Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

06 Saturday Jan 2018

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Connie Britton, Dinner party, Drama, Healer, John Lithgow, Miguel Arteta, Mike White, Review, Salma Hayek

D: Miguel Arteta / 82m

Cast: Salma Hayek, John Lithgow, Connie Britton, Jay Duplass, Amy Landecker, Chloë Sevigny, David Warshofsky, John Early

The dinner party has long been used as an excuse for movies to explore the differences between people, or to expose secrets, or to raise questions of a social, sexual, psychological, philosophical, or moral nature. Beatriz at Dinner seeks to cover each of these angles in its relatively short running time, but is it as successful as it may have wanted to be? The answer lies in the way in which it establishes its main character, the titular Beatriz (Hayek). When we first meet her, Beatriz is in a rowboat in a mangrove swamp. It’s a beautiful location, peaceful and calming, and on a bright sunny day. It’s idyllic. But then Beatriz spies a white goat stranded on the shore line. The camera moves in closer – and then Beatriz wakes up; it’s all been a dream. However, it’s a dream that has a basis in reality, because Beatriz has a goat in a pen in her bedroom. It tells us a lot about her, about her principles, and what type of person she is. How will she fare then, when placed in a room with a group of people whose experiences of life, and whose attitudes, are so different from hers?

That’s the question at the heart of Mike White’s screenplay, one of four that were made into movies during 2017 – the others were The Emoji Movie, Brad’s Status, and Pitch Perfect 3. White is a multi-hyphenate who has built up a solid reputation for himself as a screenwriter, and since his first script for Dead Man on Campus (1998), he’s plied his trade in both mainstream and indie circles. Beatriz at Dinner is definitely one of his indie projects, and it reunites him with Arteta, who directed another of White’s scripts, Chuck & Buck (2000). But where White is usually sharper and more astute with his indie scripts, this time around there’s a sense that not all the movie’s ambitions have been met. It’s puzzling, yet perhaps shouldn’t be, because it all hinges on Beatriz, and Beatriz isn’t exactly the kind of heroine that we were probably expecting. She’s a legal migrant from Mexico, she works as a therapist at a cancer treatment centre, and she does private massages for a variety of clients. She doesn’t wear any make-up, drives an old beat up car, has a goat and two dogs, doesn’t appear to be in a relationship, and believes in an holistic approach to life.

One of her clients is Kathy (Britton). Kathy lives with her husband, Grant (Warshofsky), in a gated community outside of Los Angeles. Their house has a view of the ocean and practically yells new money. Beatriz arrives one afternoon to give Kathy a massage, but her car won’t start when she tries to leave. Kathy insists that Beatriz stay for dinner, even though it’s a dinner party for two of Grant’s business colleagues and their wives, and Beatriz is only waiting on a friend to come and get her car started. The first guests, Alex (Duplass) and Shannon (Sevigny) arrive, followed by the other couple, Doug (Lithgow) and Jeana (Landecker). The three couples are celebrating a business deal that Alex has closed, and which stands to make them even richer than they already are. Beatriz begins to suspect that she knows Doug from some time in her past, perhaps in Mexico. As the evening progresses, Beatriz has a little too much to drink, but not enough to stop her voicing her disgust when Doug brags about his having hunted big game in Africa. But her outburst causes a rift between her and Kathy, and when she learns more about Doug and challenges him on some of his sharp practices as a businessman, that rift grows even wider…

Beatriz at Dinner has been widely regarded as a comedy as well as a drama. This is a little misleading, as while there are certainly humorous moments, and other moments where a darkly satirical tone is adopted, this is a drama through and through, serious in its intentions, and direct in its approach to the material. White is looking to skewer the pompous, affected nature of these entitled men and their equally entitled wives, and he does so by providing them with dialogue that makes them sound crass, insensitive, patronising, and lacking in self-awareness. It even extends to the “help”, when John Early’s eerily proficient Evan interrupts Beatriz when she’s talking, to advise on the starters that are available. Beatriz is talking about the hardships she’s experienced in her life; he wants to make sure the guests know what sauces go with the beef and the halibut. Just by that alone you know the evening isn’t going to go well.

Tension arises through the character of Doug, whose company has been involved in several controversial incidents, some of which have occurred in Mexico. The scene is set for a showdown between Beatriz and Doug, but White makes Doug look like he’s made out of Teflon; no matter how angry or aggrieved Beatriz becomes, Doug just shrugs it off as if it’s of so little importance than he can’t even be bothered to acknowledge it. By adopting this approach to the character, White has made him incapable of being affected, and so he remains a largely anodyne villain, in place to stir up emotions and provide conflict, but too remote in attitude to care about being attacked in the first place. Lithgow is good as Doug, expressing right-wing opinions on a variety of topics, and forever wondering why anyone should care if what he does is harmful or even immoral. Doug is a character we want to see bested and taught a valuable lesson about responsibility, but White has other ideas, and so in those terms the movie ends unsatisfactorily, and worse still, elliptically.

Aside from Beatriz, Doug and Kathy, the characters are bland, interchangeable versions of each other, though Grant does show a huge propensity for ass-kissing (see how many times he agrees with something Doug says). As a result there’s little in the way of scene-stealing, and Sevigny and Duplass are on the periphery of the action for the most part, their roles more mundane than necessary. Britton is good as the outwardly empathetic but inwardly image conscious Kathy, while Hayek connects well with Beatriz’s sense of herself as a healer, expressing the character’s spiritual and environmental passions with an understated yet still fervent sincerity. Arteta has trouble mustering enough energy in some scenes, leaving the movie feeling flat and prosaic, and there are times when it seems as if something momentous is about to occur – but it doesn’t (though when something momentous actually does occur, even then it’s undermined by narrative decision making). All this makes for occasionally intriguing viewing, but in the end, the movie leaves too much unaddressed to make it work consistently or completely.

Rating: 6/10 – a movie that often lacks substance thanks to the stereotypical nature of most of its characters, Beatriz at Dinner is neither acerbic enough nor penetrating enough in its efforts to expose the moral and ethical lassitude of America’s nouveau riche; Hayek gives an impassioned portrayal, but it isn’t matched elsewhere, and though the script strives for political relevance, it doesn’t offer the kind of insights that would have an audience nodding their heads in weary recognition.

Rush: Time Stand Still (2016)

05 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alex Lifeson, Canada, Dale Heslip, Documentary, Geddy Lee, Neil Peart, Review, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Rock band, Rushcon

D: Dale Heslip / 97m

Narrator: Paul Rudd

With: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart, Ray Danniels, Jillian Maryonovich, Liam Birt, Howard Ungerleider, Brian Hiatt, Arthur “Mac” Mclear, Ray Wawrzyniak, Michael Moore

What does it say about a band that, after over forty years the same three members are still together, still passionate about the music they’ve created, and more importantly, still the best of friends? That’s the case with Rush, the Canadian rock band whose members Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart, have weathered the storms of poor early album sales, record label pressure to “conform”, following their own musical path, personal tragedy (twice), and the debilitating effects of psoriatic arthritis and chronic tendinitis. Alongside all these downs though, there have been some incredible positives: increased critical acclaim, increased album sales, pop cultural relevance, the vocal appreciation of their peers, and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But most important of all, they’ve had the benefit of one of the most loyal fanbases ever.

This is the aspect of Rush’s forty year-plus history that Rush: Time Stand Still explores most effectively, while it also follows the band on what – so far – has proved to be their farewell tour. The tour has come about for a variety of reasons. Peart relates wanting to retire from touring but being persuaded/emotionally blackmailed by Lifeson’s need to go out on the road one last time while he still can, while Lee wants to keep going and going and going… Listening to three friends voice differing opinions about what’s best for each of them, and still managing to find a common accord without any lasting or lingering resentment is a testament to the strength of their friendship, and on a broader basis, the importance of the band itself in their lives. It’s clearly a tough decision that they’ve made though, and all three provide honest perspectives on the end of something that has been a huge part of their lives for such a long time.

The movie covers Rush’s R40 tour from its early stages as the format is decided on, and all the way through to the final show. Along the way there are generous helpings of Rush doing what they do best, and from various stages of their career (and with all the worrying stage outfits they’ve worn over the years). These sequences aren’t just there to illustrate the band’s prowess on stage – though this soon becomes obvious – but the pleasure that the band still derive from performing after so many thousands of shows in so many thousands of venues. Back in the Seventies it seemed as if Rush were only away from the road when they were in the studio recording an album, and though they’ve slowed down as the years have gone by, their enthusiasm and passion for playing live has been retained. It’s the one thing, even beyond the likes of albums such as 2112 (1976), Moving Pictures (1981), and Test for Echo (1996), that has brought Rush their success. The movie reflects this through the thoughts of the band members themselves, and more pertinently, through the thoughts of their fans.

It’s this aspect of Dale Heslip’s documentary that elevates it and makes it more than yet another movie that covers a band on tour, even if it is their last (probably). Correctly recognising that without the fans who have come to their shows over and over Rush’s success might not have been as far-reaching as it has been, Heslip casts a spotlight on the likes of Jillian Maryonovich, who for a time was a White House staffer under Barack Obama by day and the creative director of Rushcon, the band’s fan club, by night, and Ray Wawrzyniak, an obsessive collector of all things Rush including Indonesian cassette releases and his sister’s 8-track copy of 2112 (which he promises he’ll return one day). It’s fans such as these and their passion for the band that gives the movie a sense that there’s a symbiosis going on, that without the fans Rush wouldn’t be having a second documentary made about them – after Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage (2010) – or that without the band, their fans wouldn’t have anything quite so joyous in their lives. It’s the power of collective reliance: each needs the other albeit for different reasons.

The sheer enthusiasm for the band that the fans display is best expressed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The master of ceremonies, Jann Wenner, announces each inductee and there’s a healthy amount of applause for each one, but when it comes to Rush, the whole place erupts. As Geddy Lee says, “It was impressive. These guys put us in the Hall of Fame. And they were celebrating their moment. And I still get choked up when I think about it.” That acknowledgment is perhaps the most illuminating moment in the whole movie, and gives credence to the idea that Rush aren’t just a band that have a loyal following – instead they have fans who care over and above in terms of the usual relationship fans have with a band. Whether or not this is actually a good thing, the movie doesn’t take the time to pursue. Instead it highlights the fans’ passion for the band, and the band’s reciprocal feelings for their fans. Criticism is useless because nothing will change.

Although the overwhelming love for Rush on display does border on the pathologically obsessive, and some fans may want to get out of their parents’ basements a bit more often, the movie also relies heavily on the thoughts and feelings of the band themselves. All three are eloquent, thoughtful interviewees whose experiences as a touring band for over forty years has provided them with insights into the rock and roll life that are sometimes sobering, sometimes surprising, but always interesting, and the differing emotions that each has about retiring from the road are given honestly and with a great deal of thought towards the feelings of each other. The band have clearly enjoyed their journey to the last tour, and though the movie is a celebration of the end of that journey, there’s a bittersweet undertone that is present and which adds poignancy to the aftermath of the last show. But that poignancy is soon replaced by something more touching. The fans we see look bereft; what on earth are they going to do now that their heroes, in terms of live shows, have retired both themselves and their fans?

Rating: 8/10 – a documentary that benefits from the commitment and openness of both Rush and their fans, Rush: Time Stand Still is a fascinating look at a band who became successful the hard way and made both their lives and the lives of their fans something to cherish; die-hard fans will lap up every minute, while those new to Rush may find themselves perplexed by the depth of the fans’ devotion, but either way this is a movie that captures the spirit and the heart of a relationship that, after forty-plus years, has never wavered on either side.

Old-Time Crime: The Whistler (1944) and The Mark of the Whistler (1944)

03 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Columbia, Crime, Drama, Gloria Stuart, J. Carrol Naish, Janis Carter, Murder, Radio drama, Review, Richard Dix, Thriller, William Castle

The Whistler (1944) / D: William Castle / 60m

Cast: Richard Dix, Gloria Stuart, J. Carrol Naish, Alan Dinehart, Joan Woodbury, Don Costello, George Lloyd, William ‘Billy’ Benedict, Byron Foulger, Robert Homans, Otto Forrest

The first in a series of eight movies released by Columbia between 1944 and 1948, The Whistler is based on the radio drama of the same name. Each movie begins with the same voice over: “I am the Whistler, and I know many things…”, and each movie features a different story “narrated” by the Whistler (Forrest). In this first outing, Richard Dix plays Earl C. Conrad, an industrialist who decides to have a contract taken out on himself. Guilt-ridden over the loss of his wife at sea, Conrad wants to end it all, and arranges with a career criminal called Lefty Vigran (Costello) to have someone kill him within the next few days. But then news reaches him that his wife is still alive, and of course he tries to call off the hit. But Vigran is unable to call a halt to things, and Conrad must spend the next few days trying to find out who’s been hired, and if he finds him, persuade the killer (Naish) not to go through with it.

As ever with this kind of story, the killer is determined to see out his contract as a matter of personal pride, and to uphold his reputation. This leaves Conrad in a tight spot, and the second half of the movie sees him trying to avoid being killed, while the killer tries – at first – to scare him to death, having read a book about the very same thing. It’s little quirks like these that make The Whistler more enjoyable than you might expect, and Naish’s performance as the killer is an equally enjoyable combination of tortured soul and pedantic assassin. Like many movies he appeared in, Naish is fun to watch, and he throws himself into the role with obvious enthusiasm, and he brings an unexpected level of sincerity to the part. It’s easy to forget, but Naish was nominated twice for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, first for Sahara (1943), and again for A Medal for Benny (1945).

As these kind of things go however, it’s only occasionally effective, and only occasionally gripping. It does have a slightness of tone in the scenes between Dix’s anguished industrialist and his super-supportive secretary, Alice Walker (Stuart) (who’s clearly in love with him), but otherwise it opts for a sub-noir approach full of menacing shadows and drawn-out sequences where Conrad is stalked by the killer. Making only his third feature, future schlockmeister William Castle contributes little in the way of anything substantial, but he does ensure that Dix gets to show viewers his entire repertoire of worried expressions. As with Naish it’s easy to forget that Dix was also an Oscar nominated actor – for Cimarron (1931) – but he’s a long way from that movie, and he looks tired throughout, a reflection on the personal problems he had at the time.

Overall it’s not the most rewarding of franchise openers, but it did establish a template that would see Dix return as different characters in a further six movies, while the last in the series saw the main character played by Michael Duane. Castle would return for the next movie, and direct two more later entries, and he would develop a better approach in regard to pacing and performances. As for the Whistler himself, he would remain in the shadows offering specious comments about the wicked nature of Man, and reminding everyone that he knows “many things”. As a framing device for the stories that are told it’s not entirely successful, and to be fair, these tales could have been made as stand-alone movies without the Whistler’s presence to connect them all, but as the series unfolded, lessons were learned, and the quality – thankfully – improved.

Rating: 5/10 – not the most auspicious of debuts, The Whistler squanders much of its running time by having Naish stalk Dix with little or no consequence or outcome, and by reducing the supporting characters to little more than walk-ons; straightforward direction from Castle doesn’t help, and there’s too much of an air of “contractual obligation” for much of this to work, and without Naish’s involvement, this would be even less interesting than it is already.

The Mark of the Whistler (1944) / D: William Castle / 61m

aka The Marked Man

Cast: Richard Dix, Janis Carter, Porter Hall, Paul Guilfoyle, John Calvert, Matt Willis, Willie Best, Otto Forrest

By contrast to the tired machinations of The Whistler, its sequel (released a little over six months later) has much more verve and energy, and the reason is simple: it’s based on a story by Cornell Woolrich. Woolrich was a novelist and crime author who during the Forties wrote some of the best noir thrillers of the period, and so prolific was he that more film noir screenplays have been adapted from his works than any other crime novelist. Here, his short story, Dormant Account, is used as the basis for another “narrated” tale by the Whistler. In it, a returning Richard Dix is a bum called Lee Selfridge Nugent. One day, Nugent sees a notice in a newspaper. A bank is looking for a Lee Nugent to come forward and claim the money in – surprise! – a dormant account. With the aid of a tailor (Hall) who provides him with a new suit, and by dint of doing his research into the other Nugent’s background, Lee “inherits” $29,000. But when his picture ends up in the local paper, he becomes the target of two brothers (Calvert, Willis) who are looking for the real Nugent. Suffice it to say, their intentions aren’t exactly good…

Woolrich’s stories and novels are the very definition of page-turners: fast-paced, always intriguing, and practically forcing you to see what happens next. He also understood how to turn the screws on his characters and leave them at the hands of a whimsical fate. This is best expressed when Lee is waiting in the bank while a clerk goes to get some paperwork. Lee can’t help but become nervous, and he begins to overthink things: what if he’s been rumbled, what if the police are being called right then, why is the bank guard always looking over at him, etc. etc. It’s a terrific distillation of the tension that Woolrich could invoke in his writing, and the two occasions when Lee has to visit the bank provide the movie with two very tense and formidable scenes indeed. Dix doesn’t look quite as bad as he did in the first movie, and the actor seems more engaged with the material. He’s even able to have a little fun in his scenes with Hall, whose parsimonious tailor is the movie’s comic relief (something the first movie could have done with).

With the money claimed, the movie changes gear and becomes an out-and-out thriller, with Calvert and Willis tracking down Lee and threatening to put holes in him unless he hands over the money. This all happens while Lee is focused on wining and dining newspaper reporter Patricia Henley (Carter). For the second time, it’s refreshing to see the lead female character kept away from harm, and not interfering in a way that will see her put in harm’s way, but the character is one of the few areas where the script by George Bricker doesn’t know how to proceed. As a result, Patricia is reduced to background traffic while Dix fights off the brothers with the aid of Guilfoyle’s down on his luck pencil salesman, ‘Limpy’ Smith. It’s another example of the institutionalised sexism of the times, and not exactly unheard of, but it still rankles as unnecessary.

With a much better script to get to grips with, Castle’s return to the director’s chair shows a marked improvement on the first movie, and he orchestrates matters with much more vigour than before, and even manages to elicit a better portrayal from Dix than previously. The hour-long running time is free of the filler that hampered the first movie, and the increased production values mean the movie doesn’t look like it’s been shot through a foggy lens or on a cheaply rented soundstage. A sequel then that’s been shown more care and attention than these kind of ‘B’ movies usually received, and very much worth seeking out.

Rating: 7/10 – an agreeable and entertaining entry in the series, The Mark of the Whistler proves that with the right source material, even the lowest budget crime thriller can be successful; tightly plotted and appropriately tense in places, this is that rare beast: a sequel (kind of) that’s better than the original.

