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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

08 Tuesday Aug 2017

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D: Luc Besson / 137m

Cast: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu, Sam Spruell, Alain Chabat, John Goodman, Elizabeth Debicki, Rutger Hauer

There’s a phrase, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, that needs an update. It should now read, “Beware of French movie directors making vanity projects”. A project that’s been on his mind to make since The Fifth Element (1997), Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets arrives trailing a cosmos-worth of hype and anticipation, but somehow manages to land with a massive, resounding thud. This is a movie that looks continuously busy, but at the same time it feels like it’s leaden and ponderous. It’s another loud barrage of a sci-fi movie driven by mounds of uninteresting exposition, and supported by empty visuals that look amazing but offer as much refreshment as an empty bottle of water. It’s a mess, and one that never lets up in its efforts to impress you with its meticulously detailed sets and costumes, and its tired characterisations. There’s a love story too, between two charismatic military operatives, Valerian (DeHaan) and Laureline (Delevingne), that offers occasional and all too brief periods of respite from the CGI onslaught, and which feels as organic as the pixelated backgrounds it plays in front of. And there’s a villain, one so obvious that they might as well stomp around yelling, “I’m the bad guy!” (in case the viewer isn’t sure).

There’s more, lots more, lots and lots and lots of it, with Besson aiming to include a veritable kitchen sink’s worth of alien species, high-tech weaponry, dazzling backdrops, vibrant colours, impressive make up designs, and specious action scenes. There’s a story in there too – somewhere – but it’s overwhelmed by the movie’s need to keep moving from one breakneck-paced scene to another. There are long stretches where the viewer might find themselves wondering if they’ve transitioned into watching the video game version of Valerian… and other stretches where they might also be wondering if Besson actually knows what’s supposed to happen next. Too often, things happen for no better reason than that Besson wants them to, and the pacing seems relentless, as the writer/director flings his lead characters into danger after danger, but without once actually putting them in danger.

The cast suffer almost as often and as much as the viewer. As the titular hero, DeHaan tackles the role with enthusiasm and a fair degree of commitment, but is hampered by Besson’s decision to make Valerian look and sound like a high school kid on his first day at an entry-level job. DeHaan is a talented actor but fantasy sci-fi is not his forte, and he rarely seems comfortable with all the running and leaping about and firing guns. Delevingne, meanwhile, appears to be far more in tune with Besson’s ambitions for the movie, and her knowing, unimpressed demeanour works well for the character, and acts as a subtle commentary on the movie as a whole. But too often, Laureline has to play second fiddle to Valerian, an unhappy circumstance that gives rise to the idea that in the 28th century, sexism still hasn’t been consigned to the dustbin of history.

There’s a great supporting cast, too, used to occasional good effect, but too often required to stand around waiting for the next clunking shift in the storyline to get them moving again. Owen’s character is an angry clown in a self-consciously big hat, Rihanna is a shapeshifting cabaret artist whose admittedly enjoyable stage routine still stops the movie dead in its tracks, Hawke (as Jolly the Pimp no less!) seems to be acting in another movie altogether, while Hauer gets off lightly with a Presidential address at the start of the movie that has all the hallmarks of being a favour to the director. Only Spruell as an harassed general seems to have grasped Besson’s intentions for his character, and as a result, his appearances are a godsend.

In case you’re wondering if there’s anything remotely good about Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, then rest assured there is, but unfortunately it’s all packed into the first fifteen to twenty minutes. Here we see the International Space Station grow in size as several countries from Earth send representatives in space vehicles that attach themselves to the station. As time goes by, alien life-forms also visit the station, and the same welcoming rituals are observed: a handshake, a bemused smile/grimace from the human in charge, and a succession of impressively realised aliens who seemed equally bemused by the idea of said handshake. As more and more ships arrive and attach themselves, the space station becomes – ta-da! – Alpha, the city of a thousand planets. It’s a terrific idea, well executed, and bodes well for the rest of the movie. Things look even better when the narrative shifts to the planet Mül, and we’re introduced to the race that live there, a peaceful, pearl-cultivating civilisation that becomes central to the plot later on (as expected), and which is apparently wiped out by events happening nearby in space. But with that prologue out of the way, we’re thrust thirty years on and forced to put up with the romantic aspirations of Valerian, and the machinations of a plot that serves as a second cousin retread of Besson’s earlier work on The Fifth Element (watch that movie now and you’ll see how inter-connected they are).

When a director announces that they’re finally going to make a long-cherished project, and one that they’ve delayed making due to the limitations of existing technology, it should be a cause for celebration. After all, it wouldn’t be wrong to believe that as they have such a passion for the project, that they’d make every effort to ensure the finished product was a vast cut above their other movies, the pinnacle of their career perhaps. But somewhere along the way, Besson has settled for making a movie that is plodding and uninspired. Scenes and characters come and go without making the slightest impact, and Besson makes the same basic error that so many other fantasy/sci-fi directors make: they mistake a distinct visual style for substance. This leaves Valerian… feeling like it’s only half the movie Besson envisaged, and with a generic genre score by the usually reliable Alexandre Desplat to add to the misery, this is a strong contender for Most Disappointing Movie of 2017.

