Beast of Burden (2018)

23 Friday Mar 2018

Tags

Daniel Radcliffe, DEA, Drama, Drug mule, Grace Gummer, Jesper Ganslandt, Mexico, Pilot, Review, Thriller

D: Jesper Ganslandt / 90m

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Grace Gummer, Pablo Schreiber, Robert Wisdom, Cesar Perez, David Joseph Martinez

Ex-US Air Force and Peace Corps pilot Sean Haggerty (Radcliffe) has a bit of a problem: he’s making a clandestine flight from Mexico to the US, and he’s carrying twenty-five kilos of drugs for a Mexican cartel. The plane he’s flying sounds like it’s going to fall apart at any moment, his Mexican handlers clearly don’t trust him for a minute, and as if either of these things wasn’t bad enough, he’s also being squeezed by the DEA into fetching them a laptop that (presumably, because we’re not actually told) contains incriminating evidence about the cartel. And when the flight plan is changed mid-flight, and a certain Mr Mallory (Wisdom) starts calling Sean and asking if he loves his wife, Jen (Gummer), it’s clear that it’s going to take a lot to keep Sean out of further trouble, and Jen safe. With Mallory and DEA agent Bloom (Schreiber) both calling him to keep him in respective line, and Jen calling him with an agenda of her own, Sean finds himself being painted into a corner that he’s unlikely to escape from.

Essaying yet another character dealing with an extreme physical and emotional dilemma, Daniel Radcliffe is Beast of Burden‘s principal asset, its MVP if you will. As Sean, Radcliffe spends most of his screen time in the plane’s cockpit, but it’s a tremendously focused performance – vivid, compelling, forceful and driven. Sean is effectively a loser trying one last time to get ahead, to boost his waning sense of self-worth and to show Jen (though she doesn’t know just how) that he can make things right in the wake of their finding out that she has ovarian cancer and may never have children. Yes, we’re in “one last big score” territory, but thanks to Adam Hoelzel’s sometimes wayward yet effective script, Radcliffe’s committed performance, and Ganslandt’s tough, muscular direction, it doesn’t always feel so clichéd or so derivative that it reminds you too often of other similarly themed movies. Instead, it grabs the attention and doesn’t let up as Sean’s position becomes increasingly threatened, and the machinations of both Bloom and Mallory ensure that whatever happens, if he comes out of it all alive, then he’ll be one very lucky drug mule indeed. Shot in close up for the most part, Radcliffe’s expressive features run the gamut from despair to anger to paranoia to fear to bewilderment to anguish and all the way back to despair again.

But while Sean is in the air and the movie sticks to its one singular purpose, to be an edge-of-the-seat thriller, two narrative decisions mar the movie as a whole. One is the involvement of Jen. At first she’s the wife trying to cope with the possibility that she and her husband are drifting apart in the wake of her illness, but then the script catapults her into the action and she has to be rescued. There are no prizes for realising that this has to happen once Sean is on the ground, and that’s the second problem with the narrative: once Sean inevitably crash lands, the script crashes with him. The last ten minutes or so lack the focus of the previous seventy-five minutes, and what transpires is a huge disappointment in relation to what’s gone before. Thanks to Hoelzel and Ganslandt both taking their eye off the ball, the tension and the claustrophobia that’s been carefully built up, evaporates in the blink of an eye. It’s a shame, as up until then, this is a very entertaining thriller indeed.

Rating: 7/10 – anchored by another tremendous performance from Radcliffe, Beast of Burden is a thriller that gleefully – and effectively – tortures its central character, and then does an about face in favour of a messy, contrived ending; the movie also benefits from Sherwood Jones’s astute editing skills, a stirring and portentous score from Tim Jones, and the oppressive nature of seeing one man confined in such a relatively small space and trying to deal with much larger problems.

Jungle (2017)

01 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Alex Russell, Amazon Rain Forest, Bolivia, Daniel Radcliffe, Drama, Greg McLean, Joel Jackson, Literary adaptation, Review, Survival, Thomas Kretschmann, Thriller, True story, Yossi Ghinsberg

D: Greg McLean / 116m

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Thomas Kretschmann, Alex Russell, Joel Jackson, Yasmin Kassim, Luis Jose Lopez, Lily Sullivan, Jacek Koman, Angie Milliken, John Bluthal

After serving three years in the Israeli military, and forgoing his father’s wish that he study to become a lawyer, Yossi Ghinsberg (Radcliffe) travelled to South America where he spent time travelling around the region until he wound up in Bolivia in 1981. There he made two new friends, Swiss school teacher Marcus Stamm (Jackson), and Marcus’s friend, Kevin Gale (Russell), an American and an avid adventurer-cum-photographer. Yossi also met an Austrian named Karl Ruchprecter (Kretschmann). Karl persuaded Yossi and his two new friends to go on an expedition into the jungle to find a lost Indian tribe that Karl was certain could be found. They set off on foot, and were soon miles from any kind of human habitation. But the dynamic of the group began to sour, especially when Marcus’s feet became badly blistered and he became unable to keep up the pace. With the expedition only partly completed, Karl announced that he was going back on foot, but that the others could use a raft to traverse the river that would take them to their destination. Marcus went with Karl, and Yossi and Kevin put together a raft and set off. But when the current proved too strong, and an accident caused the two to be separated, it left Yossi alone in the jungle, and with no tools to help him survive or find his way to safety…

As Jungle is based on the book of the same name by Ghinsberg himself, there’s no surprise in how the movie ends, but what is surprising is how compelling it all is once Ghinsberg is separated from Kevin, and the perils of being lost in the jungle become all too apparent. However, before all that, the viewer has to wade through some fairly tortuous scenes in the first hour, where the four main characters are introduced but without providing them with any appreciable depth, or Yossi aside, any clear motivations as to why they’re all there in the first place. Karl remains a mystery right until the end, when we learn something very important about him, while Kevin and Marcus come across as the unfortunate tag-alongs who share part of Yossi’s trials and tribulations, but whose own dilemmas don’t rate as much interest in Justin Monjo’s straightforward screenplay.

