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Molly’s Game (2017)

08 Monday Jan 2018

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D: Aaron Sorkin / 140m

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Jeremy Strong, Chris O’Dowd, J.C. MacKenzie, Brian d’Arcy James, Bill Camp, Graham Greene, Jon Bass

With the issue of women trying to get ahead in a “man’s world” receiving so much attention right now, the arrival of Aaron Sorkin’s debut as a director seems like very good timing indeed. Based on the true story of Molly Bloom (Chastain), a potential Olympic-class skier forced to retire through injury, and how she came to run one of the world’s most exclusive high-stakes poker games – twice, Sorkin’s debut is a dazzling whirl through the twilight world of underground gambling where fortunes are won and lost at the turn of a card. Molly begins her second career while working for Dean Keith (Strong), a struggling businessman who hosts his own underground game, and who tells her to oversee the game each week. When her relationship with Keith becomes irretrievably strained, she starts up her own game, steals away one of his main players, an actor referred to as Player X (Cera), and begins to make a name for herself. Avoiding taking a cut of the money being wagered, Molly isn’t doing anything illegal, but she falls foul of Player X’s ego and the game is taken away from her. She moves to New York where she starts another game but this time she begins to take a cut. She bows out after a couple of years, but two years later, finds herself being arrested and charged with, amongst other things, money laundering. Enter the man who will represent her in court, Charlie Jaffey (Elba)…

Like many biopics, Molly’s Game doesn’t tell Bloom’s real story, but instead uses its bare bones to explore a world where gambling is its own addictive drug of choice, and the players wage obscene amounts of money for the thrill of it. It’s a world that Sorkin portrays with a great deal of fidelity, but while it’s an interesting and compelling world to spend time in – and the movie spends as much time there as it can – it does mean that Molly herself is placed firmly in the background. There are too many times where she’s the observer, watching the players while offering a pointed commentary on their habits and foibles. The movie is on firmer ground when it’s showing the process by which Molly and Jaffey spar their way to a workable defence strategy, with her refusal to implicate others or break her own self-imposed ethical code, proving at odds with Jaffey’s efforts to keep her out of jail. The scenes between Chastain and Elba crackle with an urgency and an intensity that isn’t always there when Molly’s past is being recounted, and while Sorkin the director in conjunction with editors Alan Baumgarten, Elliot Graham, and Josh Schaeffer, keeps things moving at quite a lick (the running time doesn’t feel like it’s anywhere near two hours and twenty minutes), the movie’s non-linear approach does undercut any potential or hard-earned momentum.

But if there’s one area of the screenplay that no one should worry about, it’s the dialogue. This is a movie where the dialogue is so well structured and so well held together through the various vocal rhythms associated with the characters, that not one word feels false or sounds awkward when it’s spoken. Sorkin’s good ear works its magic as usual, and there are times when it’s easy to believe that Molly et al spoke these actual words during the real-life situations being depicted. Even a scene late on between Molly and her uncompromising father (Costner), a scene that screams plot contrivance at the top of its lungs, is so deftly written that you can almost forgive the hackneyed nature of it. Sorkin is also well served by his cast, with Chastain and Elba both giving terrific performances, and they in turn are given equally terrific support from the likes of Costner, Cera, and O’Dowd. This is a confident debut feature from Sorkin, and even though some of it feels a little stretched in terms of “did it really happen that way?” there’s no denying the energy and the appeal of seeing one woman carving out her own niche in a man’s world and sticking to her own principles while she does it.

Rating: 8/10 – top-notch performances from Chastain and Elba added to another script full of riches from Sorkin (and his surprisingly flexible direction) make Molly’s Game a hugely enjoyable movie even when it steers perilously close to Movie Biopic Clichés 101; if you’re not into poker some of this will go way over your head, and there are a few silly missteps along the way, but otherwise this is a fast-paced, freewheeling, and above all fun experience that doesn’t rely on depth or subtexts at all in telling Bloom’s story.

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The Mountain Between Us (2017)

22 Friday Dec 2017

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D: Hany Abu-Assad / 112m

Cast: Idris Elba, Kate Winslet, Dermot Mulroney, Beau Bridges

Sometimes, and even in the best of movies, characters will do or say something that makes the viewer take a breath before uttering that immortal phrase, “What the hell?” (or some similar version). It might be something that’s out of character, or that doesn’t make any sense, or both, but it’s something that always takes the viewer out of the moment and leaves them wondering, “what idiot came up with that idea?” There’s such a moment in The Mountain Between Us, an adaptation of the novel by Charles Martin, that sees Idris Elba’s moody neurosurgeon Ben Bass, and Kate Winslet’s overly inquisitive photo-journalist Alex Martin, stranded in the High Uintas Wilderness (in Utah) after their charter plane crashes there. It would be unfair to mention this moment in detail, but any prospective viewer will know it when they see it. The problem with this moment in particular is that once it happens, the movie – already teetering on the brink of credibility – decides not to bother anymore and appropriately given Ben and Alex’s predicament, it’s all downhill from there.

Ostensibly a survival thriller, The Mountain Between Us isn’t content with being one type of movie: it wants to be a romantic drama as well. This would be all well and good if both approaches worked well together, but in the hands of director Hany Abu-Assad, and writers Chris Weitz and J. Mills Goodloe, the movie begins well enough with a well conceived and executed plane crash, and places its two main characters in a great deal of jeopardy, but then settles down to ensure that they become attracted to each other, and that their reliance on each other in order to survive becomes something greater. Yes, love is the order of the day, and is as clearly signposted as the various trials and tribulations they’ll face on their trek out of the wilderness. What this romantic development means though, is that the movie can’t decide which is more important in terms of the narrative: finding safety, or falling in love (and not into a frozen lake as Alex does).

