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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

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Monthly Archives: June 2016

Monthly Roundup – June 2016

30 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

A Certain Justice, A Place to Go, Action, Al Pacino, Ann Sheridan, Anne Heywood, Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, Bascom Affair, Baseball, Basil Dearden, Bernard Lee, Bethnal Green, Cecil Parker, Cochise, Crime, Cung Le, D. Ross Lederman, David Gordon Green, Dennis O'Keefe, Dolph Lundgren, Drama, Ethan Hawke, Freddie Francis, Frieda Inescort, George Sherman, Giorgio Serafini, Heather Angel, Holly Hunter, Jack Elam, James Coyne, Jay Silverheels, Jeff Chandler, John Lund, Johnny Simmons, Literary adaptation, Manglehorn, Mike Sarne, Monument Valley, Moon landing, Moonwalkers, Mystery, Noah Buschel, Norman Foster, Paul Cavanagh, Paul Giamatti, Peter van Eyck, Relationships, Reviews, Rita Tushingham, Robbery, Robert Keith, Ron Perlman, Rupert Grint, Sci-fi, Shadows on the Stairs, Susan Cabot, The Battle at Apache Pass, The Brain, The Phenom, Thriller, Vinnie Jones, Western, Whodunnit, Woman on the Run

Manglehorn (2014) / D: David Gordon Green / 97m

Cast: Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, Harmony Korine, Chris Messina, Skylar Gasper

Manglehorn

Rating: 5/10 – in the wake of a failed romance that has left him heartbroken, locksmith A.J. Manglehorn (Pacino) decides to try again with bank teller Dawn (Hunter), but his personality puts obstacles in his way; despite the obvious talent involved, Manglehorn is a chore to sit through, as the character himself – as Dawn discovers – isn’t someone you want to spend too much time with.

The Brain (1962) / D: Freddie Francis / 83m

Cast: Anne Heywood, Peter van Eyck, Cecil Parker, Bernard Lee, Jeremy Spenser, Maxine Audley, Ellen Schwiers, Siegfried Lowitz, Hans Nielsen, Jack MacGowran, Miles Malleson, George A. Cooper

The Brain

Rating: 5/10 – a fatal plane crash sees a millionaire businessman’s brain kept alive by pioneering scientists, one of whom (van Eyck) finds himself searching for the person who caused the plane crash when the businessman’s brain communicates with him; an erratic sci-fi thriller that gets bogged down whenever it concentrates on the murder suspects, this adaptation of Curt Siodmak’s novel Donovan’s Brain has a great cast and a terrific premise, but is let down by Francis’ pedestrian direction and a style that wants to evoke film noir but can’t because the script hasn’t been written that way.

A Certain Justice (2014) / D: James Coyne, Giorgio Serafini / 96m

aka Puncture Wounds

Cast: Cung Le, Dolph Lundgren, Vinnie Jones, Briana Evigan, Gianni Capaldi, James C. Burns, Robert LaSardo, Jonathan Kowalsky, Sean O’Bryan, Eddie Rouse

A Certain Justice

Rating: 4/10 – Iraq veteran John Nguyen (Le) returns home and becomes embroiled in a fight against big-time drug dealer Hollis (Lundgren) when he saves a hooker (Evigan) from the violent attentions of Hollis’ men; as a showcase for Le, A Certain Justice works well enough, but this is still a muddled actioner that cuts narrative corners more often than it doesn’t, and sees Lundgren adopting a wig and ponytail that makes him look like an aging hippie instead of a menacing crime boss.

Woman on the Run (1950) / D: Norman Foster / 77m

Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis O’Keefe, Robert Keith, John Qualen, Frank Jenks, Ross Elliott, J. Farrell MacDonald, Victor Sen Yung, Steven Geray

Woman on the Run.jpg

Rating: 7/10 – when store window designer Frank Johnson (Elliott) witnesses a gangland execution he goes on the run, leaving his estranged wife (Sheridan), the police, and a persistent reporter (O’Keefe) trying to track him down before the killer does; a cleverly written film noir based on Sylvia Tate’s original story, Woman on the Run may have a misleading title but it features hard-boiled dialogue, bruised relationships, and atmospheric location work, all of which means the movie is an under-rated gem and deserves a wider audience.

The Battle at Apache Pass (1952) / D: George Sherman / 82m

Cast: John Lund, Jeff Chandler, Susan Cabot, Bruce Cowling, Beverly Tyler, Richard Egan, Jay Silverheels, John Hudson, Jack Elam, Regis Toomey

The Battle at Apache Pass

Rating: 6/10 – peace on the frontier with the Apache nation is threatened by the divisive tactics of Indian Affairs agent Neil Baylor (Cowling) and unsanctioned raids by Geronimo (Silverheels); based around two historical events – the Bascom Affair in 1861, and the title encounter in 1862 – The Battle at Apache Pass is an enjoyable Western featuring good location work in Monument Valley, beautiful photography, and Chandler (as Cochise) and Silverheels reprising their roles from Broken Arrow (1950).

The Phenom (2016) / D: Noah Buschel / 88m

Cast: Johnny Simmons, Ethan Hawke, Paul Giamatti, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Yul Vazquez, Louisa Krause, Paul Adelstein, Elizabeth Marvel, Marin Ireland

The Phenom

Rating: 5/10 – Hopper Gibson (Simmons) is a talented pitcher who has a shot at the big leagues but suffers a crisis of confidence, one that threatens his future; well acted but dour and uninviting, The Phenom plods along in such a low-key manner that some viewers may well decide they don’t care enough if Hopper overcomes his slump, and may also decide to watch something else instead.

A Place to Go (1964) / D: Basil Dearden / 86m

Cast: Rita Tushingham, Mike Sarne, Bernard Lee, Doris Hare, Barbara Ferris, John Slater, David Andrews, William Marlowe, Michael Wynne, Roy Kinnear

A Place to Go

Rating: 5/10 – an ambitious young man who wants to get away from Bethnal Green gets involved with a local racketeer (Slater) and a young woman (Tushingham) at the same time, and much to the consternation of his parents (Lee, Hare); a slice of life, East London style, this kitchen sink drama is enjoyable enough but is hampered by a dreadful performance by Sarne and some weak plotting, but still has enough to recommend it, particularly the (deliberately) sad sight of Lee’s character trying to impress as an escapologist.

Shadows on the Stairs (1941) / D: D. Ross Lederman / 64m

Cast: Frieda Inescort, Paul Cavanagh, Heather Angel, Bruce Lester, Miles Mander, Lumsden Hare, Turhan Bey, Charles Irwin, Phyllis Barry, Mary Field

Shadows on the Stairs

Rating: 4/10 – a killer strikes in a boarding house where everyone comes under suspicion; a leaden whodunnit shot in a pedestrian style, Shadows on the Stairs is typical of the period with its mix of drama, comic relief in the form of Hare and Irwin as bumbling policemen, romantic triangles, and occasional flashes of social comment, but it all adds up to a movie that betrays its stage origins at every turn.

Moonwalkers (2015) / D: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet / 107m

Cast: Rupert Grint, Ron Perlman, Robert Sheehan, Stephen Campbell-Moore, Tom Audenaert, Jay Benedict, James Cosmo, Eric Lampaert, Kevin Bishop, Erika Sainte

Moonwalkers

Rating: 4/10 – in 1969, the US military sends unstable CIA agent Kidman (Perlman) to London to contact Stanley Kubrick with an offer to film a mock moon landing (in case the real mission goes wrong) – but he ends up working with a would-be rock band manager (Grint) instead; uneven and often groan-inducing, Moonwalkers takes a great idea and tramples all over it with a mix of psychedelia, undercooked comedy and inappropriate violence, leaving just a few knowing nods and winks in relation to the period to provide anything of interest.

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Mini-Review: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016)

30 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Comedy, John Corbett, Kirk Jones, Lainie Kazan, Marriage, Michael Constantine, Nia Vardalos, Review, Sequel, The Portokalos family, Wedding

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

D: Kirk Jones / 94m

Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan, Andrea Martin, Gia Carides, Joey Fatone, Louis Mandylor, Elena Kampouris, Alex Wolff, Bess Meisler, Rita Wilson, John Stamos, Mark Margolis, Rob Riggle

The extended Portokalos family are back, but since we saw them in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), things haven’t remained the same: Toula (Vardalos) has had to close her travel agency due to the recession, and the family dry cleaning business has gone the same way. All that’s left is the restaurant started by her father, Gus (Constantine). On the home front, Toula and her husband, Ian (Corbett) have a grown-up daughter, Paris (Kampouris), who can’t wait to head off to college and escape her family’s overbearing attempts to make sure she’s okay – and Gus’s constant reminders that she needs to marry at the first opportunity. Some things though haven’t changed: Gus is still convinced that the Greeks invented everything, and that he’s a direct descendant of Alexander the Great. When this assertion is challenged he decides to prove his claim by entering his ancestors’ details on an online ancestry site. But when he starts going through his paper records he discovers that his marriage certificate was never signed by the priest, and that he and wife Maria (Kazan) aren’t officially married.

Expecting Maria to go along with his idea of renewing their vows, Gus is horrified when she tells him she wants a proper wedding, and more importantly, a proper proposal, something Gus failed to provide fifty years before. Gus baulks at this and a stalemate ensues, with each proving as stubborn as each other. It’s only when Gus falls ill and Maria refuses to go with him to the hospital that Gus relents and proposes. Maria accepts his proposal and when Gus is well again, she begins to plan their wedding. Meanwhile, Paris gets accepted to a college in New York, Toula and Ian try to spend more time together and rekindle the romance that brought them together, Gus’s estranged brother, Panos (Margolis) arrives from Greece for the wedding, and the ancestry site replies to Gus’s application.

MBFGW2 - scene2

If you liked My Big Fat Greek Wedding then you’ll definitely like My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. There’s very little here that’s different from the first movie (“Now, give me a word, any word; and I will show you how the root of that word is Greek.”), and Vardalos, who wrote the script, wisely plays up the original’s strengths in favour of doing anything too new or complicated. The end result is a movie that complements the original without challenging it any way, and which offers a pleasant if unexceptional viewing experience for anyone meeting the Portokalos family for the first time.

Vardalos has also been lucky enough to reassemble everyone from the first movie, and everyone reconnects with their characters as if they’ve only been away from them for a couple of months instead of fourteen years. Martin is wisely given ample opportunity to show off her particular brand of forthright comedy, while Meisler, as Mana-Yiayia, steals every scene she’s in. It’s a tribute to Vardalos’ skills as a writer that she manages to find moments for all the characters to shine, and she doesn’t make Toula the main focus of the movie as she did before. That said, there are still the usual themes surrounding family, and mutual love and support, and director Kirk Jones adds a degree of sparkle to proceedings, raising this way up and above the level of unnecessary sequel.

Rating: 6/10 – while it’s not the most original of sequels, nevertheless My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is much better thanks to Vardalos’ decision to not tinker too much with the original format; still, it is formulaic, and it doesn’t stretch itself in any new directions, but it’s a nice, friendly movie that just wants to entertain – and by and large, it does.

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Trailers – American Pastoral (2016), The 9th Life of Louis Drax (2016) and Keeping Up With the Joneses (2016)

30 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Aaron Paul, Action, Alexandre Aja, Comedy, Drama, Ewan McGregor, Gal Gadot, Greg Mottola, Isla Fisher, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Literary adaptation, Liz Jensen, Mystery, Philip Roth, Previews, Sarah Gadon, Supernatural, Thriller, Trailers, Zach Galifianakis

For his feature debut as a director, Ewan McGregor could have (probably) chosen any project he wanted, but not one to shirk a challenge, the actor has decided to film Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (it’s been in development for over a decade, and Jennifer Connelly is the only person still on board from back then). So, no pressure there, then. But the trailer reveals, albeit in a disjointed fashion, that McGregor appears to have found a way of coherently presenting the various social and political upheavals of the period (the Sixties), and without sacrificing any of the personal or emotional effects these events have on the characters involved. With David Strathairn cast as Roth’s alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, and a supporting cast that also includes Molly Parker and Peter Riegert, McGregor has found himself in very good company indeed, and if his direction, allied with John Romano’s screenplay, is as good as it looks (and thanks to DoP Martin Ruhe it looks beautiful indeed), then this could be a strong Oscar contender come next February.

 

In The 9th Life of Louis Drax (it’s never Johnny Smith anymore, is it?), a young boy’s fall from a cliff and subsequent coma opens up a mystery that will involve his parents (Sarah Gadon, Aaron Paul) and his doctor (Jamie Dornan). Liz Jensen’s 2004 novel was due to be adapted by Anthony Minghella before his untimely death in 2008, but now it’s been adapted for the screen by his son Max, and with the formidable talent of Alexandre Aja in the director’s chair. The trailer is sufficiently twist-y enough for clues to Louis’s “condition” to be given in one second and then overturned in another, and the movie’s success is likely to depend on how well the mystery is maintained before answers have to be revealed. The cast also features the likes of Oliver Platt, the ubiquitous Molly Parker, and Barbara Hershey, and seems to have got a firm hold on the supernatural thriller aspects of the story, so this should be as satisfying – hopefully – as it looks.

 

Whatever you want to say or think about Keeping Up With the Joneses, there’s little doubt that this mix of action and comedy about a suburban couple (Zach Galifianakis, Isla Fisher) who discover that their new neighbours (Jon Hamm, Gal Gadot) are international spies, is exactly the kind of moderately high concept idea that the Hollywood studios love to put their money behind. The trailer offers perhaps too many laughs (and hopefully not all the best ones), while downplaying the inevitable action sequences, but whatever the finished product gives us, let’s hope that director Greg Mottola’s quirky sense of humour is front and centre, and the chemistry between each couple adds to the fun to be had. If not we’ll just have to chalk it up to a good idea gone bad, or to put it another way, a movie that you switch off from once it’s started.

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Life on the Line (2015)

29 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Danger, David Hackl, Devon Sawa, Drama, John Travolta, Kate Bosworth, Linemen, Review, Sharon Stone, Storm, Thriller

Life on the Line

D: David Hackl / 93m

Cast: John Travolta, Kate Bosworth, Devon Sawa, Gil Bellows, Julie Benz, Ryan Robbins, Ty Olsson, Sharon Stone

The life of a lineman – in Texas at least – is one that is continually fraught with danger and the prospect of death. This is the message that Life on the Line reminds us of throughout its (brief enough) running time, and especially when said linemen make mistake after mistake as they go about their daily work (the movie will have health and safety experts choking on their popcorn; real linemen will either be laughing at the many, many inaccuracies the movie exhibits or shaking their heads in prolonged disbelief). But, hey, this is still the fourth most dangerous job in the world.

We’re given an example of this right at the start when the actions of cocky lineman Beau Ginner (Travolta) lead to the death of his brother, who’s also his crew boss. Circumstances lead also to the death of his brother’s wife; this leaves Beau’s neice, Bailey, in his care (what the authorities were thinking is a question the movie avoids asking altogether). Fast forward ten years and Bailey (Bosworth) is on the verge of going to college, while Beau has become Mr Safety, and a well respected crew boss like his brother. The complete overhaul and replacement of thousands of miles of electrical lines throughout Texas has Beau’s crew working flat out to meet the utility company’s deadline.

vlcsnap-00001

Two new workers – Bailey’s ex-boyfriend Duncan (Sawa), and new neighbour Eugene (Robbins) – bring their own problems to the mix, with Duncan treating Bailey in an unexplained, dismissive manner, and Eugene having trouble with PTSD since returning from Iraq. He’s distant to his wife, Carline (Benz), and is away a lot due to his work. Meanwhile, Bailey is trying to reconnect with Duncan because she has something important to tell him, while also fending off the unwanted attentions of ex-con Danny (Olsson). And Beau is coming under increasing pressure from the utility company, even to the point of being asked to “take risks” if it will get the job done sooner rather than later.

By now it’s clear that all these separate storylines are likely to converge, and the movie makes it clear that this will be the case as it keeps counting down the days to a great storm. Until then the movie busies itself with some low-key soap opera dramatics mixed with random scenes such as Beau talking down an angry biker in a bar. Bailey reveals her secret to Duncan, and to Beau; Danny’s unwanted attentions escalate to the point where he targets Carline; Eugene’s paranoia leads him to climb an electrical pylon with the intention of killing himself; and a trainwreck causes Beau no end of problems, including one of his crew being injured. As the storm rages around them all, matters of life and death arise, and Beau has to make a terrible choice.

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Whatever you may think about John Travolta and his recent run of movies, he’s still an actor to watch, even if his performances border on the perfunctory these days. Life on the Line is no different to any other movie he’s made in the last few years, and here he does the bare mimimum in terms of characterisation and emoting, a situation his fans will be overly familiar with. There’s no spark or energy in his portrayal, no attempt to overcome the many implausibilities of the script, or the diffidence with which screenwriters Primo Brown, Peter I. Horton, Marvin Peart and Dylan Scott have created the part of Beau. Instead he goes through the motions, and in some scenes, comes close to looking bored (when Beau harangues his crew about safety and shows them pictures of electrical burn injuries, Travolta’s delivery lacks the edge such a scene needs to show Beau’s doing this because he cares about his crew).

