• 10 Reasons to Remember…
  • A Brief Word About…
  • About
  • For One Week Only
  • Happy Birthday
  • Monthly Roundup
  • Old-Time Crime
  • Other Posts
  • Poster of the Week
  • Question of the Week
  • Reviews
  • Trailers

thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

thedullwoodexperiment

Tag Archives: London

All the Devil’s Men (2018)

08 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Action, CIA, Drama, Gbenga Akinnagbe, London, Matthew Hope, Milo Gibson, Review, Sylvia Hoeks, Thriller

D: Matthew Hope / 99m

Cast: Milo Gibson, Sylvia Hoeks, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Joseph Millson, Elliot Cowan, William Fichtner

Following a successful assassination attempt in Morocco, covert US operative Jack Collins (Gibson) just wants to go home and be with his wife and their first child (whom he hasn’t seen yet). But before that can happen he’s drafted into a CIA mission to track down and eliminate a rogue soldier turned arms dealer called Terry McKnight (Cowan), who is planning to acquire a Russian nuclear warhead on behalf of a suspected terrorist organisation. Intelligence has placed McKnight in London, and Collins, along with old friend and mentor, Bennett (Fichtner), and CIA hotshot Samuelson (Akinnagbe), head there to intercept McKnight’s deal with the Russians. They make contact with an old friend of Collins’ called Deighton (Millson), who is a known associate of McKnight’s, but though he is initially cooperative, he soon betrays them. It transpires that Deighton is helping McKnight to facilitate the warhead deal, and keeping him safe in the meantime. With Collins’ handler, Leigh (Hoeks), insisting that McKnight must be stopped at all costs (and having personal reasons for being in charge), Collins must find a way of first eliminating Deighton before he can get to McKnight, and then finally get home…

Eight years ago, writer/director Matthew Hope made the edgy and well received The Veteran. It featured Toby Kebbell as a soldier returning from Afghanistan and discovering a conspiracy between the intelligence services and a gang of local drug dealers. Kebbell spent much of the movie popping up in various out of the way London locations and putting a messy stop to it all. Now, in All the Devil’s Men we have Milo Gibson doing much the same thing, but to far less rewarding effect. Saddled with playing a character suffering from an unexplored and ill-defined form of PTSD, Gibson spends a lot of screen time staring at, or taking, little red pills (but called gold pills by everyone else for some reason), and grimacing in pain from time to time. This and Collins’ need to return home to his family is the entire extent of his character development, and though you’d expect his PTSD to come into play during any showdown between Collins and McKnight at the movie’s close, Hope lets the idea lapse in favour of an over-the-top, gung-ho, ultra-macho shootout. It’s not the only time Hope sets things up for a later payoff only to renege on the deal and leave the viewer wondering why a plot point was included in the first place.

Perhaps the problem lies in the paper-thin transparency of the plot, which attempts to create thrills out of a nebulous geo-political intrigue, and then populates it with characters who remain woefully one dimensional and lumbered witn the kind of dialogue that serves only to highlight that Hope has no idea just how real life covert operatives etc would talk (Samuelson describes himself as a “shadow warrior”, while McKnight continually spouts aphorisms about the nature of conflict). There are the requisite number of action scenes but these largely consist of everyone running around shooting at each other in those aforementioned out of the way London locations, while Hope tries his best with limited resources to make them as exciting as possible. Sadly, he doesn’t always succeed, and the scenes in between the shootouts are of the “let’s set up the next action scene” variety and not terribly interesting. It’s clear that the movie has ambition, but its reliance on action thriller clichés and lack of investment in the characters – there’s literally no one to root for – are problems it’s unable to overcome, and Gibson, whose career trajectory has so far been on a steady upward curve, is ill-used and under-served by the material and his character. All in all, it’s a movie that somehow got made, but waaaay before it was ready.

Rating: 4/10 – despite attempts at being atmospheric and brooding, and opening with a tense, well executed sequence set in Morocco, All the Devil’s Men betrays its generic, meaningless title, and offers little from then on for the viewer to connect with; a massive backward step for Hope, and one that the likes of Hoeks and Fichtner might conveniently erase from their resumés, this lacks pace and energy, and any sense that a coherent, fully developed movie was ever on the cards.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

British Classics: Love Actually (2003)

24 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alan Rickman, Colin Firth, Comedy, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Liam Neeson, London, Love, Provence, Review, Richard Curtis, Romance, Xmas

D: Richard Curtis / 135m

Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Colin Firth, Gregor Fisher, Martin Freeman, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Andrew Lincoln, Laura Linney, Heike Makatsch, Kris Marshall, Martine McCutcheon, Lúcia Moniz, Liam Neeson, Bill Nighy, Joanna Page, Alan Rickman, Rodrigo Santoro, Emma Thompson, Billy Bob Thornton

In the weeks leading up to Xmas, several friends and relatives who are all connected to each other find themselves dealing with love in (almost) all its various forms. David (Grant) is the newly elected Prime Minister who finds himself attracted to Natalie (McCutcheon), a junior member of the staff at 10 Downing Street. Mark (Lincoln) is the best friend of Peter (Ejiofor), who has just married Juliet (Knightley) – who Mark is secretly in love with. Writer Jamie (Firth), after being cheated on by his girlfriend, heads to Provence to write his latest novel, and falls in love with his housekeeper, Aurélia (Moniz). David’s sister, Karen (Thompson), begins to suspect that her husband, Harry (Rickman), is having an affair with someone at his work. Meanwhile, one of his other employees, Sarah (Linney), has feelings for her colleague, Karl (Santoro), but doesn’t know how to broach them. Daniel (Neeson), a friend of Karen’s, is a recent widower who’s stepson Sam (Brodie-Sangster) reveals his own life for a girl at his school. John (Freeman) and Judy (Page) are body doubles working on a movie, while Colin (Marshall) dreams of visiting the U.S. where he believes his being British will attract lots of women.

The glue that binds all these characters together, even more so than writer/director Richard Curtis’s excessive generosity in connecting them in the first place, is the character of Billy Mack (Nighy), an aging singer making a comeback with a cover version of The Troggs’ Love Is All Around, retitled Christmas Is All Around. Whenever the movie is spending time with the other characters, Billy is often there in the background, his cheesy monstrosity of a Xmas record and louche behaviour a much needed antidote to the surfeit of sentimentality and saccharine romanticism that peppers the narrative from start to finish. Even the less “happy” storylines – Harry and Karen, Sarah and Karl, Juliet and Mark – are bittersweet entries that are layered with poignancy and hopefulness. But that’s the point of the movie: it’s a positive message of love for everyone. Even if a marriage founders for a moment (Harry and Karen), or love is a case of wrong place, wrong time (Mark and Juliet), or even if it never gets off the ground at all (Sarah and Karl), all the clichés are in place: love will find a way, love is all you need, love conquers all… That Curtis holds it all together and still manages to make it work despite all the plot contrivances and rampant wish fulfillment that threaten to derail it several times over, is a testament to his confidence in the material.

Of course, he’s aided by an accomplished ensemble cast who rise to their individual challenges with gusto and no small amount of charm. Grant’s dance routine, Rickman’s hangdog expressions, Nighy’s inappropriate smirking – all of these character beats and more help to make the movie a feast of feelgood moments that linger like treasured memories long after it’s ended. Curtis may have laid on the romance with a trowel (sometimes it’s like being battered over the head with a dozen red roses), but this is a very, very funny movie with endlessly quotable lines (Colin: “Stateside I am Prince William without the weird family”), visual gags aplenty, and the ability to spring a number of clever narrative sleights of hand when you’re least expecting them. It’s an appealing, but unsophisticated slice of romantic fairy tale excess that’s bolstered by pin-sharp humour, terrific performances, and a refreshing awareness that it all takes place in a fantasy-based “reality” of Curtis’s devising (where else would the US President get such a public dressing down for his behaviour?). Fifteen years on, it remains a perennial favourite at Xmas, and despite an initial lack of enthusiasm on the part of critics, a movie that has transcended any criticism – deserved or otherwise – to become one of those rare movies that can be enjoyed over and over again, and which never seems to grow old or stale with repeated viewings.

Rating: 8/10 – a movie that tells nine separate stories and which does justice to all of them, Love Actually is a moving, thoughtful, and emotional look at love itself and what it means for a variety of people in a variety of situations and circumstances (though notably, not anyone who’s LGBT); comic and romantic in equal measure, it’s a movie you can fall in love with easily and unreservedly (and any movie that contains Jeanne Moreau in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo has got to be getting things more right than wrong).