Rating: 4/10 – technical wizardry aside, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is an unabashed dud, content to make as little effort as possible, and trading on its writer/director’s past glories; with its €197 million budget making it the most expensive European and independent movie ever made, it’s a shame that all that money has been used to such undemanding and underwhelming effect.

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In a Valley of Violence (2016)

27 Monday Mar 2017

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D: Ti West / 104m

Cast: Ethan Hawke, John Travolta, Taissa Farmiga, James Ransone, Karen Gillan, Toby Huss, Tommy Nohilly, Larry Fessenden, Burn Gorman

These days, Westerns come and go infrequently, but largely seem to be a cause for (minor) celebration. A genre that had its heyday in the Fifties and Sixties, the Western was a simple beast, telling classic tales of good versus evil (white hats versus black hats, cowboys versus Indians), until they got darker, more symbolic, and infused with heavy psychological importance. In the last twenty years, the Western has lain relatively dormant. But for some movie makers, the Western is a genre that’s ripe for re-evaluation and examination. Ti West, who has made his name on the back of a run of horror thrillers, is one such movie maker. And so, we have In a Valley of Violence, his “tribute” to the Western genre.

It begins with a recognisable Western encounter. A lone rider (Hawke) comes upon a priest (Gorman), who’s stranded thanks to a lame mule. He’s looking to get to the nearest town, Denton, but needs help. He pulls a gun on the lone rider, but it has no effect whatsoever; the man doesn’t appear worried in the slightest. The next thing the priest knows, the man’s dog has him by his gun arm, and the tables have been turned in an instant. The man doesn’t kill him, though. Instead, he takes the priest’s water and the bullets from his gun, and lets him live. He rides off, heading for Mexico, and at first, he’s intending to avoid Denton, but when he sees what kind of a detour he’d need to make to avoid it, he decides passing through is the better option. As long as he doesn’t draw any attention to himself…

Ten minutes in and already we’re in classic Western territory (almost as classic as its New Mexico setting). We’ve got the tactiturn, quick-witted loner (whose name we later discover is Paul), and we have a supporting character in the priest that you can be sure will make another appearance later on. And then there’s Denton, a town that, according to the priest, is “run by sinners”. As Paul heads into town, the viewer could almost be asking themselves, “What could possibly go wrong?” The answer is as obvious as the scar on the side of Paul’s face: everything.

And at first, it looks as if West is going to honour all the staples of a Western movie. The loner rides into town, and within minutes is being challenged by the town bully, a loudmouth by the name of Gilly Martin (Ransone). A showdown is on the cards, as Gilly goads the stranger in town into a gunfight. But here’s where West wrong foots the audience, and instead of a classic gunfight in the middle of the street, Gilly’s efforts to call out Paul meet with quiet dismissal. Until Gilly realises that Paul’s dog is across the street and makes a threatening move towards it. It’s too much for Paul: he comes out, water bowl for the dog in hand, throws it at Gilly, and when he catches it, Paul punches him once in the face and lays him out. Not a shot fired, not even a gun drawn out of a holster. The lead-up is stretched out, but the fight is short, and the outcome is funny as all hell. We’re in classic Western territory all right, but somewhere along the way, West has taken his audience down a different trail, and though quite a lot of what follows cleaves to the staples mentioned above, it’s clear that West is going to put his own spin on things.

But therein lies the problem with the movie as a whole: it’s a classic Western that’s been bent out of shape, and though it looks like a Western, and it sounds like a Western (even down to Jeff Grace’s Morricone-inspired score), it’s only a Western in terms of its starting-off point. Once Paul throws that bowl, we’re in a whole different kind of Western altogether, and a lot of it doesn’t fit together. There’s a lot of sly humour here, and while it would be unfair to pin the blame for the movie’s unevenness on the humour alone, it does contribute greatly to the sense that West, while he definitely wanted to make a Western, didn’t quite know what kind of Western he wanted to make. As a result, bullets do fly, and revenge is placed firmly on the table as a motivating force for the violence, but there are other elements – sibling rivalry, public confidence in the town marshal (Travolta), bravery and cowardice co-existing at the same time in most of the characters, lead-footed moments of irony – that are part of the material, and which serve to either slow down the movie, or make it seem ragged and unfocused.

The other problem is with the characters themselves, archetypes that are also twisted out of shape. At one pivotal point in the narrative, Paul is ambushed by Gilly and his men. West can’t decide from one moment to the next if Paul should be angry, upset, fearful for his life, pleading, or stubborn in the face of imminent death, and so has him be all of these things. Hawke’s a great actor, but even he can’t pull off all that. When we meet the marshal, we find he has a wooden leg and is of a temperament to let his son get a beating from a stranger (yes, Gilly is his son), and not pursue it because he knows what his son is like. The wooden leg proves to be incidental, while the decision to send Paul on his way, proves to be an awkward way of allowing the revenge angle to be introduced. Gilly himself is vainglorious and stupid, and vacillates between the two, sometimes in the same scene. As a result, Ransone has a hard time keeping him even remotely credible as a character. Farmiga is the sixteen-year-old whose husband has left her(!) and wants to leave town (but won’t do it unless a man takes her with him), while Gillan (as her sister) gets to screech a lot at Ransone, and generally behave like a spoilt brat. While many Westerns play up the stereotypes of the genre, usually it’s a welcome gambit – a movie shorthand, if you will – but here, the impression given is that West wasn’t too interested in having his characters interact or behave in a way that the audience could identify or sympathise with.