This uncertainty leads to the movie feeling schizophrenic at times, as it develops a tendency to focus on the relationship/burgeoning love affair storyline for a while, before remembering it’s also a survival thriller and focusing on that before remembering again that it’s a romantic drama. As a result of this narrative to-ing and fro-ing, the movie never settles into a consistent groove, and as noted above, it loses its way once a certain point is reached, and from there it consequently loses traction. What could have been a tense, enthralling tale of two strangers learning how to survive against perilous odds, and using their combined wits and ingenuity to make it out of the wilderness alive (if not exactly in one piece: Ben has broken ribs, Alex has a leg injury), is left unrealised thanks to the romantic angle. And what could have been an emotive, touching love story borne out of an unexpected mutual attraction is made unlikely and annoying by the conventions used to tell said story.

As the movie unfolds it becomes obvious that the romance between Ben and Alex is more important to the overall story than whether or not they survive (though the outcome is entirely predictable). This means there are plenty of those odd, awkward moments that only seem to occur in the movies where characters remain reticent and hold back their emotions for no other reason than that the script needs them to, and misunderstanding is piled on top of further misunderstanding as the same script keeps both characters from openly declaring their love for each other until the very end. Someone, somewhere, has decided that this makes for good viewing. Someone, somewhere, needs to know this isn’t true. And if you’re a viewer watching this kind of thing drag itself out, you’ll be annoyed and frustrated and want to yell things like, “Kiss her/him already!” or “Just get on with it!” Ben and Alex do exactly this, andthe script can’t find adequate reasons for them to be so afraid of talking openly to each other.

Fortunately, and though the characters are somewhat insipid and stereotypical, they’re played by Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, two of the best actors working today. Doing their best to compensate for the vagaries of the script, the pair make Ben and Alex more sympathetic than they perhaps have any right to be, and though their inevitable coming together is less than convincing, they at least make it less dispiriting than it could have been. Elba uses his familiar taciturn demeanour to good effect throughout, while Winslet always seems to be thinking about what her character is doing and why. True, she looks puzzled more often than not, but it’s in keeping with the way that Alex views things and tries to make sense of them. Together they share a definite chemistry; it’s just a shame that the script and Abu-Assad’s direction can’t provide a suitable scenario for them to build on more effectively. And there aren’t many actors who could take the last couple of scenes in the movie and make them work as well as Elba and Winslet – and that’s no mean feat.

Alas, the movie is further undermined by its refusal to put Ben and Alex in anything truly like harm’s way. Problems arise and are quickly overcome, whether it’s Ben’s broken ribs (which don’t seem to slow him down at all) or Alex’s injured leg (she proves equally adept at getting about despite the pain she’s in), or a cougar looking for an easy lunch, or the aforementioned dip in the frozen lake that Alex enjoys: none of these problems pose much of a realistic threat, or give any indication that they might stop Ben and Alex from reaching civilisation. With any and all peril removed so easily and consistently, the movie loses any sense of urgency it might have been able to assemble, and Abu-Assad’s flaccid direction ensures that any thrills to be had are left behind with the plane crash. That said, the Canadian locations have been beautifully photographed by DoP Mandy Walker, displaying their snowy peaks and valleys to often striking effect, and emphasising the vastness of the wilderness Ben and Alex are stranded in. Sadly, it’s really only these aspects of the production that Abu-Assad and his team have managed to get completely right, leaving a movie that’s good in some places, but (mostly) not in others.

Rating: 5/10 – Elba and Winslet are the main draw here, an acting dream team who can only do so much against a script that lacks conviction and somewhat counter-intuitively at times, a clear purpose; another of the many missed opportunities that 2017 has seen fit to put in front of us, The Mountain Between Us just doesn’t register strongly enough to make much of an impact, and comes perilously close at times to wasting the talents of both its stars, something that should be regarded as unforgivable.

The Dark Tower (2017)

21 Monday Aug 2017

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D: Nikolaj Arcel / 95m

Cast: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Dennis Haysbert, Jackie Earle Haley, Claudia Kim, Fran Kranz, Abbey Lee, Katheryn Winnick

Problems, problems, problems…

It’s taken eleven years for an adaptation of Stephen King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower, to reach our screens, and now that it’s here, it’s not even an adaptation of King’s work. Instead it’s an approximation of King’s tale, a clumsy reshaping of a story that had the potential to be one of the most impressive fantasy series ever made. You could argue that King has been spectacularly hard done by over the years when it comes to adaptations of his novels, what with the likes of Dreamcatcher (2003), Cell (2016), and über-awful The Mangler (1995) proving that King’s fertile imagination doesn’t always translate well to the screen. What’s also noticeable is that over the years the quality of adaptations has dwindled to the point where a movie or TV version of a King novel or short story evokes dispassion and/or protracted bouts of ennui rather than enthusiasm. Take for example 11.22.63 (2016), a TV mini-series based on one of King’s more well received recent novels. Who remembers it now?

The Dark Tower, though, should have been another matter altogether. It should have raised the bar for big screen fantasy movies. But instead of a movie to herald in a series replete with narrative complexity, flawed yet fascinating characters, high stakes adventure, a carefully constructed yet organic mythology, and pursuing elements of fate and predestination, we have a hodgepodge of ideas and a crude collage of scenes from the books as a whole, all stitched together with little or no concern as to how it all looks as a final product. Stories of post-production problems have been rife, with an early cut of the movie being greeted with the kind of dismay that leads to producers considering replacing their director. And that’s without reshoots designed to provide more backstory about the rivalry between Idris Elba’s vengeful gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and Matthew McConaughey’s evil predator in black, Walter Padick. It doesn’t take much to wonder why such a backstory wasn’t thought out and shot originally, but it does point to the terrible ineptitude that appears to have been prevalent throughout.

