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Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

07 Monday Aug 2017

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D: Jon Watts / 133m

Cast: Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jr, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Gwyneth Paltrow, Zendaya, Donald Glover, Jacob Batalon, Laura Harrier, Tony Revolori, Bokeem Woodbine, Michael Chernus, Logan Marshall-Green, Tyne Daly, Hannibal Buress, Jennifer Connelly

What must it have been like back at the tail end of 2014 and the start of 2015 if you were “in the know” at Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios, and were aware of what was about to happen to everyone’s favourite neighbourhood web-slinger? How exciting must that have been? If you were a fan of Spider-Man, just the anticipation that he might be coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe was enough to send you into a giddy spell of mega proportions. And then to find out that not only was there going to be a new Spider-Man movie designed to bring him into the MCU, but that he was also going to make his first appearance in another movie within that Universe – well, it was like having Xmas every day (if you were a fan). And then to have that early appearance, in Captain America: Civil War (2016) no less, and for him to steal the movie – well, that was like having the best ice cream in the whole wide world, and with sprinkles on (but again, if you were a fan).

But what if you’re not a fan? What if the very idea of another Spider-Man reboot (the third in fifteen years) has all the attraction of a Liam Hemsworth movie? What if the idea of all that ice cream, with sprinkles on, holds no attraction at all? Well, if that’s the case then be assured: this is a Spider-Man movie that even non-fans can enjoy. And why? That’s the clever part. This is the first Spider-Man movie where the whole notion of “with great power comes great responsibility” is sidelined in favour of seeing Peter Parker struggle with the basics, and not some overwhelming sense of guilt over the death of his uncle, or his parents, or Mary Jane Watson (or even Norman Osborn). This is the first Spider-Man movie where the makers have done away with the more traditional origin story, and instead have got things started by accepting that we all know the story by now; so why bother? Why not just get on with it?

Which is exactly what happens, but cannily, not before a trip back to 2012 and the aftermath of the Battle of New York. There’s Chitauri technology all over the place, and salvage contractor Adrian Toombes (Keaton) has spotted a way of exploiting it in order to make a lot of money. But no sooner has he thought of it than he’s shut down by the US Department of Damage Control and forced to continue his plan to make weapons in secret. And before long, that plan is coming to fruition. Fast forward five years and high school student Peter Parker (Holland) still can’t believe he was involved in the airport scrap that took place in Berlin between Team Captain America and Team Iron Man. Still buzzing, Peter believes his involvement in that fight means he’s a member of the Avengers team, but Tony Stark (Downey Jr) has other ideas, and does his best to mentor Peter from a distance. But Peter is irrepressible (and naïve), and his determination to show Stark what he’s capable of inevitably backfires. When he inadvertently takes on some of the men that work for Toombes, it brings him to the attention of Toombes’ alter ego, The Vulture.

Peter decides it’s his mission to stop The Vulture from building and selling any more Chitauri-based weaponry, and one (future) classic scene where Peter and Toombes realise each other’s secret identities aside, the movie follows a predictable pattern before the inevitable superhero v supervillain showdown. But what makes the movie so charming and so enjoyable is both its backdrop and its setting: Peter’s first year in high school and all the trials and tribulations that follow in the wake of that teenage milestone. Already described as a superhero movie by way of John Hughes, Spider-Man’s first solo outing in the MCU paints a much more believable portrait of Peter Parker than we’ve seen in the previous five movies. By keeping Peter at the age he was when he developed his powers in the comics, Marvel have actually managed to breathe new life into the character and make him seem fresh and relevant, rather than  an angst-ridden science nerd with literally no friends. Here, Tom Holland’s incarnation is bright, overly enthusiastic, and immensely likeable (just like the movie). Holland perfectly captures the giddy sense of euphoria that comes from doing something so cool you want to shout from the rooftops about it – but know that you can’t. This is a Spider-Man who knows how to have fun (at last).

By focusing more on Peter’s attempts at fitting in, both in high school and in the wider world of superheroes, the script allows the audience to have a lot of fun at Peter’s expense. But then he is only fifteen, and he’s bound to make mistakes, whether from plain old exuberance or because he hasn’t built up his street smarts yet. Seeing him fail is more refreshing than expected, and a pivotal scene involving Stark and the loss of his Stark-created outfit highlights the true dilemma of being able to shoot webs and swing between tall buildings but not be able to talk to a girl. But again, it’s a happy dilemma because this is what the movie is all about: providing audiences with a surfeit of fun. Marvel know how to incorporate humour into their movies, but this may well be the first MCU movie that knows how to sustain that humour throughout, and round things off with the best end credits sting since Nick Fury first tried to recruit Tony Stark to some team he was trying to put together. This is a movie that is enjoyable and joyous at the same time, and proof that Marvel really do understand their characters better than anyone else (sorry Sony).