Once tensions arise within the group, it’s Yossi’s unintended lack of sympathy for Marcus’s plight that provokes the turning point where the quartet split up, but once that happens, the movie seems to breathe a huge sigh of relief, as if now it can concentrate on the story it really wants to tell. And aided by yet another impressive performance from Daniel Radcliffe, the movie quickly comes into its own and puts both Yossi and the viewer through the wringer as days pass and Yossi’s situation worsens with every step. He has to combat starvation, fatigue, disorientation, hallucinations, jungle predators, and the likelihood that he will wander round and round in circles without ever coming close to being found. It’s a horrifying situation to be in, and the script (perhaps unfairly) revels in giving Yossi moments of hope only to have them dashed a moment later. But these occasions also help to sharpen the narrative and accentuate the idea that the jungle has no time for sympathy if you’re unprepared for what it can do.

As the beleaguered Yossi, Radcliffe provides further evidence that he’s a more than capable actor, and though the role of Ghinsberg could be considered as just another in the long line of physical endurance roles that actors take on from time to time, thanks to Radcliffe’s commitment and understanding of the effects these rigours can have, Yossi’s deteriorating physical appearance and fast-eroding mental stability is made all the more credible and shocking when at last he reveals the extent of his (admittedly CGI enhanced) malnourishment. Ghinsberg somehow managed to survive for nineteen days before he was found, and though McLean fumbles the moment of discovery through some poor editing choices, there’s still an emotional kick to be found that is undeniable.

In telling such a dramatic true story, McLean and Monjo have crafted an old-fashioned survival story that focuses (eventually) on its central character’s will to cheat death and find their way back to civilisation, no matter how remote. McLean knows how to maintain dramatic tension – even if he hasn’t applied that ability to some of his more recent movies; The Darkness (2016) anyone? – and he uses close ups and an always unsettling, always encroaching soundscape to highlight both the pressure and the impending sense of doom that Yossi is experiencing. It’s a shame then that all this tension and pressure doesn’t come into play until around the halfway mark, and that McLean hasn’t been able to make Munjo’s script as compelling from the first page as it is to the last. Still, it’s a movie that goes someway to redeeming McLean’s “street cred” as a director, and there are plenty of moments where his skill as a director can be recognised in the claustrophobic nature of the jungle itself, and the ease with which he integrates Yossi’s hallucinations into the narrative so that they look and feel like an organic part of the whole.

True stories ultimately stand or fall based on the risks a movie maker is willing to take with the material, and though McLean has been stuck in something of a creative rut in recent years, here those risks relate to the various hallucinations/dream sequences that Yossi has, some of which provide some much needed humour into the mix. By taking Yossi, and the viewer, away from the threatening environment of the jungle, McLean gives both a chance to grab a breather and prepare themselves for the next part of Yossi’s heroic journey. The jungle itself is a fearsome opponent, and helped by cinematographer Stefan Duscio, McLean disorients and distracts both Yossi and the viewer so that each new setback to his finding safety increases the sense of fearfulness and increasing despair that the real Yossi must have felt all those years ago. That his predicament has proven so effective in terms of his will to survive, is as much a testament to the man himself, as it is – for the most part – to the movie itself.

Rating: 7/10 – an unfortunate first hour aside, Jungle is a harsh, unblinking look at a stranger in a strange land and the unwise decisions that cause him to be lost and alone in an inhospitable and deadly setting; Radcliffe is the main draw here, and then it’s McLean, and though McLean could have been tougher with some of the narrative decisions that were made, all in all this is a tough, unsentimental true story that impresses more than it disappoints.

Imperium (2016)

22 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Ragussis, Drama, FBI, Review, Terrorism, Thriller, Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Undercover, White supremacy

D: Daniel Ragussis / 109m

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Sam Trammell, Nestor Carbonell, Chris Sullivan, Seth Numrich, Pawel Szajda, Devin Druid, Burn Gorman

At the start of Imperium, relatively inexperienced FBI agent Nate Foster (Radcliffe) helps foil a terrorist bombing on US soil. His intuitive interrogation skills attract the attention of senior agent Angela Zampano (Collette). When a truck illegally carrying quantities of Caesium-137 – a chemical used in radiation treatments – crashes and six of the manifested containers are found to be missing, the FBI immediately assume that the chemical has been appropriated by Muslim terrorists. However, Zampano believes that the perpetrators are much closer to home, specifically within the white supremacy movement. She approaches Nate and convinces him that he would be an ideal choice to go undercover and infiltrate said movement and discover the whereabouts of the Caesium-137.

Connecting with a group of neo-Nazis led by Vincent (Szajda), Nate quickly earns their trust, and sets about making himself useful to them. Through Vincent, Nate is introduced to Aryan Alliance leader Andrew Blackwell (Sullivan), and other members of the movement, including atypical supremacist Gerry Conway (Trammell) who espouses supremacy ideals but leads an otherwise quiet suburban life. In turn, Nate’s attendance at a Unity Conference allows him to meet Zampano’s main target, an ultra-right-wing radio talk show host called Dallas Wolf (Letts). Wolf has ties and contacts to most of the organisations within the white supremacy movement, and Zampano is certain that he will know of any “action” that any of them may be planning. Nate gives Wolf the impression that he can help him boost the circulation of his radio show, in exchange for knowledge of any imminent “action” that Wolf may be aware of.

