer no option but to grin with shared happiness (and maybe shed a tear or two as well). It’s one of the most uplifting endings to a movie ever, and a perfect finale for a tale that is honest and affecting throughout.

The Red Balloon carries such an emotional charge in its short running time that at times it’s hard to reconcile its faux-documentary presentation with the lyricism it displays at every turn. It’s a fascinating mix, and a spectacular achievement by Lamorisse that is a potent now as it was when it was first released. Belleville is filmed with such a candid eye for the decay of its surroundings that the area is almost a secondary character in itself, and Edmond Séchan’s photography is striking and evocative in equal measure.

Red Balloon, The - scene2

But all this, finally, is underpinned by a sincere, genuine performance by Lamorisse’s son, Pascal. There’s a moment where he’s looking up at the balloon as it floats away from him. His gaze is querulous but unperturbed, as if he can’t quite work out why the balloon is behaving the way it is, but isn’t worried in the least that it won’t return to him. It’s like he’s trying to decipher the inner workings of the balloon’s “mind’ or the mechanics of the game they’re playing. It’s a peaceful moment of natural reflection that Pascal carries off as if he’s not even trying – he’s that good.

Rating: 9/10 – a sublime piece of movie making that warms the heart and reminds us what it is to be young and without a care in the world, The Red Balloon is a jewel to be treasured with every viewing; heartfelt, touching and inspirational, this is a bona fide classic that shouldn’t be missed.

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10 Reasons to Remember Rod Taylor (1930-2015)

10 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Actor, Australian, Movies, Rod Taylor

An Australian actor with rugged good looks and a surfeit of roguish charm, Rod Taylor was an actor whose big screen outings displayed a raw energy, and a willingness to take risks, both in his choice of roles and (sometimes) in his choice of movies. He came to the US in the early Fifties and soon made a name for himself as a supporting actor in a variety of well-received movies – Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), The Catered Affair (1956), Giant (1956) and Raintree County (1957).

However, it was a science fiction adaptation of an H.G. Wells novel that brought him international stardom, and throughout the Sixties he made a number of highly regarded movies that helped maintain that stardom. If the Seventies saw him slowly drop out of the spotlight, Taylor still put in good performances even when the projects didn’t match his level of commitment (it would have been interesting to see how his career would have continued if he hadn’t lost the lead in Planet of the Apes (1968) to Charlton Heston). With an unexpected appearance as Winston Churchill in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) – he’d retired completely from acting at that point – to round off his career, Taylor has left us a raft of indelible performances that still have the power to entertain, and leaves behind a strength and an integrity few other actors of his generation could match.

Rod Taylor 1

1 – The Time Machine (1960)

2 – 101 Dalmatians (1961)

3 – The Birds (1963)

4 – Sunday in New York (1963)

5 – Young Cassidy (1965)

6 – The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

7 – Hotel (1967)

8 – Zabriskie Point (1970)

9 – The Train Robbers (1973)

10 – The Picture Show Man (1977)

Rod Taylor 2

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Big Hero 6 (2014)

09 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Animation, Baymax, Chris Williams, Disney, Don Hall, Hiro, Hiro Hamada, Kabuki mask, Marvel, Microbots, Professor Callaghan, Robot, Ryan Potter, San Fransokyo, Scott Adsit, Superheroes

Big Hero 6

D: Don Hall, Chris Williams / 102m

Cast: Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter, Daniel Henney, T.J. Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans Jr, Genesis Rodriguez, James Cromwell, Alan Tudyk, Maya Rudolph

Hiro Hamada (Potter) is a fourteen year old orphan living with his brother Tadashi (Henney) and aunt Cass (Rudolph) in San Fransokyo. He’s a precocious teenager, a genius with robotics who takes part in underground robot fights (and gets himself into trouble). Tadashi believes Hiro is wasting his time and talents, and takes him to the robotics lab at the university he attends. Hiro meets his brother’s friends, Go Go (Chung), Wasabi (Wayans Jr), Honey Lemon (Rodriguez) and Fred (Miller). Tadashi also introduces him to his own special project, a robot called Baymax who provides personal healthcare. Seeing the inventive projects they are all working on, Hiro becomes committed to enrolling at the university.

Hiro works on a project that he can use to apply, and comes up with microbots, tiny robots that can be connected in any way possible via the use of a neural sensor (basically a headband that reads a person’s thoughts and communicates them to the microbots). The head of the robotics department, Professor Callaghan (Cromwell) is sufficiently impressed to offer Hiro a place at the university. Also interested in the microbots is businessman Alistair Krei (Tudyk), but at the urging of Professor Callaghan – who dislikes Krei intensely – Hiro declines his offer to buy the microbots and make a fortune. Later, a fire breaks out at the university; Callaghan is trapped inside and Tadashi rushes in to rescue him. Hiro can only stand by and watch as the building explodes, killing both his brother and Callaghan.

Hiro retreats from daily life. One day he accidentally injures himself. This causes Baymax to activate and try to help Hiro. At the same time, one of Hiro’s microbots comes to life; they soon realise it’s trying to unite with the other microbots, but they should all have been destroyed in the university fire. They follow the microbot to an abandoned warehouse where they discover that someone is mass producing the microbots. Confronted by a man in a kabuki mask who uses the microbots to attack them, Hiro and Baymax manage to escape but not before Hiro realises his project is going to be used for evil purposes.

Hiro upgrades Baymax to be able to fight and equips him with body armour. They track  the microbots to the docks where they encounter the masked man. Before Hiro can instruct Baymax to attack him, Tadashi’s friends all turn up; a chase ensues in which the masked man attempts to kill all of them. They manage to avoid being killed and head for Fred’s palatial home where Fred tells them he believes Krei is the man behind the mask and the theft of the microbots (and the deaths of Tadashi and Professor Callaghan). They use Baymax’s sensors to locate Krei and, kitted out in costumes that allow them to act as superheroes, head for an island off the coast where they discover an abandoned facility that contains the remains of a machine that they further learn was used as a teleportation device. And then the masked man appears, and attacks them all…

Big Hero 6 - scene

Watching Big Hero 6 – especially if you’re a Disney executive – is a reassuring experience. In the same year that Marvel took a chance on one of their lesser known titles (something called Guardians of the Galaxy), the House of Mouse also took a chance on releasing another Marvel adaptation, a comic book property that had an even lower profile than Star Lord and his pals. The result is a funny, exciting, refreshing, beautifully rendered, heartwarming tale that introduces audiences to one of the most lovable animated characters in recent memory: a rotund primary care robot called Baymax.

It’s a recognisably Disney movie. There’s the standard emphasis on family bonds and the importance of friendships, as well as doing the right thing, but it’s a Disney movie that’s been meshed with the standard tropes of a Marvel origin story, its action heroics and in-house maxim “with great power comes great responsibility” adding an extra layer to the emotional content that makes it more affecting than expected. Given free rein by Marvel to adapt Big Hero 6 in whatever way they saw fit, directors Hall and Williams and screenwriters Jordan Roberts, Dan Gerson and Robert L. Baird have created a movie that is a model of consistent, gratifying entertainment.