And for the first time since Loki we have a villain who has a credible motive for being the bad guy, and thanks to Keaton’s performance, he’s one we can have a degree of sympathy for. Toombes is about providing for and protecting his family, but though that’s an honourable sentiment, Keaton shows how that has become inexorably warped over the years, until his motives aren’t quite as clear-cut as when he began putting on the flying suit. Together, Holland and Keaton are terrific adversaries, and easily outshine the rest of the cast, who, to be fair, don’t stand out quite as well (though Batalon as Peter’s best friend, Ned, comes close). There’s the possibility of a romance for Peter with debate team captain, Liz (Harrier), that takes an unexpected turn, a series of action scenes that vary between broadly exciting and acceptable, competent direction from Watts that fares better away from said action scenes, a little too much moralising from Tony Stark, and a “get-to-know-your-suit” sequence which is possibly the movie’s true highlight. Smartly written – and by a team of six writers at that – this is the Spider-Man movie fans have been waiting for. Now, how about all you non-fans?

Rating: 8/10 – a giddy fun ride of a movie that can’t contain its own excitement about existing, Spider-Man: Homecoming adds another superhero to the MCU roster and does so with exuberance and no small amount of wit; you know Marvel have got a firm grip on things when the opening music cues reference the original Sixties animated series theme tune, and web-swinging in the suburbs brings its own measures of difficulty and danger.

The Founder (2016)

18 Saturday Feb 2017

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D: John Lee Hancock / 115m

Cast: Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Laura Dern, Linda Cardellini, B.J. Novak, Patrick Wilson, Kate Kneeland, Justin Randell Brooke, Griff Furst

For those of us who live outside the good ole US of A, the idea of the American Dream seems like a typically grandiose American proposition, as if the US is the only place where dreams can come true, where people can become anyone they want to be, or where success can be won if you work really hard to achieve it. At the risk of upsetting any American readers of thedullwoodexperiment, it’s a strange kind of conceit; in reality, what makes the States any different from anywhere else in the world when it comes to people achieving their dreams? The obvious answer is: nothing. But it’s an idea that many Americans believe wholeheartedly, and one that fuels the story of Ray Kroc (Keaton), the man who gave us McDonald’s, the corporate behemoth that grew out of one independent restaurant in San Bernardino, California, and now spans the globe.

When we first meet Kroc it’s 1954. He’s a milkshake mixer salesman who’s about as successful as a butcher at a vegan commune. But he’s his own boss so he keeps plugging away at it, facing rejection at every turn, when one day his secretary, June (Kneeland), tells him they’ve received an order for six mixers from a restaurant in San Bernardino, a place called McDonald’s. Surprised, he decides to visit the owners, Mac and Dick McDonald (Lynch, Offerman), and they elect to tell him their story, one that involves many false starts and setbacks in setting up a burger restaurant, until they realised that by stripping down the menu and speeding up the delivery time, they could maximise their sales. Kroc is astonished by how effective their business is, and finds he can’t stop thinking about it.

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The next day he proposes the brothers expand their business into a franchise. But they’ve tried this also, and it hasn’t worked, mostly because they were unable to guarantee the same quality of operation as at their own site. Kroc persuades them to let him take on the challenge, but fearful of what he might do in the process, they get him to sign a contract that states all changes must be agreed by them first. Kroc sets about building the McDonald’s brand but encounters problems when wealthy investors are involved. Instead he tries to attract middle-class couples who will work hard to make their franchise a success. Soon there are franchises opening all across the Midwest, but Kroc is getting little financial reward from it all. His contract gives him a very small percentage of any profits, despite the amount of effort he’s putting in, and the McDonald brothers won’t change the terms.

A chance encounter with a financial consultant, Harry Sonneborn (Novak), sees Kroc changing his approach to both his finances and his relationship with Mac and Dick. By focusing on the real estate needed by the franchisees, Kroc not only increases his own revenue, but is able to leverage his deal with the brothers to make changes to the overall operation, including replacing the ice cream in the milkshakes with powdered milk. The brothers resist, but by this stage, Kroc is effectively the face of McDonald’s to anyone who’s interested. And soon, he’s in a position to force out the brothers from their own business, and continue his expansion of the McDonald’s brand…

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Your reaction to The Founder is going to be based on one of two things: whether you feel Ray Kroc was right in the way that he treated the McDonald brothers, or whether you feel that he mistreated them. But Robert D. Siegel’s engaging script isn’t solely about fair or foul play, or whether Kroc is a hero or a villain (like a lot of people he’s both, depending on the circumstances). Rather, it’s also about the very thing Kroc mentions in his opening sales pitch to an off-screen customer, and later to various groups of potential franchisees: opportunity. Ray Kroc was in the right place at the right time, and he instinctively knew that creating a franchise was the way to go. He was blinkered in his attitude, dismissive of his critics, and willing to roll over anyone and anything to make the McDonald’s brand a nationwide success. As he tells the unfortunate Mac and Dick: “If I saw a competitor drowning, I’d shove a hose down his throat.”

