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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

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Tag Archives: Emily Blunt

A Quiet Place (2018)

02 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Creatures, Drama, Emily Blunt, Horror, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Review, Silence, Sound, Thriller

D: John Krasinski / 90m

Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe

In the near future, humans have been decimated by creatures who hunt by sound. One family, the Abbotts – dad Lee (Krasinski), mother Evelyn (Blunt), daughter Regan (Simmonds), and son Marcus (Jupe) – are living in a farmhouse away from the nearest town. They have learned to adapt by being as silent as possible: when they travel they don’t wear anything on their feet, and they stick to paths they’ve created that soften their footfalls. Regan is deaf, and the family all communicate using sign language. Nearly five hundred days have elapsed since the creatures first appeared, and Evelyn is heavily pregnant. One day, Lee decides to take Marcus with him on a trip. Regan wants to go as well, but she’s charged with staying behind and looking after Evelyn. Angry at this, she decides to run away. Meanwhile, Evelyn injures herself, something that causes her to cry out (and attract one of the creatures), and also to go into labour. With the family split up, all of them find themselves in danger, and all of them must rely on their ingenuity to keep from being killed…

A creature feature with a modern, high concept twist, A Quiet Place opens with a prologue that highlights just how much peril the Abbotts are facing on a daily basis. With this established, the movie proceeds to introduce us properly to the characters, and to explore further the world they live in, what with all its rules about being silent, and how best to avoid the creatures that are lying in wait. In adapting an original screenplay by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, actor-director John Krasinski has made a horror thriller that plays on our fears of the nuclear family coming under threat from a seemingly unstoppable force, and the potential destruction of said family. It’s a movie with a warning message: be careful and keep your family close, because if you don’t, bad things can happen (as the prologue tells us). This allows the movie to explore aspects of personal paranoia and fear that resonate throughout. Bolstered by a determination not to let anyone off lightly, the movie puts its characters into harm’s way at several different turns, and it doesn’t always provide them with a free pass. For once, this is a movie where you can’t be sure just who is going to make it to the end.

Naturally, the focus is on the sound design – though the cinematography by Charlotte Bruus Christensen is equally vivid – and it’s the combination of muted dialogue and rarefied natural sounds, along with periods of prolonged silence that makes it all so effective. Krasinski lessens the effect by including Marco Beltrami’s music score (would that he could have left out a score altogether), but the absence of a familiar soundtrack adds to the tension, and this makes for an uncomfortable atmosphere against which the action takes place. Making his first foray into the genre, Krasinski acquits himself well, and there are good performances from the cast, including Simmonds who is deaf in real life. If there are any caveats, it’s that the movie does feel stretched as it heads into the final half hour, and a couple of narrative decisions push the boundaries of what is otherwise a fairly well constructed scenario. The creatures are appropriately menacing, if a little over-exposed by the end, and the script makes only a casual attempt to explain their provenance, something that’s refreshing and doesn’t cause the movie to put itself on hold while someone delivers a few minutes of exposition (though if they were killed for doing so…).

Rating: 7/10 – a solid, unpretentious horror thriller that is at least trying to do something different, A Quiet Place is an intelligent if ultimately overwrought movie that has a number of effective moments, and makes a few good points about the perils of parenting along the way; there’s tension aplenty, and even though most of it dissipates in favour of the kind of showdown seen dozens (if not hundreds) of times before, this is still an above average survivalist horror that has a lot more to offer than most of its ilk.

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Trailers – A Quiet Place (2018), A Bad Idea Gone Wrong (2017) and Game Night (2018)

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Comedy, Emily Blunt, Horror, Jason Bateman, Jason Headley, John Krasinski, Matt Jones, Previews, Rachel McAdams, Thriller, Trailers, Will Rogers

The premise of A Quiet Place is a simple one: a family must remain ever vigilant and ever quiet, or some things will find them and kill them. At this stage, the whys and the hows of this particular scenario remain unknown, which makes the trailer that much more effective. Star John Krasinski also directs – making this his third feature after Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (2009) and The Hollars (2016) – and he’s rewritten the original script by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, so this is close to a one-man show, but with an additional dose of nepotism, as Blunt is Krasinski’s real-life wife. This has the potential to be as scary as a mofo, and it will be interesting to see just how long the movie goes on for before a word is spoken, and if at all. Though it will inevitably include sound effects and music, what might be a modern day silent movie is an intriguing idea, and if Krasinski has got a confident grip on the tension and what looks to be a slowburn build up of terror, then the movie could be a breakout hit that attracts audiences wanting to be terrified.

