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Holmes & Watson (2018) – Or, Time for Will Ferrell to Do Something Different

27 Thursday Dec 2018

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D: Etan Cohen / 90m

Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Rebecca Hall, Kelly Macdonald, Lauren Lipkus, Rob Brydon, Pam Ferris, Steve Coogan, Hugh Laurie, Ralph Fiennes

A score of 3.9 on IMDb. A score of 25 on Metacritic. A 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. All beg the question: is Holmes & Watson really that bad? The answer is unequivocal: yes, it is.

It’s not just bad, it’s abysmal. It’s sluggish, dull, uninspired, monotonous, vapid, unimaginative, feeble, pointless, moronic, inane, stupid, tedious, stale, lacklustre, incompetent, and worst of all for a supposed comedy, almost entirely laugh free. It’s a clear contender for worst movie of the year, something of a feat when 2018 has already given us the likes of Lake Placid: Legacy, The Nun, Mile 22, Supercon, and Proud Mary. This is a movie that is so awful you have to wonder if anyone was paying attention while they were making it, a piece of dreadful nonsense about a plot to kill Queen Victoria (Ferris) by Professor Moriarty (Fiennes) that is so lazy its climax takes place on RMS Titanic (Victoria was long dead by the time it launched in 1912). Writer/director Cohen brings absolutely nothing new to the idea of a Sherlock Holmes parody, and wastes the time and efforts of his very talented cast. A perfect example of Cohen’s approach is the moment when Holmes smears Watson in horse shit; a better metaphor for the movie as a whole couldn’t be more fitting.

But more concerning perhaps than all of this is the performance of Will Ferrell. Someone really needs to take him to one side and tell him that his manic style of comic acting is wearing perilously thin these days. Shouting isn’t inherently funny, but Ferrell does this a lot, and when he isn’t shouting, he’s behaving in such an arch, mannered fashion that he just looks and sounds like he’s trying too hard, as if someone had told him that if he didn’t behave that way then the material – and his performance – wouldn’t be as effective. As a result, it’s hard to tell if Ferrell is afraid to try something different, or he’s just being lazy. Either way, he’s the movie’s weakest link, and he drags it down every time he opens his mouth or offers us another of his “hilarious” facial expressions (see above). Maybe it’s time for Ferrell to broaden his horizons and make more serious fare, and remind audiences that beneath his default man-child persona, there’s an actor with a greater range than portrayals such as Chazz Michael Michaels in Blades of Glory (2007) and James in Get Hard (2015) would seem to indicate. It’s not as if he hasn’t proved this already, with Stranger Than Fiction (2006) and Everything Must Go (2010), movies that showed he could do subtle and restrained, and find the truth in a character, rather than their inner idiot.

In the meantime we’re stuck with Holmes & Watson, a movie that sucks hard at the teat of comedy and comes away with the merest of dribbles to sustain its inept storyline, dire dialogue, and crass characterisations (you really have to feel for the likes of Fiennes and Hall, forced to standby as their credibility as serious actors is stripped from them with each passing moment they’re on screen). Cohen – whose first outing as a writer/director was the less than appropriately titled short, My Wife Is Retarded (2007) – displays a singular lack of ability behind the camera, cluttering up the frame, placing the camera where it has the least impact, and utilising close ups for dramatic purposes that only he can explain. Scenes connect haphazardly and awkwardly with each other, and Holmes’ leaps of intuition make about as much sense as why this farrago was made in the first place. This is the second movie of 2018 to feature John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan in its cast, and it’s instructive that this is markedly inferior to their other outing, the sublime Stan & Ollie. Now that really is a funny movie (take note, Will Ferrell).

Rating: 3/10 – saved from a 2/10 rating by virtue of its production design alone, Holmes & Watson is a terrible, dispiriting way to see out the year, and a firm reminder that Ferrell’s “schtick” is well past its sell-by date; when a “comedy” with such a talented cast is released straight to cinemas without the benefit of critics’ screenings beforehand then the warning signs couldn’t be more obvious, and the timing of its release near Xmas is entirely apt: it’s an enormous turkey.

