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Monthly Roundup – September 2018

30 Sunday Sep 2018

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Christopher Robin (2018) / D: Marc Forster / 104m

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Bronte Carmichael, Mark Gatiss, Oliver Ford Davies, Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett, Peter Capaldi, Sophie Okonedo, Toby Jones

Rating: 7/10 – having left behind his childhood friends at the Hundred Acre Wood, an adult Christopher Robin (McGregor), now married and weighed down by the demands of his work, is reunited with them just at the moment that they all most need each other; a live action/CGI variation on A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories, Christopher Robin is an enjoyable if lightweight confection from Disney that features good performances from McGregor and Cummings (as both Pooh and Tigger), but which also takes a very straightforward approach to its story, and allows Gatiss to overdo it as the smug villain of the piece.

Melvin Goes to Dinner (2003) / D: Bob Odenkirk / 83m

Cast: Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price, Annabelle Gurwitch, Maura Tierney, David Cross, Melora Walters, Jack Black

Rating: 7/10 – two friends agree to meet for dinner but two other people end up joining them, leading to an evening of surprising connections and revelations that causes each to rethink their own opinions and feelings about each other; adapted from the stage play Phyro-Giants! (and written by Blieden), Odenkirk’s debut as a director is an amusing examination of what we tell ourselves to be true while being closely examined by others who may (or may not) know better, making Melvin Goes to Dinner a waspish if somewhat diffident look at social mores that feels a little forced in places, but is well acted by its cast.

BlacKkKlansman (2018) / D: Spike Lee / 135m

Cast: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Jasper Pããkkönen, Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Houser, Ashlie Atkinson, Michael Buscemi, Robert John Burke, Frederick Weller, Corey Hawkins, Harry Belafonte, Alec Baldwin

Rating: 9/10 – the true story of how, in the early Seventies, the Colorado Springs Police Department’s first black officer, Ron Stallworth (Washington), infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan with the aid of a fellow, Jewish officer, Flip Zimmerman (Driver); a return to form for Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman is entertaining and frightening in equal measure for the way it deals with contentious issues surrounding politics and racism that are as entrenched today as they were back in the Seventies, and for the deft way in which Lee allows the humour to filter through without negating the seriousness of the issues he’s examining.

Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary (2017) / D: John Campopiano, Justin White / 97m

With: Mary Lambert, Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby, Brad Greenquist, Peter Stein, Elliot Goldenthal, Miko Hughes, Susan Blommaert, Heather Langenkamp

Rating: 6/10 – a look at the making of Pet Sematary (1989), with interviews and recollections from the cast and crew, and an assessment of the movie’s impact and legacy in the years that have followed; coming across very much like a labour of love for its directors, Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary features a wealth of details about the making of the movie, some of which is fascinating, and some of which is less so, making this a mixed bag in terms of content, but if you’re a fan of Pet Sematary, this will be a must-see, and should offer up behind-the-scenes information that hasn’t been seen or heard before.

Lake Placid: Legacy (2018) / D: Darrell Roodt / 93m

Cast: Katherine Barrell, Tim Rozon, Sai Bennett, Luke Newton, Craig Stein, Joe Pantoliano, Alisha Bailey

Rating: 3/10 – a group of eco-warriors discover a remote island that’s not on any maps, and find a genetically altered apex predator that soon begins whittling down their numbers; the sixth entry in the franchise, Lake Placid: Legacy ignores the previous four movies and acts – without explanation – as a direct sequel to the original, though that doesn’t make it any less abysmal, and it’s easily the worst in the series, something it achieves thanks to a dreadful script, Roodt’s absentee direction, the less than stellar efforts of the cast, and just by being greenlit in the first place.

Killing Gunther (2017) / D: Taran Killam / 93m

Cast: Taran Killam, Bobby Moynihan, Hannah Simone, Cobie Smulders, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Allison Tolman, Paul Brittain, Aaron Yoo, Ryan Gaul, Amir Talai, Peter Kelamis

Rating: 4/10 – an assassin, Blake (Killam), hires a team of other assassins to help him track down and eliminate Gunther (Schwarzenegger), the world’s most feared, and successful, hitman; ostensibly a comedy, Killing Gunther is yet another ill-advised movie where the script – and the cast – try way too hard to make absurdist behaviour funny all by itself, and where the tone is as wayward as the narrative, something that makes the movie an uneven watch and less than successful in its attempts to entertain – and the less said about Schwarzenegger’s performance the better.