At a rally, a fight breaks out and Blackwell is injured. Nate helps him get away, and later receives an invitation to the Aryan Alliance’s new compound (which the FBI is unaware of). There he sees plans relating to the water network for Washington D.C., and fears that the Caesium-137 will be used to poison the water supply. Needing confirmation from Wolf, he pushes the talk show host, but Wolf refuses both the money offered to help expand his circulation, and to have anything further to do with Nate. At the same time, Blackwell is dismissed as a potential threat by the FBI. With his undercover work seemingly at an end, Nate makes one last visit to see Conway. Still “in character”, Nate relates how much he wants to make a difference to the world as it is now. And to his surprise, Conway reveals that he has the Caesium-137, and that Nate can make a difference to the world…

Imperium does two things that are dramatically unexpected: first, it makes it appear incredibly easy to infiltrate a white supremacist organisation, and second, it makes it appear equally incredibly easy to divert suspicion when an agent’s identity is called into question. There are two main occasions when it looks as if the game is up, and Daniel Radcliffe’s wide-eyed right-wing ingénue is in danger of being exposed, but apparently the trick is just to get angry, accuse others of duplicity or stupidity – or both, and treat the accusation with complete disdain. As for providing proof, don’t worry; due diligence isn’t exactly high on a white supremacist’s list of priorities. They may be paranoid, but they’re not stu- Oh, hang on. Sadly, it’s this unconvincing approach to the material that undermines much of director Daniel Ragussis’s screenplay, leaving the movie itself to struggle from scene to scene in maintaining the viewer’s interest.

It’s not so much that Imperium is a bad movie per se, but it is a movie that never grabs the viewer’s attention completely, making it an exercise that’s more frustrating than engaging or compelling. Also, there are problems with the character of Nate that Ragussis never seems to find solutions for. His initial naïvete and inexperience in field work (let alone being undercover) – illustrated by his being told to keep his weapon holstered in the movie’s opening sting operation – is highlighted in almost every scene until he’s facing Vincent across a table in a diner and making out he’s a disgruntled ex-Marine who doesn’t know why he was in Iraq. Nate gives an assured, confident performance that is completely at odds with his real, somewhat nerdy personality. He’s Serpico in suspect Levi jeans, and has an answer for everything. And despite the occasional protest to an uninterested Zampano, that’s how he remains.

This leaves the movie lacking in tension, as Nate goes about his task of infiltrating the white supremacy movement catching lucky break after lucky break and fending off any concerns about his being less than “racially superior”. And even though he’s been chosen for his empathy for others, where you might think that would lead to a kind of Stockholm Syndrome scenario, instead Nate appears largely unaffected by the hatred he encounters, and emerges from his undercover work psychologically unscathed. It’s this lack of depth, or any consequences to his involvement with such ideologically extreme people, that hurts the movie the most, as the script moves him from scene to scene, gathering intel but never being affected by what he sees and hears. This leaves Radcliffe, normally more than capable of inhabiting a role, somewhat stranded and unable to pull together a cohesive performance.

Inevitably, and despite the idea of there being a deadly chemical out there that could be used in a dirty bomb with the potential to kill thousands, it’s not a threat that anyone watching Imperium could take seriously. The various white supremacy protagonists are shown to be less than organised, preferring to squabble among themselves rather than combine their efforts and really make a difference (for which we should all be grateful), and their lack of guile and sophistication makes them a less than worrying “villain”. Only Gerry seems to be properly motivated, but in a very real sense he comes across as a left-wing idea of how a white supremacist should talk and behave; then they’d be more approachable, a notion that doesn’t make any sense at all.

With such tonal and narrative problems at the heart of the movie’s premise, Ragussis has assembled a movie that only fitfully engages the viewer, and which doesn’t seem to know just how effectively white supremacist groups are operating currently in the US, and just how much of a threat they really are (again, on this showing, not very much at all). There’s a good, thought-provoking movie to be made from the issue, but this isn’t it, and though the likes of Collette, Letts and Druid as a young neo-Nazi rise above the material for the most part, spare a thought for Radcliffe, stuck with carrying the movie for most of the running time, and whose director couldn’t get him to stop looking so scared and wide-eyed in scenes where he had no need to look scared and wide-eyed.

Rating: 5/10 – not quite a disaster, but certainly not as impressive as you might expect, Imperium is a sluggish, uncertain, and poorly assembled movie that never does itself justice; hampered by a script that feels under-developed in large stretches, this is passable stuff that requires patience and forgiveness in order to reap the few rewards it has to offer.

Swiss Army Man (2016)

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Corpse, Daniel Kwan, Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Scheinert, Drama, Manny, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Paul Dano, Review

D: Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan / 97m

Cast: Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Antonia Ribero, Timothy Eulich, Richard Gross

Stranded and alone on an island in the Pacific, Hank Thompson (Dano) has decided to end it all. He’s going to hang himself. But as he’s about to do so he spies a man’s body lying on the shoreline. Hoping the man (Radcliffe) is still alive, Hank forgets about killing himself and rushes to the man’s side. But he’s too late. The man looks as if he’s been in the water for too long, and it’s also not long before the accumulation of the gases inside his body begin to make themselves known. At first, Hank is annoyed and dismayed by the noises (and smells) coming from the man’s corpse, but when the tide starts to carry him back out to sea, Hank realises that the dead man’s flatulence is the answer to his being stranded on the island. Hank straddles the dead man’s back, points him away from the island and lets the escaping gases propel them both across the open ocean. And then he falls off…

Hank comes to on another beach, but this time he’s not on an island somewhere. He’s made it to US soil. And so has the dead man. Feeling a debt of gratitude to the dead man, Hank takes his corpse with him as he begins his trek back to civilisation. That first night he seeks shelter in a cave. The next morning, the corpse begins to speak, hesitantly at first, and then with increasing fluency. His conversation, though, is naïve and childlike, and Hank finds himself having to explain much about life and love and the nature of relationships. The corpse, who Hank names Manny, sees a picture of Hank’s “girlfriend”, Sarah (Winstead), on Hank’s mobile phone. He becomes obsessed with meeting her, so much so that to appease him, Hank constructs a hideout in the woods where he can teach Manny the best way to approach her, and how to talk to her without sounding stupid.

When they move on, they discover that they’ve been nearer to civilisation than either could have expected. And by chance they find themselves in Sarah’s back yard, where her daughter, Chrissy (Ribero) is playing. She’s curious about them at first, but Manny starts talking about being dead and then alive thanks to Hank. Chrissy becomes scared, and Sarah comes out to see what’s going on. When she sees Hank and Manny, she calls the police. In turn, EMT’s arrive to take away Manny’s body, and Hank’s dad (Gross), whom he’s distant from, also turns up. But Hank can’t bear to be separated from Manny, and so he makes one last desperate act of compassion, one that astounds everyone.