Problems, problems, problems…

Watching the movie itself, there is one immediate flaw that shows that director Arcel, his co-writers Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, and the producers weren’t paying attention to the structure or the set up of King’s novels at all. That flaw is the decision to make Roland a supporting character. When the main character who drives an eight-volume saga is reduced to playing second fiddle to a pre-teen, then you know that something is terribly, dreadfully wrong. Whether or not this was an attempt to broaden the movie’s chances at the box office is hard to decipher, but when a movie gets something this fundamentally wrong, then there’s little hope for the rest of it. The quest for the Dark Tower is Roland’s quest, and to play down this really quite important aspect of King’s novels is to show no understanding of the story at all. And then there’s the ending…

Perhaps it was too much to ask that The Dark Tower would turn out to be all that it could be. After all, if movie makers of the calibre of JJ Abrams and Ron Howard couldn’t make it work, whether as a series of movies, or a mix of movies and TV series, then what confidence could anyone have in this particular incarnation? With its budget of $60 million, and a running time of ninety-five minutes, how do you build another world that exists alongside our own? The answer, as anyone who’s seen the movie knows, is easy: you don’t. Aside from some impressive desert vistas, and a couple of sequences set in Mid-World, the movie remains firmly rooted in New York, keeping its characters there for long periods and managing the expectations of fans by ignoring them altogether.

Problems, problems, problems…

With the makers unsure of just what exactly they want to do with the material at their disposal, the movie itself struggles to make any sense or provide any depth. This is a dreadfully flat, unnecessarily dry “adaptation” that skips over any attempts at character development, keeps exposition to a minimum, and favours action scenes that seem content to showcase the various ways that Roland can reload his guns instead of making them exciting to watch. As Roland, Elba has no choice but to ramp up the sincerity and make the gunslinger as taciturn as possible. That he gives a good performance is more of a tribute to his skill as an actor than any skill possessed by the writers, and even though he’s burdened by the kind of trite, clichéd dialogue that most actors would fail to overcome, Elba makes the best of moments such as when he’s called upon to recite the most long-winded, and excruciating, mantra in movie history (it begins with, “I do not shoot with my hand”). Opposite him is McConaughey, an actor who has surpassed everybody’s expectations (except possibly his own) in recent years, but here all he does is remind us that when he’s not working with a strong-minded director who’ll keep him in line, his performance will suffer. Here he gives us a caricature of a villain, and a pantomime one at that.

Taylor as Jake lacks presence, and the likes of Haley, Kim and Haysbert are given too little to do to make an impact. There’s too much jumping through portals, too many moments where the script trips itself up (bullets are supposed to be scarce in Mid-World but Roland never runs out), and too many references to characters and places in other King novels (prizes though for spotting a shop called Barlow and Straker’s). As it’s unlikely that The Dark Tower will be successful enough to warrant any further adventures that aren’t based on King’s original novels, all these references feel like gratuitous easter eggs rather than attempts to (subtly) build on the notion that there are worlds next to worlds, and there are more connections than even Roland or Jake are aware of. It’s another example of Arcel and co. lacking the insight into the material to make it work more effectively, making the movie a shoddy, ill-lit, tension-free exercise in damage limitation.

Rating: 4/10 – professionally made at least, but lacking energy and conviction, The Dark Tower is a dramatically sprawling yet visually restrained fantasy action movie that won’t interest fans of the novels, or win over viewers who have no connection to them at all; Arcel exerts very little control over the material, and what few glimpses there are of what could have been, only add to the disappointment and the horror of what’s been done with the source material – literally nothing.

A Brief Word About The Dark Tower (2017)

06 Saturday May 2017

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If you’ve seen the first trailer for The Dark Tower, and if you’ve read the series of novels by Stephen King, then chances are you’re already wondering what the hell is going on. While fans and non-fans alike of King’s fantasy magnum opus have been in agreement over the casting of Idris Elba as Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger, and Matthew McConaughey as Walter Padick, the Man in Black, there’s been little understanding of the movie’s structure or the makers’ intentions in telling King’s vast story. How much of the first volume, The Gunslinger, is going to be included? Is this the first of a series of movies, or as suggested in the past, will the next incarnation be shown on television as a mini-series before it all returns to the big screen? And how long will it be before we reach the conclusion of King’s tale?

Well, again, if you’ve seen the first trailer then you might have noticed that all those questions are actually irrelevant. For while The Dark Tower takes elements from all eight volumes, it is essentially a sequel to all of them, as the action takes place some time after the events of the final volume. Now bearing that in mind, is this the first adaptation in a series of projects derived from The Dark Tower novels, or is this the first in a series of projects based on The Dark Tower novels? It seems to be the latter, which means that credited screenwriters Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, and director Nikolaj Arcel have decided to come up with new material. Which makes the next question a resoundingly obvious, Why? King has given them everything they need to produce a movie (or series of movies/TV shows) that would do justice to his literary endeavours. Instead, like so many adaptations of his work, it appears they’ve decided to go their own way with the material.

King himself appears to be happy with the way The Dark Tower is going, but for anyone who’s read the books and feels the same way about them as fans of The Lord of the Rings did when Peter Jackson stepped up to bring Tolkien’s classic to the big screen, this feels less and less like a viable proposition and instead like one more cinematic offering to join the dozens of other below-par movies that have been made out of King’s work in the past.

 

Agree? Disagree? Couldn’t give a ka-tet one way or the other? Let me know by leaving a comment.