Overboard (2018) / D: Rob Greenberg / 112m

Cast: Eugenio Derbez, Anna Faris, Eva Longoria, John Hannah, Swoosie Kurtz, Mel Rodriguez, Josh Segarra, Hannah Nordberg, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Payton Lapinski, Fernando Luján, Cecilia Suárez, Mariana Treviño

Rating: 6/10 – when a rich, arrogant, multi-millionaire playboy (Derbez) falls overboard from his yacht and loses his memory, a struggling single mother (Faris) that he’s treated badly sees an opportunity to exploit his misfortune for her own personal gain; a gender-swap remake of the 1987 original, Overboard is pleasant enough, with well judged performances from Derbez and Faris, but it plays out in expected fashion, with only occasional moments that stand out, and never really tries to do anything that might make viewers think of it as anything more than an acceptable remake doing its best to keep audiences just interested enough to stay until the end.

El club de los buenos infieles (2017) / D: Lluís Segura / 84m

Cast: Raúl Fernández de Pablo, Fele Martínez, Juanma Cifuentes, Hovik Keuchkerian, Albert Ribalta, Jordi Vilches, Adrián Lastra

Rating: 7/10 – four friends, all married but experiencing a loss of desire for their wives, decide to start a club for men with similar problems, and in the hope that by “seeing” other women, it will rekindle their desire; based on a true story, El club de los buenos infieles starts off strongly as the men explain their feelings, but soon the ridiculous nature of their solution leads to all sorts of uncomfortable moments and situations that stretch the credibility of the material, leaving the principal cast’s performances to keep things engaging, along with Segura’s confident direction (which helps overcome much of the script’s deficiencies), and a couple of very funny set-pieces that are worth a look all by themselves.

Destination Wedding (2018) / D: Victor Lewin / 87m

Cast: Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves

Rating: 5/10 – two misanthropes (Ryder, Reeves) invited to the same wedding (he’s the groom’s brother, she’s the groom’s ex), find they have much more in common than expected, including an attraction to each other; the kind of movie that has its characters spout pseudo-intellectual nonsense at every opportunity in an effort to make them sound wise and/or studiously profound, Destination Wedding could have been much funnier than it thinks it is, and wastes the talents of both Ryder and Reeves (yes, even Reeves) as it leaves no turn unstoned in its efforts to be a romantic comedy that isn’t in the least bit romantic, or comic.

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone (2016) / D: Dallas Jenkins / 92m

Cast: Brett Dalton, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, Neil Flynn, D.B. Sweeney, Shawn Michaels, Patrick Gagnon, Tim Frank, Tara Rios

Rating: 6/10 – a former teen TV star whose adult acting career isn’t going as well as he’d hoped, finds himself doing community service at his hometown church, and discovering that having a lack of religious faith is the least of his problems; a bright and breezy romantic comedy, The Resurrection of Gavin Stone wears its Christian beliefs on its sleeve, while doing absolutely nothing that you wouldn’t expect it to, thanks to likable performances from Dalton and Johnson-Reyes, a solid if predictable script, and workmanlike direction that never lets the material stray from its formulaic constraints, though if truth be told, on this occasion that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The Predator (2018) / D: Shane Black / 107m

Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Sterling K. Brown, Olivia Munn, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey, Yvonne Strahovski

Rating: 5/10 – a rag-tag band of PTSD sufferers and an army sniper (Holbrook) find themselves taking on a couple of Predators while a secret arm of the US government atempts to exploit their presence on Earth; a movie that could and should have been so much better (soooo much better), The Predator is unnecessarily convoluted and stupid at the same time, and despite Black’s best efforts, remains the kind of sequel that everyone has high hopes for, only to see them drain away with every dumb moment that the script can squeeze in, and every tortuous twist of logic that can be forced onto the narrative, all of which leaves everyone hoping and praying that this is the end of the line.

The Astounding She-Monster (1957) / D: Ronald V. Ashcroft / 62m

aka Mysterious Invader

Cast: Robert Clarke, Kenne Duncan, Marilyn Harvey, Jeanne Tatum, Shirley Kilpatrick, Ewing Miles Brown

Rating: 3/10 – kidnappers take their hostage up into the mountains, unaware that a space ship has crash landed nearby, and the sole occupant (Kilpatrick) is more than capable of defending itself; not a cult classic, and not a movie to look back fondly on for any low-budget virtues it may have (it doesn’t), The Astounding She-Monster is a creature feature without a creature, a crime drama with an annoying voice over, a sci-fi horror with minimal elements of both, and a movie with far too many scenes where the cast run through the same stretch of woods trying to get away from an alien whose only speed is ultra-ultra-slow.