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Permission (2017)

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

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D: Brian Crano / 98m

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Gina Gershon, François Arnaud, Morgan Spector, David Joseph Craig, Jason Sudeikis

Anna (Hall) and Will (Stevens) have been together since forever, a couple with no other relationship experience except their own. They’ve never lived as a couple with anyone else, never had sex with anyone else, and never felt that they’ve missed out on anything as a result. In short, they live in a state of blissful monogamy. Will is an artisan who makes furniture and is renovating a house for he and Anna to move into, while Anna is finishing up her music thesis. Will has begun to believe that it’s the perfect time to propose, but at the same dinner in which he plans to pop the question, another one is raised by Reece (Spector), the partner of Anna’s brother, Hale (Craig): how can either of them be sure each is “the one” when they’ve never “been” with anyone else? Will holds off on proposing, and it isn’t long before both of them are contemplating the idea of sleeping with other people. Soon an agreement is reached whereby Anna meets musician Dane (Arnaud), and Will meets wealthy divorcée, Lydia (Gershon). But their agreement soon starts to cause problems between them…

It’s not immediately obvious while watching Permission, but Brian Crano’s second feature after the more easy-going A Bag of Hammers (2011), has a secret agenda that it doesn’t reveal until at the very end. You could say it’s in the nature of a twist, something that the viewer won’t see coming, but with any good twist the clues should be woven into the narrative from the start so that even if the twist really does come as a complete surprise then at least the viewer can look back and – hopefully – spot those moments where they were hoodwinked. Unfortunately, writer/director Crano doesn’t do this, so when one of his two main characters does pitch that curveball, it’s likely to provoke more headscratching than nodding in agreement. But before then, Crano is already sending the viewer mixed messages, so perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising. Anna and Will are set up initially as the poster couple for committed monogamy, but the speed with which they allow Reece’s poser to have them throwing away their commitment to each other is as unseemly as Anna’s later encounter with a gallery owner.

Of course, this is the thrust of the movie: is Anna and Will’s specific kind of monogamy healthy enough for a relationship to succeed? But the material is too uneven to provide any kind of definitive answer (though it does decide that casual hook-ups are a no-no), and so instead of having Anna and Will explore other sexual experiences and then bring those experiences back to their own relationship, both engage in new relationships that test their own commitment in different ways. Crano can’t resist throwing in some clichés – Will asks if Dane is bigger than him, Dane falls in love with Anna – but too often the script fails to relate things back to Will and Anna except in the most perfunctory of ways. Hall is as spiky and watchable as ever, while Stevens has more of a comic role that feels at odds with the intended drama of the material. As the objects of Will and Anna’s new affections, Gershon is breezy and likeable while Arnaud is left high and dry by his character having nowhere to go. There’s an intriguing sub-plot involving Hale’s desire to have a baby (which isn’t shared by Reece), and at times this is more interesting, but overall this is a movie that puts its central characters into a number of uncomfortable situations and then gifts them a convenient way out almost every time – so where’s the lesson there?

Rating: 6/10 – if monogamy is your thing and “well-meaning” affairs are the antithesis of what you believe is right, then Permission won’t be the movie for you; even as a potential comedy of errors and/or manners it falls short, and if the movie has any kind of message it’s that you actually don’t have to be careful what you wish for.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)

18 Sunday Feb 2018

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D: Angela Robinson / 108m

Cast: Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, Bella Heathcote, Connie Britton, JJ Feild, Oliver Platt, Chris Conroy, Alexa Havins

The creation of Wonder Woman, or at least, the source of her creation, is the kind of story that should be filed under “so incredible it must be true”. And that’s exactly right. Wonder Woman was the lasso-twirling, tiara-wearing brainchild of ex-Harvard faculty member William Moulton Marston (Evans), a psychology professor who also invented the systolic blood pressure cuff used with lie detectors (though he forgot to patent it). Wonder Woman was born out of Marston’s belief that women could only truly be happy by “submitting to a loving authority”, i.e. a husband. As a result, the early Wonder Woman comic strips were full of scenes of bondage, domination and spanking, with the majority of the female characters passively accepting their situations. Some of this was due to the structure of Marston’s private life. He was married to Elizabeth (Hall), also a professor of psychology, and they in turn lived with a research assistant of Marston’s who became their joint lover, Olive Byrne (Heathcote). Both women had children by Marston, and for a number of years their living arrangements went unquestioned. This polyamorous relationship led to Marston’s creation of the Amazonian princess, but even though the Wonder Woman comic strip was enormously popular, its content ensured that it would fall under the spotlight of Josette Frank (Britton) and the Child Study Association of America, and find itself at risk of public censure…