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Yardie (2018)

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

A Hundred Streets (2016)

03 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Charlie Creed-Miles, Drama, Franz Drameh, Gemma Arterton, Idris Elba, Jim O'Hanlon, Ken Stott, London, Relationships, Review

aka 100 Streets; One Square Mile

D: Jim O’Hanlon / 93m

Cast: Idris Elba, Gemma Arterton, Charlie Creed-Miles, Franz Drameh, Kierston Wareing, Tom Cullen, Ken Stott, Ashley Thomas, Ryan Gage

Max Moore (Elba) is a retired rugby player whose fame on the field has translated into a media career where he promotes a favourite, sports-related charity. His public image – seen in clubs and bars and at functions, often surrounded by attractive women – is at odds with the fractured home life he’s trying to repair. He’s estranged from his wife, Emily (Arterton), and their two young children. While Max plays at being a responsible family man in an effort to win Emily back (after sleeping with the children’s nanny), she has embarked on an affair with an old friend, Jake (Cullen). Kingsley (Drameh) is a young man whose aptitude for street poetry, plus a chance meeting with well connected actor Terence (Stott), provides him with an opportunity to leave behind the gang he’s currently a part of. And George (Creed-Miles) is a cab driver who, along with his wife Kathy (Wareing), is looking to adopt their first child. Over the course of several weeks their lives will intersect in unexpected ways, but each will be irrevocably changed by their experiences…

A low budget British drama with a glossy sheen to it, A Hundred Streets looks like the kind of movie that will offer a pointed and affecting social commentary on modern life in the UK capital, and which will examine in detail the pressures that people endure in order to get by. Alas, a closer inspection reveals a movie that paints its characters against a far broader canvas than might be hoped for, and by using brush strokes better suited to a daytime soap opera. Writer/producer Leon Butler (who raised the entire budget single-handedly), immediately gives the viewer two problems to deal with. The first is Elba’s Max, a caricature of a faded sports star who behaves badly but underneath the promiscuity and self-loathing, has a good heart and loves his kids. Despite these good qualities, Max is unsympathetic from the start, and though Elba tries hard, remains so until the end, and a dramatically absurd sequence that sees him waving – and firing – a shotgun from a balcony window, while the police standby until Emily can get home and talk him down (and let’s not mention the police marksman who has Max in his sights the whole time – for tension purposes only).

Neither Max nor Emily are characters you can warm to, so self-absorbed are they in their individual needs. This leaves Drameh’s earnest Kingsley and Creed-Miles’s dopey George to pick up the slack, but therein lies the second problem: their storylines are just as routine as Max and Emily’s. Tragedy stalks them both, but in such a way that neither tragic incident comes as a surprise, or indeed the events and outcomes that follow. As the movie progresses, it becomes something of a tick-box exercise for the viewer, and for the movie makers, as the characters behave either recklessly for no reason, regressively for “dramatic” purposes, or reactively because the script demands it. Struggling to make more out of Butler’s script than he’s able to, director Jim O’Hanlon can only focus on the performances, and though Elba and Arterton are adequate, Creed-Miles, Drameh and Stott at least manage to make an impact in their roles, though this is very much against the odds. Stott in particular is good, but even he has trouble with some of the dialogue Terence is given, and hearing it makes you wish there had been more opportunities for improvisation.

Rating: 5/10 – formulaic and at times dramatically challenging – though not in a good way – A Hundred Streets aims for a modicum of prestige but misses by a square mile, and then some; adopting clichés as if they were the answer to every problem raised, the script undermines the movie from the word go, and as a result, leaves it in just as good a state as Max’s career as a rugby star.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Lost in London (2017)

14 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Arrest, Comedy, Drama, Eleanor Matsuura, London, Martin McCann, Owen Wilson, Review, True story, Woody Harrelson

D: Woody Harrelson / 103m

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Owen Wilson, Eleanor Matsuura, Martin McCann, Peter Ferdinando, Zrinka Cvitešić, Al Nedjari, David Mumeni, David Avery, Amir El-Masry, Willie Nelson, Daniel Radcliffe

In 2002, Woody Harrelson was in London appearing in John Kolvenbach’s play, On an Average Day. One night, following a visit to Chinawhite, a club in Soho, Harrelson was in a taxi where he broke an ashtray. The police were called, and Harrelson, having transferred to another taxi, was subsequently chased by them before being arrested. He spent the night in jail before being bailed the following morning. This incident forms the basis for Lost in London, a reworking of the events of that night, events that begin with Harrelson getting into trouble with his wife, Laura (Matsuura), after she reads about him in the papers having partied with three strippers. Given until midnight to be by himself and think about his actions, while Laura decides what to do herself, Woody finds himself hooking up with an Arab prince (Nedjari) and his three sons and going to a nightclub. There he bumps into Owen Wilson, and an ensuing altercation between the two men leads to Woody having to leave the club suddenly, and get into the first available taxi, a decision that will prove to have far-reaching consequences…

Lost in London is notable for two reasons: it’s Harrelson’s first movie as a director (he also wrote the script as well), and it was the first – and so far only – movie to be screened in cinemas live. Necessarily playing out in real time, apart from a temporal sleight of hand towards the end, Harrelson’s debut is much more than a gimmick of a movie. Shot through with an absurdist sense of humour that feels more British than American, the movie sees Harrelson riffing on his career (often to self-deprecating effect), and his public persona at the time (drugs and booze his staple diet). He also expands on the original problem with the ashtray to include such priceless moments as “hiding” from the police at the top of a children’s slide, and Martin McCann’s sympathetic policeman’s phone call to a reggae-obsessed Bono (actually Bono). The humour in the movie ranges from the broad to the scalpel sharp to inspired to silly, and all the way back again. At the beginning, having come off stage after a less than well received performance of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Harrelson bemoans being stuck doing serious drama. Watching Lost in London, that’s definitely not a problem.

Harrelson has assembled a great cast in support of his endeavours, with McCann and Cvitešić (as a woman he meets outside the nightclub) particularly good, while Wilson trades increasingly vicious barbs with him as they trash each other’s movies (Wilson: “You were just oozing sex appeal in Kingpin.” Harrelson: “You got out-acted by a dog in Marley & Me“). There are some serious moments as well though, caustic observations about the nature of celebrity, and the drawbacks of public perception (at one point Harrelson sings the theme song to Cheers to an unimpressed and unaware bouncer). But most of all, this is meant to make its audience laugh, and this Harrelson achieves with a great deal of skill and wit. As a technical challenge, it has to be regarded as an unalloyed success, with Nigel Willoughby’s single camera cinematography providing a sense of immediacy that, if it had been missing, would have undermined the movie completely. That it all works so well is a testament to the planning and the practice that must have gone into putting the movie together in such a way, and so confidently. It may be some time before anyone attempts such a movie again, but until then, this is a more than worthy effort all by itself.

Rating: 8/10 – having given himself a major challenge with his first feature as a director, Woody Harrelson delivers a movie that’s funny, warm-hearted, and full of indelible moments; Lost in London may stretch the format out of shape on occasion, but Harrelson has such overall control of the material that the odd mis-step now and again can easily be forgiven.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Hector (2015)

04 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Charity shelter, Drama, Family ties, Homeless, Jake Gavin, Keith Allen, London, Peter Mullan, Review, Sarah Solemani, Scotland

D: Jake Gavin / 87m

Cast: Peter Mullan, Keith Allen, Natalie Gavin, Laurie Ventry, Sarah Solemani, Ewan Stewart, Stephen Tompkinson, Gina McKee

Hector McAdam (Mullan) is a fifty-something homeless man “living” with two other homeless people, Dougie (Ventry) and Hazel (Gavin), in a makeshift “home” at the rear of a service station in Scotland. He walks with a limp and has been in poor health for some time. Needing an operation, Hector decides to get in touch with his sister, Lizzie (McKee), who lives in Newcastle, but though he tracks down her husband, Derek (Tompkinson), his sister doesn’t want to see him. With his annual trip to London to stay at a charity shelter over the Xmas period coming up, Hector determines instead to find his brother, Peter (Stewart). With the aid of one of the shelter’s support workers, Sara (Solemani), Hector tries to locate Peter, but with only a vague idea of where to find him, his chances of being successful are very slim. But one day, Sara has a surprise for him, an unexpected visitor – Peter. As the reasons for Hector being homeless begin to be revealed, he’s also given a chance to reconnect with his family, and to face the future with more optimism than before…

Movies like Hector can appear – at first – as if they’re too slight, or too ephemeral, to work properly. This is borne out by the movie’s opening scenes, which see Hector trudging the streets from place to place and looking forlorn and rootless, a man adrift from his own life but having made a kind of peace with that. He’s good-natured, kind and thoughtful, but above all modest in his efforts to get by. Whatever his previous life, he’s moved on in his own way, even though it’s meant rejecting his family (and losing much more). We never learn what it is that means he needs an operation, but the emphasis is clear: it’s serious enough to make him rethink his situation and want to make amends (he has been homeless, and isolated himself, for fifteen years). As we spend more time with Hector, watching how painful walking is for him, how he has moments where he seems on the verge of some kind of seizure, first-time writer/director Jake Gavin ensures that Hector’s plight is one the viewer is entirely sympathetic of. He’s a good man, well liked and regarded, and thanks to Peter Mullan’s exemplary performance, deserving of our support.

