Monthly Roundup – January 2018

31 Wednesday Jan 2018

Tags

Adrian Molina, Alexander Payne, Animation, Anthony Gonzalez, Awakening the Zodiac, Chadwick Boseman, Christoph Waltz, Coco, Comedy, Darkest Hour, Downsizing, Drama, Dylan Minnette, Fabrice du Welz, Family Fever, Gael García Bernal, Gary Oldman, Germany, Hallie Meyers-Shyer, History, Home Again, Horror, Jaume Collet-Serra, Joe Wright, Jonathan Wright, Kathrin Waligura, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lee Unkrich, Leslie Bibb, Liam Neeson, Matt Angel, Matt Damon, Meryl Streep, Message from the King, Mexico, Michael Sheen, Nico Sommer, Peter Trabner, Pixar, Reese Witherspoon, Reviews, Romance, Serial killer, Shane West, Steven Spielberg, Suzanne Coote, The Commuter, The Open House, The Pentagon Papers, The Post, The Washington Post, Thriller, Tom Hanks, True story, Vera Farmiga

Awakening the Zodiac (2017) / D: Jonathan Wright / 100m

Cast: Shane West, Leslie Bibb, Matt Craven, Nicholas Campbell, Kenneth Welsh, Stephen McHattie

Rating: 4/10 – no one knew it at the time but the notorious (and uncaptured) Zodiac killer filmed the murders he committed, something cash-strapped couple Mick and Zoe Branson (West, Bibb) discover when they come into possession of one of the reels, and then find themselves and those around them targeted by the Zodiac killer himself; there’s the germ of a good idea lurking somewhere in Awakening the Zodiac, but thanks to a sloppy script, wayward direction, and an indifferent approach to the Zodiac killer himself (by the end he’s just a generic movie-made serial killer), this never gets out of first gear, and settles for trundling along and signposting each narrative development with all the skill and style of a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.

Home Again (2017) / D: Hallie Meyers-Shyer / 97m

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Michael Sheen, Candice Bergen, Pico Alexander, Jon Rudnitzky, Nat Wolff, Lake Bell

Rating: 7/10 – when middle-aged fledgling interior designer Alice (Witherspoon) splits from her unreliable husband (Sheen), the last thing she expects to do is allow three young men trying to break into the movie business to move into her guest house – and then become romantically involved with one of them (Alexander); it’s hard to criticise Home Again because despite it being almost drama-free and the very definition of innocuous, it also just wants to give audiences a good time, and on that very basic level it succeeds, but it’s still possibly the most lightweight romantic comedy of 2017.

Downsizing (2017) / D: Alexander Payne / 135m

Cast: Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig, Rolf Lassgård, Udo Kier, Søren Pilmark, Jason Sudeikis

Rating: 5/10 – the answer to the world’s population crisis is revealed to be shrinking people to the point where they’re five inches tall, something that sad-sack occupational therapist Paul Safranek (Damon) agrees to with alacrity, but being small proves to be no different from being normal-sized, and soon Paul is having to re-think everything he’s ever thought or believed; a closer examination of Downsizing (under a microscope perhaps) reveals a movie that contains too many scenes that pass by without contributing anything to the overall storyline, and a satirical approach to the idea itself that lacks purpose, and sadly for Payne fans, his trademark wit, making it all a dreary, leaden experience that goes on for waaaaaay too long.

Family Fever (2014) / D: Nico Sommer / 71m

Original title: Familien fieber

Cast: Kathrin Waligura, Peter Trabner, Deborah Kaufmann, Jörg Witte, Jan Amazigh Sid, Anais Urban

Rating: 7/10 – when two sets of parents get together for the weekend at the request of their respective children (who are a couple), none of them are able to deal with the fallout that comes with the revelation of a secret that threatens the security of both marriages; a German comedy/drama that doesn’t always go where the viewer might expect it to, Family Fever revels in the awkwardness and frustration felt by its quartet of main characters, and though it sadly runs out of steam in the last fifteen minutes, by then it’s done more than enough to provide plenty of wicked laughs and affecting drama.

Coco (2017) / D: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina / 105m

Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renee Victor, Jaime Camil, Alfonso Arau

Rating: 8/10 – Miguel (Gonzalez) is a young boy whose family has rejected any kind of music in order to focus on selling shoes, which leads him into all sorts of trouble in the Underworld on Mexico’s Day of the Dead, trouble that could also mean his never returning to the land of the living; right now you’re never quite sure how a Pixar movie is going to work out, but Coco is a treat, its mix of clever character design, beautifully rendered animation (naturally), heartfelt storylines, and memorable songs making it one to savour time and again… though, be warned, you will be in tears towards the end.

