Widows (2018)

08 Thursday Nov 2018

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Chicago, Colin Farrell, Crime, Cynthia Erivo, Drama, Elizabeth Debicki, Literary adaptation, Michelle Rodriguez, Review, Steve McQueen, Thriller, Viola Davis

D: Steve McQueen / 130m

Cast: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Carrie Coon, Garret Dillahunt, Lukas Haas, Kevin J. O’Connor, Jacki Weaver, Matt Walsh, Adepero Oduye, Robert Duvall, Liam Neeson

In the wake of her husband’s death in a heist gone wrong, Veronica Rawlings (Davis) finds herself in a whole lot of trouble. Her husband, Harry (Neeson), along with three of his friends – all career criminals – stole two million dollars from gang boss Jamal Manning (Henry), and though his money is gone, he expects Veronica to pay him back within a month. With no money of her own, and only a notebook Harry left her that gives details of his previous heists – and the one he had planned next – Veronica decides her only option is to contact the wives of the other men in Harry’s gang, and persuade them to help her carry out his next robbery, which will net them a cool five million. Two of the women, Linda Perelli (Rodriguez) and Alice Gunner (Debicki), agree to help, but the fourth, Amanda (Coon), isn’t interested. Needing four of them to carry out the heist, Linda recruits her babysitter, Belle (Erivo). They move forward with the plan, but are unaware that they’re being watched…

An adaptation of Lynda La Plante’s novel, Steve McQueen’s latest movie is an odd beast indeed, quite formal in its approach, but with occasional directorial flourishes to remind the viewer that this isn’t just a heist movie, it’s a serious heist movie, unlike, say, Ocean’s Eight (2018). Here, lives are at stake, and the cost of failure is unthinkable. It’s a dour, earnest movie that explores notions of sexism, political expediency (care of a subplot surrounding a ward campaign involving Farrell’s reformist alderman versus Henry’s aspiring gang boss), proto-feminism, spousal betrayal, and personal legacies. The script, by McQueen and author Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, Sharp Objects), is adroitly constructed, but though the pair have worked hard to bring the characters to life and present them against a credible backdrop (well, as credible as these kinds of movies can manage), there’s not much here that will either come as a surprise, or which doesn’t follow in an expected order. Even if you’re not familiar with La Plante’s novel, or the original British TV series, the few twists and turns in the narrative won’t have much of an impact, and getting through the movie almost becomes a tick box exercise.

That’s not to say, however, that the movie is bad, or disappointing, just oddly straightforward and dramatically sincere without ever rising above the expectations of the genre. Perhaps this kind of story has been told too many times before for McQueen to provide us with anything fresh or new. And there’s the small matter of Davis’ and Debicki’s characters having more screen time than Rodriguez’ and Erivo’s. This lop-sided approach to the main quartet seems a little counter-intuitive in a movie that seems to be promoting female solidarity, and often, some character beats are cut short in order to move on to the next phase of the heist and its planning. On the agnate side, the likes of Duvall, Kaluuya and Dillahunt are saddled with perfunctory, under-developed secondary roles, while Farrell does his best to make sense of a character whose ambivalent motives rarely make sense. Thankfully, Davis and Debicki are on hand to provide two excellent performances. That Davis is so good is a given, but it’s Debicki who shines the most, imbuing Alice with a steely survivor’s determination to make life better for herself that is both complex and credible; whenever she’s on screen, she holds the audience’s attention in a vice-like grip. That the rest of the movie doesn’t manage to do this, is again, something of a surprise, but in playing out as expected, it doesn’t disappoint entirely. Instead it’s a respectable effort that isn’t as memorable as we all might have hoped.

Rating: 7/10 – despite all the effort and all the talent involved, Widows lacks the kind of verve needed to make the thriller elements thrill, and the dramatic elements resonate; McQueen directs as if his brief was to be a pair of safe hands, and though it’s technically well put together, somewhere along the way, any idea of elevating the material doesn’t appear to have been acted on.

Galveston (2018)

29 Monday Oct 2018

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Beau Bridges, Ben Foster, Crime, Drama, Elle Fanning, Literary adaptation, Lung condition, Mélanie Laurent, Mob enforcer, Review, Texas, Thriller

D: Mélanie Laurent / 93m

Cast: Ben Foster, Elle Fanning, Beau Bridges, C.K. McFarland, Robert Aramayo, Adepero Oduye, María Valverde, Lili Reinhart

An enforcer for a local crime boss (Bridges), Roy Cady (Foster) finds out he has a lung condition but he refuses to have treatment for it. On the same day he’s given a job to scare a local lawyer into staying silent on a case that his boss is involved with; he’s also advised not to take a gun. Roy ignores this instruction, which proves fortuitous as it’s a set up that’s meant to see him killed and framed for the lawyer’s murder. Fleeing with Rocky (Fanning), a young girl he finds at the scene, Roy deliberates on what to do next, but before he can decide, Rocky persuades him to take her home so she can pick up some things. Circumstances mean that Rocky returns with her three year old sister, Tiffany, and the trio end up staying at a motel. There, Roy tries to work out the importance of some paperwork he found at the lawyer’s house, while a bond develops between him, Rocky, and her sister. He’s also approached by another resident at the motel, Tray (Aramayo), about taking part in a robbery at a local pharmacy, but it’s when the truth emerges about Rocky’s home visit that their lives are put in even further jeopardy…

For the first twenty minutes of Galveston, it’s business as usual as Foster’s brooding, moody mob enforcer acts in a brooding, moody manner in a movie that looks as if it’s going to be brooding and moody all the way through. But once Roy has been forced to rely on his violent proclivities, and he flees the lawyer’s home with Rocky in tow, the movie takes a left turn away from the kind of modern noir it looks and feels like, and becomes a different beast altogether. That noir feeling hangs around in the background waiting to be employed again, but not before the storyline morphs into a relationship drama that sees Roy become a de facto father figure to Rocky and Tiffany, and while he also explores – albeit hesitantly – his impending mortality. As Roy learns to be responsible for someone other than himself, the movie settles down into a melancholy groove that sees Rocky reveal a tragic past, and fate catch up with both of them. That this all takes up most of the movie’s running time, and the various plot strands are all tied up with almost indecent haste in the final twenty minutes, makes for a thriller that avoids being a thriller as much as it possibly can.

Part of this is undoubtedly due to the movie’s structure, and a script that was originally written by Nic Pizzolatto (who also wrote the novel from which this is adapted), but which received “contributions” from Laurent that led to Pizzolatto leaving the project (he’s credited under the pseudonym Jim Hammett). Whatever Laurent’s “contributions” were, the end result is a movie that underwhelms during its extended middle section, and which often strives for relevance in terms of its characters and the situation they find themselves in. Though Foster is as convincing as ever, this is still a role he could play in his sleep, that of the taciturn loner gradually brought out of his shell. But this time around his performance is in service to a story that doesn’t develop his character fully enough to make audiences care enough about his belated attempts at redemption. Likewise, Fanning is stranded in a role that gives Rocky little to do except make terrible decisions without ever learning from them. Laurent’s direction is uneven too, with individual scenes carrying much more weight than others (or the movie as a whole), and while the whole thing benefits from Arnaud Potier’s striking cinematography, the movie remains a frustrating exercise that never quite catches fire in the way it promises.

Rating: 6/10 – Foster and Fanning are a great pairing, but with both of them shackled by a script that doesn’t examine their characters’ relationship too closely, or exploit its potential, Galveston fails to impress in the manner that Laurent may have been hoping for; one to approach with caution then, but with sufficient bursts of the movie it could have been to make it an occasionally interesting experience.

Juliet, Naked (2018)

28 Sunday Oct 2018

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Chris O'Dowd, Comedy, Drama, Ethan Hawke, Jesse Peretz, Literary adaptation, Musician, Review, Romantic comedy, Rose Byrne, Sandcliff, Tucker Crowe

D: Jesse Peretz / 97m

Cast: Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke, Chris O’Dowd, Azhy Robertson, Lily Brazier, Ayoola Smart, Phil Davis

For Duncan Thomson (O’Dowd), there is only one recording artist of any merit: Tucker Crowe (Hawke), a singer-songwriter who twenty years before walked away from a promising career as a musician after making a highly regarded first album called Juliet. Duncan has set up a blog site dedicated to Crowe and his short-lived career, and this takes up most of his spare time. Which doesn’t leave much room for his partner, Annie (Byrne). Having been together for fifteen years, Annie is beginning to realise that Duncan isn’t going to change, and things such as having children, or cutting back on the time he spends in Crowe-land, aren’t going to happen. When Duncan receives a CD that contains demo versions of the tracks on Juliet, the fact that she listens to it first causes a row between them. This leads to Annie posting a disparaging review of the demo versions on Duncan’s blog, which in turn leads to Annie receiving a response from Tucker himself. They begin corresponding (a fact that Annie keeps to herself), and soon find they’re able to be really honest with each other about their lives. And then Tucker reveals that he’s coming to London…

An adaptation of the novel by Nick Hornby, Juliet, Naked is one of the most easy-going romantic comedies of recent years. Treading a delicate path between meandering introspection and trifling whimsy, it’s a movie that could be the very cinematic definition of flimsy, so thin is its storyline and narrative arc. It’s also a movie that will have you wondering out loud about the characters and their pasts, and how they’ve come to be leading their lives now, from Tucker’s slacker muso and proto-dad, to Annie’s emotionally doused museum manager. Both Tucker and Annie seem to be treading water, waiting for someone or something to come along and free them from the traps they’ve fallen into. Tucker has allowed his talent to fray to nothing through fear of responsibility, while Annie has gone the opposite route and allowed responsibility to wither her creativity. They’re practically perfect for each other, albeit in an anodyne, nondescript fashion that makes their inevitable romance as cautious as they both are with everything else. Only Duncan remains true to himself throughout, even if he is thoroughly self-absorbed and operating entirely out of self-interest. Selfish he may be, but at least he’s doing what he really wants.

Thankfully, and despite the often vapid nature of the whole venture, the movie is rescued from being overwhelmingly twee by a trio of performances that elevate the material and make the characters more than the slavishly opaque stereotypes that the script – by Evgenia Peretz, Jim Taylor and Tamara Jenkins – seems determined to make them. Byrne makes Annie gentle yet resilient, put upon perhaps but not entirely a victim, and willing to take a stand when she needs to. Hawke plays Tucker as a man adrift from his own life but also willing to make amends for the mistakes he’s made; it’s a carefully crafted portrayal that Hawke pulls off with ease. O’Dowd appears to have the hardest task of all, that of making Duncan more than the arrogant, annoying arse that he clearly is, but there’s no small amount of pathos in his performance, and Duncan emerges as more rounded than expected. Elsewhere, Tucker’s family issues occupy a good deal of the running time, and though they feel very much like the movie’s token dramatic thread, they at least offset the predictable nature of the romantic elements. Peretz directs with an emphasis on keeping things light and airy, and succeeds in making both the romance and the comedy as agreeable as possible, but in the end, at the expense of achieving anything new or different.

Rating: 7/10 – so thin it’s almost diaphanous, Juliet, Naked is a tribute to the efforts of its cast and director in making a movie that borders constantly on being insubstantial without actually crossing that line; engaging enough to be enjoyable without being anywhere near memorable, it’s a light-hearted tale told with a sprinkling of playfulness that makes it all the more tolerable, and on this occasion, that’s entirely okay.

A Brief Word About The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

26 Friday Oct 2018

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Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas, Hill House, Horror, Literary adaptation, Mike Flanagan, Netflix, Shirley Jackson, TV series

Although thedullwoodexperiment is primarily (and until now exclusively) about movies, there’s a 10-part TV series showing on Netflix at the moment that should be required viewing for anyone with even a passing interest in horror movies or the horror genre in general. That series is – you guessed it – The Haunting of Hill House. An expansion of the novel by Shirley Jackson, the series tells the story of the Crain family, and their experiences both living in Hill House in the early Nineties, and twenty-six years later when the influence of the house begins to make itself felt again. The story of the Crains is told in non-linear fashion with many scenes told from various perspectives and meshing between the past and the present. It features a terrific cast that includes Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas, Timothy Hutton, Michiel Huisman, Elizabeth Reaser, Kate Siegel, Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Victoria Pedretti as the Crain family, and is the brainchild of Mike Flanagan, the director of Oculus (2013), Before I Wake (2016), and Gerald’s Game (2017).

The series is quite simply one of the best things on TV at the moment: gripping, compelling, scary, finely written and directed (Flanagan directs all ten episodes), and replete with the kind of fluid camerawork that allows for increasing moments of dread in every episode. As the camera spins around the characters, or prowls the corridors and rooms of Hill House, each movement prompts the question, just what fresh horror is going to be revealed next? The series is also one of the finest examinations of the devastating effects that grief and loss can have on individuals that’s come along in a very long while. Alongside themes of mental illness, paranoia, and addiction, this is only occasionally played for laughs, and instead focuses on keeping audiences on the edge of their seats and hiding behind the nearest available cushion. With ghosts and apparitions likely to appear at any time and in any circumstance, watching the show becomes something of a challenge to get through if you’re easily spooked. But it’s definitely worth it. If you haven’t seen it yet, then give it a try – you won’t regret it.

On the Road #1 – The Fundamentals of Caring (2016)

21 Sunday Oct 2018

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Comedy, Craig Roberts, Drama, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Literary adaptation, Paul Rudd, Review, Road trip, Roadside attractions, Rob Burnett, Selena Gomez

D: Rob Burnett / 97m

Cast: Paul Rudd, Craig Roberts, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Ehle, Megan Ferguson, Julia Denton, Frederick Weller, Bobby Cannavale

Ben Benjamin (Rudd) is a retired writer who takes a course to become a caregiver in order to support himself. He has a wife, Janet (Denton), but they’re in the process of getting divorced. Ben’s first job is to look after Trevor (Roberts), an eighteen year old suffering from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, while his mother, Elsa (Ehle), is at work. As the two get to know each other, Ben becomes aware that Trevor has a fascination for roadside attractions, particularly the World’s Deepest Pit. Ben suggests they take a road trip to the Pit and take in some other attractions along the way. Trevor wants to but is scared of leaving his home, while Elsa has her own worries about his safety. In the end, he and Trevor set off on a trip that will take them a week. On the way, they give a lift to Dot (Gomez), who’s hitchhiking to Denver to restart her life after the death of her mother, and later to Peaches (Ferguson), a young pregnant woman heading home to Nebraska. But it’s Trevor’s determination to visit his absent father in Salt Lake City that changes the nature of the trip indelibly…

The road trip movie is a staple of American movie making, the country’s wide open highways and variety of physical locations often providing a vivid backdrop for what is usually a journey of self-discovery. Adapted from the novel, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison, this is yet another movie that takes that basic set up and offers a mix of heartfelt drama and sprightly humour as it plays out its simple storyline. This is a straightforward, no frills, no surprises feature that ticks all the boxes dramatically and comedically for this kind of movie, but which does so in such an inoffensive, pedestrian, but likeable manner that it’s hard not to approve of it, even though a lot of the time you’ll be wondering, Is this it? At first, Ben is out of his depth, but soon becomes adept at caring for Trevor, while Trevor’s initial snarky behaviour (and practical jokes) soon transforms into a respect for Ben that he hasn’t shown toward any of his previous carers. So far, so predictable then, but it’s the lightness of Burnett’s direction, and the relaxed performances of Rudd and Roberts that help offset any criticism. For once, a movie’s benign approach to the material makes it all the more enjoyable.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t address some serious issues along the way, because it does. Ben has a tragic past that is affecting his divorce; Trevor wants to resolve the emotional issues he has surrounding his father (who left when he was diagnosed at the age of three); Dot has her own father issues; and there are minor shout outs to the quality of disabled access at roadside attractions, depression, self-imposed guilt, and betrayal. But again, this isn’t a heavy drama, rather it’s a movie that makes its points with a laidback approach that suits the material and which is content to explore these matters with a restraint that underscores the characters’ emotional states throughout, and with a subtlety that’s refreshing. That old phrase, Less Is More, applies here, even when the material does thin out alarmingly in places, but it always slips back on track, thanks to the solid work of its cast, Burnett’s sense of rhythm and pace, and evocative camerawork by DoP Giles Nuttgens. The whole thing ends on a perfect coda, as well, one that will viewers away feeling good about the movie and having seen it in the first place. And what more could you ask for…?

Rating: 7/10 – anyone expecting a movie with the kind of depth that the World’s Deepest Pit might be a metaphor for, will find The Fundamentals of Caring to be anything but; however, it’s a lovely movie full of bright moments and with good intentions, and though you can accuse it of being slight and innocuous, on this occasion, these are actually strengths that make the movie more than it seems at first glance.

22 July (2018)

12 Friday Oct 2018

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Anders Danielsen Lie, Bombing, Drama, Jonas Strand Gravli, Literary adaptation, Norway, Paul Greengrass, Review, Terrorist attack, True story, Utøya Island

D: Paul Greengrass / 144m

Cast: Anders Danielsen Lie, Jonas Strand Gravli, Jon Øigarden, Maria Bock, Thorbjørn Harr, Seda Witt, Isak Bakli Algen, Ola G. Furuseth

On 22 July 2011, a right-wing extremist named Anders Behring Breivik (Lie) carried out two acts of domestic terrorism in Norway. In the first, he set off a bomb outside the executive government quarter in Oslo. Less than two hours later, at a summer camp on Utøya Island, he shot and killed dozens of the people there, most of whom were teenagers. With the two attacks, Breivik killed a total of seventy-seven people and injured over three hundred others. Breivik surrendered to police on Utøya, and was soon charged with carrying out both attacks. His lawyer, Geir Lippestad (Øigarden), suggested that Breivik opt for a defense based on insanity, and Breivik was assessed by psychiatrists who diagnosed him as being a “paranoid schizophrenic”. But at trial, and even though the prosecution had to accept the diagnosis (which would potentially have seen Breivik committed to an institution rather than prison), Breivik realised this would blunt the message he wanted to make. Insisting that he wasn’t insane, Breivik made it clear he was fully cognisant of his actions, and that he carried out the attacks out of a sense of necessity…

Any retelling of a tragedy of the scale of the 2011 Norway attacks needs a sensitive approach, and it’s no suprise that when the movie was first announced, a campaign to stop its production was raised, and 20,000 signatures were generated. But those who didn’t want to see the movie made needn’t have worried, because 22 July is as restrained and as unsensational as you could possibly get. Thanks to an intelligent, well-constructed script (by Paul Greengrass), and equally intelligent, perceptive direction, this adaptation of Åsne Seierstad’s book, One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway – and Its Aftermath, is less about the terrorist attacks and more about what happened in their wake, from the trial of Breivik and its conclusion, to the physical, mental and emotional rehabilitation of a (fictional) survivor of the Utøya shootings, Viljar Hanssen (Gravli), to the ways in which Norway as a country dealt with the horror of such events happening on its native soil. Successfully mixing the broader details of this last with the personal details of Viljar’s struggle to regain his sense of self, and Breivik’s self-aggrandising polemical references, Greengrass avoids any potential accusations of unnecessary melodrama, and opts instead for a quiet sincerity that permeates the whole movie.

What this gives us is a movie that approaches the material in a patient matter-of-fact way that eschews the need for tension or more traditional thriller elements, but which does pack several emotional punches into its structure. Like much of the movie, these moments are quietly devastating, often coming out of the characters’ need to understand what happened and, more importantly, why it happened to them. To his credit, Greengrass doesn’t offer very many answers, and it’s this sense of confusion that carries much of the movie’s middle section, as conversely, it becomes clear that whatever larger motivations Breivik may have had, notoriety seems to be the one that he’s most comfortable with (there’s a horrible moment where he complains casually about a cut to his finger caused by a “skull fragment” from one of his victims). Lie is excellent in the role: smug, condescending, without an ounce of remorse, and chillingly banal; Breivik might not be a paranoid schizophrenic, but in Lie’s interpretation, he’s definitely got some kind of dissociative disorder. Gravli is equally compelling as the good-natured teen forced into some very dark corners through being a survivor, and Øigarden displays Lippestad’s patient forbearance of his client with great skill and diplomacy. In fact, this is that rare cast where everyone is on top form, and as they’re all Norwegian, that’s something that couldn’t have been better.

Rating: 8/10 – with only a tendency to drag during a middle section that repeats a number of encounters and narrative discursions to be held against it, 22 July is further proof that Paul Greengrass is one of the best writer/directors currently making movies; insightful and incisive, he’s crafted a movie that does full justice to the terrible events of that fateful day, and he does so with great skill and an abundance of straightforward honesty, something that should placate all those who didn’t want the movie made in the first place.

Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)

24 Monday Sep 2018

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Alejandro Jodorowsky, Documentary, Frank Herbert, Frank Pavich, H.R. Giger, Literary adaptation, Michel Seydoux, Pre-production, Review, Salvador Dali, Sci-fi

D: Frank Pavich / 90m

With: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Michel Seydoux, Chris Foss, H.R. Giger, Jean-Paul Gibon, Brontis Jodorowsky, Nicolas Winding Refn, Richard Stanley, Devin Faraci, Diane O’Bannon, Gary Kurtz, Amanda Lear

Following the success of The Holy Mountain (1973), Chilean-French movie maker Alejandro Jodorowsky was given carte blanche by his producing partner, Michel Seydoux, to make another movie. Jodorowsky chose to adapt Frank Herbert’s Dune, a sci-fi novel that was deemed unfilmable. Ploughing forward irregardless, Jodorowsky set about assembling the people he needed to help him realise his dream of making the finest sci-fi movie ever. Setting up a pre-production unit in Paris, he enlisted the talents of artists and designers Chris Foss, Jean Giraud (aka Moebius), and H.R. Giger, brought on board Dan O’Bannon to handle the special effects, and approached both Pink Floyd and French progressive rock band Magma to provide the score. His ambition produced a script complete with extensive storyboards and concept art that was sent to all the major studios, and which, as Herbert himself put it, was “the size of a phone book”, and would have meant a movie lasting around fourteen hours. In the end, none of the studios was willing to finance Jodorowsky’s epic vision, and the unrealised movie is one of cinema’s great What if’s…

Forty years after its production was prematurely halted, the idea of a version of Dune directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky remains a tantalising prospect. The size and scope of Jodorowsky’s ambition is evidenced by his determination to have only the best working on the project (though O’Bannon was recruited after Douglas Trumbull proved less “spiritual” than Jodorowsky would have liked). This extended to his casting of Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen, David Carradine as Duke Leto Atreides, and bizarrely, Salvador Dali as Emperor Shaddam IV (Dali negotiated his way to being paid $100,000 a minute for his role, little realising he would only be in the movie for a maximum of five minutes). Jodorowsky’s enthusiasm for the project is reflected in the passion he evinces even now, looking back on a period that saw him at the height of his creativity, and which, if it had been made, would have been a sci-fi epic like none before it. Some of the storyboard sequences have been animated for this documentary, and while they’re necessarily rough, they give more than enough of an idea of what Jodorowsky was aiming for. Whatever else the movie may have been, it would definitely have been as visually arresting as his previous works.

In the end, and while Jodorowsky may well have been the best director to adapt Herbert’s weighty novel, the irony is that the studios didn’t trust him, and each one baulked at his insistence on filming his script as written. Ever the uncompromising auteur, Jodorowsky was the unwitting author of his downfall, and it’s this that gives Pavich’s astutely handled documentary a touch of unexpected pathos. (It also leads to the movie’s funniest moment when Jodorowsky recounts seeing David Lynch’s 1984 version and finding himself relieved to learn that it was terrible; his unaffected glee is terrific.) Pavich assembles as many eye witnesses as he can to flesh out Jodorowsky’s remembrances, and there’s a wealth of detail in there, as well as heartfelt appreciations from the likes of fellow directors Refn and Stanley. And for a movie that was never made, the documentary shows just how influential it’s been, just as Pavich et al make the case for Jodorowsky’s unfinished Dune as being a lost or missing masterpiece. What seems clear is that, whatever form it might ultimately have taken, it would have changed the face of sci-fi forever – and we might be living in a world where Star Wars (1977) is known more as an imitator than a trailblazer.

Rating: 8/10 – though there are times when you wonder just how Jodorowsky was going to pull it all off, Jodorowsky’s Dune remains an absorbing examination of one man’s impassioned creative ambition and what could have been; Jodorowsky is an engaging, mercurial presence, and this is a compelling, if at times bittersweet, tribute to a man who, like Frank Herbert, has the ability to create new worlds from his own imagination.

The Little Stranger (2018)

22 Saturday Sep 2018

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Charlotte Rampling, Domhnall Gleeson, Drama, Hundreds Hall, Lenny Abrahamson, Literary adaptation, Mystery, Review, Ruth Wilson, Supernatural, Will Poulter

D: Lenny Abrahamson / 111m

Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Will Poulter, Charlotte Rampling, Liv Hill, Anna Madeley, Richard McCabe

In the wake of World War II, Dr Faraday (Gleeson), a recently appointed country doctor, is called to Hundreds Hall, a sprawling estate that he once visited as a child. There he meets the owners, the Ayres – the mother (Rampling), and her two children, Roderick (Poulter) and Caroline (Wilson). The main house is gloomy and in a state of decay that speaks of prolonged financial difficulties for the family. Roderick is in charge, but he also has to contend with severe injuries he received as a pilot in the war. When Faraday offers to provide some palliative care for Roderick, it’s also so that he can see Caroline, but as he begins to spend more and more time at the Hall, so he becomes aware that all is not well there. The Ayres’ believe there is a supernatural presence in the house, one that is targeting them one by one. Faraday refuses to believe this, but events seem to prove otherwise. As he and Caroline become closer, he’s forced to consider that she really is in danger, and that perhaps there really is a presence in the house…

An adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel, The Little Stranger is a ghost story without a ghost – perhaps – and a mystery that remains a mystery once the movie has ended. Whether or not this is a good thing will be down to the individual, as Lucinda Coxon’s screenplay deals in ambiguity and narrative sleight-of-hand at several key moments, but what it does mean is that the mystery of what is happening at Hundreds Hall plays out like a riddle that no one is meant to unravel. There are clues to be had, and some of what is shown can be taken at face value, but the script, in conjunction with Abrahamson’s measured, calculating direction, is more concerned with atmosphere and mood than with providing answers. This makes for a somewhat disconcerting viewing experience as scenes that build tension dissipate quickly once they’re established, and Ole Bratt Birkeland’s precision-tooled cinematography – always looking, always probing into the house’s darkest nooks and crannies, and its past – invites observation rather than immersion. There’s a detachment here that stops the viewer from becoming too involved with the Ayres family and their fears, and this despite very good performances from Wilson, Poulter and Rampling as the beleaguered trio.

The reason for all this is the movie’s main theme, that of the rise of post-war socialism and the weakening of the power and influence once wielded by the landed gentry, here represented by the Ayres’ financial downfall, and Faraday’s barely concealed contempt for them. His pursuit of Caroline is less about love than about the need for possession, to have, finally, what he’s wanted ever since he was a child and saw Hundreds Hall in all its former glory. He’s the classic outsider: envious, ambitious, and determined to be on the inside. As played by a never better Gleeson, Faraday is supercilious and self-contained, yet brimming with indignation at the way in which the Ayres’ have let the Hall decline. Coxon and Abrahamson recognise the co-dependency that exists between Faraday and the Ayres’, and it’s this approach, and the way that it develops, that is ultimately more intriguing and compelling than if the movie was merely another haunted house tale. Abrahamson maintains a keen sense of unease in terms of Faraday’s motives, and as the threats to the Ayres’ become more tangible, a more human cause comes to the fore. But again, there’s that overwhelming ambiguity to keep the viewer on their toes, and wondering if what they’re seeing and hearing can be trusted.