At one point in Swiss Army Man, Hank tells Manny that, “You can’t just say anything that comes into your head, that’s bad talking.” Judged against the things that Hank doesn’t say, it’s a self-serving rebuke that highlights just how uncomfortable he is with his own thoughts. If, as seems likely – and despite the best efforts of writers/directors Scheinert and Kwan to make it seem otherwise – that Hank is imagining Manny’s return to life as a way of coping with his own issues of being alone (and not just on the island), then Hank is arguing with himself. Or more accurately, attempting to persuade himself that he doesn’t have to be alone, and that he can find happiness in a relationship with Sarah. But where you might expect Manny to act as a deus ex machina, a source of resolution for Hank’s emotional fragility, what Scheinert and Kwan do in their script – and achieve thanks to two standout performances by Dano and Radcliffe – is make Manny the unbridled id to Hank’s more cautious super-ego.

It all makes for a fascinating and delicately balanced examination of one man’s lack of faith in himself. In the same way that we never learn how Hank came to be on the island in the first place, we never learn who Manny really is and why he came to be washed up there either. But it makes perfect sense if you accept that Manny’s physical self is real, and that his subsequent, miraculous ability to talk is due to Hank’s attempts to work out, or through, his own emotional distance from everyone. For Hank, Manny offers him a chance to examine his life and begin to make a difference. But Manny’s “approach” to life is the antithesis of how Hank approaches life; it’s no coincidence that Manny appears to be more “alive” than Hank.

By “resurrecting” Manny and making him Hank’s companion and eventual friend, Scheinert and Kwan have created a unique cinematic relationship. There’s a troubling sequence around the hour mark where Hank dresses up as Sarah in order to teach Manny what to say and how to behave around her. From this we can discern the exact nature of Hank’s relationship with Sarah, and also just how important it is to him. The sequence is troubling for the way in which Hank readily becomes Sarah, and readily accepts the off-kilter “courtship” that ensues. It all leads to a moment that is both uncomfortable for the audience and potentially cathartic for Hank, but he backs away at the last second, content still to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

It’s been said elsewhere, but Swiss Army Man is definitely unlike any other movie you’ve ever seen. As if its basic premise isn’t bizarre enough, Scheinert and Kwan’s decision to include metaphysical and reality-bending aspects to the narrative makes it even more extraordinary, and so too is their decision not to shy away from the more singular side effects of being a corpse (“Manny, I think your penis is guiding us home”). As mentioned before, the movie benefits greatly from the performances of Dano and Radcliffe, both actors unsurprisingly committed to their roles and unsurprisingly affecting, and effective, as two halves of the same person. Dano’s offbeat acting style suits Hank immensely, his tremulous delivery and poignant facial expressions matched perfectly by Radcliffe’s mostly static gaze and conscience-free dialogue.

Aside from Dano and Radcliffe’s involvement, the movie has plenty else to recommend it, from the two Daniels’ sense of the absurdity of Hank’s situation and his decreasing mental stability, to the crisp, carefully composed cinematography of Larkin Seiple, a catchy indie soundtrack, and a deliciously tart sense of humour that helps alleviate the inherent darkness of the material. It’s not a perfect movie – amongst other things there are too many continuity problems for that – but it is one that brings its own rewards if you’re willing to go along with it. Scheinert and Kwan are to be congratulated for coming up with such an unusual, and diverting, cinematic experience.

Rating: 8/10 – a movie that defies easy categorisation – and for once, that’s a good thing – Swiss Army Man is likely to divide audiences, and be unapologetic for doing so; if you go with it then it’s an outlandish yet entertaining treat, but if you don’t then you’re missing out on one of the most original, inventive and surprising movies made in recent years, and one replete with enough fart jokes to keep anyone and everyone happy.

Now You See Me 2 (2016)

27 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Daniel Radcliffe, Dave Franco, Drama, FBI, Jesse Eisenberg, Jon M. Chu, Lizzy Caplan, London, Macau, Magic, Magicians, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, New York, The Eye, The Horsemen, Thriller, Woody Harrelson

D: Jon M. Chu / 129m

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Daniel Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Morgan Freeman, Jay Chou, Sanaa Lathan, Michael Caine, David Warshofsky, Tsai Chin

Ten questions you need to ask yourself while watching Now You See Me 2:

Why would prison authorities allow convicted criminal Thaddeus Bradley (Freeman) access to computer equipment that would enable him to make threats against the Four Horsemen (“You will get what’s coming to you. In ways you can’t expect.”)?
Pigeons? (Yes, pigeons.)
How does Lula (Caplan) know so much about the Four Horsemen, including the reason why Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher’s character from the first movie) isn’t around any longer?
Why is Dylan Rhodes’ (Ruffalo) attendance at a Four Horsemen “event” more suspicious to his FBI colleagues than his talking into his sleeve?
How convenient is it that Bradley has just the form Rhodes needs to get Bradley out of jail?
Chase McKinney (Harrelson) – unfortunate stereotype or unfortunate stereotype?
How likely is it, in a sequence that lasts nearly four and a half minutes, that not one of the security guards notice the playing card as it’s whipped, zipped and slipped from one Horseman to another?
How do lines such as, “But I don’t agree that we have a sackful of nada, ’cause we’re all here. That’s a sackful of something” get past the first draft stage?
When did the FBI’s remit extend outside of the US?
Could the screenplay by Ed Solomon have ended on a more absurd, ridiculous note than the surprise reveals made by Bradley?

Rating: 4/10 – another poorly constructed sequel that plays fast and loose with logic, Now You See Me 2 wants the audience to like it as much as the mass London crowds go crazy for the Horsemen; slickly made but soulless, only Caplan makes an impact, and the magic tricks lack the first movie’s sense of fun, leaving the movie to rattle on for two hours without anyone having to care what happens to the characters (which is both a bonus and a relief).