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House (2017)

02 Tuesday Jan 2018

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Deep Throat, Diane Lane, Drama, FBI, Liam Neeson, Marton Csokas, Peter Landesman, Review, True story, Watergate

aka The Secret Man

D: Peter Landesman / 103m

Cast: Liam Neeson, Diane Lane, Marton Csokas, Tony Goldwyn, Ike Barinholtz, Josh Lucas, Wendi McLendon Covey, Kate Walsh, Brian d’Arcy James, Maika Monroe, Michael C. Hall, Tom Sizemore, Bruce Greenwood, Eddie Marsan, Noah Wyle

To have lived in America during the late Sixties and early Seventies was to have lived in troubled times. The country was experiencing seismic shifts in practically all areas: sexually, racially, politically, socially. But if there was one constant, one small part of the US that could be counted on to remain the same, no matter what was occurring anywhere in the country, it was the FBI. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover remained apart from political bias or influence, an autonomous body that answered to no one, but which involved itself – if needed – in the lives of everyone. If you ever wanted to know just how much Hoover was feared, you only have to watch the first scene in Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House. In it, the FBI’s Deputy Associate Director Mark Felt (Neeson) is called to the White House for a meeting with John Dean (Hall) and two of his colleagues in the Nixon administration, John Mitchell and John Ehrlichmann. When they infer that Hoover should step down as Director of the FBI, it’s Felt who chillingly reminds them about Hoover’s secret files, the ones that contain everybody’s dirty laundry. What would happen, Felt counter infers, if those files were made public. The idea of Hoover retiring is quickly dropped.

The scene serves two purposes: one, to show just why the FBI was so autonomous, and two, to make it clear to the viewer that even if Hoover wasn’t around, Felt would be, and he was just as much a keeper of the secrets as Hoover was. It’s a necessary distinction to make, as what follows in the wake of Hoover’s death on 2 May 1972, is a watershed in US history, and Felt’s involvement in that watershed is crucial to the events that led to President Nixon’s resignation from office. Make no mistake: without Felt’s involvement, and without the decision he ultimately took in becoming “Deep Throat”, the US political landscape would have continued to change irrevocably for the worse. It’s a theme that runs throughout the movie, and which has modern day parallels. After Hoover’s death, and the discovery of the Watergate break-in, the White House did its best to influence the FBI and stop it from carrying out a thorough investigation (sound familiar?). And the White House’s efforts would have succeeded – if it hadn’t been for Mark Felt.

And so we have Felt portrayed by Liam Neeson in a political drama that goes behind the scenes at the FBI during the two years between Hoover’s death and Nixon’s resignation. Based largely on A G-Man’s Life (2006), a memoir Felt wrote with John O’Connor, Peter Landesman’s latest movie is ultimately a strange beast, neither compelling enough to grab its audience and guide it safely through the political upheaval of the time, or clear enough on the details of just how Nixon was caught in a web of his own deception. Instead, Landesman’s script focuses on the need to keep Acting Director L. Patrick Gray (Csokas) in the dark about the investigation, the search for the mole in the FBI who’s leaking information to Time and The Washington Post, and on a personal front, Felt’s search for his runaway daughter, Joan (Monroe). These three strands lead to a lot of repetition as Felt repeatedly goes behind Gray’s back, accusations of someone being “Deep Throat” fly thick and fast through the FBI offices with almost everyone being accused at one point or another, and Felt reassuring his wife, Audrey (Lane), that Joan will be found safe and well.

It’s all done in a watchable, unpretentious way, with Landesman apparently content to play out the story as if he were doing it by the numbers. There’s energy here in the way that people around Felt seem to be rushing around but to no obvious purpose (Felt gives out lots of instructions but rarely receives any related feedback), and the pace of the movie is quick enough that boredom is never likely to set in, but it all seems like a missed opportunity. It’s another movie where we all know the outcome in advance (or at least should do), and so it’s also a movie where the script’s ability to create tension and maintain it is undermined from the word go. Even when Felt falls under suspicion of being “Deep Throat” and Gray implies that Felt is being bugged because of this, all it leads to is a few minutes of Felt searching his office and his home for hidden microphones, and then it’s all forgotten. In his efforts to include as much as possible that occurred during that tumultuous two-year period, Landesman has forgotten to ensure that what is included is both relevant and advances the narrative. As a result, there are too many occasions where said narrative stalls and needs to be kickstarted again.

In the title role, Neeson is square-jawed, determined, strikingly gray-haired, and a bit of a dull date. Spending time with Felt eventually becomes something of a chore. He’s not the most expressive of men – though when he becomes angry about something, his outbursts are like the tantrums of a six year old, or someone trying out being angry for the first time – and his stolid, rigid demeanour doesn’t exactly warm you to him, but where Neeson does succeed with the character is in showing his commitment to the FBI and the depth of his affiliation with it. The script hints at Felt becoming a whistleblower because of what was happening to the FBI rather than any disgust at Nixon’s criminal behaviour, but it falls short of exploring this idea fully, and instead paints Felt as a kind of Gary Cooper figure who has to do the right thing, no matter what. Neeson is also lumbered with some gloriously tedious dialogue, though the moment where he gets to say, “No one can stop the driving force of an FBI investigation, not even the FBI”, is one to cherish.

There’s good support from the likes of Lucas and Monroe, but Csokas comes across as too heavy handed as the out of his depth Gray. Lane, meanwhile, apparently gave such a great performance as Felt’s troubled wife that most of her scenes ended up on the cutting room floor, which is a shame as Lane provides easily the movie’s best performance in spite of this. Visually the movie is quite restrained, with a dark, limiting colour palette that is probably meant to represent the gloominess of the times, but which in reality makes the movie look unnecessarily dreary. In the end it’s a competently made movie but not one that stands out from the crowd despite its subject matter.

Rating: 5/10 – a movie that has all the potential to be a riveting political thriller is instead a rather uninspired trek through a period of US history that was anything but humdrum; Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House lacks drive and ambition in its attempts to tell Felt’s story, and settles early on for playing it safe and pedestrian in terms of its willingness to amble instead of soaring.

Palace of Fun (2016)

01 Monday Jan 2018

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Andrew Mullan, Brighton, Drama, Eadward Stocks, First feature, George Stocks, Phoebe Naughton, Review, Thriller

D: Eadward Stocks / 82m

Cast: Andrew Mullan, Phoebe Naughton, George Stocks

In this ultra-low budget British thriller set in Brighton, Lily (Naughton) and Finn (Mullan) meet in a nightclub. There’s an immediate attraction between them, and Lily takes Finn back to her parents’ home. The next morning, Finn meets Lily’s brother, Jamie (Stocks), and the three of them go on a yachting trip together. However, a disagreement between Lily and Jamie hints at an instability in Jamie’s character, and when he takes the opportunity to look through Finn’s satchel, what he discovers there leads all three down a very dark path indeed. With Finn and Jamie both doing their best to manipulate matters between the trio – though for very different reasons – Lily soon finds herself caught in the middle, until Finn decides to reveal the secret that Jamie has already discovered. When Jamie sees that his sister and Finn are still together, things become even darker, and his attempts to derail their relationship has unfortunate consequences…

First-time features often go one of two ways: they’re either first-out-of-the-gate original, both in terms of the story or the visual design, or they’re derivative yet respectful of pre-existing material. Palace of Fun adopts a third option, that of being a combination of the two, and it does so with a degree of style and confidence that helps it during some of the less successfully rendered moments or scenes. The narrative will be familiar to most viewers, but it’s cuckoo-in-the-nest storyline, coupled with its Patricia Highsmith-inspired tone, is offset by George and Eadward Stocks’ measured, and understated screenplay which threatens to drift into melodrama on more than one occasion but which also manages to avoid the same pitfall thanks to Stocks the director’s firm grip on the material. It’s a presure cooker environment that the first-timer maintains comfortably throughout, and without giving too many clues as to whether or not said pressure cooker does boil over, there’s a grim inevitability about the movie’s outcome that suits it perfectly.

The screenplay is keen to explore the dynamics of the relationship between Jamie and Lily, but it does so without qualifying why Finn is effectively taken in by Lily, and why Jamie takes against him so quickly. By pushing the narrative on in this way (and in deference to the running time), the story becomes more involving and less trite in its exploration of the characters and the twists and turns that drive the material, but it does also make Finn more of a cipher than is necessary for any sympathy or collusion on the part of the viewer to be established. Finn is the deus ex machina of the story, and while we don’t get to know too much about him, what little information we are given about him is too generic to work properly. That said, Mullan gives a very good performance as the mysterious Finn, and he works hard to ensure that the character retains a sense of vulnerability beneath his outwardly confident demeanour.

Similarly, the relationship between Jamie and Finn is one that leads to a couple of scenes where the lines are blurred as to just which one of them is the manipulator and which one is the manipulated. What seems like a frivolous game of cat and mouse soon gives way to a more (apparently) calculated game of psychological oneupmanship. Jamie appears to be in control, and he seems more able than Finn to manoeuvre things to his advantage, but as the movie progresses it’s Jamie whose grip on matters starts to falter. This leads to him taking increasingly more desperate measures in an attempt to split up Finn and Lily for good. Although not explicitly revealed, there’s more than a hint of sexual jealousy at play here, and while Jamie is certainly a devious and easily maligned character – he could be best described as someone who “doesn’t play well with others” – the script makes it clear that he’s operating out of a need for approbation that a) his actions don’t always deserve, and b) he’s not always able to control.

In the middle of all this is Lily, somewhat carefree but left on the sidelines for long stretches, her presence almost incidental to the main storyline even though the character is an integral (and very necessary) part of the drama that unfolds. At one point she has to make an important decision regarding her relationship with Finn, and though it’s a decision that the script can’t avoid Lily making in order for things to progress, it would look and feel more clumsy than it is thanks to Naughton’s honest approach to the character, and her rendition of the emotional bewilderment Lily feels at the time. It’s a role that requires Naughton to be reactive for much of the movie, but thanks to her portrayal, Lily remains the most honest of the three, and the only one without an ulterior motive for her behaviour.

The performances are a little rough around the edges at times, but this can be attributed to the minimal experience each has accrued so far in their careers (this is actually Naughton’s first acting gig). However, each contributes greatly to the overall effectiveness of the movie, and they’re matched by the efforts made behind the camera. Stocks the director displays an over-fondness for slightly off-centre framing, but it helps keep the viewer off balance in terms of what’s really happening, while Brighton itself is shot by DoP Murren Tullett with a view to providing a bright and sunny counterpoint to the increasing darkness of the material. As well, there’s an often ominous soundtrack that heightens the drama of certain scenes, and which acts as a warning that something bad might be about to happen. It’s all put together in a way that makes the movie compelling to watch for the most part, but which also labours the point quite heavily at times as well. Still, the Stocks brothers have proven themselves as movie makers to watch out for, and their debut feature is, for the most part, a triumph of ultra-low budget movie making.

Rating: 8/10 – a deliberately uneasy blend of slow-build menace and pitch-black humour that smooths out some of the narrative bumps in the road (e.g. Finn suddenly gains a mobile phone that he shouldn’t be able to afford), Palace of Fun is an ironic title for a movie that treads in very deep waters; acerbic and violent at times, and touching and warm-hearted at others, it’s a movie that has very specific aims and ambitions, ones that it achieves without too much fuss, and a simpicity of effort.

Lady Bird (2017)

31 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Comedy, Drama, Greta Gerwig, High School, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Mother/daughter relationship, Review, Sacramento, Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, Tracy Letts

D: Greta Gerwig / 93m

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Lois Smith, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Odeya Rush, Jordan Rodrigues, Marielle Scott

Warm and inviting, actress Greta Gerwig’s debut as a writer/director is a coming of age tale that involves Christine McPherson (Ronan), a seventeen year old high schooler who lives in Sacramento with her parents, Marion (Metcalf) and Larry (Letts), her adopted older brother Miguel (Rodrigues) and his girlfriend, Shelly (Scott), and who prefers to be known by her given name (as in given to her by herself) of Lady Bird. Lady Bird is a senior student who is looking to swap what she views as the culturally barren West Coast for the more eclectic and intellectual East Coast when she graduates and heads off to college. Currently attending a Catholic high school, she feels and acts like an outsider, and aside from having one friend, Julie (Feldstein), doesn’t do much to combat this. When she and Julie decide to audition for the upcoming school musical though, she meets Danny (Hedges), and they begin dating.

But while she navigates the uncharted waters of her first romantic relationship, Lady Bird has other problems to deal with. Her father is in danger of losing his job, and increasing financial difficulties have left the family living – literally – on the wrong side of the tracks. Also, Lady Bird’s relationship with her mother is an adversarial one, with the two of them constantly arguing and battling against each other. Marion is painfully honest about her belief in Lady Bird’s ability to get into a good college, and rarely ever compliments her. Her father is more supportive, and between them, he and Lady Bird endeavour to get her on to a college Wait List. While she waits for a response, Lady Bird’s relationship with Danny stalls due to an unexpected development, and she drops Julie in favour of Jenna (Rush), a more popular girl in school. At the same time she meets Kyle (Chalamet), who’s a musician in a band. But Lady Bird soon finds that dropping one small set of friends for another doesn’t solve any of her self-perceived problems, and her fractious home life doesn’t improve either. In fact, events lead to it being quite the opposite…

The idea of actors or actresses deciding to step behind the camera is far from unusual, but writing and directing as a first choice, and on the first occasion, is a little rarer. It’s a tribute to Greta Gerwig’s efforts that Lady Bird is not only an accomplished first feature, but a movie that will bear up under repeated viewings. Coming of age movies are ten a penny these days, and the highs and lows of being a teenager have been the subject of so many movies that you could be forgiven for wondering if there is anything new to be said. And while this does remain the case, what Gerwig does that makes her movie so effective, and so good, is write convincing dialogue. There’s not one line that feels false or contrived or sounds clichéd, and with this so ably taken care of, the cast have no problem in sounding like real people, and the various interactions their characters have all have an air of authenticity, as if Gerwig has eavesdropped on actual conversations and recorded them verbatim. This also gives the movie a rhythm and a flow that allows the viewer to be drawn along in the characters’ wake, something that adds immeasurably to the enjoyment the movie provides. And with that enjoyment comes a hopefulness that everything will eventually work out well for everyone concerned.

Lady Bird herself is a terrific character, challenging and challenged at almost every turn, and behaving in contradictory fashion throughout, just as a regular teenager would be who was trying to work out their place in the world. She wants to be her own individual, independent and assured despite having only limited experience of relationships and the wider world – everything happening with her father comes as a surprise to her – and trying to do her best as long as she benefits most. Gerwig focuses on Lady Bird’s selfish behaviour with a precision that if it isn’t autobiographical then it means that she’s very, very observant. There are moments where sympathy for the character is deliberately withdrawn by Gerwig, but there are also moments that follow on where Lady Bird shows more self-awareness than before, and sympathy is restored accordingly. It’s all played out with great skill and directorial acumen, and Gerwig accurately captures the confusion and longing that goes with being seventeen and wanting to be loved by family, friends, and/or the opposite sex.

She’s aided by a tremendously assured performance from Ronan, an actress who seems to be getting better and better with every role. Ronan brings a versatility and an understanding of the character that is impressive for the consistency that she achieves in maintaining Lady Bird’s obdurate character. It’s an appealing, generous performance and has a sincerity about it that allows the viewer to overlook much of Lady Bird’s poor behaviour. As Lady Bird’s mother, Metcalf is also on tremendous form, channelling the pain and frustration Marion feels at where Life has brought her, and the additional pain that comes of finding herself unable to do anything about the emotional discord between herself and her daughter (though the reason why is perfectly encapsulated in a single line of dialogue). In support, Letts is tender and more approachable, Hedges is a flawed Prince Charming, Chalamet is the pretentious rebound boyfriend, and Feldstein shines as the best friend who’s kicked to the kerb out of social expediency.

For the most part, Lady Bird is a keenly observed drama, but Gerwig is able to infuse her tale with an abundance of humour that acts as a necessary counterpoint to the emotional trials and tribulations that her heroine faces. The humour is varied from scene to scene, but like the majority of Gerwig’s script is only included when it suits or supports the material; there are no easy laughs here. Gerwig also shows that she has a keen sense of the spaces that her characters inhabit. Lady Bird and Marion are often shot in close proximity to each other so as to highlight the closeness of their relationship, while her other relationships – the ones that aren’t so emotionally acute – are allowed greater room in which to play out. DoP Sam Levy does a terrific job in allowing Sacramento (with which Lady Bird has a love-hate relationship) to become a secondary character all its own, while Nick Huoy’s editing is perfectly in sync with the tempo of Gerwig’s screenplay and directing style. As first features go, Gerwig has made a formidable debut. If she has any other ideas for a movie, then let’s hope we get to see them real soon, because on this evidence, her career as an actress doesn’t have to be her only one.

Rating: 9/10 – modest in scope and presentation, but perfectly realised for all that, Lady Bird is a movie with a big heart, grander ambitions than expected, and the courage to attain them all; in making this movie so completely irresistible, Gerwig has put her indie colleagues on notice: there’s a new movie maker in town and worst of all, she knows exactly what she’s doing.

Call Me by Your Name (2017)

30 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

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

D: Luca Guadagnino / 132m

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

28 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Comedy, Crime, Drama, Frances McDormand, Martin McDonagh, Murder, Review, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson

D: Martin McDonagh / 115m

Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Hedges, Abbie Cornish, Zeljko Ivanek, Sandy Martin, Clarke Peters, John Hawkes, Samara Weaving, Peter Dinklage, Kerry Condon

Every now and then – too rarely, perhaps – a movie comes along and just sucker punches the viewer, leaving them out of breath and wondering what the hell just happened, and was that a movie that did all that? Movies such as these often come out of nowhere, with minimal fanfare, but have the greatest impact. This year, there are two movies that fit that description. One is Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, and the other is Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Both movies have the ability to draw in the viewer within minutes of starting, and both movies have the ability to keep the viewer engaged and involved and wanting to know what happens next. Baker achieves this through his characters, while McDonagh achieves this through a complex narrative that never goes where you expect it to. Both movies are among the finest examples of modern day movie making that you’re ever likely to see. In short, they’re magnificent.

But before you begin to wonder if this is going to be a review of both movies, let’s step away from The Florida Project and focus fully on Three Billboards… It concerns a mother, Mildred Hayes (McDormand), whose teenage daughter, Angela, was killed in a particularly horrific way seven months before. The police investigation has stalled, and to Mildred’s mind they’ve stopped looking for her daughter’s killer. Unhappy with this, Mildred decides to make use of three unused billboards on the outskirts of town. She rents all three and uses them to bring the public’s attention to the fact that her daughter’s murder remains unsolved. The billboards prove divisive, and the local police, headed up by Chief William Willoughby (Harrelson), try to persuade Mildred to have the billboards taken down (well, they are pretty critical of the police, and the chief in particular). But Mildred remains resolute. The reaction(s) she seeks, however, aren’t exactly what she’d hoped, and as the billboards further fan the flames of division and animosity within the town, what transpires over the next few days is both surprising, and in some cases, life-changing.