Rating: 7/10 – some viewers may find The Little Stranger hard going as Abrahamson adopts an often glacial pace to the material while providing deft psychological insights into the characters and their social positions; with a pervasive sense of time and place, and an air of impending tragedy, it’s a movie that doesn’t trade in the accepted tropes of the genre, but instead, warps them to its own advantage.

Let’s Take a Walk Down Hype Street – Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

16 Sunday Sep 2018

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Comedy, Constance Wu, Drama, Family relationships, Gemma Chan, Henry Golding, Jon M. Chu, Literary adaptation, Michelle Yeoh, Review, Romance, Singapore, Wedding

D: Jon M. Chu / 121m

Cast: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Chris Pang, Jing Lusi, Nico Santos, Ken Jeong, Jimmy O. Yang, Pierre Png

In a summer that’s been dominated (as usual) by superhero movies, tired remakes, and special effects driven action movies, one movie has “broken out” and caught the attention of critics and audiences alike. It’s billed as a romantic comedy – though if there’s ever likely to be a breakout movie each summer it’s likely to be a comedy of some description – and it’s been hailed as not only a breakout movie but a breakthrough movie as well. The movie (surprise!) is Crazy Rich Asians, and it’s the first time since The Joy Luck Club (1993) that any feature has had a predominantly Asian cast (though it appears that an early producer thought it would be a good idea to whitewash the lead character, Rachel). Watching the movie in the wake of all this positive feedback is interesting, partly to see if it can or does live up to the hype it’s received, and partly to see if it succeeds on its own merits. Inevitably, it does and it doesn’t.

Let’s get the casting out of the way first. Perhaps a better way of describing the cast would be to say that they’re of “predominantly Asian heritage”, but that aside, it is good to see the major roles filled by recognisably Asian actors, and especially as the story is set within the confines of a recognisably Asian family and its attendant culture. But if you’ve seen one romantic comedy where the girlfriend or the boyfriend is the outsider who needs to win over a dysfunctional extended family, then much of what’s on offer in Crazy Rich Asians will be very familiar to you. Indeed, the only real difference between this movie and many others is the fact that it is an Asian family that’s on display – and display is perhaps the best word to describe what’s happening. In everyone’s rush to congratulate the movie, they seem to have forgotten that we’ve actually been here before, in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) and its equally culturally exploitative sequel. That the cast is predominantly Asian doesn’t matter when the same romantic comedy tropes and characterisations are trotted out, and when we’re asked to laugh at comic behaviour that’s been seen too often before. It’s not enough to have an ethnic twist when the material remains the same.

And then there’s the whole idea that the movie is a romantic comedy. There is humour in Crazy Rich Asians, much of it delivered by Awkwafina as the kind of quirky best friend to the heroine that seems de rigeuer these days, or Santos’ stereotypical gay fashion designer. But in reality this is a romantic drama that has comic overtones. There are long stretches where the material isn’t even trying to raise a laugh as it seeks to explore ideas of cultural isolationism (or indigenous racism), bitterness, marital betrayal, emotional regret, depression and envy. The obstacles that loved up couple Rachel (Wu) and Nick (Golding) have to overcome lead to some very dramatic sequences, and the hurtful behaviour of Nick’s mother (Yeoh) towards Rachel borders on the perverse. And that’s without a subplot involving Chan as Nick’s sister, Astrid, whose unhappiness causes her to binge shop and hide the purchases from her husband (Png). Perhaps the makers were aware of the darkness inherent in the material from the start, but felt that promoting the movie as a romantic drama wouldn’t attract as many viewers. And therein lies the irony: as a romantic drama it’s much more effective than as a romantic comedy.

Rating: 7/10 – with very good performances in service to a good script, solid direction, and production design that emphasises the opulent above the mundane every time (the wedding is a particular standout), Crazy Rich Asians is let down by its unapologetic sense of cultural appropriation; not as groundbreaking as everyone makes out, it’s still a refreshing change from the usual summer blockbuster fare, but definitely not the movie it’s been hyped up to be.

The Land of Steady Habits (2018)

14 Friday Sep 2018

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Ben Mendelsohn, Comedy, Drama, Drugs, Edie Falco, Father/son relationship, Literary adaptation, Mid-life crisis, Nicole Holofcener, Review, Thomas Mann

D: Nicole Holofcener / 98m

Cast: Ben Mendelsohn, Edie Falco, Thomas Mann, Bill Camp, Connie Britton, Elizabeth Marvel, Michael Gaston, Charlie Tahan

Anders Hill (Mendelsohn) has turned his back on his life as a husband and father, and his work in finance. Divorced and living in a condo, he’s “retired”, but finding it difficult to make his new life work. Casual (and disappointing) hook-ups with women only remind him of his ex-wife, Helene (Falco), and how much he misses her, and the fact that she’s now seeing someone he used to work with, Donny (Camp), makes it even worse. And their son, Preston (Mann), has graduated from university but seems rootless and unwilling to do anything with his life. When Anders is invited to an annual party given by his friends, the Ashfords (Marvel, Gaston), he’s not expected to actually turn up. But he does, and ends up taking drugs with the Ashfords’ son, Charlie (Tahan). When Charlie ends up in hospital that same night, it’s the beginning of an unexpected if not entirely appropriate friendship, while unresolved issues involving Helene and Preston continue to cause friction between the trio, and have a wider effect on Donny and the Ashfords, as well as a woman Anders meets called Barbara (Britton)…

The first movie directed by Nicole Holofcener that doesn’t feature Catherine Keener in the lead role, The Land of Steady Habits is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Ted Thompson. The title refers to the collection of hamlets and towns that dot the Connecticut commuter line, and their similarity to each other. Anders has decided that he no longer wants to be a part of the “rat race”, and that his happiness has been impeded by his job and his marriage and having to be selfless in providing for everyone around him. But Anders is finding that being “free” brings its own set of problems, some that remain from his previous life, and newer ones that add to his woes. It’s clear he’s not happy, and it’s clear that he has no idea of what he’s doing (we first meet him trying to buy ornaments to fill the shelves in his condo; the choices he makes are less than complementary to each other). He wants to retain a connection with Helene but can’t articulate why, while he’s more in tune with Charlie and his issues with his parents than he is with his own son.

All this is handled by Holofcener (who also provides the screenplay) with her customary sincerity and sympathetic approach to each of the characters, and by doing this she manages to avoid making Anders’ story yet another dull tale of an affluent, middle-class man’s mid-life crisis. She’s helped enormously by Mendelsohn’s sensitive and often poignant portrayal of Anders as a man who is at odds with himself and what he needs out of life. Falco is slightly less well served by the material – Helene isn’t given the room to develop as a character – while Mann is terrific as Preston, with rehab in his past and facing an uncertain future. However, the movie is a mixture of drama and comedy that doesn’t always gel convincingly, the relationship between Anders and Charlie is the kind that exists purely in the movies, and there are times when it seems Holofcener has trouble making certain scenes appear relevant. The result is a movie that feels as if it’s holding itself back, and which, despite the cast’s commitment, always seems to be on the verge of saying something profound – without quite knowing just what it is it wants to say.

Rating: 7/10 – a great performance from Mendelsohn ensures The Land of Steady Habits remains watchable throughout, but the patchy material doesn’t always hold up; ultimately it’s a movie that remains likeable even when it’s not living up to its full potential, and it retains a certain charm that is hard to ignore, but a lot will depend on how much emotional dysfunction you can endure – and not just from Anders.

Yardie (2018)

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Aml Ameen, Drama, Drugs, Idris Elba, Jamaica, Literary adaptation, London, Review, Shantol Jackson, Stephen Graham, The Eighties, Thriller

D: Idris Elba / 101m

Cast: Aml Ameen, Shantol Jackson, Stephen Graham, Fraser James, Sheldon Shepherd, Everaldo Creary, Calvin Demba, Naomi Ackie

As a child in Jamaica, Dennis Campbell aka “D” (Ameen), saw his father shot and killed by another child, Clancy, who was never apprehended. His father was trying to broker peace between two rival gangsters, and in the wake of his father’s death, Dennis was taken under the wing of one of them, King Fox (Shepherd). Ten years later, Dennis works for King Fox, but his quick temper keeps getting him into trouble. To keep him from getting into any further trouble, Fox sends Dennis to London, to deliver a package to a local associate of Fox’s called Rico (Graham). But Dennis isn’t impressed by Rico’s mock-Jamaican phrasing and attitude, and decides to keep the package (which contains cocaine) for himself and find another distributor. He’s able to reconnect with his wife, Yvonne (Jackson), and young daughter, and he also becomes involved with a group of friends who want to break into the world of sound system competitions and become DJs. It’s when he discovers that Clancy is now working for Rico that Dennis’s actions begin to cause real problems for him, and for those around him…

Victor Headley’s debut novel, from which this is adapted, was a publishing sensation when it was first released in 1992, and it paved the way for a wave of new black fiction that continues today. Now regarded as something of a “cult” novel, Headley’s debut has been given the big screen treatment, and as perhaps could have been expected, Idris Elba’s debut feature treats the source material with obvious respect and admiration. Beginning in the Seventies in Jamaica, the screenplay by Brock Norman Brock and Martin Stellman shows a time in Dennis’s life when his father was a true source of optimism and inspiration in the face of gang warfare. His father’s death acts as a trigger for the pessimism and violent expression that Dennis displays as a young man, and the script, plus Elba’s confident direction, rightly keeps Dennis away from the path of redemption. Instead, he follows his own vengeful path, even when it means harm being caused to others. The script shows how much his anger has consumed him, and despite the assurances he gives Yvonne of changing things around and leading a better life, these are just empty words that not even he believes.

With such an anti-hero as a lead character, Yardie has something of a distance about it, thanks to Dennis being someone we wouldn’t want to know in real life, and also because he’s choosing a criminal lifestyle when he could do so much more – and has the opportunity to do so. Elba wisely exploits those moments of rare self-reflection that bring Dennis up short, but dramatically they’re not as convincing as they should be as Dennis soon returns to his criminal activities or thirst for revenge. Despite a very good performance by Ameen, Dennis remains a character on too rigid a journey to make him sympathetic, and unfortunately none of the supporting characters are fleshed out enough to make a difference. What we’re left with is a movie that’s well constructed by Elba and his cast and crew, but which fails to connect with its audience on an emotional level. So much of the material, and the narrative, plays out in a connect the dots fashion, leaving little room for spontaneity or surprises, that the movie often feels rote. Perhaps Elba and co have been too respectful and admiring of Headley’s novel, as this adaptation lacks the consistent passion and energy needed to make it work as well as it should.

Rating: 7/10 – though London in the Eighties is recreated with considerable skill, and given vibrant expression by DoP John Conroy (along with recurring visual motifs aplenty), Yardie can’t overcome the lack of attention given to the material and how to make it more gripping; a terrific soundtrack (naturally) adds to the sense of time and place, and though it’s not entirely successful, Elba shows enough talent behind the camera that if he were to give up his day job, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

The Children Act (2017)

28 Tuesday Aug 2018

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Blood transfusion, Court case, Drama, Emma Thompson, Fionn Whitehead, Ian McEwan, Jehovah's Witness, Judge, Leukaemia, Literary adaptation, Review, Richard Eyre, Stanley Tucci

D: Richard Eyre / 105m

Cast: Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Fionn Whitehead, Ben Chaplin, Jason Watkins, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Anthony Calf, Rosie Cavaliero, Rupert Vansittart, Nicholas Jones

Fiona Maye (Thompson) is a High Court judge who specialises in cases involving the Children Act 1989, cases that often involve a strict interpretation of the law and which require a consideration of what is best for the child, even if it’s at odds with the wishes of the parents. Fiona is married to Jack (Tucci), a classics professor, but in the wake of a particularly difficult case, Jack announces that he plans to have an affair; he’s unhappy with the lack of intimacy in their marriage. Fiona is upset by this but remains reticent until a call from her chambers advises of an emergency case that needs her attention. Jack leaves, while Fiona prepares to deal with the case of Adam Henry (Whitehead), a seventeen year old Jehovah’s Witness who will die from leukaemia unless he is given a blood transfusion. Adam is refusing to have the transfusion, and so the hospital is seeking a ruling to overturn his refusal. Against a background of religious determination and legal necessity, Fiona meets Adam before making her judgment. It’s a meeting that proves to have a profound effect on both of them…

Sometimes a movie has no choice but to rely heavily, if not completely, on the merits of a particular performance. Without that performance, the movie loses its central focus, or becomes less of an accomplished piece, or worst of all, lacks any appreciable impact. Such is the case with The Children Act, an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s 2014 novel, and with a screenplay by McEwan himself. Without Emma Thompson, this would be a hollow movie with little to recommend it (though that’s not to say that another actress couldn’t have carried off the role to the same degree). What comes across, and very early on, is that Fiona is the whole show, and without her the storyline and the movie as a whole would amount to very little indeed. McEwan is a terrific novelist, but he’s not necessarily a terrific screenwriter, because in translating his novel to the big screen, he’s forgotten to make the elements around Fiona as interesting or intriguing as those that directly concern her. This leaves the movie dependent entirely on Thompson’s performance throughout, and in the process, relegates everyone else to the second tier.

The decision Fiona makes in regard to Adam’s case won’t surprise anyone, but once she makes it, the movie jettisons its legal drama set up and becomes something entirely expected and dramatically demoralising: Fiona finds herself “pursued” by an overly enamoured Adam. Up until now, the story has played out with a keen awareness of the legal, religious and emotional undercurrents of Adam’s case – in the witness box, Adam’s father (Chaplin) is a passionate advocate for his faith in God – but with the verdict in and Adam’s life saved, it becomes an unwieldy drama of misspent longing and unwanted attention that turns Adam from a fierce proponent of religious and personal choice into a drippy, Yeats-quoting stalker whose intelligence and wit seems to have been drained out of him along with his own blood. This sudden change hurts the movie tremendously, and makes the final half an hour something of a struggle in terms of credibility. At the same time, the sub-plot with Jack is allowed to resolve itself with a minimum of effort. With so much initial momentum overturned, it’s again thanks to Thompson’s subtle yet deeply emotive portrayal that the viewer is able to carry on until the end, but with the certain (and unavoidable) awareness that, whatever the outcome, it won’t be as insightful or impactful as what happens before Fiona reveals her decision.

Rating: 7/10 – Thompson’s magnificent performance is the real deal here, and the only deal as well, making The Children Act something of a lop-sided endeavour that’s compelling when focused on Fiona’s emotional confusion, but merely adequate at all other times; Eyre’s direction is solid, but Tucci is wasted in a thankless role, and the whole thing unfolds against a backdrop of repressed emotions that the script seems uninterested in revealing.

Don’t Go in the Water! – The Meg (2018) and Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018)

27 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Bingbing Li, Cliff Curtis, Danielle Savre, Darin Scott, Drama, Jason Statham, Jon Turteltaub, Literary adaptation, Megalodon, Michael Beach, Rainn Wilson, Research facility, Review, Rob Mayes, Sci-fi, Sequel, Sharks, Thriller

It happens so often that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. A major studio release is announced, and before you know it, a “rival” production is rushed onto our screens. These so-called “rivals” often operate on a fraction of the budget of the mainstream release, have a cast that few people have heard of, and betray their lack of originality at every turn. Such is the case in 2018 with The Meg being pipped to the release post by Deep Blue Sea 2, a sequel/remake that no one wanted or needed (especially nineteen years after Renny Harlin’s enjoyable if still risible original).

The Meg (2018) / D: Jon Turteltaub / 113m

Cast: Jason Statham, Bingbing Li, Rainn Wilson, Cliff Curtis, Winston Chao, Ruby Rose, Page Kennedy, Robert Taylor, Shuya Sophia Cai, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Jessica McNamee, Masi Oka

The Meg is a silly, silly movie – let’s get that out of the way from the start. It provokes far more laughs than it does gasps, but at least it’s aware that it’s preposterous. This is most definitely a good thing, because if it wasn’t so self-aware, this would be an horrendously difficult movie to sit through. There are moments where the script (by Dean Georgaris and Jon and Erich Hoeber from the novel by Steve Alten) strives for serious drama – usually when someone dies, or the gravity of the situation needs reinforcing – but otherwise keeps things easy-going for much of its running time. It’s as if it can’t wait to poke fun at itself, whether it’s by giving Statham lines of the calibre of “Meg versus man isn’t a fight… it’s a slaughter” (though he does miss out on saying “Megalo-don’t”), or having its characters behave foolishly (add up how many times they deliberately put themselves at risk when there’s no need to). It’s also a movie that seems reluctant to give the Meg free rein when the script puts a resort full of swimmers, and a small dog, in its path. Anyone expecting mass carnage is going to be disappointed; better to watch Piranha 3D (2010) instead.

Of course, this is all professionally made with a suitably excessive budget needed to make the special effects look as impressive as possible, but as with many movies that have a larger than normal protagonist at its centre – see also Rampage (2018) – there are problems with the Meg’s size, and keeping it proportionally realistic in relation to its human co-stars. But there are bigger problems: the movie soon settles for being a series of showdowns between Statham’s gung-ho marine rescue specialist and the Meg that rely too often on the Meg swimming off once their encounters are over; so much for being a super-predator. Of course, this repetition is to allow the cast of characters to be picked off one by one, even though it’s obvious just who is still going to be around when the Meg is finally taken care of. Statham is fine as the improbably named Jonas (the makers clearly wanted to call him Jonah – but too much context maybe?), while Curtis and Wilson stand out because they both seem to have the measure of the material, and are obviously having fun. Turteltaub’s direction is competent without being flashy, there’s one climax too many, and sadly, Statham doesn’t get to punch or head butt the Meg (what were the makers thinking?).

Rating: 6/10 – nothing more or less than a summer popcorn movie with no other ambition than to provide audiences with a good time, The Meg is surprisingly toothless when it matters most; glossy and sleek, it goes where it needs to, but doesn’t offer the necessary thrills to make it stand out from the crowd, all of which just goes to prove that size isn’t everything.

Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018) / D: Darin Scott / 94m

Cast: Danielle Savre, Rob Mayes, Michael Beach, Nathan Lynn, Kim Syster, Jeremy Boado, Adrian Collins, Cameron Robertson, Darron Meyer

Where The Meg is a silly, silly movie, Deep Blue Sea 2 is a dreadful, dreadful movie, an uninspired retread of the original, and a chore to sit through (unless your standards are non-existent or you’ve suffered a recent brain trauma). Having the number two in the title would seem to make it a sequel, but in fact this is an unofficial remake, with several scenes rehashed from the first movie, and the action taking place in yet another submerged research station where genetic experiments have been carried out on – surprise! – a number of bull sharks. Sooner than you can say “shark lunch in a tin can”, things start to go wrong, and the tasty morsels – sorry, characters – inside the research facility are being picked off one by one. This tries for grim humour at times, but manages to miss the mark at every attempt; it can’t even raise some much needed unintentional humour either. Instead, the main response it provokes is one of profound ennui, and a deep regret that you started watching it in the first place. To say that it lacks energy, pace, commitment, good performances, and a decent script would be stating the obvious.

It does trade in a healthy amount of rampant absurdity, though, as evidenced by the decision to give the sharks a female leader who gives birth (thankfully off-screen) to a dozen or so little nippers who take over their mother’s murderous duties, and who make loud screeching noises when they attack (these sounds are audible above the water line – of course). Unlike The Meg, Deep Blue Sea 2 has no problem with showing the gory after effects of a shark attack, but against the odds this is one of the very few aspects it gets right. Again, the performances range from very poor (Savre) to perfunctory (Mayes, Lynn), while Beach outdoes the sharks for chewing the scenery as (the meg)alomaniacal sponsor of the research facility. Scott, clearly a long way from his days as a producer on movies such as To Sleep With Anger (1990) and Menace II Society (1993), struggles to make anything out of the by-the-numbers screenplay, its dreary nature and one-dimensional characters proving impossible to root for. If you have to see one shark-based movie in 2018, then make sure it isn’t this one. You have been warned.

Rating: 3/10 – awful enough to make you wish for a shark to come along and put you out of your misery, Deep Blue Sea 2 is the cinematic equivalent of chum in the water; brazenly stealing all the best bits from its predecessor and then doing nothing constructive with them, this is a movie that wastes no time in wearing out its welcome, and becoming irredeemably, dramatically soggy.

The House of Tomorrow (2017)

26 Sunday Aug 2018

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Alex Wolff, Asa Butterfield, Drama, Ellen Burstyn, Heart transplant, Literary adaptation, Nick Offerman, Punk rock, R. Buckminster Fuller, Review, The Rash

D: Peter Livolsi / 86m

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Alex Wolff, Nick Offerman, Ellen Burstyn, Maude Apatow, Michaela Watkins

The House of Tomorrow is a museum built to honour the life and work of noted futurist R. Buckminster Fuller. Run by one of his devotees, Josephine Prendergast (Burstyn) and her grandson, Sebastian (Butterfield), it sits in a beautiful woodland setting but doesn’t have a lot of visitors. When a Lutheran church group led by their pastor, Alan Whitcomb (Offerman), and including his son, Jared (Wolff), take a tour one day, Josephine suffers a stroke. While she’s in hospital, Sebastian finds himself spending more and more time with Jared, and experiencing his first actual friendship. Jared has recently had a heart transplant, and has ambitions to start a punk rock band. He convinces Sebastian to be the band’s bass player, but the time they spend together begins to interfere with Sebastian’s work at the museum, especially when Josephine returns home. Wanting to broaden his horizons, but afraid of hurting his grandmother, Sebastian finds himself living a double life. When Alan refuses to allow Jared’s band a spot at a church talent show, Sebastian uses subterfuge to ensure the museum can be used as a venue instead, something that has far-reaching consequences…

Sometimes it’s hard to work out just what would happen if the movies didn’t have the coming of age tale to revisit over and over. Dozens, if not hundreds of movies each year would vanish from the release schedules, and literary adaptations such as this one – from Peter Bognanni’s novel – would no longer see the light of day. On the one hand, that might be a good thing; just how many times can a teenager be seen to make the same mistakes in a variety of guises without it becoming tiresome? The answer, of sorts, can be found in The House of Tomorrow, a mostly well handled indie drama that takes a home-schooled innocent and throws him head first into the world in order to help him take the first steps towards maturity. Along the way, Sebastian learns to lie and steal (and apparently without regret), and to explore new experiences through his friendship with Jared, and Jared’s sister, Meredith (Apatow). In the hands of first-time writer/director Livolsi, all of this is treated very matter-of-factly, and in a deliberate manner that aids the material immensely, and which prompts good performances from all concerned.

However, though the movie is, on the whole, a good one, it does suffer from a kind of narrative indolence that it can’t avoid no matter how hard Livolsi and his talented cast try. Sebastian’s journey is so familiar to audiences, and the story is so predictable, that it robs the movie of any emotional impact. There’s simply not enough here to resonate, whether it’s Jared’s rebellious spirit and punk sensibility, or his heart condition, or Josephine’s increasing sadness and fear as she begins to understand Sebastian is willingly drifting away from her. Here, all this narrative familiarity is at least offset by the aforementioned quality of the performances (with Offerman on particularly good form), and Livolsi’s attention to detail, but even with Corey Walter’s savvy cinematography and a punk-centric soundtrack that includes tracks by The Stranglers and The Germs, The House of Tomorrow remains a movie that tries hard but succeeds only in offering a number of expected conclusions and outcomes. Even the use of R. Buckminster Fuller and his thoughts on architecture and systems design are used as an occasional diversion rather than as an integral part of the narrative. Which leaves little else for the casual viewer to enjoy, and that’s truly a shame.

Rating: 6/10 – lacking the depth or originality that could have elevated the material, The House of Tomorrow is a perfunctory coming of age tale that offers a diluted crash course in Teen Angst 101; while it’s not affecting, it is at least honest in its endeavours, but not so much that it offers viewers anything more than the barest of dramatic rewards.

Earthworm Tractors (1936)

17 Friday Aug 2018

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Comedy, Guy Kibbee, Joe E. Brown, June Travis, Literary adaptation, Ray Enright, Romance, Salesman, Tractors, William Hazlett Upson

aka A Natural Born Salesman

D: Ray Enright / 69m

Cast: Joe E. Brown, June Travis, Guy Kibbee, Dick Foran, Carol Hughes, Gene Lockhart, Olin Howland, Joseph Crehan, Charles C. Wilson

Alexander Botts (Brown) is a self-professed natural born salesman. Looking to impress his girlfriend, Sally (Hughes), and win her hand in marriage, Botts takes a job with the Earthworm Tractor Company as a master salesman and mechanic (even though he has no experience with tractors at all). Sent to the midwest town of Cypress City, Botts is tasked with selling tractors to an old, intransigent lumberman called Johnson (Kibbee). Even with the aid of Johnson’s daughter, Mabel (Travis), Botts finds the old man a hard sell, and his efforts to impress the lumberman usually end in calamity. A stroke of luck keeps Botts in his job, and he becomes even more determined to clinch the deal, but one more disaster ruins his chances, both with the old man, and with Mabel. Chastened, Botts heads home to seek solace with Sally, but that idea doesn’t work out either. Still in danger of losing his job, Botts returns to Cypress City intending to make one last effort to change Johnson’s mind, and win back Mabel…

Based on the character created by William Hazlett Upson in a series of stories for The Saturday Evening Post, Earthworm Tractors trades heavily on Joe E. Brown’s ebullient screen persona, and a number of slapstick action sequences based around Botts’ misuse of an Earthworm Tractor (often with Johnson as an unwilling passenger). It’s something of a curio now, an off-centre comedy with the requisite romantic elements, that looks and feels more like a silent movie given an audio upgrade than a movie released in 1936. But while it has the perfunctory quality inherent in so many low budget B-movies of the Thirties – all the characters are recognisable staples of the genre, the camerawork, editing and score are all adequate without standing out – there’s an energy to the movie that keeps the viewer entertained as each one of Botts’ plans comes to an ignoble, and often destructive end. Working from a script by Richard Macaulay, Joe Traub and Hugh Cummings, Enright and his star keep things moving with impressive dexterity, imbuing even the most pedestrian of scenes with a comic sheen that highlights Brown’s skills as a comic actor, and his director’s deft understanding of what constitutes effectiv physical comedy.

