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Monthly Roundup – February 2018

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

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‘C’-Man (1949) / D: Joseph Lerner / 77m

Cast: Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Lottie Elwen, Rene Paul, Harry Landers, Walter Vaughn, Adelaide Klein, Edith Atwater

Rating: 5/10 – a US Customs agent (Jagger) finds himself looking for the killer of his best friend (and fellow Customs agent), and the person responsible for the theft of a rare jewel – could they be the same man?; an odd noir crime thriller that betrays its low budget production values, ‘C’-Man is short on character but long on action, and is fitfully entertaining, though the performances vary wildly and the script contains some very po-faced dialogue, making it a movie you can’t really take your eyes from – and not in a good way.

When We First Met (2018) / D: Ari Sandel / 97m

Cast: Adam Devine, Alexandra Daddario, Shelley Hennig, Andrew Bachelor, Robbie Amell

Rating: 3/10 – Noah (Devine) falls for Avery (Daddario) and winds up in the friend zone, but thanks to a magic photo booth, he gets the chance to go back and change their relationship into a romantic one; a dire romantic comedy that struggles to be both romantic and funny, When We First Met can’t even make anything meaningful out of its time travel scenario, and is let down by a banal script and below-par performances.

The Phantom (1931) / D: Alan James / 62m

Cast: Guinn Williams. Allene Ray, Niles Welch, Tom O’Brien, Sheldon Lewis, Wilfred Lucas, Violet Knights, William Gould, Bobby Dunn, William Jackie

Rating: 3/10 – a reporter (Williams) tries to track down the titular criminal mastermind when he targets the father of his girlfriend (Ray), but finds it’s not as simple a prospect as he’d thought; an early talkie that shows a lack of imagination and purpose, The Phantom struggles from the outset to be anything but a disappointment, what with its unconvincing mix of comedy and drama, its old dark house scenario, and a clutch of amateur performances that drain the very life out of it at every turn.

Black Panther (2018) / D: Ryan Coogler / 134m

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, Florence Kasumba, John Kani

Rating: 7/10 – the king of outwardly poor but inwardly technologically advanced Wakanda, T’Challa (Boseman), faces a coup from an unexpected source (Jordan), while trying to work out whether or not his country’s scientific advances should be shared with the wider world; though Black Panther does feature a predominantly black cast, and speaks to black issues, this is still a Marvel movie at the end of the day and one that adheres to the template Marvel have created for their releases, making this an admittedly funny and exciting thrill ride, but one that’s also another formulaic entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Atomic Blonde (2017) / D: David Leitch / 115m

Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, James Faulkner, Roland Møller, Sofia Boutella, Bill Skarsgård, Sam Hargrave, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Til Schweiger

Rating: 6/10 – in the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, a spy (Theron) must find a list of double agents that are being smuggled into the West, a task complicated by the involvement of the Americans, the Russians and a number of other interested parties; an attempt to provide audiences with a female John Wick, Atomic Blonde does have tremendous fight scenes, and a great central performance by Theron, but it’s let down by a muddled script, an even more muddled sense of the period it’s set in, and by trying to be fun when a straighter approach would have worked better.

Beauty and the Beast (2017) / D: Bill Condon / 129m

Cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Nathan Mack, Audra McDonald, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Rating: 5/10 – the classic fairy tale, and previously a classic animated movie, is given the live action treatment by Disney; if the latest installment of a certain space opera hadn’t been released in 2017, Beauty and the Beast would have been the number one movie at the international box office, but though the House of Mouse might point to this as a measure of quality, the reality is that Watson was miscast, the songs lack the emotional heft they had in the animated version, and the whole thing has a perfunctory air that no amount of superficial gloss and shine can overcome.

The Case of the Black Parrot (1941) / D: Noel M. Smith / 61m

Cast: William Lundigan, Maris Wrixon, Eddie Foy Jr, Paul Cavanagh, Luli Deste, Charles Waldron, Joseph Crehan, Emory Parnell, Phyllis Barry, Cyril Thornton

Rating: 6/10 – a newspaper reporter (Lundigan) gets involved in a case involving a master forger (the Black Parrot), an antique cabinet, and a couple of mysterious deaths; an enjoyable piece of hokum, The Case of the Black Parrot gets by on a great deal of understated charm, a whodunnit plot that doesn’t overplay its hand, and by having its cast treat the whole absurd undertaking with a sincerity that is an achievement all by itself.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) / D: Kenneth Branagh / 114m

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, Lucy Boynton, Olivia Colman, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Derek Jacobi, Marwan Kenzari, Leslie Odom Jr, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sergei Polunin, Daisy Ridley

Rating: 5/10 – the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is faced with a complex mystery: which one of a dozen passengers killed an infamous kidnapper, and more importantly, why?; yet another version of the Agatha Christie novel, Murder on the Orient Express strands its capable cast thanks to both an avalanche and a tepid script, leaving its director/star to orchestrate matters less effectively than expected, particularly when unravelling the mystery means having the suspects seated together in a way that clumsily replicates the Last Supper.