Visually, West does provide enough cues and familiar set ups to make his Western look and feel authentic, and the town of Denton is cleverly realised, from its boarded up church and empty saloon, to the absence of its townsfolk or any thriving businesses. It’s a ghost town in the making, and what better way to help it on its way than to bring in a lone stranger to kill most of the people who still remain there? Of course, being a Western there’s plenty of violence, and West doesn’t skimp on making it impactful and severe, with Fessenden and Ransone in particular suffering quite nastily at Hawke’s hands (and cutthroat razor, and boot). But again, there’s that humour to soften the blow, but it’s not as successful in that respect as West has probably intended. Instead the two elements sit together unhappily, with neither elevating the other.

Something of a vanity project for West, the movie does work for the most part, but there are too many occasions where the awkward mix of styles and elements derails the narrative, and brings everything up short. This leads to the movie having an awkward rhythm as well, with some scenes extended beyond their ability to be effective, or to advance the various storylines. Hawke is a great choice for the lead role, while Travolta appears to be having more fun than he’s had on a movie set in years. There’s enough to admire here without feeling that West has done his audience a disservice, but there’s also enough here to leave said audience also feeling that he hasn’t quite done enough for them either.

Rating: 6/10 – ambitious but ultimately disappointing given West’s track record so far, In a Valley of Violence never really reconciles itself as to what kind of Western it wants to be; Hawke and Travolta make for appealing adversaries, and there’s a sense that if West had adopted a more straightforward approach, this could have been the classic modern Western he was (perhaps) aiming for.

Trailers – xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017), Hands of Stone (2016) and In a Valley of Violence (2016)

22 Friday Jul 2016

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In the trailer for xXx: Return of Xander Cage, one thing stands out: that pretty much all the action beats we see, involve, or are performed by, everyone with the exception of Vin Diesel (aside from one leg swipe and an elbow to the neck). So straight away this seems less of a movie about the return of Xander Cage, and more of a movie where the star of the Fast & Furious franchise reinvigorates another, minor franchise by inserting his character into a storyline Cage didn’t originally feature in. If that’s so, then Diesel and director D.J. Caruso have an uphill battle on their hands to make Cage a still-relevant action hero at a time when Jason Bourne is back on our screens, and the best action movies are being made by a little outfit called Marvel. But if this really is a brand new outing designed and written specifically for Cage, and is intended to restart the franchise with Diesel firmly in place this time, then on first glance, it’s not looking too good. And it’ll be interesting to see where Tony Jaa fits into the scrapping order (first Paul Walker, now Diesel – who’s next? Michelle Rodriguez?). Let’s hope the two have a thumping good fight scene together, and one that doesn’t rely on the kind of editing that makes you wonder if their stunt doubles should be sharing top billing.

 

Real violence is on display in Hands of Stone, the story of boxer Roberto Durán’s rise from the poverty-stricken streets of Guarare in Panama, to glory in the ring, and two historic fights with Sugar Ray Leonard. The trailer makes it look as if Durán’s story is being told from the perspective of legendary trainer Ray Arcel, so it may be that the movie carries a degree of objectivity in its approach, and isn’t out to simply lionise Durán’s achievements. The boxer had his demons, and though the trailer touches on these, it’s hard to tell how much time will be spent on the man outside the ring instead of or rather than, the man inside it. Ramirez seems an obvious choice to play Durán (and he may be hoping to erase moviegoers’ memories of his performance in the Point Break remake), but he’s not an actor who’s really proven himself to date. De Niro has proven himself (many times) but the trailer doesn’t make it look as if he’s really trying, so let’s hope he’s more engaged than he’s been in recent years. And let’s hope the fight sequences are more Raging Bull (1980) than Grudge Match (2013).

 

Ti West is an indie movie maker in the best sense: he writes and directs his own movies, and he has a intriguing visual style that means you’re never sure where he’s going to take you next. Sometimes, as in The Sacrament (2013), he can surprise you just by getting the camera to turn a corner; other times, as in The Innkeepers (2011), he can surprise you by not surprising you (you’ll have to see the movie to know what that’s like). In a Valley of Violence has been on West’s to-do list for some time, and now that the first trailer is here we can see that it’s been well worth the wait. There are few trailers that can adequately instill a sense of foreboding from its assembly of clips, but this is one of those trailers. The lone stranger in town isn’t exactly a new twist on the Western genre, but under West’s stewardship, this looks like meaty, thrilling stuff indeed. With a great cast that includes Ethan Hawke, John Travolta (let’s hope it’s the kind of role he can do real justice to), James Ransone, Karen Gillan and indie favourite Larry Fessenden, this should be a rousing treat come the end of the year.