Brown is irrepressible as Botts (even when he’s down, a contradiction that works when it shouldn’t), and his infectious smile goes a long way towards keeping the viewer rooting for him throughout. Of the rest of the cast, Kibbee is notable for another variation on his grouchy old man routine, though Travis and Hughes are, frankly, too bland to make much of an impact. However, the acting isn’t the movie’s focal point. Rather it’s the impressive-for-a-low-budget-movie stunt sequences involving the Earthworm Tractor. The finale – which takes place in a quarry that’s primed with explosives that will inevitably be set off – sees Botts, Johnson and the Earthworm Tractor having to negotiate each detonation and a rickety old wooden bridge before reaching safety, and it’s this sequence that is the movie’s highlight. Along the way there are numerous examples of clever ideas that have been used cleverly, such as the couple of occasions where Botts is thrown bodily from Johnson’s premises and onto the ground, only for him to land on a carefully placed mattresss on the third occasion. Little moments such as that one help make the movie resonate much more with the viewer, and though some of those moments are almost thrown away (though deliberately), the ones that are included help make the movie as silly and as entertaining as it is.

Rating: 7/10 – a slapstick comedy with romantic overtones and a quiet sense of irony regarding its capitalist message, Earthworm Tractors is still very definitely a Thirties movie, but one that’s flecked with nice touches and occasional, surreal moments; Brown is the main star, but the likes of Lockhart and Crehan boost the supporting cast thanks to their efforts, and Enright orchestrates it all with a dexterity and prowess that belies his reputation as a journeyman director.

NOTE: Alas, there’s no trailer available for Earthworm Tractors.

Let the Corpses Tan (2017)

13 Monday Aug 2018

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Action, Belgium, Bruno Forzani, Crime, Elina Löwensohn, France, Gold bullion, Hélène Cattet, Literary adaptation, Review, Stéphane Ferrara, Thriller

Original tltle: Laissez bronzer les cadavres

D: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani / 88m

Cast: Elina Löwensohn, Stéphane Ferrara, Bernie Bonvoisin, Hervé Sogne, Michelangelo Marchese, Marc Barbé, Marine Sainsily, Pierre Nisse, Dorylia Calmel, Dominique Troyes

On a remote outcrop of land, an abandoned church and its surrounding buildings has become the home of a once in-demand artistic muse Madame Luce (Löwensohn), her partner, an unscrupulous lawyer called Brisorgueil (Marchese), and a bohemian writer, Max Bernier (Barbé), who was once her lover. One day they are joined by a group of men – Rhino (Ferrara), Gros (Bonvoisin), and an unnamed young man (Nisse) – who, while on their way back from getting supplies at a nearby town, rob an armoured car of 250 kilos of gold bullion. But as they head back to the church, they find themselves picking up a woman, Mélanie (Calmel), her young son, and the boy’s nanny (Sainsily). The woman proves to be Max’s wife, there to hide out after abducting her son from her ex-husband who has custody. Meanwhile, two motorcycle cops (Sogne, Troyes) become intrigued by a sighting of Max’s wife, and decide to ride out to Madame Luce’s, a decision that will prove to have a number of far-reaching consequences for everyone there…

A Franco-Belgian production adapted from the novel of the same name by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, Let the Corpses Tan is a heavily stylised kaleidoscope of unflinching violence supported by a bravura visual palette that employs all kinds of cinematic trickery to tell its tale of intrigue and betrayal and the legacy of the Golden Woman (Löwensohn’s Madame Luce, albeit in younger days). It’s an absurdist Euro-meta-Western, straight out of the late Sixties and early Seventies, and with compositions by Ennio Morricone from the period that fit neatly into Cattet and Forzani’s excessively mounted pastiche. Replete with every trick in the book to add energy and pizzazz to its flamboyant tale, the movie is exhausting to watch, with the camerawork and the editing designed in tandem to assault the eyes and render any resistance as futile. This is a movie that wants to dominate its audience into submission, to send it reeling away at the movie’s end having been visually assaulted by the extent of Cattet and Forzani’s colour drenched aesthetic. But while it does have an excess of, well… excess, Let the Corpses Tan doesn’t quite reach the giddy heights it sets for itself, and for all the visual distractions, its basic premise lacks conviction.

It’s nearly always the same: the more striking a movie is to look at, and the more its creators rely on creating an overly stylised mise en scene, the more likely it is that the story isn’t on the same level. Here this is unfortunately the case, as Cattet and Forzani (who also wrote the screenplay) forget to make any of the characters relatable or sympathetic, and though you could argue that this might be deliberate, when you don’t even care who gets out alive – or at all – then an opportunity has been missed. Such is the case with a movie where the expected body count happens at regular enough intervals but without any of them making an impact or eliciting an emotional response in the viewer. It’s rote storytelling, with the original source material diluted and weakened by the visual artifice it’s asked to support. The cast struggle too, with Löwensohn behaving as if Madame Luce is still tripping from the Seventies, while the male characters are pretty much indistinguishable from each other. And by the end even the violence has become tiresome. There’s a better movie hidden somewhere inside Cattet and Forzani’s screenplay, but in allowing themselves free rein with the movie’s look, that particular version was always doomed to stay hidden.

Rating: 6/10 – though visually adventurous and on occasion quite audacious – a fantasy sequence where the nanny’s clothes are ripped to shreds by gunfire leaving her naked is a prime example – nevertheless Let the Corpses Tan is only partly successful; a movie with style in (over-)abundance, but without the necessary substance to back it up, this can be enjoyed on a basic level, but those looking for more than just visual panache would do better to look elsewhere.

The Catcher Was a Spy (2018)

21 Saturday Jul 2018

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Baseball, Ben Lewin, Drama, Literary adaptation, Mark Strong, Morris "Moe" Berg, Nuclear bomb, Paul Rudd, Review, Sienna Miller, Thriller, True story, World War II

D: Ben Lewin / 95m

Cast: Paul Rudd, Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Jeff Daniels, Tom Wilkinson, Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti, Giancarlo Giannini, Hiroyuki Sanada, Connie Nielsen, Shea Whigham

In the years before the US enters World War II, Morris “Moe” Berg (Rudd) is a catcher for the Boston Red Sox. Regarded as the “strangest man ever to play baseball”, Berg is an average player, but of above average intelligence, being able to speak seven languages fluently, regularly contribute to the radio quiz programme Information, Please, and read and digest up to ten newspapers daily. A man of singular interests but also leading a very private life, Berg pursues a relationship with a woman, Estella (Miller), that he won’t acknowledge publicly, while on a trip to Japan, he takes it on himself to shoot footage of the Tokyo harbour. After Pearl Harbor, Berg uses the same footage to wangle himself a desk job with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Soon though, his expertise in languages lands him a job in the field: to track down the noted physicist Werner Heisenberg (Strong) and determine if his work for the Nazis will give them a nuclear weapon – and if it will, then Berg is to kill him…

Another tale of unsung heroics set during World War II, The Catcher Was a Spy (a title that’s both derivative and clever) is a movie that takes a real life person and spins a mostly true story out of events they took part in, but does so in a way that alerts the viewer very early on that, despite the mission, Berg won’t be put in any danger, so any tension will evaporate before it’s even got up a head of steam. So instead of a movie that should be increasingly tense and dramatic, we have a movie that plays matter-of-factly with the material, and is presented in a pedestrian, if sure-footed manner. Working from an adaptation of the book of the same name by Nicholas Dawidoff, director Ben Lewin and writer Robert Rodat have fashioned a moderately engaging espionage tale that moves elegantly yet far from robustly from scene to scene without providing much in the way of emotional impact. Partly this is due to Berg’s own nature, his muted feelings and intellectual prowess being ostensibly the whole man, and while the movie and Rudd’s performance adhere to Berg’s character, it leaves the viewer in the awkward position of being an observer and not a participant.

With Berg introduced “as is”, and with only the most minimal of character arcs to send him on, the movie soon becomes a wearying succession of exposition scenes, or opportunities to show off Berg’s gift for languages (which Rudd copies with aplomb). The early scenes with Estella show Berg trying to be “normal” but not quite knowing how to, give way to the mission to find Heisenberg, but the movie’s switch from domestic tribulations to wartime emergency – Berg literally has Heisenberg’s life, and possibly the fate of the world in his hands – dovetail at the same pace and with the same lack of urgency. Even a sequence where Berg, accompanied by military man Robert Furman (Pearce) and friendly physicist Samuel Goudsmit (Giamatti), try to thread their way through a town overrun by Germans lacks the necessary sense of imminent peril needed to make it work. Another issue is Andrij Parekh’s humdrum cinematography, which deadens the effect of Luciana Arrighi’s murky yet effective production design. Against all this, Rudd is a good choice for the enigmatic Berg, and the moments where he expresses Berg’s self-doubts, offer a rare glimpse of the man behind the façade. But, sadly, these moments aren’t plentiful enough to offset the flaws that dog the rest of the movie, and which keep it from being far more impressive than it is.

Rating: 5/10 – proficient enough without providing much more than the basics of Berg’s life as a catcher or an OSS man, The Catcher Was a Spy isn’t dull per se, just not as compelling as it could (or should) have been; Rudd aside, a quality cast is left with little to do except recite their lines in a competent manner, and any notions of political or intellectual morality are left undeveloped or overlooked.

A Brief Word About Toto

17 Tuesday Jul 2018

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Literary adaptation, Michael Morpurgo, Pre-production, The Wizard of Oz, Toto, Warner Bros.

The Wizard of Oz. It’s a classic, one of the most beloved family movies of all time. It’s a movie that has stood the test of time, generations and cultural developments. As it nears its eightieth birthday, let’s try and forget the various much-needed (not) movies that have followed in its wake. You know, movies such as Return to Oz (1985), or Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), or The Wiz (1978), and the dozens of animated variations we’ve had as well. But all of these movies have had something missing, an approach that would have guaranteed their success and allowed them to have a place in our collective hearts that the 1939 version continues to have right up until now. And that something is: the story told through the perspective of Dorothy’s dog, Toto (sorry for the unalloyed sarcasm).

Well, now we won’t have to wait too long. In a bold move that will have everyone clapping with joy (apologies for the continued sarcasm), Warner Bros. have snapped up the rights to Michael Morpurgo’s book, Toto: The Dog-Gone Amazing Story of the Wizard of Oz, and put it into pre-production. And because Disney shouldn’t be the only ones to put words in the mouths of some of their favourite animal characters, Toto will have a voice. Yes, as if a talking scarecrow, tinman, and cowardly lion aren’t enough, now a Cairn terrier will have a speaking role as well. And while it’s still way too early to judge a movie that hasn’t even gone before the cameras yet, does this really sound like a great idea? Answers on that proverbial postcard…

Entebbe (2018)

16 Monday Jul 2018

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Air France, Daniel Brühl, Drama, Eddie Marsan, Hijacking, José Padilha, Lior Ashkenazi, Literary adaptation, Review, Rosamund Pike, Thriller, True story, Uganda

aka 7 Days in Entebbe

D: José Padilha / 107m

Cast: Daniel Brühl, Rosamund Pike, Eddie Marsan, Lior Ashkenazi, Denis Ménochet, Nonso Anozie, Ben Schnetzer, Mark Ivanir, Angel Bonnani, Zina Zinchenko, Amir Khoury

On 27 June 1976, Air France Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked following a stopover in Athens. The hijackers – two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations, and two members of the German Revolutionary Cells (Brühl, Pike) – diverted the flight to Benghazi in Libya for re-fueling before heading to their planned destination of Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Once there, the passengers and crew were herded into the transit hall of an out-of-use terminal, where eventually, the Jewish passengers were separated from the rest. With the hijackers and their associates on the ground in Entebbe receiving support from Ugandan leader Idi Amin (Anozie), they made their demands to the Israeli government, then led by Itzhak Rabin (Ashkenazi): $5 million for the release of the plane, and the release of fifty-three Palestinian and Pro-Palestinian militants. With Israel having a no negotiation with terrorists policy, they made it seem that they were willing to break with their standard protocol, but while the hijackers began to feel that their mission was going to succeed, the Israelis actually had other plans…

With three previous movies about the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 already released, and all of them within a year of the actual event, the first question to ask about Entebbe is, why now? (A second might be, and does it retain any relevance?) The answer to the first question remains unclear, as the movie, freely adapted by Gregory Burke from the book Operation Thunderbolt (2015) by Saul David, has a tendency to flirt with the truth for dramatic purposes, and in doing so, it manages to dampen the drama by lacking the necessary focus to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. The second question is easier to answer: it doesn’t, and for much the same reason as the answer to the first question. With the script trying to cover too many bases – the hijackers, the Israeli government, the hostages, Idi Amin’s need for personal aggrandisement, the raid that ended the whole thing, and a dancer taking part in a performance of the traditional Jewish song Echad Mi Yodea – the movie never settles on any one aspect for long, and never maintains a sense of the terror and danger that the hostages must have experienced.

It’s a curiously bland affair, with plenty of gun-waving by Pike, but more navel-gazing from Brühl than is necessary, and lots of scenes where the enormity of the situation is trotted out for any slow-off-the-mark viewers – and with increasing emphasis. Most of the characters are forgettable, even the hijackers, as they’re treated more as functioning stereotypes than real people who existed in a real environment and experienced real emotions (much of this by the book). Pike’s angry revolutionary pops a lot of pills but we never learn the reason why, while Brühl’s softly softly bookseller seems out of place entirely. Ashkenazi is a tortured Rabin, Méncohet is the flight engineer who’s scared of no one, and Schnetzer gets his own journey as one of the Israeli commandos who take part in the raid (though why we need his journey is another question the script can’t answer). Only the ever-reliable Marsan, as hawkish Israeli Minister of Defence Shimon Peres, delivers a credible performance, and that’s against the odds, as Burke’s script and Padilha’s direction continually combine to undermine the cast in their efforts. Worst of all though, is the raid itself. After all the build-up, and all the foreshadowing, it’s shot using techniques and a style that wouldn’t have looked out of place in any of the movies made back in the wake of the hijacking.

Rating: 5/10 – handled with a dull reluctance to make it the thriller it should be, Entebbe lacks energy, pace, and any conviction in the way that it tells its story; fascinating only for the way in which it does a disservice to the event itself, it’s a movie that wastes so many opportunities, it’s as if the material itself has been hijacked – but no one told the producers.

Two for the Kids: Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism (2015) and Curse of Cactus Jack (2017)

12 Thursday Jul 2018

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Adventure, Billy Kitchen, Christopher N. Rowley, Comedy, Craig McMahon, Drama, Fame, Fantasy, Gold mine, Hypnotism, Katie Kitchen, Literary adaptation, Orphanage, Raffey Cassidy, Reviews

Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism (2015) / D: Christopher N. Rowley / 98m

Cast: Raffey Cassidy, Lesley Manville, Emily Watson, Dominic Monaghan, Celia Imrie, Joan Collins, Anne-Marie Duff, Ben Miller, Sadie Frost, Omid Djalili, Gary Kemp, Jadon Carnelly Morris, Tallulah Evans, Tom Wisdom

Hardwick House is an orphanage that’s run on a tight rein by its headmistress, Miss Adderstone (Manville). Sour and unlikeable, and disliking the children in her care, she has to contend with Molly Moon (Cassidy), a constant thorn in her side, and someone for whom getting into mischief – deliberately or not – seems to be a way of life. When Molly discovers a book on hypnotism at the local library, she uses it to begin making life at the orphanage that much better. But she’s drawn toward living a better life far away, and travels to London, where she tricks her way into replacing incredibly famous Davina Nuttel (Evans) as the star du jour. But she’s being pursued by would-be arch-criminal Nockman (Monaghan), who wants to use the book as a means toward robbing a diamond house. Will Molly thwart Nockman’s plans, and in the process, will she abandon her friends at Hardwick House altogether…?

Based on the 2002 novel by Georgia Byng, Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism is a lightweight adaptation that hits its marks with all the energy and bounce of a movie that knows it’s not quite going to measure up in the entertainment department. This is despite a plethora of generous acting performances by a talented cast who all know what’s required of them, and a script that doesn’t skimp on making it seem as if being an orphan isn’t really that bad. Molly’s adventures in London – becoming a mega-star overnight, saving a friend, Rocky (Carnelly Morris), from the perils of middle class adoptive parents, and foiling Nockman’s plans – are played out in a day-glo fantasy world of crude ambition and guilt-free wish fulfilment. That it stays just on the right side of amiable and is even (whisper it) enjoyable for the most part, is a tribute to the invested cast and director Rowley’s simplistic approach to the material. It lacks depth – something that’s not unusual in these circumstances – and avoids presenting its target audience with anything that might be recognised as real life. But this is part of its charm, and though it relies heavily on adult caricature and Molly’s authority-defying behaviour, it’s pleasant enough, and at times, funny in a way that children will enjoy far more than the grown ups.

Rating: 6/10 – targeting its intended audience with almost laser precision, Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism will amuse and entertain those of a pre-teen persuasion, but older viewers won’t be so impressed; a great cast helps the script overcome some serious narrative hurdles, and the whole thing breezes along like a modern day fairy tale – just with manufactured magic.

Curse of Cactus Jack (2017) / D: Craig McMahon / 82m

Cast: Billy Kitchen, Katie Kitchen, Mitch Etter, Aaron Seever, Julie Van Lith, Glen Gold

Billy and Katie live with their parents (Seever, Van Lith) and their grandfather (Etter). When their mum and dad aren’t paying attention – which is often – their grandfather regales them with tales of the Old West, and in particular, the legend of Cactus Jack, a gold prospector who found what was said to be the most lucrative gold mine of all. Fearful of his find being taken away from him, Jack never revealed the location of his mine, though he left behind a bunch of keys and a map with cryptic clues as to its whereabouts. Now in their grandfather’s possession, he hands them over to Billy and Katie. The next day, while their parents are at work, Billy and Katie determine to find the mine and Cactus Jack’s long-hidden horde. Using the map and its clues, they realise that the mine is near to where they live (conveniently), and soon find an entrance that leads them into the mine and the first of many obstacles put in place by Cactus Jack. Risking their lives, they venture further and further into the mine, and discover the reason why the mine is known as the curse of Cactus Jack…

A tightly budgeted adventure movie for kids, Curse of Cactus Jack is an Indiana Jones-style feature that pits its intrepid siblings against a variety of deadly obstacles, but makes itself somewhat redundant in terms of actual peril thanks to the script’s decision to make almost every snag and hindrance solvable through the use of one of the keys (conveniently) left behind by Cactus Jack. This might hamper the effectiveness of the narrative, but it’s ultimately of little consequence thanks to the casting of real life siblings Billy and Katie Kitchen. The pair are most definitely a team, supportive of each other (though Billy does get to mention that he’s “been a great brother” a little too often to avoid sounding as if he’s crowing about it), and on the same page throughout. There’s no sibling rivalry here, no bickering or complaining, and while it fits with the overall blandness of their characters, it’s refreshing to see them just getting on with it all. Against this, mum and dad are the parental equivalent of Bobble Heads, grandpa speaks as if he’s just stepped out of the Old West himself, and there’s a supernatural element that sits uncomfortably amongst proceedings as if the story really needed it (it doesn’t), but this is a pleasant enough diversion, and its target audience will most likely be pleased to see two pre-teens being so proactive and capable.

Rating: 6/10 – something of a one-man show – director McMahon is also the co-writer, co-producer, cinematographer, editor, and post-production supervisor – Curse of Cactus Jack is amiable and inoffensive, but also enjoyable for being a basic, no frills kids’ adventure movie; first-timers the Kitchens are acceptable as the movie’s protagonists, but if there’s one character that steals every scene he’s in, it’s Scooter Bear – now let’s see him get his own movie.

Leave No Trace (2018)

06 Friday Jul 2018

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Ben Foster, Debra Granik, Drama, Father/daughter relationship, Literary adaptation, My Abandonment, Oregon, PTSD, Review, Thomasin McKenzie

D: Debra Granik / 109m

Cast: Ben Foster, Thomasin McKenzie, Jeff Kober, Dale Dickey, Dana Millican, Isaiah Stone, David Pittman

In the forest outside Portland, Oregon, an Army veteran suffering from PTSD, Will (Foster), and his teenage daughter, Tom (McKenzie), live together in a makeshift encampment. Only venturing into the city to pick up supplies, the pair do their best to ensure they pass unnoticed. But when Tom is seen by a jogger, their peaceful existence is brought to an end. The authorities raid their camp, and they’re apprehended; as they learn, it’s not illegal to live in the forest per se, but it is when the forest is part of a state park. Placed with a farmer (Kober), Will remains uncomfortable being surrounded by four walls, while Tom begins to explore a wider world than the one she’s used to. It isn’t long before Will tells Tom they’re leaving, and they head off into the Oregon wilderness. It isn’t long before they’re lost, and in less than hospitable conditions, a situation that reinforces Tom’s awareness that the life they’ve been living isn’t the same one she wants to continue with…

Writer/director Granik’s follow up to Winter’s Bone (2010) (and only her third feature over all), Leave No Trace is a low-key experience, full of emotional and dramatic ellipses, and yet with a depth and a clarity of expression that seems at odds with the stripped back nature of the material. Adapted from the novel My Abandonment by Peter Rock, Leave No Trace explores the ways in which a mutually dependent relationship inevitably has to fracture when it’s exposed to outside influences. It’s also a deeply sincere look at how longing and individual need can set people in such a relationship on vastly different courses in life, and yet still be the best thing for both of them. Will is always unlikely to accept the “normal” life he and Tom are thrust into, while it’s equally likely that Tom will take to it with a greater appetite. But though all this is a given, it’s the quality of Granik and co-scripter Anne Rossellini’s screenplay that all this plays out with a great deal of compassion and understanding for both characters’ aspirations and needs. There’s not one false note to be found in the way that Will and Tom behave, or in the way that they interact with their surroundings, be it the forest or their temporary home on the farm.

The movie has a beautiful visual aesthetic too, the lush green vegetation of the forest feeling visceral and alive before giving way to the compromised homogeneity of the city, and then enveloping us again towards the end, wrapping Will and Tom (and the viewer) in a leafy embrace that’s heartening and threatening and exciting and reassuring all at the same time. Michael McDonough’s cinematography deftly switches from being an immersive, magnificent experience during its forest scenes to that of an impartial observer of Will and Tom’s emotional struggles, and back again with such authority that it’s breathtaking. Granik has also seen fit to employ a soundtrack that comprises much of the natural soundscape as its backdrop, adding to our sense of the time and place(s) that Will and Tom inhabit. Will and Tom are played to perfection by Foster and McKenzie, with Foster’s internalised, haunted performance a career best that’s matched – exceeded perhaps – by McKenzie’s beautifully nuanced portrayal of Tom. Their scenes together never feel strained or unconvincing, and Granik’s measured yet intuitive direction teases out every unspoken thought or feeling with a clarity that is unlikely to have been more impactful if they’d been uttered out loud.

Rating: 9/10 – tremendously moving and visually striking, Leave No Trace is a strong contender for Movie of the Year and easily one of the most impressive movies of the last few years; with faultless performances, inspired direction, a deceptively impassioned screenplay, and an abiding sense of hope for both its central characters, this is richly rewarding and an absolute must-see.

Monthly Roundup – June 2018

01 Sunday Jul 2018

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Action, Adam West, Animation, Austin Stowell, Ayla Kell, Batman vs. Two-Face, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, Biography, Borg McEnroe, Bruce Greenwood, Bryce Dallas Howard, Burt Ward, Charles Barton, Chris Pratt, Crime, Dave Davis, Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A., Dominic Cooper, Don E. FauntLeRoy, Drama, Elliott Maguire, Francine Everett, Francis Lawrence, Gail Patrick, Guy Pearce, Horror, J.A. Bayona, Jack the Ripper, Janus Metz, Jennifer Carpenter, Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Literary adaptation, Murder, Mystery, Nicola Holt, Pierce Brosnan, Randolph Scott, Red Sparrow, Rick Morales, Sam Liu, Shia LaBeouf, Simon Kaijser, Simon West, Snakehead Swamp, Spencer Williams, Spinning Man, Stratton, Sverrir Gudnason, SyFy, The Ferryman, Thriller, True story, Wagon Wheels, Western, William Shatner

Borg McEnroe (2017) / D: Janus Metz / 107m

Cast: Sverrir Gudnason, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård, Tuva Novotny, Leo Borg, Marcus Mossberg, Jackson Gann, Scott Arthur

Rating: 7/10 – the rivalry between tennis players Björn Borg (Gudnason) and John McEnroe (LaBeouf) is explored during the run up to the 1980 Wimbledon Tennis Championships, and the tournament itself; with a script that delves into both players’ formative years (and if you think Borg is a terrific choice for the young Swede then it’s no surprise: Bjōrn is his dad), Borg McEnroe is an absorbing yet diffident look at what drove both men to be as good as they were, and features fine work from Gudnason and LaBeouf, though at times it’s all a little too dry and respectful.

The Ferryman (2018) / D: Elliott Maguire / 76m

Cast: Nicola Holt, Garth Maunders, Shobi Rae Mclean, Pamela Ashton, Philip Scott-Shurety

Rating: 4/10 – following a suicide attempt, a young woman, Mara (Holt), finds herself experiencing strange phenomena and being pursued by a mysterious hooded figure; an ultra-low budget British horror, The Ferryman is let down by terrible performances, cringeworthy dialogue, and a patently obvious storyline, and yet it’s saved from complete disaster by a strong visual style that’s supported by a disconcerting soundtrack, an approach that first-timer Maguire exploits as often as possible.

Red Sparrow (2018) / D: Francis Lawrence / 140m

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker, Ciarán Hinds, Joely Richardson, Bill Camp, Jeremy Irons, Thekla Reuten, Douglas Hodge

Rating: 6/10 – Ex-ballerina Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) is recruited to a secret Russian organisation that trains her to use her body as a weapon, and which then uses her to expose a double agent working in the heart of the Soviet system; a movie made up of so many twists and turns it becomes tiring to keep track of them all, Red Sparrow is an unlikely project to be released in the current gender/political climate, seeking as it does to objectify and fetishise its star as often as possible, but it tells a decent enough story while not exactly providing viewers with anything new or memorable.

Spinning Man (2018) / D: Simon Kaijser / 100m

Cast: Guy Pearce, Pierce Brosnan, Minnie Driver, Alexandra Shipp, Odeya Rush, Jamie Kennedy, Clark Gregg

Rating: 4/10 – when a teenage student (Rush) goes missing, suspicion falls on the professor (Pearce) who may or may not have been having a relationship with her; with arguably the most annoying character of 2018 propping up the narrative (Pearce’s commitment to the role doesn’t help), Spinning Man is a dreary mystery thriller that has its chief suspect behave as guiltily as possible and as often as he can, while putting him in as many unlikely situations as the script can come up with, all of which makes for a dismally executed movie that can’t even rustle up a decent denouement.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) / D: J.A. Bayona / 128m

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, Jeff Goldblum, BD Wong, Geraldine Chaplin, Isabella Sermon

Rating: 7/10 – with the volcano on Isla Nublar about to erupt, a rescue mission is launched to save as many of the dinosaurs as possible, but it’s a rescue mission with an ulterior motive; clearly the movie designed to move the series forward – just how many times can Jurassic Park be reworked before everyone gets fed up with it all? – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom concentrates on the horror elements that have always been a part of the franchise’s raison d’être, and does so in a way that broadens the scope of the series, and allows Bayona to provide an inventive twist on the old dark house scenario.

Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. (1946) / D: Spencer Williams / 61m

Cast: Francine Everett, Don Wilson, Katherine Moore, Alfred Hawkins, David Boykin, L.E. Lewis, Inez Newell, Piano Frank, John King

Rating: 7/10 – making an appearance at a club on a Caribbean island resort, dancer Gertie La Rue’s free-spirited behaviour causes all sorts of problems, for her and for the men she meets; an all-black production that takes W. Somerset Maugham’s tale Miss Thompson and puts its own passionate spin on it, Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. overcomes its limited production values thanks to its faux-theatrical mise-en-scene, Williams’ confidence as a director, a vivid performance from Everett that emphasises Gertie’s irresponsible nature, and by virtue of the relaxed attitude it takes to the themes of race and sexuality.

Wagon Wheels (1934) / D: Charles Barton / 59m

Cast: Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick, Billy Lee, Monte Blue, Raymond Hatton, Jan Duggan, Leila Bennett, Olin Howland

Rating: 5/10 – a wagon train heading for Oregon encounters trials and hardships along the way, including Indian attacks that are being organised by someone who’s a part of the group; a middling Western that finds too much room for songs round the campfire, Wagon Wheels takes a while to get going, but once it does, it has pace and a certain amount of B-movie charm thanks to Scott’s square-jawed performance, and Barton’s experienced direction, benefits that help offset the clunky storyline and one-note characters.

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018) / D: Sam Liu / 77m

Cast: Bruce Greenwood, Jennifer Carpenter, Scott Patterson, Kari Wuhrer, Anthony Head, Yuri Lowenthal, William Salyers, Grey Griffin

Rating: 6/10 – in an alternate, Victorian-era Gotham City, the Batman (Greenwood) has only recently begun his efforts at stopping crime, efforts that see him cross paths with the notorious Jack the Ripper; though kudos is due to Warner Bros. for trying something different, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight doesn’t always feel as if it’s been thoroughly thought out, with too much time given over to the mystery of Jack’s real identity, and a sub-plot involving Selena Kyle (Carpenter) that seems designed to pad out a storyline that doesn’t have enough substance for a full-length feature.

Batman vs. Two-Face (2017) / D: Rick Morales / 72m

Cast: Adam West, Burt Ward, William Shatner, Julie Newmar, Steven Weber, Jim Ward, Lee Meriwether

Rating: 6/10 – when a laboratory accident turns Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent (Shatner) into arch-villain Two-Face, Batman (West) and Robin (Ward) soon end his criminal activities, only to find themselves battling all their old adversaries – but who is manipulating them?; what probably seemed like a good idea at the time – have West and Ward (and Newmar) reprise their television roles – Batman vs. Two-Face is let down by a tired script that does its best to revisit past TV glories but without replicating the sheer ebullience the 60’s series enjoyed, making this very much a missed opportunity.

Stratton (2017) / D: Simon West / 94m

Cast: Dominic Cooper, Austin Stowell, Gemma Chan, Connie Nielsen, Thomas Kretschmann, Tom Felton, Derek Jacobi, Igal Naor

Rating: 4/10 – a Special Boat Service commando, John Stratton (Cooper), teams up with an American military operative (Stowell) to track down an international terrorist cell that is targeting a major Western target – but which one?; the kind of action movie that wants to be packed with impressive action sequences, and thrilling moments, Stratton is let down by a tepid script, restrictive production values, poor performances, and despite West’s best efforts, action scenes that only inspire yawns, not appreciation.

SnakeHead Swamp (2014) / D: Don E. FauntLeRoy / 86m

Cast: Ayla Kell, Dave Davis, Terri Garber, Antonio Fargas

Rating: 3/10 – a truck full of genetically mutated snakehead fish crashes, releasing its cargo into the Louisiana swamp land, where they soon start making their way to the top of the food chain; another lousy SyFy movie that mixes mutant creatures, endangered teens, a muddled voodoo subplot, and sub-par special effects to less than astounding results, SnakeHead Swamp might best be described as a “no-brainer”, in that it doesn’t try very hard, FauntLeRoy’s direction is rarely noticeable, and the cast – even Fargas – don’t come anywhere near making their characters credible or realistic, all of which is down to a script that should have been rejected at the title stage.

Love, Simon (2018)

23 Saturday Jun 2018

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Blackmail, Comedy, Coming out, Drama, Greg Berlanti, High School, Jennifer Garner, Josh Duhamel, LGBTQ+, Literary adaptation, Nick Robinson, Review, Romance

D: Greg Berlanti / 110m

Cast: Nick Robinson, Jennifer Garner, Josh Duhamel, Katherine Langford, Alexandra Shipp, Logan Miller, Keiynan Lonsdale, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Talitha Eliana Bateman, Tony Hale, Natasha Rothwell, Miles Heizer

Simon Spier (Robinson) is in high school. He has three best friends – Leah (Langford), Abby (Shipp), and Nick (Lendeborg Jr) – loving parents (Garner, Duhamel), a kid sister, Nora (Bateman), whose culinary efforts he praises whether they’re good or (usually) bad, an interest in drama, and a big secret: he’s gay. Being a teenager, of course, nobody knows that he’s gay, but when Leah tells him that another pupil at their high school has come out anonymously online, Simon begins talking to him via e-mail. Soon, he and “Blue” are exchanging their mutual thoughts and feelings on their personal circumstances. When another pupil, Martin (Miller), discovers Simon’s e-mails, he uses them to blackmail Simon into helping him get together with Abby. Afraid of being outed, Simon does his best to set them up with each other, while also trying to bring Nick and Leah together (because Nick is attracted to Abby). But his attempts at matchmaking backfire, and Martin does what Simon has feared all along: he outs Simon to the entire school…

Widely touted as the first movie by a major Hollywood studio to focus on a gay teenage romance (and it’s only taken until 2018 to happen – way to go, 20th Century Fox), Love, Simon is a tender, heartfelt, and overwhelmingly sweet movie based on the novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. It features a good central performance by Robinson as the modest but likeable Simon, and it hits all the right notes in its attempts to focus on his struggle to deal with the implications of being gay, the fear of being outed, and what it means to have to protect that knowledge. And yet, once Simon’s secret is revealed to one and all, what has been a confidently handled, and sincerely expressed story – with a nice mystery sideline in trying to work out Blue’s identity – suddenly becomes an unexpected fantasy based somewhere between the world of John Hughes’ teen dramas and a return trip to the Land of Oz. All along, Simon has been dreading everyone finding out that he’s gay, and it’s at this point in the movie where you could be forgiven for thinking that things will start to get really difficult for him.

Au contraire, mon ami. Aside from a (very) brief moment of uninspired, and childish, leg-pulling (bullying is really too strong a word for it), the only other fallout from Simon’s outing is the decision of his three best friends to avoid him – he did manipulate them after all. Otherwise, his family prove to be mega-supportive, his teachers express zero tolerance for any homophobic behaviour by the other students, Martin apologises to him while admitting his own insecurities, and when Simon challenges Blue to meet him at an upcoming carnival, what seems to be the whole high school turns out to be there for them (oh, and his friends forgive him as well). Now, there’s nothing wrong with a happy ending, but this is like something out of the Thirties and early Forties when happy endings were guaranteed (back then it might have been called Andy Hardy Comes Out… of the Barn). If the movie’s message – coming out is easy-peasy – is intentional, then that’s fair enough, it’s still a piece of entertainment, and designed to do well in the mass market. But as a reflection of what is likely to happen in the real world when coming out, then Love, Simon is a far from perfect choice from which to take your cues.

Rating: 7/10 – a wish fulfillment tale that’s breezy and fun but also deliberately anodyne in places, Love, Simon is enjoyable and refreshing for its choice of topic, and benefits from good performances throughout – Rothwell’s drama teacher with attitude is a highlight – as well as Berlanti’s sensitive direction; becoming an entirely different movie altogether once Simon is outed, though, undermines the character’s emotional struggle, and paints first gay love in such rainbow-like colours that any real sense of drama is abandoned altogether.

Every Day (2018)

27 Sunday May 2018

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Angourie Rice, Body swapping, David Levithan, Drama, Instagram, Jusice Smith, Literary adaptation, Lucas Jade Zumann, Michael Sucsy, Owen Teague, Review, Romance

D: Michael Sucsy / 97m

Cast: Angourie Rice, Justice Smith, Lucas Jade Zumann, Jacob Batalon, Colin Ford, Owen Teague, Maria Bello, Michael Cram, Debby Ryan

Rhiannon (Rice) is a sixteen year old schoolgirl whose boyfriend, Justin (Smith), surprises her one day by convincing her to skip classes and go to the beach. It’s a wonderful day, one that ends with Rhiannon believing that Justin, who isn’t normally so spontaneous or thoughtful, has changed for the better. However, the next day sees Justin finding it difficult to remember what happened the day before, and back to his usual self. Over the next few days, Rhiannon meets a handful of new people, all of whom are different but who also exhibit similar behaviours. One girl she meets tells her that these people have all been one person, inhabiting each body for a day, and that day at the beach has caused this person – who calls himself A – to want to spend more time with Rhiannon. Though at first she’s incredulous, Rhiannon begins to believe A’s story, and in the process starts to fall in love with him, despite the obstacles between them. But it’s when A finds himself able to stay in a body for more than a day that things become even more complicated…

A Twilight Zone-style scenario given a teen soap opera makeover, Every Day is the kind of inoffensive, and somewhat blandly presented movie that wants its characters to be better versions of themselves, but through the intervention of a body swapping entity instead of going on a personal journey of self-discovery. Rhiannon’s parents have their issues – dad had a breakdown some time before, mom now “works late” a lot – but it’s only when Rhiannon is substituted by A for a day that “she” does anything about these problems. Similarly, a teenager with suicidal thoughts is saved by A’s stepping up and saving the day. Every Day wears its wish fulfillment heart on its sleeve, and Jesse Andrews’ adaptation of David Levithan’s novel is keen to ensure that any drama is cleared away as tidily as possible, and as soon after it’s introduced, as if real life is ever that simple. What this means is that the material remains mostly good natured throughout and any lows are compensated for by the next high waiting around the corner. With the structure and the plotting laid out in such a straightforward, no frills way, the movie rarely moves out of second gear, or gains any real dramatic traction.

However, one area where the movie does excel is in its assembled depiction of A. Played by a total of fifteen actors and actresses (including Rice), it’s this aspect of the movie that works best. Watching so many different people playing the same character, and with all of them, even those with a limited amount of screen time, providing a consistent personality and mannerisms, is the movie’s trump card. A is handled with a great deal of care and attention throughout, and Sucsy and his talented cast ensure that his predicament is handled with a degree of sensitivity and even gravitas that is both unexpected and sincere. With A’s character feeling and sounding so grounded from the beginning, it helps the rest of the movie in terms of the drama surrounding his relationship with Rhiannon. As romances go, it’s not ideal, or practical, and the script doesn’t shy away from the likelihood that not everything will work out as it does in most other teen romantic dramas. But again, things run a little too smoothly, and any tension or close examinaton of A’s condition is passed over, making this a teen romance that can’t quite muster enough passion or depth to stand out from the crowd.

Rating: 6/10 – though the challenge of having fifteen different actors play the same role is achieved with a great degree of skill and confidence, it’s the overall story of Every Day that stops it from being better than it is; lacking in substance and/or dramatic thrust, it’s a movie that ambles along comfortably, while offering just enough to keep viewers interested until the end.

Trailer – Leave No Trace (2018)

16 Wednesday May 2018

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Ben Foster, Debra Granik, Drama, Literary adaptation, My Abandonment, Peter Rock, Preview, Thomasin McKenzie, Trailer

In a summer that will be dominated again by mega-budget blockbusters, trying to pick out a movie or two (or even three) that offers something a little different from heavily edited fight scenes, numerous explosions, and the same characters we’ve seen several times before, is something that will probably require a little persistence. One movie that fits this particular bill is Leave No Trace, the latest drama from Debra Granik, the director of Winter’s Bone (2010). Adapted from the novel My Abandonment by Peter Rock, the movie stars Ben Foster as Will, an ex-military man living in a Portland, Oregon forest with his thirteen year old daughter, Tom, played by Thomasin McKenzie. The pair eschew civilisation, and Will has educated Tom himself. Inevitably their “idyllic” lifestyle is discovered and they are forced into a “normal” life through the intervention of social services. Unable to adapt to their new lives, however, they decide to journey back into the forest.

A movie that looks to be engrossing due to the dynamic of the relationship between Will and Tom, and their commitment to each other, the trailer sets up a number of questions for the potential viewer to be thinking about ahead of seeing Leave No Trace – not the least of which is why are they in the forest in the first place – and it promises excellent performances from its two leads. As a substitute for the usual fare seen in our cinemas during the summer months, this has all the hallmarks of a movie that could quietly gain everyone’s attention, and prove to be an attractive, rewarding alternative to the flash, bang, wallop on offer pretty much across the board.

Monthly Roundup – April 2018

12 Saturday May 2018

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Action, Adventure, Alain Guiraudie, Alberto Cavalcanti, Amen Island, Animation, Anthony Russo, Assassin, Avengers: Infinity War, B-movie, Babak Nafari, Bank robbery, Barbara Britton, Billy Brown, Blaxploitation, Blue Sky, Brad Peyton, Bullfighting, Burglars, Carlos Saldanha, Children of the Corn: Runaway, Children's Film Foundation, Chris Evans, Christina De Vallee, Comedy, Crime, Danny Glover, David Paisley, Drama, Eugeniusz Chylek, Ferdinand, France, Genetic experiment, Hafsia Herzi, Horror, Jake Ryan Scott, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Joe Russo, John Cena, John Gulager, Johnny on the Run, Kate McKinnon, Le roi de l'évasion, Lewis Gilbert, Literary adaptation, Ludovic Berthillot, Maggie Grace, Marci Miller, Mark Harriott, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mike Matthews, Naomie Harris, Pine-Thomas, Proud Mary, Rampage, Reviews, Rival gangs, Rob Cohen, Robert Downey Jr, Robert Lowery, Romance, Ryan Kwanten, Sequel, Sydney Tafler, Taraji P. Henson, Thanos, The Hurricane Heist, The Monster of Highgate Ponds, They Made Me a Killer, Thriller, Toby Kebbell, Unhappy Birthday, Video game, William C. Thomas

They Made Me a Killer (1946) / D: William C. Thomas / 64m

Cast: Robert Lowery, Barbara Britton, Lola Lane, Frank Albertson, Elisabeth Risdon, Byron Barr, Edmund MacDonald, Ralph Sanford, James Bush

Rating: 5/10 – a man (Lowery) drives across country after the death of his brother and gives a lift to a woman (Lane) who tricks him into being the getaway driver in a bank robbery, a situation that sees him on the run from the police but determined to prove his innocence; a gritty, hard-boiled film noir, They Made Me a Killer adds enough incident to its basic plot to keep viewers entertained from start to finish without really adding anything new or overly impressive to the mix, but it does have a brash performance from Lowery, and Thomas’s direction ensures it’s another solid effort from Paramount’s B-movie unit, Pine-Thomas.

Proud Mary (2018) / D: Babak Najafi / 89m

Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Billy Brown, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Danny Glover, Neal McDonough, Margaret Avery, Xander Berkeley, Rade Serbedzija, Erik LaRay Harvey

Rating: 3/10 – a female assassin (Henson) finds herself protecting the teenage boy (Winston) whose father she killed years before, and at a time when her actions cause a murderous dispute between the gang she works for and their main rival; as the titular Proud Mary, Henson makes for a less than convincing assassin in this modern day blaxploitation thriller that lets itself down constantly thanks to a turgid script and lacklustre direction, and which has far too many moments where suspension of disbelief isn’t just required but an absolute necessity.

Children of the Corn: Runaway (2018) / D: John Gulager / 82m

Cast: Marci Miller, Jake Ryan Scott, Mary Kathryn Bryant, Lynn Andrews III, Sara Moore, Diane Ayala Goldner, Clu Gulager

Rating: 3/10 – arriving in a small Oklahoman town with her teenage son, Ruth (Miller) attempts to put down roots after over ten years of running from the child cult that nearly cost her her life, but she soon finds that safety still isn’t something she can count on; number ten in the overall series, Children of the Corn: Runaway is yet another entry that keeps well away from any attempts at providing anything new, and succeeds only in being as dull to watch as you’d expect, leaving unlucky viewers to ponder on why these movies still keep getting made when it’s clear the basic premise has been done to death – again and again and again…

Johnny on the Run (1953) / D: Lewis Gilbert / 68m

Cast: Eugeniusz Chylek, Sydney Tafler, Michael Balfour, Edna Wynn, David Coote, Cleo Sylvestre, Jean Anderson, Moultrie Kelsall, Mona Washbourne

Rating: 7/10 – after running away from his foster home in Edinburgh, a young Polish boy, Janek (Chylek), unwittingly falls in with two burglars (Tafler, Balfour), and then finds himself in a Highland village where the possibility of a new and better life is within his grasp; an enjoyable mix of drama and comedy from the UK’s Children’s Film Foundation, Johnny on the Run benefits from sterling performances, Gilbert’s astute direction, excellent location work, and a good understanding of what will interest both children and adults alike, making this one of the Foundation’s better entries, and still as entertaining now as when it was first released.

Ferdinand (2017) / D: Carlos Saldanha / 108m

Cast: John Cena, Kate McKinnon, Anthony Anderson, Bobby Cannavale, Peyton Manning, David Tennant, Jeremy Sisto, Lily Day, Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs, Gabriel Iglesias

Rating: 8/10 – a young bull called Ferdinand (Cena) whose disposition includes a fondness for flowers and protecting other animals, finds himself temporarily living with a supportive family, until events bring him back to the world of bullfighting that he thought he’d left behind; the classic children’s tale gets the Blue Sky treatment, and in the process, retains much of the story’s whimsical yet pertinent takes on pacifism, anti-bullying, and gender diversity, while providing audiences with a rollicking and very humorous adventure that makes Ferdinand a very enjoyable experience indeed.

The Hurricane Heist (2018) / D: Rob Cohen / 98m

Cast: Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Ralph Ineson, Melissa Bolona, Ben Cross, Jamie Andrew Cutler, Christian Contreras

Rating: 4/10 – thieves target a US Treasury facility during a Category 5 hurricane, but don’t reckon on their plans going awry thanks to a Treasury agent (Grace), a meteorologist (Kebbell), and his ex-Marine brother (Kwanten); as daft as you’d expect, The Hurricane Heist continues the downward career spiral of Cohen, and betrays its relatively small budget every time it sets up a major action sequence, leaving its talented cast to thrash against the wind machines in search of credibility and sincerity, a notion that the script abandons very early on as it maximises all its efforts to appear as ridiculous as possible (which is the only area in which it succeeds).

The Monster of Highgate Ponds (1961) / D: Alberto Cavalcanti / 59m

Cast: Sophie Clay, Michael Wade, Terry Raven, Ronald Howard, Frederick Piper, Michael Balfour, Roy Vincente, Beryl Cooke

Rating: 6/10 – when his uncle (Howard) returns home from a trip to Malaya, David (Wade) gets to keep a large egg that’s been brought back, but little does he realise that a creature will hatch from the egg – a creature David, his sister Sophie (Clay), and their friend, Chris (Raven) need to protect from the authorities until his uncle returns home from his latest trip; though the special effects that bring the “monster” to life are less than impressive, there’s a pleasing low budget, wish fulfillment vibe to The Monster of Highgate Ponds that allows for the absurdity of it all to be taken in stride, and thanks to Cavalcanti’s relaxed direction, that absurdity makes the movie all the more enjoyable.

Rampage (2018) / D: Brad Peyton / 107m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jake Lacy

Rating: 5/10 – a gorilla, a wolf, and an alligator are all exposed to an illegal genetic engineering experiment and become massively bigger and more aggressive thanks to the corporation behind the experiment, leaving the gorilla’s handler (Johnson) to try and help put things right; based on a video game, and as brightly ridiculous as any movie version of a video game could be, Rampage uses its (very) simple plotting to bludgeon the audience into submission with a variety of exemplary digital effects, while also trying to dredge up a suitable amount of emotion along the way, but in the end – and surprisingly – it’s Johnson’s knowing performance and Morgan’s affected government spook that trade this up from simple disaster to almost disaster.

Unhappy Birthday (2011) / D: Mark Harriott, Mike Matthews / 91m

aka Amen Island

Cast: David Paisley, Christina De Vallee, Jill Riddiford, Jonathan Deane

Rating: 4/10 – Rick (Paisley) and his girlfriend, Sadie (De Vallee), along with their friend Jonny (Keane), travel to the tidal island of Amen to reunite Sadie with her long lost sister, only to find that the islanders have a secret that threatens the lives of all three of them; a low budget British thriller with distinct echoes of The Wicker Man (1973) – though it’s not nearly as effective – Unhappy Birthday highlights the isolated nature of the island and the strangeness of its inhabitants, but reduces its characters to squabbling malcontents pretty much from the word go, which makes spending time with them far from appealing, and stops the viewer from having any sympathy for them once things start to go wrong.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) / D: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo / 149m

Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Tom Hiddleston, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Idris Elba, Danai Gurira, Peter Dinklage, Benedict Wong, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio Del Toro, William Hurt, Letitia Wright

Rating: 8/10 – Thanos (Brolin) finally gets around to collecting the Infinity stones and only the Avengers (and almost every other Marvel superhero) can stop him – or can they?; there’s much that could be said about Avengers: Infinity War, but suffice it to say, after eighteen previous movies, Marvel have finally made the MCU’s version of The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

The King of Escape (2009) / D: Alain Guiraudie / 90m

Original title: Le roi de l’évasion

Cast: Ludovic Berthillot, Hafsia Herzi, Pierre Laur, Luc Palun, Pascal Aubert, François Clavier, Bruno Valayer, Jean Toscan

Rating: 6/10 – when a middle-aged homosexual tractor salesman (Berthillot) falls in love with the daughter (Herzi) of a rival salesman, this unexpected turn of events has further unexpected repercussions, all of which lead the pair to go on the run from her father and the police; as much a comedy of manners as an unlikely romance, The King of Escape is humorous (though far from profound), and features too many scenes of its central couple running across fields and through woods, something that becomes as tiring for the viewer as it must have been for the actors, though the performances are finely judged, and Guiraudie’s direction displays the increasing confidence that would allow him to make a bigger step with Stranger by the Lake (2013).

The Tenth Victim (1965)

23 Monday Apr 2018

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Drama, Elio Petri, Italy, La decima vittima, Literary adaptation, Marcello Mastroianni, Ming Tea, Review, Sci-fi, The Big Hunt, Thriller, Ursula Andress

Original title: La decima vittima

D: Elio Petri / 89m

Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress, Elsa Martinelli, Salvo Randone, Massimo Serato, Milo Quesada, Luce Bonifassy, George Wang

In the future, war has been eradicated thanks to The Big Hunt, a televised form of mass entertainment that involves people with violent tendencies taking it in turns to be Hunter or Hunted. The Hunter knows everything about their prey, while the Hunted has no idea who might be trying to kill them. There is a financial reward for the winner of each round, and if a contestant successfully despatches their tenth victim then they win a million dollars and can retire from the game. Caroline Meredith (Andress) is facing her tenth hunt; her intended victim is Marcello Poletti (Mastroianni), who has survived six hunts. With sponsorship allowing Caroline the chance to stage the grandest of all televised kills, she sets about luring Marcello to his death by pretending to be a journalist who wants to interview him about the sexual proclivities of Italian men. But Marcello becomes suspicious of her behaviour, and soon the pair are involved in an increasingly convoluted game of bluff and double-bluff, a game that will test the limits of the feelings they are starting to have for each other…

In many ways, Italian movies from the Sixties were startling creations, and unlike any others from around the world. Adapted from the short story, Seventh Victim (1953) by Robert Sheckley, The Tenth Victim fits neatly into that category, its tale of intrigue and romance bolstered by futuristic costume designs, a visual style that fuses images of old Rome with avant-garde projections of its future version, and a reckless approach to the narrative that serves the movie well for the most part, but which also undermines it completely at other times. It’s a sci-fi thriller with earnest romantic leanings that don’t quite gel into a convincing whole, but it’s also a movie that provides sights and sounds that you’re unlikely to see anywhere else (even in other, similar Italian movies of the period). Where else would you see a bra that fires bullets, or a mechanical toy animal that Marcello calls his only friend, or a seat that catapults an unlucky sitter into a nearby pool with a crocodile in it? Bizarre moments like these, where the script goes off on a creative tangent, help the movie overcome some of its more pedestrian passages, but there aren’t enough to overcome the feeling that the material is being stretched too thin in places, and to no obvious benefit.

That said, the game of bluff and double-bluff played out by Caroline and Marcello does have its moments, with each trying to manoeuvre the other into place so their kill can have the most impact. Andress is earnest and determined as Caroline, both in terms of her character’s growing love for Marcello, and her single-minded pursuit of the game’s ultimate prize. But while Andress – unexpectedly – proves to be very good indeed in her role, the same can’t be said of Mastroianni, who is let down by the script’s indecision in how to portray him. One minute he’s looking smug, the next he’s angry, the moment after that he’s as amorous as a typical Italian male… and so on. He’s not helped by Petri’s scattershot approach to directing, with the future director of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) unable to maintain a consistent pace or tone throughout. There are very definite highs in the movie, but there are also very damning lows, and it’s this inconsistency that stops the movie from being as carefree and as enjoyable as it could have been.

Rating: 7/10 – while there’s a lot going on visually – all of it captured by Gianni Di Venanzo’s exemplary cinematography – the story suffers somewhat, making The Tenth Victim both invigorating and disappointing at the same time; with the main storyline falling victim to a series of implausible built-in plot developments, the movie is as preposterous as many others of its kind from the Sixties, but thanks to a frothy sense of its own absurdity, overcomes many of its faults by sheer force of indomitable Italian will.

I Can’t Think Straight (2008)

18 Wednesday Apr 2018

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Drama, LGBTQ+, Lisa Ray, Literary adaptation, Review, Romance, Sexuality, Shamim Sarif, Sheetal Sheth, Wedding

D: Shamim Sarif / 79m

Cast: Lisa Ray, Sheetal Sheth, Antonia Frering, Dalip Tahil, Nina Wadia, Ernest Ignatius, Siddiqua Akhtar, Amber Rose Revah, Anya Lahiri, Kimberly Jaraj, Sam Vicenti, Rez Kempton, Darwin Shaw

The daughter of wealthy Christian Palestinians (Frering, Tahil), Tala (Ray) is preparing to get married. Hani (Shaw) is a handsome young businessman, and her fourth fiancé. The wedding is due to take place in Jordan, but Tala lives and works in London. There she meets Leyla (Sheth), the girlfriend of Ali (Kempton), one of Tala’s old college friends. There’s an instant attraction between the two, and soon they are finding excuses to spend time together. A trip to Oxford with one of Tala’s sisters, Lamia (Lahiri), leads to Leyla and Tala sleeping together. But where this emboldens Leyla to acknowledge and embrace her sexuality, Tala cites her family and cultural traditions as reasons why she can’t commit to a relationship with Leyla, and this causes a wedge between them. They go their separate ways, with Tala preparing to enter into a marriage that isn’t what she wants, and Leyla choosing to make a life-changing decision. Time passes, but though both women retain their feelings for each other, it takes one more life-changing decision to allow them the chance of being happy together…

A lighter, less dramatic (and contemporary) version of Sarif’s previous movie, The World Unseen, I Can’t Think Straight is also another adaptation by Sarif of one of her novels. It’s a semi-autobiographical tale where Leyla represents Sarif, and reunites Ray and Sheth in similar roles from The World Unseen. It’s a breezy effort, more concerned with applying humour to events than focusing on the drama, and making the romance between Tala and Leyla more predictable. It’s a movie where the outcome can be guessed within the first ten minutes, and where each character fits neatly into a prescribed stereotype, particularly both sets of parents, with the mothers portrayed as controlling, and resistant to truly supporting their daughters’ happiness, while the fathers are entirely accepting and sympathetic. With the majority of the characters being so agreeable, Sarif has to work hard to make Tala and Leyla’s burgeoning relationship the source of any conflict. And when she does, the same issue that hampers the script elsewhere also comes to the fore: it’s all too inevitable to be completely convincing.