In telling Marston’s story, and that of Elizabeth and Olive, Angela Robinson’s earnest biopic relates a story of a ménage à trois that succeeded on its own terms, and in flagrant defiance of the societal norms of the period. This is the movie’s focus: not the creation of Wonder Woman, but the creation of a three-way relationship that withstood both internal and external pressures, the addition of children (four in total), long periods where Marston was reliant on his writing to bring in money (Elizabeth was a better breadwinner), and which did so because of the trio’s commitment to each other (though inevitably, there’s a blip). Robinson’s screenplay is firmly on the side of Marston and his two Wonder Women, and the personal and sexual explorations they undertook in order to make their relationship work, and if there isn’t too much in the way of judgment or objective criticism about the nature of their private lives, then it doesn’t hurt the story overall. But there are moments where the narrative seems in need of a dramatic push, and Robinson obliges accordingly.

But this is a movie about feelings, and emotions, and the best way of expressing them. Refreshingly, and aside from a closing scene in a hospital room that seems to go on for far too long (see if you think someone should have come in at some point), the characters make their points succinctly and quickly before moving on the next, and despite some occasionally clunky expository dialogue, the cast all give strong, skillful performances. It’s good to see Evans taking on a more meatier role than of late, and he expertly navigates the twin poles of Marston’s personality, aiming for dominance in his public and working lives, while being submissive in private. Hall is terrific as Elizabeth, hiding her vulnerability and insecurities behind a fearsome exterior, and Heathcote is equally impressive as Olive, the young woman neither Marston nor his wife can live without. As a framing device, Marston’s meeting with Frank doesn’t always tie up with what amount to flashbacks of his life up until then, but it does give the viewer a better understanding of Marston’s views on relationships and submission and all areas in between. This is a movie that’s unafraid to explore issues surrounding marriage and polygamy and notions of what constitutes individual pleasure, and in doing so proves itself to be intelligent and thought-provoking, though a little too matter-of-fact in its approach.

Rating: 7/10 – purposeful and intense for the most part, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women plays it straight, and in doing so, does justice to its trio of lead characters and their unconventional lifestyles; Bryce Fortner’s cinematography adds a layer of nostalgia to things, and Robinson is to be congratulated for interpreting Marston’s life in such a way that the majority of the movie remains plausible if not always entirely convincing.

Christine (2016)

20 Thursday Apr 2017

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D: Antonio Campos / 119m

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts, Maria Dizzia, J. Smith-Cameron, Timothy Simons, Kim Shaw, John Cullum

In the Spring of 1974, Christine Chubbuck (Hall) was a twenty-nine year old news reporter working for Channel WXLT in Sarasota, Florida. She was single, she lived with her mother, Peg (Smith-Cameron), and she had been given her own talk show on WXLT called Suncoast Digest, in which she would focus on local people and community activities. But Christine also suffered from depression, and could be up one moment and down the next (nowadays she would likely be diagnosed as having bi-polar disorder). Her depression could lead to extreme mood swings, and she would often push people away even though the few friendships she had were very important to her. And she regularly complained that the news stories she, and the station, were covering weren’t interesting enough, and that the station should focus more on regular people’s lives and what those lives were really like.

This kept her at odds with news director Mike Simmons (Letts), and the two would have regular run-ins as Christine tried to emphasise the various ways she felt the station wasn’t living up to its potential. Simmons wanted “juicier” stories about murder and other crimes; Christine felt the station should focus more on local people and the drama inherent in their lives. Simmons didn’t. Also at this time, the owner of WXLT, Bob Anderson (Cullum), was looking for two of the news team to transfer to Baltimore to a new station he’d recently purchased. Lead anchor George Peter Ryan (Hall) was a likely candidate, but Christine felt that she could be the other person Anderson was looking for.

Christine’s determination to be that other person led her to make some questionable decisions in relation to her work, and she came close to alienating Simmons for good. When she discovered that she wouldn’t be going to Baltimore (even after speaking directly to Anderson), Christine’s depression seemed to be under control. Her mood swings disappeared, she was more agreeable to her fellow co-workers, and she apologised to Simmons. She also asked to helm a Suncoast Digest piece direct to camera, something she’d never done before. Simmons agreed, and on the morning of 15 July 1974, Christine became a news story herself…

In telling the last few months in the life of Christine Chubbuck, Antonio Campos and screenwriter Craig Shilowich have fashioned the kind of Seventies-based journalistic enquiry that wouldn’t look out of place when compared to similar movies made at the time. With its drab Seventies decor and often drabber costume design (brown was definitely the colour back then), Christine pays homage to an era when news reporting in the US was heavily community-based – parochial even – and sensationalism was just beginning to take hold (when one of Christine’s reports is bumped in favour of a murder outside their area, she’s informed it’s because it’s what the viewers want to see). The movie eloquently and confidently recreates the period (in all its dreary glory), and provides a perfect backdrop for its tale of a real-life news reporter who could never understand why her work wasn’t as well-regarded as she expected.