Throughout the movie Kroc seizes on opportunity after opportunity, triumphing over every setback and potential obstacle until he gets what he wants. And although you may indeed feel that his treatment of the McDonald brothers was akin to bullying, there’s a kind of grim inevitability to the story that makes Kroc seem like an instrument of Fate. The question then becomes, if Ray Kroc hadn’t met the McDonald brothers, would their one restaurant have grown into a franchise operation with approximately thirty-six and a half thousand outlets worldwide? The movie makes it clear: no. And so the movie becomes about the how (the why is obvious). And if sharp practice is the order of the day, then that’s going to come with a side order of fries and a drink (preferably Coca-Cola).

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Inevitably, audiences will decide that Ray Kroc treated the McDonald brothers abominably, because that’s exactly how he treated them. The movie doesn’t shy away from this, or from his shoddy treatment of pretty much everyone around him, and particularly his long-suffering wife Ethel (Dern). As Kroc, Keaton is a mesmerising presence, tightly-wound, arrogant and determined. Even when he’s still, he looks as if fires are raging beneath his skin. In 1954, Kroc was fifty-two and suddenly possessed by an idea that would consume him until his death in 1984, and Keaton displays this “possession” as if it was a calling. But Keaton also shows the venal side of Kroc’s nature, the need to be seen to succeed after so many years toiling in fields of failure, and so the movie also becomes, however uncomfortably, about one man’s redemption through the mistreatment of others.

As the McDonald brothers, both Offerman (in a rare serious role) and Lynch provide equally good performances, showcasing the naïvete and increasing stubbornness that would prove their undoing, and see them forced – eventually – out of the restaurant business. Dern gives a quiet, controlled portrayal as Kroc’s wife, while there’s a cameo role for Wilson as an interested franchisee whose wife (Cardellini) attracts Kroc’s attention. It’s all set against a vibrant period backdrop that highlights the sense of immeasurable promise that the US held for itself in the Fifties, and Hancock marshals the various plot strands and storylines with skill, maintaining the movie’s forward momentum despite several occasions when exposition threatens to overwhelm everything. As a cautionary tale – be careful who you do business with – The Founder is a good example of inexperience (and some degree of pride) going before a fall. It may not be the most positive of messages, but then, not everyone or everything in this world is going to treat you as you yourself would like to be treated, something Ray Kroc, despite his faults, knew all along.

Rating: 8/10 – anchored by a strong, forceful performance by Keaton, The Founder is a judicious mix of history and biography that looks behind the scenes at the beginnings of a global corporation with insight and sincerity; whatever your feelings about the fast-food industry, or McDonald’s specifically, this won’t necessarily change your mind, but as an object lesson in getting what you want – at all costs – then this should be required viewing.

Trailers – Special Correspondents (2016), The Founder (2016) and Blood Father (2016)

26 Tuesday Apr 2016

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Netflix adds another movie to its distribution roster with the latest from Ricky Gervais, a satirical look at at a journalist (played by Eric Bana) and his sound man (Gervais) who find themselves covering a civil war in Ecuador… from the safety of an apartment in New York. Adapted by Gervais from the 2009 French comedy Envoyés très spéciaux, the movie had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and will be released worldwide on 29 April, but from the trailer it’s hard to tell if the movie is going to be as funny or as satirical as Gervais intended, and largely because the trailer’s pretty much a laugh-free zone. Gervais’s big screen projects haven’t exactly set the box office on fire in the past, and advance word isn’t very positive, so it’s likely that Special Correspondents will disappear just as “effectively” as Bana and Gervais’ characters do in the movie.

 

The true story of Ray Kroc’s acquistion of the McDonalds chain over the course of the late Fifties/early Sixties, The Founder looks to be a pull-no-punches examination of how Kroc outmanoeuvred the McDonald brothers (played by Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch), and gained control of what has become one of the world’s largest and most successful franchises. As Kroc, Michael Keaton has landed yet another role likely to reward him with a slew of awards nominations, while the recreation of the period looks to be spot on. This has the potential to be an unexpected hit at the box office, partly due to the nostalgia on offer, and partly because in the current US social and political climate, a tale of how the American dream was usurped and bent to someone else’s needs seems all too relevant.

 

Tough and moody, with a brutal streak running through it a mile wide, Mel Gibson’s latest foray in front of the cameras sees him playing an ex-con who’s forced to protect his estranged daughter (played by Erin Moriarty) from the drug dealers bent on killing her. Blood Father has an exploitation movie vibe to it, allied to strong visuals, as well as a pleasing sense that Gibson is playing a role more attuned to his work in the first two Lethal Weapon movies rather than the cartoon-oriented variations of the third and fourth. With an intriguing supporting cast on board – William H. Macy, Diego Luna, Elisabeth Röhm, Dale Dickey – this latest from the director of Mesrine Parts 1 & 2 (2008) could be another redeeming feature in Gibson’s post-meltdown career.