Of course, Big Hero 6 would be nothing without Baymax, an irresistibly charming, sweet-natured character who melts the heart and warms it at the same time. He’s a brilliant creation, a soft, cuddly vinyl-formed teddy bear whose personality chip is completely in the right place (where his heart would be – coincidence?). Voiced to perfection by Adsit, Baymax is the kind of friend we’d all love to have: solicitous, kindly, generous, selfless, supportive, and always there for us (it would be a hard heart indeed that didn’t fall in love with him at first sight).

With Baymax proving to be such a wonderful character it wouldn’t have been a surprise to find Hiro lacking in appeal by comparison, but thanks to the very cleverly assembled script, Hiro is as immediately likeable as Baymax is, his scamming at the opening robot fight proving to be a great introduction to a character the viewer can both identify and sympathise with throughout, even when his thirst for revenge for the death of Tadashi threatens to overwhelm his sense of right and wrong. And he’s not as self-centred as most fourteen year olds, having a refreshingly sincere relationship with both his brother and his aunt. And even more refreshingly, the script avoids any notion that Baymax is a replacement for Tadashi; the lovable lug, ultimately, is more than that, fulfilling the roles of brother, friend, and father.

What’s also refreshing is the fact that the villain actually has a good reason for stealing Hiro’s microbots and replicating them. When this reason is revealed it adds yet another emotional layer to the storyline, as well as an unexpected sadness that is amplified by highlighting how much the villain and Hiro have in common. It’s a neat twist on the usual hero-villain relationship, and allows Big Hero 6 to be comprised of more than just the customary bad-guy-out-to-take-over-the-world-and-stopped-by-errant-genius scenario we’re so used to seeing.

The supporting characters are all endearing in their own ways, with Miller’s Fred proving especially likeable (stay til after the end credits for a great “reveal” relating to his dad), and Wayans Jr’s Wasabi often very funny as the constantly risk assessing member of the group. The voice cast are all excellent, with special mention going to Potter and Henney who make their scenes together genuinely touching, and Adsit once more for making Baymax so appealing and irresistible.

Big Hero 6 - scene2

As for the animation, the use of new technology means that Big Hero 6 is possibly one of the most beautifully animated movies so far. There’s also a level of detail that is absolutely breathtaking, notably in the scenes that take place on the streets of San Fransokyo. The mix of Eastern and Western cultures is a joy to behold, and very cleverly assimilated, providing a rich visual palette that can be enjoyed time and time again. The character designs are also impressive, with a welcome reduction on the size of the eyes that has hampered the design of so many previous animated characters. And the use of a kabuki mask makes the villain truly intimidating and menacing, augmenting the threat he presents and making him look creepy as well.

With Hall and Williams showing an obvious command of the material, and choosing not to set this in another corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the viewer is free to enjoy the movie for what it is and not where it might fit in to any future Marvel outings. With this potential aspect removed, Big Hero 6 is free to be delightful and entertaining on every level it aims for.

Rating: 9/10 – a winner, pure and simple, continually inventive and captivating in equal measure; Big Hero 6 is yet another triumph from Disney, and is – probably – one of the most visually ravishing, heartwarming animated movies you’re likely to see in this or any year.

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Dumb and Dumber To (2014)

08 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Adopted daughter, Comedy, Harry Dunne, Jeff Daniels, Jim Carrey, KEN conference, Kidney transplant, Lloyd Christmas, Review, Rob Riggle, Sequel, The Farrelly Brothers

Dumb and Dumber To

D: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly / 109m

Cast: Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle, Laurie Holden, Rachel Melvin, Kathleen Turner, Steve Tom, Don Lake, Patricia French, Brady Bluhm, Tembi Locke

Ever since his failed romance with “Mary Samsonite”, Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) has been in a mental institution where he appears to be in a persistent vegetative state. Visited two or three times every week by his best friend, Harry Dunne (Daniels), Lloyd eventually reveals he’s okay and that he’s been playing an elaborate prank on Harry the whole time. Back at their old apartment, Harry tells Lloyd he needs a kidney transplant soon or he’ll die. They visit Harry’s parents in the hope one of them will be a donor, but Harry learns he was adopted. As they leave, Harry is given all the mail that’s been piling up since he moved out; amongst it all is a twenty-two year old postcard from Fraida Felcher (Turner) telling Harry she’s pregnant and to call her.

The duo track Fraida down and she reveals she had a daughter she named Fanny (Melvin) who she gave up for adoption. She also tells them she’s written to her but the letter was returned with a request not to try and contact Penny (her adopted name) ever again. Undeterred by this, Lloyd and Harry determine to find Penny and save Harry’s life. They travel to Maryland where Penny lives with her adoptive parents, famed scientist Bernard Pinchelow (Tom) and his wife Adele (Holden). Unfortunately, they just miss her, as Penny has gone to El Paso to represent her father at a KEN conference, but she’s forgotten to take a special gift for the conference’s organiser that Pinchelow says will be of major benefit to everyone worldwide.

Lloyd and Harry – accompanied by Travis (Riggle), the Pinchelow’s housekeeper – take the gift and head to El Paso. What they don’t know is that Travis is having an affair with Adele, and that they’re plotting to kill Pinchelow; they’re also looking to steal the gift and make millions from it. Along the way, Travis attempts to kill Lloyd and Harry but is thwarted by a freight train and killed. Harry and Lloyd continue on to El Paso, while Adele learns of Travis’s demise from his twin brother (Riggle); he agrees to help her with her plan.

At the conference, Harry is mistaken for Pinchelow and gains admittance, telling the organisers that Lloyd is a colleague. But when Lloyd lets slip that he’s attracted to Penny, Lloyd has him thrown out. Lloyd arranges a meeting with Penny and she reads the letter Fraida sent her; from it, Lloyd deduces that he is Penny’s father and not Lloyd. Penny leaves to get back to the convention, but Adele and Travis’s brother are there as well, and so is Fraida. It all leads to a showdown in a bathroom that sees Lloyd reappear having made the most generous gesture of his life.

Dumb and Dumber To - scene

How do you follow a cult favourite twenty years on? Do you keep to the same formula that made the first movie so successful, or do you try another approach with the same characters and hope it’s not too jarring for fans? Well, if you’re the Farrelly Brothers and you’ve got Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels back on board, the weight of expectations can only lead to one answer: give ’em more of the same.

Dumb and Dumber To was always going to be a sequel that critics would have little time for, but the Farrellys, aided by their committed stars, have come up with a movie that honours the first one without entirely sullying its reputation. True, the plot is unsophisticated (not that the first movie’s was any more original or complex), and the humour is broad, puerile and often farcical, but this is a concept that lives or dies not by its content but its willingness to be as relentlessly silly as possible. And silly it is – unremittingly, gloriously, stupidly silly.