First of all, this really isn’t going to go the way you expect. Be warned, McDonagh the writer is in cahoots with McDonagh the director, and both men want to keep you on the edge of your seat trying to work out what’s going to happen next. And this isn’t your bog standard, predictable murder mystery where suspects and red herrings and hidden clues are bandied about like house keys at a swingers party. This follows its own darkly comic path while also packing a strong dramatic punch or three when it needs to. It’s brave, it takes chances, it certainly doesn’t lack for confidence, and it features a trio of excellent performances. This is only McDonagh’s third feature after In Bruges (2008) and Seven Psychopaths (2012). Those movies are good, very good in fact, but this sees McDonagh stepping up several notches at once and showing a command of the medium that is hugely impressive. In 2012 he was quoted as saying, “…the amount of control for a playwright is almost infinite, so you have that control over the finished product. But in film, you’re the lowest form of life. So that was half of the job of directing, was not letting someone else come in and fuck it up.” He needn’t be worried anymore: Three Billboards… is almost perfectly realised, and is far and away one of the finest movies of 2017.

To reveal more of the plot and how it all plays out would be to spoil the movie completely for anyone coming to it fresh and without any advanced knowledge other than what can be guessed from the brief outline recorded above. But what can be expressed is the strength of the material over all, the precise way in which McDonagh introduces his characters and then takes them on journeys we and they could never expect, how easily McDonagh can change the tempo and the tone of a scene in seconds and still make it all feel organic, and all the while juggle themes of regret, anger, guilt, loss, and pride. This is also about revenge and the need for someone to be accountable (and if not the killer, then the police), and the way in which that anger can hollow out a person. And with all that, McDonagh still manages to include elements relating to racism, casual violence, anti-authoritarianism, self-pity, fate, spousal abuse, peer pressure, and blind chance. That it all fits together so well is yet another tribute to McDonagh’s expertise as a writer and a director.

He’s helped tremendously by the performances of McDormand, Harrelson, and Rockwell. McDormand is as fierce as we’ve ever seen her, commanding our attention in every scene, Mildred’s determination to follow her own path given sympathetic expression through her steely gaze and forthright opinions and sense of justice. She does things that challenge our sympathies, but McDormand never allows us to lose sight of the pain and anguish that Mildred is still experiencing after so long, and in doing so Mildred remains a singular character with a singular goal. As the chief of police, Harrelson gives one of his best performances, infusing the character with a mixture of remorse, hopefulness and resignation. It’s a thoughtful portrayal, one that allows Harrelson to show a more restrained, internal approach to the part, and one that provides one of the movie’s more emotionally compelling moments. And then there’s Rockwell, a wilful force of nature who acts like a whirlwind leaving a trail of devastation in his wake. It’s an unforgettable performance, brash, loud and unashamedly complex in its creation, and Rockwell walks a fine line between arrogance and childish insubordination as Dixon, a man with his own issues to deal with.

The rest of the characters, most of whom orbit around Mildred, Willoughby and Dixon, are all perfectly cast, and McDonagh doesn’t neglect them, instead making them all integral to the story, from Jones’s advertising manager who sticks to his guns when the police try to intimidate him into withdrawing Mildred’s “ads”, to Martin as Dixon’s mother, a wry, darkly humorous turn that explains much of why her son is the way he is. The humour is important here, as McDonagh uses it to diffuse the terrible tensions and horrific nature of much of the material, and to shade the various levels of grief and anger experienced by the characters. Again, it’s a terrific balancing act that McDonagh pulls off, and there are many moments where the viewer has no choice but to laugh out loud or face up to the tragedy that is continuing to unfold even after seven months. All this is beautifully photographed by DoP Ben Davis, carefully edited and assembled by John Gregory for maximum effect, and set to another quietly ambitious score by Carter Burwell. Quite simply, it’s a must-see movie.

Rating: 9/10 – heartbreaking, powerful, exquisite, emotionally perceptive, profane, unpredictable, and unapologetic in tone and ambition, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a masterpiece of modern movie making; a movie to be absorbed into and then released at the end with your heart pounding, it takes big risks and pulls off every single one of them, making this not just a triumph for its writer/director, but a wonderful, magnificent surprise for anyone who decides to engage with it.

Last Flag Flying (2017)

27 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Bryan Cranston, Comedy, Darryl Ponicsan, Drama, Ex-Marines, Funeral, Laurence Fishburne, Review, Richard Linklater, Road trip, Sequel, Steve Carell

D: Richard Linklater / 123m

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, Steve Carell, J. Quinton Johnson, Yul Vazquez, Deanna Reed-Foster, Cicely Tyson

A man walks into a bar… From this inauspicious beginning, writer/director Richard Linklater provides us with another unmissable movie that bristles with humour and thoughtfully constructed drama, and which introduces us to three of the most fully rounded characters you’ll meet all year (and in one movie to boot). Adapted from the novel of the same name by Darryl Ponicsan, this is a loose sequel to Ponicsan’s The Last Detail (1973) (which he also wrote the screenplay for), and features three ex-Marines, all former friends who have lost touch since coming home from Vietnam. There’s Sal (Cranston), a bar owner, Larry aka “Doc” (Carell), who still works in a civilian capacity for the Navy, and Mueller (Fishburne), who has since become a pastor. Larry is the man who walks into a bar, in order to ask for Sal’s help with something. They travel to the Mueller’s home, where Larry reveals that he would like the three of them to go to Washington. The reason? Larry’s son has recently been killed while on duty in Iraq. His body is on its way home to be buried in Arlington cemetery, and Larry would like his two old friends to help him.

And so begins a road trip that sees Larry defer much of what happens to Sal and the Mueller, animosities long forgotten dusted off and trotted out, the trio encountering insensitive bureaucracy, the Mueller being mistaken for a terrorist, some detours along the way, and their friendships withstanding the test of both time and their being together again after so long. The script also reflects on matters of grief, regret, guilt, doing the right thing, and persevering through emotional and physical anguish. It’s a movie with many layers, all dovetailing neatly together, and providing one of the most affecting experiences of 2017. Linklater and Ponicsan have made a movie that is about the basic humanity in all of us, and how it brings out the best in us, even when we’re not sure if what we’re doing is the right thing. All along, Larry believes that what he is doing is what is appropriate and correct. At first he’s happy for his son, Larry Jr, to be buried at Arlington; after all, he’s been told his son died a hero in a skirmish with insurgents. But when the truth is revealed, his feelings change. And when he’s confronted with a different point of view, his feelings are challenged and his point of view shifts again. The clever thing is, at no point is Larry wrong about how he feels or what decisions he makes.

If it’s a simple statement to make – that Life isn’t always simple or easy – it’s still an important one. Linklater and Ponicsan are on point here, and the way in which Larry’s deliberations affect both him and his friends infuses much of the interplay between the three characters. For much of the movie, Larry is reticent and appearing to be in a world all his own, as he might well be. Sal is the motor mouth, always ready to challenge authority, politics, religion, anything that he disagrees with (and there isn’t much that he doesn’t disagree with), while the Mueller, actually called Richard, is a mix of the two, thoughtful and contemplative thanks to his religious beliefs but also forthright and aggressive when he feels he needs to be. You can see how they would have been friends in Vietnam, and how they emerged from that period to become the people they are now. Their experiences back then are used to inform the characters they’ve become, and thanks to three very gifted performances, spending time with them is an absolute pleasure.

Cranston has the more showy role, talking non-stop, Sal getting the three friends into trouble deliberately or without even trying, but always making him sympathetic, someone you can see is just trying to do their best in any given situation. The actor is on rare form here, judging the mercurial aspects of the role perfectly, and also showing a more reflective side to Sal that helps make the broader tones of his portrayal that much more believable. Fishburne is, in some ways, our way in to the characters, his quiet, brooding presence more reactive than passive, and despite the Mueller’s continued reluctance to be making this extended trip (nothing quite goes according to plan – as you might expect). It’s a role that also serves to remind us of what a terrific actor Fishburne is when given the right script, the right character, and he’s encouraged by the right director. And then there’s Carell as the distant, heartbroken Larry, his emotions pushed and pulled in opposing directions, and never quite sure if he’s in the moment or merely watching it all from a distance. Like his co-stars’ it’s a perfectly pitched performance, sincere, honest and entirely credible, and when his feelings do break through, all those tempered emotions mentioned before – grief, guilt etc – come flooding through and it’s almost overwhelming, for him and for the viewer.

Of course, this being a Richard Linklater movie, it’s not all doom and gloom or a completely depressing drama. The movie is infused with a dark, satirical kind of humour that offsets the heavy lifting the script does elsewhere. Sal provides much of the verbal comedy, his quick-fire retorts and pithy observations leavening the serious nature of the material, while there are a handful of visual gags, usually juxtapositions, that pop up here and there to good effect. And then there is a scene in the baggage car of a train where reminiscences and regrets come together to form one of the movie’s most engaging and humorous moments. Line by line, and minute by minute, this is the part of the movie that highlights the true spirit of friendship that exists between the three friends, and which is perhaps one of the funniest scenes you’ll see all year (even if you don’t see this until 2018). It’s also a point in the movie that is very much needed in terms of lightening the load, and it’s perfectly executed by all concerned.

That said, there a few caveats to be made, mostly in the form of certain scenes that prove superfluous, such as one involving Yul Vazquez’s oily, dislikeable Colonel where he vents his anger at the lack of respect shown to him by Sal in particular, and a side trip to visit the mother of a fellow Marine whose death wasn’t as heroic as she believes. This is one of the movie’s main thrusts, whether the truth should be told on every occasion or are there times when a lie is justified. Quite rightly, the movie errs on the side of “depending on the situation”, but it’s a valid question and one that is ripe for debate within the movie’s own context. And the movie ends on a sentimental note that, while providing Larry with a sense of closure, is at odds with the ambiguous nature of much of the material in relation to his son’s burial. It doesn’t quite ruin the movie – it would take something much more momentous than that – but as a way to finish things off feels more contrived than anything else seen or heard up to that point.

Rating: 8/10 – some judicious trimming would have made this a 9/10 easily, but this is still a terrific movie that deserves to be seen by as many people as possible; with humour, poignancy, wonderful performances, and often beautiful cinematography from Shane F. Kelly, Last Flag Flying tackles its themes with intelligence and wit and style and huge amounts of unashamed humanity, making this another Richard Linklater movie that steals both our hearts and our minds.

Bright (2017)

23 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, David Ayer, Drama, Edgar Ramirez, Elves, Fantasy, Joel Edgerton, Lucy Fry, Magic wand, Noomi Rapace, Orcs, Review, Thriller, Will Smith

D: David Ayer / 118m

Cast: Will Smith, Joel Edgerton, Noomi Rapace, Lucy Fry, Edgar Ramírez, Veronica Ngo, Alex Meraz, Happy Anderson, Ike Barinholtz, Dawn Olivieri, Matt Gerald, Margaret Cho, Joseph Piccuirro, Brad William Henke, Jay Hernandez, Enrique Murciano

And so, like the cinematic equivalent of a pair of socks (but for the same foot), we have Bright, the latest Netflix original to grace the small screen and remind us that not all the bad movies get a cinema release. Penned by Max Landis and directed by David Ayer, this lumpen mix of fantasy and crime arrives D.O.A. before it’s even started, and not once during its near-on two hour run time, shows any sign that it can be resurrected (unlike one of its characters). If you have to see this movie, then be warned: it’s as if Alien Nation (1988) never happened.

Mismatched buddy cop movies have been around for some time now, but rarely have they been as ill-advised and as poorly constructed as this movie. Bright takes a great central conceit – what if magic was real and fantasy creatures co-existed with us in some alternate reality? – and then keeps on reminding the viewer that beyond this central conceit, the script has no idea what to do with it other than to make an action thriller out of it, and one that rarely makes any coherent sense. There’s a Dark Lord who was vanquished two thousand years ago, and now a bad elf, Leilah (Rapace), wants to use one of three magic wands to bring the Dark Lord back so he can kill billions of people and enslave the rest. (As wth most fantasy movies where there’s a Big Bad who just wants to destroy everything, there’s no actual reason given as to why they want to do all this, or why they have followers who can’t see this isn’t actually a good thing.) Our heroes are a couple of L.A. cops, the mismatched buddies of this paragraph’s first sentence. One is Daryl Ward (Smith), a long-serving officer about to resume active duty after being shot, and the other is his partner, Nick Jakoby (Edgerton), the first and only Orc to become a police officer.

It won’t surprise anyone that Nick being an Orc gives rise to notions of racism, both casual and institutional, and the movie does spend some time examining this particular theme, but it does so in such a clumsy, ham-fisted way that it’s almost embarrassing. The Orc population primarily lives in ghetto-ised areas, while the Elves have their own exclusive part of town, are rich and influential, and apparently exist to go boutique shopping (there are fairies too but they’re not important). Both keep out of each other’s way, both have sketchily drawn histories, and there’s no attempt to explain how they and humans came to be co-existing with each other, or how long it’s been going on. Landis and Ayer aren’t interested in creating a credible world that makes any sense, and that’s evident by the way in which the movie throws the viewer in at the deep end and then wanders off without throwing them a lifeline. Instead, Ward and Nick are soon running from everyone in their efforts to keep Leilah’s magic wand – stolen by good elf Tikka (Fry) – from ending up in the wrong hands. Corrupt cops want it, a local gang wants it, Leilah and two of her followers (Ngo, Meraz) want it, and an FBI agent, Kandomere (Ramirez), wants it as well. What’s a couple of increasingly isolated police officers to do?

The answer is to wait until the movie delivers on a piece of information a minor character imparts near the beginning. The title refers to someone who can wield a magic wand – usually an elf – but who can also be human, even though the odds are (unsurprisingly) astronomical. With this fairly important tidbit introduced into the narrative, and in such a way as to draw direct attention to it, the ending of the movie is set up, and any tension intended to keep viewers on the edge of their seats wondering how Leilah can be defeated, is abandoned. Landis and Ayer know what’s going to happen, the viewer knows what’s going to happen, and if you took a straw poll of a hundred random strangers, they’d all know too. This means wading through a number of encounters that offer a succession of action beats – one inside a convenience store is at least well choreographed – interspersed with scenes that are meant to reveal more about the characters. Sadly, much of this is tedious to watch and dramatically redundant. This is fantasy by numbers, and Landis’s script doesn’t bring anything new to the table, just stock characters and a predictable scenario.

It’s concerning that Landis thinks of this movie as his “Star Wars“, and that Ayer has said (in response to a negative review) that “it’s a big fun movie”. Landis needs to rethink his opinion, and Ayer needs to reflect on what aspects could be regarded as “fun”. Following on so soon after the debacle that was Suicide Squad (2016), Ayer should be persuaded to avoid big budget fantasy spectacles and maybe concentrate on smaller, more personal movies or return to making gritty, immediate cop thrillers such as End of Watch (2012). Equally, Landis should forget about high concept screenplays and maybe write some more of the quirky, low budget stuff that actually has an impact, such as Mr. Right (2015). The trap that both men have fallen into is in believing that audiences will just accept what they’re being shown, and will be more than happy with the numerous action scenes that bulk out the movie. But when everything seems either laboured or ignored or both, audiences will take that on board, and they will be disappointed.

The performances are adequate, with Edgerton coming away with a degree of kudos for his portrayal of Nick, but for Smith this is another misfire in what seems to be a consistent series of misfires stretching all the way back to Men in Black 3 (2012). Whether you believe his judgment has been affected in some way, and that his choice of projects over the last five years has made him appear “off his game”, what remains is a portrayal here that doesn’t resonate in the way that a Will Smith performance used to. There isn’t the energy or the knowing humour that we’ve come to expect in the past; instead it’s another occasion where his presence is almost a guarantee of disappointment. Rapace has even less chance of making an impact, reduced as she is to playing generic villain of the month, while the rest of the cast make up the numbers in a variety of unassuming and unaffecting ways. It all looks gloomy and portentous, but not in a good way, and there are moments where any good intentions or creative ideas appear to have been jettisoned in favour of sticking to Landis’s screenplay. There’s a great movie to be made from the idea of fantasy creatures inhabiting the same world as humans, and living side by side with us, but unfortunately, Bright isn’t it.

Rating: 3/10 – with a sequel already greenlit and Smith set to return, the notion that Netflix have seen all they need to see in relation to Bright is quite a worrying development, especially as there’s nothing here to warrant continuing Ward or Nick’s story; loud, dumb, and superficially entertaining, it’s a movie that lacks heart and soul and a sense of wonder at the world it’s seeking to show, and which quickly descends into a melee of rote situations and trite outcomes.

The Mountain Between Us (2017)

22 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Drama, Hany Abu-Assad, High Uintas Wilderness, Idris Elba, Kate Winslet, Plane crash, Review, Survival, Thriller

D: Hany Abu-Assad / 112m

Cast: Idris Elba, Kate Winslet, Dermot Mulroney, Beau Bridges

Sometimes, and even in the best of movies, characters will do or say something that makes the viewer take a breath before uttering that immortal phrase, “What the hell?” (or some similar version). It might be something that’s out of character, or that doesn’t make any sense, or both, but it’s something that always takes the viewer out of the moment and leaves them wondering, “what idiot came up with that idea?” There’s such a moment in The Mountain Between Us, an adaptation of the novel by Charles Martin, that sees Idris Elba’s moody neurosurgeon Ben Bass, and Kate Winslet’s overly inquisitive photo-journalist Alex Martin, stranded in the High Uintas Wilderness (in Utah) after their charter plane crashes there. It would be unfair to mention this moment in detail, but any prospective viewer will know it when they see it. The problem with this moment in particular is that once it happens, the movie – already teetering on the brink of credibility – decides not to bother anymore and appropriately given Ben and Alex’s predicament, it’s all downhill from there.

Ostensibly a survival thriller, The Mountain Between Us isn’t content with being one type of movie: it wants to be a romantic drama as well. This would be all well and good if both approaches worked well together, but in the hands of director Hany Abu-Assad, and writers Chris Weitz and J. Mills Goodloe, the movie begins well enough with a well conceived and executed plane crash, and places its two main characters in a great deal of jeopardy, but then settles down to ensure that they become attracted to each other, and that their reliance on each other in order to survive becomes something greater. Yes, love is the order of the day, and is as clearly signposted as the various trials and tribulations they’ll face on their trek out of the wilderness. What this romantic development means though, is that the movie can’t decide which is more important in terms of the narrative: finding safety, or falling in love (and not into a frozen lake as Alex does).

This uncertainty leads to the movie feeling schizophrenic at times, as it develops a tendency to focus on the relationship/burgeoning love affair storyline for a while, before remembering it’s also a survival thriller and focusing on that before remembering again that it’s a romantic drama. As a result of this narrative to-ing and fro-ing, the movie never settles into a consistent groove, and as noted above, it loses its way once a certain point is reached, and from there it consequently loses traction. What could have been a tense, enthralling tale of two strangers learning how to survive against perilous odds, and using their combined wits and ingenuity to make it out of the wilderness alive (if not exactly in one piece: Ben has broken ribs, Alex has a leg injury), is left unrealised thanks to the romantic angle. And what could have been an emotive, touching love story borne out of an unexpected mutual attraction is made unlikely and annoying by the conventions used to tell said story.