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T2 Trainspotting (2017)

19 Sunday Mar 2017

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D: Danny Boyle / 117m

Cast: Ewen McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Anjela Nedyalkova, Kelly Macdonald, James Cosmo, Shirley Henderson, Pauline Turner, Scot Greenan, Kyle Fitzpatrick, Gordon Kennedy, Irvine Welsh

Choose life, choose four characters who have led miserable lives for the past twenty years and can’t overcome their failings. Choose redemption if only because it sounds good and it might make you feel better. Choose old friends, however much they might hate you, because making new ones is too difficult. Choose Scotland. Choose to make amends. Choose the past over the future because it’s safer. Choose remorse. Choose anger at seeing your dreams go unfulfilled, and try to make new dreams to stop yourself from feeling angry. Choose revenge if remorse won’t work. Choose life over a slow, drawn-out, painful trudge towards non-existence. Choose drugs to soothe or melt away the pain of choosing life. And choose the path of least resistence so that choices become easy. Choose football, music, sex, anything to make the emptiness inside you feel less overwhelming. But above all, choose life, and live it with everything you’ve got, even when you feel that you don’t have anything to offer, and if you did, that no one would want it.

Twenty-one years on from the events depicted in Trainspotting (1996), we finally have the sequel that’s been mooted for so long (Danny Boyle first voiced the idea back in January 2009). Back then, the original movie ended with Renton (McGregor) stealing the proceeds of a drug deal – £16,000 – from his friends, Simon aka Sick Boy (Miller), Spud (Bremner) and Begbie (Carlyle), and heading off to live a normal life. But that “normal” life, which included living in Amsterdam and being married, has fallen apart, and now Renton is back in Edinburgh. His mother has died, he’s staying with his dad (Cosmo), and looking to hook up with his old friends – if they’ll let him. He visits Spud first, only to find him trying to asphyxiate himself with a plastic bag. Saving an initially ungrateful Spud, Renton learns that Begbie is in jail serving a twenty-five year sentence, Simon is the landlord of a rundown pub that an aunt has left him, and Spud himself is a drug addict.

Renton reconnects with Simon, but Simon holds too much enmity towards his old friend because of the money from the drug deal. Along with his business partner, Veronika (Nedyalkova), Simon offers Renton the chance to become part of a scam to acquire European development funds that Simon can use to open a “leisure” club above the pub. Renton agrees, and ropes in Spud to help design the club and oversee its construction once the funds are awarded. Meanwhile, Begbie finds a way out of prison and back home to his wife, June (Turner), and teenage son, Frank Jr (Greenan). Begbie takes his son with him when he burgles properties, but is sidetracked from his endeavours when he learns from Simon that Renton is back in Edinburgh. Begbie’s thirst for revenge is exploited by Simon, and a chance encounter at a nightclub between the AWOL gaolbird and Renton leads to a showdown above the pub, and the chance to settle old scores the hard way.

If you enjoyed Trainspotting, then T2 Trainspotting is likely to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Laced with affectionate nostalgia and perceptive notions of what it is to be middle-aged and treading water, this looked-for sequel isn’t as iconic as its predecessor – and to be fair, it was never likely to be – but it does have an erstwhile melancholy feel to it that accurately reflects the regrets of its four main characters. Like everyone else, Renton is the architect of his own downfall: drug-free but without any purpose in life, he’s come home because he’s not been able to make a go of it in Amsterdam; he’s adrift in his own life, and lacking ambition. Conversely, Simon has nothing but ambition, a drive to better himself financially, but he lacks foresight and cohesive thinking; his plans always backfire as a result. Spud is an addict who wants to swap his drug habit for something more meaningful, another addiction preferably, but one that has a positive effect on his life; writing down stories from twenty years ago helps him on this path. And Begbie – well, Begbie’s only regret is that he’s only just now got out of prison.

With the characters locked in place, John Hodge’s screenplay is free to explore themes of personal responsibility, misplaced nostalgia, revenge, deceit, and compromised friendships. It looks back further than Trainspotting itself, to when all four friends were much younger, pre-teens with the whole world ahead of them, and all the promise that entailed. It provides flashbacks to the first movie, and reintroduces other characters from twenty years before, such as Renton’s girlfriend, Diane (Macdonald), now a successful solicitor. And it shows how stagnant each of the main characters’ lives have become, how mired in mediocrity they are thanks to emotional malaise and impulsive behaviour. There’s little in the way of meaningful progress for any of them, just a desire to lead brighter, better lives that is slipping away from them with every passing year.