Leaving restraint at the door, the tone is set by Harry’s attempt to remove Lloyd’s catheter, an uncomfortably wrong moment that encapsulates the Farrellys approach to both Lloyd and Harry, and the movie as a whole – nothing is too out there. After almost twenty-five years of cinematic gross-out humour it’s got to be difficult to push that particular envelope but there are moments of inspiration that more than make up for the banality of the plot and the supporting cast’s perfunctory acting. The catheter joke gives way to a series of sight gags and one liners that are effortlessly sold by Carrey and Daniels, and it’s clear that the two actors are having a whale of a time, their efforts at raising laughs proving infectious. Carrey, an actor whose facial gurning was overplayed during the Nineties, brings that particular skill back to the big screen and reminds us just how talented he is when “silly” is a movie’s prime objective. But it’s Daniels who steals the show, his big rubbery face the perfect foil for Carrey’s sharp-edged contortions. Daniels is lovable in a way that Carrey can’t be because of the way the characters are written, and he takes full advantage, making Harry not only funnier to watch, but more endearing as well.

There are, inevitably, problems with the script – Lloyd’s selfless gesture involves a trip to Mexico he couldn’t possibly have made, references to the first movie are crammed in for no other reason than to have them there, the conference scenes are not as sharp as they could have been – but it’s the laughs that count, and the Farrellys deliver when it matters, including (for this reviewer) a brilliant moment when Lloyd and Harry think they’ve reached Penny’s home in Maryland (and if you ever end up in a situation where Lloyd is offering you goji berries, just don’t, okay?). The movie also runs around  ten minutes too long and some scenes could have done with some more judicious editing, but on the whole, this is much better than you might expect.

Rating: 7/10 – not the travesty some critics would have you believe, Dumb and Dumber To ends with an advert for Dumb and Dumber For (in 2034); if we do get to spend some more time with Lloyd and Harry, and it’s up to the standard of this outing, then 2034 can’t come round soon enough.

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The Woman in Black: Angel of Death (2014)

07 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Crythin Gifford, Drama, Eel Marsh House, Evacuees, Haunting, Helen McCrory, Horror, Jennet Humpfrye, Jeremy Irvine, Review, Sequel, Susan Hill, Thriller, Tom Harper, World War II

Woman in Black Angel of Death, The

D: Tom Harper / 98m

Cast: Phoebe Fox, Jeremy Irvine, Helen McCrory, Oaklee Prendergast, Adrian Rawlins, Ned Dennehy, Amelia Crouch, Amelia Pidgeon, Casper Allpress, Pip Pearce, Leilah de Meza, Jude Wright, Alfie Simmons, Leanne Best

London, 1941. The Blitz has caused the evacuation of several schoolchildren along with their headmistress, Jean Hogg (McCrory) and their teacher, Eve Parkins (Fox). As they take the train to their destination of Crythin Gifford, Eve shares a compartment with RAF pilot Harry Burnstow who is on his way to a new posting at a nearby airfield. Met by local air raid warden Dr Rhodes (Rawlins), he takes them through the now deserted village where the bus has a puncture. While it’s repaired, Eve encounters a blind man, Jacob (Dennehy) who warns her that she and the children will never escape “her”.

At Eel Marsh House, the two women and their charges settle in. Eve has a bad dream that leads to her seeing a woman dressed all in black (Best). The figure vanishes, but the next day, one of the children, Edward (Prendergast), who has been mute since the death of his parents in an air raid, is locked in the nursery by two other children, and sees the woman in black. Afterwards, Edward carries a tattered doll around with him. That night, one of the boys who locked him in the nursery is led from the house by the woman in black; the next morning he’s found dead.

Another sighting of the woman in black in a graveyard leads Eve to discover her identity and the sad history of her child, Nathaniel. With Eve becoming even more convinced that they are all in danger, she battles to convince Jean that they should all leave as soon as possible. An air raid sees the woman in black claim another victim, and with the aid of Harry, they head for the airfield where he’s based. While they wait for the morning to come, Edward is spirited away back to Eel Marsh House. Eve refuses to leave him behind and makes her way back to rescue him.

Woman in Black Angel of Death, The - scene

Set forty years after the events of The Woman in Black (2012), this unnecessary sequel fails to match the quality and all-round scariness of its predecessor, and thanks to a badly constructed screenplay by Jon Croker, almost reduces its titular character to making little more than a cameo appearance.

The success of the original always meant there would be a sequel, and with the decision to set the new story during World War II it seemed as if the makers had come up with an idea that would avoid the usual horror sequel inanity that most follow ups suffer from. Alas, the wartime setting is the only good idea the makers have come up with, and the rest of the movie is as turgid and predictable and run-of-the-mill as any other horror sequel.

With the woman in black’s story told in the first movie, its resurrection here feels like padding in a movie that repeats various shots and sequences in an attempt to promote a sense of menace that never really pays off. Eve has the same nightmare over and over, and while it replays with different outcomes (including a bone-wearying appearance from you-know-who on one occasion), and serves to provide Eve with a back story of her own, the script’s intention for it to be as scary as what’s happening in Eel Marsh House never pans out. Likewise, the oft-repeated shot looking upward at the hole in the ceiling above Edward’s bed – will we glimpse the woman in black there? – is played over and over and becomes tiresome in the extreme.

That a potential franchise has run out of steam so soon may not be surprising to some, but the strength of the original in comparison to this outing is too evident for any other analysis. As a main character, Eve is too blandly presented to have much of an impact, and the viewer has a tough time sympathising with her or her predicament, even when mad, blind Jacob has her temporarily imprisoned. The same goes for the character of Jean, the rationalist who denies the supernatural until it’s literally staring her in the face (and then is all nice and apologetic). Both Fox and McCrory are more than capable actresses, but even with their talents they’re unable to raise their performances above the level of perfunctory. Worse still is Harry, a character so unimaginatively drawn that Irvine is unable to add any colour or flesh him out to an extent that would make him more interesting.

As for Jennet Humpfrye herself, the movie places her firmly in the background, giving her less exposure and as a result, making her less menacing. As a supposedly single-minded, revenge-oriented character she’s remarkably relaxed in her efforts to kill the children placed so conveniently in her home (especially after forty years). And with the change in actress – Best taking over from Liz White – the look and design of the woman in black has been altered somewhat, with Jennet looking younger and less intimidating behind her veil. It’s a sign that not all’s well, that the movie’s primary source of scares and shocks is not as effectively rendered as before (and perhaps this is why we see so little of her, the makers realising how tame her appearance looks in comparison).

To make matters worse the interiors of Eel Marsh House are gloomily lit and make it difficult to see what’s going on when the action takes place at night, while the exteriors are equally bleak and forlorn. It’s all done for the sake of atmosphere but makes the movie an unappealing viewing experience nevertheless. Orchestrating it all, Harper forgets to imbue the movie with a sense of credible peril, and one jump scare aside, defaults on the terror as well. It all leads to an ending that is rushed and dramatically unsatisfactory, and reinforces the feeling that the makers could have done a whole lot better.

Rating: 4/10 – a movie that plays at being scary but doesn’t deliver, The Woman in Black: Angel of Death aims high but succeeds only in being mediocre; a poor effort by all concerned, and one that (hopefully) will discourage a further movie from being made.