Christine’s issues at work were exacerbated by her mental health issues, and the movie spends a lot of time reinforcing the idea that she was unwell. There are references to a previous “episode” that occurred before she and her mother moved to Sarasota; Christine herself acknowledges at times her own inability to connect with the people around her (she seems more confident with strangers, something that’s noted but not examined too closely); and her continual on-again, off-again reactions to her colleagues speak effectively of someone struggling to make sense of her place in the harried world of news journalism.

That Christine Chubbuck suffered from a variety of mental health issues is clear from Shilowich’s sympathetic and engrossing screenplay, and Hall gives a bravura performance, imbuing the troubled newswoman’s lack of social skills, and her off-kilter idea of professional balance with a scary, aggressive approach that initially makes her a hard character to like. But with the knowledge that she is ill, the movie is able to provide a sympathetic hook for the audience to hold on to, even when Christine is being manipulative and horrible to her mother, berating Simmons for treating her badly, or when she mistreats her best friend and colleague, Jean (Dizzia).Through all this and more, Hall never loses sight of the woman who is trapped behind the cold veneer of mental illness, and whose sense of self-worth is only as strong as the approbation she receives from the people around her (and which she then refutes). It’s an often distressing performance, and one that’s tempered by a refusal to soften the blow of certain scenes and images (it also makes you wonder how on earth Meryl Streep could have received an Oscar nomination for Florence Foster Jenkins when Hall’s portrayal is on another level entirely).

Other aspects of Christine’s personality, character and history are explored, such as the work she did with children with intellectual disabilities, adopting a puppet show approach to teaching them life skills. The movie uses these shows to explore the depth of Christine’s own feelings about various topics, and they retain an added poignancy thanks to the knowledge that though Christine is passing on sound advice, the viewer is aware that it’s advice she herself won’t be able to follow. In a scene where Ryan takes her to a trancendental analysis meeting, Christine expresses all the things that are wrong with her life, including the lack of a partner and/or children. This is the crux of the matter: she doesn’t want to be alone anymore. She’s fast approaching thirty, is to all intents and purposes alone in her life, can’t see a way forward, and decides on a course of action that will deal with everything that contributes to her being depressed.

Anyone aware of Christine Chubbuck and what she did that baleful July morning in 1974, will already know the movie’s outcome, but what’s remarkable about the period before that day, and the way that both Shilowich and Campos treat it, is that it’s not until the last ten or twelve minutes that Christine’s fate is sealed. There are a couple of foreshadowings that viewers who are “in the dark” may well pick up on, but as well as its self-destructive mental health theme, this is the story of a woman fighting for recognition in an industry that was inherently sexist, and which was on the verge of becoming less conventional and more exploitative. This subplot is given enough screen time that it adds to the sense of Christine being beleaguered from all sides, and her efforts to break free and get to Baltimore all the more understandable. But it’s also Christine’s last chance to salvage something from her time at WXLT, and it’s only then that her “solution” presents itself. With both her personal and professional lives coming to a standstill, her decision has an inevitability about it that the movie has avoided delving into up until then.

Throughout, Campos’ direction is solid, sympathetic and invigorating. He wisely keeps the focus on Hall, while giving the likes of Letts and Michael C. Hall plenty of room to flesh out their characters and make them as credible as they can (in reality, neither Ryan nor Simmons had as much involvement in Christine’s life as they do here, and sometimes it shows). The hustle and bustle of the newsroom is downplayed in favour of effective character beats, while Joe Anderson’s muted yet moody cinematography is a perfect match for the emotional troubles Christine experiences. There’s a whole lot of heart and craft here, and as an examination of one person’s bitter disappointment with the hand Life has dealt her, it’s also painfully affecting.