This gloomy, regret-laden approach could have made the movie too depressing or downbeat for audiences unfamiliar with the original (which was itself a frank, unapologetic examination of the joys and horrors inherent in taking drugs), but there’s too much mordaunt humour and scabrous comedy on display, and Hodge and returning director Danny Boyle have made a movie that connects on various, different levels, and which does so with Boyle’s trademark visual stylings. This is still a movie that fizzes with invention, from its seemingly scattershot, haphazard camera angles, complex yet rewarding editing rhythms, exceptionally well chosen soundtrack, and emphatic performances, and all the way down to the integration of “old’ footage with new, including a recreation of that classic moment from the original where Renton is almost knocked down by a car – and then stops to revel in the moment.

It’s a Danny Boyle movie through and through, with several moments where the semi-linear narrative seems unlikely to knit together into a satisfying whole, until by the end, everything has been explained and the various strands all neatly tied up. And there are fitting outcomes for all the characters, with all bar one back on the road to self-respect and potential absolution. In bringing back the original cast, and at a point where their own ages reflect the passing of time more effectively than if it had been achieved through make up, the movie offers a kind of shorthand for new viewers, introducing each character they play with an economy of purpose that’s admirable and effective. McGregor still retains some of that boyish charm that made the younger Renton so attractive to watch, while Miller takes glowering to new heights, his features displaying the frustration of Simon’s life with an icy conviction. Carlyle is still effortlessly frightening as Begbie, a man who may not be as comfortable in his own skin as we thought, but who can still inject menace and venom into the most unremarkable line of dialogue.

But if there’s one performance that stands out from the rest, and unexpectedly so, it’s that of Bremner as Spud. Spud is the eternal fuck-up, the addict with the unenviable ability to still feel deeply and profoundly despite the mental numbing he endures, and Bremner is simply superb in the role. Spud is the only character that the viewer can sympathise with, as his motives are selfless, and focused (as best he can) on providing for his partner, Gail (Henderson), and son, Fergus (Fitzpatrick). There’s an innate bravery about Spud that Bremner underplays with skill, making the moment where his writing skills are acknowledged by Veronika, a touching and heartfelt one. Through Veronika’s eyes we see Spud as more than just an addict, and unlike his friends, he can be cheered on with affectionate glee. But friendship is still the key ingredient in what makes these four people tick, even if they’re at odds with each other over past indiscretions. And some bonds, however stretched or damaged they may have become, will, as the movie tells us, withstand much more besides, and still prove beneficial to everyone concerned, no matter how much life has battered them.

Rating: 8/10 – an invigorating if pensive look at middle-aged bitterness wrapped up in a blanket of repentance, T2 Trainspotting doesn’t match the heights of its predecessor, but in fairness, it never actually tries; as much a product of its time as the first movie, there’s a heartache about this movie that is genuinely affecting, and which allows new viewers to see Renton et al as far more than cyphers in a movie about trying not to let the past inform and dictate the future.

Quotes of the Week – Trainspotting (1996) and T2 Trainspotting (2017)

17 Friday Feb 2017

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Back in 1996, the monologue recited by Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) at the beginning of Trainspotting (1996) set the tone for the scabrous, searing, drug-fuelled blast of nihilism that followed. It became culturally iconic, with poster versions on the walls of students everywhere. Renton’s rant against the social and cultural mores of the day was like having your eyes and ears opened to the ills that surrounded you, whether you were into drugs or not. It railed against “normal” middle class lifestyles and being part of a faceless crowd, lacking identity or personal pride. It was a cry to the young to avoid the mistakes of the previous generation and not fall into the same traps that had left them ambling through life like sheep. And it wanted you to be angry, to rebel at the possibility of following in your parents’ footsteps. It wanted you to… Choose… Life… because the alternative, and the inevitability of it all, was too terrible to deal with.

“Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin can openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life . . . But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”

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Fast forward twenty-one years and Renton is still challenging the status quo, and casting stones against the way life is treating both him and his generation. In T2 Trainspotting (2017) the fire is still there, but it’s been dimmed by twenty years of disappointment and regret. It’s a shorter monologue as well, hinting at how weary Renton has become with the struggle to maintain a “normal”, socially acceptable lifestyle. His return to Edinburgh and his disillusionment at falling back into his old lifestyle is highlighted by this outburst, made in front of a bemused Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova). But just as he was twenty years ago, Renton is trapped by addiction – not to heroin, but failure. All he wants is to make something of his life, something better, something worthwhile. But the clue to how successful he’ll be in the future (and it’s likely Renton already knows this), is there in his scathing tirade: “And choose watching history repeat itself.”