By telling Hector’s story against a backdrop of homelessness and personal hardship, Gavin eschews the usual tropes and themes associated with such elements in favour of an approach that allows for tragedy and heartbreak, but not in a way that’s exploitative or melodramatic. Gavin’s direction is confident yet simple, allowing the narrative to broaden its scope when necessary, and to introduce a number of secondary characters, including Solemani’s ultra-supportive charity worker, that allows for an optimistic tone throughout. It’s arguable that Hector has it too easy – a social worker has helped him get his benefits and a pension, a shopkeeper helps him after he’s been assaulted – but that would be to miss the point of Hector’s story: it’s about taking those first brave steps toward reconciliation, both with his family and with himself. Mullan’s performance is first class, quietly commanding and authoritative, and with an emotional clarity to the character that’s all the more impressive for being so restrained. There’s fine support from Solemani, Ventry and Gavin, though Tompkinson’s over protective (and boorish) brother-in-law feels out of place, something that fortunately doesn’t harm the movie too much. It’s a surprisingly rewarding first feature, touching but persuasive, and with a simple sincerity that’s hard to beat.

Rating: 8/10 – a good example of the antithesis of today’s modern blockbuster, Hector is a small gem of a movie: unshowy yet emotive, and handled with due care and attention by all concerned; shot in a low-key style by DoP David Raedeker, this modest production is intelligent, absorbing, and beautifully understated.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Foreign Moon (1996)

26 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Chen Daming, Chen Hsaio-hsuan, Drama, Harrison Liu, London, Music student, Review, Romance, Zeming Zhang

D: Zeming Zhang / 87m

Cast: Chen Hsiao-hsuan, Harrison Liu, Chen Daming, David Tse, Hong Xiang, Jian Rui Chao, Tanya Broome, Vanessa Earl

Arriving in London from Mainland China, Lan Lan (Chen Hsiao-hsuan) is a music student finding herself stranded at Waterloo Station when her sponsor doesn’t show up to collect her. She approaches a Chinese man, Su Tong (Liu), who helps her find her sponsor’s home, but when she learns her sponsorship comes with a major string attached – marriage to her sponsor’s son, Charles (Tse) – she soon leaves. With nowhere else to go she turns again to Su Tong who finds her somewhere to live and helps her navigate the confusing requirements of college scholarships and living in London. In time, Su Tong persuades her to live with both him and his younger friend, Deng Lin (Chen Daming), and help them with their new Chinese takeaway/delivery business. Despite Su Tong having a wife and a young son back in China, Lan Lan begins to develop feelings for him, feelings that he appears to have for her in return. With both of them too afraid to reveal their feelings for each other, it takes a violent intervention to highlight the strength of the emotional bond they’ve developed, but also why they shouldn’t act on it…

What first appears to be an examination of the experiences of a Chinese student coming to London for the first time, Foreign Moon soon morphs from a promising (if lightweight) fish out of water tale into something quite different. Unconcerned with making Lan Lan’s story one that sees her hampered by bureaucracy – which would have been a more predictable path to take – writer/director Zeming instead develops it into a delicate romantic drama, one that retains a healthy respect for Chinese norms of behaviour, while also recognising that China and its influences are a long way off.

The trio of central characters all act and behave in ways that are understandable given the close quarters that all three live and work in, and Zeming ensures that the drama that unfolds as strains are placed on all of them – Lan Lan tries to hide her feelings for Su Tong, he has to deal with the disappointment of his wife and child having to remain in China, Deng Lin allows his hedonistic lifestyle to get him into trouble – isn’t allowed to become melodramatic, but remains realistic instead. Zeming achieves this through close attention to the characters’ emotional states, and dialogue that remains naturalistic throughout.

It’s a shame then that the performances aren’t always able to match the quality of Zeming’s script. Chen Hsiao-hsuan makes her feature debut here, and though she’s a beguiling and appealing presence, there are moments where her inexperience catches her out, and the demands of the role remain unfulfilled. Similarly, Daming Chen, though exuding confidence in his role as a young Chinese man with only three things on his mind: sex, money, and a passport, is allowed to overdo the angry young man that Deng Lin is required to be at times. Liu however, is a strong focal point, his grasp of the emotional and cultural responsibilities facing Su Tong adding gravitas to a role that could have been far less complex, and easily so. On the plus side, Zeming doesn’t make London another character in the drama, but uses it as an ordinary backdrop (though Piccadilly Circus does get more than the one look-in). The interiors are equally well handled, stage sets that don’t feel like stage sets, and they’re explored more throughly than expected thanks to Lik Lu’s probing camerawork, creating a verité feel that grounds the action effectively and with a fine attention to detail.

Rating: 8/10 – with its story of two not-quite lovers wanting to connect with each other but afraid to do so, Foreign Moon isn’t an original piece by any means, but it has a sincerity and a humanity that singles it out from other, similar movies; Zeming directs with a directness that doesn’t allow for ambiguity or misunderstanding – which in some ways is refreshing – while his cast, despite the drawbacks mentioned already, help make this a perceptive and engaging viewing experience.

NOTE: Sadly, there’s no trailer available for Foreign Moon.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Foreigner (2017)

18 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

6 Days (2017)

21 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

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.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017)

17 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Anthony C. Ferrante, Cameos, Franchise, Ian Ziering, London, Sequel, Sharks, SyFy, Tara Reid

D: Anthony C. Ferrante / 90m

Cast: Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Cassandra Scerbo, Billy Barratt, Yanet Garcia, Porsha Williams, too many minor celebrities to mention…

The Sharknado series has long been a bastion of awfulness, a treasury of trash, and a castle keep of constant calamity. It’s fast becoming the movie franchise that cannot, will not, die, with a new instalment being released each year with alarming regularity of purpose and design. And so we have the latest farrago in a series of movies that just keeps on coming and coming and coming. Rest assured (if that’s the right word), Sharknado 5: Global Warming won’t be the last in the series (and you’ll know why if you manage to make it to the end), and though Jaws 19 directed by Max Spielberg won’t ever happen, it’s more than likely now that in 2032 we’ll be having Sharknado 19: The NeverEnding Story streamed directly onto the back of our eyeballs.

This far in there’s very little point in offering up a proper review, or trying to differentiate between this instalment and any of the others. They’re all genuinely bad movies, and the producers seem to have decided that they need to be made that way deliberately. Fans of the series will get as much or as little out of Sharknado 5 as they have all the rest, detractors will have their views confirmed yet again, and the casual viewer will probably wonder how on earth a movie this bad has managed to get made in the first place. In the beginning, it could have been argued that the first Sharknado was a modern-day variation/update on the kind of monster horrors from the Fifties and Sixties, but without the radiation fallout to start things off. Now though, it’s a cultural anomaly that just keeps on giving and giving, even though the majority of us don’t want it to.

Rating: 3/10 – with only its celebrity cameos giving it a lift, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming is the franchise’s nadir, an appalling waste of everyone’s time and money; with the producers seeming to think that the series needs to get sillier and more deliberately stupid with each entry, it’s a poor reflection on their latest instalment when the cleverest thing about it is its tagline: Make America Bait Again.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Mini-Review: Unlocked (2017)

08 Monday May 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Action, CIA, Drama, John Malkovich, London, MI5, Michael Douglas, Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Review, Terrorism, Thriller, Toni Collette

D: Michael Apted / 98m

Cast: Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Michael Douglas, Philip Brodie, Makram Khoury, Brian Caspe, Tosin Cole, Aymen Hamdouchi, Michael Epp

In 2008, Peter O’Brien’s script for Unlocked made it onto the Black List. In order to make it onto the Black List that year, a script had to receive a minimum of four “mentions”. These “mentions” were tabulated from the responses of around two hundred and fifty movie executives, each of whom had to nominate up to ten unproduced screenplays that were relevant to 2008. Unlocked received five mentions, and though that keeps it quite a ways down the list, the idea that it’s on the list in the first place gives the impression that the script has some merit, that if it were to be produced, and if it did make it to our screens, then it would be a worthwhile movie to watch.

Well, Unlocked has been produced (by seven collaborating production companies), it has made it to our screens, but it’s far from being a worthwhile movie to watch. It’s yet another generic, cliché-ridden action thriller where loyalties are betrayed every five minutes, where the hero (or in this case, the heroine) goes it alone to prove their innocence, where jumps in credibility and logic are allowed to happen without any thought as to how they might harm the narrative, and where Noomi Rapace continues to show why the role of Lisbeth Salander will always be the high point of her career. It’s a movie that starts off moderately well – Rapace’s interrogator is called on to interview the go-between for an imam who’s sympathetic to terrorism, and an associate looking to release a biological weapon in Central London – and which quickly abandons that early promise by failing to connect the dots in any menaningful way, and by offering Tired Thriller Set Up No 387 as the basis of the action.