Darkest Hour (2017) / D: Joe Wright / 125m

Cast: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Stephen Dillane, Ben Mendelsohn, Ronald Pickup, Nicholas Jones, Samuel West

Rating: 8/10 – it’s 1940 and Great Britain is faced with a challenge: who is to lead them against the fast-approaching menace of the Nazis, and if it has to be Winston Churchill (Oldman), then what can be done to undermine him and his authority?; the answer is quite a bit – for the most part – but history is firm on Churchill’s success, and so Darkest Hour, while featuring a superb performance from Oldman, has no choice but to succumb to retelling events that have already been retold numerous times before, and in doing so doesn’t offer the viewer anything new except for a number of very good performances and assured, and surprisingly sinewy direction from Wright.

Message from the King (2016) / D: Fabrice du Welz / 102m

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Luke Evans, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Natalie Martinez, Arthur Darbinyan, Lucan Melkonian, Diego Josef, Tom Felton, Chris Mulkey, Jake Weary

Rating: 5/10 – when his younger sister dies in suspicious circumstances in Los Angeles, South African cab driver Jacob King (Boseman) travels there to find out who caused her death and why – and exact revenge; a throwback to the kind of blaxploitation movies made in the Seventies, Message from the King at least refers to King as an angry brother in the traditional sense, but the movie’s plot is hollow, and the likes of Evans and Molina are wasted in roles that might have seemed fresh (again) in the Seventies, but here feel like caricatures for the movie to focus on in between bouts of King exacting his violent revenge.

The Commuter (2018) / D: Jaume Collet-Serra / 105m

Cast: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern, Killian Scott, Shazad Latif, Andy Nyman, Clara Lago, Roland Møller, Florence Pugh

Rating: 4/10 – ex-cop turned insurance salesman Michael MacCauley (Neeson) is approached by a mysterious woman (Farmiga) on his train home and tasked with finding a complete stranger who’s also on the train – what could possibly go wrong?; everything as it turns out, with The Commuter going off the rails soon after, and never getting back on track, something confirmed (if there was any doubt before then) when the script throws in an “I’m Spartacus/I’m Brian” moment (take your pick), as well as reminding everyone that Neeson really is too old for this kind of thing.

The Post (2017) / D: Steven Spielberg / 116m

Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, David Cross, Zach Woods, Pat Healy

Rating: 9/10 – the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the level of deceit the US government had perpetrated on its citizens about its involvement in Vietnam, is explored through the days leading up to the Washington Times‘ courageous decision to publish despite the threat of imprisonment for treason that the White House was prepared to enforce; Streep is publisher Kay Graham, Hanks is legendary editor Ben Bradlee, and Spielberg is on excellent form, giving The Post a sense of immediacy and potency that other historical dramas can only dream of (and the relevance to today’s US political scene doesn’t even need to be made obvious).

The Open House (2018) / D: Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote / 94m

Cast: Dylan Minnette, Piercey Dalton, Patricia Bethune, Sharif Atkins, Aaron Abrams, Edward Olson, Katie Walder

Rating: 3/10 – a recent widow (Dalton) and her mopey son (Minnette) get away from their grief and their problems at a house that’s up for sale – and find strange things going on there right from the start; an awful thriller that just refuses to make any sense or make either of its two main characters sympathetic, The Open House does everything it can to make you look away… and not in a good way.

Pan (2015) or: One More Unnecessary Origin Movie

16 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Amanda Seyfried, Blackbeard, Captain Hook, Drama, Fairies, Fantasy, Garrett Hedlund, Hugh Jackman, J.M. Barrie, Joe Wright, Lambert Home for Boys, Levi Miller, Neverland, Peter Pan, Pirates, Review, Rooney Mara, Tiger Lily, World War II

D: Joe Wright / 111m

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Levi Miller, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Amanda Seyfried, Adeel Akhtar, Nonso Anozie, Kathy Burke, Lewis MacDougall, Cara Delevingne

Let’s cut to the chase: Pan, by itself, is a disappointment, an uneven children’s fantasy movie that is disjointed, awkwardly humorous, suffers from production overkill, and makes very little sense throughout. But unfortunately, Pan isn’t just a movie by itself, it’s an origin story for a beloved children’s tale that didn’t need it in the first place.