Along the way we’re treated to picture postcard shots of London and Oxford, a battery of supporting characters who are all painted in broad brush strokes, and a polo match where Tala’s hair and make up are immaculate – after she’s taken part (the script does acknowledge this, but even so…). But what really doesn’t help is the dialogue. Clunky and awkward, and often proving the better of the cast – including Ray and Sheth – Sarif and co-screenwriter Kelly Moss have concocted some truly cringeworthy lines that call attention to themselves when they’re uttered. It’s not helpful either that the script is peppered with lumbering references to the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and Tala’s mother voices as many anti-Semitic remarks as she can manage in any given scene. Thankfully, Ray and Sheth manage to make more of Tala and Leyla than is on the page, though the rest of the performances remain perfunctory throughout. As that commonplace conundrum, the difficult second movie, I Can’t Think Straight lacks the persuasiveness and focus of Sarif’s first movie, and suffers accordingly. It’s lightweight and somewhat superficial, and unsure if it’s a rom-com or a rom-dram. In the end it’s an ungainly combination of the two, and though there are occasional moments where the script does work, there aren’t enough of them to make this anything more than disappointing.

Rating: 4/10 – a movie that betrays its low budget production values, and gives the impression its script needed more of a polish, I Can’t Think Straight tells its lesbian love story like it was a meringue, i.e. light and insubstantial; Sarif does her own novel a minimum of justice, and there’s a complacency to the material that hampers it further, making this something of a curio and nothing more.

The World Unseen (2007)

12 Thursday Apr 2018

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Apartheid, Cape Town, Drama, LGBTQ+, Lisa Ray, Literary adaptation, Location Cafe, Parvin Dabas, Review, Romance, Shamim Sarif, Sheetal Sheth

D: Shamim Sarif / 90m

Cast: Lisa Ray, Sheetal Sheth, Parvin Dabas, Nandana Sen, David Dennis, Grethe Fox, Colin Moss, Natalie Becker, Rajesh Gopie, Bernard White, Avantika Akerkar

Cape Town, 1952. Amina (Sheth) is a young Indian woman who owns and runs the Location Cafe, a haven for both the local Indian community and the blacks. Miriam (Ray) is an Indian housewife and mother of three who visits the cafe and finds herself fascinated by Amina’s seemingly carefree, yet proud attitude. Her husband, Omar (Dabas), opens a general store on the outskirts of the city, and for a while, things progress as expected. Omar’s sister, though, puts them in danger when she comes to visit from Paris with her white husband. The police discover their presence, and Omar’s sister, Rehmat (Sen), is only saved from arrest by Amina’s hiding her. This helps to build Amina and Miriam’s friendship, something that is aided by Omar’s decision to hire Amina to create a vegetable garden behind the store. The two women spend more and more time together, and their friendship deepens until each begins to acknowledge the attraction they have for each other. But how can their love flourish when they have to contend with the social, sexual, cultural and political milieu they’re a part of?

A romantic drama set in a time and place that would have heavily condemned the sexual love of two women for each other, The World Unseen is a carefully paced, judiciously mounted movie that isn’t too interested in putting its central characters in too much jeopardy, while it explores themes related to the racism and homophobia of the period. Adapted from writer-director Sarif’s own novel, her tale of fledgling love amidst the trials and tribulations of apartheid South Africa is a low-key affair, telling its story simply and with due care and attention to the characters of Amina and Miriam. Thanks to Sarif’s script and the performances of Ray and Sheth, both women are sharply drawn, and their thoughts and feelings expertly expressed through covert looks, cautious body language, and coded language. The slow reveal of their feelings for each other is hidden behind a veil of subterfuge, and Sarif shows the mounting tension between Amina’s longing for Miriam and Miriam’s hesitancy over what it will mean to her marriage and her children, in such a way that the sincerity of their emotions is never in doubt.

With the movie’s central relationship locked in, Sarif is free to build around it, adding sub-plots and minor incidents to help flesh out the running time. Sadly, not all of these sub-plots are as successful as they could have been, and though they don’t do anything to hurt the pace of the movie – Sarif’s measured direction ensures everything proceeds at an even pace – there are too many that feel as if they’ve been lifted from a soap opera. Amina’s silent partner in the cafe, Jacob (Dennis), has a predictably short relationship with a white postmistress (Fox), Omar has a secret that Miriam has no choice but to tolerate (at first), and Amina’s grandmother tries to push her into an arranged marriage. Most of these elements end as quietly as they began, and lack any appreciable impact, but thanks to the engaging quality of the material as a whole, the movie doesn’t suffer as dramatically as it might have done. The rest of the performances are adequate (though Moss’s permanently aggressive policeman is particularly one-note), and the visual style is consistently muted in terms of colour and light, something that robs it of any further appeal, but overall this is a quietly persuasive movie that does very well by its central characters.

Rating: 7/10 – with its well conceived romance, and passive recreation of the time period it’s set in, The World Unseen is exemplary when focusing on its central characters’ hopes and dreams, but less so when the focus switches elsewhere; Sarif’s first outing as a writer and a director shows promise, and there’s a clear message about female empowerment, but in the end, there’s too much that feels perfunctory instead of important.

80,000 Suspects (1963)

17 Saturday Mar 2018

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Bath, Claire Bloom, Drama, Elleston Trevor, Literary adaptation, Review, Richard Johnson, Smallpox, The Pillars of Midnight, Thriller, Unhappy marriage, Val Guest, Yolande Donlan

D: Val Guest / 109m

Cast: Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Yolande Donlan, Cyril Cusack, Michael Goodliffe, Mervyn Johns, Kay Walsh, Norman Bird, Basil Dignam, Arthur Christiansen

It’s New Year’s Eve and all is not well between Dr Steven Monks (Johnson) and his wife, Julie (Bloom). After nine years their marriage is faltering. He has had an affair with a long-time friend, Ruth Preston (Donlan), the wife of one of his colleagues, Clifford (Goodliffe), but Julie only has vague suspicions and half-formed ideas as to why their marriage is in trouble. The discovery that a patient at the hospital where Steven works has smallpox, at first puts their problems to one side, but as more and more sufferers are found and the threat of an epidemic hangs over everyone, their relationship – and how they overcome their issues – takes on a greater importance for both of them. Julie contracts the virus, while at the same time, Ruth may or may not have left her husband. With the authorities stretched to the limit in their efforts to contain the outbreak, personal animosities become heightened, Steven and Julie find themselves making irrevocable decisions about their marriage, and one carrier threatens the safety of everyone…

Adapted from the novel, The Pillars of Midnight by Elleston Trevor, 80,000 Suspects is three movies rolled into one. There’s the hospital-based drama that unfolds as more and more smallpox sufferers are discovered and the Ministry of Health is brought in to save the day, there’s the relationship drama built around the problems of Steven and Julie, and there’s a late addition in the form of a race against time to find the last carrier, which makes it a thriller. All these elements bump against each other as the movie unfolds, and though they don’t always do so in an organic or believable way, the strength of the material overall ensures any rough transitions are smoothed over as quickly as possible. As each element is explored, the script also ensures that they’re not explored for too long before moving on or away to the next development in the story. This keeps the narrative ticking over effectively, and allows the characters – even the minor ones such as Johns’ over-anxious Ministry of Health coordinator – to stand out as credibly as possible. Working from his own script, director Val Guest adroitly keeps the focus where it’s needed, and elicits good performances from all concerned (though you could argue Johnson is a little stiff at times).

Shot in and around the town of Bath during the winter of early 1963 (which was particularly bad), the movie benefits from its location work, and the involvement of local residents in the scenes involving mass vaccination (watch out too for a cameo from Thirties star Graham Moffatt as a man with a fear of needles). This level of verisimilitude adds greatly to the no-frills approach adopted by Guest, and helps to make the potential scale of the epidemic that much more frightening. And for once, there aren’t any hidden agendas or characters using the outbreak for personal gain, just a group of people trying to do their best under difficult circumstances. The inter-relationships between the Monks’ and the Prestons does lead to a couple of soap opera-style moments, but these are forgivable in a movie that, by and large, could be mistaken at times as being a reconstruction of past events. Guest oversees it all with his usual skill, and in tandem with DoP Arthur Grant, uses the CinemaScope format to impressive effect, even though he relies on medium shots for most of the movie. Often gripping, this is a minor British classic, and easily due a revival.

Rating: 8/10 – an intelligent, yet modest drama with thriller leanings, 80,000 Suspects invests heavily in its characters and uses its smallpox outbreak as a way of exploring their faults and foibles, and in some depth; Bloom is terrific as the conflicted Julie, but Guest is the movies’s MVP, and if for nothing else, than for showing the fear and paranoia about the outbreak spreading out of control coming not from the public, but from the authorities trying to combat it.

NOTE: At present, there isn’t a trailer for 80,000 Suspects.

The Breadwinner (2017)

25 Sunday Feb 2018

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Afghanistan, Animation, Deborah Ellis, Drama, Kabul, Literary adaptation, Nora Twomey, Review, Saara Chaudry, Soma Chhaya, Taliban

D: Nora Twomey / 94m

Cast: Saara Chaudry, Soma Chhaya, Noorin Gulamgaus, Laara Sadiq, Ali Badshah, Shaista Latif, Kanza Feris, Kawa Ada

In Taliban controlled Kabul, Afghanistan, eleven year old Parvana (Chaudry) and her family – father Nurullah (Badshah), mother Soraya (Latif), older sister Fattema (Sadiq), and younger brother Zaki – get by through selling personal items on the street. Business isn’t always good, though, and when a run in with a member of the local militia, Idrees (Gulamgaus), leads to Nurullah being arrested and imprisoned without charge, things become even more difficult. With money and food running out, and women unable to move about freely unless accompanied by a man, Parvana hits on the idea to look and dress like a boy. She cuts her hair short, wears clothes worn by her deceased older brother, and along with Shauzia (Chhaya), a girl she knew when she went to school and who is also disguised as a boy, she begins to earn enough money to keep her family from becoming destitute. Parvana has a bigger aim, though: she wants to see her father, and maybe get him out of prison. Shauzia helps her get enough money together to bribe the guards, but Parvana’s plan doesn’t work. But as life in Kabul becomes more and more dangerous, the kindness of a stranger, Razaq (Ada), may prove to mean all the difference in Pavarna’s family being reunited…

Adapted from the literary award-winning novel of the same name by Deborah Ellis, The Breadwinner is the kind of animated movie we don’t often see enough of. Dealing with serious topics such as female persecution and religious intolerance in an honest and direct manner, the movie allows us a glimpse into a world most of us can’t even imagine. But like the best animation, the world it presents to us is just as real and just as affecting as if it were a documentary. The importance of the family unit, and the daily struggle to keep it intact, is highlighted by the little sacrifices that Parvana’s mother and sister make in the wake of Nurullah’s imprisonment. For Parvana, her experiences in the wider world – in a male-dominated world – bring both freedom of movement and unexpected restrictions due to her increased responsibility. It’s a dangerous path Parvana is taking, and the anguish it causes her family if she’s late home, is explored with impressive sincerity and pitched at just the right level of paranoia. Likewise, the risk of Parvana being found out, and the knowledge that if she is, everyone in her family will suffer, adds to the tension.

As a result, the movie draws in the viewer and provides them with a sincere, heartfelt story that is peppered with moments of philosophical reflection on the nature of modern Afghanistan, as well as showing that it’s still possible, even in a country ruled by the Taliban, to have hopes and dreams. Parvana hopes to be reunited with her father, Shauzia wants to see the ocean. Neither is unobtainable, but the script by Anita Doron makes it clear that achieving these things won’t be easy. The script also makes it clear that despite the hostility and the religious fundamentalism that the Taliban use to enforce their beliefs, there is also room for personal respect and understanding amongst the “people”. There are other messages to be found (relating to issues such as integrity, the abuse of power, and recurring injustice), but this is a movie about the power of hope and the power of family (a narrative strand that is best exemplified by the story within a story that Pavarna tells when there is a lull in her endeavours, and which features a brave villager taking on a terrible Elephant King). Twomey’s direction is confident, intelligent and humane, while the animation, with its clean lines and vibrant colours, is simple, yet tremendously effective.

Rating: 9/10 – nominated at this year’s Academy Awards in the Best Animated Feature Film category, The Breadwinner is an outstanding movie that features a great voice cast, superb animation, and a story that is compelling, thought-provoking, and ultimately, uplifting; not afraid to pull any narrative punches, the movie offers insights into life under the Taliban, but paints a picture of hope amidst all the suffering, and the refusal of the human spirit to be crushed completely.

Freak Show (2017)

19 Monday Feb 2018

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Abigail Breslin, Alex Lawther, AnnaSophia Robb, Bette Midler, Comedy, Cross-dressing, Drama, High School, Homecoming Queen, Literary adaptation, Review, Trudie Styler

D: Trudie Styler / 91m

Cast: Alex Lawther, Abigail Breslin, AnnaSophia Robb, Ian Nelson, Larry Pine, Bette Midler, Celia Weston, Willa Fitzgerald, Charlotte Ubben, Laverne Cox, Christopher Dylan White, Michael Park, Mickey Sumner, John McEnroe, Eddie Schweighardt

What if you didn’t fit in anywhere, and most days went out of your way not to fit in? And what if you were bullied by your fellow high schoolers, ignored by your father, missed your absentee mother terribly, and expressed your inner feelings by dressing up in outrageous yet clearly female outfits… and the source of all this was because you’re a boy? How would all that make you feel? And what would you do to combat the unwanted attention you’re getting from the other students? Well, in the feature debut of director Trudie Styler, the answer new kid Billy Bloom (Lawther) opts for is to be bolder and more outrageous, and to treat the majority of the other kids with disdain. But for all his outward self-confidence, Billy is still the outsider who wants to be accepted for who he is. The trouble is he’s flamboyant, shamelessly narcissistic, and completely uninterested in fitting in unless it’s on his own terms. But when he’s viciously beaten up by members of the school football team, things begin to edge his way, and a wider acceptance makes itself felt, an acceptance that is put to the test when Billy decides to run for Homecoming Queen…

Anyone coming to Freak Show might find themselves wondering if its origins lay between the pages of a Young Adult novel, and those assumptions would be right. Adapted from the novel of the same name by self-styled celebutante James St. James, Freak Show is a movie predicated to the idea of individuality above all else, and being true to yourself, even if you’re not sure just who you are yet. It’s an ode to persevering against the odds, but told in an uneven and often uncertain way thanks to a screenplay by Patrick J.Clifton and Beth Rigazio that can’t decide if Billy should fully integrate into high school life or remain a consenting outsider. Outside of school, Billy lives with his father (Pine) who doesn’t understand him, and he dreams of the day his mother (Midler) will come to rescue him from the terrible life he really doesn’t lead. Within school, Billy makes friends with Blah Blah Blah (Robb), who thinks he’s amazing, and football star Flip (Nelson) who has an artistic side he doesn’t feel he can express except when he’s around Billy.

The relationship that develops between Billy and Flip occupies a lot of the movie’s running time, and it spends a lot of that time not going where you might expect it to (but then it does). It’s not always handled well, and there’s a frankly embarrassing moment between Flip and Billy’s mother that has all the dramatic subtlety of a police baton strike to the lower right thigh (sorry, wrong movie). Billy’s decision to run for Homecoming Queen includes the movie’s heartfelt plea for tolerance, and though it’s beautifully expressed by Lawther, the movie tries to be ironic immediately after – and doesn’t even come close. With the screenplay also unable to pin down its approach to gender politics, it’s left to Lawther and the make up, costume and wardrobe departments to provide a series of outfits that best express Billy’s glamour obsessed personality, and in doing so to gloss over the movie’s various shortcomings, not the least of which is Breslin’s God-bothering rival for the Homecoming Queen tiara, Lynette. It is Lawther’s movie though, the young actor giving a relaxed, confident, and sincere performance that keeps Billy sympathetic throughout, even when it’s hard to feel entirely sorry for him.

Rating: 6/10 – bolstered by a terrific performance from Lawther, but hampered at the same time by so many high school movie clichés it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, Freak Show is at least funny when it’s trying to be, but tiresome when it’s trying to be serious; with its mixed messages centering around individuality and integration, the movie is only half as effective as it should be, and too often opts for warm and fuzzy when it should be direct and uncomfortable.

The Scent of Rain & Lightning (2017)

17 Saturday Feb 2018

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Blake Robbins, Drama, Literary adaptation, Maggie Grace, Maika Monroe, Mark Webber, Murder, Revenge, Review, Thriller, Will Patton

D: Blake Robbins / 103m

Cast: Maika Monroe, Mark Webber, Will Patton, Maggie Grace, Justin Chatwin, Bonnie Bedelia, Aaron Poole, Brad Carter, Logan Miller, Kassia Conway, Sarah Noble Peck

A small town murder mystery with an arthouse feel, The Scent of Rain & Lightning opens with bad news for Jody Linder (Monroe): Billy Croyle (Carter), the man who was jailed for killing her parents, Laurie and Hugh (Grace, Chatwin), twelve years before has had his sentence commuted and is being released from prison. Understandably, Jody and the rest of her family – grandfather ‘Senior’ (Patton), grandmother Annabelle (Bedelia), uncles Chace (Webber) and Meryl (Poole) – aren’t too happy about this, but when Jody confronts Croyle and he accuses ‘Senior’ of getting the verdict he wanted, as well as denying he killed her parents, Jody begins to ask questions around town, questions that make her believe that not everything about her parents’ deaths is as cut and dried as she’s been led to believe. As the town – and her family – start to give up their secrets, Jody is forced to accept that the answers she’s looking for may lie closer to home. But then a senseless act of violence occurs, one that puts Jody in danger, and which threatens her family as well…

A slow burn thriller that looks and feels like an arthouse movie, The Scent of Rain & Lightning (adapted from the novel of the same name by Nancy Pickard) doesn’t offer anything new for viewers with a liking for small town murder mysteries, but it does provide a non-linear narrative that interweaves Jody’s somewhat random approach to investigating her parents’ deaths, with flashbacks to the events that led up to the murders, and finally, what actually happened. These flashbacks are necessary, as Jody proves to be the Rick Deckard of small town murder mysteries, and never learns anything of real value. Thankfully, while she’s looking for answers, the script by Casey Twenter and Jeff Robison (also two of the movie’s producers) keeps the viewer up to speed with what happened, why, how, and who was responsible. It makes for an uneven narrative, with neither strand complementing each other, or finding common moments where they might connect effectively, and as a result, it’s a movie that often feels like it’s been stitched together Frankenstein Monster-style, with no clear idea of which part goes with which. This also leaves some scenes feeling a little lost, or there just to pad out the running time.

Performance-wise, the movie is a bit of a mixed bag also. None of the characters are particularly well developed, and Jody’s expected character arc fizzles out around two thirds in. Monroe, a very talented young actress who’s still looking for that perfect follow up to her breakout role in It Follows (2014), hasn’t much to do beyond ask awkward questions and have those questions go unanswered. As the movie progresses, her role diminishes further and further, and the need to solve the mystery takes precedence. This brings Grace’s character to the fore, but Laurie and her secret prove to be very stereotypical, which leaves any emotional connection the viewer might be looking to make as unlikely as Kevin Spacey winning a Best Supporting Actor award at this year’s Oscars. Elsewhere, the likes of Patton, Bedelia and Poole flit in and out of the narrative, while Webber struggles to make his character ambivalent enough to be considered a viable suspect. Robbins, making his second feature (and appearing as the town sheriff), opts for a muted visual style that is at least atmospheric, but which doesn’t elevate the material, and there are too many occasions where the image is refracted through water as if it has an important psychological resonance.

Rating: 5/10 – with two narrative strands that work independently of each other, and a sense that no amount of screenplay jiggery-pokery could have brought them together, The Scent of Rain & Lightning lacks the impact needed to make its mystery elements work, and its small town milieu appropriately claustrophobic; disappointing then – though not unwatchable – it’s another indie thriller that tries hard to be different while forgetting that it’s using very basic materials to begin with.

HHhH (2017)

12 Monday Feb 2018

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Assassination, Cédric Jimenez, Drama, History, Jack O'Connell, Jack Reynor, Jason Clarke, Literary adaptation, Mia Wasikowska, Reinhard Heydrich, Review, Rosamund Pike, Thriller, World War II

aka Killing Heydrich; The Man With the Iron Heart

D: Cédric Jimenez / 120m

Cast: Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Jack O’Connell, Jack Reynor, Mia Wasikowska, Stephen Graham, Thomas M. Wright, Noah Jupe, Geoff Bell, Enzo Cilenti, Volker Bruch, David Rintoul, David Horovitch, Abigail Lawrie, Adam Nagaitis

Let’s get this out of the way right from the start: HHhH is an odd movie. In fact, it’s very odd. Not because of the title, which is an acronym for Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich (Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich, a quip you wouldn’t dare repeat back then), and not because you have to wade through a long list of actors before you find someone whose first language is actually German or Czechoslovakian. No, what makes the movie so odd is that, for a drama based around the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (Clarke), keen violinist and one of the main architects of the Final Solution, it lacks ambition and drive, and often moves from scene to scene as if seeking the right direction in which to move forward. It also lacks focus, telling us much about Heydrich’s early life in its first twenty minutes (including his love of fencing, and his dishonourable discharge from the German Navy), but then failing to link it all to anything that happens once he’s fully committed to being a Nazi.

Like a lot of members of the Nazi Party, Heydrich went from being something of a nobody to somebody wielding quite a lot of power in a very short space of time, and the movie recognises this. However, thanks to the vagaries of the script, and Clarke’s gloomy demeanour throughout, Heydrich remains a sadistic bully boy in adult’s clothing – and just that. No one is looking for the movie to redeem Heydrich in some way (though that would make it more interesting), but for all its attempts at trying to shine a spotlight on his pre-Nazi activities, they’re all left abandoned as the movie progresses. Instead we see Heydrich’s rise to prominence through the patronage of, first, his wife, Lina von Osten (Pike playing Lady Macbeth as if her career depends upon it), and then, second, Heinrich Himmler (Graham playing Hitler’s right hand man as the uncle you do visit). He does some expectedly nasty things, behaves unconscionably whenever possible, and then his story, with over an hour of the movie to go, takes a back seat to Operation Anthropoid.

By changing its focus nearly halfway through, Jimenez’s movie only narrowly avoids feeling schizophrenic. As we’re introduced to Jan Kubiš (O’Connell) and Jozef Gabčík (Reynor), the two men chosen to head up the assassination attempt, we also get to meet a whole roster of new characters that we don’t have time to get to know or care about. And once Heydrich is out of the way, the terrible reprisals carried out by the Nazis are represented by the razing of Lidice (which actually happened), but in such a brusque way that it makes it obvious that HHhH wants to move on quickly to address the fate of Kubiš and Gabčík and their compatriots – which goes on for far too long and features the kind of gung-ho heroics that only a movie would feel was appropriate. Add the fact that the script – by Jiminez, Audrey Diwan and David Farr from Laurent Binet’s novel – is represented by some of the blandest, most depressing cinematography seen in recent years, and you have a movie that is tonally awkward, flatly directed, and which flirts in earnest with having nothing meaningful to say.

Rating: 5/10 – clunky and dour, and only sporadically engaging, HHhH tells its story as if it was being forced to – and the whole process is painful; a missed opportunity would be putting it mildly, but the movie’s very oddness allows for a certain fascination to develop as the movie unfolds, making it watchable if you don’t expect too much from it.

The Clapper (2017)

02 Friday Feb 2018

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Amanda Seyfried, Comedy, Dito Montiel, Drama, Ed Helms, Infomercials, Literary adaptation, Review, Romance, Tracy Morgan

D: Dito Montiel / 90m

Cast: Ed Helms, Amanda Seyfried, Tracy Morgan, Adam Levine, Russell Peters, P.J. Byrne, Brenda Vaccaro, Leah Remini

Eddie Krumble (Helms) is a professional clapper, a paid audience member of informercials who sometimes gets paid extra for asking a question, or standing out from the crowd in some other way. It’s not the best paid job in the world, but Eddie is kept busy, and along with his best (and only) friend, Chris (Morgan), he makes a good enough living to suit his needs. He’s also struck up an unlikely friendship with a young woman, Judy (Seyfried), who works at a gas station. But just as they begin dating, a late night TV show shines a spotlight on Eddie’s clapper activities, and asks the question, Who is the Clapper? This unwanted attention causes problems for Eddie as he doesn’t want the exposure, and it leads to Judy being fired from her job at the gas station. Not knowing how to contact her, and with the TV show still trying to track him down, Eddie hits on an idea that he thinks will keep everyone happy: he’ll appear on the show and ask people to help him find Judy. But Eddie’s efforts backfire, and soon it looks as if he and Judy are destined never to be reunited.

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In adapting his own novel, writer/director Dito Montiel has crafted an uneven yet enjoyable movie that tries to take a number of heavy-handed potshots at lowest common denominator television, while also featuring a sweetly nuanced romance, and a deft exploration of the lasting effects of overwhelming grief. In targeting the exploitative nature of some US TV shows, Montiel’s approach feels a little old and past its time, and it lacks the satirical bite that’s needed for his barbs to hit home with the required effect. The burgeoning romance between Eddie and Judy is handled with a lightness of touch that is magnified by the just-this-side of overbearingly cute performances by Helms and Seyfried. In their capable hands, what could have been sickly and off-putting is instead winning and delightful, a meeting of unsure hearts and minds with each needing to protect themselves as much as possible while also trying to find the courage to make a commitment. Their romance is touching and sincere, and the awkwardness each feels is tenderly expressed on both sides, with Eddie’s nervous ramblings a perfect foil for Judy’s equally nervous uncertainty.

But where the movie really works is in its depiction of the emotional troubles affecting Eddie, and his consternation at being singled out. Helms is terrific as Eddie, a man just trying to get along without being noticed, and trying to put a devastating trauma behind him. There’s a frailty and an anger and a desperation in Eddie, and they all threaten to leak out and overwhelm him, and Helms is at his best when showing us how his character is trying to keep all these feelings in check. There are moments when it seems as though Montiel has let Helms run with a scene, and if this is true, then it was a wise decision; this is one of Helms’s finest performances. However, it’s a performance that can’t make up for some of the other decisions Montiel has made, such as the late inclusion of Vaccaro as Eddie’s mother (there just to push Eddie into a necessary narrative corner), and the length of time that Eddie remains anonymous (when she wants to, Judy finds his agent/manager with ease; yet the TV show struggles for weeks to do the same thing). The tone of the piece changes too often as well, with the disparate storylines not always fitting well together. Nevertheless, this is diverting enough to warrant maybe a repeat watch, just for the pleasure of seeing Helms at his best.