Victor Frankenstein (2015)

09 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Andrew Scott, Body parts, Daniel Radcliffe, Drama, Frankenstein, Horror, Igor, James McAvoy, Jessica Findlay Brown, Life and death, Literary adaptation, Mary Shelley, Monster, Paul McGuigan, Review, Science, Thriller, Victorian London

D: Paul McGuigan / 110m

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, James McAvoy, Jessica Findlay Brown, Andrew Scott, Freddie Fox, Callum Turner, Daniel Mays, Charles Dance, Mark Gatiss

And so we have the latest variation on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, or as it perhaps should be known, Victor Frankenstein: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Release Date…

When the first trailer was released back in August 2015, prospective viewers could have been forgiven for thinking that Victor Frankenstein was going to be a bit of a romp, a version where comedy was at the forefront, the bromance between Victor and Igor was going to carry the movie, and there was going to be lots of flashy special effects (and a monster). When the second trailer was released, the humour had been dialled back and the movie appeared to be a more serious take on the legend (albeit with a bromance between Victor and Igor and lots of flashy special effects – and a monster). Some prospective viewers may have sighed with relief; after all, if you’re going to make a Frankenstein movie that’s got humour in it, how on earth are you going to top Young Frankenstein (1974)?

Thankfully, the makers seemed to have realised that the one-liners and the overt bromance weren’t as good an idea as they might have been, and the movie is a more serious proposition, but there are still echoes of both humour and bromance, mostly from McAvoy’s hyperactive performance and screenwriter Max Landis’s uncertainty as to what tone to take with the material. What we’re left with is a movie that tries to make two tortured individuals into an unofficial couple – they meet, they admire each other to bits, they fall out, they reunite and reconfirm their commitment to each other – while using Andrew Scott’s equally tortured, increasingly crazed police inspector as the religious foil for their scientific endeavours, and never quite reconciling the whole “benefit to mankind” approach that goads them on.

Victor is portrayed as a manic obsessive with a “history” that drives him on, and McAvoy, usually a sensitive actor, here can’t resist the urge to go for broke and just let rip. You half suspect that Victor’s taking drugs but it’s not that simple: it’s just his personality, and McAvoy parades around like he’s on display throughout, declaiming wildly and to little purpose. Radcliffe takes the quieter route, but his Igor is a dead weight in a movie that wants to celebrate Victor’s mania rather than his assistant’s good sense. As one half of a team that’s in danger of destroying itself and being forgotten by history, you can understand his willingness to spend more and more time with ex-circus aerialist Lorelei (Brown) (who only appears to like him when he’s not a hunchback or looking like Robert Smith from The Cure).

On the visual side, Victor Frankenstein owes a lot to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies, its late Victorian era setting full of background shots of building work going on and the streets teeming with the great and the downtrodden (and is further reinforced by the sudden appearance at the end of Gatiss as Victor’s new assistant). The climax is a suitably overwrought affair with plenty of explosions and destruction, and a monster that bears an unfortunate resemblance to both Dave Prowse’s incarnation in The Horror of Frankenstein (1970) and the Newborn from Alien: Resurrection (1997) (and why is it that mad scientists just can’t master putting a proper nose on their creation’s face?).

McGuigan doesn’t appear to have a firm grip on any of the movie, and there are moments of pure farce that undermine the intensity the makers are going for, such as Dance’s brief appearance as Victor’s father: there just to give Victor a slap and tell him he’s been a naughty boy. Still some humour then, but this time, unfortunate and unintentional, a bit like the movie as a whole.

Rating: 5/10 – another disappointing “adaptation” of Shelley’s tale, Victor Frankenstein is held back by weak plotting and a sense that there’s a different, perhaps better movie in there somewhere; McAvoy seems to be acting on his own recognisance, and the movie skips on providing any real horror from what Victor is bent on achieving, leaving it more anodyne than effective.

The Gamechangers (2015)

25 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Bill Paxton, Daniel Radcliffe, Devin Moore, Drama, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, GTA, Jack Thompson, Joe Dempsie, Murders, Owen Harris, Review, Rockstar, Sam Houser, Sex scene, True story, Video games

D: Owen Harris / 90m

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Bill Paxton, Joe Dempsie, Mark Weinman, Ian Keir Attard, Fiona Ramsay, Shannon Esra, Garion Dowds, Thabo Rametsi, Gideon Lombard

Following the release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, eighteen-year-old Devin Moore (Rametsi) is arrested for stealing a car. At the police station, he disarms an officer and shoots him dead. He kills two more officers before escaping in a police car. When he’s apprehended, a link emerges between his actions and Vice City: Moore has copied one of the scenarios in the game. This claims the attention of Florida lawyer Jack Thompson (Paxton), a fiercely moralistic man who feels that the makers of the game are complicit in Moore’s crimes. He travels to Alabama in order to represent the victims’ families in a civil suit against the makers, Rockstar Games.

Meanwhile, Sam Houser (Radcliffe), the British-born co-founder and president of Rockstar Games, has decided that their next release will be bigger, better and more realistic. Always looking to improve both the content and the format of their games, Houser pushes for a sex scene to be included in their next Grand Theft Auto release, even though his closest colleagues, including his brother Dan (Attard), and fixer Jamie King (Dempsie), aren’t convinced it’s a good idea. When Houser learns of Thompson’s civil suit he rails against the notion that Rockstar is any way responsible for Moore’s actions. While Thompson looks for evidence to support his assertion that violent video games can influence people into behaving violently themselves, Rockstar hires a firm of corporate lawyers to represent them. But Thompson’s enthusiasm for the case proves to be its downfall, and the judge throws it out.

Rockstar press ahead with the release of their next instalment, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but the inclusion of the sex scene proves problematical: if it’s included it will seriously effect the game’s potential sales. Houser bows to pressure from his close colleagues and orders the scene removed. The game is released and is a huge success, but a short time after, a modder (a person who modifies existing software or hardware) in Holland, Patrick Wildenborg (Lombard), finds the code for the sex scene hidden within the game. He renders the code into rudimentary animation and posts it on YouTube. When the post goes viral, and Rockstar are charged with misleading both their customers and the body that regulates the video game industry, it leads to a federal investigation, and gives Thompson a second chance to make Rockstar and other video game makers accountable for the content of their games.