But Travolta’s paycheck-grabbing performance is the least of the movie’s worries. The aforementioned script is quite a stinker, cobbled together and assembled on screen by Hackl and his production team with all the finesse of pre-school children being asked to build a rocket ship: you can give them all the directions and tools they’ll ever need, but they won’t know what to do with them. It’s much the same here, with Travolta and his fellow cast members continually left high and dry by the vagaries of the script and the vague intentions of Hackl, DoP Brian Pearson, and editor Jamie Alain. All three share an inability of purpose that ruins the movie from the word go. And some of the dialogue – straight from the Holy Land of Cliché – is so dire that no one can rescue it and make it sound even halfway credible.

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The narrative doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny, the subplots scream “Filler!”, and the denouement is so laughable and corny and hackneyed and clichéd and just plain stupid that you won’t believe your eyes and ears. As a drama, Life on the Line is the equivalent of a DOA, and should be approached as warily, as if you were, say, taking a hot dish out of the oven without the benefit of oven mitts. This is bad on a level that only low-budget movies can achieve, and while the production has attracted a reasonably talented cast, it struggles to be both interesting and dramatic, and succeeds only in giving new meaning to the word ‘risible’.

Rating: 3/10 – “no one here gets out alive,” said The Doors, and Life on the Line is a perfect example of a movie that fits that kind of doom-laden vibe; blandly executed and overly reliant on plot rehashes we’ve seen a million times before, the movie stumbles along in search of someone to steer it out of the murky backwaters of its own making, and along the way, makes you wonder if anyone associated with it could ever be happy with the way it’s turned out.

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Demolition (2015)

28 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Bereavement, Car accident, Champion Vending Company, Chris Cooper, Drama, Grief, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jean-Marc Vallée, Judah Lewis, Mother/son relationship, Naomi Watts, Review, Vending machine

Demolition

D: Jean-Marc Vallée / 102m

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper, Judah Lewis, C.J. Wilson, Polly Draper, Heather Lind

There’s a scene early on in Demolition, the latest feature from the director of Wild (2014) and Dallas Buyers Club (2013), where Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, an investment banker named Davis Mitchell, attempts to get some M&M’s from a hospital vending machine, but the M&M’s don’t drop down. He hits it a couple of times, then asks one of the hospital staff if they can open it; the answer is no, because it’s not owned by the hospital. This prompts Davis to write a letter of complaint to the Champion Vending Company, which begins, “Dear Champion Vending Company: I put five quarters in your machine and proceeded to push B2, which should have given me peanut M&M’s. Regrettably, it did not. I found this upsetting, as I was very hungry, and also my wife had died ten minutes earlier.”

Now, on the face of it, this is a great way in which to begin exploring the mindset of a recently bereaved husband, but Bryan Sipe’s unconvincing screenplay hasn’t told us enough about Davis so far for the audience to make a judgment as to whether or not this is funny, sad, poignant, or revealing. Instead, it invites the viewer into Davis’s world by getting him to expand on his relationship and marriage with his recently deceased wife, Julia (Lind), but through the medium of letters to the vending company. It’s an awkward plot device because we don’t know if this is a legitimate way for Davis to deal – initially – with his grief at losing his wife in a tragic car accident. It’s awkward because, outside of these letters, Davis acts like he’s okay and he’s dealing with it all pretty well.

Demolition - scene1

At first, at least. Something his father-in-law, and boss, Phil (Cooper), says to him sends Davis off on another tack, that of dismantling things to see what they’re made of, and how they work. To this end he dismantles light fixtures and bathroom stalls at his place of work, along with his computer, and at home, a coffee machine. He takes these things apart, lines the various component parts in neat groups, and then leaves them where they are. At work it all leads to Davis being told to take some time off, while at home it leaves him restless and unfocused. When he receives a late night call from a woman called Karen Moreno (Watts), the vending company’s customer service manager and someone who has read and connected with his letters, Davis is intrigued enough by her call to want to learn more about her.

Again, though, Sipe’s screenplay – and Vallée’s direction – doesn’t make it clear just why Karen connects with Davis, and vice versa. It’s true that Davis is behaving oddly, and it’s true that Karen is a needy single mother who has the ability to behave in an equally odd manner (she stalks him until he talks to her on a train), but just why these two people find support and a degree of comfort in each other is left floating in the wind. You could argue that the script requires them to, and that would be a reasonable enough answer, but the script doesn’t legitimise their relationship, even as it develops, and especially with the introduction of Karen’s fifteen year old son, Chris (Lewis). Here, Davis is pared away from Karen and inxplicably, takes on the role of father figure to Chris.

Demolition - scene2

It’s another decision made by the movie that takes Davis further and further away from the grief and (implied) despair he’s meant to be feeling following Julia’s death, and into an area where he becomes an unofficial member of Karen and Chris’s disjointed family. Meanwhile, Phil decides to use Julia’s memory to start a foundation and needs Davis to sign off on it. But Davis drags his heels, and again, the script doesn’t provide any ready answers as to why. By the two thirds mark, most viewers would be forgiven for wondering if any of Davis’s decisions have a point to them or are based on any recognisable emotions. This is because the movie is a frustrating exercise in character development and emotional withdrawal that coasts along with little regard for cause and effect, or the demands of a cohesive narrative.

It will come as no surprise that Demolition ends with everything wrapped up neatly (and with a pretty bow on top), and viewers who do manage to make it this far will be asking themselves what all the fuss was about in terms of the storyline and a handful of subplots that pop up every so often but don’t add anything to the overall narrative (a revelation regarding Julia comes out of nowhere and goes back there pretty quickly without having any real effect whatsoever). It’s hard to engage with any of the characters except on a superficial level, and the quality of the characterisations is such that even Gyllenhaal and Watts – two extremely capable actors – can only do so much with them before repetition sets in and their efforts fail to have any impact.

Demolition - scene3

Vallée’s direction is also a problem. While there’s a kernel of a great idea here – widower tries to make sense of his own grief by rebuilding his life from the ground up – Vallée doesn’t have any answers to the problems that are inherent in the script. This leaves the movie plodding along for several stretches (particularly when Davis enlists Chris in the demolition of his home), and any emotional high points lacking punch or dramatic intensity. It’s a visually well-constructed movie, however, with Vallée proving once again that he has an eye for composition and filling a frame with relevant information in support of the story, and he’s ably supported by his regular DoP Yves Bélanger. But it’s not enough to hide the ways in which Sipe and his wayward screenplay fails to explore Davis’s grief and Karen’s lack of confidence.

Rating: 5/10 – given Vallée’s previous movies (and their success), his work on Demolition and partnership with Gyllenhaal seems like a guarantee of quality, but there are too many problems with the script for even this combination to improve things; the movie aims for a kind of heightened realism at times, and while this is an admirable ambition, the fact that it doesn’t even come near is a good indication of how difficult it’s been to translate Sipe’s undercooked screenplay for the screen.

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Mini-Review: Urge (2016)

27 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Aaron Kaufman, Ashley Greene, Danny Masterson, Designer drug, Drama, Eastman Island, Justin Chatwin, Pierce Brosnan, Review, The Red Bastard, Thriller

Urge

D: Aaron Kaufman / 90m

Cast: Justin Chatwin, Danny Masterson, Ashley Greene, Pierce Brosnan, Nick Thune, Alexis Knapp, Chris Geere, Bar Paly, Eric Davis, Jeff Fahey, Kevin Corrigan

In Urge, there is only One Rule: you can only take said designer drug once. It’s new, much more addictive than any other drug available, and can only be found at a nightclub on Eastman Island, off the coast of New York. When arrogant businessman Neil (Masterson) takes his p.a. Theresa (Greene), and friends Joey (Knapp), Danny (Thune), Vick (Geere), and Denise (Paly) to his home there for the weekend, they find another (uninvited) friend, Jason (Chatwin) already there. The group head for the island’s only nightclub, where they find the guests rapidly shedding their inhibitions and having the time of their lives. Jason is invited to meet the club’s owner (Brosnan), who supplies him with Urge, a new drug that promises to surpass anything Jason and his friends have tried before… and so it proves, except for Jason who is unaffected by it.

Despite the One Rule, Neil and friends go back the next night to score some more Urge. Later, Jason awakes back at Neil’s house where a party is in full swing, and Urge is being taken repeatedly by everyone there. But instead of providing everyone with a good time, darker aspects of their personalities and hidden desires are being drawn out by the drug. Sex and violence abound, and try as he might, Jason can’t get any one of his friends to listen to him when he tells them something is wrong. With the violent behaviour increasing, he attempts to get them to leave but only Joey is able to go with him. But once they do they discover that things are worse all over the island, and Jason learns that the mysterious club owner has a much darker plan for Urge than anyone could have imagined.

Urge - scene1

Showing the effects of a drug high on screen is often an excuse for directors to go overboard in the editing suite by stitching together static shots with jump cuts featuring bursts of colour and/or flashing images (and not always in a way that makes any sense). Urge takes this option but doesn’t overdo it, choosing instead to have its cast behave in angry, declamatory ways that are meant to be dramatic but are often absurd and laughable; you could be forgiven for thinking that getting high means acting in an over the top manner and shouting a lot (which is pretty much Masterson’s entire performance). This all leads to various comeuppances and violent confrontations that, alas, add little to the main narrative, and are largely contrived.

What doesn’t help is the movie’s determination to be a tortured religious allegory, with Brosnan’s character (all tired verbiage and inappropriate laughing) put forward as a vengeful God, and Urge being used as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. None of it makes any real dramatic sense, and when Jerry Stahl’s script isn’t trying to make Urge seem like an edgy thriller, it stops the movie short and lets Brosnan’s mysterious club owner pontificate on the failings of the human race (dialogue that not even Brosnan can make credible). There’s an attempt at making the spread of the drug an example of the drawbacks relating to free will, but it’s awkward and ill-conceived in its execution.

Rating: 3/10 – with an unwieldy narrative that rarely makes sense and has a nodding acquaintance with plausibility, Urge wants to be a tense, disturbing thriller, but ends up  falling short on both fronts; Chatwin and co. struggle with their underwritten characters, and director Kaufman (making his feature debut) shows an aptitude-lite approach to the material that hampers it even further.

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Question of the Week – 26 June 2016

26 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Blade Runner, Dances With Wolves, Director's Cuts, Question of the Week

Director’s Cuts have been with us for quite some time now, and often they’re the version of a movie that we should have seen in cinemas – it’s unlikely that anyone watching the extended versions of all three Lord of the Rings movies will want to go back to the theatrical cuts (or even prefer them). But whether Director’s Cuts provide us with a fully realised vision, or enable a director to add/extend scenes he/she wasn’t able to retain in a theatrical cut, there’s a market out there among movie buffs for so-called extended versions. Occasionally, some of these Director’s Cuts make it onto the big screen, as with Dances With Wolves (1990), which gave fans of the movie a whole extra hour to enjoy. But more often than not, the Director’s Cut is restricted to the home video market, where it still attracts fans and/or interested viewers, but isn’t given the acknowledgment it may (or may not) deserve. With this in mind, this week’s Question of the Week is as follows:

Should Director’s Cuts be given a theatrical release – if only for a limited time – so that fans or audiences in general, can see a movie exactly as their directors envisaged?

Blade Runner

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The Nice Guys (2016)

26 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Action, Angourie Rice, Car industry, Comedy, Drama, Kim Basinger, Murder, Porn movie, Porn star, Review, Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Shane Black, The Seventies, Thriller

The Nice Guys

D: Shane Black / 116m

Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Margaret Qualley, Yaya DaCosta, Keith David, Beau Knapp, Lois Smith, Murielle Telio, Gil Gerard, Daisy Tahan, Kim Basinger

Amidst all the super-hype surrounding the likes of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War, one movie stood out as a becaon of hope amongst all the spandex and super-destruction on offer in 2016. That movie was… Finding Dory. But after Pixar’s latest, there was another movie that looked like it could rescue the average movie goer from having to endure even more superhero shenanigans. And that movie was… Everybody Wants Some!! And then, after Richard Linklater’s latest, there was yet another movie that had the potential to offer a respite from the Marvel and DC Universes. (Drum roll please.) The Nice Guys!

Audiences needed this movie. Audiences needed it because it promised to be hyper-violent, occasionally crass (perhaps even borderline obscene), blackly funny, unapologetically profane (and profanely unapologetic), a twisted caper, beautifully acted, and fantastically written and directed by its creator, Shane Black. It was the anti-superhero movie that would remind us all that you could have a two-hour movie that didn’t rely on mega-destruction and angsty men in tights. And Shane Black, the genius who wrote Lethal Weapon (1987), The Last Boy Scout (1991), and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), he would be our saviour.

But…

TNG - scene3

Somewhere along the line, somewhere during the movie’s production, and at some point when someone really should have been paying attention, Black fumbled the ball. Not in a horrible, dying-seconds-of-the-match, the-other-team-scores-and-wins-as-a-result kind of way, but with the story, the movie’s reason for being, the set up if you will. Because the movie has a ton of promise. It has all the ingredients: it’s set in the Seventies, a decade that’s almost over-ripe for satirizing; it co-stars Russell freaking Crowe and Ryan freaking Gosling as two opposing private eyes who work together when they realise their cases are linked; it has action and stunts aplenty; it’s unfalteringly funny, with wisecracks, one-liners and visual gags sprinkled liberally through the script; and it “introduces” Kim Basinger. (Which is interesting/distracting. If you remember, Basinger played a prostitute “cut” to look like Veronica Lake in L.A. Confidential (1994). Here she looks like she’s been “cut” to look like her younger self.)

But what it doesn’t have is a coherent, or interesting plot. Somehow, Black has managed to take two of the biggest industries in America during the Seventies, the porn industry and the automobile industry, and contrive to mix them together so that neither one is interesting anymore. And then he throws in some unnecessary political scandal-mongering, and you realise it won’t get any better. (You could argue that that’s an achievement all by itself, but you’d be missing the point.) So contrived is the plot that every time Crowe and Gosling stumble over another clue and head off to make things worse, it doesn’t make any difference: anyone watching is just being carried along for the ride – and you don’t care where they (and you) end up.

TNG - scene2

So, The Nice Guys isn’t quite the triumph we were hoping for. It also makes you think of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang more than once as it drags itself along looking for an interesting enough plot to hook itself up to. Gosling is the new Robert Downey Jr, while Crowe is the new Val Kilmer (minus the gay characterisation). There are parties to attend, villains stalking the heroes, and a female character who appears to be dead but might not be. Black changes much more than he repeats, but the echoes are there, and they’re enough to make you wonder if The Nice Guys was conceived as a companion piece to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, or if Black was thinking, “Well, it worked last time…”

However, the movie does have Crowe and Gosling as its trump card(s). Whoever thought that they’d make a great double act should be given the keys to Tinsel Town, because it is an inspired piece of casting. Crowe’s gruff, no-nonsense character we’ve seen before, but here he distills it down to its pure essence and then adds a thin layer of impish humour to boost it back up. He’s ostensibly the straight man, but thanks to Black, Crowe gets to deliver some of the movie’s drier, more acid-tinged humour, and sometimes with just a look. It’s been a while since Crowe had a role he could do real justice to, but Jackson Healy is it, and he grabs the opportunity with both hands (he looks more relaxed than we’ve seen him for a long while, as well).

TNG - scene1

If Crowe is the straight man then Gosling is definitely the funny man. He’s not known for his comedy roles, but as the cowardly, avaricious Holland March, Gosling judges his performance perfectly, squealing and flinching at the drop of a hat, and generally embarrassing his young daughter, Holly (a terrific performance by Rice). Watching him react to the several physical liberties that March is prone to during the movie is immensely rewarding, and again, thanks to Black’s way with clever dialogue, makes March’s innate stupidity more endearing than annoying (he refers to Hitler at one point as a “munich” because he had one ball). Like Crowe, Gosling looks entirely comfortable in his role, and the enjoyment both are having transfers itself to the viewer.

1977 is recreated with a great sense of fun – watch out for the billboards advertising that year’s Jaws 2 and Airport ’77 – and the movie opens with a reminder that the Hollywood sign didn’t always look so good back then; it also serves as an indication of the level of corruption that our “nice guys” will be getting involved with. The movie is given a level of off-kilter glamour thanks to the prowess of DoP Philippe Rousselot, and alongside John Ottman and David Buckley’s original score there’s a veritable hit parade of Seventies music to get down and groove to. Now, what was it all about again…?