“Meh” Movies and Me – Part 2

10 Saturday Sep 2016

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When I posted “Meh” Movies and Me on 8 September, that was meant to be that. I had a list of movies going forward that I planned to watch and review, and none of them were big-budget, “event” movies made with conspicuous excess and an unhealthy reliance on CGI (well, all except The Legend of Tarzan). The first movie on the list was Black Tar Road (2016), and that was meant to be followed – today – by Zoom (2015), and then I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016). But instead of watching either movie I re-watched an old favourite, To Be or Not to Be (1942), and episode six of Jessica Jones (what can I say? I lag behind when it comes to TV series’). Why did I watch these instead? That’s a fair question, and the answer is simple, albeit in two parts.

to-be-or-not-to-be

Firstly, I wondered if I’d over-reacted. After all, I’d had a bad run, three movies in a row that had earned themselves 3/10 because they were basically rubbish. They were movies that really should have been vetoed at the idea stage. But they were made, they attracted well-known names to them, and they were all heavily promoted as if they were must-see movies. Now I like Jason Statham, and I like Idris Elba, and I like… Rose Byrne, and if they all appeared in the same movie together I would probably make a point of seeing it as soon as possible. But instead they made a trio of movies that were as soul-destroying as watching that last Rolo get away from you (apologies to anyone outside of Britain who doesn’t get that last analogy/joke). They made a trio of movies that they should have known – from day one – were going to be bad. Actually, not just bad, but appalling. I’m all for actors being employed and able to pay their bills each month, but can their mortgage really mean more than their self-esteem – or their reputation?

And so, the more I thought about it, the more I decided that, no, I hadn’t over-reacted. I’d been right, right to challenge the status quo, and right to call out anyone who makes a movie with the knowledge that it’s going to suck; and especially if they use millions and millions of dollars to make it. But after watching and reviewing Black Tar Road (and on the whole, liking it quite a bit), I realised that I needed a bit of a cooling off period. I needed to watch something that would remind me that mainstream movies can be entertaining, that they can have well-constructed and thought out scripts, that the cast can take those scripts and use them to create wonderful, memorable characters, and that directors can be bold and decisive and in tune with the material and above all, take risks. And so, To Be or Not to Be, which has all of those things. And Jessica Jones, which has them too, but in a different way.

But I said the answer was in two parts, didn’t I? Well, the second part is a little less obvious. When you’ve seen as many movies as I have – 14,432 and counting as of today – then you get a little set in your ways and your opinions. Not about whether or not a movie is an appalling piece of crap and doesn’t deserve to see the light of day – that’s a constant that should never be discouraged. No, it’s when you’re five or ten minutes into a movie and you know exactly how it’s going to end (and how it’s going to get there), and what’s going to happen to the characters. There are signs everywhere and most of them aren’t very subtle, which is why some movies feel like ninety minutes or more of déjà vu. Black Tar Road is such a movie, and though I liked it, it has a predictable nature to it that is as off-putting (to me) as watching a movie where you’re led by the hand from scene to scene.

jessica-jones

One of the great things about To Be or Not to Be is that even if you watch it more than once, it retains a freshness and an easy charm that’s never diminished. This is due to the quality applied to the material in every department. And Jessica Jones, while conforming to many of the expectations of contemporary television, regularly and repeatedly tries to subvert those expectations in order to keep its audience engaged and coming back for more. With this in mind, shouldn’t movies be doing the same? Shouldn’t they be trying to subvert our expectations? I think they should be, but maybe I’m in a minority. Maybe everyone else is happy with the status quo and watching movies that continually fail to meet the demands of modern audiences. And maybe that’s what today’s movie makers are counting on: that we just don’t care enough to complain, or change our viewing habits for the better.

And that really is that.

Bastille Day (2016)

05 Monday Sep 2016

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Bastille Day

D: James Watkins / 92m

Cast: Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Charlotte Le Bon, Kelly Reilly, José Garcia, Thierry Godard, Anatol Yusef

Meh (see also Mechanic: Resurrection).

Rating: 3/10 – uninspired, heavy-handed, preposterous, and as dead on arrival as the four victims of its fictional bombing, Bastille Day limps along from one turgid, barely credible scene to another with all the panache and style of a boxer who’s on the ropes and seeing double of everything; not even Elba’s stoic presence can save this Euro-mess of a movie, an action thriller that insults its audience at every turn, plays fast and loose with its own narrative, and which flags up every single plot development with all the subtlety of a punch in the face.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

02 Tuesday Aug 2016

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Star Trek Beyond

D: Justin Lin / 122m

Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella, Joe Taslim, Lydia Wilson, Deep Roy, Shohreh Aghdashloo

It’s unfortunate, given the response to Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013), that the latest instalment in the JJ Abrams’ revamped movie franchise opens with über-Captain James T. Kirk (Pine) lamenting his time in space as part of the Enterprise’s five year mission. After nine hundred and sixty-six days, Kirk is, frankly, bored, and as he puts it, “wondering what it is we are trying to accomplish”. It’s like a listening to a man who’s treading water in the ocean, far from land, and hoping a shark comes along to break the monotony. Harking after further adventure, Kirk sounds petulant rather than unhappy. But if it’s a challenge he’s after, then he need wait no further, because once the Enterprise has docked at the Federation’s new super-duper starbase, the Yorktown (a nod to the Enterprise’s original name in the original series’ pilot), an alien craft seeking help arrives and propels Kirk and his long-suffering crew into just the kind of adventure that he craves.

Told that an alien menace headed by someone called Krall (Elba) is responsible for the abduction and imprisonment of her crew, Kalara (Wilson), leads Kirk and co to the planet where her crew are being held. Orbiting the planet, the Enterprise suffers a devastating attack, and the main saucer is forced into a crash landing – but not before Krall and his men have invaded the starship and made it clear they’re after an artifact – the Abronath – that is on board, and not before the crew have been either captured by Krall or gotten away by means of the Enterprise’s escape pods. Spock and Bones escape together, as do Kirk and Chekov, while Scotty gets clear by himself. Down on the planet, Scotty meets Jaylah (Boutella), a scavenger whose people were captured and imprisoned by Krall in the past. She takes him to what she calls her ship, and Scotty is amazed to find it’s the remains of the USS Franklin, a ship long considered to have been lost.