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Mandrake, the Magician (1939) – Chapter 1: Shadow on the Wall

06 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Al Kikume, Columbia, Doris Weston, Drama, Lothar, Magician, Mandrake, Norman Deming, Platinite, Professor Houston, Radium machine, Review, Sam Nelson, Serial, The Wasp, Thriller, Warren Hull

Mandrake, the Magician

D: Sam Nelson, Norman Deming / 30m

Cast: Warren Hull, Doris Weston, Al Kikume, Rex Downing, Edward Earle, Forbes Murray, Kenneth MacDonald, Don Beddoe

Travelling back from the Orient aboard the S.S. Mohawk, Mandrake the Magician (Hull) receives a telegram from the daughter of Professor Houston (Murray). She’s worried due to his work on a radium machine that will be a huge benefit to humanity but which also has the capacity to be used for evil. Mandrake has been in Nepal searching for a rare metal called platinite that Houston needs for his invention; during his act, an attempt is made on his life by two henchmen of the master criminal known as the Wasp.

Reaching the US, Mandrake travels to Professor Houston’s California home by single seater plane (and survives a further attempt on his life when it’s tampered with). He meets up with Betty (Weston), the professor’s daughter. Meanwhile, the professor receives a threat from the Wasp. A demonstration of the radium machine reveals its potential for mass destruction, but Houston is encouraged to continue with his work. At the request of a friend of Mandrake’s, Dr Andre Bennett (Earle), Houston agrees to demonstrate the machine to a group of Bennett’s fellow physicians. However, when the time comes, Houston is kidnapped by the Wasp’s henchmen, and one of them takes Houston’s place. Mandrake realises this and a fight ensues, one that leads to the magician being in the firing line of the radium machine.

Mandrake the Magician - scene1

As an example of the kind of cliffhanger serial that studios big and small churned out through the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, Mandrake, the Magician is a fun, efficiently presented melodrama that features peril at every turn, poorly choreographed fisticuffs, and the kind of dialogue that’s one part exposition to two parts repetition to three parts baloney. It’s all done with a knowing sense of its own ridiculousness, but in many ways it’s all the better for it. Putting Mandrake in danger at least three times in the first episode sets the tone for the serial, and allows writers Joseph F. Poland, Basil Dickey and Ned Dandy (great names all) to indulge in all manner of unbelievable  scenarios, including a magic act that features an extended cup and balls routine (this from the world’s greatest magician), and the sight of Professor Houston donning protective clothing to demonstrate his machine while Mandrake and others merely take a step back.

Performance-wise, Hull is as debonair as a man who wears a top hat can be, while Weston has little to do other than look decorative. Kikume is kept in the background, Earle appears too late in the episode to make much of an impression, while MacDonald, as electronics expert Webster, takes an early lead in the who-is-the-Wasp-really? sweepstakes. Nelson and Deming direct with a flair that makes the episode fly by, and the sheer gung-ho spirit of the narrative makes for an enjoyable, leave-your-brain-at-the-door outing that promises much more of the same in the remaining eleven chapters.

Rating: 5/10 – rickety sets and a villain who remains masked while wearing a hat give Mandrake, the Magician a hokey, old-time feel that provokes good-natured amusement instead of disappointment; stirring stuff, and a reminder of when movie making was a lot more innocent and a lot less complicated.

NOTE: In keeping with its original presentation in 1939, the remaining chapters will be reviewed each in turn over the next eleven weeks.

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Still Alice (2014)

05 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Alec Baldwin, Alzheimers, Drama, Early onset Alzheimers, Julianne Moore, Kate Bosworth, Kristen Stewart, Lisa Genova, Literary adaptation, Memory loss, Review, Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland

Still Alice

D: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland / 101m

Cast: Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish, Shane McRae, Stephen Kunken

Alice Howland (Moore) is a respected linguistics professor at Columbia University. She has a loving husband, John (Baldwin), and three grown up children, Anna (Bosworth), Tom (Parrish), and Lydia (Stewart). Shortly after her fiftieth birthday she gives a lecture and forgets the word ‘lexicon’. She brushes it off but when she’s out running one day she reaches the campus and for one disorientating moment she has no idea where she is. She begins to see a neurologist (Kunken) and undergoes various tests. When it comes, the diagnosis is a shock: she has early onset Alzheimers. Further tests also reveal that it’s familial, and her children are at risk of carrying the recessive gene that causes it.

As expected, the news is a blow to Alice’s family, but she is determined to fight the disease for as long as she can. Her children have different reactions: Anna is tested and is positive; she and her husband, Charlie (McRae), are trying for a baby via an infertility clinic and need to know. Tom tests negative, while Lydia, who is a budding actress living on the West Coast and a bit of a free spirit, decides not to find out. But they and their father all do their best to support Alice as she comes to terms with what her life will become.

But the illness is aggressive, and Alice’s initial coping mechanisms of using her mobile phone to record information, and setting herself little memory tests, lose their effectiveness, and she begins to forget even more. Her awareness of the speed at which her illness is affecting her, leads Alice to record a video message advising her future self to commit suicide by taking a bottle of pills. One day, while she and John are at their beach house, she forgets where the bathroom is and wets herself. As she begins to forget more and more, she receives an invitation to speak at an Alzheimers convention. There she gives a moving description of the ways in which the disease is affecting her but also the ways in which she deals with it.

Alice’s deteriorating mental abilities become more and more obvious. When Lydia performs at a local theatre, Alice forgets her name when they meet up afterwards. And she becomes anxious when John receives an offer to work at the Mayo Clinic, which will mean moving. And then Alice discovers the video message she made earlier…

Still Alice - scene

Adapted from the novel by Lisa Genova, Still Alice is a gloomy, yet also affecting look at the debilitating effects of Alzheimers on an intelligent, academically respected individual, and her immediate family. It’s a straightforward, no frills movie that aims to pull no punches regarding the debilitating aspects of the disease, but can’t quite stop itself from trying to salvage a degree of personal triumph out of Alice’s dilemma. In fact, Still Alice tries so hard to make Alice’s fight against Alzheimers laudatory that it almost misses the tragedy that goes with it hand in hand.

In telling Alice’s story, writer/directors Gratzer and Westmoreland have resorted to charting the gradual effects of the disease by signposting them with often clumsy simplicity. First Alice forgets a word in a lecture, next she forgets where she is, then she forgets someone’s name and their address in a test. As each lapse in memory and example of cognitive impairment is trotted out, their presence in the narrative seems to be crying out, “See? She’s getting worse!”, as if the viewer couldn’t work that out for themselves. And when she’s told that her form of Alzheimers, matched by her intelligence and mental acuity, means that the disease will have a more rapid effect on her, it’s almost like kicking someone when they’re down; not only is Alice already unlucky to be suffering at so young an age, but because she’s so smart it’s another point against her.

This kind of unnecessary melodrama hurts the middle third of the movie so much that it’s only thanks to Moore’s superb performance that it remains so affecting and watchable. Even when the script piles on the pain and anguish she remains utterly believable, painting a sincere, credible portrait of a woman losing her sense of herself, and portraying the terrible ramifications of having her personality destroyed from within. The scene where Alice can’t find the bathroom is a powerful example, as the camera stays with her at waist height as she rushes through the house. When she stops the camera focuses on her face and the evident torment she’s experiencing. The viewer knows exactly what’s happening, from the shame and distress Alice is feeling to the moment where the inevitable happens, and when the camera pans back to reveal the stain down the front of her jogging bottoms it’s nowhere near as effective as the acting masterclass that Moore has honoured us with. Simply put, Moore is astonishing, and when the disease has robbed Alice of nearly all cognisance of the world around her, and her eyes are dulled by incomprehension, it’s heartbreaking.