Monthly Roundup – June 2016

30 Thursday Jun 2016

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

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

Manglehorn

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

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

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

The Brain

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

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

aka Puncture Wounds

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

A Certain Justice

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

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

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

Woman on the Run.jpg

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

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

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

The Battle at Apache Pass

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

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

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

The Phenom

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

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

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

A Place to Go

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

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

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

Shadows on the Stairs

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

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

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

Moonwalkers

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

Regression (2015)

28 Thursday Apr 2016

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Regression

D: Alejandro Amenábar / 106m

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Emma Watson, David Thewlis, Lothaire Bluteau, Dale Dickey, David Dencik, Devon Bostick, Aaron Ashmore, Peter MacNeill

Minnesota, 1990. Farmer John Gray (Dencik) confesses to molesting his seventeen year old daughter, Angela (Watson) – but there’s a catch: even though Angela has made an accusation, Gray can’t remember doing anything of the sort, and is confessing purely because Angela has never lied to him, so in his mind it must be true. Detective Bruce Kenner (Hawke) is assigned to the case, and while Gray languishes in prison awaiting a trial date, he begins to look into the matter. It’s not long though before Kenner begins to find that the case isn’t as straightforward as his boss, Chief Cleveland (O”Neill), would like.

With the help of Professor Kenneth Raines (Thewlis), Kenner learns through Raines’ use of regression therapy techniques that Gray wasn’t alone when his abuse of Angela was supposed to have happened. When the other person present is revealed to be a fellow police officer, George Nesbitt (Ashmore), that revelation opens up another can of worms altogether: that Nesbitt, along with an unwitting Gray, are members of a satanic cult. With the rest of the police force treating the idea of a satanic cult as a joke, and Gray’s family proving resentful of Kenner’s investigation, it’s not until he gets to meet Angela that Kenner begins to believe that there might actually be something in what her father has remembered.

Regression - scene2

Kenner remains sceptical but insists on keeping an open mind, and begins looking into the possibility that a cult is operating in the local area. A second meeting with Angela has him believing more and more, and even more so when he begins to have strange dreams, some where he appears to be involved in the blood sacrifice of a newborn baby (and which echoes what Angela has told him of her own experiences). Kenner becomes paranoid, and his relationships with those around him begin to deteriorate. When Nesbitt is released for lack of evidence, Kenner believes he has to risk everything in order to keep Angela safe, but if the cult is for real, will he be able to?

The period setting of Regression is deliberate. In the US in 1980, a book was published called Michelle Remembers, and it was written by Michelle Smith and her future husband Lawrence Pazder (who was then her psychiatrist). In it, Smith recounted – through Pazder’s use of hypnotherapy – alleged memories of what became known as Ritual Satanic Abuse (RSA). These memories related to abuse supposed to have been perpetrated by Michelle’s mother in the mid-Fifties when Michelle was five. The book proved to be a starting point for allegations of widespread satanic activity within the US (and further afield), and although skepticism of Smith and Pazder’s book was equally widespread, as the Eighties progressed, the idea of satanic cults prospered, and the book, and Pazder’s “expertise” on the subject, were used as a guide for prosecutors preparing cases against individuals accused of satanic practices.

Set against the backdrop of this developing fear and paranoia, Regression touches on several attendant topics – the (mis)use of regressive therapy, the impact of such allegations on closed communities, individual feelings of guilt and/or responsibility, the ease with which unsubstantiated rumour becomes accepted fact – but it does so in such an awkward, hamfisted way that any dramatic emphasis is reduced by the way in which Amenábar’s script fails to follow through on these topics. The end result is a movie that has a lot going on but little of it that makes consistent sense.

Regression - scene1

Worrying aspects crop up almost from the start, with a very clumsily inserted “clue” that Nesbitt is more involved than is initially apparent, and this is followed by the way in which Detective Kenner commits himself so unreservedly, leaving the viewer to wonder just what it is that drives him (a question the movie avoids answering). Raines’ involvement so soon into the investigation, and the way in which he’s allowed to take the lead on so many interviews is concerning in terms of likelihood (it doesn’t help that Raines is often unnecessarily aggressive as well), and a sequence where Kenner “sees” the events described to him by Angela is another cause for concern, as it comes across as a stylistic exercise rather than a character trait.

Kenner is the viewer’s guide through the events of the movie but he proves an unreliable guide, prone to making schoolboy errors in terms of the investigation, and behaving unprofessionally with Angela. The movie doesn’t give any real reason for the waywardness of his behaviour, and as the mystery deepens his growing paranoia (and belief) that the satanic cult is real causes him to behave so irrationally that the extent of it becomes unconvincing. With Gray already acting strangely, and with most of the local community seemingly in thrall to the cult that no one can identify, Amenábar’s decision to have Kenner become a victim as well becomes exasperating rather than effective in terms of the drama.