Such is the tired nature of the whole endeavour, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that this is a movie that was shot over two years ago, and which makes it to our screens now purely as a mercy release, a way of allowing those seven production companies a chance to earn back their investments. And it’s yet another movie where the quality of the cast and crew should ensure some measure of critical acclaim, but despite everyone’s involvement, this fails to happen, and the measure of the movie can be found in Bloom’s risible performance, Apted’s uninterested direction, a principal villain who sticks out like a sore thumb, and the kind of twists and turns that we’ve all seen in other, sometimes much better movies.

It’s hard to explain from the finished product just why O’Brien’s script made the Black List. Maybe since then it’s suffered from a pronounced case of rewrite-itis, and any subtleties it once had have been removed. Whatever happened between then and now, none of it has helped Unlocked become anything more than a weary, lukewarm slice of hokum. Rapace plays her character with grim determination and little else, Collette adds another high-ranking spook to her resumé, Malkovich provides the humour (welcome but still out of place), and Douglas is Mr Exposition, a role it’s unlikely anyone could have made anything out of. It’s a disjointed mess, providing few thrills and laboured fight scenes, along with a misplaced sense of relevance (chemical weapons smuggled into Britain from Russia? Really?). Ultimately, once it’s seen, this is a movie that fades away at speed, and is soon forgotten.

Rating: 3/10 – a movie that struggles to make an impact, but when it does, does so in ways that induces groans instead of applause, Unlocked could be re-titled Unloved and it would mean absolutely no difference to anyone; with too many scenes that provoke laughter – and often not deliberately – this is yet another reminder that low-key, low-budget action movies deserve more care and attention than their makers are willing to provide.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Now You See Me 2 (2016)

27 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Daniel Radcliffe, Dave Franco, Drama, FBI, Jesse Eisenberg, Jon M. Chu, Lizzy Caplan, London, Macau, Magic, Magicians, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, New York, The Eye, The Horsemen, Thriller, Woody Harrelson

Now You See Me 2

D: Jon M. Chu / 129m

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Daniel Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Morgan Freeman, Jay Chou, Sanaa Lathan, Michael Caine, David Warshofsky, Tsai Chin

Ten questions you need to ask yourself while watching Now You See Me 2:

  1. Why would prison authorities allow convicted criminal Thaddeus Bradley (Freeman) access to computer equipment that would enable him to make threats against the Four Horsemen (“You will get what’s coming to you. In ways you can’t expect.”)?
  2. Pigeons? (Yes, pigeons.)
  3. How does Lula (Caplan) know so much about the Four Horsemen, including the reason why Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher’s character from the first movie) isn’t around any longer?
  4. Why is Dylan Rhodes’ (Ruffalo) attendance at a Four Horsemen “event” more suspicious to his FBI colleagues than his talking into his sleeve?
  5. How convenient is it that Bradley has just the form Rhodes needs to get Bradley out of jail?
  6. Chase McKinney (Harrelson) – unfortunate stereotype or unfortunate stereotype?
  7. How likely is it, in a sequence that lasts nearly four and a half minutes, that not one of the security guards notice the playing card as it’s whipped, zipped and slipped from one Horseman to another?
  8. How do lines such as, “But I don’t agree that we have a sackful of nada, ’cause we’re all here. That’s a sackful of something” get past the first draft stage?
  9. When did the FBI’s remit extend outside of the US?
  10. Could the screenplay by Ed Solomon have ended on a more absurd, ridiculous note than the surprise reveals made by Bradley?

Now You See Me 2 - scene

Rating: 4/10 – another poorly constructed sequel that plays fast and loose with logic, Now You See Me 2 wants the audience to like it as much as the mass London crowds go crazy for the Horsemen; slickly made but soulless, only Caplan makes an impact, and the magic tricks lack the first movie’s sense of fun, leaving the movie to rattle on for two hours without anyone having to care what happens to the characters (which is both a bonus and a relief).

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Jason Bourne (2016)

20 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Action, Alicia Vikander, Asset, Athens, Berlin, Black ops, CIA, Drama, Iron Hand, Las Vegas, London, Matt Damon, Paul Greengrass, Review, Sequel, Thriller, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel

Jason Bourne

D: Paul Greengrass / 123m

Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed, Ato Essandoh, Scott Shepherd, Bill Camp, Vinzenz Kiefer, Stephen Kunken, Gregg Henry

The original Bourne movie trilogy was smart, inventive, thrilling, and a massive boost for the ailing spy genre. It made an action hero of Matt Damon, featured action sequences that were fresh and exciting, and had an emotionally complex through-line that bolstered the already intense plotting. At the end of The Bourne Ultimatum, David Webb had gained the answers to questions that had plagued him ever since he’d been saved from a watery grave by the crew of a fishing boat.

Except… he hasn’t, not really. The closing lines from The Bourne Ultimatum – “I remember. I remember everything.” – are repeated here at the movie’s beginning, and are followed by a montage of scenes from the original trilogy (as far as this movie is concerned, The Bourne Legacy (2012) never happened). But in amongst these memories are flashes of scenes we haven’t seen before. And when Jason Bourne snaps out of his reverie, we find him in the back of a truck and heading for an illegal fight ground in Greece. Clearly the years since he took down Treadstone and Blackbriar haven’t been good to him: despite his fighting prowess he still looks lost. And the bad dreams, or reveries, he’s experiencing aren’t helping. For someone who “remembers everything”, he’s having some of the most spectacularly disturbing and disorienting dreams ever. And he can’t make sense of them, especially the ones that involve his father, Richard Webb (Henry).

Jason Bourne - scene1

Help comes in the familiar but unexpected form of ex-CIA analyst Nicky Parsons (Stiles). Having hacked into the CIA mainframe, she’s done so with the aim of helping Bourne learn more about his past, and has discovered that his father had a greater role in the Treadstone programme than Bourne has been led to believe. But in hacking the CIA, Nicky has become a target and her contacting Bourne in Athens leads to his getting “back in the game”. With CIA operatives on their trail, as well as an Asset (Cassel), Bourne gains access to the information Nicky hacked, and once he becomes aware of his father’s involvement, he finds his enrolment in the Treadstone program wasn’t as clear cut as he thought. But as before, his reappearance has senior members of the CIA, including Director Robert Dewey (Jones), unwilling to let Bourne expose their Black Ops programs. Using a combination of the Asset and the head of the Cyber Crimes Division, Heather Lee (Vikander), to track down Bourne and eliminate him once and for all, Dewey plots to keep the CIA’s secrets as hidden as ever.

Fans of the Bourne Trilogy are generally dismissive of The Bourne Legacy, the Jeremy Renner starring addition to the series that failed to add anything new to the mix, and which felt like an uninspired retread of everything that had gone before. Matt Damon famously turned down the chance to cameo in Legacy, and made it clear that he wouldn’t return to the franchise unless Paul Greengrass was back on board as well. Well, Damon got his wish, and Greengrass is back as the movie’s director. But perhaps Damon should have made another stipulation: that Greengrass didn’t write the script.

Jason Bourne has many of the same attributes that The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum share. There’s the generous use of “shaky cam”, Christopher Rouse’s exemplary editing, excellent location work, and a series of intense and very well-staged action sequences (one of the series major strengths). But there’s one aspect that’s missing this time round, and aside from Greengrass’s muscular directorial style, it’s perhaps the series’ most important component: the contribution of Tony Gilroy. As screenwriter of the first two movies, and co-screenwriter of the third (though his input was drastically reduced), as well as Legacy‘s writer/director, Gilroy helped guide the series from its inauspicious beginnings to a position of critical and commercial success worldwide. His scripts had intelligence, depth and subtlety, and his villains were drawn with a vividness and care that made them worthy adversaries.

Jason Bourne - scene3

But without Gilroy (no doubt a casualty of The Bourne Legacy‘s poor reception), Jason Bourne proves just as disappointing as its unacknowledged predecessor. Nearly ten years on from the events of Ultimatum, Bourne is still an emotional mess, haunted by memory fragments that cause him pain and regret. He looks awful, and Damon plays him like a man besieged. For a man who found all the answers he needed, Bourne looks even more tormented than when he was in the dark. The movie never really attempts to explain why this is the case, preferring instead to give audiences a tortured Bourne without expanding on his back story. As a result, his decision to jump back in, prompted by some spurious nonsense involving his father, seems perfunctory instead of necessary.

With Bourne himself treated in such a cavalier fashion – he’s really just a one-man wrecking crew here – the other characters fare just as badly. Dewey is a stock villain, one step removed from twirling an invisible moustache and muttering “mwah-ha-ha!” whenever the script has him do something nefarious. Jones has no chance with the role, and there are times when his awareness of this comes through loud and clear; just watch his scenes with Vikander, and ask yourself if he looks committed. Cassel’s Asset is fuelled by revenge for the torture he suffered through Bourne’s exposure of the Blackbriar program, but as the character spends an inordinate amount of time running around chasing Bourne without actually catching him, his anger (and his back story) gets shoved to the side. And then there’s Heather Lee, the Cyber Crimes head who acts as this movie’s Pamela Landy. There’s supposed to be some mystery as to which side she’s on (she helps Bourne in various ways while pushing a separate CIA agenda), but thanks to Greengrass’s less than subtle direction, Vikander never looks anything other than extremely distrustful.