Rating: 7/10 – that man Helms rescues The Clapper from a lower score purely by the strength and subtlety of his performance, and Montiel’s inspired decision to cast him; Morgan too is on good form, and so is Seyfried (even if she’s given less and less to do as the movie progresses), but narrative inconsistencies, and a sense that Montiel hasn’t fully locked in the script, undermine the good work on show elsewhere, leaving the movie feeling likeable yet also incomplete.

Final Portrait (2017)

25 Thursday Jan 2018

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Alberto Giacometti, Armie Hammer, Art, Comedy, Drama, Geoffrey Rush, James Lord, Literary adaptation, Painting, Paris, Review, Stanley Tucci

D: Stanley Tucci / 90m

Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Armie Hammer, Clémence Poésy, Tony Shalhoub, Sylvie Testud

In 1964, the writer James Lord (Hammer) is in Paris on a short trip when his friend, the artist Alberto Giacometti (Rush), asks him to sit for a portrait. Giacometti initially says it will take a few hours – one afternoon – but his own eccentricities and his own self-doubts mean that one afternoon becomes several weeks, and Lord is faced with postponing his return to the US until the portrait is finished. Giacometti works in fits and starts, and his personal life often interferes with his progress with the painting. There are long-standing animosities between Giacometti and his wife, Annette (Testud), that are exacerbated by his relationship with Caroline (Poésy), whose portrait he’s also painting. As the time passes, Lord becomes an observer of Giacometti’s life and work, and his insecurities and obsessions.

Based on the biography written by Lord a year later, A Giacometti Portrait, Stanley Tucci’s fourth feature as a writer/director is a meditative exploration of the creative process, and the notion that no work of art can ever truly be regarded as finished. It’s an interesting idea for a movie to examine, as by its very nature, Final Portrait is exactly that: a finished product (unless Tucci decides to release revised versions of the movie in future years). But it’s an idea that Giacometti adheres to, and Tucci has him continually looking at the sculptures in his studio, examining them, assessing them, and sometimes changing them slightly, albeit in very minor ways, as if by doing so, he can improve the work in such a way that it becomes more relevant, and worth the effort he’s put into it. The same applies to Lord’s portrait, an endeavour that Giacometti says will never be truly completed, even if Lord were to be available to sit for the rest of his life; even then, more can always be done to improve the work, and then more again.

Tucci isn’t one for histrionics or exaggerated performances, and his cast comply with the needs of a script that requires a delicacy of touch and a sympathetic approach to both Giacometti and his erratic genius. Rush is a terrific choice as the artist who thinks nothing of throwing an envelope with two million francs in it under a bed and forgetting about it. Chain-smoking his way through the movie, Rush portrays Giacometti as a restless man who is always searching for that one moment of clarity in his work but never quite finding it. As the trapped, slightly bewildered, and increasingly frustrated Lord, Hammer is effectively the straight man to Rush’s manic devilry, but he carries the role well, and is a charming foil for Giacometti’s maddening behaviour. In support, Poésy and Testud offer polar opposites as the women in Giacometti’s life (neither of whom are as well treated as they would like), and there’s the quiet, reflective presence of Shalhoub as Giacometti’s brother, Diego. The movie is beautifully constructed, with the artist’s studio a wonderfully designed and assembled cave of wonders courtesy of production designer James Merifield, art director David Hindle, and set decorator Sarah Wan. The camera takes in all the elements that are on display and a wonderfully evocative world is entered into as a result. It’s all overlaid with a tremendous sense of fun, along with a dash of rueful humour here and there, and remains a captivating and entertaining experience throughout.

Rating: 8/10 – an affectionate tribute to the difficulties inherent in the artistic process, Final Portrait is a thoughtful, sincere, modest, and clever movie that offers a beguiling yet intuitive examination of the artist Alberto Giacometti and his work; Rush and Hammer give wonderful performances, Tucci directs with verve and confidence in his own script, and it all proves as invigorating as the pursuit of artistic “truth” should be.

The Foreigner (2017)

18 Thursday Jan 2018

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Action, Authentic IRA, Bombing, Drama, Ireland, Jackie Chan, Literary adaptation, London, Martin Campbell, Pierce Brosnan, Review, Thriller

D: Martin Campbell / 113m

Cast: Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Orla Brady, Dermot Crowley, Rory Fleck Byrne, Charlie Murphy, Niall McNamee, Rufus Jones, Ray Fearon, Lia Williams, Michael McElhatton

At the beginning of The Foreigner we see Jackie Chan playing a role that we’ve not seen him play before: that of a concerned father. Already it’s a refreshing change, and though you might think he’s being a little over-protective of his teenage daughter, even he can’t foresee that when he drops her off a boutique clothes shop that she’s going to be the victim of a terrorist bom blast just moments later. But if Chan’s character, a Chinese Nuang chef called Ngoc Minh Quan, is stone-faced before, then he’s positively chiselled granite afterwards, as the London Metropolitan police investigation stalls quickly in its efforts to discover which dissident faction of the IRA carried out the bombing (they call themselves the “Authentic IRA”, as if the real IRA were somehow a bunch of phoneys). Quan learns enough from the police to enable him to go after Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Liam Hennessy (Brosnan), an ex-member of the original IRA brought into the Establishment but who still has ties to his once and fellow comrades. Is Hennessy the link that Quan needs to find the bombers? Will Quan be able to stay one step ahead of the police as he wages his own one-man war against Hennessy and his associates? And will anyone be able to answer the question, just how does one lone sixty-one year old Asian man that everyone’s on the lookout for, travel backwards and forwards between London and Ireland without racking up some serious air miles (oh yes, and being spotted)?

Adapted from Stephen Leather’s novel of the same name, The Foreigner is an action thriller that requires the usual suspension of disbelief at almost every turn, but which still manages, for the most part, to be entertaining. Chan is excellent value as the grieving yet violently focused Quan, a role he slips into with very little effort. It’s sometimes easy to write off stars such as Chan as not being “real” actors, but as Arnold Schwarzenegger showed in Maggie (2015), there will always be roles they can play that will surprise us. Chan’s melancholy, devastated presence is one that adds a layer of sympathy to the character that isn’t always considered a necessity in this kind of movie, but it’s a more than welcome change, and again, Chan is more than up to the task. So too is Brosnan, clearly relishing the chance to play an Irishman for a change and ramping up the character’s ambiguity; is he a good guy, or a bad guy, or just caught in the middle? Further down the cast list there are fine supporting turns from the likes of Crowley and Murphy (though her role is a little too similar to Polly Walker’s in Patriot Games (1992), and from the ever reliable McElhatton.

But while the performances are above average for a thick-ear thriller such as this, and director Martin Campbell does his best to keep things moving quickly enough so that the viewer won’t notice some of the more patent absurdities on display (again, just who is Quan’s remarkable travel agent?), the script by David Marconi either relies on too much exposition, or jumps from scene to scene disjointedly, making it difficult to keep track of what’s happening exactly, and why. That said, Campbell does know how to put together an effective action sequence, and though Chan isn’t as fast as he used to be, he still doesn’t have to rely on carefully chosen camera angles or rapid-fire editing to make himself look good. All in all, the movie is good in places, long-winded in others, but still well assembled enough to provide a couple of hours of harmless enjoyment – and sometimes that’s all you need.

Rating: 7/10 – Chan and Brosnan make for great adversaries, and Campbell is on solid form in the director’s chair, making The Foreigner an above average thriller with better ambitions than most; a bit of a throwback to thrillers from the Seventies (but with extra added millennial-style violence), this gives Chan his best role in years, and is an entertaining if occasionally cheesy action movie that doesn’t worry in the slightest about the things it gets irretrievably wrong.

Call Me by Your Name (2017)

30 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Armie Hammer, Drama, First love, Italy, Literary adaptation, Lombardy, Luca Guadagnino, Michael Stuhlbarg, Review, Romance, Timothée Chalamet

D: Luca Guadagnino / 132m

Cast: Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, Victoire Du Bois, Vanda Capriolo, Antonio Rimoldi

In this beautifully shot, written, directed, and acted adaptation of the novel by André Aciman, the setting is Northern Italy in the summer of 1983. Oliver (Hammer), a graduate student of archaeology and Greco-Roman culture arrives at the home of Professor Perlman (Stuhlbarg) and his family – wife Annella (Casar) and son Elio (Chalamet) – to assist the professor for six weeks with his academic paperwork. Oliver is outgoing, confident and charming, and soon wins over everyone except for Elio. Elio is Oliver’s polar opposite: reserved, insular, unsure of himself, and envious of Oliver’s ebullient nature. But Elio finds himself unexpectedly attracted to Oliver, something that both frightens and excites him. Lacking in any kind of sexual experience at seventeen, and torn between his burgeoning feelings for Oliver as well as the attentions of Marzie (Garrel), a close friend, Elio tries to navigate the treacherous waters of first love, and the realities inherent in accepting feelings and emotions that are completely overwhelming.

A project that has been in development since the movie’s main producers, Peter Spears and Howard Rosenman, saw an early galley of Aciman’s novel (his first) back in 2007, Call Me by Your Name is perhaps one of the most visually and emotionally ravishing movies of the year – or indeed any year. Shot in a variety of locations around Crema in Lombardy, this is a beautiful movie to watch, perfectly capturing the hazy, laidback existence of the Perlman family and their idyllic, rural home, and constantly providing the viewer with some absolutely magnificent imagery. Director Luca Guadagnino, in collaboration with DoP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, has made a movie that is almost painterly in its design and execution. Shots are so perfectly framed that the amount of information in any given scene is breathtaking. With such a wealth of detail on offer, it’s a triumph of cinematography yes, but also of production design, and art and set decoration.

But this movie isn’t just about the world that it so richly creates. It’s an examination of the joys and cruelties associated with first love, that horrible wonderful period in a person’s life when the world seems turned upside down and all the surety and confidence they’ve accrued counts for nothing in the face of having to let down their defences and hope their hopes and feelings aren’t rejected wholesale. The movie addresses this directly in a scene where Annella reads from a German translation of Marguerite of Navarre’s Heptaméron, where the question is asked, “Is it better to speak or to die?” This is the dilemma Elio faces: does he reveal his feelings to Oliver, or does he remain silent and in doing so forgo the relationship he seeks. It’s a familiar plight, and one that the movie treats with an appropriate sympathy and sense of consideration. Elio’s uncertainty facilitates a kind of dance between the pair as they circle around each other, both providing hints for the other and neither of them trusting their instincts far enough to take that first, all-important step.

Guadagnino ensures that the nature of this dance and the intricacy of its turns and swirls is played out in contrast to Elio’s relationship with Marzie, which is just as hesitant and just as confusing for Elio as his feelings for Oliver. Faced with opposing emotions and unable to reconcile them, Elio is equally unable to take responsibility for them. The script – a remarkable achievement courtesy of James Ivory – has him do what any confused and horny teenager would do, and indulge his desires wherever and however they might appear. It doesn’t lessen his sense of ambiguity about his sexuality, or his need for Oliver, but it does lead him to make some questionable decisions, and while there are moments where he appears unable to overcome his own culpability, the fact that his behaviour is so easily recognisable and understandable, allows the viewer to remain hopeful that things will work out for him.

It helps that Ivory’s script and Guadagnino’s direction don’t pass judgment on any of the characters, and instead provides them with a cinematic safe haven for their troubles to play out. It’s also refreshing that the movie focuses on a gay relationship that runs its course – as inevitably it must do, Oliver is only there for six weeks – and there’s no threat or peril attached, either from Elio’s parents or any of the locals (though a handful of scenes set in Bergamo where Elio and Oliver spend some time together give the impression that something bad will happen at some point). It’s worth noting that this is a movie where prejudice isn’t allowed to raise its unwelcome head at any time, and though you could argue that this doesn’t sound entirely realistic given the period, it’s still encouraging to have that particular hoary old plot device ignored completely. The dynamic between Elio and Oliver is what’s important, and once Elio has made his choice to either speak or die, the movie rightly focuses on them and the fledgling steps they take in their relationship.

All of this, though, would be for nothing if it weren’t for the two mesmerising performances given by Hammer and Chalamet. For Hammer this is a major step up in his career, his portrayal of the apparently worldly-wise Oliver strengthened by his ability to show the character’s own insecurities and vulnerable side. There’s a scene where Oliver begins to have doubts about the longevity of his relationship with Elio, and the way in which Hammer expresses this uncertainty pulls at the heartstrings in a way that’s completely unexpected. Chalamet is equally as impressive as Elio, the camera lingering on him for long stretches, catching each fleeting emotion and sharply expressed moment of self-awareness. For Chalamet, the key scene is one that involves a peach, and it’s thanks to his skill as an actor that the scene works as incredibly well as it does; in the hands of some movie makers and actors, it would have killed the movie stone dead. Together, both actors support and encourage each other in their scenes, and the freedom they exhibit is hugely impressive. Again, without them, all the good work achieved in other areas would be for naught, and this would be a movie about which we would all be saying, “Ah well, good try.” That we’re not is a triumph for all concerned.

Rating: 9/10 – a superb adaptation of Aciman’s novel that is languid in pace yet deeply emotional in tone, Call Me by Your Name is also an amazingly affecting movie that grips like a thriller and which presents its characters as average human beings struggling with common human problems, but particularly, how to commit to someone else wholeheartedly; beautifully made on all levels, this is Guadagnino’s best movie yet, and one that resonates with, and rewards and reassures viewers by providing recognisable characters that we can all identify and sympathise with – because we’ve all been there ourselves.

Stronger (2017)

17 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Biography, Boston Marathon bombing, David Gordon Green, Drama, Erin Hurley, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeff Bauman, Literary adaptation, Miranda Richardson, Review, Romance, Tatiana Maslany, True story

D: David Gordon Green / 119m

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany, Miranda Richardson, Clancy Brown, Richard Lane Jr, Nate Richman, Lenny Clarke, Patty O’Neil, Kate Fitzgerald, Danny McCarthy, Frankie Shaw, Carlos Sanz

Following in the wake of Patriots Day (2016), Peter Berg’s excellent recreation of the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, we have Stronger, a movie that focuses on one of the victims on that occasion, a Costco employee called Jeff Bauman (Gyllenhaal). Adapted from the book he wrote about his experiences after losing both his legs from above the knee down, Bauman’s tale is one of physical and emotional hardship, but most of all, how his relationship with on again, off again girlfriend, Erin Hurley (Maslany), made all the difference to his rehabilitation. It’s another true story of triumph over adversity, but while Jeff’s story – by itself – is inspiring, the movie itself isn’t quite as satisfactory.

Biopics often have a hard time avoiding the clichés of the genre. In recounting the trials and tribulations of someone who has suffered greatly through personal trauma, there’s usually a list of stock situations to be worked through. Most of them adhere to the various stages of grief, and so audiences can almost tick off these stock situations as they go along, but while Stronger does its best to avoid these clichés, in doing so it actually robs the movie of a lot of what would involve the audience more. Sure, we see Jeff falling off the toilet because his centre of gravity is out of whack, and yes, he tries to push Erin away because of self-pity, and of course, he misses rehab appointments because he can’t motivate himself, but while these are all established staples, here they’re downplayed to the point where the movie runs the risk of feeling a little detached from its subject matter and main character. There’s a matter-of-fact approach adopted by director David Gordon Green that stops the viewer from fully engaging with Jeff and his struggle to walk again.

Partly this is due to the way in which John Pollono’s script tackles the various stages of Jeff’s recovery. It always feels like a piecemeal attempt to tell a larger story, and while the focus on Jeff and Erin’s fractious relationship is to be commended, it doesn’t take long for the viewer to realise that without it the movie would be a lot shorter and a lot less interesting. Stripped of this central relationship, and once he’s lost his legs, the movie would consist merely of scenes between Jeff and his alcoholic mother, Patty (Richardson), a handful of other scenes featuring Jeff and his friends, Jeff being feted as a living breathing incarnation of the Boston Strong ideal, and further scenes where he’s told off for not going to his rehab appointments. All these are exactly the kind of things you’d expect to see in a movie such as this, and in that respect, the movie doesn’t disappoint. But there have been far too many other movies made along similar lines, and there’s not enough effort made to make this stand out from the crowd.

Bauman’s story, however, is made more interesting through his relationship with Erin. Pre-bombing, Jeff isn’t the most committed of boyfriends, but Erin has always allowed herself to give him another chance after splitting up with him. The irony of what happened to Jeff isn’t lost on the movie, as the only reason he was near the finishing line when the first bomb went off, was because he was there to support Erin (who was taking part in the race), and to show that she could rely on him more than in the past. Their connection is strengthened by Erin’s innate decency in supporting Jeff through the days and months that follow, and also by his need to have someone capable of looking after him; Patty is a semi-functioning alcoholic who admits she hasn’t been the greatest of mothers. With his father, Jeff Sr (Brown), reduced to hanging around in the background the longer the movie goes on, Jeff leans on Erin quite heavily, and as the dynamic of their relationship shifts and changes, it’s Erin’s own sense of self-respect that allows her to make a decision that, along with meeting the man who saved his life, Carlos Arredondo (Sanz), helps Jeff to dig himself out of the mire of self-pity and self-doubt that he’s surrounded himself with.

As Jeff, Gyllenhaal puts in another committed, powerful performance that sees the actor express Jeff’s confusion and anguish and dismay and anger at being placed in such a difficult position. However, his commitment to the role is hampered by the script’s determination not to make things too difficult for Jeff, as each obstacle he encounters is quickly overcome so that he can move on to the next – and overcome that one just as easily. If anything, this approach comes as something of a surprise, especially when it becomes obvious that Maslany’s portrayal of Erin is the movie’s strong suit, instead of Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of Jeff. It’s a career best performance from Maslany, who takes charge of the role and makes Erin the movie’s heart and soul. She’s simply mesmerising, and she finds new and different ways to make Erin more than the eternally supportive and self-sacrificing (i.e. stock) girlfriend that she could have been in other hands. In their scenes together, Maslany is so good that she’s always the focus and not Gyllenhaal; when the camera’s on him, you want it to shift back to her as quickly as possible.

There are many elements that are allowed to play out without any resolution, and a lot of things that are left unaddressed, such as the marital status of Jeff’s parents (are they divorced, separated, taking a break?), and though Green directs with his usual flair for exploiting emotional undercurrents, he’s not given too many occasions where he can do this. Certain scenes lack purpose – the script could have done with some judicious pruning – and there are times when Jeff’s family and friends seem present only to provide the movie with a sense of humour, but the overall problem with the movie is that its efforts to avoid the clichés of the genre don’t always work. And when you have a character who needs to learn to walk again but on prosthetic legs, and that aspect is reduced to a smattering of scenes, that raises another issue: just what is the movie’s focus if it isn’t that?

Rating: 6/10 – neither great nor awful but somewhere maddeningly in between, Stronger cleaves to audience expectations of what is, in cinematic terms, a very familiar story, and only manages to deviate from it when examining Jeff and Erin’s relationship; good performances all round help to alleviate the feeling of déjà vu that pervades the material and which holds it back from being more effective, leaving the whole thing feeling like a missed opportunity, and a curious one at that.

Wonder (2017)

04 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Drama, Facial disfigurement, Izabela Vidovic, Jacob Tremblay, Julia Roberts, Literary adaptation, Owen Wilson, R.J. Palacio, Review, Stephen Chbosky, Treacher Collins syndrome

D: Stephen Chbosky / 113m

Cast: Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Jacob Tremblay, Izabela Vidovic, Mandy Patinkin, Noah Jupe, Bryce Gheisar, Elle McKinnon, Daveed Diggs, Millie Davis, Danielle Rose Russell, Nadji Jeter, Sonia Braga

Imagine you’re at a restaurant and pancakes are on the menu. Now imagine that you’ve ordered said pancakes and they’ve just arrived at your table. The waiter (or waitress; let’s keep this fair) offers you maple syrup. You say please, and they begin to pour the maple syrup over the pancakes. And they continue pouring… and pouring… and pouring… Soon, the pancakes are swimming in maple syrup, and just the mere thought of tucking into them has become as desirable as if the waiter or waitress had poured an okra smoothie over them. This is the gourmet version of Wonder, a movie so glutinously nice, and so determinedly uplifting that it should come with a health warning. It not only tugs unashamedly at the heartstrings, but inspires lashings of sympathetic responses and unabashed sentimentality. It’s a massive sugar rush for fans of emotionalism and softheartedness.

For once, though, all this wistful sensitivity actually works – although you’d still be wise to wear waist-high waders in order to combat the rising tide of persistent romanticism that the movie fosters. In adapting R.J. Palacio’s novel, director Chbosky, along with co-screenwriters Steve Conrad and Jack Thorne, have retained the book’s wholesome dramatics, and tried extra hard to ensure there isn’t a dry eye in the house by the time they’ve finished. What this means for the movie as a whole, is that August “Auggie” Pullman (Tremblay somewhere under all the prosthetics), and his first time in school at the age of ten, becomes an exercise in survival for him, and a precautionary tale for the viewer who must overcome several instances where the script goes for the emotional jugular in its efforts to “hit home”.

August “Auggie” Pullman (Tremblay) suffers from Treacher Collins syndrome, a genetic disorder that is characterised by deformities affecting the eyes, ears, cheekbones and chin. It’s incurable, but the symptoms can be managed, and life expectancy is normal. Auggie has been home-schooled by his mother, Isabel (Roberts), but now it’s time for him to attend a school where there are other pupils and other teachers. Isabel insists everything will be alright, and Auggie wants to believe her, but inevitably he’s treated differently by all the other children. He’s bullied by one child, Julian (Gheisar), but finds a friend in another, Jack Will (Jupe). As the school year continues, Auggie learns that being different has both its ups and downs, and he grows in confidence as a result. Meanwhile, his older sister, Via (short for Olivia) (Vidovic), has problems of her own: her best friend, Miranda (Russell), isn’t talking to her, and her first day in high school has her feeling lost and alone.

Wonder‘s appealing sense of family dynamics makes the Pullmans seem impervious to external harm or misfortune; they even argue amongst each other with good grace. No problem is too big for them to overcome, and no issue is allowed to stop them from remaining as tight-knit and loving a family as you could ever wish for. And that’s the beauty of the narrative: it’s a fairy tale where the frog prince is welcomed into the fold despite never being able to turn into a handsome prince. It’s a wish fulfilment fantasy where everyone – even those who are initially horrible to Auggie and bully him at every turn – comes to be his friend and appreciates him for who he is and not what he looks like. Let’s be serious about this. This is a movie that has no grounding in any reality that any child with Treacher Collins syndrome would experience. Instead it’s a movie whose reality seems based on what that child would wish for. It’s a dubious conceit, but because the script is unequivocal in its approach – Auggie will triumph over all his adversities – there’s little room to manoeuvre. Either you go with the flow of the movie and give yourself over to its ultra-positive nature, or you struggle against it and allow yourself to be weighed down by its unabashed mawkishness.

If you choose the former, then thankfully there’s much to enjoy, not least from the performances. We haven’t really seen enough of Julia Roberts in recent years, but here she gives an impressive portrayal of a mother who has willingly put her career on hold to look after her son, and who has found a tremendous sense of purpose in doing so. Roberts is the movie’s anchor, her role the one that stabilises it and gives it meaning in the face of so much untrammelled sensitivity. Without her, Wonder would have a hollow centre where Isabel should be. Alongside her is Wilson, essaying much the same character he played in Marley & Me (2008), and offering a comic foil to Roberts’ more serious portrayal. He’s the light relief when things threaten to become too serious and the movie needs to right itself. Under all the make up, Tremblay continues to impress as the smart but emotionally smarting Auggie, and the young actor plays the role as the natural that he is. Sometimes it’s hard to express appropriate emotions from under a layer of latex, but Tremblay has no such problem, and he’s perhaps the perfect choice for the role.

Kudos too to Vidovic, who invests Via with an independence that allows the character to operate separately from the Pullman family dynamic, and Jeter as Via’s eventual boyfriend, Justin, a role that requires him to hang around and be nice a lot, something he pulls off without making it seem too weird. There’s plenty of weird going on elsewhere, but in a good way, as the movie allows Auggie triumph after triumph and keeps him away from any drama that might affect his slow rise to middle school stardom. The movie is with him all the way, knocking down obstacles and pushing aside unwanted nuisances. By the movie’s (slightly preposterous) end, Auggie’s luck will be left unchallenged and his family will remain as good-natured and eternally supportive as they were at the beginning. But this is still a good thing, and though the movie does look and sound as if it’s deliberately trying to induce tears in its audience, going against such a thing is, ultimately, too tiring and too much of a struggle to keep up for nearly two hours. As the Borg would say, “resistance is futile”.

Rating: 7/10 – an immensely appealing slice of unreality, Wonder is completely uninterested in making any of its characters suffer for very long, and by extension its viewers too, as it strives to make itself the feelgood movie of 2017; you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll laugh and cry some more, but in the hands of Chbosky and his talented cast, and despite some very high levels of romanticism and unrestrained poignancy, this is something of an unexpected treat.

The Disaster Artist (2017)

27 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Comedy, Dave Franco, Drama, Greg Sestero, James Franco, Literary adaptation, Review, Seth Rogen, The Room (2003), Tommy Wiseau, True story

D: James Franco / 103m

Cast: Dave Franco, James Franco, Alison Brie, Seth Rogen, Ari Graynor, Paul Scheer, Josh Hutcherson, Jacki Weaver, Zac Efron, Jason Mantzoukas, Hannibal Buress, Nathan Fielder, Megan Mullally, Sharon Stone, Melanie Griffith, Bryan Cranston

Every now and then a movie comes along that defies both its own creation and its own inherent drawbacks to achieve cult status amongst movie fans. Instead of disappearing into obscurity, perhaps never to be seen again (or only in the early hours of the morning on channels such as Movies 4 Men when they haven’t got a poorly dubbed spaghetti western to show) some movies take on a life and a reputation all their own, and succeed against – or in spite of – all the odds. One such movie is The Room (2003), written, produced, directed by and starring Tommy Wiseau. Generally regarded as one of the worst movies ever made, and critically lambasted on its initial release, The Room plays regularly at midnight showings throughout the US, and has the kind of dedicated fans who dress up like their favourite characters and throw items at the screen at relevant moments. Think The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), but without the wit or the ingenuity (or indeed, the songs).

Wiseau made the movie with and for his friend, Greg Sestero, who eventually wrote about his experiences being Wiseau’s best friend, and making The Room, in a book called, The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Film Ever Made. And now we have an adaptation of that book, and a recreation of the making of the movie, that is both entertaining and irresistible. In the hands of James Franco, The Disaster Artist is a fresh, appealing movie that looks at the dangers of following your dreams, and how those dreams can become the source of bitterness and disappointment. It’s a movie that works on a number of levels, and thanks to a perceptive screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, it’s a fully rounded piece that embraces drama, comedy, and darker facets of both in its tale of deluded ambition.