Spotlight (2015)

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

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Spotlight

D: Tom McCarthy / 128m

Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Brian d’Arcy James, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup, Jamey Sheridan, Paul Guilfoyle, Len Cariou, Neal Huff, Michael Cyril Creighton, Richard Jenkins

In 2001, the Boston Globe newspaper hired a new editor, Marty Baron (Schreiber). Baron noticed a column in the paper about a Catholic priest, John Geoghan, who was known to be a paedophile, and a lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian (Tucci) who claimed he had evidence that the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Law (Cariou), knew all about it and did nothing to stop Geoghan’s activities. Urging the paper’s Spotlight section – an investigative team made up of four people – to look more closely at the matter, Baron set in motion an investigation that would expand rapidly to reveal a far greater problem than one errant priest.

This is the story that Spotlight tells: the investigation into one priest’s predatory behaviour that revealed the systemic abuse of children over decades, and which had been covered up by the Catholic Church. It’s a tale of widespread abuse, and the political and legal corruption, and immorality, that goes with it. As the team – editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Keaton), and reporters Mike Resendez (Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (McAdams), and Matt Carroll (James) – begin looking into the story they learn that the Globe was aware of some of the allegations being made as far back as 1996 following a similar case, but these were never followed up. They speak to the founder of a support group for people who have been abused by priests, Phil Saviano (Huff), who reveals that, based on what he’s been told, Goeghan is one of thirteen priests in the Boston area that have molested children over the years.

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Shocked by this, the team divide their attention in different areas: Resendez contacts the lawyer, Garabedian, in order to find out what evidence he has; Pfeiffer meets with a victim, Joe Crawley (Creighton); and Carroll starts looking into the backgrounds of the priests Saviano has named. What emerges is a picture of abuse that appears to have been ignored or covered up by the Church, and which is still continuing. They also get in touch with an ex-priest, Richard Sipe (Jenkins), who worked at a “treatment centre” back in the Sixties. Since leaving the Church he’s made a thorough study of the “phenomena” of sexual abuse wihtin the priesthood, and in one particularly chilling telephone conversation with the Spotlight team he tells them his findings indicate that 6% of priests abuse children. Now the team has to rethink their strategy: based on Sipe’s findings, they’re no longer looking at thirteen priests in the Boston area, but ninety.

With the enormity of the problem now fully revealed, the team have to tread even more carefully, and refocus their investigation; it’s no longer enough to target Cardinal Law and his tacit allowance of the abuse. It’s now obvious that the abuse isn’t confined to Boston, it happens everywhere. The story becomes about how the Church itself allows this to happen and never disciplines its priests, preferring instead to move them around and still allowing them to have unsupervised access to children.

In the end, Spotlight broke the story in early 2002. It was the major news story of its day, and the movie recounts those days with a measured simplicity that avoids any potential hyperbole or grandstanding. Thanks to an intelligently constructed script by McCarthy and Josh Singer, the way in which the story unfolded is handled with a sensitivity and compassion for the victims that is offset by the Spotlight team’s increasing sense of disgust at the Church’s mistreatment of them. Each of the team is affected in their own way, showing just how pervasive the issue was, and without anyone realising. It’s a sobering realisation, that the abuse of children by a powerful organisation such as the Catholic Church – such a huge presence in so many people’s lives – can have such far-reaching consequences.

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Thanks again to the script, the legal and moral issues surrounding the cases are clearly laid out on both sides, and Mitchell Garabedian aside, the lawyers involved in out of court settlements fare badly, as they put ethical issues aside and justify their actions by virtue of “just doing their job”. As one of these lawyers, Billy Crudup has a small but crucial role that highlights just how much one section of the Boston legal system was prepared to look the other way. And the Cardinal’s spokesman, a wily operator called Joe Connelly (Guilfoyle), is on hand to show how the political machine tried to keep the Church from being exposed by attempting to make it seem that the revelations would be bad for the city.

It’s safe to say that the movie exposes a lot more than the hypocrisy of the city’s movers and shakers, and it does so in a low key dramatic manner that allows the horror of the situation to seep through as the movie progresses. McCarthy and his talented cast never let us forget just how awful the amount of abuse was, and through their pursuit of the truth we get to see levels of betrayal that most of us would be hard pressed to even consider let alone believe in. And when a necessary delay in printing the story leads to an angry outburst by Resendez, we can sympathise with him, because by then the audience wants the story to be told equally as much as he does.