In recent years, Hollywood has given us origin story after origin story in an attempt to expand franchises and add “depth” to existing stories. Last year we had Maleficent, a movie that tried to rewrite the Sleeping Beauty story to make its Wicked Queen a more sympathetic character, as if somebody somewhere had decided that a Wicked Queen couldn’t just be a Wicked Queen; no, there had to be a good reason why she was a Wicked Queen. And now we get to see how a foundling called Peter became the high-flying leader of the Lost Boys, Peter Pan. But did we need to? Perhaps there’s a clue in the fact that J.M. Barrie, who created Peter Pan, never felt the need to go back and provide an origin story for him. And if he didn’t feel the need to, do we really need to know either?

But Hollywood knows better (or so they like to think), and now we have an origin story anyway, but one that’s been given so little thought it’s frightening given all the talent involved in making it. You only have to watch the first five minutes of Pan to know that the makers have got it completely, spectacularly wrong. The scene is London, between the two World Wars. An unidentified young woman, clearly scared and frightened that she’s being followed, carries an infant with her until she reaches the doorstep of the Lambert Home for Boys. There she leaves him but not before she’s told him that they’ll meet again, in this world or another. Already there’s a problem: why does the woman abandon her son so recklessly (it’s not the most pleasant-looking of orphanages) and if he’s in as much danger as she seems to think, why take the risk of leaving him in such an awful place?

We fast forward twelve years and find the infant has grown up to be Peter (Miller), and he’s still at the orphanage (surprise, surprise), and he’s a bright, confident child who has no problem challenging authority, in this case Kathy Burke’s snarling, growling, thoroughly unpleasant Sister Barnabas. At this point the movie introduces a superfluous subplot involving Sister Barnabas hoarding goods before Peter and some of the orphans are kidnapped by pirates who descend through the skylights on bungee cords (the dormitory is located conveniently in the roofspace). Now correct me if I’m wrong, but this now makes the woman’s decision to leave Peter there a tad careless, as she’s placed him in the very place that her adversary – who we learn is the pirate Blackbeard (Jackman) – is stealing children from. (What it is to be undone by unforeseen coincidence…)

Once in Neverland, the movie takes a left turn by introducing Blackbeard and his merry band of pirates, and what looks like thousands of Lost Boys, as they indulge in a bit of a sing-song. The song in question turns out to be Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, an anachronistic choice that serves only to remind viewers just how well this sort of thing was done in A Knight’s Tale (2001) (and begs the question, does Blackbeard time travel as well for his Lost Boys?). From then on, and despite the introduction of James Hook (Hedlund) (also trapped by Blackbeard), and Tiger Lily (Mara), the princess of the natives, and a plot involving Blackbeard’s determined efforts to wipe out all the fairies (don’t ask why – the movie doesn’t), Pan becomes the Hugh Jackman larger-than-life performance movie as he struts and rampages and roars his way through things with all the gusto of a pantomime villain. It’s not a bad performance per se, it’s just in the wrong movie.

As you’d expect, Neverland is beautifully, stunningly realised, and is a triumph of art direction, set construction, costume design, and special effects, but ultimately it all makes for a hollow confection, an empty shell that the narrative flits and jumps around without any clear idea of where it’s going or why. With the fairies hidden from Blackbeard’s grasp, and of course with Peter as his unwitting accomplice in getting to them, it comes as no surprise that the script shows the fairies completely able to defend themselves from Blackbeard and his men, thus ending any idea that the pirate’s intentions were in any way a threat. It’s not the first time in the movie that the viewer is likely to be wondering why something is happening, or if it’s likely to be explained (usually not).

Pan is a movie that should be included in the ever-growing number of movies that come under the heading, Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should. Joe Wright’s direction is focused largely on the cast, and while he’s obviously let Jackman do his own thing, he does allow Mara to give a decent performance, and Miller is suitably stout-hearted as Peter, even if he does take everything in his stride a little too easily. And Hedlund acts more by smiling roguishly than actually emoting, but it’s still a likeable portrayal. The only trouble is, Hook is a character who lacks for development, and remains the same from beginning to end.

Pan‘s terrible performance at the box office – so far it’s only grossed $125m against a budget of $150m – will hopefully discourage other studios/production companies from messing with other established, classic stories. These stories are so well-regarded for a reason: they work independently of any others and in many cases are archetypal and don’t need further embellishment or expansion. Such is the case with Barrie’s tale of the boy who never grew up, and Pan serves only to reinforce what a foolhardy idea it is to try.

Rating: 4/10 – lacking a true sense of childlike wonder, or focus in the story it’s telling, Pan is the movie equivalent of pudding: rich, stolid, and if you’ve had too much, weighing too heavily for comfort; another unsatisfactory, unnecessary origin story that shows just how difficult it is to get these things right, and especially when there’s no real need to.