The movie begins in 1998, with Tommy (James Franco) and Greg (Dave Franco) meeting at acting classes and forming a strange, unorthodox friendship. Tommy is secretive and elusive, making out that he’s from New Orleans when he clearly has an Eastern European accent, and insisting that he’s the same age as Greg when clearly he’s much older. There’s also the matter of his being independently wealthy. Where does his money come from? Nobody knows. They move to Los Angeles, where they both try to break into Hollywood. Greg quickly gains an agent (Stone) but finds his career stalling just as quickly. Tommy remains unemployable as an actor, but can’t understand why. All he sees is his talent going unrecognised. Eventually they decide to make a movie on their own, a movie that will star Tommy and Greg and make their fortune. Tommy writes the script, and in 2002, production begins. And what a production it proves to be…

This being a good movie about the making of a bad movie, it’s tempting to wonder just how accurate this movie is in recreating the details of the production itself. There are moments of pure comedy, such as shooting Tommy’s first scene (“What is line?”), or the awkward mechanics of a sex scene (“Why is he having sex with her belly button? He knows where her vagina is, right?”), but there are also much darker moments when Tommy behaves like a dictator and riles the crew with his indifference and misplaced anger. It’s at these moments that Tommy is shown as a selfish, manipulative child, and none more so than when he refuses to let Greg have a day off to appear in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle (and at the request of Bryan Cranston himself). Tommy’s jealous intransigence casts a sallow light on his behaviour and his character, but it’s a measure of both the script and Franco’s performance that Tommy remains a figure to pity rather than be angry with.

What comes across is the importance of his friendship with Greg and the determination to make the movie he wants to make. When challenged about his on-set behaviour, Tommy cites Hitchcock and Kubrick as directors who didn’t care about their actors, but without realising that they had talent to make up for their callow attitudes. At every turn, Tommy doesn’t understand anything about what he’s doing, and he can’t see that the decisions he’s making are undermining almost everything that he’s trying to do. Everyone around him sees this, but Tommy’s insecurity won’t let him acknowledge it. He’s a lonely man looking for approbation, and though his friendship with Greg goes some way to meeting his emotional needs, it’s a much wider appreciation that he’s searching for. And the movie makes it clear that this is the dream he really has; the movie is just a means to that end. Franco nails the accent, and Wiseau’s own off-centre thought processes, and gives one of his best performances: at times sad, defensive, jealous – of Greg’s relationship with girlfriend, Amber (Brie) – antic, effusive, melodramatic, and emotionally shallow.

He’s matched by an intuitive and likeable portrayal of Greg by his younger brother, and there are plenty of enjoyable supporting performances, including Rogen as the script supervisor who becomes the de facto director when Tommy is “acting”, and Graynor as the female lead who possesses the aforementioned “belly button”. Elsewhere there are plenty of cameos and talking heads (at the beginning) to keep viewers on their toes, but it’s the recreation of those hectic days when The Room was being shot that proves the most compelling, and Franco the director assembles it all with an eye for the absurdity of it all and the misguided passion that pushed Wiseau to make the movie in the first place. An auteur’s folly, then, but one that has survived and prospered over the years, and which has afforded Wiseau exactly what he wanted: recognition. But as The Disaster Artist proves, passion without talent is just passion, and dreams often require luck as well as a determination to succeed.

Rating: 8/10 – a wonderfully bizarre tale given the kind of respectful treatment that only highlights how unlikely it all was at the time, The Disaster Artist doesn’t need anyone to see The Room before watching it, as the off-camera turmoil is captured with aplomb by Franco and his cast and crew; a testament to the power of friendship (and pinky swears), as well as not giving up on your dreams, this is also a cautionary tale about what can happen when ambition becomes obsession, and the pursuit of fame turns everything (temporarily) sour.

Small Crimes (2017)

15 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Crime, Drama, Evan Katz, Gary Cole, Literary adaptation, Molly Parker, Murder, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Review, Robert Forster, Thriller

D: Evan Katz / 95m

Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gary Cole, Molly Parker, Robert Forster, Jacki Weaver, Macon Blair, Pat Healy, Michael Kinney, Daniela Sandiford, Shawn Lawrence

At one point in Evan Katz’s Small Crimes, the lead character, ex-cop and recent ex-con Joe Denton (Coster-Waldau) sets out to blackmail the local DA (Kinney) by setting him up with an obliging stripper in a motel room. With a camera in place to record the “tryst”, Joe settles back in an adjacent room and waits for the DA, Phil Coakley, to turn up. Coakley duly arrives but just as it looks as if Joe’s plan is going to work, along comes the stripper’s boyfriend – and with a gun. The boyfriend bursts in, Joe hears shots fired, and then looks out the window to see Coakley emerge unscathed with a gun in his hand. Rushing to the room, he finds the stripper and her boyfriend are both dead and the camera is gone. It’s not the first of Joe’s plans to go wrong since he got out of jail (nor will it be the last), but as the movie continues, and there’s no immediate follow up with either Coakley or Joe, it leaves the viewer wondering: where does all that fit in?

This happens several times during the course of the movie, and though it’s all part of Katz’ and co-screenwriter (and supporting actor) Macon Blair’s screenplay, such a non-linear approach – while it can be applauded as a way of making the movie more distinctive than some of its many cinematic cousins – doesn’t help the viewer to become more involved in the plot and with the various characters that pop up here and there, do their thing, and then disappear again. Only Joe is consistent in his appearance and involvement, and while the viewer can be thankful for this, Joe himself is less of a protagonist and more of a violence-attracting bystander. On his very first night of freedom after spending six years in jail for an extremely vicious assault on the same DA he later tries to blackmail, Joe graciously offers a young woman (Sandiford) a ride home from a bar. But it’s a honey trap, one that Joe fights his way out of, only to learn that the young woman is Coakley’s daughter.

Coincidence or set up? A set up is the likely answer, but the script fumbles this, as it does quite a lot else that could be explained by the odd line of exposition, but Katz and Blair aren’t interested in keeping things simple. Instead their brief seems to be the murkier the better. Motivations are kept frustratingly vague, and even when some decisions or events have to be explained, they’re done in such a way that often it makes it even more difficult to understand why something is happening, and where it fits in. Sometimes a scene will play out, and though it may feel important in the grand scheme of things, that scene will find itself isolated from the rest of the script until such time as Katz and Blair decide they can return to it. And sometimes, they never do. What this all means is that Small Crimes often feels arch and tiresome, as if it can’t make up its mind just what sort of tone it should be adopting, and is trundling along in the hope that inspiration will strike and help it on its way.

The movie has been adapted from the novel by Dave Zeltserman, and while it may seem to have all the requirements for a modern day noir – Joe just wants to go straight for the sake of his kids, who he’s not allowed to see – there’s no femme fatale, there’s no devious figure in the background pulling all the strings, and the only mystery involves a death that occurred before Joe went to jail and which he may be responsible for. The machinations that are set up once Joe is out of jail don’t always make sense, and though all the main characters are surprisingly well drawn (even Molly Parker’s superfluous cat lady-cum-love interest), they’re all in service to a narrative that only occasionally flexes its muscles, and which does so only when there’s violence involved. Otherwise, personal animosities are the order of the day, Joe’s efforts to extricate himself backfire then succeed out of nowhere once too often, and the material tries too hard to be ironic when it just needs to be sincere.

There’s humour then, but not so much that it makes watching the movie a more enjoyable experience. It’s often at a cost to the credibility of Joe himself and Coster-Waldau’s performance, which is through necessity, a more passive role than might be expected. Joe makes a lot of noise when he needs to, but that’s all it is: a lot of noise. He’s also surprisingly naïve in his thinking, believing that he can get himself out of the fix he’s in without there being any bloodshed. There’s noise too from Joe’s mother, Irma (Weaver), who seems there only to shout at him in a disapproving, angry manner. Later, she suffers an injury that could have been avoided, but the irony is in the detail of what happens. Alongside her is Joe’s father, Joe Sr (Forster), her antithesis, a man who is calm and confident and coordinated, and apparently unflustered by anything anyone says. Each gives a better performance than might be expected, and though Coster-Waldau is as charming as ever, there are times when he tries too hard, and the result is some obvious mugging.

The movie at least tries to be interesting, but its tired old scenario isn’t gripping enough for it to make a consistent impact, and some viewers may well be asking themselves why, with admittedly a lot going on, that there’s a distance between the material and the viewer. The simple answer is that what’s happening on screen isn’t anything so convincing or compelling that the viewer is ever likely to maintain continued interest throughout, or care about the characters and what happens to them. And even when the movie pulls a surprise out of its hat at the end, what should be a highly effective, and emotional moment, is undermined by there having been so little previously that would warrant that kind of reaction when it’s needed. Things are further hindered by Katz’s low-key directing style and the bland visual palette used to make the characters seem more interesting than they are. When murder and mayhem in a small town are this unaffecting, then it’s time to look elsewhere for your villainy and deceit.

Rating: 5/10 – patchy and rarely absorbing, Small Crimes unfolds patiently but with few moments where the pace quickens enough for the movie to become entirely interesting; the performances help, but the main storyline lacks cohesion and there’s a distinct sense that the material is laboured, something that it never finds a way to overcome.

Jungle (2017)

01 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alex Russell, Amazon Rain Forest, Bolivia, Daniel Radcliffe, Drama, Greg McLean, Joel Jackson, Literary adaptation, Review, Survival, Thomas Kretschmann, Thriller, True story, Yossi Ghinsberg

D: Greg McLean / 116m

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Thomas Kretschmann, Alex Russell, Joel Jackson, Yasmin Kassim, Luis Jose Lopez, Lily Sullivan, Jacek Koman, Angie Milliken, John Bluthal

After serving three years in the Israeli military, and forgoing his father’s wish that he study to become a lawyer, Yossi Ghinsberg (Radcliffe) travelled to South America where he spent time travelling around the region until he wound up in Bolivia in 1981. There he made two new friends, Swiss school teacher Marcus Stamm (Jackson), and Marcus’s friend, Kevin Gale (Russell), an American and an avid adventurer-cum-photographer. Yossi also met an Austrian named Karl Ruchprecter (Kretschmann). Karl persuaded Yossi and his two new friends to go on an expedition into the jungle to find a lost Indian tribe that Karl was certain could be found. They set off on foot, and were soon miles from any kind of human habitation. But the dynamic of the group began to sour, especially when Marcus’s feet became badly blistered and he became unable to keep up the pace. With the expedition only partly completed, Karl announced that he was going back on foot, but that the others could use a raft to traverse the river that would take them to their destination. Marcus went with Karl, and Yossi and Kevin put together a raft and set off. But when the current proved too strong, and an accident caused the two to be separated, it left Yossi alone in the jungle, and with no tools to help him survive or find his way to safety…

As Jungle is based on the book of the same name by Ghinsberg himself, there’s no surprise in how the movie ends, but what is surprising is how compelling it all is once Ghinsberg is separated from Kevin, and the perils of being lost in the jungle become all too apparent. However, before all that, the viewer has to wade through some fairly tortuous scenes in the first hour, where the four main characters are introduced but without providing them with any appreciable depth, or Yossi aside, any clear motivations as to why they’re all there in the first place. Karl remains a mystery right until the end, when we learn something very important about him, while Kevin and Marcus come across as the unfortunate tag-alongs who share part of Yossi’s trials and tribulations, but whose own dilemmas don’t rate as much interest in Justin Monjo’s straightforward screenplay.

Once tensions arise within the group, it’s Yossi’s unintended lack of sympathy for Marcus’s plight that provokes the turning point where the quartet split up, but once that happens, the movie seems to breathe a huge sigh of relief, as if now it can concentrate on the story it really wants to tell. And aided by yet another impressive performance from Daniel Radcliffe, the movie quickly comes into its own and puts both Yossi and the viewer through the wringer as days pass and Yossi’s situation worsens with every step. He has to combat starvation, fatigue, disorientation, hallucinations, jungle predators, and the likelihood that he will wander round and round in circles without ever coming close to being found. It’s a horrifying situation to be in, and the script (perhaps unfairly) revels in giving Yossi moments of hope only to have them dashed a moment later. But these occasions also help to sharpen the narrative and accentuate the idea that the jungle has no time for sympathy if you’re unprepared for what it can do.

As the beleaguered Yossi, Radcliffe provides further evidence that he’s a more than capable actor, and though the role of Ghinsberg could be considered as just another in the long line of physical endurance roles that actors take on from time to time, thanks to Radcliffe’s commitment and understanding of the effects these rigours can have, Yossi’s deteriorating physical appearance and fast-eroding mental stability is made all the more credible and shocking when at last he reveals the extent of his (admittedly CGI enhanced) malnourishment. Ghinsberg somehow managed to survive for nineteen days before he was found, and though McLean fumbles the moment of discovery through some poor editing choices, there’s still an emotional kick to be found that is undeniable.

In telling such a dramatic true story, McLean and Monjo have crafted an old-fashioned survival story that focuses (eventually) on its central character’s will to cheat death and find their way back to civilisation, no matter how remote. McLean knows how to maintain dramatic tension – even if he hasn’t applied that ability to some of his more recent movies; The Darkness (2016) anyone? – and he uses close ups and an always unsettling, always encroaching soundscape to highlight both the pressure and the impending sense of doom that Yossi is experiencing. It’s a shame then that all this tension and pressure doesn’t come into play until around the halfway mark, and that McLean hasn’t been able to make Munjo’s script as compelling from the first page as it is to the last. Still, it’s a movie that goes someway to redeeming McLean’s “street cred” as a director, and there are plenty of moments where his skill as a director can be recognised in the claustrophobic nature of the jungle itself, and the ease with which he integrates Yossi’s hallucinations into the narrative so that they look and feel like an organic part of the whole.

True stories ultimately stand or fall based on the risks a movie maker is willing to take with the material, and though McLean has been stuck in something of a creative rut in recent years, here those risks relate to the various hallucinations/dream sequences that Yossi has, some of which provide some much needed humour into the mix. By taking Yossi, and the viewer, away from the threatening environment of the jungle, McLean gives both a chance to grab a breather and prepare themselves for the next part of Yossi’s heroic journey. The jungle itself is a fearsome opponent, and helped by cinematographer Stefan Duscio, McLean disorients and distracts both Yossi and the viewer so that each new setback to his finding safety increases the sense of fearfulness and increasing despair that the real Yossi must have felt all those years ago. That his predicament has proven so effective in terms of his will to survive, is as much a testament to the man himself, as it is – for the most part – to the movie itself.

Rating: 7/10 – an unfortunate first hour aside, Jungle is a harsh, unblinking look at a stranger in a strange land and the unwise decisions that cause him to be lost and alone in an inhospitable and deadly setting; Radcliffe is the main draw here, and then it’s McLean, and though McLean could have been tougher with some of the narrative decisions that were made, all in all this is a tough, unsentimental true story that impresses more than it disappoints.

The Death of Stalin (2017)

26 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Armando Iannucci, Central Committee, Comedy, Drama, Jeffrey Tambor, Literary adaptation, Michael Palin, Moscow, Olga Kurylenko, Review, Simon Russell Beale, Soviet Russia, Steve Buscemi

D: Armando Iannucci / 106m

Cast: Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurylenko, Jason Isaacs, Rupert Friend, Dermot Crowley, Paul Whitehouse, Paul Chahidi, Paddy Considine, Adrian McLoughlin

The Death of Stalin could have easily been subtitled Fear and Loathing in Moscow, such are the high levels of animosity and opposition that ensue following the death of Soviet leader, “Uncle Joe” Stalin (McLoughlin). As the various members of the Central Committee scramble to establish a way forward – and more importantly, decide which one of them will be the country’s new leader – loyalties are tested, schemes are hatched, alliances are forged, but political manoeuvring continues unabated (it’s just that some of the goals, and the goalposts themselves, are changed from moment to moment). Under the satirical gaze of writer/director Armando Iannucci, the events that took place in the wake of Stalin’s death provide the basis for a movie that combines very black humour with a surprisingly serious approach to the material that helps the movie operate effectively on two separate levels, both comedic and dramatic.

While not everything happened in the way that Iannucci portrays it, some things did, and it’s the way in which he emphasises the absurdity of these real events that adds greatly to the effectiveness of the screenplay which has been co-written by Iannucci, David Schneider and Ian Martin, with additional material by Peter Fellows, and which itself is based on a screenplay by original source material writer Fabien Nury (The Death of Stalin has been adapted from the comic book of the same name). One such event occurs following the stroke Stalin suffered on 1 May 1953. When he’s found the next morning, it takes around twelve hours for a doctor to be called, as each member of the Central Committee refuses to make a decision by themselves in case Stalin recovers and takes them to task for their actions. It’s only when all the Committee members are in agreement that a doctor is needed that anything more is done. But then there’s another issue: thanks to the recent Doctors’ Plot, where prominent doctors were accused of conspiring to assassinate Soviet leaders, all the good, well regarded physicians in Moscow have been either imprisoned or executed. So, who to call? It’s moments like these, absurdist moments that challenge the perception of what’s real and what’s invented that makes the movie so enjoyable to watch.

But Iannucci isn’t solely interested in pointing out how ridiculous some of the events surrounding Stalin’s death were, but also how deadly serious that milieu was and how nothing could be taken for granted, be it a job, a reputation, or worse still, a life. Iannucci is quick to show the darker side of Soviet life in the Fifties, with Stalin’s Head of Security, Lavrentiy Beria (Beale), relishing his role as a combination accuser, torturer, and executioner, whether he’s chasing down real enemies of the state or fabricating evidence to convict the innocent through political expediency. With Stalin’s full support while he’s alive, Beria has attained a position of power that he seeks to build on once his mentor is dead, and as he manipulates the Deputy Leader, the fragile minded Georgy Malenkov (Tambor), it’s left to Nikita Khrushchev (Buscemi) to put a stop to Beria’s ambitions.

One of the more absurdist notions of Iannucci’s movie is that it puts forth Nikita Khrushchev as its hero, but this was Khrushchev’s time, the moment where he took power in the wake of Stalin’s death and set about making long-lasting reforms. Here he’s a worried politician who wants to see an end to the tyranny of Stalin’s rule, and fears that Beria’s influence on Malenkov will see an unnecessary continuation of past horrors. Iannucci makes it clear that fear is the one overwhelming motivator in Soviet life, no matter what level you’re at. There’s fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of being seen with the wrong person, fear of ignorance and knowledge together, and fear of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The movie shows how stressful this must have been, and how easy it must have been to make a simple honest mistake that might mean the difference between life and death, and how either outcome could shift according to whim or will.

Such a dark period in Soviet history (one of many though, to be fair) might not be the best subject for a dark comedy, but The Death of Stalin is more than that, and as well as its exploration of a society living in fear, it also seeks to examine how power corrupts those who look for it above all else – Beria seals his fate by threatening each of the other Committee members with what he knows about them. These dramatic moments, where the political jockeying turns brittle and ugly, allows the humour to have even more of an impact; if you didn’t laugh, you’d have to acknowledge the tragedy and the terrible nature of what’s happening. But Iannucci knows when to raise a laugh and when to keep the drama humour-free. It’s a delicate tightrope that he traverses, but he does it with style and confidence, creating a restrained yet also panic-ridden atmosphere for his characters to operate in. He also finds time to highlight the self-serving hypocrisy of the Committee members, something that’s best expressed through the attitude of Vyacheslav Molotov (Palin), who denounced his wife for the good of the party – and his own position within it.

With Iannucci and his co-writers putting together such a good script, and Iannucci himself proving that he’s firmly in control of both the tone and the pace of the movie, things are made even more impressive by the cast that he’s assembled. Buscemi is terrific as Khrushchev, a bureaucrat holding the fate of a nation within his hands, while Tambor’s turn as Malenkov is a delight, even if you have to wonder how such a dimwit got onto the Committee in the first place. There are first-rate supporting turns from Isaacs as a very gruff, very Yorkshire-sounding Head of the Red Army, Georgy Zhukov; Riseborough as Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana; Considine as an under threat theatre manager who really needs to record a live concert; and Palin, who gives such a subtle reading of his character that it serves as a reminder that when he’s not travelling the world, he’s a very accomplished actor indeed. But if anyone stands out it’s Beale as the venal, grotesque Beria, a character who seems fully formed from the moment we first see him, flinging horrible caustic remarks about with no concern for the feelings of others, and telling the audience everything they need to know about him in one perfect line of dialogue: “Have a long sleep, old man. I’ll take it from here.” It’s a performance that’s unlikely to win any awards thanks to the nature of the movie, but if Beale did win an award, it would be entirely justified. It’s the perfect cap to a movie that operates effectively on so many levels, and which has a lot more going on below the surface both in terms of the narrative, and its recreation of a period when laughing at senior Soviet politicians would have meant a swift trip to a gulag…or worse.

Rating: 8/10 – a movie that treats its historical backdrop with a great deal of respect (even when it alters certain facts to suit the material), The Death of Stalin is a small, unassuming gem of a movie that is both horrifying and amusing at the same time, and without either element undermining the other; with its clutch of richly perceptive performances, cleverly constructed humour, and astute direction, it’s a movie that may not find the wider audience it deserves, but is nevertheless a must-see for anyone who likes their political satire barbed and ready to sting.

1922 (2017)

23 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Drama, Dylan Schmid, Hemingford Home, Horror, Literary adaptation, Molly Parker, Murder, Review, Thomas Jane, Thriller, Zak Hilditch

D: Zak Hilditch / 102m

Cast: Thomas Jane, Molly Parker, Dylan Schmid, Kaitlyn Bernard, Neal McDonough, Brian d’Arcy James

Hemingford Home, Nebraska, 1922. Wilfred James (Jane), a farmer, owns eighty acres of land. His wife, Arlette (Parker), owns an adjoining one hundred acres of land, an inheritance from her late father. They have a teenage son, Henry (Schmid). Arlette is frustrated by having to live outside of town and wants the three of them to sell their combined land and move to Omaha. Wilfred is against the idea, but Arlette is insistent, telling him that if he won’t agree to her wish then she’ll sell her hundred acres and move to Omaha anyway; and she’ll take Henry with her. Wilfred is against this idea even more, and decides that he needs to do something to stop his wife from going through with her plan.

Now this being an adaptation of a Stephen King novella, Wilfred’s solution is, of course, to murder Arlette and dispose of her body down a well that’s conveniently located on the property. But Wilfred can’t do this on his own, and so he inveigles Henry into helping him. He does this by convincing his son that Arlette leaving will be the ruin of the farm (which is actually true), and that it will mean Henry will no longer be able to see his girlfriend, Shannon (Bernard), the daughter of another local farmer, Harlan Cotterie (McDonough). Henry has reservations about his father’s plan, but as there’s no particular love lost between him and his mother, he agrees. Between them, they murder Arlette, and as planned, her body ends up at the bottom of the well. Realising that he’ll need a reason to fill in the well (or it will look suspicious), Wilfred has one of his cows fall in as well. Then he fills it with concrete. It’s not long before Arlette’s disappearance – Wilfred tells the sheriff (James) that she just upped and left – has its consequences. Wilfred and Henry have trouble dealing with their individual guilt, and they become estranged from each other. And then Henry reveals Shannon is pregnant…

Secrets, and the dead, rarely remain quiet, and this is very true in 1922, the latest feature from Australian movie maker Zak Hilditch, and the latest in what seems to be a neverending conveyor belt of Stephen King adaptations that have been released this year. Once Arlette has been killed, things go quickly from bad to worse to simply terrible for Wilfred, as his relationship with Henry disintegrates, and Arlette’s ghost – aided by the presence of rats that seem to be in league with her – begins to appear with increasing malevolence. Wilfred has no one to turn to, no one he can ask for help, and as he sinks into a morass of terror and despair, he finds that his one fear, that Arlette’s leaving would be the ruin of the farm, is going to happen anyway (though just how he and Henry by themselves were going to manage one hundred and eighty acres remains a mystery). Taunted by Arlette’s ghost, menaced by rats, and abandoned by Henry who runs off with Shannon, Wilfred’s fate is sealed.

Despite its obvious thriller and horror trappings, 1922 is a movie that’s more concerned with its traditional theme of pride going before a fall. Many of the characters exhibit this trait in one form or another, and while it does provide the backbone of the narrative, writer/director Hilditch is clever enough not to overdo it. He adopts a matter of fact approach to the material that serves it well, and especially when pride turns to guilt and then to unavoidable resignation. There’s grief here too, painful, overwhelming grief, and again, Hilditch makes it an organic part of the narrative, and not something to be trotted out to make one or two scenes work independently of all the rest. These emotions are pervasive and tied to the fates of all concerned. When Wilfred comes up with his plan, it’s not just Arlette that is doomed, it’s Henry, and Shannon (they become Bonnie and Clyde-style robbers nicknamed The Sweetheart Bandits), and Harlan too. These emotions also help anchor the movie when it moves into the realm of the supernatural, and they help to make Wilfred’s situation all the more credible in the face of Arlette’s ghostly return.

The supernatural elements do feel a little forced however, with Arlette appearing randomly at first, but always at moments when you’d expected her to. And despite Hilditch’s best efforts, she’s not really that frightening or scary, her presence more of an obligation to the story than something to really be afraid of. Of course, she appears in a post mortem state, with blood and all, but it’s only in the movie’s best sequence, where she relates Henry and Shannon’s fate to a cowering Wilfred, her lips in kissing distance to his face, and shot in close up, that Hilditch makes the most of Arlette’s oppressive presence. As Arlette, Parker has little to do except be a self-regarding shrew for around twenty minutes before being killed off, and quite explicitly at that. Schmid is good as the conflicted yet defiant Henry, rushing off into the world without a clue as to how to tackle it and paying the price for his feelings of guilt and anguish. The other secondary and minor performances range from adequate to perfunctory, but all in all this is Jane’s movie from start to finish. Jane’s now rugged features are a perfect match for Wilfred, and helped by a severe haircut he paints a terrific portrait of a man defined by his pride and his actions, and who does what he does out of loyalty to the land and to his son. That both are taken away from him when he would sacrifice his own life for both of them – something that Jane incorporates into his portrayal with ease – adds to the tragedy of it all. This is by far and away Jane’s best performance in quite some time, and one that maintains a subdued energy throughout.

The era is replicated quite nicely, though the movie does suffer from a surfeit of patently false looking backdrops and CGI surroundings, no doubt a budgetary constraint rather than an artistic decision, but these are noticeable, and they do hamper the sense of time and place that the movie is looking to represent. The movie also moves at a slow, deliberate pace that suits the material in the early stages, but which does it no favours when applied to events in the last forty minutes. The story itself is told in wraparound fashion by Wilfred as he writes everything down in an attempt at a confessional while in a hotel room (not 1408). Here, Hilditch eschews the ambiguity of King’s original ending in favour of one last fright, and while this does provide a frisson to see out the movie, its literal nature isn’t quite as effective in terms of the story as it could have been. But these are caveats in a movie that gets far more right than it does wrong, and which can be added to the list of better than average Stephen King adaptations.

Rating: 7/10 – Hilditch has adapted King’s novella with a great deal of care, and 1922 is one adaptation where the characters and their motivations and emotions are more important than providing just a succession of frights and jump scares; a slow burn build up helps also, as well as Jane’s compelling performance, making this a movie that, while it may not be to all tastes, is still worth seeking out on its own terms.