Sadly, Moore is the best thing in a movie that fails to paint convincing portraits of Alice’s family and resorts to their providing implausible levels of support throughout. Not once does any one of them lose their temper, or voice their own distress at what’s happening to her, or display any hesitation in doing what they can. Even when John is offered the job at the Mayo Clinic and Alice states her reluctance of doing so, the scene is set for the kind of antagonism that must surely happen in these situations. But instead, John swallows his disappointment in seconds and the moment passes. It’s an uncomfortable moment because it feels so false, and Baldwin doesn’t pull it off (for once though, we see another character looking as lost as Alice is). But Baldwin isn’t alone. Each of the supporting cast has their “uncomfortable moment”, Stewart early on when Alice and Lydia have one of those awkward mother-daughter conversations about careers that seems to have been cribbed from a thousand and one other similar mother-daughter conversations in the movies, and which leaves Stewart struggling to make her supposedly independent-minded character sound anything other than petulant. In contrast, Bosworth is the waspish eldest daughter, saddled with lines that are largely derogatory of others and with no obvious reason for her being that way. And Parrish is sidelined pretty much throughout as Alice’s son, allowed only a brief moment to shine (but not say much) at the Alzheimers convention.

With Moore’s formidable performance taken out of the equation, Still Alice skirts perilously close to formulaic disease-of-the-week TV movie status. It’s a movie that wants to say something profound about the way in which a disease as awful as Alzheimers can be managed – albeit in its early stages – and while Alice’s address to the conference is genuinely moving, it relies too heavily on her normal mental capability to be completely persuasive. With other dramatic flaws that weigh the movie down, Glatzer and Westmoreland’s efforts remain lumbering and inconsequential. The movie is also curiously bland to watch, with too many neutral colours in the background, and Alice aside, too many characters who evince emotion with restraint. There’s also a mawkish score by Ilan Eshkeri that only occasionally matches the action for poignancy.

Rating: 6/10 – gaining two points because of the sheer brilliance and sensitivity of Moore’s performance, Still Alice is gripping stuff when Moore is onscreen but turgid and lacking validity when she isn’t; if it wasn’t for her this would be one movie that could be so easily forgotten, and without any attendant grief.

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To Kill a Man (2014)

04 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alejandra Yañez, Alejandro Fernández Almendras, Chile, Daniel Antivilo, Daniel Candia, Drama, Harassment, Murder, Revenge, Review, Shooting, True story

To Kill a Man

Original title: Matar a un hombre

D: Alejandro Fernández Almendras / 82m

Cast: Daniel Candia, Alejandra Yañez, Daniel Antivilo, Ariel Mateluna, Jennifer Salas, Don Willie, Paula Leoncini

Jorge (Candia) is a quiet family man who works as a caretaker at a forest research site. One night he’s mugged near to his home by a man called Kulale (Antivilo) and some of his gang; they steal his money and his insulin kit. He tells his wife, Marta (Yañez) and Jorgito (Mateluna). Jorgito knows who Kulale is and tells his father that he can get his insulin kit back for 5,000 pesos. Jorge demurs but later that night he realises his son has gone out. He goes to look for him and hears a gunshot from the nearby projects. He finds Jorgito has been shot. As he tends to him, Kulale appears and, weighing up the situation, shoots and wounds himself.

While Jorgito spends three months in hospital recovering, Kulale’s prosecution goes ahead. He contends Jorge and his son attacked and shot him first and he was defending himself when he shot Jorgito, but the court rules against him. To the family’s shock, however, his sentence is restricted to eighteen months due to a technicality. Following the trial, cracks begin to appear in Jorge and Marta’s marriage, and she blames him for Jorgito’s being shot.

Two years pass. Jorge and Marta are now divorced, though he visits his family often. One day at work he receives a call from Kulale who tells him he’s not finished with Jorge and his family and that they have a debt to settle. This proves to be the beginning of a campaign of harassment carried out by Kulale and his gang, which includes abusive phone calls, trapping Jorgito in the back of his truck, throwing rocks at the family home, and assaulting Jorge’s teenage daughter, Nicole (Salas). Each time, Jorge and his family report the incidents but the police and the prosecutor’s office seem unconcerned or unwilling to proceed without any witnesses.

Realising that the chances of anything being done to stop Kulale’s harassment and intimidation of his family are minimal, Jorge decides to take matters into his own hands. One night he lures Kulale out of his home and forces him at gunpoint into the back of Jorgito’s truck. It’s at this point that Jorge must decide if killing Kulale is the right course of action, and if it is, if he can go through with it.

To Kill a Man - scene

A sparse, quietly powerful movie, To Kill a Man is an intense, thought-provoking look at the way in which intimidation and bullying can lead even the most reserved of people to take the law into their own hands, and the subsequent ways in which their lives can be affected, both subtly and obviously. It’s a stark, poetic movie, one that carries a tremendous emotional wallop, and which portrays its central character as a simple man trying to lead a simple life, and struggling when that simplicity of existence is threatened.

The emotional turmoil suffered by Jorge and his family is soberly portrayed, and without recourse to melodrama. Their pain and anger is clearly felt and expressed both through their dealings with authority, and through the deteriorating relationship between Jorge and Marta. Even after they’ve divorced there’s a lingering sense of resentment and disapproval that undermines their ability to communicate with each other. Marta wants Jorge to be more assertive, but it’s not really in his nature; he’s a solitary man, even within his own family. Faced with the problem of Kalule and his aggressive behaviour, Jorge reacts as best he can but it’s not enough for Marta or Jorgito. He deflects their anger at the situation and appears weak in the process.

But all this turmoil is having an effect, and thanks to the combination of Almendras’ impressive script and Candia’s riveting portrayal, Jorge’s eventual decision to “deal” with the problem of Kalule displays an inner strength that abrogates any suggestion that he’s too reserved to cope with it all. Bolstered by an encounter on forest land with a man who pulls a knife on him, Jorge takes confidence from his dealing with that situation and commits to a course of action that tests both his sense of morality and his sense of himself as a man. For the viewer it’s a moment where the feeling of holding one’s breath gives way to a sense of relief at Jorge making such an important, difficult decision.

Candia gives a remarkable performance, Jorge’s withdrawn, taciturn nature given full articulation via the actor’s subtly expressive features. It’s a performance that proves unexpectedly gripping, and while the rest of the cast provide more than adequate support, Candia is the emphatic heart and soul of the movie. Even when he’s alone in a scene there’s little doubt as to how he’s feeling, or what he’s thinking. It’s gripping to watch, and a testament to Almendras’s decision to cast him.

As well as an examination of the morality of taking the law into your own hands, the movie also looks at the effects a shocking event can have the family involved, as well as its legacy. Even when they fight back against Kulale by going to the police there’s no real sense of a family united in their efforts, and Almendras rarely shows all four members spending time together. It’s beyond the movie’s scope but it would be interesting to see their reaction to Jorge’s abduction of Kulale and what happens as a consequence. The Chilean legal system comes in for some considerable criticism (though at present it is undergoing a radical change), and some aspects might seem a little far-fetched – the prosecutor’s home address being given out upon request, for example – but it’s all fuel for the predicament Jorge finds himself trying to cope with.