Made for TV by the BBC, The Gamechangers sets out its stall right from the outset by stating that while it’s based on real events, scenes have been altered for dramatic effect. But while this seems entirely laudable, what it actually does is to make the viewer unsure if what they’re seeing is either next door to the truth or living in the next town. Certainly, Rockstar has disavowed the movie for containing a number of inaccuracies, and there are several moments where the likelihood of James Wood’s script being as factual as it should be are easily questioned, but what hurts the movie more than all this is the unfortunate way in which it takes the idea of violent video games causing impressionable game players to act out those violent fantasies, and does nothing with it.

What we’re left with is Thompson’s principled railings against the “filth” he sees in the games tempered with Houser’s insistence that they’re in no way to blame for Moore’s behaviour, and these confident outbursts are repeated over and over, as if the viewer would be unable to work out either hypothesis for themselves. Add a number of scenes designed to show both men’s commitment to their individual causes, and how their single-mindedness affects the people around them, the movie becomes less about issues of violence and more about what drives both Thompson and Houser to be so committed in their respective arenas. Alas, this isn’t as interesting or engaging as the movie thinks it is, and gives both Radcliffe and Paxton little room to provide well-rounded portrayals, or make much of the repetitive dialogue.

With the movie lacking focus, any drama feels either overdone or forced, particularly in the relationship between Houser and King, which becomes increasingly adversarial as the movie progresses, but seems based purely around King’s lack of time off. Harris seems unable to overcome these problems, and many scenes seem designed to pad out the running time, whether it’s another example of Houser’s dismissive attitude towards his staff, or Thompson’s unresolved anger at not being able to find the justice he’s seeking. By the time the viewer learns how the federal investigation pans out, and the result of an investigation into Thompson’s competence as a lawyer is revealed, the flatness of the drama is too apparent to make it compelling.

As a result, the performances range from the pedestrian to the merely satisfactory, with Radcliffe and Paxton both stranded by the script, and the supporting cast left to fend for themselves. Only Rametsi impresses, making Moore a blank-faced killer with no real conception of whether he’s living in the real world or the confines of a video game (Moore is still on Death Row awaiting execution by lethal injection). And despite occasional attempts to make the visuals more interesting, Gustav Danielsson’s cinematography is mostly perfunctory and uninspired, leaving no room for the movie to impress in other areas. There’s a decent movie to be made out of the events that followed Moore’s kill-spree, but this isn’t it.

Rating: 4/10 – an opportunity that’s been missed by a very wide margin indeed, The Gamechangers challenges the audience’s patience throughout, and never settles on which story it really wants to tell, Houser’s or Thompson’s; blandly made, and with an awkwardness that never resolves itself, potential viewers should lower their expectations before they start watching.

Trailer – Victor Frankenstein (2015)

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Daniel Radcliffe, James McAvoy, Preview, Trailer, Victor Frankenstein

A reworking of Mary Shelley’s classic tale, Victor Frankenstein has long been touted as a story that concentrates on the relationship between the titular scientist (James McAvoy) and his assistant Igor (Daniel Radcliffe). It sounded like an interesting premise, and with the two stars firmly committed to the project, hopes have been high that this version will show audiences a new, different take on what is now a very familiar story. But this first trailer raises a variety of concerns, not least in that the relationship so focused on during production seems to have been over-emphasised (there’s certainly no glimpse of it in the trailer), and there are too many occasions where McAvoy seems to be cracking one-liners. Whether or not this version proves to be a stylish, thought-provoking addition to the ranks of Frankenstein movies, or something that sits uncomfortably close to Mel Brooks’ brilliant homage remains to be seen, but on this evidence there’s very much room for concern (and the introduction doesn’t help either).

What If (2013)

16 Sunday Nov 2014

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Adam Driver, Comedy, Daniel Radcliffe, Dublin, Michael Dowse, Rafe Spall, Relationships, Review, Romance, Romantic comedy, Taiwan, Toothpaste & Cigars, Zoe Kazan

D: Michael Dowse / 98m

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Megan Park, Adam Driver, Mackenzie Davis, Rafe Spall

Following a difficult break-up, Wallace (Radcliffe) wants nothing to do with love. He no longer believes in it, and is in no hurry to hook up with someone new. At a party held by his best friend Alan (Driver) however, he meets Chantry (Kazan), Alan’s cousin. They hit it off, and he walks her home; at this point she reveals she has a boyfriend. Even so, Chantry gives Wallace her number but feeling that nothing good can come of their new association he doesn’t keep it. Sometime later they bump into each other outside a cinema they’ve just been to, and they pick up from where they left off. This time, when they reach Chantry’s home, she asks if they can be friends, to which Wallace agrees.

Their relationship grows as they spend more time together. Chantry invites Wallace to meet her boyfriend, Ben (Spall), and her sister, Dalia (Park). Ben warns Wallace off, while Dalia finds him attractive. An accident leaves Ben in the hospital overnight, and leads to his revealing why he’s so anti-love: his parents were doctors who cheated on each other until they divorced, and while he was a med student his girlfriend (also a med student) cheated on him with another doctor. Now he’s determined not to behave like his parents did.

Ben takes advantage of a job opportunity and moves to Dublin for six months, though he and Chantry commit to keeping their relationship going despite the distance between them. Alan and his girlfriend, Nicole (Davis) realise that Wallace is falling for Chantry, and even though he denies it, they keep pushing him to tell her how he feels about her, even on the day they get married. A disastrous night left naked and stranded at the beach by Alan and Nicole with just a sleeping bag to keep them warm, leads to an estrangement between Wallace and Chantry that neither knows how to fix. Confused about her feelings for Wallace she flies to Dublin and discovers that Ben has been offered a further job in Rio de Janeiro for another six months.