The Boss Baby (2017) / D: Tom McGrath / 97m

Cast: Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kudrow, Tobey Maguire, Miles Bakshi, James McGrath, Conrad Vernon, ViviAnn Yee, Eric Bell Jr, David Soren

Rating: 6/10 – when seven year old Tim (Bakshi) finds he has a new baby brother, Theodore (Baldwin) – and one dressed in a business suit at that – he also finds that Theodore is there to stop babies from being usurped in people’s affections by puppies; a brightly animated kids’ movie that takes several predictable swipes at corporate America, The Boss Baby wants to be heartwarming and caustic at the same time, but can’t quite manage both (it settles for heartwarming), and though Baldwin may seem like the perfect choice for the title character, he’s the weakest link in a voice cast that otherwise sells the performances with a great deal of enthusiasm.

Game Night (2018) / D: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein / 100m

Cast: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jesse Plemons, Danny Huston, Michael C. Hall

Rating: 5/10 – when a group of friends led by Max (Bateman) and Annie (McAdams) are invited to a game night at the home of Max’s brother, Brooks (Chandler), the evening descends into murder and mayhem, and sees the group trying to get to the bottom of a real-life mystery; like an Eighties high concept comedy released thirty years too late, Game Night has a great cast but little direction and waaaay too much exposition clogging up its run time, all of which makes a couple of very funny, very inspired visual gags the only reward for the viewer who sticks with this to the end.

Mr. Holmes (2015)

07 Tuesday Jul 2015

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Mr. Holmes

D: Bill Condon / 104m

Cast: Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Porter, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hattie Morahan, Patrick Kennedy, Roger Allam, Frances de la Tour, Philip Davis, John Sessions

In 1947, Sherlock Holmes (McKellen), now 93, lives in a Sussex farmhouse, and is looked after by his housekeeper, Mrs Munro (Linney), and her young son, Roger (Porter). He keeps bees and uses royal jelly as a means of improving his memory, which has deteriorated in recent years. A recent trip to Japan in search of supplies of prickly ash, a plant also known for improving the memory, has been undertaken with a view to ensuring that Holmes can complete one last project before he becomes unable to: to write a true account of his last case as a detective. Unhappy with the way Dr Watson portrayed those events, Holmes is struggling to remember the details of the case. Urged on by the interest shown by Roger, Holmes renews his efforts to pin them down.

His recollections take him back thirty years, after Watson has gotten married and their partnership has dissolved. He’s visited by Thomas Kelmot (Kennedy), a man worried about the behaviour of his wife, Ann (Morahan). Following two miscarriages, Ann Kelmot has become withdrawn; her husband has advised her to take up a musical hobby but now that has become an obsession, and even though he has forbade her from continuing her lessons with glass harmonica teacher, Madame Schirmer (de la Tour), he has discovered Ann is still visiting her. He suspects the music teacher of some kind of plot and wants Holmes to investigate.

Back in the present, Holmes takes Roger under his wing in and introduces him to his apiary. Roger persists in asking about Holmes’ last case; his enthusiasm prompts Holmes to make more of an effort to remember Ann Kelmot, including following her to Madame Schirmer’s and from there to various places before he approaches her in a public garden. Their conversation becomes confrontational but Holmes reveals the depth of his knowledge about her situation, and the effect the two miscarriages has had on her.

Mrs Munro, meanwhile, informs Holmes that she is planning to move to Portsmouth and work in a hotel; it will mean taking Roger with her. Roger doesn’t want to go, but when Holmes suffers a collapse shortly after, they are forced to stay. While he remains bedridden on the advice of his doctor (Allam), Roger takes care of the bees. He also finds a grey glove in Holmes’ study, a memento from the case of Ann Kelmot that Holmes can’t remember keeping or having. As Holmes remembers more about the case he also recalls the event that led to his retirement as a detective, and the reasons behind Watson’s subsequent involvement. But his remembrance of the past is put into perspective when he finds Roger has been stung by dozens of bees, and the boy’s life is hanging in the balance…

Mr. Holmes - scene

Dealing with themes of sadness and loss and regret, Mr. Holmes presents us with a portrait of a master detective beset by echoes from his past. It’s a richly detailed depiction of times long past, anchored by a superb performance from McKellen, and redolent of a bygone age, with its frock coats and steam trains and pre-suffrage gender politics. Expertly marshalled by Condon – reunited with McKellen for the first time since they collaborated on Gods and Monsters (1998) – the movie is a flawless recreation of two periods in English history that still exert a strong fascination: the post-Victorian era and the years immediately following the cessation of World War II. There’s also Holmes’ trip to Japan and the sight of the devastation wrought on Hiroshima. The historical trappings carry so much weight it’s almost as if the audience has been transported back with Holmes and are experiencing things themselves.