STB - scene2

Meanwhile, Spock has been injured, and Bones is doing his best to keep him alive. Sulu and Uhura have been captured, and Kirk and Chekov head for the downed Enterprise to see if they can make it operational again. Krall appears to be one step ahead of everyone, and his motive for gaining the Abronath is revealed to be part of a plan of revenge on the Federation. Aided by Jaylah, the crew of the Enterprise come together to fight back against Krall’s homicidal intentions, and in the process, find some very unique ways of taking the fight to him.

When Paramount announced that they were rebooting the original Star Trek franchise and had given the project to JJ Abrams, it seemed like a risky proposition, what with William Shatner et al having become so completely associated with the roles of Kirk and Spock and Bones etc, that it was hard to imagine anyone else portraying them. But Abrams was more than up to the task, and even managed to come up with a plot device that allowed his “new crew” to have their own adventures independently of the original movie series’ timeline. Quinto was a great choice for Spock, Pine had the cocksure audacity of a younger Kirk down pat, and Urban was possibly a better (if underused) Bones than DeForest Kelley. Only the lack of a convincing villain stopped Star Trek (2009) from being a complete triumph. And then Star Trek: Into Darkness tried to be too clever for its own good with its “He’s not Khan/Okay, he is Khan” shenanigans, and overwrought plotting.

STB - scene1

Perhaps realising that going “darker” on the first sequel works only on other sci-fi franchises, the producers have decided with this third outing to go lighter and make Star Trek Beyond more like an episode of the original series; or to be more accurate (or cynical – you decide) a retread of Star Trek: Generations (1994). The script, by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung (who appears briefly as Sulu’s husband, a gender acknowledgment that carries no weight whatsoever in the grand scheme of things), coasts along for the most part, and does what the original series always did so well: focuses on the relationships between Kirk, Spock and Bones, gives Scotty a chance to shine when something needs fixing (which happened pretty much every week), adds an alien collaborator to help the crew overcome the villain, throws in said villain and ensures they have a grudge against everyone else, and sidelines Uhura at every opportunity (though she is involved, by reference, in one of the movie’s funniest scenes). A tried and tested formula, to be sure, and one that on this occasion makes for an enjoyable if underwhelming experience.

But while enjoyable is good – and in a loud, dumb, fun kind of way the movie is enjoyable – there’s something missing that stops it from becoming a Star Trek movie that makes you want to go back and view it again because you had such a great experience watching it the first time. Partly because Krall is yet another weak villain, partly because there are too many occasions when the solution to a problem is to “couple the doohickey to the whatchamacallit and transverse the first number you thought of” (and who knew Kirk was so familiar with the properties of FM radio frequencies?), and partly because any plot development that relies on the presence of a fully functioning motor bike on the bridge of a downed starship, is stretching credibility to snapping point. (There are other moments where the viewer’s jaw is in danger of hitting the floor, but to reveal them all would take too long.)

STB - scene3

In the director’s chair, Fast & Furious alumni Lin makes a decent enough fist of things but doesn’t manage to provide audiences with anything really memorable to go away with. It’s a turbo-charged experience, to be sure, and Lin, along with his editing team (Greg D’Auria, Dylan Highsmith, Kelly Matsumoto and Steven Sprung) ensures that the movie zips along at an exciting pace. The visuals are as crisp and vibrant as you would expect, and even though there’s an over-reliance on CGI, this is to be expected: it’s a science fiction movie, for Pete’s sake; how else is it going to look? The cast enter into the spirit of things, though Elba struggles with his dialogue thanks to the kind of alien mask that looks great but probably isn’t that functional; and there’s a touching moment where Spock looks at a picture from the past (that he can’t possibly have).

All in all, Star Trek Beyond is a movie that falls under the heading of “honourable mention”. It’s not going to be at the top of anyone’s list of all-time favourite Star Trek movies, but it won’t be anywhere near the bottom, like Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). It zips along like a young child eager to show off the neat-looking toy it’s just found, but as any parent will tell you, even neat-looking toys can lose their attraction quickly and without warning.

Rating: 6/10 – a middling, superficially diverting entry in the Star Trek canon, Star Trek Beyond is nothing new or special, and only occasionally rises to meet the demands of franchise (and genre) expectations; more a case of “boldly going where everyone has been before” than anything else, the movie is yet another reminder that the odd-numbered entries in the series are the ones that don’t always work.

Zootopia (2016)

20 Friday May 2016

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Zootopia

aka Zoomania; Zootropolis

D: Byron Howard, Rich Moore / 104m

Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, Tommy Chong, J.K. Simmons, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, Maurice LaMarche, Shakira

Appearing out of nowhere to grab over $970 million worldwide, Zootopia is yet another reminder that when Disney gets it right, Disney gets it right and then some. In terms of Disney animation only The Lion King (1994) and Frozen (2013) have taken more money at the box office, while in comparison, Pixar have only one movie, Toy Story 3 (2010), that’s been more successful. Of course, there’s always the possibility that Zootopia isn’t as good as its success at the box office suggests. But the answer to that is: yeah… right.

Like so many Disney characters, Judy Hopps (Goodwin) is a bunny with a dream: to be a police officer working for the Zootopia Police Department. Despite no rabbit ever having even tried to join the ZPD, and despite the fears and worries of her parents (Hunt, Lake), Judy excels at the training academy and graduates top of her class. But when she arrives in the great city of Zootopia – where predator and prey co-exist in harmony – she finds that her presence isn’t exactly welcomed, by her fellow officers, and in particular, by her boss, Chief Bogo (Elba). While the rest of her colleagues investigate the separate disappearances of fourteen different animals in mysterious circumstances, Judy is given Meter Maid duties.