As the movie unfolds it becomes obvious that the romance between Ben and Alex is more important to the overall story than whether or not they survive (though the outcome is entirely predictable). This means there are plenty of those odd, awkward moments that only seem to occur in the movies where characters remain reticent and hold back their emotions for no other reason than that the script needs them to, and misunderstanding is piled on top of further misunderstanding as the same script keeps both characters from openly declaring their love for each other until the very end. Someone, somewhere, has decided that this makes for good viewing. Someone, somewhere, needs to know this isn’t true. And if you’re a viewer watching this kind of thing drag itself out, you’ll be annoyed and frustrated and want to yell things like, “Kiss her/him already!” or “Just get on with it!” Ben and Alex do exactly this, andthe script can’t find adequate reasons for them to be so afraid of talking openly to each other.

Fortunately, and though the characters are somewhat insipid and stereotypical, they’re played by Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, two of the best actors working today. Doing their best to compensate for the vagaries of the script, the pair make Ben and Alex more sympathetic than they perhaps have any right to be, and though their inevitable coming together is less than convincing, they at least make it less dispiriting than it could have been. Elba uses his familiar taciturn demeanour to good effect throughout, while Winslet always seems to be thinking about what her character is doing and why. True, she looks puzzled more often than not, but it’s in keeping with the way that Alex views things and tries to make sense of them. Together they share a definite chemistry; it’s just a shame that the script and Abu-Assad’s direction can’t provide a suitable scenario for them to build on more effectively. And there aren’t many actors who could take the last couple of scenes in the movie and make them work as well as Elba and Winslet – and that’s no mean feat.

Alas, the movie is further undermined by its refusal to put Ben and Alex in anything truly like harm’s way. Problems arise and are quickly overcome, whether it’s Ben’s broken ribs (which don’t seem to slow him down at all) or Alex’s injured leg (she proves equally adept at getting about despite the pain she’s in), or a cougar looking for an easy lunch, or the aforementioned dip in the frozen lake that Alex enjoys: none of these problems pose much of a realistic threat, or give any indication that they might stop Ben and Alex from reaching civilisation. With any and all peril removed so easily and consistently, the movie loses any sense of urgency it might have been able to assemble, and Abu-Assad’s flaccid direction ensures that any thrills to be had are left behind with the plane crash. That said, the Canadian locations have been beautifully photographed by DoP Mandy Walker, displaying their snowy peaks and valleys to often striking effect, and emphasising the vastness of the wilderness Ben and Alex are stranded in. Sadly, it’s really only these aspects of the production that Abu-Assad and his team have managed to get completely right, leaving a movie that’s good in some places, but (mostly) not in others.

Rating: 5/10 – Elba and Winslet are the main draw here, an acting dream team who can only do so much against a script that lacks conviction and somewhat counter-intuitively at times, a clear purpose; another of the many missed opportunities that 2017 has seen fit to put in front of us, The Mountain Between Us just doesn’t register strongly enough to make much of an impact, and comes perilously close at times to wasting the talents of both its stars, something that should be regarded as unforgivable.

Mayhem (2017)

21 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Comedy, Drama, Horror, ID7 Strain, Joe Lynch, Kerry Fox, Quarantine, Review, Samara Weaving, Steven Brand, Steven Yeun, Thriller, Towers & Smythe Consulting

D: Joe Lynch / 87m

Cast: Steven Yeun, Samara Weaving, Steven Brand, Caroline Chikezie, Kerry Fox, Dallas Roberts, Mark Frost, Claire Dellamar, André Eriksen, Nikola Kent, Lucy Chappell, Olja Hrustic

Multi-hyphenate Joe Lynch has come a long way since Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007), his debut as a director. Knights of Badassdom (2013) was a mess that at least confirmed Lynch had promise (if he had the right material to work with), while Everly (2014) was an over-the-top action fest that showed Lynch was indeed learning his craft, and becoming increasingly more confident. And now, with his latest movie, Lynch displays an even greater confidence, and makes his most polished feature so far. It’s a darkly humorous, splatter-infused second cousin to The Belko Experiment (2016), but where that was a terrible attempt at creating an old-fashioned exploitation flick, Mayhem is an old-fashioned exploitation flick, and one that is far more successful in both its aims and its achievements.

The McGuffin of the movie is a virus, the ID7 Strain, a nasty little bugger that causes people to throw caution, responsibility and morality out of the window, and indulge in whatever hidden desires they’ve held back from carrying out in the past. ID7 means self-control is anathema to the infected, and be it lust, greed, violence, or a mix of all three, those afflicted will ignore any calls for restraint. Thankfully, an antidote has been found, but the company that created the virus, Towers & Smythe Consulting, is about to fall victim to a very bad case of schadenfreude: their corporate headquarters is about to be put into quarantine because of an outbreak in the building. It will take eight hours for the antidote to reverse the effects of the virus; until then it’s every man and woman for themselves. Two of the infected – executive Derek Cho (Yeun), who has been set up as a patsy for one of his colleagues’ malpractice and then fired, and Melanie Cross (Weaving), a victim of one of T&SC’s sharp practices – find themselves teaming up and using a legal loophole (no one affected by the virus can be arrested or tried for any crimes they commit while suffering from ID7) to fight their way to the top floor and “persuade” the company’s board of directors to give Derek his job back, and allow Melanie to keep her home.

Of course, the path to the top floor is paved with numerous obstacles and murderous intentions, as the company’s head honcho, coke-snorting, golf club-wielding John Towers (Brand), takes offence to Derek wanting his job back, and takes even further offence when Derek starts leaking company secrets. With both Derek and Towers determined to use the eight hour quarantine period to advance their own agendas, the stage is set for a bloody boardroom showdown and a number of violent “dismissals” along the way. As Derek and Melanie fight their way up the building using an assortment of tools including a nail gun and a wrench, they find themselves facing the likes of the Reaper (Roberts), an HR executive who does the firing, the Siren (Chikezie), Derek’s rival and the colleague who got him fired, and the Bull (Eriksen), Towers’ head of security.

It’s all good, propulsive stuff, violent and preposterous, clever and absurd, and bearing absolutely no resemblance to anything that’s even remotely credible – at any stage. By creating the legal loophole whereby anything goes and no one is responsible for their actions (a la The Purge series), Mayhem ensures that any criticism of what takes place is fruitless, and that only the more extreme moments, such as when Derek is stabbed through the hand with a pair of scissors and shrugs it off for the rest of the movie, can be called into question. With Lynch and co given free rein thanks to Matias Caruso’s knowing screenplay, the movie embraces its exploitation roots and allows itself to throw narrative caution to the wind in its efforts to provide thrills, gore, action, comedy, and blunt force drama. There’s enough blood spilt here to keep the cleaners mopping up for days. And Lynch orchestrates it all with the glee of someone getting to play at being sadistic while also keeping their tongue firmly in their cheek. The violence may be bloody and raw on occasion, but it’s leavened by a cruel sense of humour at the same time, and there are moments when the viewer won’t know whether to wince or laugh or both.

There’s also a fair and pleasing dose of corporate satire at play here, as the script pokes fun at the culture of ladder climbing at all costs that exists in modern US buinesses (and elsewhere in the world, no doubt). Derek is seen when he first comes to work for T&SC and he’s a naïve, hopeful individual whose experiences soon make him more callous and dismissive of others. He retains an innate sense of justice but outwardly and for the most part he’s just as much a jerk as the rest of his colleagues. Yuen plays him to perfection, channelling Derek’s anger at being fired and using it as a way to control the virus in his system. Likewise, Weaving does the same with Melanie, only allowing her to cut loose when needing to take someone down (and/or out). Both actors are clearly having fun with their roles and this transfers itself well to the viewer, who will be on their side and willing them on at every turn. Against this, Brand is a terrific villain: vain, arrogant, and getting through mounds of cocaine like a pig in a trough.

Elsewhere, Fox provides another exemplary portrayal as the Smythe in T&SC, there’s a lovely moment where Derek and Melanie pause to debate the merits of the Dave Matthews Band, and viewers should keep one eye focused on what’s going on in the background in certain scenes. The movie has a good pace, takes an adequate amount of time to introduce its central characters, maintains a good narrative structure, mounts several good action scenes, includes several unexpected pop culture references, and makes the very most of its limited budget. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s far better than most exploitation flicks out there these days and it’s immensely likeable, with strong characters and Lynch’s (by now) trademark rock ‘n’ roll sensibility urging it along. For fans of this sort of thing it will feel like a welcome breath of fresh air, and for others it should prove to be far more enjoyable than expected. Either way, this is a movie whose spiky energy should be welcomed and applauded.

Rating: 8/10 – with several plusses – Yuen in a starring role and corporate culture being skewered left, right and centre (to name just a couple) – Mayhem sets out its stall early on in a bravura pre-credits scene, and doesn’t let up once the ID7 Strain makes its presence felt; a popcorn movie it may be, but this has much more than that to recommend it, and by confidently mixing its genres, makes itself all the more praiseworthy, and well worth seeking out.

Daddy’s Home Two (2017)

19 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Comedy, Fathers, John Lithgow, Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson, Review, Sean Anders, Sequel, Will Ferrell, Xmas

D: Sean Anders / 100m

Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson, John Lithgow, Linda Cardellini, Alessandra Ambrosio, Owen Vaccaro, Scarlett Estevez, Didi Costine, John Cena

Is it only two years since we were “treated” to Daddy’s Home (2015), the lacklustre real dad versus step-dad movie that was banal and uninspired except on a handful of occasions (bet you can’t name any of them now, though)? Well, the sad answer is yes, it is, and if this entirely expected (but unnecessary) sequel achieves anything, then it’s being blander and less funny than its predecessor. It’s actually quite impressive: the lengths to which the makers of Daddy’s Home Two have gone to ensure this sequel is a snoozefest on an epic level. This is a movie that makes the original look and sound like a multi-award winning cult classic. It’s also one of the dreariest movies to come along in a very long while. If you manage to get through this from start to finish, give yourself a pat on the back and a gold star.

Deciding that making a sequel means bringing in bigger names to bolster the cast, this has somehow managed to attract the likes of Mel Gibson, John Lithgow, and most bizarrely of all, Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, the pilot responsible for the 2009 Miracle on the Hudson plane landing. There are always projects where you wonder if anyone read a finished script before shooting began, and what appears to be obvious here is that if they did they didn’t worry about the lack of laughs, the terrible dialogue, the predictable arc of the story, or the OTT feelgood ending that sees most of the main cast “singing” Do They Know It’s Christmas by Band Aid (why? Don’t ask). Comedy sequels usually aim higher, bigger, broader, or sometimes opt to be more extreme. However, this is a comedy sequel that eschews all that and goes all out to be the cinematic equivalent of beige; as a result, it’s unrelentingly tedious. The movie lasts for one hundred minutes but watching it feels like it takes twice as long.

The main problem is that the script – by director Sean Anders and John Morris – doesn’t have a purpose other than to make the audience wait until Gibson’s horny old goat, Kurt, finally succumbs to the idea of peace and goodwill to all men and kisses his son, Dusty (Wahlberg), on the mouth (and yes, you are reading that right). Before then, the movie takes an age to undermine the friendship and mutual understanding that was established between Dusty and Brad (Ferrell) in the first movie, and only around the hour mark does it finally pit them against each other. Cue lots of moody looks between the two characters, and both of them engaging in the kind of low-key antagonism that is best expressed by Brad’s fake-pumping a snowball throw: there’s a minimum of intent and no follow through. Throughout, Dusty tells Brad that Kurt is looking to undermine their co-dad status, and while Kurt is certainly dismissive of their friendship – and questions their masculinity at every opportunity – again there’s more intent than action. This is a sequel that talks a lot about what’s going to happen, and what did happen, but has a hard time focusing on the present.

As a comedy, it relies on a series of pratfalls that happen to Don (Lithgow), Brad’s father, and Brad himself; a number of uninspired one-liners; the blossoming attraction of pre-teen Dylan (Vaccaro) for his pre-teen step-sister, Adrianna (Costine); and… that’s about it. There are an awful lot of scenes that occur purely in order to set up the next scene, and then that scene sets up the next scene, and so on, until finally a scene comes along that has a specific purpose. By then, however, any sense that the script knows what it’s doing, or that Anders has any intention of loading the movie with any appreciable energy, is long gone, and as the movie drags itself along like a sick animal looking for a place to curl up and die, any sympathy that arises is entirely for the viewer, and not for the cast and crew who took part in it. They should have known better. (And it all takes place at Xmas, for no better reason than to provide an excuse for Kurt and Don to be involved, as if family get-togethers don’t happen at any other time of year.)

In the end, it’s a lazy movie with lazy performances and a hazy sense of its own quality. Ferrell has made too many similar “comedies” for anyone to be surprised at his involvement, while Wahlberg keeps everything on the same level throughout. Their performances are as perfunctory as possible, and they’re encouraged by Anders’ desultory approach to directing; going through the motions is all that’s required of them. Gibson is hamstrung by his character’s one-note attitude to parenting, while Lithgow’s dad-with-a-secret tries for pathos in one scene but is let down by the comic shifts that occur right alongside his tragic reveal. Cardellini and Ambrosio are the token women putting up with Brad and Dusty’s shenanigans, and with barely a word of protest (hey, whatever happened to strong female characters in comedies?), while the child actors are used for maximum cuteness, something that soon wears thin.

Forbearance is a wonderful thing, and so is patience, but if you absolutely have to see Daddy’s Home Two, then be prepared to wait around for long stretches for anything to have an impact, or provide a genuine laugh, or provide you with anything that will make the experience worthwhile. If this is the best that everyone can do, then it’s a further damning example of the parlous state of mainstream movie making in America today. With a budget of $69 million, it’s hard to work out where the money was spent, but easy enough to see why it was greenlit in the first place. That doesn’t excuse the poor quality of the script, though, or the lack of commitment from all concerned, all of which makes the movie not just a disappointment but a dire retread of themes and ideas that have been done to death already. You could argue that a movie like this one isn’t expected to be great, or a must-see, but with the talent involved it is reasonable to expect a greater effort made in making the movie as good as can be. That it doesn’t look like anyone could be bothered is both appalling and, worse, unsurprising.

Rating: 3/10 – sequels are an easy source of revenue (this has already made its money back and more), but they needn’t be an excuse for a shoddy finished product; Daddy’s Home Two is both of those things, and is also laboured, boring, unimaginative, and a slap in the face to viewers hoping to be entertained, something this movie gives up on with alacrity.

Stronger (2017)

17 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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

D: David Gordon Green / 119m

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pottersville (2017)

16 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Bigfoot, Comedy, Drama, Furries, Ian McShane, Judy Greer, Michael Shannon, Monster Finder, Review, Ron Perlman, Seth Henrikson, Thomas Lennon

D: Seth Henrikson / 85m

Cast: Michael Shannon, Judy Greer, Ron Perlman, Thomas Lennon, Ian McShane, Christina Hendricks, Michael Torpey, Debargo Sandal, Greta Lee

In the same way that most music artists are seemingly contractually bound to release a Xmas album (or at the least, a single), the same appears to apply to actors as well. This is the only way to explain the existence of Pottersville, a movie that features a well-known and very capable cast literally going through the motions right before our eyes. It’s a movie that will encourage viewers to have one too many glasses of Xmas punch, or perhaps wish they could choke on a mince pie while they’re watching it. It’s not even so bad it’s good; in fact, it’s just plain awful. So what on earth could have attracted said cast to the project in the first place? And why did two of them jump on board as producers? (Perlman is a co-producer, while Shannon is one of several executive producers – along with Patricia Hearst, which is still a weird notion even after all this time.) Surely they had some degree of confidence in the script, some idea that this could be a traditional heart-warming tale for children and adults alike? Didn’t they?

Well, if they didn’t, then the final product – directed by relative newbie Henrikson from a script by feature debut screenwriter, Daniel Meyer – must have come as quite a surprise. For while this looks very much like a Xmas movie at first glance, and while there’s plenty of snow around, and the wintry feel lends itself to being a Xmas movie, Pottersville isn’t set at Xmas, there aren’t any Xmas trees or decorations in sight, no one dresses up as Santa, and nobody has a tragic Xmas tale to tell a la Gremlins (1984). It’s all so misleading, especially when the poster supports the idea that this is a Xmas movie, and features various Xmas trees and twinkly lights (and as for Lennon sporting Santa’s headgear, let’s not even go there). But while this isn’t a Xmas movie per se, it’s certainly feeding off the hope that viewers will begin watching it as such and wll be sucked in by the movie’s snowy mise en scene, but by the time they work out that they’ve been duped, the audience will have been exposed for too long to the movie’s daft sensibilities and ham-fisted attempts at providing the kind of generous helpings of down-home folksy wisdom that would make a reindeer choke and Santa blush with embarrassment.

When it’s not being a Xmas movie – which is still all the way through – Pottersville is content to disturb the spirit of Xmas Past and rehash key elements from a proper Xmas movie: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Alas, it’s a telling distinction, as Shannon’s main character, general store owner Maynard Greiger, is no George Bailey, and despite Shannon’s obvious skill as an actor, here he’s no James Stewart either. Financial matters, though, are to the fore as the struggling town of Pottersville faces an uncertain future thanks to an economic downturn. There are more stores that are closed than open, and Maynard is the kind of philanthropic individual who’ll happily let someone off their bill if they’re having difficulty finding the money. With only one employee, Parker (Greer), it’s hard to work out how he’s managed to stay open, but he seems happy enough (if a little resigned to following in the foreclosed footsteps of his main street neighbours). A chance discovery that his wife is a Furry, and that his long-time friend and town sheriff, Jack (Perlman) is too, leads Maynard to get drunk and put on a Sasquatch outfit in a moment of alcoholic “insight”. He roams the town at night, is seen by too many short-sighted townsfolk, and soon discovers that his drunken behaviour has led to everyone believing that Bigfoot is alive and well and living in the woods outside of town.

With “Bigfoot” attracting media attention, Pottersville is soon inundated with people hoping to catch sight of the hairy fella, and the residents are only too happy to help relieve said people of their money, offering Bigfoot related merchandise and the like. Maynard sees the turnaround in the town’s fortunes and decides to keep quiet about what he did, and even provide the odd extra sighting from time to time. But there’s a fly in the ointment, in the shape of reality TV presenter, Brock Masterson (Lennon). Masterson arrives in town with his Australian accent and bored entourage, and promises to catch Bigfoot live on his show, Monster Finder. His initial attempts though, are unsuccessful – surprise, surprise – but when he accepts the help of local tracker and hunter, Bart (McShane), Maynard’s secret is placed in jeopardy, and so is the town’s renaissance.

From the obvious references to It’s a Wonderful Life, to a scene that rips off Quint’s “you know me” speech in Jaws (1975), Pottersville lurches from one lapse in artistic judgment to another, and leaves its cast reeling in its wake. Rarely have so many talented actors looked so bemused or bewildered by what they’re being asked to do, and Meyer’s script proves of no assistance to them whatsoever. Probably best described as a broad comedy, this is cringeworthy stuff that many of the cast may well leave off their resumés in the future. Most of the movie’s “humour” is meant to come from the vain, cowardly antics of Lennon’s TV host, but he’s just tiresome from very early on, and irritating in a way that makes you want to reach through the screen and slap him. That he’s allowed so much screen time is one of the worst decisions the movie makes, and it’s right up there with its crude use of Furries – people who like to dress up in furry, anthropomorphic animal costumes – who at one point conveniently meet up in the woods for no apparent reason that anyone can think of. (If anyone in the Furry community is reading this, please be quick and get a documentary made about yourselves; don’t let this be the main representation of your lifestyle on screen.)

While there are some occasional moments when it seems as if the movie is going to break free of the heavy chains created out of Meyer’s poorly constructed (and hopelessly contrived) script, and Henrikson’s laboured direction, the movie shuts those moments down with a crash and its business as usual. There is a kind of perverse enjoyment to be had from watching such a bad movie, but the feeling rarely lasts for more than a minute, and the cast don’t seem able (or willing) to fight their way out from under. Shannon is under-used and left to look thoughtful for much of the movie, while Lennon portrays Masterson like a twelve-year-old going through atomoxetine withdrawal. Perlman and Greer fulfill their contractual obligations, Hendricks gets to spend a fair bit of time in a bunny costume, and McShane is perhaps the most “game” of all, but even he’s struggling, and when someone with McShane’s talent can be seen to be struggling, then it’s all you need to know.

Rating: 3/10 – like an evil Xmas present left out for the one kid on Santa’s Naughty List, Pottersville is appalling yet brief, far-fetched to the point of infinity, and not really worth anyone’s time – even fans of the cast; such a conspicuous waste of time and effort isn’t seen very often, and this is one of those occasions when it seems only WTF? will do as a response, but beware: you’ll be saying WTF? so many times it’ll be exhausting.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

15 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Barry Keoghan, Colin Farrell, Drama, Heart surgeon, Mystery, Nicole Kidman, Raffey Cassidy, Revenge, Review, Thriller, Yorgos Lanthimos

D: Yorgos Lanthimos / 121m

Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic, Alicia Silverstone, Bill Camp

In Yorgos Lanthimos’s follow up to the multi-award winning The Lobster (2015), he teams up again with Colin Farrell to tell a story adapted from Iphigenia at Aulis by the Greek playwright Euripides. Lanthimos is an idiosyncratic writer/director, and his approach to movie making can often seem experimental and/or challenging. That’s certainly the case here, as he shines a light on the aftermath of a man dying during surgery, a man that Farrell’s character, cardiothoracic specialist Steven Moore, operated on. Steven is part of a traditional nuclear family – wife Anna (Kidman), teenage daughter Kim (Cassidy), younger son Bob (Suljic) – is well respected by his peers, and appears to have everything he could need. The only odd thing about his life is his relationship with a teenage boy called Martin (Keoghan). They meet in coffee shops, and though Martin at first seems as if he could be some kind of outpatient that Steven is treating, his openly expressed neediness is at odds with Steven’s more reserved demeanour.

Martin begins to visit the hospital instead of waiting for their meetings outside. He appears without warning, and his beahviour becomes increasingly erratic. In an effort to placate him, Steven invites Martin to his home for dinner. Over time, Martin ingratiates himself into Steven’s family, and wins the affection of Kim. A reciprocal arrangement sees Steven going to dinner at Martin’s home, where he meets Martin’s mother (Silverstone). The evening doesn’t go well, and it prompts Steven to start ignoring Martin’s calls and attempts to meet up. Then one day Bob wakes to find he’s paralysed from the waist down. Soon he’s refusing to eat as well, but despite the best medical treatment that Steven can arrange, there is no physical reason found to explain what’s happening. And then, during choir practice, Kim too loses the use of her legs, and she and her brother find themselves in hospital, in the same room, and facing the same outcome: death.

In adapting Iphigenia at Aulis, Lanthimos has taken the central theme – what would you do if you had to kill a loved one to avert a greater number of deaths – and made it into a psychological thriller that proves difficult to engage with from the very start. Beginning with a close up of a beating human heart that’s been operated on, this is as close as the movie gets to displaying anything like the same kind of “heart” to its characters. As a result, Steven, Anna, Martin et al become chess pieces to be moved around a board of Lanthimos’ design, and with no greater ambition than to reach the endgame. What doesn’t help is the emotional constraint the movie adopts, particularly with Steven, where his dialogue is largely clipped and/or neutral in its relation to other dialogue in any given scene. This makes Steven something of an emotional cipher, physically present in the moment, but otherwise withdrawn or remote from the people around him (he’s more present with his children but then only when they’re doing what he expects of them). And even when he does display any real emotion, such as during a row with Anna, his responses are childish and inappropriate; he’s a man approximating what it is to feel anything.

Steven is also a dissembler, hiding the facts about his relationship with Martin from everyone else until matters dictate he reveal the truth. This should lead to a point from which the audience can begin to have some sympathy for his predicament – in order to save the lives of everyone in his family he must choose to kill one of them deliberately, to make a sacrificial offering as atonement for his sins – but thanks to Lanthimos’ determination to continue on and make Steven’s predicament a tragic one, the movie becomes instead a visual treat if not one that is likely to stir any feelings beyond impatience or apathy. The how and the why of his children falling ill is explained fully and with no room for misunderstanding, but despite this the actual source of their illness remains illogically set up and maintained. As an act of revenge it has its merits (as Euripides knew), but it’s introduced in a way that robs it of any merit as a narrative device; the audience is expected to go along with it because the script doesn’t offer any alternative. It also leaves the inter-relationships between the likes of Martin and Kim, and Steven and Anna – and most notably, Anna and Matthew (Camp), one of Steven’s colleagues – feeling contrived and under-developed.

There are times when it seems as if Lanthimos is more interested in mood and tone than he is in characterisation or narrative meaning, but what this does mean is that the movie has such a strong, consistent visual aesthetic that it compensates for some of the more wayward decisions made in regard to the plot. Each shot is lovingly framed and lit by DoP Thimios Bakatakis, and there are moments of quiet beauty, such as the very high, overhead shot of Anna and Bob that sees them about to leave the hospital after Bob has been allowed to go home, only for him to collapse. The camera stays fixed in place, maintaining its distance, as Anna desperately tries to rouse him. There are other moments where the cinematography excels, but these moments aren’t always in service to the narrative, unless Lanthimos’ intention really is to keep the viewer at a distance, and make it more difficult (than it is already) to engage with the characters.

In the end, and despite Lanthimos’ best efforts, this is a movie that relies on its main character behaving inappropriately and oddly in spite of the gravity of his situation, and Keoghan giving the kind of performance that is technically impressive – and that’s about all. As the movie spirals down towards a scene that is likely to have viewers laughing when they should be horrified, the nature of the material reveals itself to be a carefully constructed farce rather than the psychological mystery thriller that it appears to be (though whether or not this is Lanthimos’ intention is still debatable). Watched as such, the movie makes more sense and is more enjoyable, but if taken at face value it’s more likely to alienate viewers than entice them in with the offer of a probing, insightful melodrama. More simply put, and despite a handful of good performances, it’s a movie that looks very good indeed on the surface, but which lacks the necessary substance when you look more closely.

Rating: 6/10 – an arthouse thriller that takes a step back from its central plot before it’s even begun, The Killing of a Sacred Deer strives for eloquence and meaning, but falls short because of its detachment from the material; Farrell et al are left stranded sometimes by Lanthimos’ approach to the movie’s subject matter, and there are too many occasions where the viewer’s response will be one of bemusement or disbelief at what they’re seeing.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

14 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Adam Driver, Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, Drama, John Boyega, Kylo Ren, Mark Hamill, Review, Rey, Rian Johnson, Sci-fi, Sequel

D: Rian Johnson / 152m

Cast: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Andy Serkis, Laura Dern, Kelly Marie Tran, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, Benicio Del Toro, Lupita Nyong’o

In the Star Wars universe there is one second sequel to rule them all (to mix franchise metaphors), and that’s The Empire Strikes Back (1980). That movie, even more so than A New Hope, was a lightning in a bottle experience, never to be repeated, and a shining example of what can happen when the stars are in perfect alignment. But now we have Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and though it falls just agonisingly short of being as good as Episode V, this is the closest anyone has come in coming close to the heights achieved by that particular movie. Better than all three prequel movies put together, richer and with more depth than either Episodes IV or VI, and showing even J.J. Abrams how it should be done, Episode VIII is the franchise entry that gives rise to another, newer hope: that Disney, for all that they want a Star Wars movie to grace our screens every year for the foreseeable future, do know what they’re doing. And the main reason for all this? Step forward, Rian Johnson.

Sometimes it’s a case of cometh the hour, cometh the man, and with The Last Jedi, it’s definitely Johnson’s hour, and he’s definitely the man. Not only has he built on the (mostly) impressive groundwork laid down by J.J. Abrams, but he’s made the current trilogy into something that’s in a league of its own. Whatever happens in Episode IX – and there’s more than enough evidence here to have Johnson substituted for Abrams in the writer/director’s chair – it will have to go some to top what’s on show here. This is bold, imaginative, stirring stuff, a clear rebuttal to all those who felt that The Force Awakens was too derivative of previous entries (another Death Star – okay, planet – and another Emperor – okay, Supreme Leader, etc.), and convincing proof that there will, and can be, life after the Skywalker story arc.

For this is the movie’s strongest suit, the way in which it’s pushing the whole Star Wars franchise forward, away from past glories, and toward future glories of its own making. Kylo Ren (Driver) sums up the aim of the current trilogy best when he says: “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.” This could double as the trilogy’s raison d’etre, as we move further and further away from the events and legacies of the first six movies, and into a period within the galaxy that involves Star Wars finding a new identity for itself. In making this narrative jump to lightspeed, producers Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman have made the most astute decision possible, and let Rian Johnson loose on their “baby”. And Johnson hasn’t let them, or the fans, or even casual viewers down. The Last Jedi is the Star Wars movie we’ve all been waiting for since 1980: the one that reminds us of just how much story-telling potential there is in the saga, and how much it can all mean to us both culturally and personally.

This is a movie that will delight existing fans, but also will go a long way to persuading non-fans that there’s much more to Star Wars than action toys and cosplay. Johnson has created an exciting, intimidating, intelligent, and emotionally daunting piece of sci-fi, and has done so with flair, confidence, and no small amount of visual style (the prequels, for all their faults, always looked visually stunning, but Johnson has upped that particular ante, and seemingly effortlessly). The movie provides impressive amounts of eye candy in terms of the production design, the locations used, and the special effects, but it’s all in service to the story, and the three separate plot strands that occupy the movie’s extended running time (forget that it’s two and a half hours long; you won’t notice the time anyway once you’re watching it). This is the movie’s greatest strength: in telling these separate plot strands in such a way that you can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next with all of them. Johnson keeps upping the stakes, putting the characters through the emotional, physical, and psychological wringer (and the viewer right along with them), and offering only very brief respites for everyone to catch their breath. It’s a juggling act, but one that Johnson pulls off with all the confidence of someone who’s been doing it all their lives.

Of course, the presence of Luke Skywalker (Hamill) is the main draw this time. Where Abrams had the nerve to keep Luke off-screen until the very last scene of The Force Awakens, here Johnson has to keep him front and centre for much of the movie, and provide some answers for the questions raised in Episode VII. To his credit, Johnson provides Luke with a character arc that makes sense of his isolation, and his reluctance to become involved with the Resistance. Hamill, naturally, seizes on the quality of Johnson’s writing and makes of Luke an old man with huge regrets and an attitude that keeps him feeling reproachful and pessimistic. The presence of Rey (Ridley) serves only as a painful reminder of his failings, and the way in which Luke rediscovers his sense of self-worth is played out with a great deal of attention to the character’s inner emotions, and the added layers of betrayal and guilt that he’s accrued over the years.

The dynamic between Rey and Kylo Ren is given its due, and though there’s a degree of inevitability about the way their Force-led relationship is resolved for now, the path they’re taken on by Johnson offers up a range of possibilities that keeps the viewer guessing as to which ones will be explored the most, and which ones will be held over for Episode IX. Both Ridley and Driver delve deeper into their characters’ individual needs and destinies, and the scenes they share have an intensity that matches the high stakes involved in their manoeuvring around each other. Against this it would be easy to say that the other characters don’t fare so well and have truncated story arcs as a result, but Rey and Kylo Ren are the central protagonists, and it’s their particular story that drives much of the action. Finn (Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Isaac) are kept busy but as secondary characters this time around, while newcomers Tran, Dern and Del Toro have roles that fit the requirements of the plot rather than making their characters as memorable as some of the others. And then there’s Carrie Fisher (involved in the movie’s strangest moment) and as General Leia Organa, carrying the weight of everyone’s hopes on her shoulders – and feeling the strain. It’s a tightly controlled performance, not a swansong as such, but one that contains the gravitas needed to emphasise the importance of keeping the Resistance alive.

In a year where there have been a number of high profile, highly anticipated blockbusters – most of which have proved disappointing on many levels – it’s reassuring to know that there is at least one movie released this year under that banner that matches the expectations required of it. Whether it’s setting pulses racing in its opening sequence as Poe seeks to disable a dreadnought’s external gun placements, or exploring the darker aspects of the Force, or even the notion that power isn’t corrupting of itself but the intent to grasp power is, the movie treads carefully but effectively through a series of emotional minefields and debatable decision making. However, this isn’t to say that it’s all doom and gloom and entirely heavy stuff, because it isn’t. There’s plenty of humour – a lot of it laugh out loud funny and in places where you wouldn’t expect it – and there’s some excellent location work, especially in Ireland’s Skellig Michael (where Luke is found), and the salt flats of Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni. Johnson’s go-to cinematographer, Steve Yedlin, makes it all look stunning, and this is an episode where more than ever the visuals are used to enhance and support the material, and which can on more than one occasion, elicit gasps of appreciation – much like the movie as a whole.

Rating: 8/10 – with still too many ties to the Lucas era, and still finding its way to a satisfying future without those ties, Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a transitional movie but one that is so confidently handled by writer/director Rian Johnson that any qualms about the material can be overlooked – for the most part; a movie that keeps moving and keeps doing its best to be surprising, it’s the very definition of a crowd-pleaser, and one that rewards as it goes, and which sets up numerous possibilities for the next installment, due on 20 December 2019.

The Show (2017)

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Drama, Famke Janssen, Giancarlo Esposito, Josh Duhamel, Review, Suicide, This Is Your Death, Thriller, TV show

Original title: This Is Your Death

D: Giancarlo Esposito / 105m

Cast: Josh Duhamel, Giancarlo Esposito, Famke Janssen, Caitlin FitzGerald, Sarah Wayne Callies, Chris Ellis, Lucia Walters, Brooke Warrington, Jaeden Noel

The rise and rise and continued rise of reality TV shows has, according to the latest movie to feature James Franco in an “anyone could have played it” cameo, brought us to a bit of an impasse. With audiences (apparently) becoming bored with watching the lives of celebrities, would-be celebrities and those looking for love, what’s a television network to do when their latest hit show, Marriage to a Millionaire, ends in murder and suicide? For the show’s host, Adam Rogers (Duhamel), it proves to be a bit of a wake up call. For network chief Ilana Katz (Janssen), it provides an opportunity to create a brand new show unlike any seen before on national TV. Ilana wants to make a show that features ordinary members of the public killing themselves live on television. At first, Adam is repulsed by the idea, as is the live event producer, Sylvia (FitzGerald), that Ilana wants to hire. But Adam convinces himself that the show doesn’t have to be as tawdry or exploitative as it sounds. Instead, he believes the deaths can have meaning, and he comes up with an idea that facilitates this: the death of each person who takes part will be financially beneficial to someone in their lives…

It’s a measure of The Show‘s innate stupidity as a movie that this notion – and all by itself – doesn’t derail things from the moment the idea is mentioned. It’s certainly the moment when the movie gives up all attempts at credibility, and settles for being an unadulterated mess. As Adam demands more and more creative control (and gets it), his insistence that the show is “real” (whatever that means), and is helping people to see that their lives can make a difference, becomes more and more nonsensical as the movie progresses. Both Adam and the script – the work of Kenny Yakkel and Noah Pink – become less and less convincing as the show, titled This Is Your Death, becomes a ratings winner, and any initial horror or disgust is conveniently overlooked. Behind the scenes, Sylvia acts as the show’s voice of conscience, but her objections to the show’s format and content is continually undermined by her remaining as the producer. Away from the show, the only other voice of dissent is provided by Adam’s sister, Karina (Callies), a nurse who quickly points out the immorality of what her brother is doing. But Adam doesn’t want to listen because Adam has his own agenda.

The movie tries to keep several plot strands going all at the same time, but while some of those strands are pursued to the end, there are just as many that are maintained in such a haphazard fashion that they add to the sense that nobody working on this movie had a clear idea as to what it was actually about. Anyone looking for a movie that supports the idea of dignity through suicide will find the televised versions shown here abhorrent, while anyone looking for a cogent and thoughtful examination of what it means to sacrifice yourself for the good of your loved ones, will come away perplexed by the simplistic and lunk-headed approach that’s adopted by Yakkel and Pink’s unimpressive screenplay. There are themes and issues raised that the movie could have addressed more directly, such as the audience’s complicity in people’s deaths, and the need for each death to be as violent as possible (when someone takes their life by lethal injection, it’s something of a relief).

But the movie is trying to be a thriller first and foremost, even though at best it’s a muddled drama that seeks to hurl contentious barbs at our obsession with reality television, and to a lesser extent, social media. Some of this is addressed through the character of Ilana, who wants only for the show to be successful, and who is willing to look the other way when circumstances dictate. But the character is an easy target, the network executive without a conscience, and though Janssen is a talented actress, there’s nothing she can do with the role because Ilana is a caricature without any substance. Then there’s Adam himself, increasingly arrogant, increasingly self-aggrandising, and only interested in what benefits the show can give him, from national fame on a whole different level to what he’s experienced before, to a new house that is way too big for just one person. The script tries to make it seem that Adam truly believes in what the show is trying to do, but whenever it tries to get him to explain his beliefs, they remain as unconvincing as the show as a whole.

Away from the studio, the movie offers us two stories, the one that relates to Karina and her efforts to remain clean from drugs (and which you know is going to collide with the show at some stage), and the efforts of a fifty-something ex-salesman, Mason Washington (Esposito), and his efforts to keep a roof over the heads of himself and his family. Mason is working two jobs when we first meet him, but inevitably he loses both thanks to Basic Plotting 101, and when he can’t find any alternative work (and even gets turned down by a loan shark; yes, a loan shark whose conscience works better than anyone on the show), Mason begins to think about trading his life for his family’s future security. He’s the emotional core of the movie, someone we can care about and hope doesn’t kill himself, and thanks to Esposito’s sympathetic portrayal, that’s easily done. But Esposito the director still has the issue of connecting what’s essentially a character drama (Mason’s trouble finding a job etc.) with a low-concept reality TV-based thriller. Sadly, the two don’t mix as well as intended.

The performances are consistent with the lack of consistency in the narrative, and the likes of Callies, FitzGerald, and Janssen can only do so much to ensure their characters aren’t completely stereotypical. But while Esposito makes it work, Duhamel isn’t so lucky, and as he showed in Misconduct (2016), when the character isn’t fully there, he’s not always able to build on what’s available and create a compelling portrayal. Duhamel is a likeable actor, but in this kind of movie and in this kind of role, he often seems out of his depth, and he struggles accordingly. By the end of the movie, and a scene set outside the studio, the limitations of his performance are on full display (though he’s not helped by Esposito’s clumsy direction; watch Esposito exit the scene as Mason to see just how clumsy Esposito’s direction can be). With so much that doesn’t work, or is simply under-developed, the movie coasts along trying to be relevant and/or insightful, but instead, falls down at every turn, and relies too heavily on dramatic clichés to ever achieve anything that isn’t superficial or half-baked.

Rating: 3/10 – as ideas go, it’s not a bad one, but the treatment is what keeps The Show from being anything other than a jumbled, unconvincing, and embarrassing farrago; another example of a movie that feels as if everyone is working from a first draft, it plays out like a bad dream that you hope you’ll be able to forget, but which lingers in the memory just a little too long for comfort.

Black Snow (2017)

09 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Argentina, Drama, Laia Costa, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Martin Hodara, Mystery, Patagonia, Review, Ricardo Darín, Thriller, Tragedy

Original title: Nieve negra

D: Martin Hodara / 91m

Cast: Ricardo Darín, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Laia Costa, Federico Luppi, Dolores Fonzi, Andrés Herrera, Biel Montoro, Liah O’Prey, Mikel Iglesias, Iván Luengo

Upon learning of his father’s death, Marcos (Sbaraglia), along with his pregnant wife, Laura (Costa), travels to his home in Patagonia to settle his father’s affairs and sell the family home. But he encounters an obstacle to his plans in the form of his older brother, Salvador (Darín). Salvador still lives in the family home, and has no wish to move to somewhere new; nor is he tempted by gaining a share of the sale price that’s being offered by a local lawyer, Sepia (Luppi). He makes it clear that he wants to stay because of a tragedy that befell the family when he and Marcos when children, and their younger brother, Juan (Luengo), was accidentally killed during a hunting trip. Their father (Herrera) blamed Salvador for Juan’s death, and ever since, Salvador has lived a life of solitude and penitence, while Marcos has made a life for himself elsewhere, and their sister, Sabrina (Fonzi), has battled with mental health issues connected with the death of her younger brother. As Marcos does his best to persuade Salvador to change his mind, the truth about what happened when Juan was killed begins to surface, and secrets long buried come back to haunt the brothers, and send them down a path towards bloody conflict…

With family tragedies – and the inevitable dark secrets that seem to go with them at every turn – fuelling so many movies over the years, Argentinian thriller Black Snow has its work cut out for it before it’s even started. But while it doesn’t offer anything that’s particularly striking or original, it does have the benefit of its Patagonian setting, and a strong cast whose performances contribute greatly in making the viewer overlook how predictable it all is. It also takes great care through the various flashbacks that pepper the narrative, in revealing just enough about what happened the day Juan died, but without giving the viewer too much information to help them work out the why. Sharp-eyed and -eared viewers – or just those who have seen one too many of these kinds of thrillers – will be able to work out who did what, but this doesn’t spoil anything going forward, and the script – by director Hodara and Leonel D’Agostino – works hard to concentrate on the characters and their fractured relationships instead of making it all about the mystery surrounding Juan’s death.

Away from that central mystery, there is still much to keep viewers occupied, from the sad fate of Sabrina, her brother’s death having scarred her to the point where she’s retreated from the world, to the legacy that their father has bequeathed them all, one that encompasses unhappiness and emotional distance. Marcos initially seems to have succeeded in avoiding the effects of their father’s legacy but his marriage shows signs that this isn’t the case, and as the movie progresses and he fights to maintain his own fragile equilibrium, whenever Laura challenges him about his behaviour or what happened all that time ago, you can see the façade that he’s so carefully hidden behind for so long begin to slip. For his part, Salvador is reticent and unhappy with Marcos’ attempts at further marginalising their shared tragedy, and the idea of selling their childhood home fuels the anger he’s kept at bay in the intervening years. And when Marcos finally goes too far, both brothers’ actions have unforeseen consequences.

The snow-covered mountains of Patagonia serve as an effective backdrop for the icy interactions between Marcos and Salvador, and the wintry weather also helps to highlight the simmering emotions that both brothers are trying to keep in check. (That said, a scene where Marcos’ and Laura’s car ends up stuck in a snowdrift, and they remain there until nightfall, sees a mistral-like wind suddenly spring up, and then just as quickly disappear once they reach safety.) It’s all shot by DoP Arnau Valls Colomer with a view to increasing the sense of isolation that these characters are experiencing, both within themselves, and as a result of where they are. Hodara takes care to make sure all this isn’t shown in a way that could be construed as heavy-handed, and as he teases out the various strands of the narrative, the overall effect is maintained and built on until those same strands are pulled together into an ending that offers both closure and ambiguity.

The final shot may have some viewers feeling that they’ve had the rug pulled out from under them, but there are clues that support the ending, and in terms of the narrative and what’s gone before, there’s a psychological underpinning that works well in supporting it. It’s also a moment that leaves you wanting to see what happens next, something that doesn’t always happen in this type of thriller, and if there is to be a sequel of some sort (though it’s unlikely), and if Hodara and his very talented cast do return, then the story really needs to be locked in before everyone’s on board. On the evidence here, though, the cast would be the least of Hodara’s worries. Darín, as usual, gives a terrific, detailed performance of a man living under a terrible shadow, but who is still able to retain an innate dignity despite what he’s done (which isn’t as straightforward as it seems). As his unwanted nemesis, Sbaraglia exudes a callous disregard for others that shows Marcos is more self-serving than he would ever admit, or want others to realise, and it’s in his scenes with Costa that this becomes more and more evident. Rounding out the main cast, Costa too is good in a role that seems like it’s going to be yet another “female character ignored by the plot” arrangement, but Laura proves integral to said plot, and Costa makes her determined and not at all vulnerable – which is a nice change.

The pace of the movie is measured, with the aforementioned flashbacks layered into the narrative at appropriate points, and the tone of the movie is suitably dark and gloomy, infused as it is by references to fratricide, mental illness, abuse, and emotional pessimism. It’s not a cheerful, sanguine movie by any means, but it tells its story in a way that maintains interest and keeps its central mystery exactly that – a mystery – until the final fifteen minutes. There are times when the material feels a little strained, and Hodara and D’Agostino seem to have painted themselves into a corner in terms of allowing the story to unfold organically, but these instances don’t hinder the movie too much even though they are noticeable, and the story is strong enough to press on without suffering any “ill effects”. A compelling thriller then, and one that has more than enough going on to attract even the most casual of viewers.

Rating: 8/10 – a neat psychological mystery that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to trick the viewer or string them along until a big twist is revealed, Black Snow is a confident, darkly agreeable movie that works hard to make its characters credible and their story more believable still; another winner from South America, and further evidence that movies from that part of the world deserve a wider platform on which to shine.

NOTE: The trailer below doesn’t have English subtitles, but it does enough without them to give you a good idea of what the movie is about, and its themes.

Darkland (2017)

08 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Ali Sivandi, Crime, Dar Salim, Denmark, Drama, Fenar Ahmad, Review, Stine Fischer Christensen, Thriller, Vigilante

Original title: Underverden

D: Fenar Ahmad / 113m

Cast: Dar Salim, Stine Fischer Christensen, Ali Sivandi, Dulfi Al-Jabouri, Jakob Ulrik Lohmann, Roland Møller, B. Branco, Anis Alobaidi

Two brothers, two different paths in Life. One, Zaid (Salim), is a respected heart surgeon whose wife, Stine (Christensen), is expecting their first child. The other, Yasin (Alobaidi), is involved with a criminal gang. They appear to lead separate lives, but Fate brings Yasin to Zaid’s door one evening after a bank heist he’s been involved in has gone badly wrong. Yasin seeks his older brother’s help but is sent on his way unceremoniously. The next day, Yasin’s badly beaten body arrives at the hospital where Zaid works, and despite the staff’s best efforts, he dies. Zaid grieves for his brother, and with the aid of one of Yasin’s friends, Alex (Al-Jabouri), begins to understand just what kind of criminal gang Yasin was a part of, and why he was so brutally attacked and left for dead. An early encounter with one of the gang’s enforcers, Branco (Branco), leaves Zaid bruised and beaten himself, but at least he’s let off with a warning to leave things well alone. But Zaid isn’t so easily persuaded, and with the aid of close friend, Torben (Lohmann), he trains to become a better fighter, and to show the gang’s boss, Semion (Sivandi), that killing Yasin was a big mistake…

Away from Hollywood, vigilante thrillers tend to be gloomy, atmospheric movies that focus more on the characters than the mechanics of getting them from one action set-piece to the next. Scenes play out in longer fashion, the interplay between the characters is given room to imbed itself within the narrative, and the action set-pieces, when they come, have a more satisfying feel to them. In short, the viewer can make more of an investment in what’s happening, and in the complexities of how and why. (And they can do all this and still cheer when the anti-hero starts kicking ass.) In Fenar Ahmad’s second feature, the very gloomy, very atmospheric Darkland, the main protagonist embarks on a journey that sees him slowly but surely strip away his humanity, the very attribute that has made him so successful, in his pursuit of vengeance for his brother. It all comes at a very high cost indeed, with his marriage and his career put under increasing pressure, and his priorities skewed in one very dark direction indeed.

One of the movie’s strong points is that even though Zaid is the central protagonist and his motives are entirely understandable, he’s not the most sympathetic of characters. Thanks to Ahmad and co-screenwriter Adam August’s considered approach, Zaid’s decision to seek vengeance for the death of Yasin always seems a little self-serving, as if it’s more important for him to be the avenger out of some misguided sense of filial obligation; what would it say about him if he did nothing? Between them, the script and Salim’s pressure cooker performance point up this emotional disparity, and the usual assurances that the central character is looking to avenge someone’s death purely for the deceased’s sake are undermined from the start. This alters the standard vigilante movie dynamic just enough to make the movie more interesting, and more likely to subvert audience expectations.

Ahmad is also clever enough to make Zaid’s immersion into the world of the vigilante one that doesn’t occur overnight. Following his beating at the hands of Branco and his men, Zaid wisely seeks help and the movie spends time with him as he learns to protect himself through a combination of boxing moves, body armour, and mysterious injections that only make sense when the final showdown between Zaid and Semion arrives. As he becomes more confident and more focused, his commitment leads to a deadening of his emotions. His relationship with Stine suffers as he closes himself off from everyone around him, and even when she becomes embroiled in the cat and mouse game that develops between Zaid and Semion he remains remote from her and their unborn child. Where you would expect him to become angrier and perhaps more reckless in his efforts, here Zaid tamps down those feelings and focuses on the job at hand. By the time he faces off with Semion he’s an automaton.

At one point a strong contender as Denmark’s official selection for the Best Foreign Language Film at next year’s Oscars (it lost out to You Disappear), Darkland has more to offer than a central character whose motives may not be as selfless as they should be. The contrast between Zaid’s comfortable, ordered lifestyle and his brother’s is perfectly illustrated by Yasin’s visit for help. With a dinner party in full swing, and already having ignored his brother’s calls, Zaid is in no mood to introduce Yasin to his guests. He keeps him outside in the hallway and gets him to leave as soon as possible. It’s when Zaid and Stine are enjoying an evening meal at a restaurant, and Semion and his entourage arrive as well, that the contrasts begin to blur, and in an icy encounter between the two men, Semion chastises Zaid for not being as charitable to the local community as he is. From that moment on, Zaid’s world is Semion’s world, and he has no intention of removing himself from it.

All this is aided by, and benefits from, sterling production design courtesy of Sabine Hviid, and excellent cinematography from Kasper Tuxen. Much of the movie takes place at night, and the semi-deserted streets of Copenhagen are used to very good effect, with the lighting providing an occasionally hallucinatory feel, as if Zaid is interacting with a different “reality”, one that has danger lurking around every corner. Tuxen is particularly good at framing the action so that each incident contains the necessary impact, and in the quieter scenes he uses lighting to create and support the various emotional moods on display. Ahmad directs with a firm understanding of how to avoid the clichés that can so easily make this kind of story seem derivative and underwhelming, and he draws out good performances from all concerned, with special mention going to Salim, and Al-Jabouri. There are times when the script feels like it’s going to cut corners in telling its tale, but thankfully it draws back from doing so, leaving the movie feeling and sounding more considered and thought out than expected.

Rating: 8/10 – with its secondary themes of personal honour and emotional neglect firmly established through its characters and their behaviours, Darkland has a lot more going on than its vigilante-out-for-revenge concept might imply; visually intense in places, and packing a visceral punch when needed, it’s a movie that also has a surprisingly melancholy vibe to it at times, something which adds further to the effectiveness of the piece as a whole.

Death Race 2050 (2017)

07 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Action, Comedy, Drama, Frankenstein, G.J. Echternkamp, Malcolm McDowell, Manu Bennett, Marci Miller, Political commentary, Review, Roger Corman, Sequel, Thriller, United Corporations of America

D: G.J. Echternkamp / 93m

Cast: Manu Bennett, Malcolm McDowell, Marci Miller, Burt Grinstead, Folake Olowofoyeku, Anessa Ramsey, Yancy Butler, Charlie Farrell, Shanna Olson, Leslie Shaw

Ah, Roger Corman. Yes, he’s a legend in the movie business, and yes, he’s made some lowest-common-denominator movies over the years, but he’s still highly regarded and his movies still continue to make money (which isn’t difficult as he still doesn’t spend very much on them). But Corman, for all his skill at getting movies made cheaply – and whether he’s directing and/or producing – doesn’t always get it right. For every House of Usher (1960), there’s a Supergator (2007), and for every Piranha (1978), there’s an Escape from Afghanistan (2001). And now you can add, for every Death Race 2000 (1975), there’s a Death Race 2050. A direct sequel to the original movie, Death Race 2050 ignores the three movies made by Universal between 2008 and 2013. Although those movies suffered a serious decline in quality by the third outing (or arguably the second), the move to revisit the milieu created for the David Carradine-starring original came from Corman himself, who felt that what was missing from the Universal movies was the political commentary.

Fair enough, you may think. Political commentary usually worked for George A. Romero, then why shouldn’t it work for Corman? The answer to that question is sharply illustrated when the viewer gets their first glimpse of Malcolm McDowell as the movie’s über-villain, the Chairman. With his floating, white-haired pompadour and “I’m in charge” attitude – and not to mention being surrounded by sycophants – it isn’t hard to think who Corman might be using as the inspiration for the Chairman. But aside from having America renamed as the United Corporations of America, that’s the full extent of any attempts at providing any political commentary or subtext. So with that out of the way, what else do we have? Surely there are some terrific action sequences involving uniquely designed muscle cars, and a wealth of pedestrian kills that are both gory and funny at the same time? And what about a group of weird and wild drivers all out to win the race and dispose of returning champion Frankenstein (Bennett)? Well, no; kind of; nearly; and sometimes. (It’s that kind of movie.)

Sadly, but perhaps predictably, whatever sense of originality or invention was intended to be part of the movie’s make up, has been ruthlessly excised in favour of a succession of appallingly directed, acted, shot, edited and scored scenes that aim for the darkly humorous tone of the original but which miss the mark by such a wide margin that you begin to wonder if it’s all deliberate (it’s the only answer that makes any sense). This is an extremely dispiriting sequel: crass, idiotic, banal, stupid, half-baked, laughable, nonsensical, hackneyed, trite, ludicrous – the list goes on and on. It’s almost as if the makers have taken a cursory glance at the original, made a few notes as to its content, and then decided that the best way to honour it is to make a sequel that trashes the original’s legacy, and in the most derogatory way possible.

From McDowell’s turn as the Chairman – replete with nods to his role in Caligula (1979) – to the decision to have Frankenstein remove his mask once the race gets under way, and to the inclusion of a group of rebels hellbent on disrupting the race for their own inane agenda, the movie flits from one ridiculous idea or set-piece to another with faint regard for its own skewed internal logic, or any interest in maintaining continuity. Almost all the interior scenes of the racers are shot in picture cars, while any scenes where the cars are seen in long shot are either speeded up or so poorly framed that any intended sense of urgency or excitement is over before it’s begun. Death Race 2050 may have been made on a shoestring budget, but watching it is like being privy to a rough cut of a movie and then finding out that the post-production funds have run out already.

The script – such as it is – is the work of director G.J. Echternkamp and Matt Yamashita. If any congratulations can be afforded them, it’s that between them they’ve managed to concoct a story that makes no sense, and which seems to have been stitched together from a variety of unremarkable sources. To mention all the areas where they’ve undermined their own narrative, or provided grist for the mill of their own incompetence would see this review double in length. But it’s with the dialogue that they’ve truly excelled themselves, coming up with such gems as, “Why did those pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock? Because they needed a place to stage the greatest pissing contest known to Man”, and “I’ll drink your tears, Frankenstein. I’ll lick them off your handsome face.” There are more, and almost all of them are likely to induce groans or slapped foreheads. The cast struggle (it’s the only thing they can do) against all of this, and even stalwarts of this kind of thing such as McDowell and Butler can’t do anything to make much of a difference. The characters all strive for relevance even within the fractured nature of the narrative, but ultimately they’re all hollow constructs whose fate is to be inter-changeable with each other – and even then not that successfully.

With the odds stacked so highly against it, the movie pivots from one ill-considered plot development to another, and relies on exposition-heavy scenes to fill in the gaps created by the script’s willingness to change tack at the slightest provocation. It looks tacky, and the visual design of the movie serves only to reinforce the idea that there was very little money available to get it made. As mentioned above, this is an appallingly assembled movie that becomes more and more depressing to watch the longer it goes on. If this really is the best sequel to Death Race 2000 that Roger Corman could come up with, then perhaps it would have been better to have left well alone and made something more distinctive or singular. As it is, we have this instead, a terrible farrago of a movie that is hard to defend both artistically and commercially.

Rating: 2/10 – a leaden, dreadful, uninspired movie that aims so low that it’s hard to work out what its aims actually are (aside from ripping off The Hunger Games as often as it can), Death Race 2050 is an insult to its predecessor, and easily qualifies as one of the very worst movies of 2017; low budget doesn’t have to mean poor quality, but this is one movie where any care or attention due to the project seems to have been jettisoned on day one as being completely unnecessary.

Hickey (2016)

06 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alex Grossman, Comedy, Cy's Auto Sound and Stereo, Drama, Flavia Watson, Indie movie, Review, Romance, Troy Doherty, Zedrick Restauro

D: Alex Grossman / 80m

Cast: Troy Doherty, Flavia Watson, Zedrick Restauro, Raychel Diane Weiner, Alex Ashbaugh, Ross Mackenzie, Tommy “Tiny” Lister, Janie Haddad Tompkins, Nicholas Azarian, Danny Chambers, Herb Isaacs

Low-budget independent movies have been with us since the beginning of cinema itself, and have ranged from cheap and nasty horrors to poorly imagined sci-fi movies, and that glorious institution, the teen comedy. Some of these movies have managed to transcend their restrictive budgets and become successful – The Blair Witch Project (1999) is perhaps the best example – but most receive a fleeting moment in the spotlight before fading into obscurity, or appearing at odd hours of the night on cable or satellite channels that most people don’t even know are transmitting. The casts and crews that make these movies are often doing it for experience, the outside chance of being in a bona fide hit (or festival darling), or for the love of it (and sometimes all three). Whatever the reasons, there are thousands of these low-budget features made every year. And for any of them to stand out from the crowd, they’ve got to have something that most, if not all, the others don’t have.

In the case of Alex Grossman’s first feature, which was made for under $200,000, that something isn’t too easy to define. His tale is a fairly simple one: boy loves girl, girl doesn’t know, boy faces losing girl, boy comes up with risky scheme to keep her around until he plucks up the courage to tell her he loves her. Here, the boy is Ryan (Doherty), a bit of a maths whizz who works at Cy’s Auto Sound and Stereo alongside the girl he’s fallen in love with, Carly (Watson). Ryan is a few months away from going to MIT, but a far more pressing and urgent matter prompts Ryan into speeding up his efforts to make his feelings known. The store is marked for closure for failing to meet its sales targets, but undeterred by this, Ryan arranges for the store to have a massive one-day sale to help a) show that the store is still viable, and b) give him the opportunity to confess his attraction to Carly. Aided by his colleague and friend, Jeremy (Restauro), Ryan sets about saving the store, and his potential future relationship with Carly. But, of course, there are more than a few obstacles along the way, including regional manager Brady (Ashbaugh), and the news that he and Carly once dated…

Written and directed by Grossman, Hickey is a confident, freewheeling mix of comedy, drama and romance that is appealing and likeable, while not exactly reinventing the wheel. The movie is a collection of stock characters and situations that sometimes border on being clichés, but thanks to a combination of Grossman’s direction and his cast’s enthusiasm, the movie doesn’t suffer too much even though there are glaring moments where originality clearly wasn’t the order of the day. Thankfully, these moments don’t detract from the overall enjoyment to be had from watching Ryan and his often humorous efforts to save the store, and the romantic longueurs that pepper the script on various occasions. But be warned: there are points in the story where the momentum that Grossman has built up grinds to a halt, and the movie teeters on the brink of losing the viewer’s interest. This seems to be as much about Grossman’s inexperience in directing features – he was a commercials director before this – as it is about the way he’s structured the material over its eighty minute runtime. But again, there’s more here that works than doesn’t.

The milieu will be familiar to most viewers – a band of quirky underachievers take on a seemingly hopeless situation – but this is one of those movies where the visual and character shorthand that comes with it, makes the viewing experience all the more enjoyable. There aren’t too many moments where you’ll find yourself laughing out loud (wry smiles would seem to be more appropriate), and the drama of the looming store closure never really feels like it’s locked in as solidly as it should be, but Grossman scores highly with his characters. Ryan is the romantically awkward, gawky teenager whose heart is in the right place but whose confidence with the opposite sex is hiding right behind it, and terrified to come out. Carly is the seemingly carefree love interest who can see past Ryan’s gauche behaviour and nerdish looks and who will, inevitably, realise she loves him too. The supporting characters are (largely) well integrated into the narrative, with Jeremy’s prickly, occasionally inappropriate behaviour allowed to stand out because of his connection to Ryan. The only character who doesn’t ring true is Brady, the erstwhile villain of the piece whose demeanour feels cartoonish and forced.

In telling his somewhat lightweight story, Grossman at least ensures that the viewer remains invested in what’s going to happen next, even if some of the plot developments come across as laboured. There are times throughout when it’s clear that Grossman is striving for more than his budgetary constraints will allow him, but it’s all in service to the material, and in trying to make the movie as good as possible. Where some movie makers settle for what they can achieve without making that extra effort to improve things, Hickey‘s creator is at least aiming for more. That he’s not always successful is a shame, as the movie has a lot of heart and a clutch of winning characters. A more polished script would have helped too, but it’s still hard to knock a movie that’s clearly trying, and which doesn’t want to disappoint its audience too much or too often.

In the end, Hickey is a likeable movie that won’t make much of an impact, and which is likely to fall into that category of unfortunate features that people discover by accident while channel hopping, or trawling through the movies available on Netflix or Amazon Prime. It’s not obscurity as such, but it is a sad fate for many movies, though Hickey doesn’t deserve it. With its amiable approach, and wistful romantic idealism at the forefront of the narrative, the movie is another example of what can be achieved on a very low budget indeed. Seamus Tierney’s cinematography is a bonus, his framing and use of medium shots often adding to the emotion of a scene, and there’s a wonderful score by Gregory Reeves that complements the material without being unnecessarily intrusive. In assembling his first feature, Grossman is to be congratulated for doing so well, even if he’s not been able to overcome some of the more obvious drawbacks.

Rating: 6/10 – a movie that shows promise in terms of where its writer/director’s career is heading, Hickey is a teen comedy/romance/drama that makes great efforts to stand out from the crowd, and avoid being labelled “so-so”; with good performances from its (mostly) young cast, it’s a sweet-natured, agreeable movie that may not garner a huge following, but which should still attract viewers that will appreciate its modest charms.

Wonder (2017)

04 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

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

D: Stephen Chbosky / 113m

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blood Money (2017)

03 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Drama, Ellar Coltrane, Jacob Artist, John Cusack, Lucky McKee, Review, Stolen money, Thriller, Willa Fitzgerald

D: Lucky McKee / 85m

Cast: John Cusack, Ellar Coltrane, Willa Fitzgerald, Jacob Artist

A movie that should really have the tag line, “If you go down to the woods today…” Blood Money shows us that, if nothing else, three friends should never go camping together for the weekend, especially if the girl, Lynn (Fitzgerald), once had a relationship with one of the guys, Victor (Coltrane), and is now seeing the other guy, Jeff (Artist). With all that baggage hanging over them, what’s the likeliest thing that could happen (aside from their falling out, that is)? The answer – of course – is that they run into an embezzler on the run, Miller (Cusack), and the four bags he’s jumped out of a plane with but become separated from. The bags contain a cool eight million dollars, and Miller is determined to be reunited with them. But he hasn’t counted on Lynn’s equal determination to keep them for herself…

And that’s the movie in a nutshell. Embezzler jumps out of a plane with eight million dollars in cash stuffed into four bags, loses them to Lynn and Jeff (Victor correctly guesses it’s stolen money and he doesn’t want anything to do with it; hooray for someone behaving sensibly in one of these movies), and spends the remainder of the movie trying to get it all back from them. A simple plot, no frills, and potentially, a timely reminder that it’s often the simplest of plots that make for the best movies. Just not this time though. Instead, Blood Money insists on putting its characters through the mill in a succession of scenes that make you wonder if writers Jared Butler and Lars Norberg had worked out any of it in advance. The trio of unhappy campers bicker and argue while Miller wanders along the side of a river seemingly in no hurry to retrieve his ill-gotten gains and then skip the country (there’s an element of the D.B. Cooper story here but that has more drama to it than this does). At one point, Victor, having left his “friends”, comes upon Miller lying asleep on a makeshift table. It’s as potent a message as to the movie’s reliance on logic as you could ever need.

The movie does do something right, though, and while it may not pan out as effectively as hoped, it is a better idea than might be expected. The standard approach for this kind of wilderness thriller is to have the thief as the bad guy (he won’t let anything stand in his way, etc. etc.), and the lone female the eventual heroine who overcomes fear, panic, injury and several attempts on her life before eventually triumphing over the bad guy. Here, though, Butler and Norberg have chosen to make Lynn the bad guy, and Miller the character the viewer ends up rooting for. Once Lynn gets her hands on the money, it’s instant addiction time, and no one, not even Miller is going to stop her from keeping it. Again, it’s a great idea, and Fitzgerald has a field day with the role, but the drawback – yes, inevitably, there is one – is that over the course of the movie, Lynn’s determination becomes more than a little tedious, and by the time the script calls on her to explain herself, and she’s become a psycho with a mission, what she comes up with makes about as much sense as anything else in the movie (it’s something to do with becoming a woman, or something like that; in truth, it doesn’t really matter).

Against this the characters of Victor and Jeff have no chance but to sound and feel like also rans, with Victor bemoaning the way in which Lynn broke up with him, and Jeff forever feeling paranoid that Lynn will give Victor a second chance. And as Lynn is so awful to both of them, you can’t help but wonder why either one of them wants to be with her. But the dynamic feels forced anyway. With no credible reason for the trio to be together in the first place – where else but in the movies do these kinds of trips ever take place? – except to grab the loot when it shows up and set the thriller elements in motion, the script’s attempts at keeping us interested in which one out of Victor and Jeff, Lynn will end up with soon becomes irrelevant, and partly because it’s pretty obvious she doesn’t want either of them. So Blood Money becomes a chase movie, and in doing so, becomes even more generic.

At the helm of all this redactive nonsense, director Lucky McKee, who can normally be counted on to elevate the material he works with – check out May (2002) or The Woman (2011) if you need any persuading – approaches the material with no clear idea of how to make more of the script than is there, or to make the narrative more thrilling. This means the movie plods along lacking any appreciable energy, and Fitzgerald aside, wastes the talents of Cusack and Coltrane accordingly (Artist’s role as Jeff is so poorly written that the actor is undermined before he can even start). It’s a shame to see Cusack’s run of terrible movies continue, but here he’s in on the act, giving a less-than convincing turn as a thief with a conscience and an easy-going manner that changes whenever he has a weapon in his hand. Miller is a character you never get to know beyond the obvious, and when he tries explaining to Victor why he stole the money, the scene fades out before he can finish. If that’s an example of how well the character has been created then there’s little hope that any of it will ever matter.

In the end, and thankfully it’s a short enough experience that it rolls around quite acceptably, Blood Money has no clear agenda beyond its basic plot. There are no hidden subtexts, no attempts at allegory, and no sense that there was ever any intention to include them. But with that being the case, then the movie had every opportunity to up the ante on its simple narrative and make it all as tense and as thrilling as possible. That hasn’t happened though, and the movie is a plodding exercise in undercooked thrills, rampant narcissism (Lynn), and underwhelming relationship advice, and it all ends as precisely as you’d expect. So beware: if you go down to the woods today…

Rating: 4/10 – shoddy and inconsistent in its efforts to provide a convincing mise en scene, Blood Money is another forgettable outdoors thriller that seems to have been written on spec and directed accordingly; only worth watching if you want to see deconstructed gender politics given a light dusting of credibility, or the movie’s Georgia locations rendered beautifully by DoP Alex Vendler.

The Party (2017)

02 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Black comedy, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Cillian Murphy, Drama, Emily Mortimer, Kristin Scott Thomas, Minister for Health, Patricia Clarkson, Review, Sally Potter, Timothy Spall

D: Sally Potter / 71m

Cast: Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, Cillian Murphy, Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall

A small, intimate dinner party to celebrate becoming the Shadow Minister for Health – what could possibly go wrong? Well, when a movie begins with one of its characters answering the front door and aiming a gun at the new arrival, the answer must be: plenty. But we’re coming in at the end – naturally – and in order to understand just what has brought this threatening moment to pass, we must allow ourselves to be brought back in time, to an hour or so before, and into the company of Bill (Spall), an elderly man sitting in a chair drinking red wine and looking as if he’s only physically present, and not mentally or cognitively. His wife, Janet (Scott Thomas), is in the kitchen preparing food. Her mobile phone keeps ringing; people are calling to congratulate her on her promotion. Soon, Janet and Bill are joined by April (Clarkson), a long-time friend of theirs, and her current boyfriend, Gottfried (Ganz).

It’s not long before further guests arrive. Martha (Jones) has known Bill since their college days; her partner, Jinny (Mortimer), is expecting their first child. Later, Tom (Murphy), a banker, arrives without his wife, Marianne, who works in the same department as Janet and is one of her colleagues. While Martha and Jinny talk in the walled courtyard that passes for a garden, Tom behaves nervously from the moment he arrives. He rushes into the lavatory and snorts a couple of lines of cocaine and reveals he’s carrying a gun. Composing himself as best he can, he joins the others who are busy discussing everything but Janet’s promotion. April seeks to address this by raising a toast to Janet, but her ploy is over-shadowed by Jinny announcing that she is expecting triplets. But even that news is over-shadowed when Bill reveals that he is seriously ill and hasn’t long to live…

A biting, acerbic comedy of bad manners, the latest from Sally Potter – Orlando (1992), The Man Who Cried (2000) – is a bruising slugfest of a movie, with its characters giving and receiving no quarter in their efforts to maintain (or retain) a sense of their own importance. From the moment April and Gottfried arrive and she mentions that their relationship is over, the mood is gleaned and it’s just a matter of waiting for the inevitable verbal assaults to find their targets (April sets the ball rolling by telling Gottfried to shut up every time he says something). As the movie progresses and we discover the cracks that exist in the relationships of all the couples – even Tom and Marianne – we also see the desperation and the fear that has propelled them into causing these cracks. We learn that Janet is having an affair, and that Bill has no idea about it. But we sense an unhappiness in him that matches hers, what with her continual references to Bill having given up his career to support her own career in politics. The cost to Bill may be more than Janet is aware of: Bill doesn’t just look unwell, he looks positively beaten.

Potter, who wrote the screenplay as well, delves quickly and easily into the lives of everyone, and shows how the dynamics within each relationship shifts and changes with every personal and private confession and revelation that ensues. Janet is devastated by Bill’s news about his health and vows to quit her position within the Shadow Cabinet. Tom is aghast at the sympathy Bill is receiving (for reasons that come to light in time), while Gottfried slips free of April’s yoke and uses his knowledge as a spiritual healer to help Bill come to terms with his impending mortality. April remains stubbornly cynical of everyone else’s motives and opinions, while Martha and Jinny come to a crossroads in their own relationship. Accusations and recriminations fly thick and fast as secrets are revealed and self-preservation becomes the order of the day. By the end, and the opening of that front door, everyone’s lives – with the possible exception of Gottfried – will have been challenged, and changed as a result.

This being a Sally Potter movie, The Party is chock-full of endlessly quotable dialogue, from April’s withering retort, “Please tell me you’re not meditating, Gottfried. Pull yourself together”, to her observation of Martha: “You’re a first class lesbian and a second rate thinker. Must be all those women’s studies.” Clarkson is terrific as a self-confessed realist who can spot a weakness of character from a mile off, and she delivers April’s barbs with an unimpressed, deadpan attitude that is at once fearsome and hilarious. Scott Thomas is also terrific, never quite allowing the viewer to think that Janet’s always behaving like a dyed-in-the-wool politician, while Spall does a mean vacant stare that’s as unnerving as it is impressive (especially later in the movie). Rounding out the cast, Murphy does agitated with aplomb, Ganz is great as someone who thinks Western medicine is “voodoo”, and Jones and Mortimer spar over Martha and Jinny’s commitment issues in ways that add depth to both characters, and overcomes the impression that they have a peripheral involvement with the main storyline.

If all this sounds too heavy, or overly dramatic, rest assured The Party is bitingly funny, and is a black comedy par excellence. Tightly controlled by Potter working at the height of her writing and directing powers, this is short of running time but full of beautifully observed moments that are in service to a fairly straightforward (and predictable, if you look too closely) narrative. The decision to shoot in astonishingly crisp black and white gives the movie a sleek, distinguished feel that works surprisingly well for a movie that could have been adapted from a stage piece (kudos to DoP Aleksei Rodionov), and Potter is helped enormously by some stategic and humorously clever editing choices courtesy of Anders Refn and Emilie Orsini. There’s also a great soundtrack that includes an inspired (if a little predictable) use of Henry Purcell’s When I Am Laid in Earth (Dido’s Lament). All in all, this is a farce wrapped up in a tragedy wrapped up in a cautionary tale, and making the point that you never know what’s waiting for you right around the corner.

Rating: 8/10 – a stellar cast have a great deal of fun with one of Potter’s more approachable screenplays, and the result is a spirited, enjoyable movie that maintains a waspish vibe throughout and piles on the agony for its characters with glee; not to everyone’s tastes though, The Party may seem shallow and derivative at first, but once it gets going it has plenty of trenchant things to say about the nature of trust, and the need to be recognised for who you are in a relationship.

NOTE: The Party is the 15,000th movie that I’ve seen (so far), and it gives me great pleasure to be able to review it here on thedullwoodexperiment. I’ve been doing this for a little over four years now, and to reach such a landmark and to be able to celebrate it here, and with the wider world, is truly incredible. Here’s to reaching 20,000 sometime in 2030!

And Punching the Clown (2016)

01 Friday Dec 2017

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Comedy, Ellen Ratner, Gregori Viens, Henry Phillips, J.K. Simmons, Musician, Review, Sequel, Singer/songwriter, Tig Notaro

aka Punching Henry

D: Gregori Viens / 94m

Cast: Henry Phillips, Ellen Ratner, Tig Notaro, J.K. Simmons, Mark Cohen, Sarah Silverman, Mike Judge, Jim Jefferies, Stephanie Allynne, Michaela Watkins, Wayne Federman, Doug Stanhope, Adam Nee, Clifton Collins Jr

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage… singer, songwriter, and rambling troubadour extraordinaire… Henry Phillips! Five years after leaving L.A. under a cloud of misperceived anti-Semitism, the comic with the deadpan yet whimsical delivery is tempted back to the City of Angels by his agent, the ever-optimistic Ellen Pinsky (Ratner). Last time round it was the promise of a recording contract, this time it’s to meet a TV producer, Jay Warren (Simmons), who’s interested in using Henry’s act and dogged determination to avoid stardom as the basis for a new TV show. But L.A. still isn’t Henry’s town. Less than thirty minutes after he arrives at the home of his friend, Jillian (Notaro), his car is stolen, and at the first gig he plays – with Warren watching – he’s heckled off the stage. But Warren isn’t dissuaded by Henry’s misfortune, and if anything his interest is piqued even further. A meeting is set up with the Noww Channel, and everything looks set to make Henry a star…

Of course, this is Henry Phillips we’re talking about, and so the idea that everything will go smoothly and all work out for the best is about as likely as Liam Hemsworth winning a Best Actor Oscar. Henry is one of Life’s eternal losers, always running to catch up but never quite getting there. Whether he’s losing a battle of wills with a cab despatcher (Stanhope), or accepting a joint at the wrong time, Henry only seems able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It would be painful if it wasn’t so funny. And as with Punching the Clown (2009), this is what makes the movie so enjoyable, and so appealing at the same time. Henry is a lovable schlemiel, someone who keeps plugging away despite every drawback, insult, and injury. Henry doesn’t know what else to do; it’s his life after all. Yes he fails more often than he succeeds, but as he himself says at one point, he has no problem “failing, doing what I love”.