With the period detail proving so effective, it’s the twin mysteries on offer – what really happened during Holmes’ last case, and what is causing the deaths of his beloved bees – that unfortunately stop the movie from becoming even more memorable (an ironic outcome for a movie that deals with the loss and despair in losing one’s own memory). The story of Ann Kelmot has all the initial hallmarks of a classic Holmes tale, with its anxious husband and a heroine seemingly under the influence of a scheming criminal. But the truth, when Holmes finally remembers it, is far more prosaic than that, and while presented with some emotional impact, still doesn’t seem as devastating as Holmes makes out. Maybe it’s seeing it from the perspective of an old man trying to make sense of things that remain just out of reach that leaves the viewer with a sense of detachment: if Holmes can’t access those recollections and connect with them, how are we to do so?

But the movie, even with its handful of slightly underdeveloped storylines, has several aces up its sleeve that mitigate and make up for the paucity of the plot and the general structure. These are the performances from McKellen, Linney, Porter and Morahan. As already mentioned, McKellen is superb as Holmes, fragile, distressed, playful, curmudgeonly, afraid – tuning his portrayal of the master detective to such a fine degree that it’s both an acting and organic masterclass; he’s believable and convincing throughout, particularly when he’s trying to downplay the public misconceptions about him that are thanks to Watson’s writings. As Holmes’ housekeeper, Linney adopts a country dialect with precision and aplomb, and imbues Mrs Munro with a stoic dignity that stops her from expressing her misgivings about the relationship between Holmes and her son. As Roger, Porter gives another of those naturalistic, not-even-trying performances that it seems most child actors can produce at the drop of a hat; his scenes with McKellen are affecting and perfectly modulated. And as the focus of Holmes’ disturbed memories, Morahan is quietly magnificent as the troubled Ann Kelmot, her tear-rimmed eyes a more than adequate depiction of the turmoil her character has fallen prey to.

The movie has an often stately, measured pace, and some viewers may find the early scenes a little hard going, but once Holmes begins to remember events following the arrival of Thomas Kelmot at Baker Street, Condon increases the rate at which things begin to happen, until the final thirty minutes are as engrossing as any modern day thriller. With Martin Childs’ meticulous production design being augmented by often beautiful cinematography from Tobias A. Schliessler, and a delicately evocative score courtesy of Carter Burwell, there’s so much to enjoy here that audiences who stay the course will be rewarded by a movie that quietly steals up behind them and warms their hearts.

Rating: 8/10 – modest in intention and design, Mr. Holmes is a small-scale triumph of historical veracity and emotional honesty, focusing as it does on the melancholic suffering of a man for whom his intellect, now foundering, defined him; full of deceptively powerful performances, this is one historical drama that resonates long after it’s ended.

Mini-Review: The Fifth Estate (2013)

09 Sunday Mar 2014

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Fifth Estate, The

D: Bill Condon / 128m

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl, Anthony Mackie, Laura Linney, David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Peter Capaldi, Moritz Bleibtreu, Carice van Houten, Jamie Blackley, Stanley Tucci

Remarkably similar in tone and circumstance to the creation of Facebook as shown in David Fincher’s The Social Network, The Fifth Estate shows how WikiLeaks became such a global phenomenon.

In the beginning, Julian Assange (Cumberbatch) is shown struggling to get his site acknowledged by the wider Internet community. A fortuitous meeting with Daniel Berg (Brühl), a bored IT expert, gives Assange the help he needs in expanding and publicising WikiLeaks, and sets them on the road to international notoriety. Along the way they expose dictatorships, a tax-avoiding Swiss bank, rigged elections, and more. Then comes the tipping point: over 250,000 leaked documents relating to the US war crimes in Afghanistan, and diplomatic cables that describe the US’s real feelings about the various governments and world leaders it deals with. Assange and Berg fall out over how to disseminate the information, and the future of WikiLeaks is brought into sharp relief.

Fifth Estate, The - scene

Already disowned by Assange, The Fifth Estate shows WikiLeaks’ creator to be narcissistic, arrogant, paranoid, and a user of other people. Cumberbatch plays him superbly, all grating Australian accent and sneering condescension; but how close a representation of the man it really is, is difficult to tell. Based in part on Berg’s own book, the movie skirts perilously close to demonising the man, while Berg comes out of it looking whiter than white. For a film about a man with a burning desire to show people “the truth” about the world they live in, it’s a dangerous approach to take. This is one-sided reportage, and the film ends with Cumberbatch as Assange making reference to the film itself and dismissing it; it’s an uncomfortable coda, even though Assange has made his feelings clear about the movie.

That said, the movie is a gripping retelling of recent events and holds the attention throughout. The cast are uniformly excellent, and even though the script by Josh Singer contains large chunks of exposition, it’s all presented in an easy-to-follow manner. Condon, fresh off the challenges of the final two Breaking Dawn movies, directs confidently and with a clear eye for the complexities of the material. It’s a movie that will attract controversy for some time to come, but as a jumping off point for the wider issues involved, this is where the movie really succeeds.

Rating: 8/10 – powerful, with two mesmerising lead performances, The Fifth Estate is thought-provoking, intelligent and remarkable; while it’s not as rigorous in its approach as it would like to be, it’s still a fascinating examination of a recent global phenomenon.