Zootopia - scene3

While making the most of this change of fortune, Judy meets Nick Wilde, a fox who proves to be a hustler. Judy wants to arrest him but Nick is too smart to be caught so easily. But when Judy promises to find one of the missing animals, an otter called – appropriately – Otterton, and Chief Bogo gives her just forty-eight hours to do so or she’ll have to resign, a clue leads to Nick being coerced into helping her look for the missing otter. The trail points to the involvement of the local crime kingpin, Mr Big (LaMarche), and a mystery involving the missing animals that sees them reject their peaceful lives and revert back to their primitive, predatory ways. Judy and Nick locate the missing animals and believe they’ve found their culprit, but in the aftermath, the pair fall out over something Judy says at a press conference. Judy resigns from the ZPD when she realises that she’s inadvertently made things worse – prey animals have less trust now in their predatory neighbours – and she returns home. But a revelation there sends her back to Zootopia where she seeks Nick’s help in solving the mystery of the “savage” animals for good.

The first thing to know about Zootopia is that it’s a Disney movie through and through. There are the usual themes of tolerance and understanding, and overcoming prejudice, as well as a mismatched couple who learn to respect and trust each other, but thanks to a confident, engaging script by Phil Johnston and Jared Bush, these themes are given a spirited polish and never once feel tired or laboured. The cleverest idea the script gives us is a central female character who has a dream that isn’t based around some old-fashioned romantic notion; instead, Judy’s ambition is to make a difference. She’s perhaps the first Disney character (male or female) to be both completely self-aware and selfless at the same time. Goodwin portrays her with such a delightful sense of sincerity tinged with playfulness that you can’t help but smile at the character’s naïvete, and cheer when she proves herself to the surprise of everyone around her.

Zootopia - scene1

Johnston and Bush’s script also gives us a great co-star and foil for Judy in the form of wily fox Nick Wilde. As played by Bateman, Nick is the kind of schemer the actor has portrayed several times before, but here he ups his game to make Nick both cunning and contrite at the same time, a neat trick that becomes more evident as the movie progresses. Like Goodwin, Bateman gives a charming, entertaining performance that benefits the movie greatly, and they share an enviable chemistry considering they’re giving vocal performances (and may not have even recorded their scenes together).

As usual with Disney – at least Disney under the leadership of John Lasseter – there’s a wealth of riches to be had, with moments that are among the finest of any animated movie made. From Judy’s carrot pen, to Nick’s son, to an app that lets anyone appear in a video with Gazelle (Shakira) (Zootopia’s leading songstress), to the Don Corleone-inspired Mr Big, to the naturalist club run by Yax (Chong), there are moments to treasure, as well as in-jokes for those paying close attention (Tudyk plays a crooked weasel called Duke Weaselton; in Frozen he played the treacherous Duke of Weselton). All of them, however, are overshadowed by one sublime moment of animation genius: the reaction of Flash the sloth to one of Nick’s jokes. This moment alone makes the movie worth seeing, and is one of Disney’s finest eleven seconds.

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Visually the movie is stunning, with levels of detail and colour that are continually arresting (no pun intended), providing a rich palette for the eyes that never stops being entertaining. The sequence where Judy chases a fleeing Weaselton into Rodentia (unexpectedly) foreshadows Captain America: Civil War (2016) as she goes from one of the smallest animals in Zootopia to a veritable giant when placed amongst the denizens of that particular area. It’s an example of just how inventive and effortlessly thrilling the movie can be, and the humour that threads itself throughout the screenplay matches that invention, with jokes at every turn and enough visual gags to keep everyone happy, young and old alike.

Zootopia‘s central storyline is enhanced by its timely message of tolerance and understanding (a message Disney have been “timely” with for decades now), and its mystery is satisfying up to a point (attentive viewers will spot the movie’s villain from the moment they make their appearance), leaving the characters to take centre stage and provide the audience with one of the most enjoyable, satisfying and rewarding animated movies of the last few years. It has a sweet-natured tone that can’t be resisted, and does everything it can to give its audience a good time, something it never fails to do.

Rating: 9/10 – animated movie-making of the highest order, Zootopia is a funny, sweet, charming, beautiful to look at movie that never puts a foot wrong in its mission to entertain; with Disney making a movie that’s this good, the competition – Pixar included – must be wondering just what they have to do to topple the House of Mouse from its (currently) well-deserved pedestal.

The Jungle Book (2016)

20 Wednesday Apr 2016

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The Jungle Book

D: Jon Favreau / 105m

Cast: Neel Sethi, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o, Scarlett Johansson, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Walken, Garry Shandling, Brighton Rose, Jon Favreau, Sam Raimi

The first of two live action versions of Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale – the other, just called Jungle Book and directed by Andy Serkis, is due in 2018 – Disney’s remake of their own beloved animated classic arrives with much fanfare and enough hype to stop even Shere Khan in his bloodthirsty tracks. It’s taken over $300 million at the international box office already, and the House of Mouse is keen to get director Jon Favreau and writer Justin Marks back for a sequel (surprise, surprise). The CGI environment created for the characters, and against which token human Mowgli (Sethi) interacts, is incredibly detailed and realistic, while the final showdown between tiger and man-cub is… well… it’s okay.

And that’s the problem with the movie as a whole: it’s okay. When the best thing you can say about a movie is that the backgrounds look realistic, then it’s a sure sign that whatever Favreau and co were aiming for, they didn’t actually achieve it. And yet the material is there to be taken advantage of, as Disney did nearly fifty years ago when they made the animated version. But this version makes some significant changes to the original, and while you don’t want an exact carbon copy of what went before, there’s too much that’s different for the movie to work as well as its predecessor.

TJB - scene2

First, there’s the musical elements. Shoehorned into the movie are two of the animated version’s most enjoyable songs, The Bare Necessities and I Wanna Be Like You. This isn’t a musical version of the story, and yet these two songs are included, and awkwardly at that. There’s no reason for them to be there, unless Disney felt that modern audiences, perhaps weaned on the animated version, would feel upset if they weren’t included. As it is, The Bare Necessities is given a nostalgic feel that helps offset the oddness of its inclusion, but the same can’t be said of I Wanna Be Like You, an uncomfortable rendition of which is given by Christopher Walken as King Louie, a giant orang-utan you half suspect has been eating his tribe in order to get so big. Some viewers may well be happy to see these songs included, but in terms of the movie itself they’re interruptions to the flow of the movie and the narrative.