Rating: 8/10 – with a mesmerising and compelling performance from Hall (a career best in fact), and a wealth of sincerity and compassion when it comes to its central character, Christine is a remarkable movie let down only by its lack of back story, and some repetition in Christine’s dealings with Simmons; absorbing and vivid, and with a sly streak of humour running throughout, it’s also a movie that refuses to pass judgment on her, and which does its best to honour her memory without sensationalising it, something she would most likely have approved of.

Trailers – Christine (2016), Nocturnal Animals (2016) and Annabelle 2 (2017)

15 Thursday Sep 2016

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Thankfully, Christine is not an unwanted, unexpected remake of the 1983 John Carpenter movie about a haunted car, but instead the true life tale of a haunted woman, Christine Chubbuck. Chubbuck was a US TV news reporter working in Florida during the late Sixties, early Seventies. She battled depression and suicidal thoughts before killing herself live on TV in July 1974. In telling her story, director Antonio Campos and screenwriter Craig Shilowich have created a compelling, richly detailed account of Chubbuck’s life and struggle with her personal demons, and the movie features what many critics are already describing as a “career-best” performance from Rebecca Hall. From the trailer we can see that the era when Chubbuck was alive has been painstakingly recreated, and that the cinematography by Joe Anderson is an integral part of what makes the movie look and feel so fresh and nostalgic at the same time. A tragic tale, to be sure, but Christine seems keen to be true to Chubbuck’s awkward yet painfully endearing persona, and which also doesn’t appear to shrink from exploring the “issues” that led to her untimely death at the age of just twenty-nine.

 

Based on the novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright, Nocturnal Animals is Tom Ford’s first movie since A Single Man (2009). A movie that features a narrative full of twists and turns, it sees Amy Adams’ art gallery owner apparently threatened by the existence of a novel written by her ex-husband (played by Jake Gyllenhaal). The novel reads like a revenge tale, a way of his getting back at her for something she did to him that was really terrible. She recognises herself in the story, and comes to believe that he’s written it deliberately to make her afraid that the story will come true. Adams, after her disappointing turns in the likes of Big Eyes (2014) and the less than stellar DC outings involving Superman, here gets to grip with a meaty, dramatic role that better suits her abilities than having to play second fiddle to a green screen. But it’s still, first and foremost, a Tom Ford movie: stylish, elliptical in places, and beautifully lensed by Seamus McGarvey, making it a feast for the senses as well as the intellect.

 

The inclusion here of the first, teaser trailer for a sequel to a spin-off movie that nobody really wanted, is, on the face of it, a little strange in itself (the original didn’t even merit inclusion in the Monthly Roundup it should have been a part of; yes, it’s that bad). But three things warrant giving the trailer for Annabelle 2 the equivalent of a hall pass: one, that’s Miranda Otto holding the cross, an actress who rarely makes bad movies; two, its director is David F. Sandberg, fresh from his success as the main creative force behind Lights Out (2016); and three, it keeps things commendably brief and doesn’t rely on a manufactured jump scare to get you, well… jumping out of your seat. These may not be enough to stop the movie from being as bad as its predecessor, but for the moment, this is one teaser trailer which understands that, when it comes to horror, less really is more.

The Gift (2015)

10 Sunday Apr 2016

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The Gift

D: Joel Edgerton / 103m

Cast: Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton, Allison Tolman, Tim Griffin, Busy Philipps, Adam Lazarre-White, Beau Knapp, Wendell Pierce, Mirrah Foulkes, Nash Edgerton, David Denman, Katie Aselton

You move to California from Chicago to start afresh. You try and put behind you the pain of a miscarriage. If you’re the husband you work hard and press for that promotion at work that you really deserve. If you’re the wife you stay at home and redesign the new home you’re living in, because interior design is what you do. And if you’re someone who used to know the husband years ago in high school then you suddenly show up out of the blue and start making things awkward.

Such is the basic set-up of Joel Edgerton’s first foray into feature directing – he also wrote the script – a dark, psychological thriller that asks that old chestnut once more: what do you do when your sins come back to haunt you? The sins in question belong to Simon Callum (Bateman). He’s smart, he’s determined, he’s likeable – in short, he’s too good to be true. And so it proves, with past behaviours having been retained twenty-five years on, and his moral centre somewhat askew. When Simon is approached by a man who claims to know him (but who he doesn’t recognise), his offhand, dismissive attitude is covered by a thin veneer of acceptance. But when a bottle of wine appears on Simon and his wife Robyn’s doorstep, with a note from the same man – whose name is Gordon Mosley (Edgerton) – Simon is made uncomfortable. And this being a thriller, the audience knows that Simon is going to feel a lot more uncomfortable before the movie’s conclusion.

The Gift - scene3

But Edgerton the writer pulls a bit of a switch, and instead of having Gordon (known as Gordo) continue to make Simon’s life uncomfortable, the old high school classmate starts dropping in unexpectedly when Simon isn’t around. Robyn (Hall) is polite, and always invites him in, and even though she’s a little bit unnerved by his presence, she’s also sympathetic towards him, suspecting that his life hasn’t turned out as well as Simon’s has. She lets him set up their new TV, and increasingly seems pleased to see him when he visits. Simon is less than happy with this, and wants nothing more to do with Gordo, even though he can’t specify why.

An invitation to dinner at Gordo’s house doesn’t go well, however, and Simon uses the opportunity to end their renewed relationship. But when an incident at their house sends Simon back to Gordo’s home, he learns something alarming: it isn’t Gordo’s home at all, but belongs to someone he works for. The police become involved, briefly, but without any evidence of a crime committed against the Callums, they’re powerless to intervene. Later, Gordo sends an apology, but Simon is angry, while Robyn is more accepting. This is the beginning of a rift that will grow between them, but right then, Simon’s bid for promotion is going well, and he feels able to control everything that’s happening around them.

The Gift - scene2

Of course, this proves foolish, as Gordo continues to manipulate their lives from afar. Robyn falls pregnant, and later learns some disturbing information about Simon and Gordo’s time in high school. She delves deeper, and what she finds out throws everything into sharp relief, and places her marriage in jeopardy. And all the while, Gordo hovers in the background, a shadow figure that may or may not be seeking justice for wrongs done to him in the past, or a malevolent force of the present, with undisclosed reasons for targetting Simon.

The Gift is a movie that tells its fairly straightforward tale with a small amount of visual flair, and a deeper understanding of untrammelled arrogance. Simon is a creep, something that’s made clear almost from the start, and his character is off-putting and insincere. It makes feeling sorry for him virtually impossible, and as the audience learns more and more about him, and his true colours shine through (however blackly), any potential sympathy is washed away in a tide of unhealthy revelations. Bateman makes the most of Simon’s more despicable justifications for his behaviour, and revels in playing the movie’s real bad guy, but it’s a role that doesn’t allow for much development or depth. And by the end, when the full extent of what’s been going on is revealed, the viewer’s main reaction is likely to be that of ennui rather than satisfaction.

The Gift - scene1

As the harried, semi-stalked Robyn, Hall is her usual intelligent but emotionally removed self, peeling back the layers of Robyn’s past with more dexterity than Bateman is allowed to do, but ultimately falling short of showing us why Robyn is with Simon in the first place (or why she stays with him until events give her no choice). Hall is also let down by the script’s decision to introduce a drug problem for Robyn, and then have it resolved within fifteen minutes. Other subplots are either forgotten or abandoned, with the disappearance of the Callum’s dog, Mr Bojangles – potentially an occurrence that could ensure a great deal of suspense – again resolved far too quickly and far too easily. Likewise the matter of Gordo’s using his boss’s house; viewers may not be surprised by this development, but they might well be surprised at the way in which it’s not used to further the plot and is just abandoned along with so much else that acts as filler for the movie’s first half.

As the drama mutates uneasily into melodrama – Simon assaults Gordo and warns him off, Simon’s promotion suffers a serious setback – the tension increases, but Edgerton the director doesn’t have the experience to really make an audience sit on the edge of their seat or hold their breath in anxious anticipation. Some scenes fall flatter than a pancake, while others maintain a sense of unease that is undone by the use of too little light. There are a handful of dream sequences that seem out of place, but Edgerton integrates them with the narrative more effectively than some other (more experienced) directors would have done, but there’s still the lingering feeling that even though he’s done his homework, the writer/director/star could have done with a little bit of assistance in pulling it all together.

Rating: 6/10 – better than most psychological thrillers (but only just), The Gift should more accurately be called The Gifts, or even Several Gifts Left on a Doorstep; Edgerton does his best to explore notions of guilt and retribution but fails to fully engage with his audience, leading to a movie that promises a lot but only delivers a fraction of what’s needed to make it completely successful.

Mini-Review: Closed Circuit (2013)

25 Sunday May 2014

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closed-circuit_8547532a

D: John Crowley / 96m

Cast: Eric Bana, Rebecca Hall, Ciarán Hinds, Jim Broadbent, Riz Ahmed, Anne-Marie Duff, Julia Stiles, Kenneth Cranham, Denis Moschitto

When a bomb goes off at a London market, the investigation leads to the arrest of Farroukh Erdogan (Moschitto). Government evidence that might support his case must be deliberated in closed court before an open trial can be conducted. Following the death of Erdogan’s lawyer, Martin Rose (Bana) is asked by the Attorney General (Broadbent) to represent the suspect at the open trial, while Claudia Simmons-Howe (Hall) is chosen to represent Erdogan at the closed hearings. Neither can be in contact with each other once the government evidence is submitted, but as both become aware they’re being followed, they begin to realise there’s more to the case than meets the eye.

Martin discovers that Erdogan is an MI5 agent who was working within the terrorist cell that carried out the bombing. With Erdogan refusing to confirm or deny anything, it’s unclear if he has double-crossed MI5, or the cell has set him up instead. Meanwhile, Claudia learns that Farroukh’s family are more involved than anyone thought. Claudia and Martin choose to work together – in spite of the risk of being disbarred – and endeavour to find out if MI5 had any further, more damaging involvement in the bombing.

Closed

Closed Circuit wants to be topical and thought-provoking but is too predictable – and cynical – to be entirely effective. Government involvement in terrorist matters is hardly news, and the idea that a cover up might be taking place is clear from the outset. The cat-and-mouse game that follows ticks all the relevant boxes – murder made to look like suicide, an MI5 overseer (Ahmed) who makes veiled threats, the revelation of a colleague working against Martin and Claudia – and there’s a subplot around Martin and Claudia’s having had an affair in the past that is dramatically redundant, but on the whole, the movie is a well-crafted, if obvious thriller that never quite takes off. Bana and Hall don’t quite gel as a couple, Crowley’s direction is efficient if indistinctive, and the script by Steven Knight isn’t as sharp as it needs to be.

Rating: 6/10 – as a paranoid conspiracy thriller, Closed Circuit is neither exciting nor provocative enough to succeed fully; with its idea of a government cover up, it’s also thirty years too late to provide much of a surprise.

 

Transcendence (2014)

21 Monday Apr 2014

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Transcendence

D: Wally Pfister / 119m

Cast: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Kate Mara, Cole Hauser, Clifton Collins Jr, Cory Hardrict, Falk Hentschel, Josh Stewart, Lukas Haas, Xander Berkeley

Those of you with a good memory will recall Johnny Depp’s last sci-fi outing, the distinctly flat and underwhelming The Astronaut’s Wife (1999).  Amongst the movies in Depp’s filmography it’s a rare misstep… until now.

Here, Depp plays Dr Will Caster, a scientist investigating the possibilities surrounding artificial intelligence (AI).  He is supported by, and works with, his wife, Evelyn (Hall), and from the wider scientific community, Max Waters (Bettany) and Joseph Tagger (Freeman).  When he is shot leaving a symposium by a member (Haas) of a radical anti-AI movement, RIFT, Will receives what appears to be a non-fatal wound.  Later, he learns the bullet was coated with polonium and he has only a matter of weeks to live.

Appropriating the work of a fellow scientist, Dr Thomas Casey (Berkeley), Evelyn sets up a secret laboratory where she intends to digitise Will’s mind and connect it with a computer system, thus allowing his “consciousness” to live on after his physical death.  She’s aided by Max who has reservations about the plan; when it succeeds, and one of Will’s first requests is to be connected to the internet, Max becomes afraid of the potential danger in Will having access to every computer on the planet.  He tries to pull the plug but Evelyn stops him and forces him to leave.  Max is then kidnapped by RIFT, and their leader, Bree (Mara), decides to keep him captive until they can stop Will’s consciousness from spreading.  They arrive at the laboratory too late to stop Will connecting to the internet, and too late to stop Evelyn from escaping.

Meanwhile, Tagger is helping FBI agent Buchanan (Murphy) track down the members of RIFT.  When Will manipulates the FBI’s computer system in order to help them, Tagger also becomes worried about the possible consequences of Will’s access.  As Evelyn, under Will’s instruction, starts to oversee the building of a brand new facility in the desert town of Brightwood, RIFT inexplicably hold back from trying to sabotage it, and the FBI sit on their hands as well.  Two years later, Will has moved on to using nano-technology in his work and when a worker is badly injured, takes the opportunity to use his medical capabilities to “improve” the worker’s physical condition, even going so far as to install software in the man’s head that links him to Will.  As more and more people undergo this “corrective surgery”, RIFT and the FBI both become afraid that Will is creating an army, and decide to take steps to put an end to his new existence.  The only way they can do it?  By using a virus created by Max that should stop Will by shutting down the internet…completely.

Transcendence - scene

Hopefully that (actually quite) brief synopsis should alert the potential viewer that Transcendence has a lot going on, and not all of it either clever or logical.  At the movie’s beginning, Will is a bit like an absent-minded professor, and has no interest in trying to change the world through the appliance of new technologies; that’s Evelyn’s aim.  As his metamorphosis develops and his “power” increases, he begins to do just that, using nano-technology to heal the sick and heal the planet.  All good, right?  Well yes, and therein lies one of the movie’s major problems: it’s ostensibly a thriller, and outside of the involvement of RIFT, so far the thriller elements have been sorely lacking (it’s also meant to be a romantic drama, and a cautionary tale, and a bio-horror movie as well).  Will’s adaptation of people becomes the trigger for a last quarter increase in action and spectacle that, while predictable, is unnecessary and forced (hell, it’s so forced, the FBI and RIFT practically team up to put a stop to Will’s unwanted apotheosis).

There’s also the timescale, that “two years later” mentioned before where everyone outside of Will and Evelyn sit around waiting for things to reach a point where they have to intervene, whereas before, prevention was the order of the day, both legally and illegally.  It’s also absurd to think that Max would be held captive for all this time without anyone trying to find him, but this turns out to be the case.  And with the size of the facility being built at Brightwood it’s unreasonable to think that the government or homeland security or the NSA (or someone) wouldn’t come around for a look-see at some point, but they don’t.  And it’s equally implausible that Will, even with all the access to information that he has, can create and master so many new technological advances from scratch, but he does.

As science fiction, Transcendence is woollier than most and depends on its human element to move the story forward but even there the story stumbles.  Will and Evelyn are supposed to be devoted to each other, and before Will’s death that’s evident.  But when he “transcends” he becomes more attentive and tries hard to make up for his lack of a physical presence; however, Evelyn is unhappy with this and shows her unhappiness in such a way that even Will should notice but he doesn’t.  Even when she begins to have doubts about what he’s doing he still doesn’t notice – so much for having advanced intelligence!  This, of course, leads into the main theme of the movie: can an artificially created intelligence be self aware?  (The answer, very obviously, is no.)  The movie dangles this supposed conundrum at the audience every now and again as if it bestows some depth on proceedings, but it’s a hollow, nonsensical question which, unsurprisingly, is resolved in an awkward, unsatisfactory manner.

The cast mostly go through the motions.  Depp is off his game by a long stretch, and as AI-Will is too subdued to make much of an impression, either as the saviour of the world, or its potential destroyer.  Hall’s character is irritating and the actress never quite overcomes this limitation; she also seems unsure of how Evelyn should behave from one scene to the next.  Bettany, as the movie’s voice of reason is sidelined too much by his incarceration by RIFT, and early on, plays the concerned friend with so much humility you half expect him to start wringing his hands at the prospective awfulness of what’s going to happen.  Freeman does his by-now standard wise old man routine, while Murphy has to cope with being a bystander to pretty much everything.  And Mara gives such a blunt performance she never changes her facial expression once throughout the entire movie.

Jack Paglen’s script mixes cod-science with emotional drama to only slight effect, and as filmed, has too many stretches where the movie stops dead in its tracks – which is odd, as the movie is decently paced and only occasionally strays towards boring.  The scenes between AI-Will and Evelyn quickly become repetitive, as do those featuring Tagger and Buchanan.  In the director’s chair, veteran cinematographer Pfister (making his directorial debut), has obviously kept a close eye on DoP Jess Hall, and the movie is often beautifully lensed, particularly its desert location.  He’s less confident when it comes to the cast, hence the lacklustre performances, and the script hasn’t helped him either.  There’s also an annoying score courtesy of Mychael Danna, packed with predictable cues and motifs.

Rating: 5/10 – somehow, Transcendence holds the attention throughout, even if it’s just to see how much sillier it can get; with another sci-fi misstep under his belt, let’s see if it’s another fifteen years before Depp makes another venture into the genre.