In many ways, Spotlight‘s steady pace and determined approach is unexpectedly gripping. As each new development unfolds, the movie steps up a gear, until the viewer is completely enthralled and can’t look away. It doesn’t matter that you know the outcome in advance, this is one of those movies that is so well constructed that you can’t help but be drawn along with it. Helping McCarthy make such an impact is his cast. Keaton is the wise old newspaperman, determined not to let the story get away and the Church off the hook, and patient enough to wait for the right evidence to come along. Ruffalo is the cocksure reporter who feels too much too often, and who uses his anger and disgust at the abuse to fuel his work. By contrast, McAdams’ lone female is affected in small ways, as in the way in which the news will be hurtful to her devout grandmother. And James’ dogged researcher learns that the issue is much closer to home than he’d realised (and which leads to one of the movie’s rare moments of humour).

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It’s a powerful movie about a powerful subject and although the naysayers will point to diffusions and imperfections in the story – this didn’t happen like that, that didn’t happen like they say it did – the truth is still clear: abuse happened and the Church covered it up. In 2002 alone, Spotlight ran a further 600 articles based on what they learned from victims. What the movie reminds us is that looking the other way can be even more uncomfortable than looking straight at something that’s too horrible to contemplate.

Rating: 9/10 – one of 2015’s best movies, Spotlight is tense, absorbing, horrifying, and a must-see, with superb performances and and one of the year’s best scripts; it’s already won a shedload of well-deserved awards, and as a movie that tackles a disturbing subject with tact and sensitivity, should gain even more further down the road – it’s that good.

Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

24 Saturday Jan 2015

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Birdman

aka: Birdman

D: Alejandro González Iñárritu / 119m

Cast: Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Lindsay Duncan, Bill Camp

Desperately needing a comeback to boost his flagging, almost moribund career, actor Riggan Thompson (Keaton) is attempting to trade movie stardom (as the action superhero Birdman) for theatrical respect by adapting a story by Raymond Carver for the stage. Thompson is director, writer and star of the production, and as the first of three previews approaches he finds himself without a second male lead. One of his cast, Lesley (Watts), says she can get legendary Broadway actor Mike Shiner (Norton) to take over the role. When he does, Thompson finds himself challenged constantly by Shiner’s view of the piece. Stuck with him, Thompson also has to deal with his best friend and lawyer Jake (Galifianakis), his girlfriend Laura (Riseborough) (who’s also in the cast), and his daughter, Sam (Stone), a recovering drug addict who’s working as his assistant.

Through all this, Thompson is tormented by the voice of his movie alter-ego, Birdman. The voice is disparaging and keeps urging him to give up the stage production and make another Birdman movie. During the first preview, Shiner takes method acting to the extreme and drinks alcohol on stage so he can be really drunk when his character should be; Thompson hides it but Shiner stops the performance and castigates Thompson in front of the audience. Afterwards, they go for a drink together and Shiner continues to undermine Thompson’s confidence. Returning to the theatre, he has a row with Sam that further upsets him. The next night’s preview goes well, though this time Shiner criticises Thompson’s decision to use a prop gun in the final scene, and says it’s not convincing enough; afterwards, Shiner and Sam run into each other on the theatre rooftop.

Thompson’s mental state deteriorates over the next twenty-four hours, as Birdman’s comments become more aggressive. Thompson runs into famed (and feared) theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Duncan) who makes it clear she hates “Hollywood celebrities” who think they can act, and promises to “kill” his production. He gets locked out of the theatre and has to walk through Times Square in his underwear. And on the day of the final preview he has an hallucination where he flies through the streets of New York City. That night he takes a real gun on stage with him for the final scene.

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Lauded for its complex, single take tracking shots (all cleverly done but tiresome to watch after a while), Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a bold, enthralling look at one man’s last, desperate chance to regain some semblance of pride and meaning in his life. It mixes (literal) flights of fantasy with a gloomy kitchen sink drama, injects pitch black humour when you least expect it, and gives Michael Keaton his best role since – unbelievably – Jackie Brown (1997). It also has a razor sharp script with some great dialogue – “When I dreamed of Broadway, I never pictured the elk antlers.” – inspired direction from Iñárritu, a claustrophobic backstage setting that increases the notion of characters trapped by their fears and insecurities, and superb performances from all concerned.

And yet… it’s not quite the all-round triumph that it appears to be. Despite the script’s inventiveness and shrewd construction, there’s something askew about Thompson’s predicament and the way in which he deals with it (or doesn’t, depending on your view of things). He can’t connect with his daughter, and while this may not be a surprise, it’s yet another example of the child being wiser than the adult, something we’ve seen so many times before even Iñárritu can’t add anything new to it. His relationship with Shiner is based on desperate need but grows into admiration, even when Shiner gives a poorly considered interview to the press. His girlfriend, Laura, tells him she’s pregnant, but he reacts as if she’s just told him something banal and uninteresting. The only real emotion he can display is anger, demonstrated in the tirade he subjects Tabitha Dickinson to, and the trashing of his dressing room. Thompson is otherwise at a remove from everyone and everything around him, failing to engage except on a superficial level, and clinging on to a shred of self-belief. He’s a man who wants to go back to old glories but knows that he’ll lose even more of himself; the play is his last chance for personal redemption.