Film Title: Jason Bourne

And then there’s the small but important matter of how Bourne gets about. From Greece he travels to Berlin, then to London. He does so on his own, without any help from anyone, and manages to elude detection at every turn (a facet of the series that was usually, and very cleverly explained away – but not here). And yet when he travels from London to Las Vegas he does so by commercial aircraft, and though he receives assistance from Lee in getting through US Customs, it still begs the question how UK Customs didn’t flag him up in the first place. (Also, it seems that outside of Athens and Las Vegas there’s not the CCTV infrastructure to allow the CIA to track Bourne efficiently anywhere else.) And stop and think about this: in Las Vegas, at an expo for a communications platform that Dewey wants to appropriate – don’t ask – Bourne picks up various conveniently placed bugging devices that he uses to get to Dewey, all of which begs the question, what plan did he have originally (as he couldn’t have known they were there beforehand)?

Gaping plot holes like these only add to the realisation that Jason Bourne is a less than rewarding, less than necessary sequel to four previous movies (three of which had already told the story effectively and with impressive style), that throws in a handful of rousing action sequences, makes Bourne indestructible, has a subplot involving a communications platform – actually, still don’t ask – and features some of the blandest characters in the whole series. Greengrass is a mercurial director, with a great visual style, but he’s not as good a screenwriter as he might think, and along with Rouse, he makes things too simplistic for the movie’s own good. The end result? A movie that only takes off when it’s throwing punches or chasing SWAT vehicles.

Rating: 5/10 – a missed opportunity to enhance and expand on the series, Jason Bourne trades on nostalgia instead of bringing something new to the franchise; Bourne looks tired throughout, as does Jones, and by the movie’s end the viewer will feel exactly the same way.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Burnt (2015)

01 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bradley Cooper, Chef, Clean and sober, Cuisine, Daniel Brühl, Drama, Emma Thompson, Food, John Wells, Kitchen, London, Michelin Guide, Restaurant, Review, Romance, Sienna Miller, Steven Knight, Three stars

Burnt

D: John Wells / 101m

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Daniel Brühl, Riccardo Scamarcio, Omar Sy, Sam Keeley, Henry Goodman, Matthew Rhys, Stephen Campbell Moore, Emma Thompson, Uma Thurman, Lexie Benbow-Hart, Alicia Vikander, Sarah Greene

Adam Jones (Cooper) is a bit of a cause célèbre in the culinary world, having crashed and burned at the Paris restaurant where he worked thanks to his diva-like behaviour and propensity for drugs and booze. Now clean for two years, he turns up in London at the restaurant run by his friend and colleague from his time in Paris, Tony (Brühl). Adam tells an unimpressed and disbelieving Tony that he’s there to make up for Paris, run the kitchen in a top restaurant, and gain three Michelin stars. Naturally, Tony refuses to help him, but Adam isn’t about to give up. He bullies his way into Tony’s restaurant, shows Tony (and his clientele) what he can do, and eyes up the sous chef, Helene (Miller), with a view to poaching her for his own place.

Which, of course, he does, but not before Helene puts up a (semi-)spirited defence, and Tony has to be dragged away from his own job as a maître d’. Having assembled his kitchen staff, Adam’s opening night doesn’t go as smoothly or successfully as he’d hoped, and the abrasive side of his personality comes out, leading to a tirade of abuse directed at his staff and Helene walking out. But Tony persuades her to come back, and soon she and Adam are starting out on the rocky road to a relationship – of sorts. Back in the kitchen, the apparent arrival of two Michelin Guide inspectors sees Adam go all out to get his three stars, but an unforeseen setback destroys his dream.

Burnt - scene1

Adam goes off the deep end (albeit for one night) and winds up at the restaurant of a rival chef, Reece (Rhys). There he learns a couple of valuable lessons, reconnects with Tony and Helene, is given a second chance at gaining the three Michelin stars, and begins – again – to put his life back together.

Burnt features a screenplay by Steven Knight, a British screenwriter who’s also responsible for Eastern Promises (2007) and Locke (2013). But he’s also written the likes of Hummingbird (2013) and Seventh Son (2014), so his track record is a little uneven… and Burnt falls firmly into the latter category. There’s very little here that makes sense, and a lot of it happens for no particular reason at all, leaving the drama feeling undercooked and the romance warmed over. For example, we don’t know why Adam chooses London to make his return. It’s never explained how he manages to stay clean without attending any meetings (“I’m not good in groups,” he keeps saying). And his backers have insisted he have weekly blood tests to ensure he’s not using again; if he does they’ll withdraw their backing. (This is where Emma Thompson comes in, as the therapist who takes his blood. Why not the hospital or a doctors’ surgery? It’s a strange arrangement, and one that just sits there like a fait accompli.)

Elsewhere there are subplots and other subplots that have their own subplots, like the money Adam owes to some unsavoury types in Paris, and who have traced him to London (having failed to learn he was in the US for two years while getting and staying sober). On the back of that we’re introduced – very briefly – to an old flame (played by Vikander) who drifts in and out of the movie and provides no threat whatsoever to the relationship Adam has with Helene (it might have been predictable but it would also have raised the movie out of the dramatic doldrums it rolls around in for an hour and a half).

Burnt - scene2

And when the script decides to throw in the notion that Tony is in love with Adam, it comes literally out of nowhere and then is left hanging there to dwindle away to nothing. Maybe these moments are meant to add depth or meaning to the various relationships in the movie, but all they do is confirm the notion that Knight hasn’t really got to grips with what the movie is meant to be saying. Adam rants unconvincingly at his staff, and thanks to the movie’s PG-13 approach, sounds less like Gordon Ramsay and more like someone having a good whinge. There’s the awkward use of his rival, Reece, as well. One minute Reece is disparaging of Adam’s talent and attempt at redemption, the next he’s stuck with lines like “You’re better than me. But the rest of us need you to lead us to places we wouldn’t otherwise go.” (Really?)

There’s more, too much more, and things aren’t helped by Wells’ direction, which remains staunchly flavourless throughout, and a cast who struggle continually to do their best but remain hamstrung by Knight’s script. Cooper, normally a very capable actor, doesn’t seem to know what to do with his character, and goes with the flow of each individual scene, so that he’s angry one moment, happy the next, confused after that, and then determined, but it’s like he’s acted in each scene with no intention of linking them with any other scenes, or the picture as a whole.

Burnt - scene3

Miller is poorly used – again – and the other female roles don’t even amount to a whole one. Thompson does just enough, Vikander isn’t allowed to do even that, and Thurman pops up as a food critic who can’t even do bitchy properly (honestly, Anton Ego from Ratatouille (2007) was more caustic). On the male side, Sy is kept firmly in the background until the script needs him (only twice), Brühl struggles with a character who gives new meaning to the word “bland”, and Scamarcio is virtually a passer-by as one of the two French thugs. The Doors once sang, “No one here gets out alive”, but in terms of Burnt, the line should be “No one here gets to act alive”.

Rating: 4/10 – with the food on display looking bright and vibrant and good enough to eat, a plate is the only place you’ll find anything that’s vibrant in Burnt; tedious, muddled and poorly constructed, this is a movie that should be sent back for being completely inedible.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

To Sir, With Love (1967)

04 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Christian Roberts, Drama, E.R. Braithwaite, East End, James Clavell, Judy Geeson, Literary adaptation, London, Lulu, Music, North Quay Secondary School, Review, Sidney Poitier, Teaching

To Sir, With Love

D: James Clavell / 105m

Cast: Sidney Poitier, Christian Roberts, Judy Geeson, Suzy Kendall, Lulu, Faith Brook, Patricia Routledge, Geoffrey Bayldon, Chris Chittell, Adrienne Posta, Edward Burnham, Anthony Villaroel, Rita Webb, Ann Bell

Having qualified as an engineer, British Guyana-born Mark Thackeray (Poitier) finds himself getting nowhere with job applications in his chosen field. Needing to make ends meet while he continues to look for an engineering post, he takes a position as a teacher at North Quay Secondary School in London’s tough East End. On his first day he’s warned that the children in his class will be unruly and will challenge his authority, and that their behaviour caused their previous teacher to resign. Further advised that they’re pupils that other schools have given up on, Thackeray begins to realise the task ahead of him.

The other teachers prove to be right. Led by Bert Denham (Roberts) and Pamela Dare (Geeson), the pupils in Thackeray’s class show a lack of interest, swear constantly, and are openly hostile and disrespectful. He retains a calm composure, however, and despite the pupils’ best efforts, manages to keep an uneasy control over them… until one morning when he arrives to discover that they’ve put a sanitary towel in the classroom grate and set it alight. Disgusted by this he tells the boys to get out and then rounds on the girls, lambasting them for their “sluttish” behaviour. Later, in the staff room, he rebukes himself for losing his temper, and for being so easily provoked by a bunch of “kids”. It’s then that he realises where he’s been going wrong.