 

When two life-long friends (and loveable schlubs) plan a burglary at a house that they absolutely know will be unoccupied, you just know that it’s not going to go according to plan. And so it proves in Jason Headley’s feature debut, the kind of indie comedy that looks down its nose at more mainstream comedy fare, and then sneezes heavily and appropriately (or inappropriately), as the case may be. As the two friends, Matt Jones and Will Rogers make for a good pair of lunkheads, and Headley’s script seems well set up to provide a mix of belly laughs, moments of wry amusement, and a knowing sense of the story’s complete and utter absurdity. Adding a measure of romance to the mix may be a smart move on Headley’s part, but whether or not the movie needs it is another matter. Unlikely as it may be that the movie will find a wider audience than expected, this still looks as if it could overcome the expectations everyone has for it and gain a lot more kudos for itself along the way.

 

Comedy thrillers are notoriously difficult to pull off, and though Game Night is billed as such, the trailer seems determined to skirt around the movie’s thriller elements and concentrate on the comedy. Whether or not this is a good thing remains to be seen, but what is promising is a cast that includes Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, and Jesse “give this man more starring roles” Plemons. The idea, that a kidnapping of one of a group of good friends may or may not be real, and they have to decide which is the case, could and should provide plenty of laughs, and the trailer does its best to confirm this, but there’s the nagging sense that the best bits have been included in it, and the movie will prove less sharp than it looks (though the squeaky toy is inspired). Still, Bateman et al are all good value for money, and this could be just the silly alternative that’s needed when every other movie in 2018 looks like it’s going to involve superheroes being, well, super and heroic.

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The Girl on the Train (2016)

07 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alcoholism, Drama, Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, Literary adaptation, Luke Evans, Murder, Paula Hawkins, Rebecca Ferguson, Review, Tate Taylor, Thriller

girl_on_the_train_ver3

D:Tate Taylor / 112m

Cast: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Edgar Ramírez, Laura Prepon, Allison Janney, Darren Goldstein, Lisa Kudrow

Whenever a novel becomes an unexpectedly massive success – such as Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train did in 2015 – then a movie adaptation is sure to follow. But what happens when the source material isn’t strong enough to support a movie version? What do the makers of such a movie do to combat this? The answer, when you watch the movie version of The Girl on the Train, becomes obvious quite quickly: they don’t do anything, they merely transcribe events and characters to the screen and do nothing to circumvent the problems in the novel. Oh – and they do so in the hope that no one will notice.

From the beginning of The Girl on the Train we have a clumsy voice over that introduces us to Rachel Watson, a thirty-two year old woman who rides the train to and from work every day, and who seems to have created a fantasy world built around another woman (Bennett) that she sees most days from the train. The woman in question piques Rachel’s interest, as she lives a few doors away from where Rachel’s ex-husband Tom (Theroux) lives with his new wife, Anna (Ferguson), and their baby daughter, Evie. Believing this woman to have a perfect marriage (but having no real reason to believe this at all), Rachel is shocked one morning to see her kissing a man who isn’t her husband.

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Rachel is so disturbed by this that she decides to confront the woman. But Rachel is an alcoholic, and though she makes the attempt, she suffers a blackout and wakes the next morning with cuts and bruises and blood on her clothes – but no memory of how any of it happened. Things get worse when a detective (Janney) visits Rachel and asks her if she knows the woman, whose name is Megan. Megan has gone missing, and because Rachel was spotted in the area where Megan was last seen, the detective wonders if Rachel is involved in Megan’s disappearance in some way. Able to stall the detective’s questions, Rachel then makes a fateful decision.