Alan tries once again to get Wallace to come clean to Chantry. Goaded to the point where he feels he has to come clean about his feelings for her, he follows Chantry to Dublin but receives a voicemail message when he gets there from Chantry that tells him she’s returned home and can he meet her. He rushes back and still feeling it’s best that he tells her how she feels, he tells her about his trip to Dublin and how much she means to him. Angry that he went to break up her relationship with Ben – something he’d promised he would never do – Chantry dismisses his claims that she has similar feelings for him, and they part. She accepts a promotion that means her moving to Taiwan. Realising that she’s not handled things too well, Chantry clings to the hope that Wallace will attend her leaving party, and they will have one last chance to make amends to each other.

Romantic comedies, these days at least, come in two forms: the kind that falls back on gross-out humour to provide something memorable, and the kind that makes an effort to create memorable characters so that the humour flows organically from the actual set up. What If is definitely in the latter category, a rom-com that pitches two of the most appealing, agreeable characters that we’ve seen for a long while, and develops their relationship with patience and a surprising degree of skill.

Adapted from the play Toothpaste & Cigars by T.J. Dawe and Michael Rinaldi, What If scores highly by virtue of the script by Elan Mastai – coming a very long way from his debut script for MVP: Most Vertical Primate (2001) – and the inspired pairing of Radcliffe and Kazan. As the couple living in mutual denial of their feelings for each other, both actors excel, raising the movie’s standard plotting and set up into something much more worthwhile and affecting. (This isn’t to say that Mastai’s screenplay is lacking in any way, it’s just that it does follow the basic formula of boy-meets-girl, boy-keeps-his-feelings-to-himself-for-too-long, boy-finally-reveals-feelings-but-girl-feels-betrayed, boy-and-girl-may-or-may-not-be-reconciled that holds up most romantic comedies.)

Kazan and Radcliffe are both on terrific form, creating a convincing, captivating couple that makes it easier to root for them both through their personal and united travails. Kazan is a remarkably intuitive actress, able to adequately demonstrate the pain and confusion of unexpected love with an intensity that’s not often called for in a rom-com, but it all leads to a well-rounded, vivid characterisation and performance that elevates the material. She’s a beguiling actress, her unconventional looks and line readings adding to the believability of both Chantry as a character and her reactions to the developments in her relationship with Wallace. There are numerous moments where she reveals both the strength and the insecurity inherent in Chantry’s personality, and each moment is rendered beautifully.

Matching Kazan for believability and commitment is Radcliffe, demonstrating once again that he is one of the most talented actors of his generation. As the conflicted, honourably-minded Wallace, Radcliffe nails yet another role where he’s required (or so it seems) to be the engine that drives the movie on. Here he expertly dissects Wallace’s character and shows us the torment of a man whose experience of love has been so cruelly undermined by the people most important to him, and before he’s really had a chance to participate in it properly. It’s a measured, perceptive performance, full of insight and wit, and it complements Kazan’s role perfectly.

The secondary characters are well-drawn even if they’re unsurprisingly not as alluring or interesting as Chantry and Wallace are, but the supporting cast have fun with them nevertheless. Driver and Davis are a great match as the overly physical Alan and Nicole, their free-spiritedness at odds with the more closed in, hesitant natures of Chantry and Wallace, while Park is daffily amusing as Chantry’s predatory sister. And in the often thankless role of partner-who-must-be-shown-the-door, Spall makes Ben more interesting (and sympathetic) than the viewer might expect.

With a great script and great performances, the romantic aspects are handled with a great deal of delicacy and skill – the scene where Wallace helps Chantry out of a dress she’s trying on but has got stuck in is a superb case in point; the longing both characters display for each other is unexpectedly moving and outstandingly played. In the director’s chair, Dowse orchestrates things with poise and sensitivity, and shows an innate understanding of the characters and the material. He also knows when to let the camera linger on his leads, and when to go for the “killer” close up. It all adds up to a movie that’s not afraid to look good while pointing up the intimacy of the feelings on display. And there’s a wonderfully appropriate indie-style score by A.C. Newman that enhances and embellishes the action with casual aplomb.

Rating: 8/10 – funny, sad, heartwarming, quirky and absorbing, What If is a cleverly constructed, endlessly entertaining rom-com with two hugely impressive central performances; the perfect movie for singles looking for reassurance that love is just around the corner, or couples who want to rediscover that first thrill of finding someone special.

Horns (2013)

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

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Alexandre Aja, Black comedy, Daniel Radcliffe, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Ig Parrish, Joe Anderson, Joe Hill, Juno Temple, Literary adaptation, Max Minghella, Murder, Review, Snakes, Thriller, Whodunnit

D: Alexandre Aja / 120m

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Max Minghella, Joe Anderson, Juno Temple, Kelli Garner, James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan, David Morse, Heather Graham

Ig Perrish (Radcliffe) has earned the enmity of the small town he lives in. His longtime girlfriend, Merrin Williams (Temple) has been brutally killed in nearby woods, and everyone thinks Ig killed her. With the townsfolk threatening him at every turn, and news crews following him wherever he goes, Ig protests his innocence but is continually ignored. Even his friends and family suspect or believe he did it; only his best friend, Lee (Minghella), a lawyer, believes he’s innocent.

When a candlelit vigil is held at the place where Merrin was murdered, a drunken Ig rages against a God who could allow her to die. The next morning he awakes to find two tiny horns growing out of his forehead. Horrified, he goes to his doctor where he becomes aware of a startling side effect that the horns have brought with them: the people he encounters are compelled to tell him their darkest thoughts and desires once they’ve seen the horns. He also learns that he can persuade them to act on these desires. Using this ability he begins to visit people who knew Merrin in the hope of finding clues as to her killer’s identity – or even find them in person. Everyone reveals something about themselves that is otherwise hidden except for Lee who doesn’t see any horns at all.