He returns to the class and informs them that as they are all leaving school at the end of the term, and are going out into the world, he will now treat them as adults, and expect them to behave accordingly. The pupils, particularly the girls, are soon won over by this, and it’s not long before the boys are too; only Denham resists. He arranges an outing for them to the British History Museum and finds them all well-dressed and looking clean and tidy. The trip is a success, but things take a more serious turn when one of the class is bullied during a gym lesson. He suffers an injury and the rest of the boys round on the teacher; Potter (Chittell) picks up a piece of wood and threatens him with it. Thackeray is called to intervene, and manages to defuse the situation, but when he tells Potter that he should apologise for his actions, he begins to lose the respect he’s worked so hard to establish, and things begin to how they were when he first arrived.

To Sir, With Love - scene

Adapted by Clavell from E.R. Braithwaite’s semi-autobiographical 1959 novel, To Sir, With Love opens with Thackeray journeying to his new teaching post through London’s East End. These brief establishing shots plus a comic bus ride are used to show the kind of area he’s venturing into, a tough, run down borough where post-War renovations have yet to happen on the scale required. It’s a trenchant observation, and serves to illustrate the movie’s central message, one that will be more explicitly referred to later on. It could even be said that Thackeray is akin to Daniel entering the lion’s den, and such is the welcome from his fellow teachers, especially the cynical Weston (Bayldon), that his time at North Quay may turn out to be even less favourable.

And so we meet the pupils, and their rowdiness and lack of respect is explained away by virtue of their coming from broken or abusive homes (or both), and by the way in which they feel they’ve been let down by the adults around them. As they search for their own identities and place in the world, they make the same mistake that every confused or angry teenager makes: that soon they too will be adults and will have to face the same challenges every other adult has to deal with. It’s an obvious point, and the movie makes it very succinctly in a scene where Thackeray insists they all treat each other with respect. For the pupils to be treated this way is a revelation to them, and they begin to see advantages to their new behaviour, advantages that help them deal with each other and make sense of what’s expected of them. In essence, they can be whomever they want, and do whatever they want; all they have to do is believe in themselves (and this is the message our first sight of Thackeray travelling through the East End sets up for us: here’s a man of determination who has made something of himself).

By concentrating on Thackeray’s empowerment of his pupils, the social aspects of Braithwaite’s story are pushed to the background, and receive only occasional mentions – the girl who can’t come to school because her mother has just given birth and needs help at home, the boy whose mother dies but whose bi-racial background means the other pupils can’t be seen to take some flowers to his home – and this leaves the drama of the piece feeling slightly muted, as if Clavell has recognised the importance of including such issues but doesn’t feel comfortable in criticising them too loudly. The same is true of Pamela Dare’s obvious attraction for Thackeray, a strand that leads nowhere in dramatic terms but which does lead to a scene at the end where racial and social concerns, and awkward convention, are ignored in favour of a feelgood moment that doesn’t feel realistic at all.

To Sir, With Love - scene2

One area where the movie is successful is in its musical interludes, which give Lulu (making her movie debut) the kind of promotional boost that’s worth its weight in gold – her rendition of the title song stayed at Number 1 in the US pop charts for five weeks. As well as the songs there’s the inevitable moving and grooving that, viewed nearly fifty years later, looks embarrassing, but which also retains a charming naïvete. And it’s this naïvete that, ultimately, makes the movie work as well as it does, and has allowed it to remain such a firm favourite after all these years. It sets itself up as a searing indictment of the British class and education systems, but then changes tack as soon as it can to become an inspirational tract for the young and disaffected. From then on there are no problems that can’t be overcome, and no situations that won’t turn out for the best. It’s not real life, it’s a cannily produced and played wish fulfilment tale that steals up on its audience and leaves a warm, enjoyable glow in its wake.

Of course, the movie relies heavily on the presence of Poitier, his every feeling and emotion writ large on his surprisingly expressive face, and he’s quickly embedded as the movie’s heart and soul, leading the audience from scene to scene and showdown to showdown with such good nature and patience that his outburst over the burning sanitary towel is a welcome relief. Roberts is a sneering, dismissive Denham, all squared shoulders and challenging smirk. Geeson manages the impressive feat of being knowingly attractive and yet sexually reticent at the same time, as the script effectively neuters her to avoid any unpleasant complaints that it’s encouraging or supporting miscegenation. And there’s a raft of familiar British character actors in smaller roles that adds to the movie’s cosy, reassuring nature.

Clavell, an Australian who made his name writing big fat bestselling novels such as Tai-Pan and Shogun, directs with a firm understanding of what he wants from his own script, and doesn’t stray too far from its remit. He plays down the humour that arises in the classroom, making it seem more natural and less rehearsed, and wisely shoots Poitier in close up as often as he can. But he does dampen down the drama a little too often, leaving some scenes feeling under-developed, while others are focused on to the point where their importance feels forced. Thankfully, he’s aided by crisp, well-framed photography courtesy of Paul Beeson, and a fine, unintrusive score by Ron Grainer (who also composed the theme tune for Doctor Who).

Rating: 7/10 – well-loved and optimistic, To Sir, With Love has stood the test of time thanks to its effective performances and inherent charm; as a snapshot of a bygone era it’s not quite the social document it appears to be, but it has a freshness that hasn’t faded, and a winning feel to it that offsets the lack of depth.

The following trailer is from America, and is a priceless example of the way in which British movies were marketed at the time, and features a voice over that has to be heard to be believed.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Monthly Roundup – July 2015

31 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1968, Adoption, Amanda Seyfried, Animation, Ari Sandel, Behind Office Doors, Bianca Rusu, Comedy, Daphne, Deportation, Designated Ugly Fat Friend, Drama, Fashion, Fred, Horror, KISS, KISS World, Kyle Balda, London, Mae Whitman, Mark Wahlberg, Mary Astor, Minions, Morocco, Paris á tout prix, Pierre Coffin, Reem Kherici, Reviews, Robbie Amell, Robert Ames, Rodrigo Gudiño, Romantic drama, Sandra Bullock, Scarlet Witch, Scarlett Overkill, Scooby-Doo! and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery, Seth MacFarlane, Shaggy, Ted 2, The Demonology of Desire, The DUFF, The Mystery Gang, Thunderbuddies, Velma

Behind Office Doors (1931) / D: Melville W. Brown / 82m

Cast: Mary Astor, Robert Ames, Ricardo Cortez, Catherine Dale Owen, Kitty Kelly, Edna Murphy, Charles Sellon, William Morris

Rating: 6/10 – at a paper supply company, personal assistant Mary Linden (Astor) is in love with rising young salesman Jim Duneen (Ames), but has to watch from the sidelines as he  plans to marry a socialite (Owen), completely unaware of how she feels about him; a broadly entertaining drama that was probably as predictable to watch in 1931 as it is today, Behind Office Doors benefits from a good performance from the always watchable Astor, and a breezy approach to social affairs that – pre-Hays code – allows Astor to kiss Cortez without being introduced first.

Behind Office Doors

Minions (2015) / D: Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda / 91m

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Allison Janney, Steve Coogan, Jennifer Saunders, Geoffrey Rush, Steve Carell, Pierre Coffin

Rating: 8/10 – the origin of the Minions takes us all the way back to the first stirrings of life on earth and then catapults the viewer to 1968 and the efforts of three intrepid Minions – Kevin, Stuart and Bob – to find a new evil master; as absurdist and mayhem-filled as the Despicable Me movies, Minions promotes the little yellow sidekicks to centre stage, and has all sorts of fun riffing on the Sixties, even though some of the voice talents are far from recognisable (Hamm, Keaton, Janney).

Minions

Paris á tout prix (2013) / D: Reem Kherici / 93m

aka Paris or Perish

Cast: Reem Kherici, Cécile Cassel, Tarek Boudali, Philippe Lacheau, Shirley Bousquet, Salim Kechiouche, Stéphane Rousseau

Rating: 7/10 – Moroccan-born fashion designer Maya (Kherici) finds herself in the running for a promotion but is deported back to Morocco when it’s discovered her visa has expired, leaving her with no choice but to pretend she’s off sick until she can find a way back to Paris and win her promotion; Kherici’s likeable, frothy comedy has its poignant moments too, and takes an affectionate stab at the fashion industry, but in the end, Paris á tout prix suffers by being too predictable and slow to get off the ground while using very broad brush strokes on the secondary characters.