Rating: 7/10 – despite letting itself down plot-wise, The Nice Guys should still be seen by anyone with an interest in clever storytelling and finely crafted dialogue; Black is still an inventive, ingenious writer/director, and there’s still much to enjoy from start to finish, but this is one movie that tries hard – sometimes too hard – to make itself more intriguing and engrossing than it actually is.

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Central Intelligence (2016)

24 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Aaron Paul, Action, Amy Ryan, Black Badger, CIA, Comedy, Drama, Dwayne Johnson, High school reunion, Jason Bateman, Kevin Hart, Rawson Marshall Thurber, Review, Satellite codes

Central Intelligence

D: Rawson Marshall Thurber / 114m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Amy Ryan, Danielle Nicolet, Jason Bateman, Aaron Paul, Ryan Hansen, Tim Griffin, Timothy John Smith, Thomas Kretschmann

An action comedy that doesn’t take itself, or its raison d’etre, seriously, Central Intelligence is the kind of buddy movie that lives or dies depending on the chemistry between its two leads. It’s a relief then that the pairing of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart – this decade’s answer to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito perhaps – works so well, and the pair are able to riff off on one another with an ease that belies the fact that this is their first movie together.

It all begins twenty years ago at a high school rally that sees put-upon fat kid Robbie Weirdicht grabbed from the school showers and sent sprawling across the floor of the gymnasium where everyone is gathered. While everyone else laughs, only Calvin Joyner, the most popular kid in school, helps Robbie to cover up. Robbie runs away and is never seen again. Fast forward twenty years and the class of 1996 is preparing to attend their high school reunion. Calvin (Hart) is now an accountant whose initial promise seems to have petered out: he’s just been passed up for promotion. He’s married to his childhood sweetheart, Maggie (Nicolet), but they don’t have any kids and she’s more successful than he is. Then, out of the blue, Calvin recieves a friend request on Facebook from someone called Bob Stone (Johnson). Stone persuades Calvin to meet him for a drink, and when they do, Calvin is amazed that Bob is actually Robbie, and that Robbie has changed so completely from the fat kid he remembers from school.

CI - scene2

The pair end up back at Calvin’s home, where Bob asks him to look at his payroll account as there’s a problem with it. But the account is actually a list of bids for an unknown item at an auction due to finish the next night. Bob stays over, but the morning brings a surprise visit by the CIA in the form of Agent Harris (Ryan) and her fellow agents, Mitchell (Griffin) and Cooper (Smith). They’re after Bob who, it transpires, is a CIA agent who is apparently wanted for the theft of spy sateliite codes and the murder of his partner. Bob has left, however, and only catches up with Calvin later at his office. A firefight with the CIA ensues and the pair narrowly escape. Bob explains he’s trying to find the location where the codes will be bought, and needs Calvin’s accounting skills to help him do so. Calvin balks at the idea however, and takes off at the first opportunity.

Pressure from the CIA is brought to bear on Calvin and he’s forced to give up Bob’s whereabouts. But with Bob in custody and being interrogated “the hard way”, Calvin has a change of heart and helps him escape. They use another high school alumni, Trevor (Bateman), to help them find the location of the buy, and head off to Boston to crash the meeting, and discover just who the buyer is and if he’s a shadowy figure called the Black Badger, also the man responsible for the death of Bob’s partner, Phil (Paul)…

CI - scene1

From the above synopsis you can guess that Central Intelligence doesn’t have exactly the greatest of scripts, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. Yes, it has several painful moments where the basic plot rebounds against the constraints of credibility, and the storyline surrounding Calvin and Maggie’s relationship takes the movie off into odd areas that slow the movie down and feel like padding, but overall it’s a movie that provides solid laughs, both visual (Bob’s dislocated finger) and verbal (“And you’re still shorter than my cat” – Trevor to Calvin). For once, Hart doesn’t overdo his usual schtick and delivers his best performance for a while, making Calvin’s eventual, committed, partnership with Bob more believable than expected. Meanwhile, Johnson reminds viewers just how good he can be in a comedy role, playing Bob as an over-exuberant man-child whose enthusiasm for pretty much everything is expressed through a variety of gushing excitement and childlike wonder.

Indeed, it’s the inspired pairing of Johnson and Hart that makes Central Intelligence work as well as it does. Unlike, say, Hart’s pairing with Ice Cube in the Ride Along movies, here he displays a genuine chemistry with the former WWE Superstar that makes watching the movie far more enjoyable than it appears at first glance. And while, as mentioned above, Hart employs his trademark cowardly, fast-talking movie persona on several occasions but perhaps in deference to Johnson’s cleverer, less in-your-face approach, refrains from going as over the top as he’s done in the likes of Get Hard (2015). This makes for one of his better performances, and in his scenes with Johnson you can see and feel him upping his game, something he hasn’t done since co-starring with Stallone and De Niro in Grudge Match (2013).

CI - scene3

Without Johnson and Hart’s sterling performances, however, Central Intelligence would be even more derivative and lightweight than it looks, thanks to its piecemeal plotting, obvious villain, and low-key action sequences (they’re well choreographed but aren’t that memorable when all’s said and done). There’s an awkward subplot involving bullying that is resolved in typically inappropriate fashion, and the secondary characters are practically cardboard cutouts, leaving the likes of Ryan and Bateman little else to do but recite their lines and hope for the best once the movie’s cut together. Thurber, whose last movie was the wickedly smart and under-appreciated We’re the Millers (2013) makes light work of a screenplay that could have been filed under “fluffy nonsense” and no one would have complained, and shows an aptitude for the buddy movie – and showing these characters in a good light in particular – that hopefully will keep him retained if a sequel is ever greenlit (which is likely).

Rating: 6/10 – there’s plenty of silly fun to be had in Central Intelligence, but while it’s amusing enough, it doesn’t excuse the waywardness or clumsiness of the script; Hart and Johnson make a great double act (though Johnson proves to be the better comic actor), and there’s enough merit to the action scenes to keep genre fans happy, all of which adds up to a surprisingly entertaining viewing experience – if you don’t expect too much.

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Poster(s) of the Week – The Secret Life of Pets (2016)

24 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Advertising, Buddy, Chloe, Duke, Gidget, Illumination Entertainment, Max, Mel, Pops, Posters, Snowball, Sweetpea

Illumination Entertainment’s latest attack on our heartstrings and wallets asks the question seen below:

The Secret Life of Pets

“They” are the various pets whose activity and behaviour is the focus of The Secret Life of Pets. In creating the following posters, Illumination have given us a chance to get to know these characters ahead of seeing the movie, and have also given us an indication of what to expect from each of them. It’s a clever touch, and there’s even room for a couple of movie in-jokes as well.

Gidget  Max

Buddy  Chloe

Sweetpea  Pops

Snowball  Mel

Duke

Which one is your favourite? Let me know by leaving a comment.

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Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

23 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Baseball, Blake Jenner, College, Comedy, Drama, Drinking, Drugs, Glen Powell, J. Quinton Johnson, Music, Review, Richard Linklater, Sex, Texas, Tyler Hoechlin, Zoey Deutch

Everybody Wants Some!!

D: Richard Linklater / 117m

Cast: Blake Jenner, Glen Powell, Tyler Hoechlin, J. Quinton Johnson, Ryan Guzman, Temple Baker, Wyatt Russell, Juston Street, Will Brittain, Austin Amelio, Forrest Vickery, Tanner Kalina, Zoey Deutch

Fresh from his success with Boyhood (2014), writer/director Richard Linklater has created a movie that begins where that movie ended – albeit with different characters. Set over a long weekend before the start of college, Everybody Wants Some!! sees freshman pitcher Jake (Jenner) arrive at a college in Texas and ready to see where college life will take him. It’s not long before he’s introduced to most of the rest of the team, and it’s even sooner when it’s suggested they all go out for a beer. While travelling round they try and tempt girls into coming to their frat house that night, but have middling luck; two girls in particular turn them down flat, though one of them does indicate she thinks Jake is attractive.

Over the course of the day Jake gets to meet everyone on the team, from coolly confident and loquacious Finnegan (Powell), to roommate Billy (renamed Beuter by his teammates) (Brittain), to knowledgeable, helpful Dale (Johnson), all the way to Jay aka Raw Dog (Street), a gonzoid character whose pitching speed is said to be around 95mph. Jake soon fits in with the established team’s sense of camaraderie, and the way they haze each other.  Made to feel at home he soon becomes aware of the various dynamics within the team and learns from other players such as Willoughby (Russell) and McReynolds (Hoechlin) that even though they might party each and every night, nothing is more important than the team and supporting each other, and that they take playing baseball very seriously indeed.

EWS - scene1

Over the course of the weekend, Jake learns some very valuable lessons and takes a chance on contacting the girl who thought he was attractive. While his teammates concentrate on having as much “fun” as they can possibly manage with as many girls as is humanly possible, Jake gets to know the girl, Beverly (Deutch), and discovers that he likes her very much. An invitation to a Sunday night party Beverly is helping to organise for the college performing arts students leads to the team coming along too, and Jake worrying that their behaviour may cause problems, and especially for him with Beverly. But it doesn’t go entirely the way he believes based on his experiences of the previous two days.

Everybody Wants Some!! – the title comes from a Van Halen track off their Women and Children First album – looks at first as if it’s going to be yet another generic coming of age movie where the hero struggles to fit in and must find a way of being accepted by the clique or college fraternity he’s been assigned to. Even Jake’s first encounter with McReynolds, where he makes it clear he doesn’t like pitchers, seems to confirm the antagonism and animosity that Jake is likely to face as he tries to establish himself. But Linklater is not a director who deals in cliché, and what feels like the first of many obstacles Jake has to overcome in order to be accepted, proves to be the last, as his arrival is welcomed and he’s accepted into the fold with alacrity.

EWS - scene3

Linklater is clever enough to make Jake quietly likeable and offhandedly friendly, taking each new introduction as it comes and avoiding being fazed by a lot of the seemingly unfriendly behaviour exhibited by his teammates. He soon comes to realise that he’s no longer the big fish in the little pond of high school, but just a little fish in a much bigger pond, and others on the team – Beuter, fellow freshman Plummer (Baker) – are in the same predicament. Jake doesn’t know how things are going to turn out but he learns early on, that whatever happens his teammates will be there to support him. From the vagaries and disappointments and minor successes of high school, Jake now has to prove himself all over again, but thankfully in a much more encouraging environment.

Of course, this being college, high spirited behaviour is the order of the day, and the movie excels in recreating the kind of unabashed hedonistic lifestyle of the very early Eighties, where excessive drinking and smoking weed and pursuing women for sex was regarded as normal for young males at the time, and whose testosterone-fuelled exploits were (rightly or wrongly) regarded as the stuff of future legend. Out of this, Linklater shows how these young men bond unconditionally, and treat each other with respect even while they’re playing pranks on each other, or treating each other with an apparent disregard for their feelings. They might not say it to each other, and Linklater stops short of saying it directly, but there is a love here that is stronger than any individual relationships they may form outside the team. And they do know how to party, whether it’s at a disco, or at the frat house, or at a country and western bar dancing to Cotton Eye Joe – these guys live for the moment in a way that successive college students (and not just in America) have been trying to emulate ever since. It was in many ways a simpler time: pre-AIDS, pre-designer drugs, and pre-social media, and Linklater highlights how little pressure college students felt as they navigated the rocky road to adulthood.

EWS - scene2

What’s also clever about the movie and its ensemble cast of characters is the speed and succinctness that Linklater employs in allowing the viewer to get to know them. Faced with around a dozen characters, most of whom are given little or no background information to help the viewer distinguish them from each other (at first), the movie could have stumbled around introducing them, and made no impact at all. But Linklater doesn’t put a foot wrong with any of them, and broadens each character’s screen time and appeal as the movie progresses, so that by the time the movie’s reached the halfway point you may well feel you’ve known them a whole lot longer. Linklater is helped in this by some terrific performances, and though it would be a little unfair to pick out any one actor ahead of anyone else, special mention must go to Glen Powell as Finnegan. His performance is the jewel in the movie’s crown: self-assured, confident, engaging, overtly dramatic when required, and quietly impressive throughout.

Of course, Everybody Wants Some!! wouldn’t be a Richard Linklater movie set in the early Eighties without it having a killer soundtrack, and that’s exactly the case, with the director choosing a selection of songs that help both recreate the times and the social atmosphere that went along with them. There’s some iconic tunes to be sure, but it’s the way Linklater uses them that’s so effective, with the likes of Heartbreaker by Pat Benatar and Hand in Hand by Dire Straits used in support of the material and not just because they might sound good at a certain moment. The movie is also beautifully lensed by DoP Shane F. Kelly, which in turn highlights the wonderful period production design and costumes – take a bow Bruce Curtis and Kari Perkins respectively.

Rating: 9/10 – a delightful mix of comedy and drama that doesn’t short change or undermine either discipline, Everybody Wants Some!! is a movie that offers a whole host of rewards for the viewer; with a cast and crew at the top of their game, the movie is honest, reflective, heartfelt, genuinely affecting in places, and a near-perfect example of a simple story told simply and without unnecessary affectation.

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Momentum (2015)

22 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Action, Cape Town, Diamonds, Drama, Flash drive, James Purefoy, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Review, Stephen S. Campanelli, Thriller

Momentum

D: Stephen S. Campanelli / 96m

Cast: Olga Kurylenko, James Purefoy, Morgan Freeman, Lee-Anne Summers, Colin Moss, Brendan Murray, Hlomla Dandala, Greg Kriek, Shelley Nicole

On the face of it, Momentum looks like another generic action movie with its central protagonist on the run from a team of highly skilled assassins who are after something the central protagonist has in their possession. And so it goes: Momentum is exactly that kind of movie. But while it certainly follows a very worn and well-trod path, there’s also enough here to warrant more than a cursory glance or viewing, because even though it could be accused of being derivative and occasionally unappealing, it has an energy and a clear sense of purpose that elevates the material and makes it a more enjoyable experience than expected.

It begins with a very odd sight: four bank robbers dressed like extras from a G.I. Joe movie breaking into a vault while bank staff and customers alike cower in fear of being shot by the usual robber with a hair trigger. The robbers steal a fair amount of diamonds and, in amongst them is a flash drive. As they’re about to leave, the robber with a hair trigger gets mouthy with the gang’s leader and winds up dead for his trouble – but not before he’s unmasked the leader who turns out to be a woman. Said woman is Alex (Kurylenko), and she’s been persuaded to take part by co-robber, Kevin (Moss). Later, at a hotel, Kevin’s idea of extra insurance re: selling the diamonds leads to the arrival of Mr Washington (Purefoy) and his team of mercenaries, who want the drive. While Alex hides under the bed, Kevin is killed. She manages to escape, and with the drive, but Washington is soon hot on her trail.

Momentum - scene1

She makes it to the home of third robber, Ray (Murray). While she’s there, Alex contacts Kevin’s wife, Penny (Summers) to warn her that her life is in danger from Washington and his men but Penny is dismissive thanks to previous animosity between her and Alex. This doesn’t stop Alex from heading for Penny’s home when Washington learns her address. There she takes out two of Washington’s men, and tracks them to their hideout in an abandoned factory. For a while she has the upper hand, but is outsmarted by Washington and captured. Washington begins to torture Alex for the whereabouts of the drive, until he realises that Alex is a lot more than she seems, and changes his approach. This leads to Washington obtaining the drive – or so he believes – at the airport, but Alex has other ideas.

It should be noted from the outset that Momentum has plot holes the size of Table Mountain (seen briefly in an aerial shot of Cape Town, where the movie takes place). The biggest and most obvious plot hole concerns the flash drive itself. As the movie’s version of Hitchcock’s favoured McGuffin, the flash drive contains evidence of a plot to destabilise the US by a crooked senator (Freeman). Why it happens to be in a safety deposit box in the vault of a Cape Town bank is a question the movie never gets anywhere near answering. And where Alex gets her incendiary devices from – one pops up out of nowhere – is another mystery you might as well forget about chasing an answer for. This is an action thriller that concentrates on its various action sequences and only occasionally remembers it has a (basic) plot to refer to.

Momentum - scene2

But within that framework there’s much to enjoy, from Kurylenko’s tough-as-nails Alex, a woman with a very specific past that, along with the movie’s denouement, is designed to enable further adventures, to Purefoy’s debonair assassin, a winsome, laidback, much needed performance that offsets the rest of the movie’s defiantly grim proceedings. Both actors are well-cast, and the nature of both characters is brought splendidly to the fore, despite the sometimes banal dialogue they have to recite thanks to screenwriters Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan. As adversaries, they make a good team.

There’s also the not-so-small matter of the action sequences, which often belie the movie’s budget, and which are confidently and expertly staged. Kurylenko acquits herself well in these scenes, and there’s a sense that the makers were looking for a harder edge than usual, as Alex’s way of dealing with Washington’s team is often uncompromisingly brutal. That said, the movie baulks at putting Alex in too much physical danger, even when Washington has her leg in a vice and is determined to torture the whereabouts of the drive out of her. Elsewhere, the movie’s treatment of its secondary female characters – Penny, Kevin’s insurance policy Jessica – leaves something to be desired, as well as a couple of instances where children are threatened for no other reason than that they can be.