“Choose life. Choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and hope that someone, somewhere cares. Choose looking up old flames, wishing you’d done it all differently. And choose watching history repeat itself. Choose your future. Choose reality TV, slut shaming, revenge porn. Choose a zero hour contract, a two hour journey to work. And choose the same for your kids, only worse, and smother the pain with an unknown dose of an unknown drug made in somebody’s kitchen. And then… take a deep breath. You’re an addict, so be addicted. Just be addicted to something else. Choose the ones you love. Choose your future. Choose life.”

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

30 Thursday Jun 2016

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

 

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

 

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

Trailers – Our Kind of Traitor (2016), The Family Fang (2015) and The BFG (2016)

11 Monday Apr 2016

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John le Carré has always been a good source for the movies. His stories are both entertaining and complex, and his characters, often as complex and deceptively drawn as le Carré’s plotting, are the kind that actors can have a veritable field day with. Our Kind of Traitor, with its criminal Russian oligarch seeking to defect to the West, is, on the page, a terrific blend of cat-and-mouse political manoeuvring and heightened thrills. By making his main character a naïve teacher (played here by Ewan McGregor), le Carré draws the reader/viewer in by using their lack of experience to muddy the waters further in terms of what’s going on. With luck, the more than competent cast, along with screenwriter Hossein Amini and director Susanna White, can pull off yet another movie adaptation of a le Carré novel that’s both compelling and engrossing, and the cinematic equivalent of a page-turner (just like its source).

 

Making his second directorial feature – after Bad Words (2013) – Jason Bateman brings yet another dysfunctional group to the big screen, The Family Fang. It’s also yet another indie comedy, with quirky characters and even quirkier situations, but this appears to have a better pedigree than most, being an adaptation of the novel by Kevin Wilson – though the script is courtesy of David Lindsay-Abaire, whose last screenplay was for Poltergeist (2015) (not a great recommendation when you think about it). Hopefully, the top-notch cast, including Bateman himself, Christopher Walken, Josh Pais, Kathryn Hahn, Michael Chernus, and Nicole Kidman (in a performance that will hopefully remind us just how good she can be after a slew of recent, underwhelming performances), have brought their A-game to the material, and this will be one movie that proves to be both memorable and funny in equal measure.

 

It’s directed by Steven Spielberg. It’s a children’s fantasy from the extraordinary mind of Roald Dahl. It’s The BFG. And it looks – on the evidence of the trailer – a lot like Pan (2015). But again, this is Spielberg at work here, and when it comes to spinning magic on the big screen, he’s in a league of his own. The BFG also features the final screenplay written by the late Melissa Mathison, whose last collaboration with Spielberg was a little movie called E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). And with recent Oscar-winner Mark Rylance playing the titular giant – his amazing voice tips you off before you even see the BFG’s face – it all looks to be in very good hands, even if – and this is just an instant reaction to seeing them – the other giants, Fleshlumpeater et al., all look like early character designs from Warcraft (2016).

Jane Got a Gun (2015)

19 Saturday Mar 2016

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Jane Got a Gun

D: Gavin O’Connor / 98m

Cast: Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor, Noah Emmerich, Rodrigo Santoro, Boyd Holbrook

Since its announcement back in 2012, Jane Got a Gun has had a difficult production history. Lynne Ramsay was the movie’s original director, but with a week to go before actual filming began, disagreements with the producers caused her to leave the project. Natalie Portman remained attached to the project, while her male co-stars changed almost as quickly as they were announced. Michael Fassbender was cast as Jane’s ex-lover, Dan Frost, but had to drop out thanks to scheduling conflicts with X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). Joel Edgerton, originally cast as the movie’s villain, John Bishop, was recast as Frost. And to take over the vacated role of Bishop, Jude Law was brought on board. However, Law had only signed on because Ramsay was directing; when she left the production, so did Law. Next up as Bishop was Bradley Cooper, but scheduling conflicts would again rob the movie of one of its stars, as the actor was needed on American Hustle (2013) (thank God Ewan McGregor wasn’t too busy).

The script also underwent a rewrite. Brian Duffield’s original screenplay, which had appeared on the 2011 Blacklist, was given an overhaul by Anthony Tambakis and Edgerton, and just in case the changes in acting personnel weren’t enough, first choice DoP Darius Khondji left the project along with Ramsay and was replaced by Mandy Walker. With Gavin O’Connor on board as the movie’s new director, the New Mexico shoot went off relatively smoothly, and a mid-2014 release was pencilled in. But this was pushed back to early 2015, and then delayed again until September. A further delay saw the world premiere arranged for 16 November in Paris, but the terrorist attacks that occurred three days before caused the premiere to be postponed. And to add insult to injury, when the movie was finally released in the US by the Weinstein Company it proved to be the worst wide release in the company’s history.