Ig suffers a setback when he learns a witness has come forward to say that they saw him leave a diner with Merrin on the night she was killed. Ig knows this isn’t true, but at first he can’t think how to make the witness withdraw their statement. The arrival of a bed of snakes that he can control solves the issue but brings him no nearer to finding Merrin’s killer. It’s only when he confronts his brother, Terry (Anderson), that he begins to discover what exactly happened that night, including a fateful meeting at the diner that he had with Merrin, and which he’d forgotten.

As the clues mount up and Ig gets nearer the truth, an unexpected revelation leads to an attempt on his life. Surviving the attempt, Ig sets a trap for the killer, and in the process, learns the tragic truth about his beloved Merrin.

There’s a moment in Horns when Ig suggests that a couple of TV news reporters should “beat the shit out of each other” with an exclusive interview as the prize for the winner. What follows is a free-for-all brawl between news teams that is both funny and ferocious at the same time. It’s a perfect example of the tone of the movie, a delightfully perverse adaptation of Joe Hill’s novel that offers a mix of very dark humour and fantasy alongside a very traditional whodunnit. It’s a bold, audacious movie, encompassing romantic drama, horror, broad comedy, and childhood flashbacks to often dizzying effect. It’s also a great deal of fun.

Under the auspices of Aja, Horns is never less than riveting, its structure so cleverly constructed by screenwriter Keith Bunin that a few minor plot stumbles aside – the presence of the snakes (never properly explained), the killer’s apparent amnesia when confronted a second time by Ig – the movie grabs the attention from the outset, thrusting the viewer into Ig’s predicament with economy and style. Its greatest trick is not to make Ig instantly likeable, and while it’s no stretch to believe he’s entirely innocent, his behaviour is self-destructive and aggressive, leaving just that sliver of doubt that maybe, just maybe, he might have killed Merrin. And with a major motive introduced two thirds in, the movie still manages to throws doubts at the viewer with deliberate glee.

Radcliffe – building a quietly diverse and impressive career for himself post-Hogwarts – is the movie’s trump card, giving a well-rounded, nuanced performance that requires a lot from him as an actor. He’s more than up to the task though, and is simply mesmerising throughout, justifying entirely the decision to cast him. It’s a rich, deceptively detailed portrayal, much more resonant than we’re used to in what is ultimately a horror fantasy. There’s a scene towards the end where Ig reads a letter written to him by Merrin. The pain and anguish Radcliffe evinces, along with Temple’s perfect reading of the letter, makes the scene achingly sad to watch (and also the movie’s standout moment).

The supporting cast offer sterling support, from Garner’s turn as Ig’s would-be girlfriend Glenna, to Morse as Merrin’s heartbroken father. If there’s a weak link it’s Minghella, an actor whose features lend themselves well to looking perturbed or querulous, but who regularly struggles to persuade audiences when more convincing emotions are required. Temple continues to impress, her role in flashback as Merrin giving her another chance to shine (along with Radcliffe, she’s carving out a very interesting career for herself), and there’s a pivotal role for the underused Graham that reminds the viewer – however briefly – just how good she is.

The fantasy elements are effective, with a final transformation for Ig that is impressively handled, and the striking British Columbia locations are lensed to subtly remarkable effect by DoP (and David Lynch alumni) Frederick Elmes. Aja keeps the focus on Ig and Merrin, the true heart of the movie, and holds back on the bloodshed to a level that, while it may annoy some horror fans, is in keeping with the overall tone of the movie (that said, he can’t resist including one splatter moment). With a denouement that ups the pace and provides a satisfying conclusion to events, Horns succeeds on so many levels that it’s a very jaded viewer who will be disappointed by what the movie has to offer.

Rating: 8/10 – an above average fantasy thriller with dark comedic overtones, Horns is another daring outing from the very talented Aja; with a deep well of emotion for it to draw on, the movie succeeds in marrying a variety of disparate elements into a rewarding and gratifying whole.

Mini-Review: Kill Your Darlings (2013)

13 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Allen Ginsberg, Beat poets, Ben Foster, Columbia University, Dane DeHaan, Daniel Radcliffe, David Kemmerer, Elizabeth Olsen, Infatuation, Jack Huston, John Krokidas, Love, Lucien Carr, Michael C. Hall, Murder, Review, William Burroughs

D: John Krokidas / 104m

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Michael C. Hall, Jack Huston, Ben Foster, David Cross, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Elizabeth Olsen, John Cullum, David Rasche

Covering the years 1943-45 while fledgling poet Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe) was at Columbia University, Kill Your Darlings – a reference to William Faulkner – charts the growing infatuation between Ginsberg and fellow student Lucien Carr (Chronicle‘s DeHaan), their relationships with William Burroughs (Foster) and Jack Kerouac (Huston), and eventually, their roles in the murder of Dr David Kemmerer (Hall).

This is a slow burn movie, where the script strives to paint the characters as boldly as possible and with as much honesty as possible. Carr is shown as manipulative, pretentious and ultimately callow, while Ginsberg comes across as incredibly naive. As played by Radcliffe, Ginsberg is all grinning confusion and slow-on-the-uptake reactions. Unfortunately, this means that neither of them are particularly likeable (though Ginsberg edges it); as a result the movie suffers because it’s difficult to root for any of them, and when the details of the murder are revealed, any sympathies built up during the movie are swept away in a moment (though maybe that was the filmmakers’ intention).

Like a lot of so-called “free thinkers” with plans to change the world, they’re more adept at ruining the world they live in than creating a new one. When it becomes clear that they’re no better than the system they despise, the movie starts to falter and first-timer Krokidas loses his previously sure grip on proceedings. Of the cast, Radcliffe and DeHaan acquit themselves well, while Foster exudes an icy menace as Burroughs. Hall, though, is miscast, and struggles as the doomed Kammerer. That said, Krokidas makes good use of a great cast, and allowing for the odd stumble, shows a great deal of promise. The 40’s recreation is done well, and Reed Morano’s cinematography recalls other movies from the same period. An interesting story, then, and well-mounted but it’s difficult to tell an interesting story when the main characters are so hollow inside.

Rating: 7/10 – a minor slice of history given a fair-minded treatment that doesn’t quite achieve its aims; absorbing though and another good performance from Radcliffe.