Anyone who has read the book will know that Rachel’s decision is to involve herself in the life of Megan’s husband, Scott (Evans). And the movie follows this route as well – how could it not? – but as with the novel, the movie has the same problem: her decision makes no sense at all. It’s obvious from Rachel’s behaviour – when she’s not fantasizing about a complete stranger, she’s stalking her ex-husband – that she’s got what you’d politely call “issues”, but the only reason the movie has for this behaviour is the fact that Rachel is an alcoholic. It was a contributing factor in her divorce from Tom, and it leads to a couple of minor revelations later on, but it ends up being a catch-all for anything she does that seems a bit manic or ill-advised. The novel tries to make her appear vulnerable; here she just seems desperate.

But as her involvement with Scott is passed off as trying to help (and punish Megan if she stops being missing), Rachel abandons all sense of decency and respect for the ordeal Scott is going through, and pushes her own agenda, which is to find Megan’s abductor or killer – and hope that it isn’t her. This leads to a couple of major revelations, and a final denouement that will have female audiences cheering, and male audiences shaking their heads at the reverse misogyny on display. In essence, the problems in the novel have become the problems in the movie.

girlontrainhaleybennett650

The main problem audiences will have is a lack of someone to even remotely care about. Despite a powerful and from time to time, deeply moving performance by Blunt, The Girl on the Train operates in an emotional vacuum. The trials and tribulations of the various characters are often on display, but it’s like watching a trio of strong-minded women who’ve all decided to give up on being independent, and who can only define themselves through their relationships with men. Rachel is the ex-wife who can’t deal with the fact that her marriage is over, Megan is the wife who needs affairs to feel some kind of connection with herself, and Anna is the ex-lover turned second wife whose chief function is being the mother of Tom’s child. Viewers may find themselves put off by the relentless undermining these characters experience, and the various ways the movie reinforces the ways in which said characters were undermined in the novel.

But beyond all the ersatz feminism, there remains the problem of the central mystery. Megan’s disappearance becomes a murder enquiry when her body is discovered in some nearby woods. But though Rachel wonders if she did kill Megan during her blackout, the likelihood of that actually having happened is so small it’s on a virtually sub-atomic level. So that leaves Anna, a character so gloriously one-dimensional that Ferguson’s talents as an actress are wasted; her husband Tom, whose outward calm and sincerity masks a need to control his environment; and tortured husband Scott, whose wild, angry outbursts could be a smokescreen for something much darker. And those are the only suspects, as the man Megan is seen kissing is her shrink, Dr Kamal Abdic (Ramírez), and despite the screenplay’s ham-fisted attempt to put him in the frame, he’s the classic red herring. This then makes it easy to work out who killed Megan, and also why.

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For a thriller based on the novel “that shocked the world” – really? – The Girl on the Train is a bit of a damp squib, only showing signs of life when focusing on Blunt’s portrayal of Rachel. Blunt brings some much needed craft to her performance, ensuring that while everyone around her aims for competent, she’s proving capable of giving a layered, compassionate performance that elevates the material whenever her alcoholism is mentioned, or she’s on screen. In contrast, Taylor, who failed to find the motivation to make The Help (2011) as compelling as it should have been, leaves the viewer with the feeling he’s only semi-engaged with the project, and as a result, none of it resonates in the way that it should. It all leaves the movie looking and sounding like an uninspired echo of the original novel – and a less than engaging one at that.

Rating: 5/10 – slickly, professionally made, but as hollow as an Easter egg, The Girl on the Train delivers low rent thrills and annoying plot developments as it unfolds the mystery of Megan Hipwell’s disappearance; the non-linear approach of the novel is retained, and used to good effect, but this is still one literary adaptation that should have been more enticing and rewarding than it actually is.

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The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016)

05 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Action, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Drama, Dwarves, Emily Blunt, Fantasy, Goblins, Ice Queen, Jessica Chastain, Magic, Mirror, Nick Frost, Prequel, Review, Rob Brydon, Sequel, Sorcery

The Huntsman Winter's War

D: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan / 114m

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain, Nick Frost, Rob Brydon, Sam Claflin, Sheridan Smith, Alexandra Roach, Sope Dirisu

Once upon a time there were two sisters. One, Ravenna (Theron), lusted for power, and used her dark magic to take over kingdoms and rule them with an iron fist. The other, Freya (Blunt), had yet to find the magic gift she possessed, but Ravenna assured her the day would come when her power would assert itself. And then Freya fell pregnant, and had a baby. But then a tragedy occurred and her baby died in a fire, apparently caused by her baby’s father, her one true love. Her powers exerted themselves then, and Freya’s gift was to be able to control ice in all its forms. She exerted her revenge on her one true love, then left Ravenna’s care to make a kingdom for herself in the North. She became known as the Ice Queen, and she was feared by all.