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But what of the movie itself? Is its tortured production and release history reflected in the quality of the movie, or has it managed to overcome all the setbacks that waylaid it over the course of three years? The answer – unsurprisingly – is yes and no. Even if you’re not aware of the movie’s history, watching it will soon give the impression that something’s not quite right, that there’s something missing, something that went astray during filming. And it won’t take the interested viewer long to realise that part of that “something” is cohesion.

Jane Got a Gun takes a non-linear approach to its narrative, offering flashbacks at every opportunity in order to fill in its back story and explain its characters’ motives. While it’s not the first movie to adopt this strategy, it is one that makes a particularly awkward fist of it. And it does so in such a piecemeal fashion that it’s hard to work out if it was a deliberate decision by Tambakis and Edgerton, or was present in Duffield’s original script. Either way, the narrative lacks momentum and comes across as unavoidably fractured. The basic story – frontier wife seeks ex-lover’s help when the gang her husband double-crossed comes looking for them – is strong enough to withstand too much tampering, but here the back story of Jane and Dan just gets in the way. A more straighforward storyline would have benefitted the movie greatly, and maybe there’s another cut of the movie out there somewhere where that approach has been adopted, but otherwise, Jane Got a Gun too often lacks focus in the time it takes for Bishop and his gang to reach Jane’s home.

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The movie also struggles with the quality of its dialogue. Some viewers might be convinced that Brian Duffield is a pseudonym for George Lucas, such is the arch, clichéd nature of some of the lines (or that Tambakis and Edgerton shouldn’t be allowed to collaborate on a script ever again) and there are too many moments where the by now trapped viewer will be wincing at some of the utterances that were allowed to stay in place. Whether or not anyone noticed seems irrelevant now given the whole raft of other problems the movie had to deal with, but sometimes the dialogue is so clunky and uninspired that anyone watching will wonder if it had to be that bad.

Thankfully, though, the movie isn’t that bad all the way through. As the beleaguered and heavily put upon Jane of the title, Portman maintains a stoicism and a sense of her rightful place (by her husband) that when Frost’s past relationship with her becomes clearer, along with the undercurrents that bind them together, these aspects give the movie an emotional depth that is pleasantly surprising (and welcome). Portman also knows when to rely on her passivity to speak volumes for the character, as in the early scenes where Jane’s pride is put aside due to the necessity of speaking to Frost. For his part, Edgerton matches Portman for moody introspection, paring Frost down emotionally and physically, letting his injured feelings seep out through the looks and glances he gives Jane. Together, Jane and Frost make for an affecting couple, both tied down by the bad decisions that each has made, and Portman and Edgerton both show the limiting effects those decisions have had, and the overwhelming sense of regret that comes with them.

JGAG - scene3

As the villainous trail boss and outlaw Bishop, McGregor has a hard time making him less unctuous and more intimidating than the character appears at first, and he’s not helped by the kind of moustache that cries out to be twirled (while he makes mwah-hah-hah sounds). Emmerich’s role is fleshed out by the flashbacks, and there are efficient turns in minor roles from Santoro and Holbrook, otherwise it’s all Portman and Edgerton, one decision the script gets right all along. There’s a fiery showdown that is let down slightly by the same shot being included twice, and a twist in the tale that facilitates a happy ending the movie didn’t really need, but all in all the tone and the pacing allow the movie to breathe when it needs to, and gives the viewer the chance to appreciate the movie’s better qualities, buried as they are beneath some of the less effective narrative decisions.

In addition it’s beautifully shot by Walker, and the editing by Alan Cody, who did some excellent work on the mini-series The Pacific (2010), matches the laconic, melancholy mood so perfectly at times that, again, you wish the script had been tighter. O’Connor doesn’t give the audience anything too spectacular or impressive to look at – what Ramsay would have made of the material remains a tantalising prospect – but he does keep a firm rein on proceedings and doesn’t make the mistake of including too many obvious directorial flourishes (though there are a few too many moments where the action is seen through a window or is distorted by glass). Backed up by a low-key yet expressive score from Lisa Gerrard and Marcello De Francisci, Jane Got a Gun may not be a movie that has overcome its troubled production history entirely, but it does get more things right than wrong.

Rating: 6/10 – good Westerns are hard to find these days, and while Jane Got a Gun suffers from a lack of cohesion in its story elements, it still contains enough good material to be worth watching; with good performances from Portman and Edgerton to help things along, this is one movie that deserves to be known for something more than the difficulties it faced in getting made.

Trailer – Jane Got a Gun (2015)

08 Tuesday Dec 2015

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It seems that eventually, and even if you’re an actress whose career to date has involved making largely independent movies with the occasional foray into big budget features, then it will come to pass that you will play the heroine in an action movie. And now it’s Natalie Portman’s turn (and before anyone mentions it, no, her role in Your Highness (2011) doesn’t count – it’s just a crap comedy, not an action movie). Here she plays a frontierswoman who falls foul of a ruthless gang of outlaws (led by Ewan McGregor) when her husband crosses their path. She seeks the help of an ex-lover (played by Joel Edgerton) to face them down. From the trailer it’s clear that Jane Got a Gun looks as if it’s got enough Western clichés in it to stuff an unfortunate mule, but the cast usually deliver good value, and though the production has had its problems – original director Lynne Ramsay quit the project early on, cinematographer Darius Khondji and star Jude Law quit as well in support of Ramsay, its world premiere was scheduled for 16 November in Paris, but following the terror attacks was cancelled – there’s still enough here to keep the movie looking like an interesting prospect, and Portman’s final line in the trailer is delivered so convincingly you’ll want to see the movie just to find out if she does what she threatens.

Mini-Review: Mortdecai (2015)

11 Monday May 2015

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Mortdecai

D: David Koepp / 107m

Cast: Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor, Paul Bettany, Olivia Munn, Jonny Pasvolsky, Michael Culkin, Ulrich Thomsen, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Byrne, Paul Whitehouse

When an art restorer is killed and the painting she was working on stolen, Inspector Alistair Martland (McGregor) is put in charge of the investigation. He brings on board crooked art dealer Charlie Mortdecai (Depp) to help recover the painting which is a Goya. Mortdecai has potentially ruinous debts, and though agreeing to help, he plans to sell the painting when he finds it. While he begins the search, his wife Johanna (Paltrow) decides to look for it herself. She visits a duke (Byrne) who tells her it was stolen by a friend of his during the war, and that on the back of the painting are codes that will lead to a hidden stash of Nazi gold.

With criminal Emil Strago (Pasvolsky) also after the painting to help fund his terrorist activities, and the involvement of Russian mobster Romanov (Thomsen), Mortdecai, aided by his faithful manservant Jock Strapp (Bettany), eventually discovers the location of the painting and attempts to steal it back from the man who has it, American dealer Milton Krampf (Goldblum). Strago, in cahoots with Cramp’s daughter Georgina (Munn), manages to get the painting himself, but when he tries to find the codes, he inadvertently destroys it. But Johanna reveals that the painting was a fake, and that she knows the location of the real one.

Mortdecai - scene

Recent movies starring Johnny Depp have proved to be mostly disappointing, and Mortdecai continues that streak, lacking cohesion, credible characters, and worst of all, sufficient laughs to offset the movie’s other faults, such as Depp’s own performance. For anyone with even a passing knowledge of British comedy from the Fifties and Sixties, Mortdecai will be the movie where Depp does his best Terry-Thomas impersonation, even down to the gap in his upper teeth. It’s hard to say if Depp is being affectionate or paying tribute, but either way his overly mannered performance is so distracting it ultimately becomes off-putting (not to mention annoying).

Thanks to Eric Aronson’s trying-too-hard screenplay (adapted from the novel by Kyril Bonfiglioli), the movie struggles on almost every level except for cinematography and costume design, and makes a hash of its absurdist situations, refusing to acknowledge that less is more and that caper movies should be fun and not a trial to sit through. Koepp is a better writer than he is a director, and he plays around with the pace of the movie throughout, making some stretches play out inordinately while letting his cast direct themselves. The twists and turns of the plot are too predictable for anyone to care about, and the action scenes too pedestrian. With running gags the order of the day, the humour soon becomes tiresome as well. There’s a decent movie to be made from Bonfiglioli’s Mortdecai novels, but sadly, this isn’t it.

Rating: 3/10 – not as clever or funny as its makers will have intended, Mortdecai is yet another movie where no one realised early on just how many mistakes were being made; lacking subtlety, wit or charm, the movie is like a smörgåsbord of bad ideas all pulled together in the wrong place at the wrong time and in the wrong way.