Regression - scene3

Viewers should be able to determine the movie’s outcome without too much trouble, but once they do, and once the movie reaches that point, the whole thing collapses in on itself and the last fifteen minutes feel like a compromise instead of a conclusion decided on from the start. Amenábar does his best, but even with the support of Hawke and Watson, he doesn’t appear to be fully in control of his own narrative or where it’s going. Scenes feel divorced from each other, and too often, characters act oddly because the script needs them to.

The performances are committed at least, with Hawke giving his all in yet another not-fully-realised horror thriller, and Watson putting Hermione Granger firmly behind her as the victim(?) whose safety becomes Kenner’s primary concern. Thewlis and his character are abandoned by Amenábar two thirds of the way through, while the rest of the supporting cast (save Dencik) do what they can in respect of filling in the blanks. In the end, Regression is a movie where the characters exist to service the plot, and at no point do any of them feel organic, leaving the cast to try and work out what’s the best approach for each one. It leads to a clash of acting styles in some scenes, and a lack of cohesion in others. Amenábar at least keeps things visually interesting, albeit in a dour, dark-hued way, and the sequences of satanic worship and sacrifice are well shot and edited together, but all in all this needed a tighter script and a better ending to be anywhere near successful.

Rating: 5/10 – though Regression is based around real events that occurred over a period of time, it never really offers a cohesive or credible story to match its general assumptions about what was happening at the time; not as scary or effective as it would like to be, the movie winds up playing it safe instead of giving the viewer any real food for thought.

Mini-Review: Good Kill (2014)

28 Thursday May 2015

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Good Kill

D: Andrew Niccol / 102m

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Bruce Greenwood, Zoë Kravitz, January Jones, Jake Abel, Dylan Kenin, Peter Coyote

With pilots no longer needed to fly as many missions thanks to the US Air Force’s reliance on drones, Major Thomas Egan (Hawke) is stuck in a dead-end post as a drone pilot at a base outside Las Vegas. Under the command of Lt. Colonel Jack Johns (Greenwood), Egan is disillusioned with his new role and wants to get back to real flying. His frustration begins to affect his marriage to Molly (Jones), and he doesn’t socialise much with his colleagues, newbie Airman Vera Suarez (Kravitz), M.I.C. Joseph Zimmer (Abel), and Capt. Ed Christie (Kenin). Targeting confirmed terrorists and Taliban members, Egan kills by remote control, and feels equally as remote from what’s happening thousands of miles away.

His role takes an unexpected turn when his unit is asked to work with the CIA in targeting and killing suspected terrorists and/or sympathisers, or anyone regarded as a potential threat to US security – but in Yemen, a country that the US isn’t at war with. When several drone strikes result in a “double tap” – the subsequent targeting and killing of anyone who goes to the aid of those injured in the first bombing – Egan, appalled by this development, begins to question the Air Force’s role in working with the CIA, and the ethics involved. Unable to influence the CIA’s thinking he attempts to thwart their plans by sabotaging the drone strikes, but when he’s found out it puts his whole future, including his marriage, in jeopardy.

Good Kill - scene

Set in 2010, at the height of the US’s use of drones in Afghanistan and neighbouring countries, Good Kill is another thought-provoking drama from writer/director Niccol. An astute observation of the ways in which technology is making modern warfare a matter of distance rather than engagement, the movie paints a chilling portrait of the callous approach to collateral damage that appears endemic in US thinking. By making Egan an unwitting – and unwilling – victim of abhorrent government policies, the movie concisely and intelligently shows the appalling effect such a responsibility can have on an individual.

Hawke gives one of his best performances outside of the Before… movies, his haunted features capturing the conflict going on inside him with studied precision. As he wrestles with his need to follow orders and his growing sense of outrage and shame at what he’s required to do, Hawke’s portrayal of Egan grounds the movie even further than the verisimilitude achieved by Niccol’s artful script. With great supporting turns from Greenwood and Kravitz, Good Kill tells its story with a great deal of subtlety and understanding of the issues involved. The Las Vegas backdrop serves to heighten the insanity of bombing people based on limited intelligence information, and the movie is immaculately shot by Amir Mokri. Niccol makes only two missteps: the character of Molly Egan, a more casually written role that Jones has trouble fleshing out, and the ending, which is too pat, but these aspects aside, the movie is a solid, engrossing thriller that shines a revealing light on yet another part of US foreign policy that ignores due process.

Rating: 8/10 – yet another contemporary, relevant drama from Niccol, Good Kill shows an unflinching, and uncompromising, approach to the material; with Hawke on top form, the human element is given a better focus than usual, and the movie persuasively challenges the idea that remote killing is less distasteful than killing someone in person.