Her pain found expression in a strange way. She would order the children from the villages in her kingdom to be rounded and trained as warriors for her growing army. All these children had to do was swear allegiance to her and foreswear any notion of love. In return she would give their lives meaning in their service to her. But love will out, and two children grew up to love each other, despite Freya’s law. Eric (Hemsworth) and Sarah (Chastain) made plans to leave Freya’s stronghold and their roles as huntsmen. But Freya learned of their plans and saw to it that they didn’t come to fruition. Eric saw Sarah killed, and he was knocked unconscious and thrown into the river to die.

THWW - scene3

But Eric survived. Time passed. Seven years, during which time he helped Snow White rid her kingdom of the villainous Ravenna. But now a new threat is in place. Ravenna’s mirror, a source of very powerful magic, has been stolen, and Eric is tasked with finding it and taking it to a sanctuary where it can be made safe. He agrees to the task, and is joined by two dwarves, Nion (Frost) and Gryff (Brydon). Soon they discover that Freya is trying to find the mirror as well. They seek help from two female dwarves, Mrs Bronwyn (Smith) and Doreena (Roach), and journey into a hidden forest inhabited by goblins to take back the mirror. But once they do they find themselves caught in a trap of Freya’s devising, leading to the mirror’s capture, and only one course of action left to them: to follow the Ice Queen back to her stronghold and destroy her and the mirror once and for all.

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) was an unexpected success, trading on Theron’s evil hearted queen and Kristen Stewart’s take on Snow White as a fantasy version of Joan of Arc. It had an impressive budget – $170 million – and made back nearly $400 million at the international box office. A sequel was always on the cards, it was just a matter of when. But here’s the rub: The Huntsman: Winter’s War isn’t just a sequel, it’s also a prequel. In it we see the Huntsman’s back story, his childhood years as a trainee in Freya’s huntsman army and his eventual love affair with Sarah, whom he marries in secret. When she dies, fate spares his life and the movie skims over the events of its predecessor with a single line of narrated dialogue (courtesy of Liam Neeson).

THWW - scene1

Then we’re fully in sequel mode, as Sam Claflin’s earnest prince convinces Eric to look for the mirror. And Freya, who has been adding nearby kingdoms to her own over the past seven years, gets wind of the mirror and its magical properties. A race against time, then, to see who reaches the mirror first. Alas, no, not really. Instead, after an eventful and encouraging first half hour, the movie settles down into fantasy adventure mode, with humour provided by Frost and Brydon. Freya’s threat is put on the back burner and Eric is confronted with a figure from his past who provides complications for his quest. It’s all serviceable enough, and despite everyone’s best efforts, all entirely forgettable.

The problem lies both with the script by Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin, and Nicolas-Troyan’s direction. The script lumbers from one unconnected scene to the next, straining the audience’s patience thanks to semi-amusing quips and snide remarks courtesy of Brydon, cowardly assertions from Frost, an drab, wearing performance from Chastain, and Hemsworth’s assumption that a big grin can pass for acting when he so desires (sorry, Chris, it doesn’t). Ravenna remains the primary adversary, despite being off screen for two thirds of the movie, and Freya’s delusional take on love and its inability to offer true contentment is recounted so often it’s as if the makers weren’t sure an audience would grasp the idea the first time around.

THWW - scene2

But if the movie’s storyline and plotting are a cause for alarm, spare a thought for Nicolas-Troyan, bumped up from second unit director on the first movie, and a poor second choice after Frank Darabont, who was attached to the project for some time before he dropped out. He’s not so bad when it comes to the action sequences, but in between times, when the characters have to display their feelings, or the script calls for another bout of humorous insults (which are pretty much all of Brydon’s lines), his lack of experience shines through. Too many scenes fall flat or fail to make much of an impact, and the cast are left to inject whatever energy they can, but with the script and their director seemingly working against them, it’s an uphill struggle for all of them.

This being a big budget fantasy movie, however, it does score highly for its production design, its costumes, and its special effects (though an encounter with a goblin isn’t as effective as it should be, thanks to its looking like an angry ape with a liking for bling). The ice effects are cleverly done, and there’s a pleasing sense of a real world lurking behind all the CGI, while James Newton Howard contributes a suitably stirring score to help prop things up when it all gets a little too silly (which is most of the middle section). And of course, the makers can’t help themselves at the end, and leave a way open for a further (full-fledged) sequel. But if anyone really cares by that stage, then the movie will have truly worked its magic.

Rating: 5/10 – a superficially appealing prequel/sequel, The Huntsman: Winter’s War isn’t the most memorable of fantasy movies, and chances are, viewers will have forgotten most of its content a short while after seeing it; it’s not a bad movie per se, but then it’s not a good movie either, and sometimes, that’s the worst anyone can say about any movie.

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Trailers – The Huntsman (2016) & Zoolander 2 (2016)

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Ben Stiller, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Comedy, Emily Blunt, Fantasy, Owen Wilson, Previews, Sequels, The Huntsman, Trailers, Will Ferrell, Zoolander 2

Ah, sequels… what would we do without them? Have less movies to watch probably, as movie makers the world over love giving us more of the same – even if it didn’t work out that well the first time. For me, both Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) and Zoolander (2001) were moderately entertaining movies that didn’t aim particularly high and didn’t reach their full potential. So it may not come as a surprise when I say that, based on these latest trailers, I’m not hugely excited about either sequel hitting our screens next year. With The Huntsman it already looks like it’s going to be a triumph of special effects over story and content, while Zoolander 2 has the feel of a long-in-development sequel that looks set to rehash what made the original outing a bit of a cult movie (I kept thinking of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013) while I was watching it). Still, both movies have their fans, and they’ll probably do well enough to make the option of a third movie in both series a good possibility, but I’m thinking that these trips to the well should be the last. Let me know what you think.

 

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Into the Woods (2014)

12 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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

Into the Woods

D: Rob Marshall / 125m

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

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

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

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

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

INTO THE WOODS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

01 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Action, Aliens, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson, Doug Liman, Emily Blunt, Exo-skeleton, Live Die Repeat, Mimics, Review, Sci-fi, The Louvre, Tom Cruise

Edge of Tomorrow

D: Doug Liman / 113m

Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Brendan Gleeson, Bill Paxton, Noah Taylor, Kick Gurry, Jonas Armstrong, Charlotte Riley, Tony Way, Franz Drameh, Dragomir Mrsic, Masayoshi Haneda

Sometime in the near future, a meteor crashes to earth in Europe, bringing with it an alien race called Mimics.  The Mimics set about taking over the planet, swiftly conquering Europe, with the UK next in line.  Military forces under the command of General Brigham (Gleeson) are preparing for a full-scale counter attack on French soil.  When Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Cruise) arrives in London to continue the PR drive he’s orchestrated from the US, he’s shocked to find he’s expected to do so from the Front and will be going in with the first wave of the attack.  His attempts to avoid this end up with him being busted down to private and made to join J Squad, under the auspices of Master Sergeant Farell (Paxton).  With no combat training or experience, Cage has a crash course in using the exo-skeletons the military provides and finds himself in a troop carrier the very next morning.  The attack is ambushed by the Mimics; Cage survives for a few minutes before he’s confronted by an Alpha Mimic.  He manages to kill the Alpha, getting the alien’s blood on him in the process.  Instead of dying as well, Cage wakes up back at the base in the UK on the day before the attack and has to relive the exact same experience all over again.

Despite still getting killed again and again, Cage does learn to anticipate events on the battlefield.  When he saves the life of Sergeant Rita Vrataski, the military’s poster girl and with more Mimic kills than any other soldier, Vrataski is obviously shocked and tells him to find her when he wakes up.  When he does, Cage learns that what is happening to him happened to Vrataski but she lost the ability after receiving a blood transfusion.  He also learns that the reason the Mimics have been so successful in conquering Europe is due to their ability to reset time; they are a hive race controlled by what is described as an Omega creature, like a queen.  Thanks to the Alpha’s blood, Cage is linked to the aliens, and Vrataski sees a chance for them to be defeated, using their ability to reset time to anticipate their actions and change the outcome of the attack.  But Cage’s continuous efforts prove fruitless; no matter how hard he trains with Vrataski or memorises the details of what happens during the attack, he still dies.

When Dr Carter (Taylor) tells Cage and Vrataski they need to find and eliminate the Omega alien, they realise they have to get away from the battle and track it down.  This proves harder than expected, but eventually they trace the Omega to the sub-cellars of the Louvre.  With the aid of J Squad, Cage and Vrataski mount an attack on the alien hideout.

Edge of Tomorrow - scene

A mash-up of Groundhog Day (1993), D-Day the Sixth of June (1956) and Starship Troopers (1997), Edge of Tomorrow is by no means an original concept, but thanks to a whip-smart script by Christopher McQuarrie and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, it’s easily one of the more enjoyable sci-fi movies of recent years.  There are some inconsistencies – it’s never made clear exactly why Cage is reliving the same day over and over again when the Omega appears to reset time only when necessary – but this is such a gung-ho ride that it doesn’t matter.  From the moment Cage tries to blackmail Brigham into getting out of going with the first wave (with Cruise’s cowardly efforts proving no match for Gleeson’s blank-faced indifference), Edge of Tomorrow sweeps up the viewer and doesn’t let them down until the movie’s satisfying, if slightly corny, ending.

A lot of this is down to Cruise and Blunt, who make a great team.  Cruise is in his element, all cocky charm and mega-wattage smile at the beginning, then increasingly serious as the movie progresses, his physicality predominant in the action scenes, and his generosity as an actor evident in his scenes with Blunt and the rest of the cast.  (Cruise may have his detractors but even they should find little to confirm their doubts about him here.)  It’s a well-rounded performance, giving Cruise a chance to display a variety of moods and emotions, some that rarely get a look in during big budget sci-fi spectaculars.  There are a couple of quiet moments where it’s just him and Blunt, and the warmth of those scenes makes their characters’ relationship all the more credible, and shows two actors elevating what could have been just a couple of moments where the movie slows down to take a breather.  Blunt is just as good, taking a straightforward, no-nonsense soldier and giving her an emotional strength that strikes a necessary balance with her obvious physical strength (and she must have had fun killing Cruise over and over again).  In addition, Blunt may not be everyone’s idea of a bad ass, but she’s very convincing, and if the casting director on the upcoming female Expendables movie is still looking for some cast members, well, they need to sign up Blunt right away.

As marshalled by a reinvigorated Liman – after the twin disappointments of Jumper (2008) and Fair Game (2010) – the production is handsomely mounted with some of the most effective use of London locations this side of 28 Days Later… (2002) (and those of us in the UK will know just how much was filmed on Saturday and Sunday mornings, as well as how under-developed Heathrow is).  The hardware is a credible mix of low-tech – the exo-skeletons still shoot live rounds – and high-tech – the troop carriers – while communications in London are still carried out largely by telephone (a nice touch), and the colour scheme is a steely blue/grey mix that suits the mood entirely.  The Mimics are mostly a rapid blur and all the more scary for it, and the replayed scenes are given enough of a visual spin – different camera angles, close ups etc. – that they never become tiresome.  There’s plenty of wry humour to be had, as well as a couple of laugh-out-loud moments on the battlefield that should feel incongruous but aren’t, and Cruise displays a knack for comic timing that might surprise some people.  The action sequences are inventive and  well-staged, and the special effects are impressive throughout.

What makes Edge of Tomorrow so effective in the long run though is its ability to take elements from various other movies and sources and meld them into an action-packed, exhilarating fun ride of a movie that is as broadly entertaining as any other big budget mainstream movie, and adds a generous dash of heart and soul to the mix as well.  It’s an accomplished piece of movie-making and an early highlight in a (so far) largely disappointing year.

Rating: 8/10 – a must-see on the big screen (and even better in IMAX 3D), Edge of Tomorrow has all the ingredients of a smart, self-aware movie designed to entertain at maximum levels; a couple of dodgy plot twists aside, this is exhilarating stuff and an almost perfect way to spend a couple of hours.

 

 

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