Paris a tout prix

Ted 2 (2015) / D: Seth MacFarlane / 115m

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Seth MacFarlane, Amanda Seyfried, Jessica Barth, Giovanni Ribisi, Morgan Freeman, Sam J. Jones, Patrick Warburton, Michael Dorn, John Slattery, John Carroll Lynch

Rating: 6/10 – when Ted (MacFarlane) marries his sweetheart Tami-Lynn (Barth) and they want to have children, their adoption application leads to Ted being declared to be property rather than a person, and his only chance of reversing the decision is to employ the services of eminent lawyer Patrick Meighan (Freeman); a sequel was always in the works and to his credit MacFarlane hasn’t strayed too far from the first movie’s formula, but it also makes Ted 2 seem more like a rehash than a genuine sequel, and while some of it is as outrageous as expected, there’s a little too much unnecessary plotting getting in the way of the jokes.

Ted 2

Scooby-Doo! and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery (2015) / D: Spike Brandt, Tony Cervone / 79m

Cast: Frank Welker, Mindy Cohn, Grey Griffin, Matthew Lillard, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Eric Singer, Tommy Thayer, Jennifer Carpenter, Garry Marshall, Penny Marshall, Doc McGhee, Jason Mewes, Pauley Perrette, Rachel Ramras, Darius Rucker, Kevin Smith

Rating: 5/10 – at the KISS World amusement park, the appearance of the Scarlet Witch and her search for a legendary rock leads to the Mystery Gang and KISS teaming up to unmask the Witch and save the park from closing; not the best of Scooby-Doo’s recent outings, Scooby-Doo! and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery is overlong – an extended fantasy sequence soon becomes tedious – and doesn’t play to either group’s strengths, while the actual mystery is sadly, quite weak, all of which leaves the movie both disappointing and unrewarding (unless you’re a die hard KISS fan, in which case you’ll probably love it).

Scooby-Doo! and KISS

The Demonology of Desire (2007) / D: Rodrigo Gudiño / 22m

Cast: Bianca Rusu, Tudor Plopeanu, Jewelia Fisico

Rating: 6/10 – a teenage girl (Rusu) torments a younger boy (Plopeanu) who professes his love for her, and leads him into a nightmare of death and madness; regarded as art-core, The Demonology of Desire is less art and more waspish commentary on the futility of young love, but it does feature some strong visuals and a performance from Rusu that makes a virtue of some very poor line readings.

Demonology of Desire, The

The DUFF (2015) / D: Ari Sandel / 101m

Cast: Mae Whitman, Robbie Amell, Bella Thorne, Bianca A. Santos, Skyler Samuels, Romany Malco, Nick Eversman, Chris Wylde, Ken Jeong, Allison Janney

Rating: 5/10 – ordinary-looking Bianca (Whitman) discovers she’s her two best (attractive) friends’ DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend), but finds her way through the necessary social adjustments thanks to best friend Wesley (Amell); pleasant enough, though featuring too many stretches where the audience is likely to lose interest, The DUFF is yet another Cinderella makeover movie that adds little to its old-time scenario.

DUFF, The

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Mini-Review: Survivor (2015)

27 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Action, American Embassy, Bombing, Conspiracy, Drama, Dylan McDermott, James McTeigue, London, Milla Jovovich, Pierce Brosnan, Review, Robert Forster, Thriller, Times Square

Survivor

D: James McTeigue / 96m

Cast: Milla Jovovich, Pierce Brosnan, Dylan McDermott, Angela Bassett, James D’Arcy, Robert Forster, Frances de la Tour, Roger Rees, Benno Fürmann, Genevieve O’Reilly, Corey Johnson

Kate Abbott (Jovovich) has transferred to the American Embassy in London. She oversees visa applications to the US by foreign nationals travelling through the UK. When she suspects that gas expert Dr Balan (Rees) isn’t all that he seems, it leads to her being hunted by assassin the Watchmaker (Brosnan). With only her colleague, Sam Parker (McDermott), believing she’s had nothing to do with the deaths of other colleagues in a bomb blast, or that of her immediate boss, Bill Talbot (Forster), Kate is forced to go on the run in an attempt to get to the bottom of the conspiracy she’s found herself entangled in.

Narrowly escaping several attempts on her life by the Watchmaker, Kate realises she has to get back into the embassy in order to find the proof she needs to expose the conspiracy. Helped by Sam and another colleague, Sally (de la Tour), Kate discovers enough information to send her off to New York on New Year’s Eve. Followed by the Watchmaker, Kate has only a few hours to foil a terrorist attack planned for midnight in Times Square, and which is backed by the pharmaceutical company that Balan works for.

Survivor - scene

Take a director whose previous output includes V for Vendetta (2005) and the underrated Ninja Assassin (2009), add two principal stars who are no strangers to the action genre, a supporting cast of more than capable (and proven) actors, and good location work in both London and New York – and what do you get? A terrible piece of nonsense that doesn’t even bother to try and hide how preposterous it all is. This is largely thanks to Philip Shelby’s overly-simplistic, corner-cutting script, a melange of action movie clichés and inane dialogue lumped in amongst an unconvincing plot and the kind of one-dimensional characterisations that leave the viewer shaking their head in disbelief.

There’s no point at which Survivor is even remotely credible, and while there’s a small degree of amusement to be had at each nutty development in the script, McTeigue fails to maintain any degree of confidence behind the camera. As a result, the movie plods from one uninspired set piece to the next without pausing for breath or an injection of self-belief. Jovovich runs around a lot looking frazzled and confused (as well she might), while Brosnan sleepwalks through his role with the look of an actor wondering where his career went to. By the end, with its inevitable showdown between Kate and the Watchmaker, the movie has given up trying to be exciting or different, and renders itself completely unremarkable.

Rating: 3/10 – why movies like these continue to be made is anybody’s guess, but Survivor is an object lesson in how not to make a modern day thriller with Cold War overtones; lacking credibility is one thing, but lacking suspense as well makes for a poorly judged and ill-considered movie that viewers can only help will end sooner than it does.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Filth and Wisdom (2008)

21 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Dancing, Dom, Eugene Hutz, Gogol Bordello, Holly Weston, London, Love, Madonna, Relationships, Review, Richard E. Grant, Stephen Graham, Vicky McClure

Filth and Wisdom

D: Madonna / 80m

Cast: Eugene Hutz, Holly Weston, Vicky McClure, Richard E. Grant, Inder Manocha, Elliot Levey, Francesca Kingdon, Clare Wilkie, Stephen Graham, Hannah Walters, Shobu Kapoor

A somewhat philosophically inclined comedy surrounding three flatmates, A.K. (Hutz), Holly (Weston) and Juliette (McClure), Filth and Wisdom charts their attempts to find love, job fulfilment, and to make sense of their lives.

A.K. works as a dom (a male dominatrix), while Holly is a struggling dancer, and Juliette works in a chemist’s.  All three of them are floundering through life, trying to get ahead but never getting further than where they are.  When he isn’t abusing middle-aged men for money, A.K. is a furrow-browed philosopher, keen to point out the futilities of life or the conundrums of existence as he sees them.  Hutz – the lead singer of gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello – spends most of the movie spouting apothegms and cod-literate sayings to camera.  Some of these sayings strive for importance and/or relevance to the events happening elsewhere in the movie but they have a poor success rate.

Holly attends regular dance lessons but seems to be getting no further in her ambition to be a dancer.  She visits a club and is offered a job there by the owner, Harry Beechman (Graham).  She agrees to audition only to find the job is pole dancing.  Terrible at it at first, she is taken under the wing of Francine (Kingdon), and soon becomes more confident.

Meanwhile, Juliette is treading water at the chemists’s, run by Sardeep (Manocher).  She steals pills off the shelves when he’s not looking though she doesn’t seem to have a drug problem; she’s just bored and wants to do something more meaningful.  She has a running battle with Sardeep over which charity collection box is more deserving: starving Africans or starving Asians.  All the while she is unaware that Sardeep – who is married – is attracted to her.

Downstairs from the three flatmates lives blind Professor Flynn (Grant).  A.K. gets his groceries for him and spends time with him.  Flynn is a melancholy figure surrounded by books he can no longer read.  As the movie progresses he becomes more and more withdrawn.

Filth and Wisdom - scene

Filth and Wisdom drew some unfavourable criticism when it was first released, and to be fair some of it is justifiable.  A.K. is just the kind of waffle-spouting poseur you’d cross the road to avoid.  This isn’t Hutz’s fault, it’s just the way the character’s written.  In fact, Hutz does well enough to create a modestly well-rounded character when he’s interacting with others, especially in his scenes with Professor Flynn.  Otherwise, when he’s talking to camera you just wish he’d get it over with.

Given roughly equal screen time, Weston and McClure fare better for having more straightforward roles, and both actresses shine.  Grant’s role is a little more complex but Professor Flynn is a secondary character, and once the script reaches a certain point, his storyline is discontinued.  The supporting cast, particularly Manocher, fare equally well, and there’s a lovely scene between Holly and Professor Flynn at a restaurant, but what scuppers Filth and Wisdom is its lack of focus from one scene to the next.  When Hutz is on screen it’s almost as if he’s acting in another movie entirely, and some scenes have a Seventies feel to them, as if Madonna’s main point of reference for filming in the UK was sitcoms from that era, such as Man About the House or Love Thy Neighbour; for such a cosmopolitan city, London comes across as parochial and insular.