Momentum - scene3

There are a couple of twists and turns, and the script takes time out to provide Alex with a back story that explains her particular skill set, but the emphasis is on moving things along as quickly as possible. This does lead to a number of risible moments where convenience is the order of the day, and coincidence rears its head to poor effect, but by and large Momentum concentrates on being a thrill ride, and in that respect it succeeds with aplomb. There isn’t a stand out sequence as such, but taken as a whole, the movie works in a better fashion than expected, its narrative proving a mix of standard action tropes and waspish humour that is enjoyable and mostly rewarding. Campanelli, making his feature debut after a successful career as a camera operator on movies as diverse as The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and J. Edgar (2011), handles the visuals well and finds creative ways of using space, and depth of field, in the action scenes. Wisely, perhaps, he leaves Kurylenko and Purefoy to do their own thing, though Freeman (who shot his scenes over two days) looks uncomfortable trying to create a villain out of nothing.

Rating: 6/10 – clumsy in places and lacking cohesion, Momentum is on firmer ground when it lets Kurylenko and Purefoy play cat-and-mouse amidst all the violence, and said violence is taking up much of the running time; a guilty pleasure perhaps, but one that at least knows where its faults lie, and which doesn’t worry too much about them.

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The Family Fang (2015)

21 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Christopher Walken, Comedy, Drama, Dysfunctional family, Family feud, Jason Bateman, Kathryn Hahn, Literary adaptation, Maryann Plunkett, Nicole Kidman, Performance art, Relationships

The Family Fang

D: Jason Bateman / 106m

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Jason Bateman, Christopher Walken, Maryann Plunkett, Jason Butler Harner, Kathryn Hahn, Harris Yulin, Linda Emond, Marin Ireland, Mackenzie Brooke Smith, Taylor Rose, Jack McCarthy, Kyle Donnery, Michael Chernus, Josh Pais

Annie and Baxter Fang (Kidman, Bateman) are the children of performance artists Caleb (Walken, Harner) and Camille Fang (Plunkett, Hahn). While growing up they took part in their parents’ various performances, which were often carried out in public places and without the people around them being aware they were taking part in a performance. Caleb and Camille have always used these “artistic moments” to highlight their idea that true art is only present in the moment it happens (they don’t acknowledge that they might be manipulating “art” in these circumstances rather than allowing it to be spontaneous).

As adults, Annie is an actress whose participation in a series of movies is under threat because she is no longer regarded as essential to the productions; she’s further challenged by a requirement to appear topless that she hadn’t previously agreed to. Baxter is a novelist whose last novel wasn’t well received. While he works on his latest book, he writes articles. On an assignment, he ends up shot in the head by a spud gun, and winds up in hospital. While he’s being treated, and much to Baxter’s consternation, the hospital staff contact Caleb and Camille, who agree to come and take him home. Not having seen his parents in years, Baxter contacts Annie and implores her to come and help him deal with them. Reluctantly, she agrees.

TFF - scene3

Back at the Fang family residence, old animosities surrounding the way Annie and Baxter were treated as children, and their involvement with their parents’ art, leads to their being involved yet again in one of Caleb’s schemes. But it backfires, and Caleb and Camille announce they’re heading off for a break. A while later, the local sheriff informs Annie and Baxter that their parents’ car has been found at a rest stop. The pair are missing, and there’s blood all over the inside of the car; foul play is suspected. Annie is adamant that it’s yet another of their parents’ performances, and that they’ll turn up safe and sound somewhere sometime later. Baxter isn’t quite as certain, and harbours some doubts. Annie challenges him to help her look for them in order to prove she’s right, but their efforts go unrewarded, until a song from their past provides them with a lead, one that finds them learning some uncomfortable truths about their parents, and the reasons for their disappearance.

The Family Fang is Jason Bateman’s second directorial feature – after Bad Words (2013) – and while it’s the kind of indie project you might expect Bateman to be attracted to, it’s not as good a fit as it seems. From the trailer the movie looks like a comedy but while there are some great comedic moments, this is a drama that examines notions of parental responsibility, the function of art in everyday life, sibling dependency and rivalry, fame, and personal fulfillment. But while the movie examines these notions, what it doesn’t do as successfully, is reach any conclusions or provide any answers to the questions it raises.

TFF - scene1

What it also fails to provide the audience with is anyone to connect with. For all of Annie’s complaining about her childhood, she’s actually broken away from her parents when we meet her. Any issues she has as an adult she relates back to when she was a child, but the movie – and in particular, David Lindsay-Abaire’s adaptation of Kevin Wilson’s novel – doesn’t make a convincing connection between the two. Likewise, Baxter’s inability to stand up for himself when confronted with Caleb and Camille in the flesh. There are flashbacks to instances where Annie and Baxter’s involvement with their parents’ “art” can be construed as inappropriate, but these don’t adequately explain the animosity they display. Without that connection it’s hard to see Annie (specifically) and Baxter (occasionally) as anything but whinging ingrates.

Unfortunately for the viewer, Caleb and Camille don’t come off any better. The movie never reconciles their unwavering dedication to their art with the selfishness that goes with it, and it never attempts to explain or rationalise Caleb’s anger when the public doesn’t recognise or understand what he’s trying to say. And Camille is so much the uncomplaining follower that when it’s revealed she had a promising career ahead of her before she met Caleb, and that she gave it all up to be with him, her reasons for doing so sound insubstantial and contrived.

TFF - scene4

As the feuding family, Kidman’s insecure and wailing Annie hogs most of the screen time, while Bateman takes a (largely) back seat as the lacking in confidence Baxter. Walken gives another of his semi-engaged performances, doing just enough to make it look like he’s interested, and is easily outgunned by Plunkett, who at least makes Camille a figure of sympathy even if she has only herself to blame for her predicament. As the younger Caleb and Camille, Harner and Hahn inject some much needed energy into proceedings, while Yulin contributes a pleasant enough cameo as Caleb’s mentor.

Watching The Family Fang, there are too many scenes where it feels that Bateman hasn’t gained a sufficient enough grip on things to make them entirely effective. Also, the pace of the movie works against it, as Bateman directs with a stubborn determination to make each scene work in the same way as all the others and with as much emotional impact (which is mostly diluted). The end result is a potentially intriguing movie that never finds its feet or a direction for it go in. And this despite some sterling camera work by Ken Seng and another wistful, deceptively emotive score by Carter Burwell.

Rating: 5/10 – a movie lacking in focus and drive, The Family Fang never rallies its constituent parts into a unified, satisfying whole; with no one to care about, the movie becomes a stilted, unconvincing piece that is only occasionally interesting, and some well judged moments of comedy aside, isn’t as sharp, or knowing, as it should be.

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Trailers – Denial (2016), Moana (2016) and Before I Wake (2016)

20 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Animation, Before I Wake, David Irving, Deborah Lipstadt, Denial, Drama, Holocaust, Horror, John Lasseter, Mike Flanagan, Moana, Movies, Previews, Rachel Weisz, Timothy Spall, Trailers

In 1996, the Holocaust denier David Irving sued the historian Deborah Lipstadt for libel in the English courts over remarks she had made about him in her book, Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. With the burden of proof planted firmly in Lipstadt’s corner, she had to prove to a libel court that Irving’s claim that the Holocaust didn’t happen, was false. Now this trial is being brought to the screen with a script by David Hare, and a cast that has more than a little experience in bringing heavyweight drama to the fore. Weisz is a great choice to play Lipstadt (though she has replaced Hilary Swank in the role), and Spall looks both banal and creepy as Irving. With its terrible historical background, Denial looks like it has the potential to be a thought-provoking, morally complex thriller that examines one of the more darker, and disturbing assertions made about the Holocaust in the last thirty years.

 

If you’re John Lasseter, you’ve got to be feeling pretty satisfied with yourself and the state of play at Disney at the moment. Two out of the three last Disney animated releases have taken over a billion dollars at the international box office, and just in the last few days, the latest movie from Pixar, Finding Dory (2016), has broken all kinds of box office records including the largest opening weekend for an animated feature. Pretty sweet indeed. This must make the next Disney animated release another cause for (probable) celebration. However, this first teaser trailer for Moana doesn’t give anything away, and aside from some beautifully realised sea-faring animation, and a rather scrawny looking chicken as comic relief, there’s nothing to get excited about. Let’s hope Moana‘s first full trailer gives us something more to look forward to.

 

Mike Flanagan is a name that most mainstream movie goers will be unfamiliar with, but if you’re a fan of horror movies and have been paying attention in recent years then you’ll know that he’s made a handful of features that have tried (and sometimes succeeded) in doing something a little bit different with the genre. Absentia (2011) was a quietly unnerving experience, while Oculus (2013), even though it didn’t work completely, was a stylish and clever exercise in combining two linear narratives to heighten suspense. With Before I Wake, the signs are that Flanagan has found a story that will play to his visual strengths as well as his ability to craft unsettling experiences out of everyday occurrences. And for anyone who thinks the child actor has a familiar face, it’s Jacob Tremblay, from Room (2015).

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10 Reasons to Remember Anton Yelchin (1989-2016)

19 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Actor, Anton Yelchin, Career, Movies

Anton Yelchin (11 March 1989 – 19 June 2016)

Anton Yelchin

Russian-born, but brought up in the US from the age of six months, Anton Yelchin eschewed his family’s sporting background (by his own admission, he “sucked” as an athlete) to become an actor. It was a wise move. From his first appearance in an episode of ER in 2000, Yelchin grew in stature with each passing year, gaining more and more attention, both with critics and audiences alike, until his name in a cast list was something to watch out for. In recent years he’s appeared in indie dramas, mega-budget sci-fi franchise reboots, and even voiced the role of Clumsy Smurf in a handful of Smurf outings (how’s that for versatility?). He was a distinctive actor with a distinctive voice and a rangy physicality that made him move in an equally distinctive yet unpredictable way, and he was one of the best performers of his generation. His death has come at a time when five of his movies have yet to be released, including Star Trek: Beyond, due later this summer. That we won’t be able to watch him grow any more as an actor, and provide us with even more emotionally astute and dazzling performances is a terrible shame, but we do have a body of work that will remain as rewarding as it’s ever been, and which will remain a testament to Yelchin’s skill as an entertainer.

AY - HIA

1 – Hearts in Atlantis (2001)

2 – Alpha Dog (2006)

3 – Charlie Bartlett (2007)

4 – Star Trek (2009)

5 – Like Crazy (2011)

6 – Odd Thomas (2013)

7 – Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

8 – 5 to 7 (2014)

9 – Burying the Ex (2014)

10 – Green Room (2015)

AY - GR

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Mini-Review: The Boss (2016)

19 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Ben Falcone, Big business, Brownies, Comedy, Dandelions, Darnell's Darlings, Ella Anderson, Insider trading, Kristen Bell, Melissa McCarthy, Peter Dinklage, Prison, Review, Tyler Labine

The Boss

D: Ben Falcone / 99m

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Bell, Peter Dinklage, Ella Anderson, Tyler Labine, Kathy Bates, Cecily Strong, Mary Sohn, Kristen Schaal, Timothy Simons, Cedric Yarbrough

Just when you thought it was safe to sit down and watch a movie featuring Melissa McCarthy – and this based on her supporting turn in St. Vincent (2014) and the refreshing change of career pace that was Spy (2015) – along comes The Boss, a throwback to the haphazard comedies she was making in the wake of her break-out turn in Bridesmaids (2011). That McCarthy has both comedic and acting chops to spare makes her decision to appear in The Boss seem like a backward step, a contractual obligation perhaps, but even though she has the ability to step up a gear when required, this sees the future Ghostbuster idling in neutral for much of the movie’s running time.

It’s a slight tale. McCarthy is Michelle Darnell, the 47th richest woman in America, a businesswoman whose foster-care childhood has made her the self-absorbed, take no prisoners, care about no one else success story she’s always wanted to be. But when she’s careless with a deal set up via insider trading, arch-rival and one-time lover Renault (Dinklage), makes sure she’s arrested. Cue a stretch in prison that does nothing to change her attitude. When she gets out she has nowhere to go, so she offloads herself on her ex-PA Claire (Bell), and Claire’s daughter, Rachel (Anderson). Financial salvation (and ultimately personal redemption) comes in the unlikely combination of Rachel’s Dandelions group, and Claire’s ability to make amazing brownies. Using the group to sell the brownies, Michelle begins to claw her way back up the business ladder, but will it be at the expense of the new-found regard for others that she’s discovered, and will she recognise at last that trusting in others brings its own rewards?

The Boss - scene1

If you have to think about the answer to that question then… where have you been, and wherever you were, what were doing all this time? This is a riches to rags to riches movie that plays fast and loose with its stitched together screenplay, and seems content to make Michelle as brainless/obtuse/horrible as possible before she experiences the usual road to Damascus moment required in movies such as this and turns into a loveable, and loving, heroine. You’ve seen this kind of movie too often for it to offer anything new, and to be fair to McCarthy and her co-screenwriters, Falcone and Steve Mallory, it doesn’t once try too hard to be anything but what it is: a so-so comedy that offers occasional laughs while its cast tries to make more out of it than is on the page (which results in one of Dinklage’s worst performances for some time, and Labine reduced to cuddly man-child duties as Claire’s potential boyfriend). If you’re a fan of McCarthy’s previous movies, such as Tammy (2014) and Identity Thief (2013), then you’ll be amused. But if not, then this will be a hard slog indeed.

Rating: 5/10 – a by-the-numbers comedy that relies too much on its star being objectionable for no real reason, The Boss also features some awkward scenes that go on for far too long in their efforts to make the viewer laugh – the scene where McCarthy plays with Bell’s breasts being a good case in point; it’s no earth-shaker to be sure, but when even the star isn’t trying too hard, then you know this is just filler before the next, hopefully more rewarding project.

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Question of the Week – 18 June 2016

18 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

International Box Office, Question of the Week, Sequels

As of today there are twenty-six movies that have made over one billion dollars at the international box office – and all but eight of them are sequels. It’s reassuring that the top two movies are original features (thanks, Jim!), but with big budget sequels driving and dominating today’s box office, it’s hard to believe that the make up of the Billion Dollar Club will change anytime soon (indeed, sixteen of the twenty-six movies in the list have further sequels planned to succeed them). With this in mind, this week’s question is:

Have audiences become unwilling to invest their time and money (and attention) in original material, and have they become too infatuated with the “cult of the blockbuster sequel” to stretch their cinematic horizons?

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The Conjuring 2 (2016)

17 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Amityville, Demon nun, Drama, Ed Warren, Enfield, Frances O'Connor, Horror, james Wan, Lorraine Warren, Madison Wolfe, Paranormal activity, Patrick Wilson, Review, Sequel, The Hodgson Family, Thriller, True story, Valak, Vera Farmiga

The Conjuring 2

aka The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Case

D: James Wan / 134m

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Frances O’Connor, Madison Wolfe, Lauren Esposito, Benjamin Haigh, Patrick McAuley, Simon McBurney, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Simon Delaney, Franka Potente, Bob Adrian

In the world of paranormal investigations, the plight of the Hodgson family, who resided in Enfield during the Seventies, is one of the most well-documented cases on record. Between 1977 and 1979, the family – single mother Peggy and her four children, Margaret (13), Janet (11), Johnny (10), and Billy (7) – were reported to have been plagued by poltergeist activity. Among the various investigators who looked into the case were Ed and Lorraine Warren. Their findings were that the activity was the result of “inhuman spirit phenomena”, and this despite a general consensus that the alleged poltergeist activity was a hoax perpetrated – largely – by Janet.

The Warrens were just two of many investigators who visited the Hodgson’s home during the late Seventies, but for the purposes of The Conjuring 2, their involvement has been beefed up to the point where lead investigator Maurice Grosse becomes a secondary character, left behind in the wake of the Warrens’ more experienced involvement with the paranormal. And in beefing up the Warrens’ involvement, the movie also connects the events that occurred in Enfield with events related to the Warrens’ investigation into the Amityville haunting.

TC2 - scene3

And this is where the movie starts, in Amityville, and where it introduces us to the movie’s principal villain, a demon nun intent on claiming Ed Warren’s life (Lorraine witnesses his death while in a trance). This early sequence serves as the set up for the ensuing events based in Enfield, and widens the scope of the Warrens’ investigation once they’ve been persuaded to look into the case. In the hands of director James Wan and his co-screenwriters, Carey and Chad Hayes, and David Leslie Johnson, this gives viewers a mix of “true” occurrences and fictional explanations that works well for the most part, but which relies heavily on the style of horror movie making established in recent years through the likes of the Insidious series, the first Conjuring movie, and its spin-off Annabelle (2014).