By having him indulge his superhero fantasies though, Iñárritu’s script offers Thompson a way out that seems designed to give the movie an element of magical realism, but also takes it in a somewhat predictable direction. As a result, the final shot is a disappointment, supporting as it does Thompson’s increasing psychosis and jettisoning any attempt at making the movie a more considered and thought-provoking look at an actor in the midst of having a breakdown. Keaton is nothing short of astonishing in the role, his constantly beleaguered expression and downtrodden body language giving full articulation to Thompson’s state of mind, and every numb or painful feeling and emotion registering on his face so, so clearly. (It’s tempting to define Keaton’s performance as a comeback, but it’s so much more than that; and roles like this don’t come along very often.)

The rest of the cast, with the exception of Norton, have their moments but aren’t really called upon by the script to match, or even come near, Keaton’s acting masterclass. Stone plays Sam as a young woman trying her best to pull her own life together and without taking on her father’s problems in the process, and succeeds in making her both tough and still assailable. Watts and Riseborough share an intimate moment that comes out of left field, but are otherwise kept in the background, along with Ryan who appears twice to remind Thompson of what he’s lost. And Galifianakis, looking thinner than usual, plays Jake like a needy best friend, his conscience having been removed at some point to allow him to deal with Thompson on a necessarily abusive level. All give terrific portrayals, but with Iñárritu’s script so focused on Thompson’s troubles, it’s almost as if they have walk-on roles. Only Norton makes an equivalent impression to Keaton’s, Shiner proving to be the kind of narcissistic monster  whose arrogance overrides all and sundry. His scenes with Keaton are nothing short of breathtaking.

Iñárritu directs with undeniable flair, and makes each scene detailed and immersive, layering the narrative with precise emotional undercurrents and orchestrating the camera movement with élan. If the subtleties of the script occasionally get lost amidst the barely disguised symbolism, and some of the dialogue is a little too florid at times – or pretentious: “Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige.” – then it’s in keeping with the theatrical setting. As mentioned above the use of long tracking shots stitched together to make the movie seem like one continuous take, while inventive, becomes distracting and then tedious very quickly, and is sabotaged by the events of the movie taking place over several days, making the aimed-for continuity an impossible achievement. Still, Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is first class and there’s a percussive jazz score by Antonio Sanchez that is likely to divide audiences into thinking it’s either hugely complementary to both the action and Thompson’s mental state, or hugely intrusive and overbearing (this reviewer holds to the former).

Rating: 8/10 – excellent work from Keaton and Norton, and a bravura production combine to make Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) one of the most fascinating movies of recent years; sadly, the decision to include some unnecessary fantasy sequences, and a handful of under-developed supporting characters, holds the movie back and alters the movie’s raison d’être to no good advantage.

Need for Speed (2014)

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

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Need for Speed

D: Scott Waugh / 132m

Cast: Aaron Paul, Dominic Cooper, Imogen Poots, Michael Keaton, Scott Mescudi, Rami Malek, Ramon Rodriguez, Harrison Gilbertson, Dakota Johnson, Nick Chinlund

At one point in DreamWorks’ Need for Speed, Julia (Poots) comes out of a gas station restroom and sees Officer Lejeune (Chinlund) in the next aisle.  Immediately she ducks down and tries to sneak her way out.  It’s possibly the stupidest moment in the whole movie – and there’s plenty of others – and makes you wonder if anyone actually read George Gatins’ half-baked, semi-developed script before they committed to filming it.  (The answer is clearly: no.)  Another question that springs to mind is: are the car chases going to be enough to help the movie make its money back?  (Ahh… we’ll get to that.)

Tobey Marshall (Paul) has inherited his father’s auto shop but there are mounting debts he can’t pay, so when old rival Dino Brewster (Cooper) offers him a chance to make $2.7 million on a private race involving Tobey, Dino and Tobey’s friend Little Pete (Gilbertson), he can’t turn it down. But Little Pete is killed in the race, forced to crash by Dino.  With Dino denying any involvement, and hiding the car he was driving, Tobey ends up  spending two years in prison.  Two years later, Tobey is released on parole, and promptly arranges for a car so that he can travel from New York to California and a) take part in a race arranged by mysterious philanthropist Monarch (Keaton), and b) have his revenge on Dino.  Dino is taking part in the race, but Tobey needs a way in as its by invitation only.  With car dealer Julia along for the ride as the car owner’s representative, Tobey gets the car and himself noticed enough times that Monarch gives him a spot in the race.  All he has to do is reach San Francisco within forty-eight hours, avoiding the police and anyone who takes up Dino’s offer of a bounty if Tobey is stopped from getting there.