And then there is the final scene.  It takes place at a Gogol Bordello concert and unites all the main characters, including a suddenly much happier Professor Flynn.  As if that isn’t jarring enough, there’s been no previous indication that A.K. is in a band at all.  Still, maybe it was a contractual obligation for Hutz appearing in the movie.

Filth and Wisdom isn’t quite as bad as some people would have it, but it does fall down far too often for its own good (although it does always get back up on its feet and try again – you can’t fault it for that).  Madonna, making her directorial debut, contributes some haphazard direction, while the script, which she co-wrote with Dan Cadan, shouldn’t have tried to sum up the trials and tribulations of daily life as it does.  The photography is dull, reflecting the environs in which it was shot, and the music – for a Madonna movie – isn’t entirely memorable.  However, the movie does manage to hold the viewer’s attention and there are far worse movies you could spend eighty minutes watching.

Rating: 5/10 – not bad, but not good, and too casual in its set up, Filth and Wisdom doesn’t always make as much sense as it thinks it does; with little wisdom (and even less filth) on display, the movie ends up failing to convince.

Originally posted on thedullwoodexperiment website.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Hummingbird (2013)

07 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Action, Agata Buzek, Court martial, Drama, Jason Statham, London, Review, Shelter, Steven Knight

aka Redemption

D: Steven Knight / 100m

Cast: Jason Statham, Agata Buzek, Vicky McClure, Benedict Wong, Ger Ryan, Anthony Morris, Christian Brassington, Victoria Bewick

There are times when watching a Jason Statham movie is akin to watching an old friend do their favourite party trick: they may execute the trick with all their usual finesse (or lack of it), and they may add or refine it as they feel necessary. But when all’s said and done, it’s still the same old trick. The same is true of Hummingbird, a London-based drama that does its best to show that Statham has a broader range than we might think, but then still gets him to thump various co-stars and stuntmen.

Statham plays Joey, on the run from a military court martial and living rough on the streets of London. When we first meet him he’s sheltering in a cardboard box with a woman called Isabel (Bewick). They’re separated after an encounter with a local criminal enforcer called Taxman (Morris) and his henchman; Joey has tried to resist and been beaten for his efforts. He manages to get away over the rooftops and eventually finds his way into a flat where he discovers the owner is away until October (it’s now February). He cleans himself up, helps himself to the owner’s clothes and finds a new credit card amongst the mail piled up by the front door (as well as an envelope conveniently stamped Pin Enclosed).

Joey has become a drunk since going AWOL and despite his new-found good fortune he returns to the bottle. While drunk he goes to a shelter run by the Church and gives £500 to Sister Christina (Buzek); in the past he has relied on the food provided by the shelter and wants to give something back in return. Joey also asks her to find out what’s happened to Isobel.

Hummingbird - scene

Now at this point, one of two things could have happened: one, Joey spirals ever further into alcoholism before finding redemption through a selfless act, or two, Joey turns his life around and does things of true value before facing up to his past. But writer/director Knight comes up with a third option: Joey turns his life around and joins a Chinese crime syndicate. It’s an amazing choice and his motivation for doing so remains murky throughout. It allows for the requisite punch-ups that Statham is renowned for, but offers little in the way of real character development. His relationship with Sister Christina becomes more involved, almost romantic, but it’s her motivation that remains murky, and so the movie stumbles from scene to scene with no clear purpose or, ultimately, resolution.

Statham is an actor for whom expressing real emotion is always going to be a stretch, and he’s fashioned his career accordingly as the stoic loner who’s stony expression acts as much as a warning to others as a mask for his feelings. And while Hummingbird might be viewed as an attempt to show he has more skill as an actor than expected, the material doesn’t allow him to do so. He’s still the taciturn outsider, resorting to violence when necessary and doling out clipped lines of dialogue. There may be an emotional role out there that Statham would be entirely suited to, but this isn’t it.

As for the rest of the cast, Buzek offers a conflicted Sister Christina who becomes dangerously close to Joey and finds herself in turmoil because of it, while other characters come and go without making much of an impact. The exception is Max Forrester (Brassington), a particularly nasty punter who abuses prostitutes and finds himself the target of Joey’s somewhat confused sense of morality. Otherwise, this is a movie that concentrates on its two main characters.

The London locations are used to good effect – it’s always strange to see places like Shaftesbury Avenue largely deserted, whatever the time of day – and the production design by Michael Carlin is suitably grimy and depressing. Knight proves to be a capable director but sadly his own script lets him down; it’s an uneasy mix of unlikely romance, grim docudrama, social criticism, action movie and crime drama, and not all of the elements gel. There’s also a problem with the pacing, with some stretches slowing the movie unnecessarily.

Rating: 6/10 – not all bad but a disappointment nevertheless; Knight needs to tighten any further film scripts he writes, and Statham – if he wants to – should commit to a script that really stretches him as an actor.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Blog Stats

  • 383,042 hits

Recent Posts

  • 10 Reasons to Remember Bibi Andersson (1935-2019)
  • Fantasia (1940)
  • Dances With Wolves (1990) – The Special Edition
  • Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
  • The Three Musketeers (1973)

Top Posts & Pages

  • Despite the Falling Snow (2016)
    Despite the Falling Snow (2016)
  • Cold Lunch (2008)
    Cold Lunch (2008)
  • Lost for Life (2013)
    Lost for Life (2013)
  • Regression (2015)
    Regression (2015)
  • The White Orchid (2018)
    The White Orchid (2018)
  • Jean de Florette (1986)
    Jean de Florette (1986)
  • Fred: The Movie (2010)
    Fred: The Movie (2010)
  • The Green Butchers (2003)
    The Green Butchers (2003)
  • A Dangerous Method (2011)
    A Dangerous Method (2011)
  • Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001)
    Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001)
Follow thedullwoodexperiment on WordPress.com

Blogs I Follow

  • Rubbish Talk
  • Film 4 Fan
  • Fast Film Reviews
  • The Film Blog
  • All Things Movies UK
  • movieblort
  • Interpreting the Stars
  • Let's Go To The Movies
  • Movie Reviews 101
  • That Moment In
  • Dan the Man's Movie Reviews
  • Film History
  • Jordan and Eddie (The Movie Guys)

Archives

  • April 2019 (13)
  • March 2019 (28)
  • February 2019 (28)
  • January 2019 (32)
  • December 2018 (28)
  • November 2018 (30)
  • October 2018 (29)
  • September 2018 (29)
  • August 2018 (29)
  • July 2018 (30)
  • June 2018 (28)
  • May 2018 (24)
  • April 2018 (21)
  • March 2018 (31)
  • February 2018 (25)
  • January 2018 (30)
  • December 2017 (30)
  • November 2017 (27)
  • October 2017 (27)
  • September 2017 (26)
  • August 2017 (32)
  • July 2017 (32)
  • June 2017 (30)
  • May 2017 (29)
  • April 2017 (29)
  • March 2017 (30)
  • February 2017 (27)
  • January 2017 (32)
  • December 2016 (30)
  • November 2016 (28)
  • October 2016 (30)
  • September 2016 (27)
  • August 2016 (30)
  • July 2016 (30)
  • June 2016 (31)
  • May 2016 (34)
  • April 2016 (30)
  • March 2016 (30)
  • February 2016 (28)
  • January 2016 (35)
  • December 2015 (34)
  • November 2015 (31)
  • October 2015 (31)
  • September 2015 (34)
  • August 2015 (31)
  • July 2015 (33)
  • June 2015 (12)
  • May 2015 (31)
  • April 2015 (32)
  • March 2015 (30)
  • February 2015 (37)
  • January 2015 (39)
  • December 2014 (34)
  • November 2014 (34)
  • October 2014 (36)
  • September 2014 (25)
  • August 2014 (29)
  • July 2014 (29)
  • June 2014 (28)
  • May 2014 (23)
  • April 2014 (21)
  • March 2014 (42)
  • February 2014 (38)
  • January 2014 (29)
  • December 2013 (28)
  • November 2013 (34)
  • October 2013 (4)

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Rubbish Talk

Film 4 Fan

A Movie Blog

Fast Film Reviews

for those who like their movie reviews short and sweet

The Film Blog

The official blog of everything in film

All Things Movies UK

Movie Reviews and Original Articles

movieblort

No-nonsense, unqualified, uneducated & spoiler free movie reviews.

Interpreting the Stars

Dave Examines Movies

Let's Go To The Movies

Film and Theatre Lover!

Movie Reviews 101

Daily Movie Reviews

That Moment In

Movie Moments & More

Dan the Man's Movie Reviews

All my aimless thoughts, ideas, and ramblings, all packed into one site!

Film History

Telling the story of film

Jordan and Eddie (The Movie Guys)

Australian movie blog - like Margaret and David, just a little younger

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • thedullwoodexperiment
    • Join 482 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • thedullwoodexperiment
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: