Come Sunday (2018)

14 Friday Dec 2018

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Carlton Pearson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Condola Rashad, Drama, Heresy, Jason Segel, Joshua Marston, Lakeith Stanfield, Religion, Review, True story, Tulsa, Universal reconciliation

D: Joshua Marston / 105m

Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jason Segel, Condola Rashad, Lakeith Stanfield, Martin Sheen, Stacey Sargeant, Danny Glover, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Ric Reitz

1998, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Carlton Pearson (Ejiofor) is the pastor of the Higher Dimensions Family Church. His congregation is a mix of blacks and whites and his services are attracting around six thousand members each week. He is highly regarded in the community, and has the respect of his peers, and the people who work for him at the church. Things begin to change, though, after he watches a programme about the Rwandan genocide. Believing that he has received an epiphany from God, Carlton begins to refute the notion that non-Christians will automatically go to Hell, and asserts that Jesus Christ died to absolve all of humanity’s sins, not just those who are saved or given absolution. This goes against the received teaching of the church, and it proves too much for many in his congregation, who elect to leave and worship elsewhere. The loss of so many parishioners is further exacerbated by his being declared a heretic by the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops. Throughout it all, Carlton wrestles with his faith, but remains true to his belief that God has spoken to him, even when it seems that God has now deserted him…

When watching a movie that explores notions of faith and religious belief, it’s often tempting to ask the question, just how is that faith going to be portrayed? Are we going to be treated to a blood and thunder show of Biblical proportions, or a quieter, more considered affair? Come Sunday, the true story of Carlton Pearson and his belief in universal reconciliation, opts for the second approach, but there are certain moments where a bit of blood and thunder wouldn’t have gone amiss. Despite the inherent drama that overtakes Carlton’s life, and which sees him lose his ministry, there’s much about Marcus Hinchey’s otherwise well constructed screenplay that keeps the movie from being as dramatic as it should be. Too many confrontational scenes – between Carlton and his associate, Henry (Segel); between Carlton and his mentor, Oral Roberts (Sheen); between Carlton and the Bishops – lack the vitality and energy that would allow them to stand out from the connective scenes around them. It’s like going to a revivalist meeting, only to find that everyone in the choir has laryngitis and they’re singing in a whisper. Even the scenes between Carlton and his wife, Gina (Rashad), where we learn there are marital problems, have a restraint about them that makes them feel of little consequence in the overall scheme of things.

But where a quieter approach proves more effective is when Carlton begins to question if his new-found belief is right. When everyone except for Gina and his assistant, Nicky (Sargeant), desert him, Carlton’s faith is rocked, and he begins to feel that God has deserted him too. Thanks to a terrific performance from Ejiofor, Carlton’s growing anguish is revealed through the star seeming to shrink physically on screen, while relaying the character’s conflicting emotions through a range of searching looks and pained expressions. There’s subtlety and range to Ejiofor’s performance, and it’s a good thing too, as Marston relies on his star more and more as the movie progresses. The director’s cautious development of the material is another reason why the movie doesn’t soar as it should, and why its examination of true faith feels laboured whenever it’s debated. There are fine supporting turns from Segel and Stanfield (as Carlton’s AIDS-affected musical director), but Sheen is miscast as Roberts, and Rashad is stifled by a role that borders on caricature. In the end, it’s a pallid movie that lacks energy, and which spends much of its running time steering clear of being anywhere near as controversial as Pearson was.

Rating: 5/10 – with its neutered narrative and sub-par dramatics, Come Sunday treats Pearson’s struggle to be explain his epiphany and subsequent denunciation as a heretic as if it were a footnote in a much larger story; with an ending that’s even more low-key than what’s gone before, the message seems to be clear: God isn’t the sure-fire draw He used to be.

An Interview With God (2018)

21 Wednesday Nov 2018

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Brenton Thwaites, David Strathairn, Drama, Faith, God, Interview, Journalist, Marital problems, Perry Lang, Religion, Yael Grobglas

D: Perry Lang / 97m

Cast: David Strathairn, Brenton Thwaites, Yael Grobglas, Charlbi Dean Kriek, Hill Harper, Bobby Di Cicco

Paul Asher (Thwaites) is a talented young journalist whose coverage of the war in Afghanistan has brought him a measure of acclaim and a good position at the newspaper he works for. He writes religious, faith-based articles, but while his career is going well, his marriage to Sarah (Grobglas) is failing, and his own faith is crumbling in the wake of his experiences in Afghanistan. Not knowing how to resolve any of the issues he’s facing, he finds some distraction in an interview with a man claiming to be God (Strathairn). Paul arranges to meet the man on three consecutive days for thirty minutes at a time. On the first day, the man blithely avoids answering Paul’s direct questions, and poses plenty of his own that Paul finds himself responding to. Later, at home, Sarah’s absence leads him to the realisation that she has left him. Meeting the man again the next day, the interview becomes more adversarial, with “God” insisting that he is there to help Paul, but with Paul refusing to believe him. Confused and scared by the effect the interviews are having on him, Paul struggles to come to terms with the very real possibility that this man really is God…

In An Interview With God, the Almighty is a middle-aged man in a bland suit who dispenses axioms with all the dexterity of someone used to bamboozling the people he meets. In the more than capable hands of David Strathairn, he also conforms to the idea that God is unknowable, even when God Himself is telling you all you need to know about Him – or isn’t. This is at the heart of the initial mystery of whether the man really is the One True God, or whether he’s just a con artist looking to exploit Paul’s emotional problems for unknown reasons. But this being a Christian movie first and foremost, it doesn’t take long for the mystery to be jettisoned and God’s identity to be confirmed (it happens during the first interview). What follows is a jittery, dramatically unstable examination of faith and how its loss can have a profoundly negative effect on our lives, and particularly in relation to personal trauma. However, Paul’s experiences in Afghanistan are never explored in a way that would allow us to have any insights into what ails him, and his failing marriage hinges more on Sarah’s feelings than his own. He may be in pain, but – and here’s the irony – we have to take it on faith that he is.

The script – by Ken Aguado – does its best to explore notions of salvation and free will, but skims over questions such as why do bad things happen to good people (the answer? They just do). With God answering Paul’s questions often with another question, their conversations soon feel like empty existential banter tricked out to sound illuminating and profound. Also, such is the amount of cod-philosophical repetition in these scenes, it’s hard to decide if Aguado and director Perry Lang were aware that this approach was stifling the material, and making it feel stilted. In the end, the movie opts for a literal answer to the question of God’s identity when a more ambivalent one would have suited the material better. As the embattled Paul, Thwaites acquits himself well but is hampered by his character lacking sufficient depth for us to care about him except superficially, while Strathairn opts to play God as a kind of exasperated guidance counselor. Both actors are good in their roles, but mostly this is against the odds, as their characters remain ciphers throughout. With artifice increasingly the order of the day, and faith sometimes treated as an abstract concept, the movie ends on a feelgood note that it hasn’t quite earned, or is deserving of.

Rating: 5/10 – the tagline asks, What Would You Ask? but this is as profound as An Interview With God ever gets, thanks to a wayward, not fully realised screenplay, and some awkwardly staged scenes between Paul and his boss (Harper) (and Paul and Sarah… and Paul and God…); in the end it proves nothing except that God continues to work in mysterious ways – if you believe in that sort of thing – and none more so than in allowing this movie to be made as it is.

Monthly Roundup – September 2018

30 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Adam Driver, Adventure, Alien, Animation, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, Anna Faris, Arnold Schwarzenegger, BlacKkKlansman, Bob Odenkirk, Boyd Holbrook, Brett Dalton, Children's movie, Christopher Robin (2018), Dallas Jenkins, Darrell Roodt, Destination Wedding, Documentary, Drama, El club se los buenos infieles, Eugenio Derbez, Ewan McGregor, Fele Martínez, Hayley Atwell, Horror, John Campopiano, John David Washington, Justin White, Katherine Barrell, Keanu Reeves, Kenne Duncan, Killing Gunther, Ku Klux Klan, Lake Placid: Legacy, Lluís Segura, Marc Forster, Melvin Goes to Dinner, Michael Blieden, Overboard (2018), Raúl Fernández de Pablo, Religion, Remake, Reviews, Rob Greenberg, Robert Clarke, Romance, Ronald V. Ashcroft, Sci-fi, Sequel, Shane Black, South Africa, Spain, Spike Lee, Stephanie Courtenay, Taran Killam, The Astounding She-Monster, The Predator, The Resurrection of Gavin Stone, Thriller, Tim Rozon, Trevante Rhodes, Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary, Victor Lewin, Winona Ryder

Christopher Robin (2018) / D: Marc Forster / 104m

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Bronte Carmichael, Mark Gatiss, Oliver Ford Davies, Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett, Peter Capaldi, Sophie Okonedo, Toby Jones

Rating: 7/10 – having left behind his childhood friends at the Hundred Acre Wood, an adult Christopher Robin (McGregor), now married and weighed down by the demands of his work, is reunited with them just at the moment that they all most need each other; a live action/CGI variation on A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories, Christopher Robin is an enjoyable if lightweight confection from Disney that features good performances from McGregor and Cummings (as both Pooh and Tigger), but which also takes a very straightforward approach to its story, and allows Gatiss to overdo it as the smug villain of the piece.

Melvin Goes to Dinner (2003) / D: Bob Odenkirk / 83m

Cast: Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price, Annabelle Gurwitch, Maura Tierney, David Cross, Melora Walters, Jack Black

Rating: 7/10 – two friends agree to meet for dinner but two other people end up joining them, leading to an evening of surprising connections and revelations that causes each to rethink their own opinions and feelings about each other; adapted from the stage play Phyro-Giants! (and written by Blieden), Odenkirk’s debut as a director is an amusing examination of what we tell ourselves to be true while being closely examined by others who may (or may not) know better, making Melvin Goes to Dinner a waspish if somewhat diffident look at social mores that feels a little forced in places, but is well acted by its cast.

BlacKkKlansman (2018) / D: Spike Lee / 135m

Cast: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Jasper Pããkkönen, Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Houser, Ashlie Atkinson, Michael Buscemi, Robert John Burke, Frederick Weller, Corey Hawkins, Harry Belafonte, Alec Baldwin

Rating: 9/10 – the true story of how, in the early Seventies, the Colorado Springs Police Department’s first black officer, Ron Stallworth (Washington), infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan with the aid of a fellow, Jewish officer, Flip Zimmerman (Driver); a return to form for Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman is entertaining and frightening in equal measure for the way it deals with contentious issues surrounding politics and racism that are as entrenched today as they were back in the Seventies, and for the deft way in which Lee allows the humour to filter through without negating the seriousness of the issues he’s examining.

Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary (2017) / D: John Campopiano, Justin White / 97m

With: Mary Lambert, Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby, Brad Greenquist, Peter Stein, Elliot Goldenthal, Miko Hughes, Susan Blommaert, Heather Langenkamp

Rating: 6/10 – a look at the making of Pet Sematary (1989), with interviews and recollections from the cast and crew, and an assessment of the movie’s impact and legacy in the years that have followed; coming across very much like a labour of love for its directors, Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary features a wealth of details about the making of the movie, some of which is fascinating, and some of which is less so, making this a mixed bag in terms of content, but if you’re a fan of Pet Sematary, this will be a must-see, and should offer up behind-the-scenes information that hasn’t been seen or heard before.

Lake Placid: Legacy (2018) / D: Darrell Roodt / 93m

Cast: Katherine Barrell, Tim Rozon, Sai Bennett, Luke Newton, Craig Stein, Joe Pantoliano, Alisha Bailey

Rating: 3/10 – a group of eco-warriors discover a remote island that’s not on any maps, and find a genetically altered apex predator that soon begins whittling down their numbers; the sixth entry in the franchise, Lake Placid: Legacy ignores the previous four movies and acts – without explanation – as a direct sequel to the original, though that doesn’t make it any less abysmal, and it’s easily the worst in the series, something it achieves thanks to a dreadful script, Roodt’s absentee direction, the less than stellar efforts of the cast, and just by being greenlit in the first place.

Killing Gunther (2017) / D: Taran Killam / 93m

Cast: Taran Killam, Bobby Moynihan, Hannah Simone, Cobie Smulders, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Allison Tolman, Paul Brittain, Aaron Yoo, Ryan Gaul, Amir Talai, Peter Kelamis

Rating: 4/10 – an assassin, Blake (Killam), hires a team of other assassins to help him track down and eliminate Gunther (Schwarzenegger), the world’s most feared, and successful, hitman; ostensibly a comedy, Killing Gunther is yet another ill-advised movie where the script – and the cast – try way too hard to make absurdist behaviour funny all by itself, and where the tone is as wayward as the narrative, something that makes the movie an uneven watch and less than successful in its attempts to entertain – and the less said about Schwarzenegger’s performance the better.

Overboard (2018) / D: Rob Greenberg / 112m

Cast: Eugenio Derbez, Anna Faris, Eva Longoria, John Hannah, Swoosie Kurtz, Mel Rodriguez, Josh Segarra, Hannah Nordberg, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Payton Lapinski, Fernando Luján, Cecilia Suárez, Mariana Treviño

Rating: 6/10 – when a rich, arrogant, multi-millionaire playboy (Derbez) falls overboard from his yacht and loses his memory, a struggling single mother (Faris) that he’s treated badly sees an opportunity to exploit his misfortune for her own personal gain; a gender-swap remake of the 1987 original, Overboard is pleasant enough, with well judged performances from Derbez and Faris, but it plays out in expected fashion, with only occasional moments that stand out, and never really tries to do anything that might make viewers think of it as anything more than an acceptable remake doing its best to keep audiences just interested enough to stay until the end.

El club de los buenos infieles (2017) / D: Lluís Segura / 84m

Cast: Raúl Fernández de Pablo, Fele Martínez, Juanma Cifuentes, Hovik Keuchkerian, Albert Ribalta, Jordi Vilches, Adrián Lastra

Rating: 7/10 – four friends, all married but experiencing a loss of desire for their wives, decide to start a club for men with similar problems, and in the hope that by “seeing” other women, it will rekindle their desire; based on a true story, El club de los buenos infieles starts off strongly as the men explain their feelings, but soon the ridiculous nature of their solution leads to all sorts of uncomfortable moments and situations that stretch the credibility of the material, leaving the principal cast’s performances to keep things engaging, along with Segura’s confident direction (which helps overcome much of the script’s deficiencies), and a couple of very funny set-pieces that are worth a look all by themselves.

Destination Wedding (2018) / D: Victor Lewin / 87m

Cast: Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves

Rating: 5/10 – two misanthropes (Ryder, Reeves) invited to the same wedding (he’s the groom’s brother, she’s the groom’s ex), find they have much more in common than expected, including an attraction to each other; the kind of movie that has its characters spout pseudo-intellectual nonsense at every opportunity in an effort to make them sound wise and/or studiously profound, Destination Wedding could have been much funnier than it thinks it is, and wastes the talents of both Ryder and Reeves (yes, even Reeves) as it leaves no turn unstoned in its efforts to be a romantic comedy that isn’t in the least bit romantic, or comic.

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone (2016) / D: Dallas Jenkins / 92m

Cast: Brett Dalton, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, Neil Flynn, D.B. Sweeney, Shawn Michaels, Patrick Gagnon, Tim Frank, Tara Rios

Rating: 6/10 – a former teen TV star whose adult acting career isn’t going as well as he’d hoped, finds himself doing community service at his hometown church, and discovering that having a lack of religious faith is the least of his problems; a bright and breezy romantic comedy, The Resurrection of Gavin Stone wears its Christian beliefs on its sleeve, while doing absolutely nothing that you wouldn’t expect it to, thanks to likable performances from Dalton and Johnson-Reyes, a solid if predictable script, and workmanlike direction that never lets the material stray from its formulaic constraints, though if truth be told, on this occasion that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The Predator (2018) / D: Shane Black / 107m

Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Sterling K. Brown, Olivia Munn, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey, Yvonne Strahovski

Rating: 5/10 – a rag-tag band of PTSD sufferers and an army sniper (Holbrook) find themselves taking on a couple of Predators while a secret arm of the US government atempts to exploit their presence on Earth; a movie that could and should have been so much better (soooo much better), The Predator is unnecessarily convoluted and stupid at the same time, and despite Black’s best efforts, remains the kind of sequel that everyone has high hopes for, only to see them drain away with every dumb moment that the script can squeeze in, and every tortuous twist of logic that can be forced onto the narrative, all of which leaves everyone hoping and praying that this is the end of the line.

The Astounding She-Monster (1957) / D: Ronald V. Ashcroft / 62m

aka Mysterious Invader

Cast: Robert Clarke, Kenne Duncan, Marilyn Harvey, Jeanne Tatum, Shirley Kilpatrick, Ewing Miles Brown

Rating: 3/10 – kidnappers take their hostage up into the mountains, unaware that a space ship has crash landed nearby, and the sole occupant (Kilpatrick) is more than capable of defending itself; not a cult classic, and not a movie to look back fondly on for any low-budget virtues it may have (it doesn’t), The Astounding She-Monster is a creature feature without a creature, a crime drama with an annoying voice over, a sci-fi horror with minimal elements of both, and a movie with far too many scenes where the cast run through the same stretch of woods trying to get away from an alien whose only speed is ultra-ultra-slow.

The Devil and Father Amorth (2017)

26 Thursday Jul 2018

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Christina, Documentary, Exorcism, Gabriele Amorth, Italy, Possession, Psychology, Religion, Review, William Friedkin

D: William Friedkin / 69m

With: William Friedkin, Gabriele Amorth, Jeffrey Burton Russell, Paolo Vizzacchero, Nadia Vizzacchero, Neil Martin, Itzhak Fried, John Mazziota, Robert Barron

In 1972, director William Friedkin began shooting The Exorcist, an adaptation of the novel by William Peter Blatty. The movie was an unqualified success, partly because of the special effects used to express the nature of the possession. It was also the favourite movie of Father Gabriele Amorth (the ‘h’ is silent), an Italian Roman Catholic priest and the Vatican’s Exorcist in Chief (though he thought the special effects were “over the top”). Having made the most famous movie about an exorcism, Friedkin was given the opportunity in May 2016 to witness (and record) a real exorcism, one carried out by Father Amorth on a 46-year-old Italian woman known as Christina. This would be her ninth exorcism. Afterwards, Friedkin followed up his experience by showing his footage to various interested parties such as clinical neurologists, psychologists, and even the Archbishop of Los Angeles. Having gained their views, Friedkin returned to Italy to meet with Christina again, but their encounter was not what the director was expecting. And due to a variety of circumstances, his enquiry into her possession was left open-ended…

You can see the obvious attraction for Friedkin in making this documentary. And it couldn’t have been difficult to raise the funds to get the movie made. But somewhere along the way, something went dreadfully wrong with the whole idea, leaving The Devil and Father Amorth as something of an odd fish, dredged up from the bottom of the ocean and looking unlike anything seen before. With a lengthy introduction that relates to the making of The Exorcist, Friedkin revisits some of the Georgetown locations where the movie was shot, and includes archive footage of Blatty talking about the inspiration for his novel. It’s perhaps meant to be a nostalgic trip down Memory Lane, a way of explaining how Friedkin came to make this movie as well. But as the movie progresses, it proves to have less and less relevance and feels more like an attempt to pad out a documentary that’s already in danger of having an appropriate running time. Make no mistake: the exorcism footage barely covers a third of the movie’s length, and despite being the “real thing”, isn’t as enthralling as you’d expect. And though it’s meant to be taken seriously, when Christina yells, “I’m Satan! Stop it!” at Father Amorth, it’s hard to believe that possession is really what’s happening.

It’s a view backed up by a number of scientific talking heads – though none of them will come right out and say it. Friedkin asks the question several times: can possession be what the Church says it is? But no one will commit to a straight answer, and though demonic possession is recognised as a psychological disorder, their equivocation is something of a non-starter (where is Richard Dawkins when you need him?). Only the neurologist Itzhak Fried comes close to hitting the scientific nail on the religious head when he says that without a belief in demons then it’s unlikely anyone else will suffer in the same way. To his credit, Friedkin allows the experts’ different opinions to stand unchallenged – who knows, one of them might be right – but spoils everything with a reconstruction from “memory” of the meeting with Christina that sounds like something from 1973. So lacking in credibility is this sequence that it spoils the movie as a whole and makes you wonder if this really is as authentic as claimed; if it is then truth really is stranger than fiction.

Rating: 4/10 – with an exploitative feel to it that further undermines the rationale behind its making, The Devil and Father Amorth is an uncertain movie that can’t decide if it’s making the case for possession or not; Friedkin is a stiff presence in front of the camera, as well as something of a badgering interviewer, but the banality of it all does allow a layer of sincerity that otherwise, would be sorely missed.

The Vessel (2016)

05 Friday May 2017

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Aris Mejias, Drama, Faith, Jacqueline Duprey, Julio Quintana, Lucas Quintana, Martin Sheen, Puerto Rico, Religion, Review, San Juan, Tragedy, Tsunami

D: Julio Quintana / 86m

Cast: Lucas Quintana, Martin Sheen, Jacqueline Duprey, Aris Mejias, Hiram Delgado, Eugenio Monclova

At a small town on the coast of Puerto Rico, tragedy hangs heavy over the residents. Ten years before, a tsunami destroyed the elementary school and claimed the lives of forty-six children. The women, who all wear mourning black, have vowed never to have any more children, and the church services are largely unattended due to the townspeople’s loss of faith in God. Leo (Quintana), whose younger brother was one of the children who died, lives with his mother, Fidelia (Duprey), and is one of the few young men remaining in the town. Fidelia has remained grief-stricken since the tragedy, and has retreated into a world of her own.

Leo feels obliged to stay and look after his mother, even though the local priest, Father Douglas (Sheen), has told him that arrangements could be made for her to live another couple in the town. However, there is another reason for his staying, a widow called Soraya (Mejias). Leo has been entranced by her for years, and hopes one day they can have a relationship. Meanwhile, a chance to leave comes along when Leo’s friend, Gabriel (Delgado) announces his plan to leave town and start a new life elsewhere. On Gabriel’s last night in town they go out, have too many drinks, and at the end of the night, while at the sea wall, both fall into the water below.

Both are drowned, and their bodies taken to the town’s makeshift morgue. Hours after he has died, Leo returns to life. Father Douglas views it as a miracle (though he makes no more of it than that), while the townspeople view it initially with suspicion, making the sign of the cross when they pass Leo on the street. However, church attendance increases, and Father Douglas sees the beginnings of a return to faith amongst the community as a whole. Leo feels emboldened enough to speak to Soraya, and a relationship begins to develop between them. At the same time, Leo is compelled to build first a shelter, and then a boat from the debris left in the church. Why he does this he doesn’t know, but he is convinced that it will float if it’s put out to sea. He plans to put his own rediscovered faith to the test, but some of the townspeople, wanting Leo to provide miracles for them, turn against him (and the church) when he’s unable to give them what they want, and they turn to sabotage as a means of hurting him…

A movie about renewed faith and rediscovered hope in a community that has shackled itself to the idea of perpetual penance, The Vessel is a rich, contemplative movie that tackles its religious themes with a modicum of proselytising, and which provides a thoughtful and thought-provoking approach to the material. All of the townsfolk – except for Leo – are waiting on a sign, an indication that God has not forsaken them in the wake of the tsunami. They want the deaths of their children to have some kind of meaning, and when finally they receive the sign they’ve been waiting for, it’s not what they’ve expected: a drowned man returned to life is the kind of message that seems to be taunting them: why him and not their children?

Crucially, it’s a question the movie, written and directed by Julio Quintana (making his first feature) never answers, settling instead for alluding to Leo as a Christ figure come to free the townsfolk from their self-imposed emotional prisons. But Leo isn’t interested in helping the townsfolk, in fact, he’s not even sure he’s helping himself. His actions in building the boat certainly have an effect on the people and friends he’s known all his life, but as Quintana the director/writer is keen to point out, whatever message there is, it’s as open to interpretation as any other message might be. This allows Quintana the director to show the townspeople’s varied reactions to the fact of Leo’s resurrection, and to focus on the way that these reactions are less concerned with regaining hope and faith than in exploiting potential solutions to their own grief and fears (and without too much forethought, as well).

Leo pursues Soraya with a determination that brooks no interference or rebuke, and their tentative, sensitively handled courtship shows both of them taking a leap of faith – Leo in acting on his feelings, and Soraya in allowing herself to have feelings again. Their romance provides the movie with a strong emotional core, while elsewhere Quintana focuses on notions of grief, sadness and religious fragility. All of these aspects are addressed in a simple, straightforward way that keeps the movie from descending into unnecessary melodrama, and allows it to maintain an even tone throughout. But it’s still the town’s lack of faith that infuses the narrative, and though it becomes clear by the movie’s end that the townsfolk have regained some of their faith (in God and each other), it’s also clear that it’s not come about because of any religious imperative. This is why Father Douglas appears to be more tolerated than needed.

As the beleaguered priest, Sheen is a major draw for the movie, and his character’s involvement with Leo and the townspeople occupies a good part of the movie’s running time. It’s a measured, delicate performance from Sheen, who provides Father Douglas with a sense of ennui that perfectly explains the priest’s inability to make significant changes to the spiritual health of his flock. He’s too weighed down by the intransigence of the townsfolk, and despite his best attempts, he has no answer for it. As the source of reawakened feelings within the townspeople, Leo is perhaps an unwitting instrument of God, but Quintana leaves that up to the viewer to decide, and uses Leo’s own reluctance to engage with religion as a powerful way of sewing doubt as to the validity of Father Douglas’s claim that his return to life is a miracle.

The Vessel (and there’s no prizes for guessing who or what the title refers to) is also one of the most beautifully shot movies of 2016, thanks to some truly impressive location photography by Santiago Benet Mari. The visual acuity brought out by such spectacular surroundings creates a sense of natural beauty that is almost hyper-real, and even the interiors have a conspicuous harmony that complements the gorgeous exteriors. Quintana organises his characters within the frame so that they too seem like an organic part of the scenery, and some compositions are so striking they’re capable of making the viewer say, “Wow!” – and more than once.

Rating: 8/10 – a modest movie with modest ambitions, The Vessel succeeds in surpassing those ambitions to provide audiences with an earnest, yet genuine look at unfettered sorrow and dissipated faith; bewitching, and with good performances all round, Julio Quintana’s debut feature is honest, unpretentious, and above all, effortlessly absorbing from start to finish.

Indignation (2016)

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Drama, James Schamus, Korean War, Literary adaptation, Logan Lerman, Philip Roth, Religion, Review, Romance, Sarah Gadon, Tracy Letts, Winesburg

D: James Schamus / 111m

Cast: Logan Lerman, Sarah Gadon, Tracy Letts, Linda Emond, Danny Burstein, Philip Ettinger, Ben Rosenfield, Pico Alexander, Noah Robbins

In New Jersey in the early Fifties, Marcus Messner (Lerman), the son of a local butcher, has been awarded a scholarship to attend Winesburg College in Ohio. His father (Burstein) is over-protective and fearful that something will happen to Marcus when he’s there, but Marcus is having none of it; he can’t wait to get away. At Winesburg he finds himself boarding with two other Jewish students, Ron Foxman (Ettinger) and Bertram Flusser (Rosenfield). He throws himself into his studies, takes on a job at the college library, and generally keeps himself to himself. He doesn’t socialise, and when he’s offered a chance to join a largely Jewish fraternity, he refuses.

Marcus is drawn out of his self-contained world by the presence of Olivia Hutton (Gadon), an elegant fellow student he’s immediately attracted to. He plucks up the courage to ask her out on a date; at the evening’s end, Olivia surprises him by doing something so unexpected that he doesn’t know what to think of Olivia, or how to assimilate what happened within his limited experience of girls. He decides to avoid Olivia while he comes to a decision about how he feels, but this has the consequence of Olivia believing he doesn’t like her. Simmering tensions with his roommates come to a head in the meantime, and his decision to find alternative lodging within the college brings him to the attention of the dean, Hawes D. Caudwell (Letts). During a meeting between them, the conversation becomes heated, with Marcus decrying some of Winesburg’s traditions, including the mandatory attendance of chapel each week, especially as Marcus regards himself as an atheist. As he attempts to leave, he collapses and ends up in hospital thanks to a ruptured appendix.

Olivia makes several visits, and their relationship develops further. She reveals a secret about herself, one that complicates matters when he receives a visit from his mother (Emond) as well. The two women are introduced to each other, which makes an initially nervous Marcus quite happy. But his mother warns him that he should have nothing further to do with Olivia, a piece of advice that he ignores once he’s allowed out of the hospital. But his pursuit of Olivia, and his making a foolish decision in relation to attending chapel, leads to another encounter with the Dean, one that will have far-reaching consequences.

Adaptations of novels by Philip Roth have proven a mixed bunch in recent years, with the likes of Elegy (2008) and The Humbling (2014) receiving a lukewarm welcome with critics and audiences alike. And at first, Indignation seems as if it’s going to buck the trend of its predecessors. It opens with a sequence set during the Korean War, with Korean soldiers attempting to kill a US soldier. The soldier appears to avoid being killed, and we’re then transported to Newark and the funeral of a young Jewish soldier. We meet Marcus, fresh-faced, and anxious to get away from the stifling attention of his father. He’s well-liked in the neighbourhood, obviously bright, and will be the first Messner to attend college. It’s a neat, concise set up, and writer-director Schamus introduces us to the Messners and their milieu with a minimum of effort and a maximum of probity.

Once at Winesburg, though, and Schamus’s efforts begin to unravel. Marcus becomes a withdrawn, mirthless individual, and not without a degree of arrogance about his manner. This change of character is disturbing, as it challenges the viewer’s ability to feel sympathy for Marcus as the movie unfolds. His interaction with his fellow roommates borders on petulant, while he pursues Olivia with an eagerness that borders on obsession (he’s won over by the sight of her bare leg dangling over the arm of a chair). Only his inexperience with girls and obvious social naïvete spares him from being regarded as a jerk, but it’s a close run thing. His dismay at Olivia’s behaviour only adds to the impression of Marcus as a bemused but intolerant, shallow young man, and Schamus doesn’t do enough to offset that belief with anything more convincing or conclusive.

The encounter between Marcus and Dean Caudwell is the movie’s highlight, a near-fifteen minute masterclass in screen acting and writing that eclipses everything that comes before and after it. It’s somewhat of a shame that the scene is that good, because it exposes Marcus’s contempt for the college, and his disaffection with everything around him. This is where the “indignation” of the title is supposed to be revealed, from Marcus being made to do things that he doesn’t like or want to do (like join a fraternity), and railing against them. But Marcus’s indignation is misplaced and misappropriated; he’s an angry young man fighting for what he believes is just and right, but based on too little experience of life and the demands it can make on a person. He’s the classic angry young man/anti-authority figure, cocksure and heading for a fall.

And so it plays out, with Schamus guiding Marcus – and the viewer – to an inevitable downfall, one where Roth, via Schamus, reveals the truth behind Marcus’s animosity: that he’s the victim of his own poor choices, and has no one else to blame but himself. There’s a wider argument: that when we make decisions we do so mostly without giving those decisions proper consideration, and Marcus’s story is a perfect example. But in adapting Roth’s novel, Schamus – known as a screenwriter and making his directorial debut here – pares back the drama so that there are long stretches where Marcus’s search for recognition (of his needs in others) occupies too much screen time. The tentative romance between Marcus and Olivia is also an issue, as Olivia’s dialogue is almost entirely given over to evasive, tissue-thin comments about relationships, and sidestepping questions about herself. And there’s a grim inevitability to it all that Schamus isn’t able to hide or exploit, despite the tragedy that surrounds her.

Thankfully, Schamus is well-served by his cast. Lerman, who despite appearances in movies such as Noah (2014) and Fury (2014), still carries the aura of being Percy Jackson with him, here embraces Marcus’s faults and growing cynicism with such confidence that it’s perhaps his most intuitive and perceptive performance to date. He’s not able to engender too much sympathy as Marcus, but perhaps that’s the point, that Marcus shouldn’t be too likeable, because if he was, his attitude and displeasure with college life (and much else) wouldn’t be as strident. In support, Gadon is radiant, her blonde hair, marbled skin and ruby red lips – such perfection – covering a damaged soul whose emotional needs are unlikely to ever be met. And then there’s Letts, his stern yet worryingly blank features proving the perfect foil for Lerman’s anguished expressions in their mid-movie encounter, his stillness and slightly menacing approach to his dialogue adding unexpected layers to the performance.

While Indignation does touch on elements and notions of anti-semitism, sexual mores, and the wider political and social worries of the time, including the shadow of the Korean War, at its heart it’s the story of a broken romance. Marcus and Olivia are a good match, one of them with too little experience of the world, one with too much; one of them has yet to make any real, life-changing decisions in their life, the other has made one too many. Again, as Roth says, it all comes down to choices, and when we make them, how we respond when they don’t work out. The consequence for Marcus can be seen at the movie’s end, and if there’s a degree of justice in that consequence, then should we be surprised?

Rating: 7/10 – with too many of its source novel’s subtleties and nuances jettisoned in favour of a more straightforward retelling, Indignation doesn’t have the impact that it should, and as a result, it only delivers emotionally and/or dramatically on a few, isolated occasions; bolstered by a trio of very good performances, and a feel for the period that helps ground the narrative, the movie struggles to make you care about Marcus or his “indignation”, and is only gripping when Marcus and the Dean go toe to toe.

Silence (2016)

02 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Adam Driver, Andrew Garfield, Buddhism, Christianity, Drama, Historical drama, Issei Ogata, Japan, Liam Neeson, Literary adaptation, Martin Scorsese, Religion, Remake, Review, Shûsaku Endô, Tadanobu Asano

D: Martin Scorsese / 161m

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Issei Ogata, Liam Neeson, Shin’ya Tsukamoto, Yoshi Oiza, Yôsuke Kubozuka, Ciarán Hinds

Seventeenth century Portugal: news has reached the Jesuit ministry that a missionary to Japan, Father Ferreira (Neeson), has renounced his faith and embraced not only the Japanese way of life, but their Buddhist teachings as well. Two of his pupils, Father Rodrigues (Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Driver), believing the news to be unsubstantiated rumour, are tasked with travelling to Japan and learning for themselves if the news is true. Needing a guide to help keep them safe once in Japan – the Japanese are persecuting anyone who promotes or follows the Christian faith – the two priests enlist the aid of Kichijiro (Kubozuka), a man whose contact with Christianity in his homeland has left him with a variety of personal demons.

Once in Japan, Rodrigues and Garupe soon discover how dangerous it is to be associated with Christianity. They witness the torture and murder of several villagers who have taken up the Christian faith, and are kept in hiding so that they don’t fall victim as well. They decide it will be safer for both of them if they split up, and make it easier to continue their search for Father Ferreira. But Rodrigues is soon captured. He’s assigned an interpreter (Asano), and is kept under the watchful eye of the local Inquisitor, Inoue-sama (Ogata). It soon transpires that Inoue wants Rodrigues to apostatize (renounce his belief in God) by stepping on an image of Christ. By this token, any Japanese who have been practicing Christianity will be allowed to live, and so will Rodrigues. Despite witnessing more atrocities, Rodrigues holds firm in his belief, even though his prayers remain frustratingly unanswered.

Rodrigues’ faith is tested time and again, and Inoue continually informs him of the obstacles that Christianity will always face in becoming established in Japan. Despair begins to set in when Garrpe is also found and his fate determined by an act of valour. For Rodrigues it’s the first of several turning points, all designed to bring him to the point of apostatizing, but when he finally comes face to face with Father Ferreira, instead of the encounter reaffirming his faith and his weakening determination to stand firm against the violence perpetrated by his captors, the priest finds himself even more stranded, both in terms of his faith and his emotions. With Inoue’s tactics beginning to finally wear him down, Rodrigues finds himself having to decide which is more important: his life and the lives of others, or his faith.

An adaptation of the novel by Shûsaku Endô (and previously made in 1971 by Masahiro Shinoda), Silence has been a project that Martin Scorsese has been looking to make for around thirty years. Passion projects don’t always turn out so well for their makers, their closeness to the material producing a kind of tunnel vision that filters out any flaws, but with this, Scorsese has made a riveting movie about faith, religious idealism, and agonising self-doubt. It’s a measured, deliberately paced movie that is unlikely to satisfy everyone who sees it, but if you give yourself over to it, then it’s a movie that will reward you over and over again.

It opens with a blank screen and a cacophony of natural sounds including insects that builds to a crescendo before we see the title displayed briefly, and then the picture cuts to a medium shot of two severed heads resting on a piece of wood. It’s an arresting opening, and what follows isn’t for the faint hearted as Christian converts are tortured and left to die, with Neeson’s anguished priest looking on. This is the backdrop the movie keeps returning to, the resolute dispassion with which the Japanese treat all Christians in their country unless they apostatize themselves. And this is the very cauldron of hate that Fathers Rodrigues and Garrpe throw themselves into thanks to their naivete and, it must be acknowledged, no small degree of religious arrogance. And it’s not long before they, and the viewer, realise that they’re out of their depth.

A major part of the narrative is taken up with the argument that Christianity has no place in the Japan of the seventeenth century, that the country’s Buddhist principles, although sharing many similar facets and ideas with the Christian faith, will never be superseded. Scorsese and co-writer Jay Cocks make much of this battle for hearts and minds, and the script is often eloquent on the subject, highlighting not the differences between Christianity and Buddhism, but their similarities. And the Japanese argument for religious isolationism has its merits when stood up against the arrogant assumption that the Japanese need Christianity to make their lives better. But while all this makes the argument sound quite a simple one, Scorsese and Cocks are also aware that faith – which can apparently move mountains – can also be stubbornly resistant to notions of change. Thus, Rodrigues endures physical torture and mental anguish, and has to be broken psychologically by Inoue (aided by the interpreter’s cruel barbs).

It’s always a difficult matter showing religious faith on screen without the characters seeming like zealots. Thanks to Scorsese’s meticulous direction, and Garfield’s magnificent central performance, Silence isn’t burdened by any notions of extreme religious belief, and nor is it hampered by too much exposition. Rodrigues’ and Garrpe’s mission is, on the face of it, a simple one, but as strangers in a strange land they underestimate their ability to make a difference. All they have is their belief in God, and it strengthens them. But when Rodrigues begins to doubt that God is even listening to his prayers, then it’s only a matter of time before that belief will be tested, and how strong that belief really is. Scorsese keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat, piling on the pressure, but in such a way that you don’t know which way Rodrigues will fall: back into renewed faith, or forward into religious exclusion.

With the religious and cultural backdrops firmly established throughout, Scorsese refrains from adding the political upheaval Japan was experiencing at the time, and which played such a heavy part in the country’s rejection of the Christian faith. It’s a wise move, as the narrative isn’t about politics per se, but Inoue makes an important point at one stage, likening Spain, Portugal, Holland and England to the four courtesans of a king who wisely sends them away to guarantee himself a quiet life. The question is, why should Japan open its borders to other countries and see its lifestyle and traditions trampled upon? Again, Scorsese keeps the material focused on the battle for the hearts and minds of the Japanese people, and the audacity of the Jesuits for believing they could, and should, undermine a foreign culture.

Away from ideas of faith and religious fundamentalism, Silence is also a quietly beautiful movie to watch, with almost painting-like vistas and compositions delicately brought to the screen by the extraordinary combination of Rodrigo Pietro’s exquisite cinematography, Thelma Schoonmaker’s matchless editing skills, and Dante Ferretti’s outstanding production and costume designs. This is organic movie making at its best, a never-ending feast for the senses that’s rounded off by a lilting, elegant score courtesy of Kathryn and Kim Allen Kluge. And then there’s the performances. Garfield – maybe not everyone’s first choice for the lead role – impresses at every step, giving a passionate, despairing portrayal of a man facing a seemingly impossible choice: renounce God (and himself), or be complicit in the deaths of potentially thousands of people. Garfield is growing in stature as an actor, and with this and Hacksaw Ridge (2016) under his belt, is heading for the A-list at a rate of knots. He’s ably supported by Driver (though he doesn’t have a lot of screen time), a slyly vindictive turn from Asano, and Ogata’s distinctive, hypnotic, somewhat casual portrayal of a man who uses physical and psychological torture to ensure his country’s religious status quo. As for Neeson, his presence is necessarily limited, but when he is on screen, his appearance serves as a reminder that, outside out of certain recent movies he’s appeared in, he’s more than capable of giving a nuanced and intuitive performance.

As mentioned above, and at 161 minutes, Silence and its subject matter will no doubt put off some potential viewers, and it’s likely that many who do see it will not be swayed by its content, or Scorsese’s approach to the material. But this really is the work of a director operating at a very high level indeed, and his confidence and expertise is there in every scene and every shot. It’s a rare movie that examines religious morality and personal faith with such authority and poise, but Scorsese has pulled it off, and with no small measure of style.

Rating: 9/10 – superb on just about every level (only Garfield’s wandering accent is any cause for annoyance or concern), Silence is a demanding yet rewarding watch made by a director whose engagement with the material is masterful; a devastating movie about ideas that is intelligent and precise in its meanings, this is a very (very) early contender for Movie of the Year.

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

06 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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"The Future", Actors, Alden Ehrenreich, Capitol Pictures, Comedy, Communists, Drama, Ethan Coen, George Clooney, Hollywood, Joel Coen, Josh Brolin, Kidnapping, Musical number, Religion, Review, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton

D: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen / 106m

Cast: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, Frances McDormand, Jonah Hill, Veronica Osorio, Heather Goldenhersh, Alison Pill, Max Baker, Ian Blackman, Christopher Lambert, Clancy Brown, Michael Gambon

Hollywood, 1951. Eddie Mannix (Brolin) is the head of production at Capitol Pictures; he’s also the studio “fixer’, the man who keeps all the stars in line and out of the gossip columns. It’s an average day for Eddie: one of his stars, unmarried DeeAnna Moran (Johansson), reveals she’s pregnant, his boss back in New York wants to take a young Western actor called Hobie Doyle (Ehrenreich) and put him in a period drama directed by European emigre Laurence Laurentz (Fiennes), he’s being headhunted by the Lockheed Company with the promise of a ten-year contract and early retirement, and by lunchtime he’s aware that the star of Capitol’s latest, prestige picture, Hail, Caesar! A Tale of the Christ, Baird Whitlock (Clooney) is missing.

Hail, Caesar! is an important movie for the studio, and Eddie is keen to ensure that nothing goes wrong with its production. When he receives a note from “The Future”, the group claiming responsibility for Whitlock’s disappearance, his day is further complicated by rival gossip columnists (and twin sisters) Thora and Thessaly Thacker (both Swinton) who are planning to run stories about Whitlock and want to interview him that afternoon. Eddie fends them off, promising them both exclusive access to Whitlock the next day. Meanwhile, Hobie Doyle’s portrayal of a dapper gentleman in Laurentz’s latest movie, Merrily We Sing, is proving to be disastrous. Laurentz wants Hobie off the picture, while Hobie thinks he’s not doing so well in the role. Eddie tells both of them that there will be no changes.

A ransom call from “The Future” has Eddie placing $100,000 of the studio’s money in a valise that he can’t close properly. Doyle, who is meeting with Eddie when the call comes through, lends him his belt to keep it shut, and Eddie hides it in one of the sound stages. Later, after attending the premiere of his latest movie, Hobie sees the valise in the possession of song and dance star Burt Gurney (Tatum). Hobie decides to follow him. Back on the lot, Eddie has to make a final decision about the Lockheed offer, while also finding a solution to the problem of DeeAnna’s pregnancy. And as midnight ushers in another twenty-four hours, it’s still another average day for Eddie.

First touted back in 1999, though originally to be set in the Twenties and focusing on a troupe of actors performing a play set in Ancient Rome, the Coen Brothers’ latest has sat on the shelf for a while now, but what was originally a “thought experiment” has developed into a deceptively simple, endlessly endearing movie about the frivolous nature of entertainment and the serious efforts that go into making all that frivolity seem important. There’s also a political element in the form of “The Future”, the group of Communist screenwriters who kidnap Whitlock, and enough affectionate pastiches of Fifties movie making to keep fans of the period more than happy (a song and dance number called No Dames! and featuring Channing Tatum is a particular highlight).

But look closely and you’ll also find a number of religious references, from DeeAnna’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy and need for a husband reminiscent of the Virgin Mary’s situation, to the Lockheed Company’s pursuit of Eddie being a clear ringer for Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. Contentious? Probably, but the symbolism is there, and the Coens have a lot of fun with it, adding unexpected layers to a movie that appears quite lightweight on the surface. But then there are the clever Hitchcock references as well, the idea of good versus evil, sinning and redemption, and suddenly Hail, Caesar! is more than the fluffy confection that it looks and sounds like.

And yet it is also determinedly simplistic in its approach, almost offhandedly so. Eddie faces each problem with an equanimity that seems out of place given the potential for career-ending disaster that faces him at every turn, but then there’s that Lockheed offer he can fall back on if he needs to, so why should he be worried all the time. (It’s actually really simple: he’s that good at his job.) Whitlock embraces the Communist rhetoric of “The Future” because he’s an idiot, an empty vessel who soaks up their ideas in the same way that he soaks up the lines of dialogue in a script – and then parrots them verbatim. It’s no wonder he’s unfazed by his having been kidnapped; like Eddie he lives in a protected bubble: along as he does what he’s supposed to, everything will be all right.

Brolin and Clooney both give wonderful performances but in different ways. Brolin displays a gift for understated comedy he doesn’t get the chance to show too often, while Clooney channels the ghost of Cary Grant with every double take and concerted bit of mugging he can squeeze in (“Squint at the grandeur. It’s blinding! It’s blinding!”). Not far behind them is Swinton as the warring gossip twins, exasperated and credulous, while the likes of Johansson, Hill, Tatum, and Lambert are given small but lovingly crafted supporting turns. As the dramatically talent-free Hobie, Ehrenreich is angel-faced yet crafty, and Fiennes is perfectly cast as the despairing Laurentz. The two share a scene devoted to having Hobie say the line, “Would that it were so simple” that is a marvel of linguistic dexterity and comic timing; it’s one of the movie’s many comic highlights.

Bolstered by gorgeous cinematography courtesy of DoP Roger Deakins, and allied to the kind of pin-sharp recreation of the period that the Coens are so good at providing, Hail, Caesar! – like a lot of their work – isn’t as straightforward as it seems, and rewards on all kinds of different levels. It seems to be common practice with their movies, to only look at what’s going on on the surface, and dismiss the notion that there’s more going on underneath, as if the Coens were journeyman movie makers, or new to the industry. But this is yet another movie of theirs that is clever throughout and cleverly constructed for maximum effect and enjoyment.

Rating: 9/10 – it may appear slight and lacking in depth, but Hail, Caesar! is a movie that never lets up in its desire to entertain by poking gentle fun at the movies of a bygone era; with a great script and winning performances, the Coen brothers have shown once again that when it comes to their own unique way of movie making, what you see is just the tip of what you get… and it’s damn funny too.

Monthly Roundup – March 2016

31 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Andy Mikita, Australia, Comedy, Cricket, Crime, Death of a Gentleman, Deathgasm, Devil worship, Disaster, Documentary, Drama, Ed Cowan, Edgar Ramirez, Ericson Core, Extreme Sports, FBI, Fred Durst, Horror, Ice Hockey, India, James Blake, Jarrod Kimber, Jason Bourque, Jeremy Sisto, Johnny Blank, Luke Bracey, Michael Shanks, Michelle MacLaren, Milo Cawthorne, Movies, Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story, Murder, Paul Johansson, Point Break (2015), Population / 436, Ray Winstone, Religion, Remake, Reviews, Robbery, Rockwell Falls, Sam Collins, Sci-fi, Sebastian Spence, Sports, Stonados, SyFy, Test match cricket, Twenty 20, Water spouts

Deathgasm (2015) / D: Jason Lei Howden / 86m

Cast: Milo Cawthorne, James Blake, Kimberley Crossman, Sam Berkley, Daniel Cresswell, Delaney Tabron, Stephen Ure, Andrew Laing, Colin Moy, Jodie Rimmer

Rating: 7/10 – when a teenage wannabe death metal band come into possession of sheet music that, when played, summons a demon called the Blind One, it’s up to them to stop both a zombie outbreak and the Blind One from destroying the world; raucous, rough around the edges, and with a liberal approach to gore, Deathgasm is a good-natured horror comedy that stumbles on occasion but, luckily, never loses sight of its simple brief: to be loud, dumb and lots of fun.

Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story (2013) / D: Andy Mikita / 87m

Cast: Michael Shanks, Kathleen Robertson, Dylan Playfair, Andrew Herr, Emma Grabinsky, Martin Cummins, Andrew Kavadas, Teach Grant, Ali Tataryn, Lochlyn Munro, Tom Anniko, Donnelly Rhodes, Erik J. Berg

Rating: 6/10 – the true story of ice hockey legend Gordie Howe who, after retiring in 1971, came back two years later and played not only with his two sons but in a new league altogether – and maintained his winning ways; looking like a strange hybrid of TV movie and abandoned big screen project, Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story does its best to avoid being a formulaic biopic, but is let down by the episodic nature of the script and a tendency to raise issues but not always follow them through.

Point Break (2015) / D: Ericson Core / 114m

Cast: Edgar Ramirez, Luke Bracey, Ray Winstone, Teresa Palmer, Matias Varela, Clemens Schick, Tobias Santelmann, Delroy Lindo, Max Thieriot, Nikolai Kinski

Rating: 4/10 – ex-extreme sportsman Johnny Utah joins the FBI and is given the opportunity to infiltrate a group of extreme sports fanatics who may or may not be responsible for a string of daring robberies; pretty to look at and featuring some great extreme sports sequences, Point Break is nonetheless a pointless remake with poor performances from all concerned, a woeful script, and lacks the edge Kathryn Bigelow brought to the original, leaving the viewer to wonder – yet again – why Hollywood insists on making so many dreadful remakes.

Stonados (2013) / D: Jason Bourque / 88m

Cast: Paul Johansson, Sebastian Spence, Miranda Frigon, Jessica McLeod, Dylan Schmid, William B. Davis, Grace Wolf, Thea Gill

Rating: 3/10 – off the coast of Boston, freak water spouts appear and hurl large stone chunks in all directions, putting everyone in danger and hoping they don’t hit land and become… stonados!; made in the same year as Sharknado, this tries to take itself seriously, but without a sense of its own absurdity it stutters from one poorly staged “stonado” sequence to another while – ironically – being unable to shrug off a whole raft of ineffective, embarrassing performances.

Population / 436 (2006) / D: Michelle MacLaren / 88m

Cast: Jeremy Sisto, Fred Durst, Charlotte Sullivan, Peter Outerbridge, David Fox, Monica Parker, Frank Adamson, R.H. Thomson, Reva Timbers

Rating: 6/10 – a census taker (Sisto) comes to the small town of Rockwell Falls and begins to suspect a terrible conspiracy, one that keeps the town’s population fixed at the same number; an uneasy, paranoid thriller with horror overtones, Population 436 features a good performance from Sisto and a well maintained sense of dread, but is held back from being entirely convincing by some awkward soap opera moments and a mangled reason for the town keeping its numbers to 436.

Death of a Gentleman (2015) / D: Sam Collins, Jarrod Kimber, Johnny Blank / 99m

With: Sam Collins, Jarrod Kimber, Ed Cowan, Giles Clarke, Narayanaswami Srinivasan, Lalit Modi, Gideon Haigh, Mark Nicholas, Chris Gayle

Rating: 8/10 – journalists Collins and Kimber set out to make a movie about their love of cricket and the challenges it faces, both commercially and culturally, and discover a scandal that threatens an end to test match cricket; not just for fans of “the gentleman’s game”, Death of a Gentleman is a quietly impressive documentary that sneaks up on the viewer and exposes the level of corruption at the very top of the game, revealing as it does the way in which the sport is being held to ransom by Srinivasan and a handful of others.

Don Verdean (2015)

19 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Al Qaeda, Amy Ryan, Archaeology, Comedy, Danny McBride, Goliath, Israel, Jared Hess, Jemaine Clement, Leslie Bibb, Lot's Wife, Religion, Review, Sam Rockwell, Satire

D: Jared Hess / 96m

Cast: Sam Rockwell, Amy Ryan, Jemaine Clement, Will Forte, Danny McBride, Leslie Bibb, Steve Park, Sky Elobar

Now and then a motion picture comes along that rocks the very foundation of accepted Christian belief, a movie that lifts the lid on the precepts of religious beliefs and exposes them to the light of clever satire. And for its first twelve minutes, Don Verdean looks like it might be that movie. But once those twelve minutes are over, and Don (Rockwell) commits to working with born-again preacher Tony Lazarus (McBride), any hopes of something special are dashed by the introduction of Boaz (Clement), an Israeli jack-of-all-trades who brings the movie down to earth with a resounding thud.

It’s not so much that Boaz is a manipulative, shady, stupid, sexist, arrogant, deceiving, lying opportunist, nor that he comes close to being one of the most offensive racial characters seen in recent years, but purely because he becomes the driving force behind a plot that doesn’t need him. Boaz is a character who belongs in another movie entirely, and one that hasn’t got the kind of ambition that Don Verdean has. But he’s there, he’s an idiot, and we’re stuck with him. (Even Clement, an actor whose comedy chops aren’t to be overlooked, can’t do much with him; and if he can’t, how’s the viewer meant to cope?)

The way in which Boaz overwhelms both the narrative and the other characters is unfortunate for several reasons. The movie sets out its comedic stall from the start with an infomercial detailing Don’s successes finding holy artefacts in Israel, items such as his greatest find: iron shears dating back over 3000 years (and possibly the very shears used to rob Samson of his hair – yes?). The narration is portentous and deadly serious, and it’s this seriousness that is carried forward as we see Don field questions about the validity of his finds at a small church group. Don responds to these doubts with calm sincerity, and even though the viewer will know without a shadow of a doubt that he’s as naive in his own way as the people that believe in him, he’s also determined to provide reassurance for those whose faith might be wavering.

With Don’s unwavering naïvete matched by the public’s erstwhile gullibility, he joins forces with Lazarus and Lazarus’s ex-prostitute wife Joylinda (Bibb) to bring even more religious artefacts back from the Holy Land (even if the whole idea is both illegal and preposterous). Lazarus wants to put these items on display at his church, both as a display of his unwavering faith, and as a way of undermining a rival ministry run by ex-Satanist-turned preacher Pastor Fontaine (Forte). Don has a lead on the remains of Lot’s Wife – actually a rock formation that looks like it has breasts – and contacts Boaz to arrange to have them shipped to the States, but the Israeli sends a different “statue”. Lazarus retains his faith in Don and asks if there is a particular antiquity he’d like to track down. Don’s answer? The skull of Goliath.

However, setbacks in Israel lead Don to make an awful decision, and he fakes finding the skull. When Boaz discovers the deception, he blackmails Don into bringing him to the US. And the script, by Hess and his wife Jerusha, quickly runs out of comedic steam as it brings Boaz’ selfish demands and childish behaviour to the fore, and sidelines Don’s attempts to weather the storm of his professional duplicity. It’s still a funny movie, but by now it’s lost the subtlety and the poise applied by a cast who know to play things completely straight, even when they’re called upon to behave ridiculously or say something absurd (even McBride, an actor not exactly known for the subtlety of his performances, reigns in the urge to put in a larger than life performance, and his tirade against sea monkeys is a highlight).

With the focus now on Boaz and his increasingly ludicrous machinations, the script brings in an unlikely scam: the finding of the Holy Grail (on an Indian reservation no less). It’s an idea that’s ripe for comic exploitation, but again, Hess misjudges the strength of the material, and the movie labours under the weight of that misjudgment, and struggles to recover. A twist in the tale proves laboured and is awkwardly revealed, and the subplot involving Don’s lovelorn assistant Carol (Ryan) is wrapped up with undue haste. And the less said about Pastor Fontaine and his efforts to see Lazarus’s church shut down the better.

This is very much a movie with a core idea – the need for religious proof of events mentioned in the Bible in an increasingly secular world – that is downplayed and eventually discarded in favour of a succession of betrayals and implausible story turns that eradicate the good work done in the movie’s first half hour. Rockwell is laidback as Don, playing him with a delicate sense of irony that makes the character immensely likeable and sympathetic, even when he responds to Carol’s dismay that he’s never asked her about her personal life by saying he hasn’t because he didn’t think she had one. Ryan struggles to make Carol anything more than an amiable stereotype, while Forte comes close to sabotaging his own performance by substituting mugging for acting. And Clement… well…

By the end, most viewers will be feeling a mixture of disappointment and ennui, as the script tries to wind things up with one last flourish, but it’s an effort that comes too late, and reminds the viewer of what might have been if the script had been more focused on the world of Biblical archaeology and its desperate-to-believe supporters. Instead, Hess’s latest fails to make the most of its central idea, and never fully gets to grips with its inherent notions of faith and honesty.

Rating: 5/10 – with a script that strays further and further away from its initial set up with each successive minute, Don Verdean lacks coherence and conviction once the search for Goliath’s skull is begun; Rockwell is good value as usual, but those expecting a more concerted, consistently humorous movie will be sorely disappointed thanks to some very poor storyline choices.

Trailer – Don Verdean (2015)

28 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Archaeology, Fraud, Goliath's skull, Jared Hess, Preview, Religion, Religious artefacts, Sam Rockwell, Trailer

Good (really good) comedies are thin on the ground these days, and although the latest from Jared Hess – Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Nacho Libre (2006) – does look a little rough around the edges, there’s enough potential seen in the trailer to warrant a good degree of anticipation. The movie’s tale of religious oneupmanship and archaeological fraud is certainly ripe for laughs, and the presence of Rockwell in the title role bodes well, but this will be down to Hess and whether or not his script (co-written by his wife Jerusha) is as finely crafted as Napoleon Dynamite was, and if it can steer clear of being more farce than parody. If so, then with a bit of (divine?) luck it could be a breath of fresh air in an otherwise currently stale genre.

Mini-Review: The Calling (2014)

23 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Canada, Crime, Donald Sutherland, Drama, Ellen Burstyn, Fort Dundas, Gil Bellows, Jason Stone, Literary adaptation, Murder, Religion, Review, Serial killer, Susan Sarandon, Thriller, Topher Grace

D: Jason Stone / 108m

Cast: Susan Sarandon, Gil Bellows, Ellen Burstyn, Topher Grace, Christopher Heyerdahl, Donald Sutherland, Kristin Booth, Ella Ballentine, Jane Moffat

Asked to look in on an old woman as a courtesy, Fort Dundas police inspector Hazel Micallef (Sarandon) finds the woman has been murdered, her throat cut and her mouth manipulated to make it look like she’s screaming. With help from fellow detective Ray Green (Bellows) she begins to investigate the murder but when another victim is discovered in similar circumstances, she begins to suspect a serial killer is responsible. She asks for help on the case and is sent Ben Wingate (Grace), an officer from Toronto; he’s a bit wet behind the ears but eager to help.

As previous victims are identified, Hazel discovers a religious aspect to the murders. She consults with Father Price (Sutherland) who tells her of a biblical portent that relates to the belief in the resurrection of the dead through the sacrifice of twelve willing individuals. Further murders occur but clues lead to a man named Simon (Heyerdahl); they also show the trail he appears to be taking across the country and the way in which he chooses his victims. Armed with this knowledge, Hazel takes a risk and sends Wingate to the home of Simon’s next intended victim…

Pitched somewhere between Fargo (1996) and Se7en (1995), The Calling is a serial killer movie that, like many others before it, takes a biblical angle and makes it sound preposterous. It’s always difficult to provide a religious-minded serial killer with an entirely plausible reason for their actions, but this movie, with its otherwise cleverly constructed script by Scott Abramovitch (based on Inger Ash Wolfe’s novel), has a hard time making Simon’s motive credible, and fares even less well when it comes to the sacrificial elements – why does his victims have to be killed so horribly? It’s all too confusing and muddled to work properly and hampers a movie that goes about its business with a moody, unrelenting seriousness.

There’s a sterling performance from Sarandon as a detective with a drink problem, but even she can’t avoid comparisons with Frances McDormand in Fargo – though her level of world-weariness is more pronounced. Bellows and Grace offer solid support, as does Burstyn as Hazel’s over-protective mother, but it’s Heyerdahl who makes the most impact, his portrayal of Simon both unnerving and chilling in its quiet intensity. One scene with the daughter of a waitress is so unsettling it’ll stay with you long after the rest of the movie has faded from your memory. Stone directs with the eagerness of someone making their first feature (which he is), but reigns in the desire to show off and throw in everything including the kitchen sink. He has a pleasingly straightforward approach to framing and composition, and isn’t afraid to embrace some of the more awkward plot developments (basically, anything involving Sutherland). It’s a confident outing for Stone, but sadly, it only gets him so far.

Rating: 5/10 – an interesting premise that’s let down by its own explanation, The Calling is left feeling overcooked and underwhelming; fans of this sort of thing will see the final scene coming from a mile off, while anyone else will have lost any initial enthusiasm once Hazel consults with Father Price.

Hypocrites (1915)

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Courtenay Foote, Gabriel the Ascetic, Hypocrisy, Lois Weber, Nude, Religion, Silent film, Statue, Truth

D: Lois Weber / 54m

Cast: Courtenay Foote, Myrtle Stedman, Herbert Standing, Adele Farrington, Margaret Edwards

The present day: the Reverend Gabriel (Foote) is preaching a sermon on hypocrisy to a congregation who are by turns, disinterested, bored, or unable to see that his sermon has any relevance to themselves. Even one of his own assistants is seen reading a Sunday newspaper. Seeing this, Gabriel rounds on everyone there and focuses the message of the sermon on them. With the service concluded, several of the congregation gather outside the church and plot to have Gabriel removed. Back inside, one of his female assistants (Stedman), clearly enamoured of the cleric, attempts to speak with him but he is so lost in thought she that she passes up the opportunity. When everyone is gone, Gabriel slumps in a chair, the offending newspaper in hand, his thoughts continuing to reach out to God.

He falls into a reverie. In it he finds himself dressed in medieval robes, ascending a steep hill. His parishioners pass by on the road below; some see Gabriel and others climbing the trail, but fail to follow him for various selfish or thoughtless reasons. Two women make the climb with him (including the woman who is fond of him), but they fall by the wayside, leaving Gabriel at the summit, alone and beseeching God for a better understanding of his flock’s lack of moral probity.

The past: Gabriel is a monk living in a monastery where the other monks are shown having what looks like a feast. Gabriel is working on a statue, a gift for the monastery and the people of the town where it’s located. He works in secrecy until the day his work is ready to be shown. The monks arrange a celebration to go with the unveiling, but when the statue is uncovered there is shock and uproar: the statue is of a naked woman, whom Gabriel calls Truth. Gabriel is seized by a mob and killed. Back in the present day, his body is found by his parishioners, the newspaper still in his hand; a later headline reveals their shock at his being found in such circumstances.

Hypocrites is a movie that has gained quite a good reputation over the years, and it’s easy to see why. Though its moralising is a little heavy-handed by today’s standards, it’s still an effective piece, the use of the same actors in both time periods serving to highlight how little Man has changed over the centuries, his selfish, irreligious behaviour leading him further and further away from the path to true enlightenment and happiness. Viewed like this it’s no surprise that the modern day congregation reacts in the way it does, seeking to oust someone who holds a mirror up to their vain, self-serving posturing. This is further explored in an extended sequence where Truth (Edwards) – depicted as a naked young woman – shows Gabriel various examples of the hypocrisy his congregation indulges in, e.g. the politician whose banner reads “My platform is honesty” but who is then seen taking bribes (businessmen, lovers by convenience, and the clergy also come under fire).

The decision to portray Truth as a naked woman caused a degree of uproar at the time of the movie’s release, despite being passed by the National Board of Censorship. Hypocrites was banned in Ohio, there were riots in New York (strange to think now that a movie could provoke that violent a reaction), and reputedly the mayor of Boston wanted each frame including Truth to be hand-painted to cover her nakedness. In the movie itself, the depiction of Truth is achieved via the use of double exposure, thus curtailing the level of detail that can be seen (and Edwards holds an arm across her breasts for the most part), and her appearance is in no way salacious. That the movie received such an unfavourable welcome in places must have been the best thing the filmmakers could have wished for.

As a piece of propaganda for the morality brigade, the movie is expertly handled by Weber whose background before entering the film industry was as a street-corner evangelist. In this sense, her mastery of the material is to be expected, and she offers convincing portraits of moral backsliding, the cast of familiar (if uncredited) faces cranking back on the declamatory style of acting usually found in movies of the period (though Foote more than makes up for any shortfall). Indeed, it’s refreshing to see a wealth of what audiences today would call more naturalistic performances. Weber also displays a technical mastery of the medium, her use of the camera and location photography combining to bring an absorbing, fresh approach at a time when movies were still largely set bound and with the camera employed as a fixed observer. The pace of the movie is well maintained also, and each scene is constructed to accommodate and/or support the fullest expression of the moral laxity it’s presenting. It all makes for an impressive feat of moviemaking.

Rating: 9/10 – as relevant now as it was in 1915, Hypocrites depicts Man at his most shamelessly self-interested and duplicitous; a classic of silent cinema and clear evidence that Lois Weber was as talented – if not more so – than many of her peers.

Carrie (2013)

11 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Bullying, Chloë Grace Moretz, Horror, Julianne Moore, Kimberly Peirce, Prom, Religion, Remake, Review, Stephen King, Telekinesis

D: Kimberly Peirce / 100m

Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Gabriella Wilde, Portia Doubleday, Judy Greer, Alex Russell, Zoë Belkin, Ansel Elgort, Barry Shabaka Henley

When seventeen-year-old Carrie White (Moretz), already a social misfit at the school she attends, has her first period and doesn’t realise what’s happening, her fear and confusion leads to her classmates throwing tampons and sanitary napkins at her, and yelling at her to “plug it up”. This humiliating event is filmed by the worst of her tormentors, Chris Hargenson (Doubleday), and is later posted on the Internet. Stopped by their teacher Ms Desjardin (Greer), the girls are punished by having to stay after school and do repetitive exercises. Chris rebels against this and ends up being suspended; this means she will miss the upcoming school prom. Angered by what she feels is a terrible injustice, Chris vows to get even with Carrie (though not with Ms Desjardin).

For Carrie, her problems don’t end at the school gates. Her mother, Margaret (Moore), governs their lives according to her strict religious beliefs. Carrie tries to explain how terrified she’d been when her period started, but Margaret, her beliefs skewed by a pathological fear of sexual intimacy, berates her daughter for “becoming a woman” and locks her in a closet. Carrie’s anger surfaces and with just her mind she causes a jagged tear to appear down the centre of the closet door. With both mother and daughter realising there is going to be a shift in their relationship – and in Carrie’s favour – a tense line is drawn, and Margaret, now wary of the daughter she has controlled so easily until now, fears for both their futures.

While Chris plots her revenge, another of Carrie’s classmates, Sue Snell (Wilde), ashamed of how she behaved, tries to make amends by persuading her boyfriend Tommy (Elgort) to take Carrie to the prom instead of her. Tommy is initially resistant to the idea but eventually agrees, and asks Carrie if she’d like to go with him. Surprised but flattered (even if she doubts his sincerity to begin with), Carrie agrees. At the prom, and as part of Chris’s revenge, Carrie and Tommy are crowned Prom King and Queen. As they bask in the applause and approbation of their peers, Chris and her boyfriend Billy (Russell) drop two buckets of pig’s blood down onto Carrie and Tommy. The shock and the humiliation is too much and Carrie, using her nascent telekinetic powers, proceeds to take her revenge on everyone there.

Updated in minor ways for a new decade, Carrie plods its way uncomfortably from one leaden scene to the next, never fully convincing and never fully engaging the audience. As a remake it fails to justify its existence thanks to two main problems, both of which are insurmountable: Peirce’s direction and Moretz’s performance.

Peirce – still best known for Boys Don’t Cry (1999) – here proves a bad fit for the material, her approach leading to a curiously flat, matter-of-fact retelling that never takes off or impresses that much. It’s as if she’s decided to film events at a remove, keeping a distance between the audience and the characters so that any empathy the viewer may have is kept from flourishing. For a story with such a strong, emotional resonance, and centred around the age old topics of bullying and female empowerment, it’s even more surprising that Peirce has been unable to connect with the themes inherent in the script. This extends to the performances as well, which – Moore and Moretz aside – are perfunctory and/or lethargic.

Moore is a great choice for Margaret White, and expresses the religious paranoia that has blighted her life, and her daughter’s life, with a real sense of conviction. She’s like a coiled snake, biding its time until the right moment to strike. Moore is the best thing in Carrie but it’s effectively a supporting role and so she’s not on screen enough to make a difference.

Someone who is on screen too much, though, is Moretz, a moderately talented young actress whose rise to stardom on the back of the Kick-Ass movies has meant her being given more praise than is deserved, and who is cruelly shown to be lacking the acting skills needed to portray a character such as Carrie White. She may be the right age but the part requires an actress who is both older and more experienced. Moretz does her best but she’s just not up to it. She isn’t at all convincing as a put-upon teenager, and when required to show the pain and discomfort her life at home has engendered, there’s barely anything for the audience to latch on to. Worse still is the wide-eyed, “did-someone-just-goose-me?” stare she adopts for her telekinetic rampage; if it was intended to make her look scary then someone wasn’t checking the dailies.

With Peirce’s feather light touch on proceedings and Moretz’s underwhelming performance putting the movie at a disadvantage from the risible opening to the even more risible denouement, Carrie fails to meet its audience even halfway. The script is serviceable enough but there’s a lack of effort all round: even Carrie’s destruction of the prom is done half-heartedly, leaving a feeling of “was that it?” in the air. In horror terms, this has to be the biggest disappointment of 2013.

Rating: 4/10 – yet another poor adaptation of a Stephen King novel/short story/laundry list, Carrie lacks the brio and energy needed to carry it off; turgid in the extreme and saved only by Moore’s creepy performance and a sequence that wouldn’t look out of place in a Final Destination movie.

My Top 10 Movies – Part Four

05 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Brian of Nazareth, Comedy, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Jesus Christ, John Cleese, Judea, Michael Palin, Monty Python, People's Front of Judea, Religion, Review, Satire, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)

D: Terry Jones / 94m

Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Sue Jones-Davies, John Young

I was going to write just four words to describe how I feel about Monty Python’s Life of Brian: The. Funniest. Film. Ever. (And then have it in Latin*.)

Although I do subscribe to that opinion – and suspect I always will – even that bold assertion doesn’t do justice to a movie that makes me laugh out loud every time I see it, and which is the one movie that I can quote whole chunks from. To me it is the perfect distillation of what Monty Python could do when they were firing on all cylinders: witty, iconic, bombastic, satirical, acerbic, perceptive, dry, ironic, crazy, and just plain daft.

Like a lot of people in the UK, I saw Life of Brian when it first came out in cinemas. Or, at least, in the cinemas that were allowed to show it. Thirty-nine local authorities (councils) either banned the movie outright, or gave it an X certificate (meaning for over 18’s only), thereby denying the movie to part of its target audience, the over 14’s. Luckily, my local council wasn’t as draconian in its outlook as some others, and on the first Saturday after the movie was released, two friends and I trekked to our local fleapit to see this cause célèbre.

We weren’t disappointed. I’ve since seen movies where the audience has been laughing loudly throughout, but that afternoon in that cinema (the ABC Basildon), there was a reaction of such intensity to the humour shown that I’ve yet to experience it again, or even come anywhere close to re-experiencing it. We laughed until it hurt…and then we laughed even more. Here was a movie that just didn’t let up. The number of gags was astonishing, and the momentum the Pythons maintained across ninety-four madcap minutes was incredible. And the range and breadth of those gags was simply breathtaking. Who else but the Pythons would portray Pontius Pilate with a lateral lisp? Who else but the Pythons would base a whole scene around the correct grammatical spelling of a phrase in Latin (“People called Romanes they go the house? This is motion towards, isn’t it, boy?”)? Who else but the Pythons would keep asserting that crucifixion is either “a doddle” or not as bad as it seems? Who else but the Pythons would have a short sci-fi interlude involving Brian aboard an alien spaceship? And who else but the Pythons would top it all off with row upon row of crucified men and women all singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life? The answer is easy: no one.

I was already a fan of Monty Python and had enjoyed their TV outings, as well as Monty Python and the Holy Grail (although I found that movie a little too rough around the edges). I knew the Pythons could be silly and in Life of Brian there were moments of inspired silliness, but this seemed altogether more grown up, more considered, as if the team had decided to infuse their unique brand of comedy with an added depth. The satirical elements were brilliantly done, highlighting the hypocrisy and shallow-mindedness of religious followers, as well as adopting an heretical stance regarding the Church. The political aspects were deftly handled, poking fun at revolutionary groups (“The Judean People’s Front! Splitters!”) and skewering the pomposity of left-wing political idealists (any scene where Reg and the People’s Front of Judea endlessly debate how to move forward). All these elements were fresh as well, giving the movie an edge of originality that added to the movie’s overall effect.

Of course, Life of Brian isn’t just about the script or the historical detail or the amazing visual look of the movie. It’s about the characters, the larger than life caricatures and personas we’ve come to know and love: Brian (Chapman), the plucky everyman mistaken for the Messiah but in reality as rattled as anyone would be when confronted by a worshipping crowd; Mandy (Jones), Brian’s mother, a coarse, dentally-challenged harridan with loose morals (“You mean you were raped?” “Well, at first.”); Pilate (Palin), the slightly effeminate Roman leader with little sense of how ridiculed he is; Reg (Cleese), the contemptuous, shop steward-like leader of the People’s Front of Judea, and the first to hide when the Romans (or Brian) come knocking; Stan (Idle), who wants to be called Loretta and who wants to have the right to have babies (“Babies? You can’t have babies! Where’s the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?”); and the Gaoler’s assistant (Gilliam) who knowingly looks at Brian and tells him, “I know where you can get it if you want it”. All played to perfection, and firing off lines of dialogue with superb timing.

Since that initial screening, and as with 2001: A Space Odyssey, I have endeavoured to watch Life of Brian at least once a year since its debut on home video. Up until a few years ago, myself and the friend I took to the IMAX five times last year, would put together 36-hour movie marathons; Life of Brian was always the closing movie (and the one we never slept through any part of, no matter how tired we were). As with the other movies in my Top 10, it’s a movie I can watch over and over and still find something new in it each time, even though it’s the shortest. It can cheer me up if I’m down, it can make me smile just by thinking about it – I’ve been smiling the whole time I’ve been writing this – and thirty-five years on it is still as impressive and hilarious as ever.

Rating: 9/10 – *funniest membrana umquam.

thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

Tag Archives: Religion

Come Sunday (2018)

An Interview With God (2018)

Monthly Roundup – September 2018

The Devil and Father Amorth (2017)

The Vessel (2016)

Indignation (2016)

Silence (2016)

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Monthly Roundup – March 2016

Don Verdean (2015)

Trailer – Don Verdean (2015)

Mini-Review: The Calling (2014)

Hypocrites (1915)

Carrie (2013)

My Top 10 Movies – Part Four

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