But the flow of the movie is also a problem. Favreau is a capable director but he doesn’t always get the pace of a movie right – check out Iron Man 2 (2010) as a prime example. Here he connects each scene as if they were part of a larger puzzle and he’s got too much time to put it all together. This leads to stretches where The Jungle Book pads along like Shere Khan at the watering hole, full of intention but held back by an unwanted need for restraint. It makes for a choppy, uneven movie that holds the attention completely in certain scenes, but then abandons that attention in favour of just moving on.

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And then there’s the ending, changed from the animated version – where Mowgli heads off to the man village because that’s where his future lies – to reflect… well, it’s not altogether clear. Mowgli has clearly found his true place in the jungle, but it’s at odds with what Shere Khan and even Bagheera have been saying all along: that Mowgli will grow up to be a man, and man has no place in the jungle (it’s even part of the jungle law, but the script ignores this practically the moment it’s been brought up). Back in 1968 this bittersweet ending was the perfect conclusion to Mowgli’s story, but here it seems like a cynical decision to help set up and ensure the sequel(s) that Disney are looking for. In a weird way, the script’s decision to integrate Mowgli more fully with the jungle environment makes him seem like another Tarzan in the making.

On the plus side, Favreau has assembled a great cast to give vocal life to the animal characters, with Murray on fine form as Baloo, and Johansson proving especially effective as Kaa. Kingsley is somewhat swamped by the script’s decision to make Bagheera almost entirely like a resigned schoolmaster, Nyong’o and Esposito make the most of their underwritten wolf parts, while Walken does his best to make King Louie frightening, but weirdly, sounds more like Kevin Spacey doing an impression of Christopher Walken than Walken himself. And then there’s Idris Elba, cast as Shere Khan; somehow his gruff tones don’t seem to suit the role, and his scenes have an awkwardness to them in terms of his voice not fitting the look of the character. In effect, it’s as if his voice has been badly dubbed.

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As the only human in the movie, a lot rides on the abilities of Sethi, and while he’s certainly proficient, his performance isn’t as effective as it could be. In the scene where Mowgli decides to leave the jungle and go to the man village, his lack of experience leaves the scene feeling perfunctory rather than highly emotive, and you get the sense that Favreau was unable to get more from him. If Sethi is to take part in any further movies as Mowgli then it’s to be hoped that his experience this time round proves to be the bedrock for better performances in the future.

All in all, The Jungle Book isn’t a bad movie per se, it’s just that it doesn’t have that spark that would have made it a truly enjoyable movie. And despite its evident popularity with audiences worldwide, it’s likely that its success is due to brand recognition rather than any inherent quality. Remakes are a tricky business to get right, as any studio or production company should know, but with Disney – and it shouldn’t be the case – you somehow expect something a little bit better, and a little bit more entertaining. That it’s just okay is perhaps worse than its being just bad.

Rating: 5/10 – nowhere near the live action remake audiences really needed, The Jungle Book suffers from being too clinical and too respectful of itself (if not Kipling’s original tale); with too many moments that pass without emphasis or emotion, it remains a beautiful movie to watch, but an empty one as well.

Mini-Review: No Good Deed (2014)

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

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No Good Deed

D: Sam Miller / 84m

Cast: Idris Elba, Taraji P. Henson, Leslie Bibb, Kate del Castillo, Henry Simmons, Mirage Moonschein

Denied parole after serving five years for manslaughter, Colin Evans (Elba) makes his escape from a prison transport vehicle, killing a guard and the driver in the process.

In Atlanta, Terri Granger (Henson) is coping with the demands of a baby and young daughter Ryan (Moonschein). When her husband, Jeffrey (Simmons), comes home early from work and announces he has to leave right away to visit his father, Terri worries about the way he’s behaving (even though he reassures her that he loves her). Her friend, Meg (Bibb), suggests they have a girls night, to which she agrees. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Atlanta, Evans is stalking the woman who was his fiancée, Alexis (del Castillo), before he went to prison. He confronts her at her home with evidence that she’s seeing someone else; when she admits to it, Evans kills her.

With a violent storm raging, Evans crashes his car and seeks help at Terri’s house. He’s respectful and agreeable but when he calls for a tow truck and is told he could have a long wait due to the storm, Terri invites him in and gives him some dry clothes to change into. He mentions that his fiancée has been cheating on him; Terri is sympathetic (if a little unnerved by his telling her this so quickly). Meg arrives with wine and is clearly attracted to Terri’s guest. During a shared smoke break, Evans tries to get Meg to question Terri’s honesty, but when she doesn’t he kills her too. Evans tells Terri that Meg has left but Terri sees Meg’s umbrella is still there; she also discovers that the phone line has been cut. Realising that Evans is dangerous she attempts to leave with her children, but the escaped convict has other ideas.

No Good Deed - scene

A movie that all involved clearly took part in for the pay cheques, No Good Deed should be rechristened No Good Movie. Turgid and lacking in genuine excitement, the movie is a home invasion thriller that defies belief from the moment Evans is referred to as a “malignant narcissist” to one of the final scenes where multiple injuries leave Terri without a mark on her. It’s dull, it’s unimaginative, it’s repetitive, and a complete waste of its stars’ time and efforts. In fact, it’s so bad that a nadir of sorts is reached when Henson has to show fear and desperation to a police officer and succeeds only in looking as if she’s desperate for the toilet.