Son of a Gun (2014)

25 Saturday Oct 2014

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Son of a Gun

aka Guns & Gold

D: Julius Avery / 108m

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Brenton Thwaites, Alicia Vikander, Matt Nable, Jacek Koman, Tom Budge, Eddie Baroo, Nash Edgerton

Sent to prison for a minor crime, JR (Thwaites) soon learns that being “connected” is the only way to survive.  Through a shared interest in chess, JR is taken under the wing of notorious bank robber Brendan Lynch (McGregor).  When JR is threatened by another inmate, Lynch and his accomplices, Sterlo (Nable) and Merv (Baroo), step in and save him.  Owing his life to Lynch, JR finds himself part of the robber’s plan to attempt a breakout.  When JR is released some months later he goes to see Lynch’s associate, Sam (Koman).  Set up in a beautiful beachfront home, JR meets Tasha (Vikander), a hostess in one of Sam’s clubs; she acts as a go-between JR and Sam, and he quickly becomes smitten with her.  Despite his attempts to get to know her better, Tasha remains at a distance from him.

After some weeks of waiting, JR is finally given the details of the breakout.  He hijacks a helicopter and uses it to effect a daring “rescue”.  Once on the outside, Lynch is soon offered the chance to carry out a gold heist, not from a bank but from the smelting plant where gold ingots are made.  Lynch agrees to take part in Sam’s plan (along with JR and Sterlo), and while the details of the heist are worked out, JR finds himself making some head way with Tasha, and a romance between them begins to emerge.  With the heist about to go ahead, Lynch is forced to take along Sam’s unstable son, Josh (Budge).  Josh proves to be the liability Lynch thought he would be when he shoots one of the plant workers.  A faster response by the police adds to their problems and their getaway is complicated by Sterlo’s being shot.  They manage to rendezvous with Sam and they hand over the gold for him to sell and give them their cut later.

Sam, however, double crosses them, especially as he’s discovered that Tasha and JR are planning to go away together once JR receives his money from the heist.  With Tasha in tow, JR and Lynch lay low while avoiding both the police and Sam’s men.  Lynch comes up with a plan to get the gold back and take his revenge on Sam, but as JR becomes increasingly concerned about Lynch’s reliability, he realises he needs his own plan if he and Tasha are to have the future they’ve been planning.

Son of a Gun - scene

Aussie crime dramas seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment, and while home audiences appear to be less than enthralled – Son of a Gun has proven a modest success Down Under – Avery’s feature debut has much to recommend it, despite being rough around the edges.  It’s sharpest in its opening twenty minutes, with JR finding his feet in prison and a mentor in Lynch.  There’s a palpable sense of menace in these scenes, both from Lynch and from the inmate who’s threatening JR and while the outcome is never in doubt, Avery uses some clever framing to add to the tension.

Once on the outside, the movie switches from intense prison drama to heist thriller and ups the pace, giving McGregor a chance to show Lynch’s more deceptive, amoral nature, and Thwaites the opportunity to make JR more self-confident and less of a bystander.  Avery use this section of the movie to more clearly define the characters but it has the effect of making the movie’s ensuing twists more easy to predict.  This doesn’t mean that Son of a Gun is any less engaging, but it does make it more of a movie where the viewer can tick off in advance each ensuing incident with complete confidence.

That said, Avery does obtain a trio of substantial performances from his lead actors, with Vikander making an impact as the pessimistic, emotionally withdrawn Tasha.  McGregor has the harder task, Lynch’s hardened attitude belying a softer, more considerate side to the character.  McGregor makes this dichotomy work though (and where some other actors might not have), and puts in one of his freshest performances for quite some time.  As the initially naïve JR, Thwaites turns in a performance that cements his position as a rising star, and has the viewer rooting for JR from the outset.

While Son of a Gun may not be completely satisfying – the prison breakout betrays the scene’s budgetary limitations, the movie’s denouement isn’t entirely convincing, some of the minor characters conform to genre stereotypes a little too much – there’s more than enough to hold the viewer’s attention and reward them at the same time.  The natural beauty of Western Australia is dialled down to reflect the cheerless nature of events, and there’s an emphasis on the casual brutality that sees several characters removed from the story without a backward glance.  Avery shows an intelligent awareness of where to place the camera, and he keeps scenes moving fluidly throughout, aided by some equally astute editing by Jack Hutchings.  A word too for the score by Jed Kurzel, that skilfully weaves genre motifs with a more propulsive approach and which complements the movie without becoming overbearing.

Rating: 8/10 – leaving aside some problems caused by the low budget, Son of a Gun is a largely impressive feature debut by Avery, and bodes well for future projects; coarse,  violent, and unexpectedly poignant in places, this is well played out and another welcome addition to the list of worthwhile Aussie crime dramas.