6 Days (2017)

21 Saturday Oct 2017

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Abbie Cornish, DFRLA, Drama, Hostages, Iranian Embassy, Jamie Bell, Kate Adie, Literary adaptation, London, Mark Strong, Review, Rusty Firmin, SAS, Thriller, Toa Fraser, True story

D: Toa Fraser / 94m

Cast: Jamie Bell, Mark Strong, Abbie Cornish, Martin Shaw, Ben Turner, Emun Elliott, Aymen Hamdouchi, Andrew Grainger, Colin Garlick, Te Kohe Tuhaka, Tim Pigott-Smith

Between 30 April and 5 May 1980, the Iranian Embassy in London came under siege from six armed men whose aim was to secure the release of ninety-one Arab prisoners being held in Iran. Taking twenty-six hostages, they also demanded safe passage out of the United Kingdom once their goal was achieved. Of course, the outcome was very much different from what they were hoping for. Following the killing of one of the hostages, the order was given to send in the SAS. On the evening of the sixth day of the siege, they stormed the building and in the ensuing seventeen minutes killed five of the six armed men, rescued all but one of the remaining hostages (five had been released over the previous days), and gave notice to the world that the UK would not tolerate terrorism on any level.

What 6 Days does is to cover that dramatic period from a variety of angles in an effort to provide the viewer with a comprehensive overview of what was going on at the time both inside the embassy and outside it. So we see the six members of the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan (DRFLA), led by Salim (Turner), as they try to control the situation from an ever decreasing state of authority, as well as the Metropolitan Police’s chief negotiator, Max Vernon (Strong), as he does his best to keep things from escalating out of control. We also see the SAS teams that would eventually end the siege gathering intelligence on how best to enter the building, BBC reporter Kate Adie (Cornish) establish her reputation as a serious news journalist, and the political manoeuvring that went on behind the scenes involving the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw (Pigott-Smith), and the various decision makers who would debate and interpret the government’s policy of non-compliance in terrorist matters.

With such an intense, dramatic situation, and one whose violent conclusion was played out – deliberately – in front of a number of assembled news cameras, you might expect 6 Days to be as equally intense and dramatic, but sadly, whatever tension is achieved is arrived at accidentally. Glenn Standring’s screenplay, adapted from the awkwardly titled Go! Go! Go!: The SAS. The Iranian Embassy Siege. The True Story (2011) by Rusty Firmin and Will Pearson, alternates between each angle with an initial promise that soon falls away to offer routine exchanges between all concerned, a worrying number of occasions where we see the SAS fail in their preparations, Cornish’s role as Kate Adie built up so that her billing is made more credible, and negotiations between Vernon and Salim that consist of Vernon reassuring Salim that he wants to help, while Salim insists that he’ll kill a hostage if his demands aren’t met – over and over. (If there was ever any intention of exploring the psychological aspects of hostage negotiation, they certainly didn’t make it into the final script.)

There are other problems, some that relate to the movie’s pacing, and others that relate to director Toa Fraser’s handling of the material. Fraser made the enjoyably quirky Dean Spanley (2008), but here the confidence he showed with that movie appears to have deserted him. With an array of characters and situations to be exploited, Fraser leaves many scenes high and dry in terms of their potential effectiveness, opting for a flatness of tone that proves wearying the more it happens. As a result, he often leaves his talented cast looking as if they’ve been cast adrift from the narrative and are wondering where the lifeboats are. Bell, as the same Rusty Firmin whose book this is based on, can’t quite convince as a lance corporal in the SAS, and he’s too bland a character to make much of an impact. Cornish is kept on standby until the siege is broken, which is the point at which Adie came into her own and sealed her journalistic reputation by reporting events as they happened (though the movie has her standing heroically out in the open, whereas in reality Adie wisely hid behind a car door). Cornish also attempts a vocal interpretation of Adie that is off-putting to say the least.

But if you have to spare a thought for anyone in the movie it’s Mark Strong, a fine actor with an impressive range, but here reduced to staring continually in anguished sincerity while his character tries to keep things from going very wrong very quickly. In comparison with much of the rest of the movie, he’s one of the best things in it, but he’s hamstrung by the demands of the script and his director’s inability to make each scene anything more than flat and undemanding. This inattention leads to the movie having an equally flat and undemanding tone that negates any sense of urgency about the siege and the political machinations surrounding it. It’s not until the SAS storm the building that the movie wakes up and remembers it’s as much a thriller as a political drama, but even then there’s a great deal of confusion as to what’s happening where and, in the case of the SAS themselves, to whom.

Again, there are pacing issues as well, and too much repetition to make 6 Days anything other than a pedestrian representation of an event that made international headlines and kept a nation glued to their televisions and radios throughout its duration. There are flashes of humour that are largely muted (though a comment from an embassy staff member to Firmin is priceless by itself), the odd attempt at post-ironic commentary, contemporary footage that sits side by side with the movie’s recreations of the same images, and an eerily effective opening shot that sees the six terrorists passing by the Royal Albert Hall, but they’re not enough on their own to make the movie more engaging or gripping. There’s a great deal of earnestness and melodramatic sincerity on display, but it’s all in service to a script that feels as if it’s trying to tell its story at a remove from the actual events, and which compresses those fateful six days into an hour and a half and still finds the need to pad out the narrative with unnecessary detours and longueurs.

Rating: 4/10 – muddled and far from absorbing, 6 Days is an undemanding viewing experience that doesn’t try too hard to make its true story anything other than perfunctory and banal; by the time the SAS storm the embassy you’ll be thinking “at last” – not because the movie is finally going to be halfway exciting, but because it means the movie is close to being over.

The Snowman (2017)

18 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Charlotte Gainsbourg, Crime, Drama, Harry Hole, Jo Nesbø, Literary adaptation, Michael Fassbender, Murder, Rebecca Ferguson, Review, Serial killer, Thriller, Tomas Alfredson

D: Tomas Alfredson / 119m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Toby Jones, David Dencik, Chloë Sevigny, James D’Arcy, Jonas Karlsson, Adrian Dunbar, Ronan Vibert, Michael Yates

Another week, another literary adaptation, another disappointment… Sometimes it’s hard to understand just what happened when a movie based on a well regarded novel hits our screens with all the turgid urgency of dripping sludge. Who do you blame? The director? Maybe. They are in overall charge of how the movie looks and sounds and how thrilling or dramatic or funny or affecting it should be. Or maybe it’s the screenwriter(s). Maybe they didn’t “get” the novel or work out the best way of transferring it to the big screen. Maybe it’s the cast. Maybe they weren’t “feeling it” and couldn’t find their way to putting in good performances. Or perhaps it’s just something a little less tangible, the tone perhaps, or the pacing, or the emotion of the piece. Maybe – maybe – it’s a combination of all these.

That certainly seems to be the case with The Snowman, an adaptation of the novel by Jo Nesbø, and the first movie to feature his troubled detective, Harry Hole (played here by Michael Fassbender in a portrayal that seems based around Hole having only the one expression). Now, if you’ve read this paragraph up til now and you’ve been pronouncing Hole as in a hole in the ground, then you have the first problem that the movie can’t or won’t overcome: no one can even pronounce the lead character’s name correctly. Harry’s surname is pronounced Ho-ly as in holy scripture, or as with this movie, what the holy hell is happening? When the makers of a movie can’t even get the lead character’s name right, then what chance does the rest of the movie have? In short, hardly any chance at all.

A rushed production that finished shooting in April 2016, but which required reshoots in the spring of this year, the movie quickly gets bogged down by the requirements of a muddled script that wants to be regarded as another excellent example of the awkwardly named Scandi-noir. All the elements are there to be ticked off one by one: the dark, brooding lead detective, the dark, brooding atmosphere, the dark, brooding nature of the murders, the killer’s dark, brooding psychological profile, the dark, brooding visual backdrop – clearly if it wasn’t dark and brooding then it wasn’t allowed to remain in the screenplay. But just as having too much of a good thing can spoil that very same thing, having too little in the way of structure, common sense and thrills can also damage a movie’s chances, and The Snowman sabotages its own semi-focused ambitions at every turn.

For a thriller that should grip like a vice, there are just too many risible moments that offer unfortunate injections of humour, such as when James D’Arcy’s character reveals that he’s “infertile. I can’t have children”, just to make sure there’s no one in the audience who won’t understand what infertile means. Then there are the dreadful, logic-takes-a-beating moments such as when the killer uses a mobile phone they know the police will be monitoring to help them pin the blame on someone else, but who then forgets that they can be traced through the use of another mobile phone later on. Scenes come and go that don’t always follow on from each other (though it’s more disheartening to think there might be a longer Director’s Cut out there somewhere), and Harry’s maverick cop activities keep him in the front line no matter how often he acts independently of the rest of the Oslo police force, while Rebecca Ferguson’s impassioned rookie, Katrine, gets sidelined the first time she uses her own initiative. Some of this is in service of the plot, but mostly it just seems that in piecing together the key points of Nesbø’s novel, screenwriters Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan, and Søren Sveistrup have decided to only include the events from every other chapter in the novel, and not adapt the novel as a whole.

Characterisations suffer too as a result of this approach, with Harry’s alcoholism only of any relevance in introducing him to the audience, and to provide a degree of drama surrounding his continual inability to spend time with the son (Yates) of his old flame, Rakel (Gainsbourg). Being an alcoholic isn’t allowed to get in the way of showing just how good a detective Harry really is, and so it becomes less and less effective as a character defect the longer the movie goes on. Likewise the relationship between Harry and Rakel is confusing because there’s no back story for the viewer to latch onto (it might have helped if the producers had decided to adapt the first book in the Harry Hole series, instead of the seventh). The killer’s motives remain vague and unconvincing throughout, and their need to build a snowman at the scene of each crime is as baffling at the end as it is at the beginning. It’s as if it’s use as a signature “flourish” by the killer is all that’s needed. (A reason for it? Ah, don’t worry about it; it’ll look cool.)

Alfredson has spoken about the challenges of making the movie within a short period of time, and without a completed script, leading to issues that were discovered in the editing suite. But while it does seem that there are huge gaps in the narrative, and the movie has to work extra hard to maintain any tension or sense of urgency, it’s the flatness of the drama and the lethargy in certain scenes that can’t be explained away just because of a shortened production period. In the end, Nesbø’s page-turner has become a movie that fails to match up to its energy and verve, and which remains a leaden, dreary experience for the viewer. The performances are adequate (though Kilmer, worryingly, looks as if he’s trying to impersonate present day Gary Busey), and Dion Beebe’s cinematography does at least capture the beautiful isolation of rural Norway in often stunning fashion. But otherwise, this is a routine, formulaic serial killer movie that does itself no favours from beginning to end.

Rating: 4/10 – muddled and convoluted aren’t words that any potential viewer wants to hear, but they describe The Snowman perfectly; uninspired and chock full of thriller clichés, the movie stumbles along trying to be clever and effective, but instead ends up putting a finish to any notion of an intended Harry Hole franchise.

You Were Never Really Here (2017)

16 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Drama, Ekaterina Samsonov, Joaquin Phoenix, Judith Roberts, Literary adaptation, Lynne Ramsay, Review, Sex trade, Thriller, Violence

D: Lynne Ramsay / 95m

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Judith Roberts, Ekaterina Samsonov, Alex Manette, John Doman, Alessandro Nivola

A funny thing happened on the way from the Cannes Film Festival…

At Cannes this year, Lynne Ramsay’s latest feature, an adaptation of the novella of the same name by Jonathan Ames, won a joint best screenplay award (tying with The Killing of a Sacred Deer), and the best actor award for Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as Joe, an ex-Marine working “undercover of the law” rescuing young girls from the sex trade. The movie was greeted with widespread critical acclaim, received a seven-minute standing ovation from its premiere audience, and was believed to be a strong contender for the Palme d’Or (though it lost out to Ruben Östlund’s The Square). Since then it has appeared at four further festivals before arriving at the BFI London Film Festival where it was shown three times.

At the second of its screenings in London, Ramsay was in attendance to introduce the movie. Within moments of coming out on stage she advised the audience not to hang around for the Q&A afterwards as she hated them. When pressed to answer a couple of questions there and then, Ramsay demurred to the point where the member of the BFI team who was on stage with her, realised that Ramsay wasn’t going to “play ball”, and somewhat embarrassingly, they left the stage and the movie began. Ninety-five minutes later the movie ended, and many in the audience waited for the Q&A to begin. It didn’t. Ramsay never came back out, and no one from the BFI clarified the situation. Having seen the movie, quite a few people in the audience felt they knew why Ramsay didn’t want to discuss her new movie.

First and foremost, You Were Never Really Here is a movie that invites a lot of scrutiny. It deals with themes surrounding the nature of violence, has a stripped back approach to the narrative, paints an austere portrait of a man who battles with his own demons to little avail, is uncompromising in its depiction of the aftermath of extreme violence (though it’s very fuzzy on the actual violence itself), operates within a noir-ish version of New York City, and features exemplary cinematography from Thomas Townend. It’s a movie that looks and feels important, a movie that wants to be taken seriously, and that appears to have something to say about the darkness within us and how, through the character of Joe, we can both explore and deny that darkness. In short, it’s a movie that looks to carry weight and meaning.

But here’s the odd thing: along with Phoenix’s tortured, semi-burnt out portrayal, and another impressive score from Jonny Greenwood, the movie has a lot of very good things going for it. And yet, as a whole, it doesn’t work. So many of the elements that go to make up the movie – Joe Bini’s editing, Tim Grimes’ production design, for example – are so good, so well executed, that it would seem that the movie can’t be anything other than hugely successful on its own terms. How could it not be? And yet, it’s not Ramsay’s best movie, not by a very wide margin. That honour belongs to Ratcatcher (1999). In the end, and despite all the effort put in by all concerned, You Were Never Really Here doesn’t match the potential all those disparate elements should do when they’re all combined. It’s a movie that isn’t the sum of all its parts.

Ultimately, the movie is one to admire for the way it tells its story rather than the response it provokes in its audience (which is muted to say the least). Technically well made, and with fine performances from all concerned (except for Nivola, whose appearance amounts to a cameo), Ramsay’s adaptation is hard to get involved with. There’s no sense of danger about what Joe does because he seems indestructible. At the beginning he’s attacked from behind by a man with a length of pipe. But Joe shrugs off the blow, head-butts his assailant who falls to the ground, and then he walks off as if it’s all part of his daily routine. But while it tells us that Joe is inured to the violent world he lives in, it makes the viewer inured as well. If it doesn’t mean anything to Joe, then why should it mean anything to us? It’s also no surprise that Joe has an elderly mother (Roberts) whom he looks after, but even their relationship doesn’t resonate in the way Ramsay might want it to. And then there’s Joe’s childhood, a period we see glimpses of, and which should invite the audience’s sympathy, but which remain violent additions to an already violent story, and as such, don’t have the power they’re meant to.

The movie’s basic storyline is also one that feels undercooked, with its political corruption and sex trade background something that we’ve seen countless times before. Ramsay works hard to make this section of the movie thrilling, and helped by Bini’s considerable editing skills she almost pulls it off, but the decision to obscure the violent acts taking place and to disallow any cathartic expression in either Joe or the viewer makes these violent outbursts triumphs of style instead of emotion. You can admire the way they’ve been shot and assembled, but they don’t evoke any feelings the viewer can experience for themselves. Ramsay keeps everyone, even her characters, at a remove, and closes out the movie with a moment of such extreme nihilism that it literally feels shoehorned in to provoke a response when none is actually needed. And that response? Just one of bafflement, which is not a response any movie maker should be looking for.

Rating: 7/10 – having surrounded herself with a cast and crew all working flat out to make the best movie they can, director Lynne Ramsay fails to put their efforts to practical good use, and leaves You Were Never Really Here feeling like an abandoned first cut; a movie that is likely to provoke serious debate over its merits for quite some time to come, it’s perhaps best described as an experiment that needed more time to be completed before any results could be unveiled.

Devil’s Knot (2013)

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alessandro Nivola, Atom Egoyan, Colin Firth, Drama, Literary adaptation, Murder, Reese Witherspoon, Review, Robin Hood Hills, True story, West Memphis

D: Atom Egoyan / 114m

Cast: Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Alessandro Nivola, James Hamrick, Seth Meriwether, Kristopher Higgins, Amy Ryan, Robert Baker, Rex Linn, Bruce Greenwood, Dane DeHaan, Kevin Durand, Stephen Moyer, Elias Koteas

There are times when the very existence of a movie proves puzzling, puzzling because the content of the movie has already been covered in greater depth, and with far more fidelity, elsewhere. Such is the case with Devil’s Knot, an exploration of the Robin Hood Hills Murders that took place in West Memphis, Arkansas on 5 May 1993. On that fateful day, three eight year old friends – Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore – disappeared. Their bodies were found in a muddy creek the following day. It didn’t take long for the police and the local community to ascribe the murders to a Satanic cult believed to be operating in the area. It wasn’t long either before the police had three suspects firmly in their sights: teenagers Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Misskelley Jr. After Misskelley Jr was interrogated for twelve straight hours, he confessed that all three were involved in the deaths of the children, and all three were subsequently arrested. At their trials, Misskelley Jr and Baldwin were sentenced to life imprisonment, while Echols was sentenced to be executed.

The problem with Devil’s Knot is not just that it’s another movie “based on a true story” and with all the limitations that usually apply, but that the story of the Robin Hood Hills murders and the West Memphis Three (the accused) have been so well documented elsewhere. There are currently four documentaries available that cover the case, and which do so in more depth, and with greater clarity of purpose. They are Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), its sequel, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000), a further sequel, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011), and a separate entry which covers the whole story, West of Memphis (2012). With all these excellent documentaries on offer (particularly the first one, which is nothing short of exceptional for the access the makers had), it remains surprising that Devil’s Knot was actually greenlit in the first place, let alone made.

Adapted from the book of the same name by Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot benefits greatly from having Atom Egoyan perched, however precariously, in the director’s chair. He’s a very talented movie maker, but he’s never seemed as comfortable as when he’s working from a script he’s written himself, and this proves to be the case here. Making the most of a script that doesn’t really tell us anything new and which can be found dramatically twiddling its thumbs from time to time, Egoyan shows occasional flashes of the erudite and ambitious director who has given us such modern classics as Exotica (1994) and The Sweet Hereafter (1997). But these are few and far between, and there are long periods where Egoyan feels like a jobbing director who hasn’t been able to connect with the material – and doesn’t know how to. And yet, conversely, there are moments where he does, and these contain a quiet power that is indisputably effective (and affecting).

Somewhat inevitably, the script tries to pull in various different directions, and by doing so, tries to cover too much ground all at once. This leads to scenes feeling unnecessarily truncated, and others feeling like filler. In its efforts to tell as much of the story as possible, the movie proves disjointed in its approach to the victims’ families – only Witherspoon’s grief-stricken mother, Pamela Hobbs gets a look in, and then only because she begins to believe Echols and co aren’t guilty – while the holes in the police investigation (and there are dozens of them) are allowed to go by remarked upon but under-emphasised. The trial scenes take up most of the second half of the movie but serve only to show that justice is not only blind in some US courts but sometimes half asleep as well, a situation that we’re already way too familiar with for these scenes to carry any appreciable weight. Egoyan gamely makes his way through them, throwing in an occasionally interesting shot, but relaying events in a style that resembles a TV Movie of the Week instead of a fully-fledged feature.

With the screenplay trying to fit so much in (there’s a reason the documentaries all run longer), it’s inevitable as well that some characters come to feel like observers rather than participants. Terry Hobbs (Nivola), Stevie’s stepdad, flits in and out of the narrative and remains elusive until the movie’s end when we learn something unexpected that relates to him. By the time this happens though it’s too late to have much of an impact as we haven’t got to know him well enough. Likewise for Durand’s scary-stary John Mark Byers, a potential alternative suspect whose day in court is remarkable for the way in which he’s let off the hook by all concerned (even the defence lawyers). Egoyan regular Koteas pops up as an expert on Satanic cults, Linn is the police official who knows his case is full of holes but pushes on regardless, and then there’s DeHaan as another potential suspect, Chris Morgan, who confesses then recants and is allowed to do so while Misskelley Jr does the same and ends up in prison for life. All these roles feel incidental to the overall aim of the movie, which in itself isn’t clear. As an undeniable miscarriage of justice, the movie does more than enough to get that across through some of the evidence that’s presented, but elements such as the local community’s willingness to accept the presence of Satanic cults despite there being no concrete evidence to support this, lands with a thud every time it’s mentioned.

More curious still is the decision to focus much of the movie on an outsider, Firth’s crusading legal investigator, Ron Lax. We see him challenging everyone around him to do their jobs properly, and he behaves like a man with a Messiah complex at times, but if the idea is that he’s the viewer’s guide through the maze of “evidence” and supposition that sees the West Memphis Three convicted, then it’s unfortunate but we don’t need him. There’s an awkward scene in the Robin Hood Hills woods between Lax and Pam Hobbs that is pure Hollywood speculation and has no place in a movie that’s striving to be taken seriously as a re-enactment of true events. It’s moments like these, where the script is trying to manipulate its audience, that it undermines its overall effectiveness and leaves the viewer wondering if the movie will ever settle for a consistent tone it can work with. The answer is a resounding No, and like so many other moments or issues this movie has, it’s in too much of a hurry to squeeze in the major plot points, however indifferently at times, and without giving them room to breathe.

Rating: 5/10 – as the movie equivalent of an unnecessary footnote, Devil’s Knot is only sporadically engaging, and on a severely reduced par with the likes of its documentary brethren; perfunctory in a way that shouldn’t be the case when you consider the story it’s trying to tell, this remains an ill-advised project that could have been a lot worse if it weren’t for the occasionally mindful ministrations of its director.

Lady Macbeth (2016)

06 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Affair, Cosmo Jarvis, Drama, Florence Pugh, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Literary adaptation, Lust, Naomi Ackie, Paul Hilton, Review, William Oldroyd

D: William Oldroyd / 89m

Cast: Florence Pugh, Cosmo Jarvis, Paul Hilton, Naomi Ackie, Christopher Fairbank, Golda Rosheuvel, Anton Palmer

Rural England, 1865. A harsh time and place to live if you’re a woman, and especially if you’re a young woman entering into a marriage with a man you don’t know, and all because you were part and parcel of a land sale. That’s the fate of Katherine (Pugh), a farmer’s daughter who finds herself the wife of local landowner, Alexander Lester (Hilton), and living in his father’s house. Forbidden to go outside the house and expected to maintain a strict schedule in relation to running the house, Katherine is less than happy with the way her life is playing out. Her husband won’t even fulfill his duties in the marital bed, content instead to make Katherine strip naked and face the wall while he pleasures himself. And as if his indifference wasn’t enough, it’s compounded by her father-in-law’s ironic disapproval at her not being able to provide a son and heir. All the company she has is that of one of the servants, Anna (Ackie), who is the epitomy of subjection.

It’s only when both men leave on separate business trips that Katherine is able to explore the surrounding countryside and take back some aspects of the life she used to enjoy. She also encounters Sebastian (Jarvis), one of her husband’s workers. She’s attracted to him immediately, and he notices this. Soon after he comes to the house to see her, and though she rebuffs his advances at first, she succumbs readily and the pair embark on an affair. When her father-in-law (Fairbank) returns, he is aware of the unseemly relationship between Katherine and Sebastian, and he quickly berates her for it. Treating her even more harshly than he did before, and giving Sebastian a beating, Katherine determines to ensure that her affair can continue. To this end, the old man meets an untimely end, and Katherine installs Sebastian as the de facto man of the house. Some time passes, and then Alexander does return home, and though he knows about his wife’s duplicity, his plan to deal with her doesn’t go as expected…

Alexander’s return is the culmination of the movie’s second act, and it comes at a time when Katherine’s natural character has become somewhat exposed through her actions and her baser emotions. The viewer is beginning to understand that beneath the lustful, all-encompassing passion she feels for Sebastian, there lurks something that’s a little more sinister, and a little more discomfiting. Flashes of this have been seen up until now, but if this transposed Lady Macbeth of the wild English countryside (the movie was shot in Northumberland, and is an adaptation of the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov) has anything to say about its central character then it’s simply this: beware of how you treat her, for she isn’t one to forgive. Now whether this is due to madness brought on by an aversion to solitude, or is part of her natural temperament and she will do anything to protect herself, that’s down to the viewer to decide. But what the viewer can be certain of is that Katherine will go to whatever lengths she deems necessary to maintain the life she wants. And this we discover at the end of the second act, and well into the third, where her sense of self-preservation becomes entirely twisted and goads her into doing something truly horrible.

All this passion and reckless abandonment of the accepted social norms and proprieties of the period is underlined by the stark severity of life in the Lester household, a place of cold, airy rooms – well-lit, but encouraging little warmth – and the even chillier nature of its male inhabitants, whose sense of puritan endeavour involves mocking and restraining the lives of others. It’s into this unforgiving patrician, and God-fearing environment that Katherine finds herself thrust without the benefit of any say in the matter. It’s this unfairness of place and position that allows Katherine to gain the viewer’s sympathy, and when she embarks on her affair with Sebastian, it’s good to see her find true affection – and love – even though it’s obvious there’s not going to be a “happy ever after”. And so it proves, with the patriarchal society she struggles against continuously, circling round her like hawks, ready to swoop down and punish her for her perceived impudence and “whorish” behaviour.

With the milieu firmly and unforgivingly established – there’s no better evocation of the social shackles Katherine is forced to endure than the sight of her sitting on a divan waiting for her husband to come home – director William Oldroyd is free to encourage and draw out a mesmerising performance from the twenty-one year old Pugh that is one of the most poised and impressive of 2016. She lets the audience know exactly what Katherine is thinking and feeling throughout, and reveals a maturity of approach to building the character that is even more extraordinary when you consider that after The Falling (2014), this is only her second feature (it also makes her next appearance in The Commuter (2018) seem like something of a backward step). So good is she that sometimes, and no matter what else is going on in a scene, the viewer is drawn to her like a moth to a flame. Passionate or icy-cold in her dealings with the other characters, Pugh ensures that Katherine remains endlessly fascinating, and a character you can love or hate or sympathise with or fear with equal intensity.

Pugh is ably supported by Jarvis as the easily manipulated (at first) Sebastian, his initial devil-may-care attitude more and more eroded the deeper he becomes embroiled in Katherine’s refusal to give up on their affair. There’s an element of Mellors from Lady Chatterley’s Lover about the characterisation, but as the story progresses that too fades away, and it’s not long before, like him, you can see that it’s not going to work out well for him. Ackie is on equally good form as Anna, the maid who retreats into silence when it all gets too much for her to deal with, while Hilton and Fairbank, though good in their roles, are a little too one-note – unrelentingly nasty, that is – in their portrayals (though this is down to the script than any intention of their own). Still, Oldroyd holds it all together by tightening the increasing suspense of just how far Katherine will go, and with cinematographer Ari Wegner ensures that the wild, sprawling moorland serves as a fine backdrop to the emotional upheavals occurring within the Lester household.

Rating: 8/10 – a gripping, emotionally charged tale of lust, madness and murder, Lady Macbeth is anchored by a superb performance from Pugh, and a chilly atmosphere that soon becomes as claustrophobic for the viewer as it is for the characters; a violent tragedy of emotions, it’s a movie that carries a rigorous beauty about it, and which remains absorbing from start to finish.

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