With Terri alternating between victim and victor (and sometimes in the same scene), and with Elba showing very little sign of the acting talent we know he has, the movie sputters its way through to one of those “Hollywood” showdowns where the attacks keep coming despite painful blows, stabbings, and the kind of injuries that would have ordinary people calling for an ambulance before the first flush of pain fully registered. It’s also a drab movie to watch, and is directed with an eye for awkward framing by Miller who probably got the job off the back of directing Elba in several episodes of the BBC series Luther. But here his lack of moviemaking experience shows and he fails to make much out of Aimee Lagos’s awful, awful script.

Rating: 3/10 – unsurprisingly pushed back for theatrical release on three occasions, No Good Deed squanders any good will by continually insulting the audience’s intelligence; poorly executed and lacking in energy, the movie seems content to undermine itself at every turn.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013)

02 Sunday Mar 2014

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Mandela Long Walk to Freedom

D: Justin Chadwick / 141m

Cast: Idris Elba, Naomie Harris, Tony Kgoroge, Riaad Moosa, Zolani Mkiva, Simo Mogwaza, Fana Mokoena, Thapelo Mokoena

Since its publication in 1995, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom has been one of those books that was always going to be adapted for the big screen; Mandela’s life was just too extraordinary to be ignored.  And now, thanks to producer Anant Singh, overseer of the project since the book’s publication, we now have fifty years of Mandela’s life condensed down into two hours and twenty one minutes.  Is it enough?  Perhaps…

The movie opens in 1942.  Mandela is a lawyer along with Oliver Tambo.  He works within the courts system and in his spare time, boxes.  He marries and has two children.  He is aware of the political injustice prevalent in South Africa, but has yet to become politicised.  When, in 1950, he witnesses a demonstration that advocates boycotting the buses – because the fares have increased unfairly – it triggers something inside him that makes him join the African National Congress.  Now a revolutionary, he supports non-violent means of attacking the system, but when the massacre at Sharpeville occurs in 1960, he realises that violence is a necessary tool against the Afrikaaners.  During this period, he also meets and takes as his second wife Winnie Madikizela (Harris), his first marriage having ended when he became radicalised.  Arrested in 1962 (according to the movie), Mandela is tried and sentenced to life imprisonment.  Along with seven other ANC members he is transported to Robben Island.  During his internment he remains an important figure within the ANC, but while he learns to approach the problem of apartheid by promoting peace, violent demonstrations and clashes with the police continue to occur across South Africa.  When the government comes calling with the promise of his being released if he helps quell the violence – by renouncing it – Mandela is faced with opposition from both Winnie and right-wing factions within the ANC.  He gains his release, begins to put into place his vision for a united South Africa, and this is where the movie ends, with Mandela having become president.

Mandela Long Walk to Freedom - scene

Adapting such a complex book was always going to be a challenge, and in the hands of William Nicholson, the screenplay does its best to cover the key moments in Mandela’s life without seeming like a hagiography.  However, this leads to many events being given a brief amount of screen time, and it becomes difficult on occasion to judge the importance of some of those events – for example, when Mandela and his fellow ANC members arrive at Robben Island, only one of them is given long trousers to wear, the rest, including Mandela, have to wear shorts.  Mandela campaigns to have long trousers for everyone, but his persistence – as well as the script’s – is free from explanation.  Elsewhere, Winnie’s own imprisonment – sixteen months in solitary confinement at one point – is referred to only when she gets out.  And therein lies another problem: the script shies away from making anything too unpalatable for the viewer.  Robben Island was an awful place, with cells that were too small, and living conditions that were designed to sap the will.  And yet, Mandela seems to get on okay there; you could argue that he even flourishes.  Winnie’s change from supportive wife and mother to violence advocating activist is presented in broad brush strokes, and while Harris convinces in an otherwise underwritten role, there’s too little character development for her, or the viewer, to latch onto.  (It doesn’t help that, due to the need to focus on Mandela, Winnie appears only here and there in the narrative, and in the end, she becomes the violent “face” of the ANC, a political boogeyman that Mandela is forced to distance himself from.)

With too many years to cover and too many incidents and events to fit in, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom suffers in the long run, and ends up like a potted history of one man’s turbulent life.  There’s also a semi-reverential tone that stops the movie from being too emotive, even when the characters are suffering or events such as the Sharpeville massacre take centre stage (this tragedy, where children were killed as well as adults, is over in a matter of minutes; there’s no time to fully appreciate the horror of the impending situation nor its aftermath, and not in the way that, say, Richard Attenborough addressed the massacre at Amritsar in Gandhi).  With the movie thus appearing flat and with no appreciable highs and lows, it’s like being told about someone’s life but by someone who can’t quite connect with, or understand, the events they’re relating.

As Mandela, Elba gives a superb, measured performance that, thankfully, makes up for  a lot of the movie’s inefficiencies (good luck to anyone trying to work out who’s who in the ANC and on Robben Island; they may have names in the credits but they’re certainly not identified in the movie).  Elba dominates the movie, nailing the husky cadences of Mandela’s speech, and projecting an authoritative aura in the movie’s later stages when dealing with the government’s representatives and the political liability that Winnie has become.  He is never less than convincing throughout, and it’s a tribute to Elba that he manages to imbue Mandela with a spiritual quality that the script downplays and which might otherwise have been missed.  In support, Harris matches Elba for commitment and avoids demonising Winnie for her beliefs.  It’s a far more subtle performance than it first appears.

Hampered by the script, director Chadwick nevertheless manages to keep the movie interesting and rightly trains the camera on Elba as much as he can.  There’s a fine score courtesy of Alex Heffes, as well as crisp, warm cinematography from Lol Crawley.  With glorious location work, and good performances  all round, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom doesn’t fly as high as you’d hope, but it does offer a fairly straightforward account of Mandela’s life over fifty years and the struggles he – and his country – endured during that period.

Rating: 7/10 – solid if unspectacular production raised up a notch or two by Elba’s excellent performance; worthy, yes, but also dull in places, and lacking in verve.