Naturally, Tobey has help along the way from fellow mechanics and friends Benny (Mescudi), Finn (Malek), and Joe (Rodriguez).  Benny is also a pilot and keeps stealing planes and helicopters in order to provide Tobey with eyes in the sky along the route.  Finn and Joe help refuel the car while it’s in motion, and generally follow along the route Tobey takes in case of back up (which is eventually needed when Tobey reaches San Francisco).  Monarch provides a running commentary on Tobey’s progress, and acts as commentator when the race starts.  Julia provides the inevitable romantic interest, and Dino is the sneering villain we all want to see crash and burn like Little Pete does.  Which leaves Tobey, the mostly silent but determined underdog who should win the race but only if he watches out for dastardly Dino and his habit of running people off the road.

Need for Speed - scene

If it seems a little predicable so far, then that’s because it is.  Need for Speed is a movie without an original thought under its bonnet, a handful of barely convincing performances, and lines of dialogue that prove impossible to give credibility to.  It’s movie-making by cliché, a string of ill-thought out scenes and low-key characters whose combined motivations couldn’t power a light bulb.  Once again, it’s the fault of the script, a horrible concoction that almost screams, “Rush job!”  This is Gatins’ first produced screenplay, and it’s ironic that he was an associate producer on a movie called You Stupid Man (2002); he gets hardly anything right.  This leaves the cast to deal with mountains of trite and terrible dialogue, third-rate plot contrivances, scenes so laughable they should be included in a training scheme for aspiring writers – at random: Benny in a military jail asking for an iPad and being allowed to follow the race on it… and all the while the guard holds it up for him to watch – and some of the most perfunctory dialogue this side of a script by George Lucas (have I mentioned the dialogue enough yet?).

With director Scott Waugh unable to breathe any life into the movie when there’s no chase going on, Need for Speed has to depend on its action scenes to gain any brownie points or gold stars.  Much has been made already of the fact that CGI hasn’t been used in the car chase sequences, and that all the smash-ups were done for real.  And so they should be.  But while Paul and Cooper may have spent time learning how to race so they could seen behind the wheel as much as possible, what the filmmakers have failed to realise is that, racing, in and of itself, is only really interesting or attention-grabbing when something goes wrong.  So yes, the car chases are exciting, but only if you find the idea of a car going really fast in competition with another car, and (inevitably) on a deserted stretch of road, to be truly exciting.  On this evidence, it’s almost exciting, but what’s missing is a real sense of danger.  When Tobey is in Detroit and he’s being chased by the police, there’s never the slightest doubt that he’ll get away (and yes, I know that’s obvious, he’s the hero, after all) so the movie drops down a gear or two and makes his escape both a high point and, from a technical viewpoint, a bit of a let-down.

This is the highly regarded “two-lane grasshopper” manoeuvre, where Tobey accelerates up an embankment and powers his car over two lanes of traffic to land safely in a third and drive away without being followed any further – at all.  It sounds like a great stunt, and on paper it is, but in the movie it’s a short sequence made up of five or six different shots (one of which is a long shot of the car in mid-flight), that doesn’t let the viewer see it happen in one fluid take (unlike, say, the bridge jump in The Man With the Golden Gun (1974).  It’s like the scene in Speed (1995) where the bus has to jump the gap in the freeway; it was done for real, but the way it’s cut together leaves you thinking it wasn’t.  Sadly, it’s the same here.

There are some positives, though.  Keaton – on a bit of a roll at the moment – reminds us just how exciting a performer he can be, and lifts the movie out of the doldrums whenever he’s on screen.  The crashes, when they happen, are spectacular and thrilling, and a testament to the creative abilities of the stunt team; they all look suitably life-threatening.  Paul and Poots, reunited after appearing together in A Long Way Down (2014), have a chemistry that helps their scenes immeasurably, and the location photography ensures the movie is nothing less than beautiful to look at in places.

Rating: 4/10 – fans will disagree but Need for Speed doesn’t have that kinetic charge that would have elevated it above other chase movies; the script’s deficiencies hurt it tremendously, too, and no matter how fast Messrs Paul and Cooper may try, that’s one (very major) problem they can’t outrun.

 

 

RoboCop (2014)

20 Thursday Mar 2014

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D: José Padilha / 117m

Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Harley, Michael K. Williams, Jennifer Ehle, Jay Baruchel, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Samuel L. Jackson, Aimee Garcia, Douglas Urbanski, John Paul Ruttan, Patrick Garrow, Zach Grenier

With the Eighties being increasingly plundered for material that can be remade, rebooted or re-imagined, the likelihood of a new RoboCop movie was always a strong possibility.  Now that it’s here, it’s inevitable that the comparisons between this version and Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 original are appearing thick and fast, with equally inevitable results: it’s not the same (shock! horror!).