It’s a style of horror movie making that is fast becoming too predictable for its own good, but as one of its creators, Wan is better placed than most to squeeze more life out of it. The Conjuring 2, with its demon nun and shaky dramatics, is a better sequel than might have been expected, but it still contains too many moments that shatter the ilusion of heightened reality that the script carefully tries to maintain throughout. With its flooded basement, final act heroics, and expository trance sequences, the movie identifies more with its own place in the modern horror landscape than it does with the requirements of telling a good story. And one or two standout sequences aside, the movie is too heavily reliant on the template established through previous movies to be entirely effective.

TC2 - scene2

But that’s not to say that Wan doesn’t give it a good try. The opening sequence set in the house at Amityville is beautifully set up, with a reverse dolly shot that brings the viewer into the house via one of the two windows that are so iconic to the look of the property from the outside. A seance sees Lorraine (Farmiga) wandering the house and imitating/reliving the murders committed by a former occupant. It’s an effective collection of scenes but as they go on there’s a feeling that this is a sideshow, a gory hors d’oeuvre before the main course set in Enfield. The Warrens’ investigation into the events at Amityville made their names (and could have made for a movie all by itself), but we’re quickly moved on, and are introduced to the Hodgsons. Peggy (O’Connor) is an harrassed single mother struggling to keep her family afloat amid issues involving an absent husband, mounting money problems, and a house that looks in places like it’s suffered from fire damage (the set design is curious to say the least).

When Janet (Wolfe) begins to experience strange phenomena, Peggy is initially dismissive until she herself witnesses the same sort of thing. The police are called but can offer little help except as witnesses to the self-same phenomena, though this does lead to the Press taking up the story. Paranormal researcher Maurice Grosse (McBurney) begins his investigation while back in the States, Lorraine convinces Ed (Wilson) they should take a break from their own investigations (though in the end it doesn’t take much to convince Lorraine to change her mind). Once they arrive, Ed and Lorraine waste no time in contacting the spirit of the house’s previous owner, a man named Bill Wilkins (Adrian). Bill died in the house and it’s he who is responsible for all the paranormal goings-on. Unable to convince him to move on, Bill’s malicious behaviour begins to put everyone at risk. But when a video recording shows Janet causing damage that everyone had attributed to Bill Wilkins, Ed and Lorraine have no option but to leave as it throws too much doubt on the veracity of what’s happening. Until Ed has a breakthrough in relation to two recordings made of Bill talking through Janet…

TC2 - scene1

While The Conjuring 2 is handsomely mounted with a touch of Grand Guignol here and there to add to the visual gloominess, and Wan orchestrates proceedings with a confidence and deftness of touch that benefits and enhances the mood of the movie to good effect, it’s still let down by the vagaries inherent in the script and its decision to include as many of the recorded events as possible (though the script seems to be saying that these events aren’t dramatic enough on their own and they’re bolstered by the inclusion of extra phenomena such as the Crooked Man and dozens of crosses that turn upside down). Narrative leaps make the movie feel disjointed at times, particularly in the stretch before Ed and Lorraine arrive in Enfield, and there’s little investment in the characters or their development, with only Grosse given a poignant (and true) reason to believe in the paranormal.

The cast perform efficiently enough, with Wilson and Farmiga settled into their roles, and there’s excellent support from Wolfe and O’Connor (though her accent, like Esposito’s, does wander from scene to scene). Don Burgess’s cinematography is a bonus, providing the movie with a sense of compressed space that feels appropriately claustrophobic when characters are shot in close-up, and there’s a subtle, “insidious” score by Joseph Bishara that adds to the effectiveness of the supernatural events. But if there’s one grumble to be made above all others, it’s why Valak, the demon nun in question, had to look like Marilyn Manson.

Rating: 7/10 – a solid if predictable horror sequel, The Conjuring 2 lacks cohesion in its narrative, but makes up for it with some impressive visuals and its recreation of the era; unnerving for the most part and featuring a couple of effective jump scares, viewers should take its assertion of being from “the true case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren” with a huge pinch of salt, and view accordingly.

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10 Stars Who Weren’t Born in the Country You Think They Were

13 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Actors, Actresses, Amy Adams, Birthplaces, Bruce Willis, Emma Watson, Eva Green, Joaquin Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Kim Cattrall, Michael Fassbender, Oscar Isaac, Rose Byrne, Stars

When we see certain stars in their movies we’re prone to making subconcious conclusions about them: what they’re like off-camera (how nice or how nasty), what they might like to do in their spare time, and sometimes, if they’re single, that we’d be the perfect partner for them (creepy yes, but in a non-stalker kind of way, you know?). Some stars have been around long enough for most people to know that they’re not originally from the country we associate them with. For example, Mel Gibson is generally regarded as Australian but was actually born in the good old US of A. And Audrey Hepburn – American? British? – was born in Belgium. In the spirit of full disclosure, here are ten stars who weren’t born in the country you think they were. See how many of them you knew already.

1 – Emma Watson – the star of the Harry Potter movies, and more recently, Regression (2015), looks and sounds like the quintessential English rose, but guess again. Although both her parents are English, Miss Watson was actually born in Paris, France.

Emma Watson

2 – Eva Green – the mercurial, fearless star of movies such as Casino Royale (2006) and 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) has a classical beauty that could have originated in any of a dozen countries around the globe, but like Emma Watson, Green was born in Paris, France.

3 – Keanu Reeves – with his Hawaiian Christian name and chiselled good looks, you could be forgiven for believing Reeves to be as American as they come, but in fact the star of The Matrix (1999) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) was born in Beirut, Lebanon.

4 – Bruce Willis – the tough-as-nails star of Die Hard (1988) and The Sixth Sense (1999) – like so many others in this list – is generally regarded as American through and through but again, appearances can be (and are) deceiving, as Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein in the former West Germany.

Bruce Willis

5 – Rose Byrne – an actress whose career began back in 1994 as the unfortunately named Rastus Summers in Dallas Doll, Byrne has made a name for herself in recent years in a number of R-rated comedies, and while she seems as American as the next actress, she was actually born in Balmain, Australia.

6 – Oscar Isaac – with his dark, brooding looks, Isaac has a cosmopolitan aura about him that, like Eva Green, could mean he was born just about anywhere, but while he’s played a Russian in Pu239 (2006), and a Mexican in For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada (2012) – amongst others – Isaac actually heralds from Guatemala.

7 – Michael Fassbender – despite having grown up in Northern Ireland and having made a name for himself in a handful of well-received British movies, including Hunger (2008) and Fish Tank (2009), the younger incarnation of Magneto in the X-Men movies actually hails from Heidelberg in the former West Germany.

Michael Fassbender

8 – Joaquin Phoenix – while most of his siblings were born in the US, including his brother River, the star of Walk the Line (2005) and Her (2013) was born in a country where his parents were serving as Children of God missionaries at the time. The country? None other than Puerto Rico.

9 – Amy Adams – as quintessentially American in appearance as Emma Watson is quintessentially British in appearance, the actress who was billed as Gorgeous Woman in Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (2006), and who is now Clark Kent/Superman’s go-to gal, was actually born in Vicenza, Italy.

10 – Kim Cattrall – the star of Sex and the City and, going further back, Big Trouble in Little China (1986), looks American, sounds American, and appears steeped in all things American, but again, appearances are deceiving as the truth is she was born in Liverpool, England.

Kim Cattrall

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Gods of Egypt (2016)

12 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Adventure, Alex Proyas, Brenton Thwaites, Drama, Egypt, Elodie Yung, Fantasy, Geoffrey Rush, Gerard Butler, Gods, Horus, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Osiris, Ra, Review, Set, Sphinx

Gods of Egypt

D: Alex Proyas / 127m

Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Brenton Thwaites, Gerard Butler, Elodie Yung, Rufus Sewell, Chadwick Boseman, Courtney Eaton, Geoffrey Rush, Bryan Brown, Emma Booth

Gods of Egypt starts by reinventing Egyptian history. Overly sincere narration informs us that Osiris (Brown) ruled over the populous and bountiful Nile area, while his brother Set (Butler) was given dominion over the barren, desert areas at the far edges of Osiris’ kingdom. Time passes, until Osiris decides to abdicate his throne in favour of his son, Horus (Coster-Waldau). At the crowning ceremony, Set arrives and promptly kills Osiris, blinds Horus by taking out his eyes, and usurps the kingdom. He also sets about killing all the other gods and collecting their individual powers.

A year passes. Set has enslaved the people of Egypt and has put them to building monuments in his name, including one that reaches high into the sky, a tower so great that Ra (Rush), Set’s father, will be able to see it in his heavenly orbit. A slave girl, Zaya (Eaton), convinces her beloved, a thief called Bek (Thwaites), that only Horus can save everyone, but he will need his eyes back. Horus’ eyes are kept in Set’s vaults, and Zaya’s position in the home of master builder Urshu (Sewell) means that she has access to the vaults’ plans and can ensure that Bek avoids any booby traps in his search for the eyes. He retrieves one, but is unable to find the other. In their subsequent escape from Urshu’s home, Zaya is struck by an arrow and dies. Bek continues on to the home of Horus where he bargains for Zaya’s return from the land of the dead in exchange for Horus’ other eye. The god agrees to help him find it.

GOE - scene1

Naturally, Set becomes aware of what Horus is doing. He sends assassins, and even himself, to halt their journey to the Egyptian capital and the procurement of Horus’ other eye. But luck is on Bek and Horus’ side, and aided along the way by Hathor (Yung), the goddess of love, and Thoth (Boseman), the god of wisdom, they reach the capital and Horus does battle with Set. With Set having unleashed the world-devouring creature Apep, Horus and Bek must find Horus’ eye, and a way to defeat Set and save Egypt from complete annihilation.

Students of Egyptian history will be shaking their heads in dismay at such a (brief) description of the events that occur in Gods of Egypt. But if they were to actually sit down and watch the movie, that head shaking would quickly turn into uncontrolled apoplexy. As revisionist fantasies go, Gods of Egypt is tawdry stuff, and heavily reliant on spectacle provided by CGI and poor script decisions. The gods can transform into armoured, winged variations of themselves in order to do battle with one another, but this is nothing to the way in which the characters speak an awful mix of cod-literal pseudo-intellectual exposition, and apparently heartfelt twaddle. With deathless lines of dialogue such as “I don’t want to die, I want to live! I want to live down on earth, amongst the lands I have conquered!” (spoken by Set), it’s no wonder that the script, by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless – who also co-wrote Dracula Untold (2014) and The Last Witch Hunter (2015), and whose next project is Power Rangers (2017) – contains enough wince-inducing moments to stun a sphinx.

GOE - scene3

Ostensibly an adventure story, the movie packs in the usual amount of over-the-top action setpieces that seem de rigeuer in modern fantasy movies, and in doing so, sacrifices credibility at every turn, and on certain occasions, any coherence it’s built up along the way (which isn’t much). Characters behave erratically, leaving the audience to wonder if Sazama and Sharpless assembled their final script from the scattered pages of previous drafts, and the journey Bek and Horus embark on seems to take in every possible physical environment – from desert to swamp to mountain – available to the screenwriters’ imagination. The movie is a big, sprawling epic, eager to please with each new bout of CGI-rendered spectacle, and yet it’s spectacularly hollow, a crowd-pleasing exercise that lacks subtlety, depth and narrative stability (which begs the question, just which kind of audience is it looking for?).

The cast are lost amid all the surface glamour and overbearing special effects. Coster-Waldau is particularly adrift, varying the level of his performance from scene to scene and never quite managing to find a through line for Horus that doesn’t smack of constantly changing improvisation. He also has trouble giving weight to his dialogue, making Horus sound plaintive and reticent rather than angry and defiant. Thwaites is stuck with the awkward task of motivating Horus and his fellow gods to take up against Set, and providing most of the movie’s humour. That he only succeeds intermittently shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as again the script doesn’t support him in either endeavour, and often leaves him hanging high and dry. And then there’s Butler, chewing the scenery with all the energy of an actor working out a contractual obligation and not caring how bad he is.

GOE - scene2

The rest of the cast struggle manfully to maintain a semblance of interest in their characters with only Yung and Boseman injecting any passion into their roles. They’re not helped by the absence of Proyas in the director’s chair. Anyone who’s seen The Crow (1994), Dark City (1998), and I, Robot (2004), will be wondering what’s happened to the idiosyncratic and daring director whose visual ingenuity and flair marked him out as a talent to watch out for. Here, Proyas’ talent is squandered in a maelstrom of pixels and perfunctory plotting that does his reputation no favours, and makes his previous movie, the nonsensical Knowing (2009), look like a masterpiece in comparison. Proyas isn’t connected with another project as yet, but let’s hope he finds one that’s worthy of his talent and commitment.

Rating: 4/10 – overcooked and belligerent in its approach, Gods of Egypt looks good but remains resolutely superficial from beginning to end; an adventure movie that goes through the motions and proves hard to engage with, it trades plausibility for spectacle at every turn, and is entirely forgettable.

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Wolf Warrior (2015)

11 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Army manoeuvres, China, Drama, Jing Wu, Mercenaries, Nan Yu, Revenge, Review, Scott Adkins, Sniper, Thriller

Wolf Warrior

Original title: Zhan lang

D: Jing Wu / 90m

Cast: Jing Wu, Nan Yu, Scott Adkins, Dahong Ni, Xiao Zhou, Qiang Ma, Zhaoqi Shi, Zibin Fang, Sen Wang, Tengyuan Liu, Yongda Zhang, Xiaolong Zhuang, Yi Zhao, Zi Liang

Action movies, when executed properly, can provide some of the most exhilarating movie moments it’s possible to experience. From John McClane’s exhortation to “take this under advisement, jerkweed” before dumping a chair load of C4 down a lift shaft in Die Hard (1988), to the spectacular destruction of the White House in Independence Day (1996), and the lobby shootout in The Matrix (1999), the movies have given us the kind of goosebump-inducing, jaw-dropping moments that make us want to go back to them time and again, so impressive are they.

But the flipside of this is the number of action movies that fail to deliver even the barest hint of one of these moments. There’s more of them, of course, and they often fall back on tried and trusted elements: running gunfire that never hits anyone, pyrotechnics rather than proper explosions, poorly orchestrated hand-to-hand combat (the kind of heavily edited sequences that end up looking as if they’ve had frames cut here and there), a scenario that sees one lone hero fend off an army of soldiers/mercenaries/thugs, a sneering villain who meets a nasty end (if the script is clever enough), a romantic interest who may or may not be abducted by the sneering villain, and/or a daring rescue mission that means certain death if anyone attempts it – usually against a heavily fortified hideout. (There are plenty of other, similar elements, but you get the general idea.)

vlcsnap-00001

It’s easy to take some comfort from all this familiarity; after all, action movies are often the cinematic equivalent of socially sanctioned vigilantism, even if there’s a police officer involved (a la Dirty Harry Callahan). After policemen, action movies like to employ members of the military as their protagonists, ex-soldiers home on leave in their troubled hometown, or maverick individuals who have trouble following orders. Again, it’s comforting; these characters know how to handle themselves, they know how to comfortably beat up a minor bad guy (and several of his buddies), and their grit and detemination will allow them to overcome all kinds of injuries and take down the sneering villain.

All of which makes watching Wolf Warrior such a pleasant, though unremarkable experience. Many of the basic action movie tropes are here, from Jing Wu’s stoic yet romantically cocky sniper Leng Feng, to the top brass (Yu, Zhou) forced to watch events unfold from a command room, and the leader of a group of mercenaries (Adkins) whose resourcefulness proves no match for the hero (and who is reduced to, yes, sneering). Leng also overcomes several injuries sustained throughout the movie, including a gunshot wound to the left shoulder that he promptly ignores. It’s all entirely predictable stuff, competently shot and edited, but offering little in the way of reward for the viewer.

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It’s comforting, though, because this is a Chinese action movie, but it has the look and feel of an American low budget action movie but with a few extra dollars spent on it. Its basic plot – sniper kills drug dealer, drug dealer’s brother hires mercenaries to kill sniper – is very basic indeed, but the screenplay (by Wu and three others) wanders away from it so often and so consistently, the average viewer could be forgiven for thinking the basic plot, if the makers had stuck to it exclusively, would have led to the movie lasting maybe fifty minutes tops. And there are several narrative decisions and developments that imply the script was made up as the production progressed, from the inclusion of a scene where Leng and his fellow wolf warriors (they’re an elite Chinese army outfit) fend off a pack of badly CGI-rendered wolves, to the idea that trying to kill Feng would best be achieved while he’s on manoeuvres and surrounded by dozens of fellow soldiers (the mercenaries are only five in number).

The mix of action movie tropes and Chinese movie making sensibilities leads to Wolf Warrior having its fair share of comedy moments too. Wu can’t resist making Leng the kind of chirpy, up for a laugh character who would usually end up as cannon fodder at some point in other action movies, and while he can be serious when required, it’s a strange sight to see him holding back on grinning when Leng steps on a mine. He also spends as much time as possible flirting with his superior (Nan Yu), which of course is reciprocated so that they can ride off together at the end (there’s no sunset, but it’s implied). And Leng’s maverick anti-authority tendencies, the subject of an enquiry at the beginning, are soon applauded once the mercenaries are defeated and the drug dealer’s brother is apprehended at the border.

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In the director’s chair, Wu proves to be an erratic presence, strangely confident when focusing on scenes that don’t involve any action, and unable to muster any tension or excitement in the scenes that do. Fans of both Wu and Adkins will be waiting for their final showdown with a fair degree of anticipation, but that anticipation is soon dispatched by the fight’s pedestrian moves and awkward wire work (it’s over too quickly as well). Adkins, whose presence in low budget action movies is often the best thing about them, is saddled with some dreadful dialogue, but he still manages to inject his character with enough venom to make his appearance fairly memorable, while Wu and his fellow cast members play up their stereotypical roles in such a way that the words ‘by rote’ spring to mind.

All this makes it sound as if Wolf Warrior is one to avoid, but while it’s certainly not a good movie, it does have a certain charm that redeems it somewhat. The Chinese setting is different, even if the overall mise-en-scene is overly familiar, and there are times when the absurdity of it all is more than capable of bringing a smile to the viewer’s face. Aside from several patriotic nods to the sanctity of the Republic of China, the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously and its running time keeps things lean and (occasionally) mean. Fans of Asian cinema might want to check it out, but if they do, they’d do well to keep their expectations in check.

Rating: 5/10 – the usual vagaries of Chinese movie making – story developments that don’t make complete sense, less than consistent characterisations, narrative inconsistencies, haphazard editing – are all present and correct in Wolf Warrior, but can’t completely derail what is basically an inoffensive, painless viewing experience; the kind of movie that’s perfectly suited to an evening’s viewing with pizza and beers, it’s an action thriller that doesn’t try too hard and should be approached accordingly.

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Question of the Week – 10 June 2016

10 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Daniel Craig, Franchise, James Bond, Question of the Week

There’s been an awful (awful) lot of speculation recently about whether or not the next James Bond movie will see a different actor in the role, or if Daniel Craig will relent on his apparent assertion that he’s done with the part. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time that the role has changed hands, but in amongst all the talk of Tom Hiddleston or Idris Elba or Jamie Bell stepping into Bond’s shoes, one thing seems to have been overlooked. It’s not about the role per se, more about the nature of the Bond movies and their need for reinvention. Putting aside the involvement of George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton, this week’s question is:

With the franchise showing continual signs of decreasing returns in terms of quality once an actor has reached his fourth outing, should the producers now look to limit an actor’s involvement to only three movies before rebooting the whole set up again and again?

James Bond

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High-Rise (2015)

09 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Ben Wheatley, Drama, J.G. Ballard, Jeremy Irons, Literary adaptation, Luke Evans, Review, Sienna Miller, Thriller, Tom Hiddleston, Tower block, Violence

High-Rise

D: Ben Wheatley / 119m

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, Peter Ferdinando, Sienna Guillory, Reece Shearsmith, Louis Suc, Enzo Cilenti, Augustus Prew, Dan Renton Skinner, Stacy Martin, Bill Paterson

First published in 1975, J.G. Ballard’s novel, High-Rise, was originally meant to be made in the late Seventies by director Nicolas Roeg from a script by Paul Mayersberg. That particular project fell through, and for a while afterwards Vincenzo Natali was attached along with Richard Stanley as screenwriter, but that fell through as well. Fast forward to 2014 and writer/director Ben Wheatley – along with his wife, screenwriter Amy Jump – develops the movie along with long-term attached producer Jeremy Thomas, and the result is an edgy, claustrophobic thriller that never quite achieves the goals it sets for itself.

We meet the movie’s central protagonist, Dr Robert Laing (Hiddleston), at a time when anarchy and violence have overtaken the residents of the tower block in which he lives. Holed up in the apartment he bought several months before, Laing is surviving against the odds, surrounded by the debris of his previously ordered and carefully maintained lifestyle. Pragmatic and sanguine about his future, the first thing to understand about Laing is that he’s showing no sign of leaving the tower block he lives in. The question that follows is a simple one: what could possibly have happened to bring Laing to this point?

HR - scene1

The movie takes us back three months and Laing’s arrival at the tower block designed by architect Anthony Royal (Irons), an experiment in social living that houses the lower classes on the lower floors, and the upper classes on the upper floors (and Royal and his wife in the penthouse suite). Laing’s apartment is somewhere in the middle, an unwelcoming collection of drably painted rooms that he makes no attempt to improve upon or make his own. He’s an aloof man, a little socially awkward, but he does attract the attention of his upstairs neighbour, Charlotte (Miller), and her son, Toby (Suc). She invites him to a party where Laing is introduced to some of the other residents, including documentary movie maker Richard Wilder (Evans) and his heavily pregnant wife, Helen (Moss).

Laing also attracts the attention of Royal, and the two meet privately, though Laing’s aloof nature keeps him at a distance from the disappointments voiced by Royal in relation to the social engineering that isn’t going as well as he’d hoped. There’s also the problem of his wife, Ann (Hawes), and her unhappiness at being cooped up in the penthouse suite, while her husband tries to perfect his plans for the tower block and the others being built nearby. With the power to the building frequently out for long periods, and the divisions between the affluent and the less well off growing wider and wider with each passing day, Laing finds himself caught between both camps in his efforts to blend in anonymously.

HR - scene2

Wilder, and his distrust and disapproval for those more privileged than himself, proves to be the catalyst for the kind of hostile rule breaking that makes the more well off residents angry and afraid that their ordered existence is in jeopardy. A party gets out of hand, and sees the beginning of the end of order within the tower block, as residents band together in various groups to impose their own versions of order on each other, but with the upper classes holding the upper hand – and crowing about it. But even their confidence proves short-lived, and Royal’s attempts to calm things aside, no one knows how to restore order to everyone’s satisfaction. It’s not long before mutual hatred leads to violence and murder, and the breakdown of civilised behaviour amongst the tower block’s denizens.

In adapting J.G. Ballard’s highly regarded novel, Wheatley has retained the Seventies period setting – all browns and oranges in the colour scheme, many of the male characters sporting excessive facial hair – and has created an isolated (and isolating) sense of space in the tower block designed by the well-meaning yet naïve Royal. With the building’s harsh lines and overwhelming size offering a sense of foreboding that’s hard to ignore, the movie’s visual design is at once disconcerting and strangely inviting, an uneasy mix of large, empty spaces and claustrophobic interiors that draws in the viewer and keeps them as unsettled as the residents of the lower floors. It’s an impressive achievement, the tower block’s dark shadows and labyrinthine feel a potent mix that is hard to shake off.

HR - scene3

Class divisions are at the core of the movie though, as Ballard’s clinical dissection of suburban mores and failings is given a thorough, if overbearing, once-over by Jump’s screenplay. Prejudice and bias, arrogance and denial, contempt and xenophobia, malice and psychosis – the script piles it all on with darkly comic attention to detail, and yet in such a fashion that none of it is as effective as the script, and Wheatley’s often fevered direction, would like. All these elements are combined in such a way that each of the characters experiences them to some degree or other, but not in a way that enhances the descent into self-induced madness and chaos they endure, or even the emotional fallout that results. The residents all behave appallingly, but in the same way that they find themselves trapped within the building, so too does the script trap them in a web of limited motivation, unexplained choices, and hasty reversals. The result is a movie where everyone behaves as if they’ve lost control of their ability to reason, while at the same time, behaving with a single-minded purpose: to destroy their lives and the lives of those around them.

If the bulk of the cast and characters are all required to behave in a fashion that suggests mass-induced paranoia, then it could be said that Jump and Wheatley are creating a world where this is inevitable when such class divisions are thrown together into a huge melting pot. Animosity will prevail, both seem to be saying, and it doesn’t matter how cultured or couth you may be, you’ll lower yourself accordingly in order to survive. Which leaves us with Laing, a character who starts off as being intriguing but soon becomes a cypher, a man it’s hard to identify with or even root for. As the tower block begins to disintegrate around him, he retreats from the carnage going on outside the door to his apartment, and gives in to emotional and physical lethargy, avoiding the world he’s now a part of, and retreating into himself. The movie loses its protagonist, and descends into an extended series of scenes where the focus becomes muddled due to the decision to explore various forms of maladroit behaviour in a mannered, and compromising way. The narrative, ostensibly about Laing and his reaction to the events going on around him, loses steam and becomes weighed down by stylistic excess and a repetitive disregard for its own narrative.

At least the performances, though mannered and harking back to the period in which the movie is set, are uniformly enjoyable, even if they’re often required to spout clichés and banal justifications in support of their actions. Hiddleston does extremely well as the odd man out, the outsider blessed with the ability to see beyond the tower block and the state of disillusion everyone is feeling, but who nevertheless finds himself embroiled in the angry wishes of the mob. Irons is astute and nowhere near all-seeing as Royal thinks he is, which adds to the character’s tragedy. Miller is fine as the object of several men’s lust, while Evans adds another powerful role to his career CV as the man whose anger makes him more dangerous than anyone else.

Rating: 6/10 – a movie that lacks recognisable depths in its characters, and avoids giving them appreciable feelings in the process, High-Rise takes its setting’s microcosm-in-sharp-relief and expands on it without fully exploring the consequences of anyone’s actions (even Charlotte’s); maddening for how good it could have been with a sharper attention to relevant emotional details, it’s still a thought-provoking movie, albeit one that loses its audience by letting its characters flail about unnecessarily and to little benefit.

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Trailers – Yoga Hosers (2016), Can We Take a Joke? (2016) and Collide (2016)

08 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Can We Take a Joke?, Collide, Felicity Jones, Kevin Smith, Nicholas Hoult, Previews, Trailers, Yoga Hosers

Watching the trailer for Yoga Hosers, the latest from Kevin Smith, is akin to hearing a long joke with every third sentence left out. You get the idea what’s being said is funny, you know you’re being told a joke so you’re waiting for the punchline (hopefully it’s not in one of those third sentences being left out), and the person telling you the joke is very funny to begin with, so the joke should also be funny – right? And yet, as the joke’s being told you start to get the idea that, actually, it’s not going to be very funny, and that maybe any humour in the joke is in the way it’s being told. Or maybe it’s just not a very good joke in the first place. That’s the idea with Yoga Hosers, whose trailer makes it look like there’s tons of humour in the movie, but at the same makes the movie look like it’s trying too hard to be wacky (oh look – there’s Johnny Depp “in disguise” again!). Smith doesn’t lack for confidence but his scripts aren’t always as water-tight as he might think (“So much nein it’s almost ten”?), and on this evidence he might be in for a mauling from both critics and audiences. Let’s hope not, though, because Smith is always one of cinema’s most idiosyncratic movie makers, and he’s not afraid to take chances; and that’s a good thing.

 

Staying with humour, the documentary Can We Take a Joke? looks at where comedians draw the line (if some of them ever do), and how they can justify stepping over it. In these days of instant outrage fuelled by social media platforms such as Twitter and  Facebook, it’s harder than ever to fly under the radar with a joke, particularly if it’s in response to a recent tragedy, but should comedians be constrained in such a way that an audience is effectively censoring them before they even step out on stage (or through whatever medium they’re broadcasting)? There are arguments for and against, and however you feel about jokes that may cause offence, this exploration of what “offensive” means looks certain to provoke a wider debate, even if it’s only for a short while until somebody else says or does something that the Take Offence brigade objects to.

 

In recent years, Felicity Jones and Nicholas Hoult have both built on their emerging careers to the point where their presence in a movie is something of a guarantee of quality. They’re also both very likeable, have very good screen presence, and franchise experiences aside, have made some very interesting choices in the past. And now we have them appearing in Collide, an action thriller that looks like any number of other action thrillers made in recent years, and also looks like it features the same clichéd character motivations we’ve seen over and over before. The presence of Anthony Hopkins in principal villain mode is not a good sign – hands up anyone who can remember the last decent performance Hopkins gave us – and the sight of Ben Kingsley hamming it up to eleven isn’t encouraging either, but the stunt work appears to be the key element, and in that respect the trailer does make the movie worth seeing just for the vehicular mayhem alone. One to see with low expectations then, and the hope that Jones and Hoult can rescue some of the movie with their performances.

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Fourth Cousin (Twice Removed) of My Top 10 Movie Quotes

07 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Barton Fink, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dazed and Confused, Dialogue, Election, Finding Nemo, Movies, Quotes, Superman II, The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), The Player, The Shawshank Redemption, The Thing (1982)

Following on from My Top 10 Movie Quotes, and Second Cousin of My Top 10 Movie Quotes, here are ten more quotes from various movies, some funny, some moderately profound, some iconic, and a couple that are just plain weird and wonderful. Feel free to let me know if you have any of your own favourites – who knows, they might appear in a future post.

1 – “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” – Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

2 – “Can we talk about something other than Hollywood for a change? We’re educated people.” – Griffin Mill, The Player (1992)

3 – “Mine.” – Seagulls, Finding Nemo (2003)

Finding Nemo

4 – “Civilization, and syphilization, have advanced together.” – Professor Abraham Van Helsing, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

5 – “Kneel before Zod.” – General Zod, Superman II (1980)

Superman II

6 – “Thirty-five is an attractive age. London is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.” – Lady Bracknell, The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)

7 – “I pulled off early today. Took your advice, went to a doctor about this ear. He says ‘You have an ear infection, ten dollars please’. So I says ‘I told you I had an ear infection, you give me ten dollars!’ Well that started an argument.” – Charlie Meadows, Barton Fink (1991)

Barton Fink

8 – “George Washington was in a cult, and the cult was into aliens, man.” – Slater, Dazed and Confused (1993)

9 – “Dear God, I know I don’t believe in you, but since I’ll be starting Catholic school soon, I thought I should at least practice.” – Tammy Metzler, Election (1999)

10 – “I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!” – Garry, The Thing (1982)

The Thing

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Hail, Caesar! (2016)

06 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

"The Future", Actors, Alden Ehrenreich, Capitol Pictures, Comedy, Communists, Drama, Ethan Coen, George Clooney, Hollywood, Joel Coen, Josh Brolin, Kidnapping, Musical number, Religion, Review, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton

Hail, Caesar!

D: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen / 106m

Cast: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, Frances McDormand, Jonah Hill, Veronica Osorio, Heather Goldenhersh, Alison Pill, Max Baker, Ian Blackman, Christopher Lambert, Clancy Brown, Michael Gambon

Hollywood, 1951. Eddie Mannix (Brolin) is the head of production at Capitol Pictures; he’s also the studio “fixer’, the man who keeps all the stars in line and out of the gossip columns. It’s an average day for Eddie: one of his stars, unmarried DeeAnna Moran (Johansson), reveals she’s pregnant, his boss back in New York wants to take a young Western actor called Hobie Doyle (Ehrenreich) and put him in a period drama directed by European emigre Laurence Laurentz (Fiennes), he’s being headhunted by the Lockheed Company with the promise of a ten-year contract and early retirement, and by lunchtime he’s aware that the star of Capitol’s latest, prestige picture, Hail, Caesar! A Tale of the Christ, Baird Whitlock (Clooney) is missing.

Hail, Caesar! is an important movie for the studio, and Eddie is keen to ensure that nothing goes wrong with its production. When he receives a note from “The Future”, the group claiming responsibility for Whitlock’s disappearance, his day is further complicated by rival gossip columnists (and twin sisters) Thora and Thessaly Thacker (both Swinton) who are planning to run stories about Whitlock and want to interview him that afternoon. Eddie fends them off, promising them both exclusive access to Whitlock the next day. Meanwhile, Hobie Doyle’s portrayal of a dapper gentleman in Laurentz’s latest movie, Merrily We Sing, is proving to be disastrous. Laurentz wants Hobie off the picture, while Hobie thinks he’s not doing so well in the role. Eddie tells both of them that there will be no changes.

HC - scene3

A ransom call from “The Future” has Eddie placing $100,000 of the studio’s money in a valise that he can’t close properly. Doyle, who is meeting with Eddie when the call comes through, lends him his belt to keep it shut, and Eddie hides it in one of the sound stages. Later, after attending the premiere of his latest movie, Hobie sees the valise in the possession of song and dance star Burt Gurney (Tatum). Hobie decides to follow him. Back on the lot, Eddie has to make a final decision about the Lockheed offer, while also finding a solution to the problem of DeeAnna’s pregnancy. And as midnight ushers in another twenty-four hours, it’s still another average day for Eddie.

First touted back in 1999, though originally to be set in the Twenties and focusing on a troupe of actors performing a play set in Ancient Rome, the Coen Brothers’ latest has sat on the shelf for a while now, but what was originally a “thought experiment” has developed into a deceptively simple, endlessly endearing movie about the frivolous nature of entertainment and the serious efforts that go into making all that frivolity seem important. There’s also a political element in the form of “The Future”, the group of Communist screenwriters who kidnap Whitlock, and enough affectionate pastiches of Fifties movie making to keep fans of the period more than happy (a song and dance number called No Dames! and featuring Channing Tatum is a particular highlight).

HC - scene2

But look closely and you’ll also find a number of religious references, from DeeAnna’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy and need for a husband reminiscent of the Virgin Mary’s situation, to the Lockheed Company’s pursuit of Eddie being a clear ringer for Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. Contentious? Probably, but the symbolism is there, and the Coens have a lot of fun with it, adding unexpected layers to a movie that appears quite lightweight on the surface. But then there are the clever Hitchcock references as well, the idea of good versus evil, sinning and redemption, and suddenly Hail, Caesar! is more than the fluffy confection that it looks and sounds like.

And yet it is also determinedly simplistic in its approach, almost offhandedly so. Eddie faces each problem with an equanimity that seems out of place given the potential for career-ending disaster that faces him at every turn, but then there’s that Lockheed offer he can fall back on if he needs to, so why should he be worried all the time. (It’s actually really simple: he’s that good at his job.) Whitlock embraces the Communist rhetoric of “The Future” because he’s an idiot, an empty vessel who soaks up their ideas in the same way that he soaks up the lines of dialogue in a script – and then parrots them verbatim. It’s no wonder he’s unfazed by his having been kidnapped; like Eddie he lives in a protected bubble: along as he does what he’s supposed to, everything will be all right.

HC - scene1

Brolin and Clooney both give wonderful performances but in different ways. Brolin displays a gift for understated comedy he doesn’t get the chance to show too often, while Clooney channels the ghost of Cary Grant with every double take and concerted bit of mugging he can squeeze in (“Squint at the grandeur. It’s blinding! It’s blinding!”). Not far behind them is Swinton as the warring gossip twins, exasperated and credulous, while the likes of Johansson, Hill, Tatum, and Lambert are given small but lovingly crafted supporting turns. As the dramatically talent-free Hobie, Ehrenreich is angel-faced yet crafty, and Fiennes is perfectly cast as the despairing Laurentz. The two share a scene devoted to having Hobie say the line, “Would that it were so simple” that is a marvel of linguistic dexterity and comic timing; it’s one of the movie’s many comic highlights.

Bolstered by gorgeous cinematography courtesy of DoP Roger Deakins, and allied to the kind of pin-sharp recreation of the period that the Coens are so good at providing, Hail, Caesar! – like a lot of their work – isn’t as straightforward as it seems, and rewards on all kinds of different levels. It seems to be common practice with their movies, to only look at what’s going on on the surface, and dismiss the notion that there’s more going on underneath, as if the Coens were journeyman movie makers, or new to the industry. But this is yet another movie of theirs that is clever throughout and cleverly constructed for maximum effect and enjoyment.

Rating: 9/10 – it may appear slight and lacking in depth, but Hail, Caesar! is a movie that never lets up in its desire to entertain by poking gentle fun at the movies of a bygone era; with a great script and winning performances, the Coen brothers have shown once again that when it comes to their own unique way of movie making, what you see is just the tip of what you get… and it’s damn funny too.

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Essex Boys: Law of Survival (2015)

05 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Chris Bell, Corruption, Crime, Drama, Essex, Jesse Birdsall, Mountie, Murder, Review, Ross Boatman, Steven M. Smith, The Rettendon murders, Thriller, True story

Essex Boys Law of Survival

D: Steven M. Smith / 91m

Cast: Chris Bell, Ross Boatman, Jesse Birdsall, Megan Lockhurst, Mark Sears, Abbie Steele, James Hodcroft, Jake Francis, Darren James King, Owen Clark, Dean Martin, Mark Arden, Carlton Leach

For anyone who doesn’t live in the county of Essex in the United Kingdom, the Rettendon murders, committed on 6 December 1995, probably won’t mean a thing. Three drug dealers – Tony Tucker, Patrick Tate and Craig Rolfe – were shot dead, executed, while they sat in a Range Rover down a small farm track. The subsequent police investigation yielded no suspects or evidence that could have led to a prosecution. It was only after the investigation was abandoned that further police enquiries led to the arrest of two men, Jack Whomes and Michael Steele, and they were eventually convicted of the murders. There is some doubt about their guilt due to the reliability of some of the evidence, but their sentence still stands.

In 1990, Essex Boys was released. It starred Sean Bean, Tom Wilkinson, and Charlie Creed-Miles, and was a fictionalised account of the murders and the events that led up to them. It’s not a great movie, but it gets most of the relevant facts right, and Bean is on splendid form as a psycho gangster. Then in 2007, Rise of the Footsoldier arrived, a violent, unimaginative movie that focused on ex-gangland enforcer Carlton Leach’s rise within the ranks of the criminal underworld, before it shoehorned in the murders at the end. (A sequel, Rise of the Footsoldier: Part 2 (2015), followed Leach in the wake of the murders.) Further movies have appeared since then, all attempting to gain some semblance of relevance by referencing the Rettendon murders, and using them as a means of exploring Essex’s criminal infrastructure – and each having the same effect: they’re all terrible.

EBLOS - scene3

And so, after Bonded by Blood (2010), The Fall of the Essex Boys (2013), Essex Boys: Retribution (2013), and a spurious documentary, Essex Boys: The Truth (2015), we have Essex Boys: Law of Survival, a sorry excuse for a movie that manages to reach a new low in British feature production. It’s an appalling movie that has only one positive aspect to it (more of which later), and which continually amazes in the way it maintains its completely shoddy visual style and amateurish presentation. Beginning with a voice over by Carlton Leach about the Rettendon murders, and the nature of crime (as he sees it), it sets the tone for the rest of the movie by making Leach sound as if he reads out loud to himself but doesn’t realise that full stops mean you can pause or take a breath.

Leach then disappears from the movie until he pops back up at the end with more words of wisdom. At this point we’re introduced to two rival gangs who want to beat the crap out of each other on an industrial estate, but won’t actually throw any punches until a handful of riot police get in between them. A very poorly choreographed fight sequence leads to another very poorly choreographed fight sequence – this time in a pub – and the death of one of the gang members. Two years pass. The police inspector who investigated the death, Franks (Boatman), is now a bit of a bigwig in criminal circles, and feared by pretty much everyone (even his boss won’t sanction him, despite knowing what he’s getting up to). One person who doesn’t really care is Danny (Bell). He’s making an effort to stay straight, and is helped in this by his girlfriend, Amy (Steele). But when the two of them witness Franks killing one of his “crew”, Amy is killed, and Danny is shot and left for dead.

Danny remains comatose for some time – the movie never really confirms just how long – but when he finally wakes up he has one thing on his mind: revenge on Franks for killing Amy. He seeks out an untraceable gun from a paranoid American called Gerrard (Clark), and begins targetting Franks’s men, and then Franks’s wife Judy (Lockhurst). Up until now the movie has been dreadful to watch, but it’s at this point that any semblance of credibility is thrown out of the window with the revelation that Judy is actually a Mountie – yes, a Canadian Mountie! – and has been sent undercover to become Franks’s wife and find out who the Canadian drug dealer is that’s supplying Franks with the product he’s distributing. It all leads to a showdown where Danny gets the chance to avenge Amy, and Judy gets her man (Arden). And then poor old Carlton comes back…

EBLOS - scene1

Watching Essex Boys: Law of Survival, the word that keeps springing to mind is: inept. The script by Christopher Jolley is replete with repetition, contains dialogue that’s never been spoken by anyone in real life, has no sense of the time period it’s trying to establish, and when it has Lockhurst admit that Judy has sex with Franks “but doesn’t enjoy it”, stomps on any hope that the viewer might have had that Jolley, director Smith, and the producers – who include the ever-dependably awful Paul Tanter and Simon Phillips (see Shame the Devil and He Who Dares) – had any intentions of making an even partially good movie. It’s not even clear that they care at all if the movie is bad or not. If they did, then they couldn’t possibly have thought that Judy’s admission, or any of the various scenes that give a bad name to screenwriting and directing, was anywhere near good enough to be included in the final cut.

The acting is atrocious, with the exception of Steele as Amy, the one bright spot in the whole movie. It’s her first feature role, and hopefully not her last, as she brings an innate sweetness to the role that thankfully offsets the harsher qualities of every other character. But she’s alone in being able to recite the dialogue convincingly, or as if English wasn’t most of the cast’s first language, and the emotional range on display ranges from teeth-clenchingly angry to teeth-clenchingly upset – and back again. Bell is particularly bad, displaying his anger at his girlfriend’s death and his own shooting by wandering around various back streets looking like he’s trying to solve a difficult maths problem in his head, instead of being on a vengeful killing spree.

EBLOS - scene2

The photography is alarming as well, with scenes inexpertly framed and blocked out, and odd camera angles used in almost every other shot, an effect that leaves the viewer wondering if Steadicam operator Matt Mitchell and the team of seven camera operators were all suffering from advanced Parkinsons during the shoot, or they were just putting the camera wherever they felt like it and hoping for the best. The editing is dreadful as a result; with so much ill-designed and shot footage to work with, editors Smith and Gareth Fient give up the ghost and play Connect Every Other Shot, a decision that makes continuity laughable – Danny appears in a scene with Gerrard where he has a cut lip and a head wound, and this is before we see the scene where he receives the selfsame injuries.

There are many other examples of how bad the movie is, but one that stands out is the movie’s final scene, a recreation of the Rettendon murders that wants to be an unexpected twist intended to have audiences gasping in shock and surprise, but which actually serves to show how ill-considered this whole venture has been all along. Let’s hope that with this awful farrago, we won’t have to endure yet another movie about the Rettendon murders, but if we do then we should also hope that it won’t be made on a micro-budget, feature a cast who can’t act (even veterans Boatman and Birdsall lack conviction), contain sound effects that don’t match the gunfire at any time, and have a script that has all the cohesion of a puff of smoke.

Rating: 1/10 – dire, just absolutely dire, and another nail in the coffin of low budget British crime dramas; Essex Boys: Law of Survival should be avoided at all costs, and even if you think the Rettendon murders are really fascinating, this is not the place to indulge that fascination, not when you could be doing something more useful, like knitting your own yoghurt, or counting the number of actual pixels in the movie Pixels (2015).

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The Scorch Trials (2015)

04 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Cranks, Drama, Dylan O'Brien, Gladers, Immunes, James Dashner, Kaya Scodelario, Literary adaptation, Patricia Clarkson, Review, Sci-fi, Sequel, The Flare, The Right Arm, The Scorch, Thriller, WCKD, Wes Ball

The Scorch Trials

D: Wes Ball / 132m

Cast: Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Ki Hong Lee, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Dexter Darden, Alexander Flores, Jacob Lofland, Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito, Aiden Gillen, Patricia Clarkson, Barry Pepper, Lili Taylor, Alan Tudyk

Following on immediately from the events of The Maze Runner (2014), The Scorch Trials begins with Thomas (O’Brien) and his fellow Gladers – Teresa (Scodelario), Minho (Lee), Newt (Brodie-Sangster), Frypan (Darden), and Winston (Flores) – having escaped the maze and finding sanctuary in a facility run by Mr Janson (Gillen). All seems to be well, and Janson refutes any connection to WCKD, the organisation that’s behind the maze and the reason for its existence. But strange things are going on in the facility; each night selected Immunes from other mazes are chosen to be taken to a place of safety, far away from WCKD’s clutches. And Teresa is separated from the group. When Thomas tries to see her he’s prevented from doing so.

Help comes in the form of Aris, one of the first survivors to be brought to the facility. He shows Thomas proof that Janson is lying about the Immunes being safe, and that he works for WCKD. Rescuing Teresa from some kind of medical procedure, Thomas and the rest of the Gladers, and Aris, escape from the facility and find themselves in the hostile environment of the Scorch. There they encounter Cranks, people infected by the Flare, the disease that has brought worldwide destruction to the planet. Thomas and the rest head north to a range of nearby mountains where they hope to meet up with a resistance group called The Right Arm.

TST - scene3

Circumstances find them taking shelter from a thunderstorm, where they meet Brenda (Salazar) and her surrogate father, Jorge (Esposito). Their hideout is discovered by WCKD forces led by Janson. In the resulting firefight, Thomas and Brenda find themselves separated from everyone else, but they manage to escape. At a nearby night club run by the duplicitous Marcus (Tudyk), the pair fall foul of a powerful narcotic but are saved by Jorge and the others. Marcus is forced to reveal the location of The Right Arm’s location in the mountains, and the group travels there quickly. But when they reach the Right Arm’s camp – led by Vince (Pepper) – Thomas is dismayed to discover that one of his friends has contacted WCKD, and more of their forces are on their way.

Where The Maze Runner was a surprising, tightly structured introduction to the world of the Flare and the young people known as Immunes, The Scorch Trials alas suffers very definitely from Middle Movie Syndrome. It tries hard to be as dramatic and as intense as its predecessor but the narrative is against it from the start. This is a movie that gives sporadic clues as to the larger back story, and even seems on the cusp of revealing some really important information about Thomas and his time working for WCKD, but ultimately it holds back from doing so, leaving any revelations for the final movie, The Death Cure, now due in January 2018 thanks to Dylan O’Brien’s on-set injuries suffered back in March of this year.

TST - scene1

With the plot put largely on hold until then, The Scorch Trials becomes one long chase movie, with Thomas once again acting as unofficial leader of the Immunes, and Clarkson returning as WCKD head Dr Ava Paige. Character development is also put on hold, and the introduction of new antagonists such as Janson and Brenda is done in such a perfunctory way that it becomes impressive that both Gillen and Salazar are able to inject anything of note into their performances. And with Thomas front and centre throughout, O’Brien’s co-stars are left wth little to do but stand around while he agonises over his past, and monopolises the action scenes.

But where the plot struggles to make itself felt, the movie does impress with said action scenes, and several of the encounters with the Cranks are filmed with a sweat-inducing energy that makes what are essentially zombie attacks that much more inventive. It’s difficult enough to come up with a new look for any flesh-eaters, but the makeup and visual effects departments have done a great job here, and those that Thomas et al encounter in a ruined shopping mall are a terrific addition to the canon. It’s worth bearing in mind that this is still an adaptation of a YA novel, and the movie should be congratulated for keeping the darkness that is inherent in James Dashner’s novel (even if certain changes have been made in terms of the story).

TST - scene2

More troublesome is the night club sequence which slows down the movie in its attempt to remind viewers that Thomas has a shared past with WCKD (it also seems to have been included to further remind viewers that when it comes to narcotics they should Just Say No). T.S. Nowlin’s script hits an awkward stretch at this point, almost as if it couldn’t find a way forward unless Thomas found himself in even more jeopardy than before. And the subsequent “interrogation” of Marcus by Jorge sees the kind of strong-arm tactics used that doesn’t sit well with the idea that this is being carried out by one of the “good” guys (there’s only a token objection made to Jorge’s methods of information gathering).

Away from troubling notions of the means justifying the ends, the movie lacks a suitable hook for the audience to cling on to. With the movie’s raison d’etre being to set up the final movie (no two-parter, thankfully), returning director Wes Ball can do little except keep things ticking over until next time. That he does this with a certain amount of conviction is evident enough, but it doesn’t help with a number of scenes that prove listless and ineffective, and there’s too much repetition as the characters move from one new introduction to yet another. This also leaves new cast members such as Pepper and Lili Taylor failing to make an impact, an oversight that points once more to the problems of trying to cram so much into a movie that runs for over two hours and lacks an overall focus.

Rating: 6/10 – although it moves (for the most part) with alacrity, The Scorch Trials isn’t as rewarding as The Maze Runner, and tries its best to make up for this by putting all its efforts into making its action scenes as thrilling as possible; in between times though, some viewers may be wondering why so much has been included and why so very little of it builds upon what’s gone before.

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Mermaid (2016)

03 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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China, Comedy, Conservation, Deng Chao, Drama, Fantasy, Green Gulf, Lin Yun, Mermaids, Octopus, Review, Romance, Stephen Chow, Zhang Yuqi

Mermaid

Original title: Mei ren yu

D: Stephen Chow / 94m

Cast: Deng Chao, Lin Yun, Zhang Yuqi, Show Luo, Hark Tsui, Kris Wu, Zhang Wen

Already the highest grossing Chinese movie ever at the international box office – over half a billion dollars and counting – Stephen Chow’s Mermaid is a sweet-natured fantasy, with strong romantic overtones, and enough comic moments to make it one of the funniest movies of the year. It’s a movie that deserves its success, and despite a limited release in the US and most other territories back in February, should be seen by as many people as possible.

It’s a movie with an environmental message as well. Beginning with scenes that could put off some viewers, especially those who love animals, Chow’s latest sees playboy industrialist and developer Liu Xuan (Deng) acquire a wildlife reserve called Green Gulf with a view to using the area as a sea reclamation project. In partnership with Ruolan (Zhang Yuqi), Liu Xuan plans to use sonar devices to scare off the marine wildlife and use the project to make even more obscene amounts of money than he’s already got. What he doesn’t realise is that his plan will affect not only the local marine wildlife, but has already affected a group of mermaids (and an octopus) that live in the bowels of a shipwrecked tanker in the gulf. Aware of his plan, the merpeople have decided to send an emissary to get to know him and then kill him.

Mermaid - scene1

Their emissary is Sham (Lin), a young mermaid who has discovered a love of chicken, and music and dancing in her brief time out of water. She manages to meet Liu Xuan but he doesn’t pay her much attention, and it’s not until some time later that he calls her wanting to meet up. When he does and Sham finally gets to be alone with him, she finds herself beginning to like Liu Xuan, so much so that she’s unable to go through with the plan to kill him. The next day, Liu Xuan takes her out and asks her to marry him; he’s fallen in love with Sham’s appealing nature, and the fact that she’s not interested in his wealth. But when Sham says no, Liu Xuan goes to her home to get her to change her mind and finds himself captured by the merpeople, who tell him about the real effects that his sonar devices are having. Just as Octopus (Luo) is about to kill Liu Xuan, Sham helps him escape.

Coming to terms with the fact that the love of his life is half-human, half-fish, and that his sonar devices will cause her and the rest of the merpeople harm, Liu Xuan has the devices turned off. He tells Ruolan the reason why, and is shocked to learn that she has known about their existence all along – and wants to hunt them down. Outmanoeuvred by his business partner, Liu Xuan has no choice but to try and reach Sham and the merpeople, and warn them before it’s too late…

Mermaid - scene2

One thing to know in advance about Mermaid is that it’s a fairy tale, a fabulous concoction that features all the basic elements of a fairy tale, and which has the traditional fairy tale ending where good (in this case a reformed Liu Xuan) triumphs over evil (his money and power-obsessed partner, Ruolan). It’s a feelgood movie, entertaining and satisfying for the way in which it blends its environmental message into a narrative that is both fantastical and determinedly romantic, while also providing some huge laughs. Chow, whose previous credits include Shaolin Soccer (2001) and Kung Fu Hustle (2004), has fashioned the kind of family-friendly movie that can be enjoyed by all ages and he’s done so using a great deal of infectious charm.

It’s also unapologetically a Chinese movie, which means that some of the humour may seem a little juvenile, or off, at times – one scene, where Octopus has to submit to having his tenatacles turned into sushi is likely to have Western audiences questioning whether or not such submissive mutilation is truly a source for laughter – but if you go with it there’s lots to enjoy, a goofy, carefree sense of mischief that’s hard to ignore. The movie’s funniest scene comes after Liu Xuan escapes from the tanker and tries to report what’s happened to the local police. Mermaid is worth seeing purely for the various mermaid drawings one of the officers comes up with.

Mermaid - scene3

Set against this is the kind of heightened, bordering on ridiculously saccharine romance that only the Chinese can do so well, with Liu Xuan’s and Sham’s relationship encountering the type of unforeseen obstacles that would cause most couples to call it a day, but which here serve only to strengthen their feelings for each other. From the scene where they serenade each other with Liu Xuan’s favourite song, to the moment where Sham saves his life, their relationship is peppered with the type of challenges that only true love was designed to overcome. Both Deng and Lin have enormous fun with their roles, and this translates to the screen, making their scenes together a joy to watch (and even more so when you consider that Lin, who’d never acted before, won her role through taking part in a talent contest-cum-audition).

There are faults, however. Chow changes the tone too many times to make the movie feel like a cohesive whole, and viewers may find themselves confused by some of Chow’s decisions both as co-screenwriter (with seven others!) and director. And while the visual effects are by and large very successful indeed, some of them are decidedly second-rate as well, and often in a scene where they’ve already been hugely impressive. But these aren’t enough to detract from the overall enjoyment the movie provides, and the often childlike sense of wonder it manages to instill.

Rating: 8/10 – a wonderful surprise for anyone who takes the time to watch it, Mermaid has heart and soul and charm by the bucket load; with terrific performances from its two leads, and a knowing sense of its own absurdity, it’s a movie that rewards the viewer over and over again without even trying too hard.

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The Do-Over (2016)

02 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Adam Sandler, Cancer cure, Comedy, David Spade, Drama, High school reunion, Kathryn Hahn, Murder, Netflix, Paula Patton, Puerto Rico, Review, Save & Pay, Steven Brill

The Do-Over

D: Steven Brill / 108m

Cast: Adam Sandler, David Spade, Paula Patton, Kathryn Hahn, Nick Swardson, Matt Walsh, Renée Taylor, Sean Astin, Natasha Leggero, Luis Guzmán, Catherine Bell, Jackie Sandler, Michael Chiklis, Torsten Voges, Stan Ellsworth

The second movie in Adam Sandler’s six picture deal with Netflix, The Do-Over arrives with probably very little anticipation on anyone’s part except for those die-hard Sandler fans who’ve been helping keep him one of the most well-paid stars in Hollywood (still). But in a strange twist of fate, The Do-Over isn’t as bad as it looks. It’s bad, but considering some of Sandler’s other, more recent movies, it isn’t that bad. (There are all different levels of bad, and Sandler’s probably made at least one movie for each level, but this isn’t quite as low down as some of the others.)

The movie introduces us first of all to Charlie (Spade). He’s dressed conservatively, looks like the kind of guy who’d struggle to be recognised in a selfie, and he’s at a high school reunion watching his wife (Leggero) getting pawed by another man (Astin) on the dancefloor. He might as well have ‘Loser’ tattooed on his forehead. Enter Max (Sandler), perhaps Charlie’s only real friend from their high school days. As they swap stories about their lives since then, it seems Max has exceeded expectations and joined the FBI, while Charlie manages a bank inside a Save & Pay. It isn’t long before Max is encouraging Charlie to change his life and do what he really wants to do, but Charlie lacks the guts to do so. But a trip out to sea on Max’s boat sees Charlie forced to do exactly that, as Max has faked their deaths and they both have new identities: Charlie is Dr Ronald Fischman, and Max is Butch Rider.

TDO - scene2

The chance discovery of the key to a safety deposit box leads them to Puerto Rico and a luxury villa that the real Fischman and Rider own. But their new, idyllic existence is brought to an end by the appearance of a hired assassin, the Gymnast (Voges), who tries to kill them. Max gets them both away and in the process reveals that he’s not an FBI agent but exactly what their high school guidance counsellor always said he’d be: a morgue attendant. He wanted to change his life as well, and when the two men arrived at the morgue he took the opportunity to switch their identities. But now it’s clear that Fischman and Rider were involved in something dangerous, and using Fischman’s widow, Heather (Patton), as a source of information, they start to delve into the pair’s recent past, but in doing so, Charlie learns that even now, Max is hiding things from him.

If you’ve read the above synopsis and thought, ‘Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad’, then that’s because it isn’t. There’s more – obviously – and a lot of it is on the same dramatic level. Naturally, this being an Adam Sandler/David Spade buddy movie, there’s a fair bit of humour thrown into the mix, as well as brief moments of romance, and even some neat, uncontrived action beats. But all these elements, well intentioned as they are, remain flat and uninvolving, and despite several attempts at the kind of wacky, minor league offensive material Sandler is known for, The Do-Over consists of one largely unmemorable scene after another, and features Sandler doing what he does best: playing the same character he’s played for over thirty years now.

TDO - scene1

If anyone has to ask, after all this time, why is Adam Sandler still so popular, and why has Netflix decided to enter into a six-picture deal with him, then this movie contains the answer. It’s a quintessential Sandler movie: defiantly silly, with a series of unrelated scenes given a sprinkling of narrative cohesion to help them through; laughs based on personal abuse; visual gags at the expense of one or more of the characters; glamorous location work; and the same just-making-the-required-effort performance from Sandler that he gives in pretty much all his movies. Some may decry these aspects of his work, but Sandler knows exactly what he’s doing: he’s giving his fans what they want, and what they’ve come to expect. And it’s why his movies always make a profit, even the likes of Jack and Jill (2011) and That’s My Boy (2012).

So all that remains is to ask the question, where does The Do-Over fit in with the rest of Sandler’s movies? Well, it’s certainly not as bad as the ones mentioned in the previous paragraph, but it’s also nowhere near as good as, say, The Wedding Planner (1998 – so long ago now), or 50 First Dates (2004). It’s averagely entertaining, largely forgettable, and the script by Kevin Barnett and Chris Pappas doesn’t strive too hard in terms of the basic plot, but it does have moments where the ennui lifts and the shade of a better movie can be glimpsed. Most of these moments involve Spade, who makes Charlie quite endearing at times, and there’s a surprisingly well choreographed fight sequence between Patton and Hahn that’s funny and bruising. As mentioned before, Sandler coasts along but often looks disinterested. Unless he manages to fit in another movie for Netflix, Sandler isn’t due back on our screens until next year in Noah Baumbach’s Yeh Din Ka Kissa, a movie that also features Emma Thompson, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, and Candice Bergen. Just how he fares in such company will be interesting to see.

TDO - scene3

Frequent collaborator Brill keeps things moving at a decent pace, and the Puerto Rican locations are exploited to the full by DoP Dean Semler, yet the movie still manages to shift awkwardly between the tonal demands of the narrative, mixing comedy, drama and thriller elements to muddled effect often in the same scene (Max’s “torture” by the Gymnast is a perfect example). And for once, there aren’t the usual round of cameos from the likes of Rob Schneider et al, a minor blessing in a movie that at least doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Rating: 5/10 – amiable enough while it’s playing, The Do-Over is the kind of comedy that fades from the memory soon after it’s seen; if you don’t expect too much going in then you might be pleasantly surprised, otherwise it’s yet another Adam Sandler movie that it’s hard to get too excited about.

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Oh! the Horror! – The Girl in the Photographs (2015) and The Other Side of the Door (2016)

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Ashes, Claudia Lee, Drama, Horror, India, Jeremy Sisto, Johannes Roberts, Kal Penn, Kenny Wormald, Murders, Nick Simon, Photographs, Review, Sarah Wayne Callies, Serial killer, Spearfish, Supernatural, Temple

The Girl in the Photographs

The Girl in the Photographs (2015) / D: Nick Simon / 98m

Cast: Kal Penn, Claudia Lee, Kenny Wormald, Toby Hemingway, Luke Baines, Miranda Rae Mayo, Oliver Seitz, Autumn Kendrick, Mitch Pileggi

Colleen (Lee) is young, pretty, stuck in a dead-end job in her home town of Spearfish, and has a jerk of a boyfriend called Ben (Hemingway). Her dull, unexciting existence is eased by the discovery of a photograph that appears to show a murdered woman. She take it to the cops but with no clear evidence that the picture is real, it’s quickly dismissed as some kind of prank. But Colleen starts receiving more photographs, all similar in tone and content, and each one more disturbing than the last. News of the photographs finds its way onto the Internet and is seen by LA photographer Peter Hemmings (Penn). He’s the type of edgy photographer who likes to think his work is “out there”, and he’s affronted by the fact that these photographs have been taken by someone else; he’s also from Spearfish so adopts an even more personal interest.

When Hemmings arrives in Spearfish it isn’t long before he meets Colleen and wants her to be the focus of the photo shoot he’s planning. Colleen, having nothing better to do, agrees to take part, and she recieves an invite to a party where Hemmings is staying. Meanwhile, one of Colleen’s friends goes missing, and the photographs keep coming. As the party gets under way, the guests start ending up dead, and Colleen, along with Hemmings’ put-upon assistant, Chris (Wormald), find themselves trying to stay one step ahead of a killer who now seems content to come out of the shadows and create their own murderous “artistic” showcase.

The Girl in the Photographs

The last movie that Wes Craven was involved with before his death in August 2015, The Girl in the Photographs is one that he may well have been pleased with, but perhaps with some reservations as well. It starts off with the roadside murder of a young woman, the first of many narrative decisions that stop the movie from being an intriguing murder mystery-cum-horror thriller. Instead this helps the movie nail its colours to the mast as another serial killer movie, albeit with a neat twist. Where it wins points for originality is the inclusion of celebrity photographer Peter Hemmings and his selfish attitude to everyone; he’s so obnoxious you don’t know whether to cheer him or not. Penn is terrific in the role, and the script wisely includes him as much as possible.

However, the movie is on less surer ground when Hemmings isn’t around. The murders lack the kind of visceral intensity that the photographs point to, and the decision to reveal the villain’s identity by the halfway mark (after the movie spends a lot of time and energy hiding his face) allows much of the tension to dissipate, especially as the reason for the murders is none too complex. Director and co-writer (with Osgood Perkins and Robert Morast) Nick Simon shows that he’s learnt a thing or two from watching Craven’s ouevre, but the slow, deliberate, and rewarding pace of the first hour is abandoned in favour of the kind of stalk and slash routine we’ve seen way too many times before. The cast are likeable if not exactly memorable – Penn aside – though Lee is a sympathetic heroine, and the movie is enhanced by the contribution of veteran cinematographer Dean Cundey, who shot Halloween (1978) and all three Back to the Future movies. A little too nihilistic perhaps by the end but still something that Craven could, and probably would, have been proud of.

Rating: 6/10 – narrative muddles and tonal shifts aside, The Girl in the Photographs is a valiant attempt to do something different within the overstuffed serial killer sub-genere of horror movies; worth a watch though for Penn’s performance, and some subtle nods to several other horror movies that both Craven and Cundey have been involved with.

 

Other Side of the Door

The Other Side of the Door (2016) / D: Johannes Roberts / 96m

Cast: Sarah Wayne Callies, Jeremy Sisto, Sofia Rosinsky, Logan Creran, Suchitra Pillai

Michael (Sisto) is an antiquities dealer who visits India a lot. He and his wife Maria (Callies) decide to make Mumbai their permanent home, and start a family. Six years later, the couple are struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of their young son, Oliver (Creran) in a car accident. They still have their daughter, Lucy (Rosinsky), but for Maria the pain of losing Oliver is too much and she tries to commit suicide. In the hospital, their housekeeper, Piki (Pillai), offers Maria a chance of speaking to Oliver one last time. All she has to do is travel to an abandoned temple in the woods near Piki’s home, spread Oliver’s ashes on the steps outside, and wait inside the temple with the door shut. The only proviso: she mustn’t open the door while Oliver’s spirit is there.

Of course, Maria opens the door, and soon strange, supernatural events are happening back at home. Lucy tells Maria that Oliver is back, but it soon transpires that Oliver isn’t the happy-go-lucky boy he was when he was alive. And when Piki realises what’s happened, she berates Maria for her foolishness. Oliver is a malicious spirit now, and will stop at nothing to avoid going back to where he came from. But there’s also another entity to contend with: the temple’s gatekeeper, a supernatural guardian who will also stop at nothing to retrieve Oliver’s soul. With Oliver targeting his sister, and Michael away a lot through work, Maria has to find a way of dealing with Oliver’s return, and the gatekeeper’s increasing presence.

The Other Side of the Door

A grim variation on The Monkey’s Paw, The Other Side of the Door wastes no time in getting its lead character to behave unbelievably and without even a first thought about what she’s doing, let alone a second one. When Maria has Oliver dug up in the middle of the night so she can burn his body for the ashes, you know that this is a movie that credibility forgot on its way to the multiplex. It’s the kind of horror movie that relies on a few jump scares, a series of strange occurrences (here all the plant and animal life, except for the family dog (for some reason), dies off due to the approach of the gatekeeper – though exactly why is a tough question to answer), and the occasional appearances of a group called the Aghori, Aboriginal-looking guardians of the dead who pop up menacingly from time to time but are there to do the same work as the gatekeeper (for some reason).

By the time the final showdown comes around, the characters have behaved too stupidly for anyone to care, and the final scene is entirely predictable. Roberts, who also co-wrote the movie with Ernest Riera, never quite grasps the idea that evil spirits disguised as children should look normal instead of covered in zombie makeup, and that long close ups of a children’s toy – for sinister effect – are only disturbing when you realise just how often they’ve been done before. As a result of these and other lacklustre decisions, both Callies and Sisto are left stranded, with Callies, whose post- The Walking Dead career is going from bad to worse – this is her third turkey in a row after Into the Storm (2014) and Pay the Ghost (2015) – unable to do anything more with a character who makes so many bad decisions that the audience will be rooting for Oliver or the gatekeeper – it doesn’t matter which – to take her with them to the other side of the door.

Rating: 4/10 – a movie that’s just plain tired in its structure and execution, and with plot developments you can see coming a mile off, The Other Side of the Door tries hard to be different with its Mumbai setting, but lets itself down by being so determinedly prosaic; it also fails to generate any genuine terror, and with the Aghori, creates a mythology that it never fully tries to explain.

 

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