To Kill a Man - scene2

Visually, the movie is a dour experience in keeping with the material, but there are glimpses of the natural beauty in the forest area where Jorge works, plus some stunning coastal scenery. Almendras keeps things straightforward and direct, dispensing with any frills or unnecessary camera flourishes, and maintaining a tight focus on the characters and placing them in various cramped locations to highlight their sense of being hemmed in at all turns. There’s also an ominous score courtesy of Pablo Vergara that accentuates the drama and cleverly pre-empts the emotional result of Kulale’s abduction.

Rating: 9/10 – a striking, intelligently constructed exploration of one man’s alienation from his family and his attempt at redressing the wrongs done to him, To Kill a Man is a modest drama that succeeds by virtue of a strong central performance and a compelling narrative; apparently based on “real events”, Almendras’s third feature is a triumph of low-budget, independent movie making.

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Housebound (2014)

03 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Comedy, Gerard Johnstone, Glen-Paul Waru, Haunted house, Horror, Morgana O'Reilly, Mystery, Review, Rima Te Wiata, Thriller, Unsolved murder

HB POSTER FINAL_BLEED_3

D: Gerard Johnstone / 107m

Cast: Morgana O’Reilly, Rima Te Wiata, Glen-Paul Waru, Cameron Rhodes, Ross Harper, Ryan Lampp, Mick Innes

After an attempted robbery of an ATM goes wrong, Kylie Bucknell (O’Reilly) is sentenced to eight months house arrest and forced to move back in with her mother, Miriam (Te Wiata) and father Graeme (Harper). Not getting on with them in the first place, Kylie’s disdain is increased by Miriam’s insistence that the house is haunted. Dismissive of her mother’s claims, Kylie keeps to herself and refuses to help out, but soon she too begins to experience strange happenings.

One such happening leads to her ankle tag being activated and the involvement of security operative Amos (Waru). When he’s not being a security operative, Amos is a paranormal investigator. He begins an investigation but it’s an encounter with a stuffed toy bear that convinces Kylie something sinister might be taking place. While she comes to terms with the possibility that her mother has been right all along, she has to put up with visits from court appointed counsellor Dennis McRandle (Rhodes). But it’s the discovery of a box of personal effects belonging to a teenage girl that deepens the mystery of what’s happening in the house.

Kylie learns that the house was originally a halfway house, and that a young girl was murdered there sixteen years before. Her killer was never caught, and Kylie begins to suspect that her ghost is causing all the strange disturbances. During a visit, Dennis is attacked and injured, but the police believe Kylie is responsible and dismiss her claims of a malevolent spirit. She tries to run away but is stopped by Amos, who persuades her to return and get to the bottom of things.

Another strange occurrence leads to the discovery of a clue to the young girl’s murder: a denture left behind by the murderer. The evidence points toward their neighbour, Mr Kraglund (Innes). Kylie breaks into Kraglund’s home in an attempt to steal his current denture for comparison but her plan backfires. But when Amos returns by himself, Kraglund tells him a story that changes everything.

Housebound - scene

A horror-comedy-mystery-thriller from New Zealand, Housebound is a wonderfully barmy breath of fresh air that mixes its various components with skill and confidence. Making his feature debut, writer/director Johnstone has fashioned a movie that pleases on so many different levels that it works as an object lesson in how to balance several genres all at once.

Beginning with a botched attempt at stealing an ATM where Kylie’s accomplice is knocked out by his own sledgehammer, the humour in Housebound is laugh-out-loud funny and as sharp as a scalpel. Throughout the movie, Johnstone throws in hilarious one-liners – “He’s a cabbage in a polo fleece” – priceless visual gags – Amos taking the knife from the killer – and absurd props such as a three-quarter size Jesus. The humour complements perfectly the mystery elements and the increasing physical horror of the movie’s final third, providing an amusing tone that never tires and offers often clever distractions and highlights.

Johnstone’s script segues from sitcom to supernatural chiller with aplomb, and helps draw in the viewer, painting a picture of domestic disharmony with broad, effective strokes that introduce the characters and sets up the ensuing disturbances with both charm and a refreshing conviction. Kylie’s relationship with her mother is deftly handled, while the awkwardness of her relationship with her father is shown best in a basement scene where he tries to have a proper conversation with her.

The central mystery – who killed the young girl? – is another example of how cleverly Johnstone’s script is constructed, its introduction around the forty-minute mark providing a reason for the supernatural happenings and paving the way for the movie’s transition from ghost story to whodunnit. (The structure of the movie is such that it moves from one genre to another with polished ease, and does justice to each one, making the whole experience so enjoyable it’s difficult to separate one particular genre from the rest as being the best served.)

Once the mystery is solved and a highly relevant character is introduced, Housebound switches tone and genre once more to become a violent thriller, with peril introduced at every turn (but still shot through with enough comedy to off-set the often vicious nature of the violence). Johnstone handles this transition with invention and panache, and makes a virtue of what amounts to a home invasion approach to the material, using the house and its internal environs to good effect.

Johnstone is well served by his cast, with O’Reilly making a tremendous impression as the sulky, standoffish Kylie, her surly looks and waspish remarks wonderfully rendered; it’s a captivating performance, mordantly funny and surprisingly emotive. She’s matched by Te Wiata as Miriam, her blasé reactions and dotty demeanour dovetailing neatly with Kylie’s antipathy, creating a mother-daughter relationship that is entirely credible. Waru is similarly effective as the trusting Amos, his faith in the supernatural played so amusingly he provides most of the comic relief (he also gets the best line in the movie: in response to Kylie’s assertion that she’ll “smash” any hostile spirits “in the face”, he mutters plaintively, “You can’t punch ectoplasm”.)

Rating: 8/10 – funny, thrilling, violent and hugely enjoyable, Housebound is the kind of movie that comes along every once in a while, but rarely reaches a wider audience than genre fans and festival audiences; one of the best feature debuts of recent years and one that marks out Johnstone as a talent to keep an eye out for.

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Mini-Review: Left Behind (2014)

02 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Cassi Thomson, Chad Michael Murray, Drama, Lea Thompson, Literary adaptation, Nicky Whelan, Nicolas Cage, Pilot, Review, The Rapture, Thriller, Transatlantic flight, Vic Armstrong

Left Behind

D: Vic Armstrong / 110m

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Chad Michael Murray, Cassi Thomson, Nicky Whelan, Jordin Sparks, Lea Thompson, Martin Klebba, Gary Grubbs, Alec Rayme, Georgina Rawlings

Rayford Steele (Cage) is a transatlantic pilot planning an affair with stewardess Hattie Durham (Whelan) when they reach London. Caught off guard by his daughter, Chloe (Thomson), coming to see him at the airport, he sidesteps her suspicions while at the same time reassuring her that his relationship with Chloe’s mother, Irene (Thompson) is all okay, and despite her recently becoming a Christian believer. Chloe goes home but has a dispute with her mother over her Christian beliefs, and she takes her younger brother to the mall. While there, he vanishes into thin air, leaving only his clothing behind. At the same time, on Rayford’s flight, all the children and some of the adults – including his co-pilot – disappear in the same way.

It soon becomes apparent that this is a worldwide event. In the air, a collision with another flight leaves Rayford’s fuel line damaged. He makes the decision to turn back to New York but with the radio down he can’t alert anyone. Meanwhile, Chloe discovers her mother has disappeared also, and her local pastor can only tell her it’s God’s will. Believing her father to be dead as well, she decides to kill herself. With the help of a passenger, journalist Buck Williams (Murray), Rayford manages to call Chloe on her mobile phone; he tells her he’s running out of fuel and needs to land as an emergency… but the airport’s aren’t an option.

Left Behind - scene

Yes folks, it’s the Rapture again, all tricked out with the barest of explanations and tagged onto an airplane disaster scenario that even Airplane! (1980) couldn’t spoof as well as Left Behind does. It’s absurdist stuff, chock-full of crushingly awful dialogue, wooden performances, absentee direction from famed stunt coordinator Armstrong, special effects that are one step up from those in a SyFy movie, and further proof (if any were needed) that Cage will commit to anything these days, no matter how bad it is.

To be fair, the movie’s first half hour isn’t so bad, as each character is introduced, and the basic premise is set up. But once Cage and co are in the air, it’s full speed ahead to Disasterville. When Chloe’s brother, and others, disappear at the mall, looting starts up right away (obviously this is a natural response to hundreds of people just vanishing). On the flight, one woman whose daughter has disappeared, pulls out a GUN and accuses the other passengers of being in cahoots with her ex-husband, who’s obviously trying to snatch her. And Chloe decides to climb to the top of a suspension bridge to kill herself – but really so that Buck’s mobile call will reach her (the networks are predictably scrambled). There are other faux pas made by Paul Lalonde and Jerry Patus’s dreadful script, and no attempt is made to justify any of them.

Rating: 2/10 – appalling stuff, and incredibly insulting to Christians (its target audience), Left Behind is a travesty of Biblical proportions; inept on pretty much every level, the prospect of two further movies to come will make viewers pray that a real Rapture comes around before they do.

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2014 – My Cinema Review

01 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

10 Best movies, 10 Worst movies, 2014, Cinema visits, CITIZENFOUR, Devil's Due, Review

2014 montage

For me, 2014 was a distinctly average year, peppered with some great surprises – Guardians of the Galaxy, CITIZENFOUR – and some huge disappointments – Interstellar, Godzilla. I saw 76 movies in all (forty down on 2013) and while I tried to be more choosy, time and circumstance stopped me from seeing a variety of movies that (I suspect) would have made the following 10 Worst and 10 Best lists look a whole lot different. My apologies then to The Imitation Game, Jersey Boys, If I Stay, This Is Where I Leave You, Nightcrawler and Boyhood.

Perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of cinema going in 2014 was the box office returns of certain movies that, for me, show a complete disregard for their intended audience, and elevate the dumbest material to even dumber heights. The king of the worldwide box office for 2014 is Transformers: Age of Extinction, bringing in over a billion dollars and securing the eventual release of a fifth movie in the franchise (God help us). And even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, possibly the most ill-considered and misbegotten movie of the year, still managed to amass nearly half a billion across the globe. As a triumph of marketing over content, the movie must be regarded as a success, but otherwise just shows that there are too many Turtles fans out there who don’t – or won’t – read reviews. So here are the top 10 movies at the box office for 2014:

1  Transformers: Age of Extinction – $1,087,404,499

2  Guardians of the Galaxy – $772,462,030

3  Maleficent – $757,752,378

4  X-Men: Days of Future Past – $746,045,700

5  Captain America: The Winter Soldier – $714,083,572

6  The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – $708,982,323

7  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – $708,279,489

8  The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 – $669,719,406

9  Interstellar – $641,387,217

10  How to Train Your Dragon 2 – $618,909,935

Seeing Maleficent at number three is probably the biggest surprise on the list, and I suspect that, say, six months down the line, some of those positions will change – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies has yet to finish its theatrical runs, and the same goes for Interstellar and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1. Seeing so many superhero movies in the list isn’t such a surprise, but the fact that what was for many the most intelligent and thought-provoking sci-fi movie of 2014 – sorry, Mr Nolan – reached number seven.

Actually visiting the cinema remained an exciting/frustrating experience, exciting because of seeing a movie on the big screen (that stuff never gets old), and frustrating because there’s still too many people who visit the cinema and treat it like they’re still at home: talking, texting, and rustling sweet wrappers and slurping drinks as if they were all by themselves. When I saw Magic in the Moonlight a woman’s mobile phone rang. Unfazed (or bothered) she answered it, told the person at the other end she was at the cinema, that she was seeing “that new Woody Allen movie”, and “so far, it’s okay”. And she was offended when the gentleman behind her asked her to switch it off.

Compiling the 10 Worst and 10 Best lists below was harder than expected. Of the worst – the number one movie aside – it was difficult to judge how bad each movie was from each other. Most are the cinematic equivalent of a car crash, bad ideas given money in the hope that things will improve somehow. One movie, Serena, was so difficult to place I thought about giving it its own category: The Movie That Gets Worse Every Time I Think About It. And the list shows that even stars of the calibre of Johnny Depp and George Clooney aren’t immune from making real clunkers from time to time.

THE 10 WORST MOVIES OF 2014

10  47 Ronin

9  Need for Speed

8  The Monuments Men

7  The Face of an Angel

6  Serena

5  Sabotage

4  Ride Along

3  Transcendence

2  Let’s Be Cops

1  Devil’s Due

Devil's Due - scene2

The 10 Best list was even harder to judge and assemble. The number one movie was in place from the moment I saw it, and The Grand Budapest Hotel was always going to be in the top three, but looking back over 2014, the number of strong, superbly crafted movies came as a bit of a shock. I could have stretched the list to fifteen* (and I did consider it for a while), but in the end it seemed like cheating, or making my choices easier. This list’s Serena was Rosewater, a movie I saw at the London Film Festival, and which was one of several 9/10 movies I saw there. It’s place on the list was assured, but again, just where was a problem I couldn’t figure out when I looked at the other movies on my list. Even now I’m not completely happy with where it is, but the decision’s been made, so that’s that.

THE 10 BEST MOVIES OF 2014

10  Mr. Peabody & Sherman

9  The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1

8  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

7  Gone Girl

6  Guardians of the Galaxy

5  Rosewater

4  Philomena

3  The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

2  The Grand Budapest Hotel

1  CITIZENFOUR

Russia Snowden

*The movies that didn’t make the Top 10: A Little Chaos, Pride, Edge of Tomorrow, Phoenix, and The Boxtrolls.

One last thought: when I first started writing this particular piece, I had an idea that the number one movie wouldn’t actually be a movie, but a TV series (weird, huh?). For me, the absolute best thing I saw in 2014 was Fargo. If you haven’t seen it for fear it will tarnish your memory of the original movie, or that it can’t possibly match it for wit and invention then have no fear, it’s the most sublime “movie” (albeit in ten parts) you’re likely to see for some time to come. And to everyone who has seen it, I’ll bet, like me, you can’t wait for the second series to come around later this year – “for sure”.

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Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)

01 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Ancient Egypt, Ben Kingsley, Ben Mendelsohn, Burning Bush, Christian Bale, Drama, Hebrews, Historical epic, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Memphis, Moses, Ramses, Red Sea, Review, Ridley Scott, Sigourney Weaver

Exodus Gods and Kings

D: Ridley Scott / 150m

Cast: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn, María Valverde, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Hiam Abbass, Isaac Andrews, Ewen Bremner, Indira Varma, Golshifteh Farahani, Ghassan Massoud, Tara Fitzgerald

Ancient Egypt, 1300 BC. In the holy city of Memphis, Pharaoh Seti (Turturro) has learnt that the Hittite army is nearby. He sends his two sons, Ramses (Edgerton) and Moses (Bale) to rout them, which they do, but not before Moses saves Ramses’ life on the battlefield, thus fulfilling a prophecy that says one of them will be saved by the other who will become a leader. When they return, Seti orders Ramses to travel to Pithom in order to assess the slaves working there. Moses goes instead and meets the Viceroy, Hegep (Mendelsohn).

Hegep is crooked and treats the slaves poorly. During his visit, Moses meets a man called Nun (Kingsley) who tells him that he is a Hebrew and that the circumstances of his birth are not as he believes. Moses refutes this and returns to Memphis, but the story is overheard and reported to Hegep. Soon after, Seti dies and Ramses becomes Pharaoh. When Hegep comes to Memphis he tells Ramses of Moses’ history; this leads to Moses being sent into exile. He travels to Midian where he settles down as a shepherd and marries Zipporah; they have a son, Gershom. Meanwhile, Ramses marries Nefertari and they too have a son.

Nine years pass. During a storm, Moses pursues some stray lambs onto a nearby mountain. A rock slide renders him unconscious; when he comes to he finds himself confronted by a young boy, Malak (Andrews) who is God’s messenger. He gives Moses a task to do, one that brings him back to Memphis and a meeting with Ramses where he warns the Pharaoh to set the Hebrews free or there will be consequences. Moses prepares the Hebrews for conflict, while Ramses targets them in the hope that Moses will give himself up. But Malak appears to him again and warns him that Moses’ lack of progress means “something is coming”.

“Something” proves to be a series of plagues that wreak havoc on Memphis and the Egyptian people, culminating in a cull of all the Egyptian firstborns, including Ramses’ infant son. Ramses, in despair, tells Moses to take his people and leave. But once they’ve done so he takes four thousand men and pursues them all the way to the Red Sea, with the intention of slaughtering them all.

Exodus Gods and Kings - scene

It could be argued that the need for a re-telling of the Moses story isn’t exactly high on anyone’s agenda at the moment, but nevertheless here it is, and directed by one of the few directors able to orchestrate a movie on such an epic scale. However, while Exodus: Gods and Kings is as visually impressive as you might expect given that Darius Wolski is behind the camera and Ridley Scott is overseeing things, the movie as a whole is a leaden, passion-free exercise in big-budget movie making.

Considering both the material and the cast taking part, the movie struggles to engage the audience from the off, proving largely uninteresting and a frustratingly bland experience. As happens every so often with the projects Scott chooses – 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) and Hannibal (2001) are just two examples – Exodus: Gods and Kings is a) too long, and b) too tedious.

With the story of Moses, the ten plagues, and the crossing of the Red Sea being one of the most dramatic Biblical tales, the fact that this incarnation loses its way so quickly (and never recovers) is a little embarrassing. The criticism that Scott focuses too much on the design and look of a movie is upheld here by a range of performances that give new meaning to the word “undercooked”. Bale’s portrayal of Moses lacks the intensity of feeling that the part demands, and his discovery of his roots is reduced to a brief scene that gives way to an even briefer fight scene; it’s as if he’s more irritated than devastated. Edgerton plays Ramses as an indecisive, self-doubting pharaoh who looks like he needs a comforter (or his mommy). As the dramatic foil to Moses, Ramses’ character carries all the weight of a feather duster, and Bale and Edgerton’s scenes together quickly become repetitive in nature: Moses shows his annoyance/anger/disappointment in Ramses, Ramses does his best not to look as if he’s going to cry.

Thus any clash between the two is always going to be heavily weighted in Moses’ favour, but Bale never takes full advantage of the way the script orchestrates these encounters (he’s also able to get to Ramses without being detected, and to leave without being pursued). He and Egerton aren’t bad per se, but they don’t spark off each other. If it weren’t for the fact that both actors are clearly physically present in their scenes together, you could be forgiven for believing that they filmed them separately and were “united” in post-production.

As for the rest of the cast, their roles are generally too small for them to make much of an impression, with the notable exception of Mendelsohn, who takes Hegep and invests him with a surprising mixture of flippancy and menace. It’s the best performance in the whole movie, and when he’s on screen, the discrepancy between his approach and Bale’s (in particular) is all too apparent. In even minor roles, Weaver, Paul, Turturro, Kingsley and Farahani are there to make up the numbers, while Valverde is stranded by the script’s need to tick off the boxes in Moses’ life without providing any depth to it. It’s unfortunate, as well, that Valverde’s appearance is during the film’s middle section, where Moses strives to be a shepherd before his first meeting with Malak (there is a burning bush but with Malak acting as God’s mouthpiece, it just looks superfluous). This stretch of the movie has all the pace of a snail race, and thanks to the indolent editing – courtesy of Billy Rich – seems to go on for much longer than it actually does.

With so many scenes either dragging on or lacking in energy, Exodus: Gods and Kings regularly falls back on its special effects, but even here the spectacular appears commonplace, our familiarity with what CGI can achieve blunting the effect of seeing Memphis from the air, or giant crocodiles attacking ships on the Nile. It also leaves the crossing of the Red Sea, and its fast-approaching ten-storey wave, feeling less impressive and/or intimidating than it should be. Again, Scott and his cast and crew fail to heighten the drama and leave the viewer struggling to work out where everyone is in relation to a constantly changing topography (not to mention a wave that appears to be advancing from at least three directions at once).

Exodus Gods and Kings - scene2

Scott’s ardor seems to have waned recently, with his last two movies – The Counselor (2013) and Prometheus (2012) – showing clear signs of a director unable to spot, or deal with, or overcome, the faults in each movie’s screenplay, and sadly, the same is true here. The script – by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage, with assists from Jeffrey Caine and Steven Zaillian – aims for intimacy amid the spectacle but ends up skirting it instead, and any notions of leadership, duty, fraternal betrayal, faith or destiny, rather than being placed front and centre, are given a passing nod whenever the movie appears to need them.

Rating: 5/10 – visually stunning but dramatically redundant, Exodus: Gods and Kings is a disappointing, mediocre piece that fails to inject any fervour into the story of Moses and his efforts to free the Hebrews from the pharaohs’ tyranny; stilted and dull, this becomes as much an epic of endurance (for the audience) as it does for its characters.

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Happy New Year!

01 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Just to wish everyone who’s visited thedullwoodexperiment over the past year a very Happy New Year, and all the best in 2015. Thanks for visiting, and I hope you find even more reasons to drop by in the next twelve months.

Happy New Year - Minions

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