From the black suit to the addition of a wife and child, RoboCop is – and was always going to be – a different beast from its predecessor(s) (let’s not even mention the animated and live action TV series’).  Some things remain the same though.  Alex Murphy (Kinnaman) is still a Detroit cop, working with his partner, Jack Lewis (Williams) to bring down crime boss Antoine Vallon (Garrow).  When the pair get too close, Lewis is wounded in a shootout and Murphy is subsequently blown up outside his home.  With his life hanging in the balance, OmniCorp boss Raymond Sellars (Keaton) offers his wife Clara (Cornish) a way to keep Alex alive: sign up to their research programme, headed by Dr Norton (Oldman).

Three months later, Alex is restored to waking consciousness to find himself encased in a metal suit and horrified by what is happening to him.  After an escape attempt fails he begins to accept the reality of his situation and works with Norton to make the best of things and, more importantly, find his way back to Clara and his son David (Ruttan).  With a projected annual return of $600 billion if their robot police programme is a success – and if a bill banning robot police officers is repealed by the Senate – OmniCorp is determined not to let Alex’s individuality ruin their investment.  They take steps to control his emotional and judgmental responses, but reckon without his love for his family – and his need for revenge on Vallon – overriding their protocols.  Soon, Alex begins to understand the depth of Sellars’ duplicity, and with his partner’s help, sets out to – yes, you’ve guessed it – bring Sellars to justice.

RoboCop (2014) - scene

Although Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner – the screenwriters of the 1987 version – are credited alongside newbie Josh Zetumer, little remains from their script except various names, the Detroit location, and the movie’s basic structure.  It’s not a bad (exo-) skeleton to hang things on and ensures the movie doesn’t stray too far from the (in-built) audience’s expectations.  The major difference here is that Alex isn’t killed but is critically injured, making his memories and emotions a much more potent angle to explore… except the movie doesn’t.  With the exception of a brief (read: cut short in the editing process) scene where Alex goes home for the first time as RoboCop, there’s no real exploration of what Alex might be feeling beyond having Kinnaman look aggrieved for a few moments in-between the action elements.

There’s also a lot of talking.  RoboCop may be the first action movie in a long time to spend so much of its screen time having its secondary characters talk so often, and to so little effect.  Jackson ramps it up as a thinly disguised version of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, spouting diatribes as only he can, and providing the movie with its thinly disguised attack on corporate America and the media as devious bedfellows (Jackson also gets to say m*thaf*cka, so some things are all right with the world).  And then there’s the continual back-and-forth between Sellars and Norton where Norton voices a concern or a negative opinion, and Sellars just waffles a few sentences and Norton goes away appeased.  (I swear I have no idea what Michael Keaton is saying in those scenes.)

With all this dialogue and by-the-numbers plotting, how then do the action scenes fare?  Well, one first-person shooter sequence aside (which sticks out like a sore thumb), RoboCop delivers fairly effective if unexceptional action beats until it wimps out altogether and gives us one of the most ineffectual showdowns in action cinema history (look for the well-armed guard who doesn’t fire a shot – no, look for him: once RoboCop appears he all but vanishes).  And if I have to make one comparison only between this version and the 1987 movie, it’s that Vallon is a poor, practically disposable villain when set against Clarence Boddicker.

The cast perform efficiently enough and Kinnaman makes for a strong-jawed hero, while Oldman does his best with a character whose motivations change from scene to scene (and sometimes within them).  Keaton underplays Sellars and only occasionally shows off the nervous energy that made him so exciting to watch earlier on in his career, and Baruchel gets to play the annoying marketing character you hope gets killed by an ED-209.  As Clara, Cornish has little to do but look angry or upset from the sidelines, and Jean-Baptiste (so brilliant in Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies) is here reduced to treading water until her character is no longer required by the narrative.

Padilha directs with an efficiency and a drive that never quite translates into sustained tension, and there are too many filler shots of RoboCop zooming through the streets of Detroit on his customised motorbike.  That said, there are things to like: Lula Carvalho’s steel-burnished photography; Murphy’s treatment of hired mercenary Mattox (Haley) after a training exercise; a short scene where a man with robotic hands plays the guitar; Mattox’s choice of music during Murphy’s first training session (plus Norton’s bemused response); the seamless special effects, a predictably vast improvement on 1987; and the movie’s best scene by far: the moment when Murphy discovers just how much of himself fills the suit.

Ultimately, what’s missing from RoboCop is a clear attempt at relating the emotional trauma of being a man in a “tin suit”.  Without it, RoboCop doesn’t engage in the way it should do, and many scenes pass by without having any meaningful effect on the audience.  It makes for frustrating viewing, and robs the movie of any real drama; sadly, it all ends up being just too impersonal.

Rating: 6/10 – a tidier script would have helped but this is by no means a disaster; a shaky start to a new series of movies(?) but enjoyable enough despite its flaws.