Cymbeline (2014)

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Cymbeline

D: Michael Almereyda / 98m

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich, John Leguizamo, Penn Badgley, Dakota Johnson, Anton Yelchin, Peter Gerety, Kevin Corrigan, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Delroy Lindo, James Ransone, Spencer Treat Clark, Harley Ware, Bill Pullman

Imogen (Johnson) and Posthumus (Badgley) are young lovers who have married in secret and exchanged gifts of a ring (for Posthumus) and a bracelet (for Imogen). Their marriage is not to the liking of Imogen’s father, biker king Cymbeline (Harris). He banishes Posthumus, and so paves the way for his second wife, the Queen (Jovovich) to advance her own son, Cloten (Yelchin) as Imogen’s husband, in an attempt to secure control of the biker gang when Cymbeline is dead. Aided by his servant, Pisanio (Leguizamo), Posthumus goes to stay with his friend Philario (Ransone). There he meets Iachomo (Hawke) who wagers that he can seduce Imogen to prove that she isn’t as virtuous as Posthumus believes. The wager accepted, Iachomo visits Imogen and when a direct assault on her virtue backfires, he portrays it as a test of her commitment to Posthumus – which she accepts. Before he leaves he asks her to look after an item for him overnight, which she also agrees to.

The item is a chest, one that Iachomo has hidden himself inside. While Imogen sleeps he climbs out of the chest and puts together evidence that he has slept with her. He takes this evidence back to Posthumus who, enraged by Imogen’s seeming duplicity, sends two letters: one to Imogen asking her to meet him at Milford Haven, the other to Pisanio asking him to take her there and when they arrive, to kill her. Pisanio, however, is unable to carry out his order and shows Imogen his letter. He has her disguise herself as a boy and tells her to travel on to Milford Haven; he also gives her what he believes to be a remedy for travel sickness that he has taken from the Queen, but which is a potion that will mimic death.

Meanwhile, Cloten discovers Posthumus’ plan to meet Imogen and heads to Milford Haven himself with the intention of killing Posthumus and bringing Imogen back to marry him. Imogen has reached the town already and fallen in with Belarius (Lindo) and his two “sons” Guiderius (Clark) and Arviragus (Ware). She tells them her name is Fidele. While they are out hunting, they encounter Cloten who insults and then threatens Guiderius, who in turn kills him and then beheads him. Imogen, feeling unwell, takes the remedy and becomes as dead. Belarius decides to bury her with Cloten’s body; when she wakes she believes Cloten to be Posthumus as he is wearing similar clothes. With both she and Posthumus believing themselves lost to each other, an impending war between Cymbeline’s gang and the Rome police – to whom they pay a tribute – proves to be the unlikely cause of their reconciliation.

Cymbeline - scene

In adapting the play by William Shakespeare, writer/director Almereyda has done two things very well, and two things not so well. The first is to employ an incredibly talented cast, all of whom are able to take Shakespeare’s lines and make them sound as natural as modern day speech, fully understandable and with clear purpose in their meaning. The likes of Hawke – reuniting with Almereyda for the first time since Hamlet (2000) – Harris, Leguizamo and Lindo provide convincing interpretations of the prose and help the casual viewer through some of the more confusing aspects of the plot (mistaken identities are key here). The second is to condense the play’s final third into a more manageable “wrapping up” of things, even if it all feels rushed and at the expense of the movie’s previously more measured pace.

But where Almereyda gets those things absolutely right, where he gets it absolutely wrong proves too damaging for the movie to recover from. The first is to set the action in a modern day setting, mostly Brooklyn, and to flavour the movie as if it were a version of Shakespeare meets Sons of Anarchy. This backdrop, given that it should enhance the drama – the Queen persuades Cymbeline to back out of his arrangement with the Rome police in the hope that war between them will see him dead – instead seems ponderous and ill-considered, more of a budgetary consideration than a narrative one. It leads to some incongruous moments, such as Cloten pushing a motorbike along a gravel road, Imogen choosing her nom-de-plume thanks to a T-shirt worn by Guiderius, and Posthumus getting about on a skateboard. While some of these tweaks may have appeared sound in the pre-production phase, on screen they’re not as effective as was probably hoped for.

The second problem is with Almereyda’s direction itself. The movie plods along from scene to scene with little energy or flair displayed, and struggles to provide any momentum to take the audience with it. There’s a signal lack of connection between scenes that makes for a stop/start experience, the narrative appearing jumbled and ill at ease with itself, like a story that needs more cohesion. With so many subplots and supporting characters, Cymbeline looks and feels like a movie that can’t quite get a grip on what it’s trying to say, or even how to say it. Again, if it weren’t for the very talented cast, the movie would founder even more, and the audience would be left adrift, waiting – unsuccessfully – for Almereyda to place his authority on the material and make it work with more style and verve.

Generally regarded as one of Shakespeare’s weaker plays (written at a time when he seemed to be bored with them), Cymbeline is a strange choice for a movie adaptation, its tale of thwarted lovers and political machinations proving not quite as amenable to the translation as might be expected. It also looks very much as if it were shot too quickly – some of the set ups look rushed or improvised. Still, it’s a brave choice by Almereyda, but if he has any plans to adapt any more of Shakespeare’s works, he might be better off securing a bigger budget, and concentrating on the script rather than directing. After all, “the play’s the thing…”

Rating: 5/10 – a dour, unimpressive adaptation, Cymbeline is rescued by a set of strong performances and an astute conflation of the plot; not as engrossing as it should have been, but not as awful as the early scenes seem to indicate.

Predestination (2014)

29 Saturday Nov 2014

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Predestination

D: The Spierig Brothers / 97m

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor, Christopher Kirby, Cate Wolfe, Ben Prendergast, Freya Stafford

A man enters a building and heads for the basement where the boiler is housed. There he finds an explosive device that’s counting down to its detonation. Just as he is about to stop the bomb from detonating he is shot at and injured. He makes one last attempt to save the building and the people inside it, but is badly burnt in the process. In desperation, he reaches for what looks like a violin case, but it’s just out of reach. Then someone pushes it closer, the man is able to push some buttons on the case… and he vanishes. When he wakes up he’s in a hospital recovering from severe burns to his face and throat. So bad were the man’s injuries, the doctors have had to carry out extensive reconstructive surgery, and he’s advised that the pitch of his voice will be very different than before.

The man (Hawke) is a temporal agent, able to travel back and forth in time within fifty-three years of 1981, the year in which time travel is achieved. Working for a secret organisation, his task – as before – is to track down and eliminate the so-called Fizzle Bomber, a terrorist responsible for several arson attacks in the Sixties and Seventies, but whose greatest “achievement” was the murder of 11,000 people in a massive explosion in New York City in 1975. Accepting one last chance to stop the Fizzle Bomber, the agent travels back from 1985 to 1978 and finds work in a bar. One night a young man comes in who reveals himself to be a writer of true confessions stories. The agent challenges him to tell the best story he knows.

The young man begins by telling the agent that when he was a girl he was abandoned by his parents on the steps of an orphanage when he was just a baby; he was named Jane. Growing up healthy and fit, and with a fierce intellect, he was precocious and headstrong. As a teenager he tried to join an organisation called Spacecorp which trained future astronauts but an anomaly discovered during a physical meant he had to leave the programme. At a night class, he met a man and fell pregnant. The child, a girl,  was born by Caesarean, and afterwards one of his doctors (Pendergast) explained to him that his internal organs were both male and female, and that they’d made the decision to remove the female organs and set him on the path to becoming a man. And if that wasn’t enough to deal with, his child was abducted a few days later and never seen again. Eventually moving to New York City, he found he had a knack for writing true confessions-style magazine articles, and now here he is. The agent is unimpressed however, and reveals that he’s known who the man is all along. The man believes he’s being scammed, but when the agent tells him that he can help him kill the man who got him pregnant (and presumably stole their child), the man is sufficiently intrigued to agree to whatever the agent has in mind.

Predestination - scene

With such a lengthy back story, Predestination has the look and feel of a convoluted soap opera, its abandoned/stolen babies and sex change protagonist the kind of thing that is so open to parody and ridicule it risks losing its audience’s involvement from the moment the writer mentions being born a girl. But the premise is played out in such a straight, deliberate fashion that what might be loosely termed “a tall story” soon proves to have more depth than is readily obvious. As the writer embarks on his quest for revenge he finds himself drawn into a world of time travel, unexpected twists and turns, temporal paradoxes, and the mystery of the Fizzle Bomber.

What happens before the scene in the bar is repeated later in the movie, while what happens after the scene in the bar sees the agent and the writer separating and converging in ways that neither they nor (hopefully) the audience are able to predict. Adapted from the short story All You Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein – a copy of his novel Stranger in a Strange Land can be seen on the writer’s desk at one point – Predestination is a mostly faithful retelling of Heinlein’s tale, and keeps the time travel paradox that unites the main characters. Outwardly complex and confusing, the movie isn’t actually that difficult to follow, but it does its best to obscure matters (mostly by having the agent make several seemingly unconnected “jumps” in the final third), and creators the Spierig Brothers (Michael and Peter) have fun providing just enough misdirection to complicate matters when necessary. But while it all adds up to an occasionally challenging viewing experience, and it holds the attention for most of its running time, sadly the movie doesn’t quite become more than the sum of its parts.

Part of this is due to the central time travel paradox, a clever conceit on paper, but not so reasonable when portrayed on film. That it breaks one of the biggest taboos ever regarding time travel is at first impressive, but then as the plot unfolds and things fall into place, the movie takes that taboo and pretty much tramples all over it. It’s actually hard to work out if Heinlein’s original concept was as well thought out as it might have been, or if the Spierigs have taken the idea a step too far (certainly the ending is modified from the original). In either case the movie begins to stumble over itself in the final third as it seeks a satisfactory conclusion. What it comes up with, though bold in itself, is not as dramatically rewarding as was perhaps intended, and some viewers may feel short changed by the nihilism employed.

With the story losing its way, the cast have a greater struggle on their hands than just remembering where they are in any given scene. There are emotional arcs here that need to be maintained, and character motivations that need to be reliably and consistently adhered to, and thanks to decisive performances from Hawke and Snook, this is largely the case, but even they are unable to offset the emphasis on overly clever plotting that hampers the last thirty minutes. Taylor has a more shadowy role as the head of the time travel agency, and while he maintains an air of inscrutability throughout, his appearances are too few to provide any real answers as to what is going on.

The various time frames and locations are kept to a generic minimum, with only costume changes and/or cars to herald the period the characters find themselves in, and the score and song choices are integrated into these scenes with aplomb. The look and style of the movie is fairly gloomy, and the camerawork by Ben Nott isn’t as fluid as perhaps was needed, though the Spierigs show a knack for effective medium shots that contain a lot of visual information for the viewer to ponder on. It’s not an attractive movie to watch for the most part, but the look of the movie is consistent, and it certainly fits the mood of the piece.

Rating: 7/10 – an intriguing idea given a progressively rougher handling than necessary, Predestination is still a valiant attempt at an intelligent science fiction story, and for that reason, shouldn’t be overlooked; a movie that sees Hawke and Snook on fine form, this also has a great sense of its own tragedy, and bravely takes its time in setting up the main storyline.

Getaway (2013)

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

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Getaway

D: Courtney Solomon / 90m

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, Jon Voight, Rebecca Budig, Bruce Payne, Paul Freeman

It’s Xmas time in Sofia, Bulgaria.  Ex-racing driver Brent Magna (Hawke) arrives home one evening and finds signs of a violent struggle, but no sign of his wife Leanne (Budig).  His mobile rings.  The voice of a man he doesn’t know tells him if he wants to see Leanne again Brent must do as the man says, beginning with picking up a specially modified car from an underground garage.  Once he’s behind the wheel, Brent is set a series of tasks, all of which see him causing vehicular mayhem, and being continuously chased by the Sofia police.

During a breather, a young girl – whose name we never discover – tries to carjack him but he overpowers her.  The voice tells Brent to ensure she stays in the car as she will be useful… and so begins a cat-and-mouse game in which Brent and the girl try to work out the voice’s plan and then thwart it.  The girl proves vital to the plot – although her connection to the car is ham-fisted and beyond contrived – while Brent tries to regain his confidence as a driver after losing it on the racetrack (he’s supposed to be starting a new life in Sofia, but as what we never find out).

Getaway is by no means a cerebral thriller, far from it.  It flexes its muscles and makes its intentions clear within the first ten minutes as Brent is forced to drive at speed through a park full of Xmas revellers and shoppers, hitting an assortment of stands and displays but miraculously missing everyone in sight.  This is a blunt force trauma movie, with a car as the object of mass destruction.  Brent collides with an abundance of police vehicles, he outruns them, he causes them to crash – the regular laws of mechanical physics are blatantly ignored as usual as cars flip and crash with tiresome abandon – he is never followed by a helicopter, and on the one occasion when he encounters a roadblock, he bluffs his way out of it in about five seconds flat.  Yes, you’ve guessed it, this is one of those movies where plot, characterisation and a logical  sequence of events are of no importance because the action is the thing, and the only thing.

Getaway - scene

So, are the action sequences exciting, varied, above average for this sort of thing?  The answer is: once, in a sequence that involves Brent outrunning three henchmen on motorbikes.  It ends in a train yard with the unlikely destruction of a marshalling platform that explodes in sections giving a slight rush as Brent speeds away from the increasing inferno.  Aside from this one sequence, Getaway‘s action choreographer, the well-regarded and experienced Charlie Picerni, fumbles the ball too often to make sitting through Brent’s efforts to remain at large anything other than a chore.  They almost make you want to listen to the terrible dialogue that co-writers Sean Finegan and Gregg Maxwell Parker have hacked together.  Add to all this an ending that feels like it’s been lifted from a discarded Mission Impossible script and you have a truly dispiriting ninety minutes.

Solomon, who gave us the equally execrable Dungeons & Dragons (2000), directs with all the flair of someone who’s learnt all he knows from kids cartoons.  The film is clumsily edited as well by Ryan Dufrene, with images flicking between the video feeds from the car and Yaron Levy’s uninspired photography, as if further tension will be added that way.  On the performance side, Hawke is so lacklustre it’s hard to believe he also appeared in the sublime Before Midnight this year, while Gomez, continuing her transition from annoying teen actress to annoying adult actress, fails to inject anything remotely approaching an emotion into her role, and handles the exposition with the grace of someone speaking in a second language.

It’s only the location work – recognisably Sofia and not filmed in a Canadian location masquerading as same – and the silky menace offered by Voight that elevates Getaway from the mire it inhabits for most of its running time.  Without these two positives to save it, Getaway would be a complete waste of time.  Action movies can be as dumb as they like as long as they deliver the goods action-wise; if they don’t then what’s the point?

Rating: 4/10 – car chases are always a good draw, and when they’re done right – Bullitt, The French Connection, To Live and Die in L.A., Ronin – they can make a movie that much better, but when only one sequence out of a dozen or so works, someone should wave that checkered flag and call time; it’s a shame the filmmakers didn’t do so here.