But whether or not Henry is a failure is to miss the point of Phillips’ and director Viens’ script, which artfully makes Henry a man of principle in a world where the people around him seem to have abandoned theirs in order that their lives are simpler. He’s content with his lot, has modest ambitions, and actually enjoys playing the crummy dives and comedy clubs that pay badly or sometimes, not at all. Henry knows his milieu, and it’s a fine distinction to make when judged against the craving for stardom and recognition that seem to be the norm these days. Fame, the movie is trying to say, isn’t all that it’s made out to be. It’s an obvious message, perhaps, but how many other movies make it an integral part of the narrative, or have their central character battle to retain their own idea of their own integrity? (And the clock is ticking…)

Henry is also strangely liberated by his behaviour, even when he gets it badly wrong. A request from Jillian to impregnate her partner, Zoe (Allynne), so they can have a child together proves as difficult a task for Henry to overcome as getting through a set without suffering some disaster. And when he walks off stage because his audience is behaving disrespectfully, what seems like the reaction of a man who hates confrontation, is rather the act of a man who won’t indulge that unpleasant behaviour. Henry may suffer Shakespeare’s “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (he’s regularly belittled by people, and often to his face), but he does so with good grace and the understanding that if he was to behave as obtusely as some of the people he encounters, then it will always backfire on him (as with the cab despatcher, a game of one-upmanship that Henry loses at every turn, even when he thinks he’s winning).

Phillips’ awareness of his alter ego’s foibles and habits, adds greatly to the movie’s sense of verisimilitude, whether he’s discussing why he’s in L.A. with radio show host Sharon Levine (Silverman) – a similar framing device to the one employed in Punching the Clown – or pointing out the obvious flaws in the format of the TV show Noww want to produce. And along the way he uses Henry’s experiences to highlight the way in which talent is increasingly manufactured, how broad, focus-based public opinion dictates what consitutes quality, and how even the smallest amount of individual power can be used carelessly or inappropriately and to the detriment of others. Heavy stuff, perhaps, but layered with a winning streak of humour that affords plenty of laughs along the way, whether it’s from lines such as, “It’s Sisyphus meets Charlie Brown!” (the TV show), visual gags such as Henry falling off stage (and going viral), or songs such as Dog-Type Girl (a highlight).

In the end, it’s Henry’s ability to shrug off adversity and make the best of things that makes him so endearing and so easy to spend time with. Phillips the actor is more accomplished than he was in his first outing as Phillips the troubadour extraordinaire, and he’s surrounded by a great cast, from Ratner to Jefferies and Notaro (so dry she’s virtually a desert), and the welcome presence of Simmons whose turn as Warren is shot through with a sense of melancholy that underpins the character and his lifetime in producing perfectly. Viens too is more confident this time around, and the movie’s faux-documentary shooting style is used to much better effect. And for once, the many ways in which this movie apes its predecessor proves to be a boon rather than a burden. Henry has remained consistent in his outlook and his needs, and in doing so has retained the sympathy that audiences can relate to, and he doesn’t let them down when it comes time for him to take to the stage.

Rating: 8/10 – similar in tone and approach to its predecessor, And Punching the Clown (the title is cleverer than it sounds) is a solid, rewarding and very funny second entry in the life and times of Henry Phillips, failing singer and comedian; smarter than your average low budget indie comedy, this will keep fans of the original very happy indeed, and if caught by newcomers, work as a terrific introduction to Phillips’ and the way in which he is able to “satisfy his satisfaction”.

The Book of Henry (2017)

29 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Brain tumour, Child abuse, Colin Trevorrow, Comedy, Drama, Jacob Tremblay, Jaeden Lieberher, Naomi Watts, Review, Sarah Silverman

D: Colin Trevorrow / 103m

Cast: Naomi Watts, Jaeden Lieberher, Jacob Tremblay, Sarah Silverman, Dean Norris, Lee Pace, Maddie Ziegler, Bobby Moynihan, Tonya Pinkins, Geraldine Hughes

A movie that inspires audiences to stare at it with the phrase, “say what?” firmly embedded at the forefront of their minds, The Book of Henry is both shockingly bad and hugely enjoyable at the same time (though it’s not quite the kind of movie that’s “so bad it’s good”). This may seem like a contradiction, but this could easily be many people’s idea of a guilty pleasure, a movie that you know from the start is pretty awful but which you can still derive an awful lot of pleasure from. The first draft was written in 1998 by author and screenwriter Gregg Hurwitz, and you can believe that the final screenplay as used in the movie, is exactly the same draft. And on this evidence, you can perhaps understand also why director Colin Trevorrow isn’t going to be at the helm of Star Wars Episode IX.

Shying away – perhaps deliberately – from creating a tonally consistent narrative, The Book of Henry sets itself up initially as a bucolic drama dealing with the ups and downs of the Carpenter family: single mother Susan (Watts), eleven year old whizzkid Henry (Lieberher), and younger son Peter (Tremblay). Susan works at a diner and dreams of writing and illustrating children’s books. Henry acts as the de facto man of the house, and is something of a financial genius, having invested very successfully in the stock market (Susan literally has no idea how wealthy they are as a family which is why she continues to work at the diner). And Peter is bullied at school, though Henry always comes to his rescue. Add their neighbour’s stepdaughter, Christina (Ziegler), into the mix as a kind of surrogate daughter/sister, and you have a family bordering on dysfunctional but in a winning, adorable way that makes you want to ruffle their hair and remark on how winning and adorable they are.

So far, so cute. But into every sunny life some shadows must appear, and it’s not long before Henry realises that Christina is being abused by her stepdad, Glenn (Norris). However, he’s the local police commissioner, and he has connections within social services, so Henry’s attempts to involve them and save Christina fail at the first hurdle. And before he can do anything more, he’s struck down by a brain tumour and promptly dies. But Henry being such a whizzkid (and apparently having had far more time on his hands than most eleven year olds), he’s not about to let Glenn off the hook. Before he dies, he compiles a book in which he leaves instructions for his mother to… contact and convince social services to investigate Glenn? Gather further evidence to prove her case? Put Glenn on notice that if he continues he’ll be exposed for the paedophile he is? Well, actually, no. As Peter so aptly puts it when he first looks at the book, “Henry wants us to kill Glenn!”

And so the movie lurches from bucolic family drama to child in danger drama to disease of the week melodrama, and all the way to vigilante thriller in little over an hour. Except none of these tonal shifts work as an organic whole. It’s as if the movie feels compelled to hit the restart button every fifteen minutes or so. And while it does so, it drops a handful of sub-plots and characters in and out of the mix at random, from Susan’s co-worker, Sheila (Silverman) and her problems with alcohol, to the bullying Peter experiences at school (which happens once… and that’s it). Hurwitz’s script is like a melting pot of ideas and themes and narrative devices all shoehorned into the smallest space available and then left to fight it out amongst themselves for the best amount of breathing space. One classic example: the school principal (Pinkins) dismisses Henry’s concerns about Christina when he raises them, but later is convinced by the interpretative power of dance (no, really). And then there’s the sight of Susan in a treehouse with a sniper rifle…

So absurd and so silly is The Book of Henry, the only way to approach it is as a drama that forgot it was meant to be a comedy. If you do, and it really is the best way to approach it, then the movie can be enjoyed despite its being a terrible mess that’s only on nodding terms with credibility. There are laughs to be had – deliberate and otherwise – and a whole raft of scenes that feel like filler (see how many times Susan covers over Peter, or the leaves in her yard are mentioned), but still the movie exerts a strange fascination, like a road traffic accident that you just can’t look away from. Hurwitz’s script, combined with Trevorrow’s meandering sense of direction, leaves the movie high and dry and static in its efforts to be effective, and the only area in which it does succeed is in its use of its Hudson Valley locations, all beautifully rendered by John Schwartzman’s richly autumnal cinematography.

The performances are a mixed bunch also. Watts has a good grasp of her character’s interior life, but it’s a shame that Susan’s exterior life is so bland and uninteresting. Aspects of Lieberher’s performance might prompt viewers to believe that Henry is on the spectrum, while Tremblay, the go-to child actor right now, is otherwise kept firmly in the background, good for a couple of scenes of emotional poignancy but little else. Spare a thought too for Silverman playing blowsy with a heart of gold, and Pace as the doctor who keeps popping up and may, at some distant point when the movie is over and done, prove to be Susan’s next love interest. The cast as a whole are admirably committed to the material, and it is fun watching them trying to legitimise some of the more absurdist moments in the script, but when there’s more enjoyment to be had from watching them fail than succeed then it’s time to ‘fess up and admit that things just haven’t worked out in the way that the producers would have hoped for.

Rating: 4/10 – silly, funny, and endlessly entertaining in all the wrong ways, The Book of Henry has at least one unfulfilled potential: that of being a cult midnight movie where the audience interacts with it a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975); such a misfire that it has to be seen to be believed, it’s a movie that doesn’t know when to rein in its ridiculous nature, but in failing to do so (and entirely against the odds), makes itself into perhaps the most unlikeliest must-see movie of 2017.

The Disaster Artist (2017)

27 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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

D: James Franco / 103m

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dismissed (2017)

26 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Benjamin Arfmann, Blackmail, Drama, Dylan Sprouse, Grade A, High School, Kent Osborne, Murder, Psychopath, Review, Thriller

D: Benjamin Arfmann / 87m

Cast: Kent Osborne, Dylan Sprouse, Rae Gray, Alycia Delmore, Chris Bauer, Leslie Thurston, Robert Longstreet, Mark Kelly, Randall Park

Movies where the central character is menaced by someone they’ve upset or betrayed, or just plain let down in some way (at least in the eyes of that someone), aren’t exactly new, and in many ways the format has been done to death over the years. With each new release riffing on storylines and characters and situations that have been done so often before, it’s difficult for any new movie to buck the trend or provide viewers with anything tangible enough to qualify as “original” or even “offbeat”. With so many movies out there having paved such a wide path already, anyone attempting a psychological thriller has their work cut out for them from day one. So what can an aspiring thriller do to overcome such hurdles?

In the case of Dismissed, the first feature from Benjamin Arfmann, the solution is to embrace those already firmly established tropes and values that come with the territory, and in doing so, treat them with a healthy dose of respect. The result is a thriller that is very much aware that it’s not telling a new story, or that it’s venturing into territory that won’t be over-familiar to anyone watching it. But what the movie does do, is to present everything in a low-key, matter-of-fact way that makes it look and feel more persuasive than if it had played as a flashy, strident melodrama. Thanks to Arfmann’s patient direction, and Yong Ok Lee’s deliberately unremarkable production design, Dismissed is that rare beast: a psychological thriller that doesn’t make the mistake of going overboard in its efforts to keep the viewer on the edge of their seats. Instead it builds tension by degrees, and the screenplay by Brian McAuley allows each new development to happen with a grim sense of inevitability, as what starts off with petty acts of revenge becomes more and more sinister and violent.

The central protagonists are high school English teacher David Butler (Osborne), and new transfer student, Lucas Ward (Sprouse). David’s class is largely disinterested in his teaching them about Othello, or Crime and Punishment (though this level, and kind of lethargy is only seen in the movies), so when super-knowledgeable Lucas makes his presence felt, David is only too glad to have a student who actually knows some (if not all) of the answers. But when David gives one of Lucas’s assignments a B+, Lucas makes his displeasure known: he’s a straight-A student, and that’s what David should have given him for his work. David sticks to his guns, and so begins a series of incidents that are the beginning of Lucas’s retaliation. David leaves for school only to find his tyre is flat. In the classroom his marker pens don’t work, and in the staffroom, his lunch is missing from the fridge. But it’s when his application to a prestigious university, one that will make him a professor and give him tenure, is replaced by a version that costs him the position, David begins to realise that Lucas is behind everything.

Now, at this stage, you might be saying, all this is over a grade? And while that does sound a little shallow, or even a little risible as a motive for Lucas’ behaviour, what the movie does really cleverly is to make Lucas’s psychopathy not only about being the best at all costs, but also what it means in terms of his “place” in the world. The opening scene shows video footage of a young child practising facial expressions, and from this we can understand that Lucas wants to fit in, even if ultimately it’s on his terms. The why is more understandable, and McAuley’s script leaves subtle clues here and there as to the details of why, but in keeping with the genre, it’s the how that leaves much to be desired. Lucas may be outwardly charming and persuasive, but like all good movie psychopaths, inside he’s as hollow as an Easter egg. Cue the aforementioned incidents of petty retaliation, plus the emotional manipulation of another student (Gray), attempted blackmail, veiled threats, murder, and evidence of Lucas having done similar things before.

In assembling all this, the movie does suffer from a handful of narrative short cuts that hurry things along, particularly in the last half an hour, and some of these short cuts are awkward in nature and upset the movie’s measured pace. But these are small prices to pay in respect of a movie that is otherwise confidently handled by Arfmann, and which features two central performances that anchor the story and give both central characters sincerity and credibility. Osborne is quietly effective as the English teacher who’s initially out of his depth in dealing with a teenage psychopath, but as the movie progresses his genial, accommodating persona becomes more steely and determined. At the point where he tells Lucas that if he comes near David’s family, he’ll kill him, Osborne delivers the line in just the way you’d expect an average man to say it: not like an action hero, but with genuine feeling. It’s moments like these, where the supposedly weaker character “turns” but it’s done with care and attention to the character’s personality, that helps make the movie more impressive than expected.

For some viewers though, the main attraction will be Sprouse, making his first acting foray since saying goodbye to the role of Zack Martin in The Suite Life on Deck (2008-11). From TV star to murderous psychopath, one could be forgiven for thinking that Sprouse is doing his best to put behind him the lovable moppet he played for six years, and for the most part he does, making Lucas the kind of over-achiever who really should set off more warning bells than he does. As his plan to get that all-important A inevitably falls apart, Sprouse stays true to the character and keeps him removed from any recognisable emotion until the screenplay requires him to ramp things up for an overly melodramatic showdown that’s as unnecessary as it is unfortunate (the one time the script really drops the ball). Sprouse is on solid ground with his portrayal, and in his own way, is as quietly effective as Osborne. Both actors seem aware of the requirements of the genre they’re working in, and provided with good support from Arfmann, who facilitates the action with a darkly portentous quality that makes it more involving than you might think at first glance, they help the movie overcome some of the more uninspired aspects of the material, and ensure that the game of cat-and-mouse David and Lucas engage in remains as credible as possible.

Rating: 7/10 – a movie that does a lot more with its simple premise than is immediately apparent, Dismissed is let down by the inconsistent way in which it treats some of its supporting characters (David’s wife, Rachel (Delmore), is a perfect example), and those previously noted narrative short cuts; with much to admire, it’s the movie’s decision to adhere to many of the genre’s devices but in a way that’s not lazy or convenient that marks it out from all the other psychological thrillers out there.

2:22 (2017)

24 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Cosmic event, Drama, Grand Central Station, Michiel Huisman, Murder, Paul Currie, Review, Sam Reid, Sci-fi, Teresa Palmer, Thriller

D: Paul Currie / 99m

Cast: Teresa Palmer, Michiel Huisman, Sam Reid, Maeve Dermody, Remy Hii, Simone Kessell, John Waters, Richard Davies, Kerry Armstrong

When a movie provides the viewer with an intriguing concept (and does so early on) it sets itself something of a problem: namely, how to maintain that sense of intrigue the longer the movie goes on, and the more that has to be explained. There are plenty of movies where that intriguing concept flounders soon after being introduced, and plenty more where it doesn’t go anywhere at all. And then there are the movies that keep that concept evolving and expanding, and in doing so, keep the viewer engaged and entertained throughout. But these movies aren’t as prevalent as we might like, and though it does its best to join that elusive and elite group, 2:22 has a basic flaw that stops it from gaining a place at the table: it never decides to settle for one cause out of three or four for the events that take place.

Dylan Branson (Huisman) is an air traffic controller living in New York. He has the ability to see patterns in all things, which makes it easy for him to make predictions out of what appear to be random variables. It also means that some of the flights under his control can sometimes take off and land within yards of each other, something that, frighteningly, his boss and his colleagues treat as more of a trick to be bet on than as an inappropriate way of dealing with hundreds of lives each time. But when a cosmic event – the shock waves from the collapse of a star in space from thirty years before – has an effect on the Earth, Dylan’s attention becomes focused on the patterns that are revealed through the waves, and he is lucky to avoid the deaths of around nine hundred people when this occurs. Rightly suspended, Dylan still goes about his daily routine, but soon begins to notice that the same things keep happening each day, and at the same times. However, it’s a fascination with Grand Central Station, and the time of 2:22pm, that he’s unable to shake.

As the patterns and repetitions become more and more ingrained, Dylan finds himself drawn into the story of three deaths that occurred thirty years before on the concourse at Grand Central. A love triangle that ended in tragedy, it saw a singer and her boyfriend, and a cop, all shot and killed. Dylan becomes obsessed with finding out why he’s seeing all this within the patterns, and why from so long ago. And when he meets Sarah (Palmer), an art gallery manager, he begins to realise that their relationship is in some way connected to the events of the past. What this all means is what Dylan feels compelled to work out, but at first it frightens Sarah, and she distances herself from him, but as their story begins to dovetail with the story from 1985, and too many coincidences occur to dispute what seems to be happening, Dylan tries to ensure that there isn’t a repeat of the concourse tragedy, and that he and Sarah can make it past 2:22pm.

There’s not exactly a glut of intelligent, well thought out science fiction movies available to audiences these days, and 2:22 clearly has ambitions to fulfill that particular requirement, but while it begins well – and with a couple of airport runway scenes that should have even the most blasé of frequent fliers gripping their upright tray tables – it’s not long before it gets bogged down in an unwieldy narrative, and it starts tripping over itself in its attempts to provide a coherent, viable framework for the mystery of thirty years ago and its relevance to what’s happening around Dylan today. At first, it’s clever, but then the movie tries to be too clever, and before long it has Dylan sounding like he’s in need of some serious medication. Sarah avoids him because he sounds crazy, the truth of the past reveals itself piece by piece, and it’s all done in such a way that makes it confusing as to whether or not it’s all in Dylan’s head, or the result of this strange cosmic event, or some kind of reincarnation version of history repeating itself. As to which one of those is the actual reason for Dylan’s visions of the past, the viewer is free to take a guess.

It may be that there is one true answer, but the screenplay by Todd Stein and Nathan Parker (from a story by Stein) is too respectful of its muddled internal logic to settle for a definitive solution. Instead it piles erratic images and mismatched scenes on top of one another, and as if it needs to add a sense of confusion to proceedings, when it does attempt to explain matters, it falls just shy of being convincing (which unfortunately leaves Michiel Huisman holding the exposition bag quite awkwardly a lot of the time). It’s obvious that the movie doesn’t want to come across as a sci-fi variation of Groundhog Day (1993), and so it throws too many extra elements into the mix, but without testing first to see if they match the level of intrigue required, and/or the details. Currie orchestrates matters with an eye for a compelling image at times, but on other occasions, there’s a pedestrian vibe to many of the scenes early on that aren’t exactly involving; thankfully, as the narrative speeds up, Currie’s confidence in his handling of the material increases also.

The well chosen cast do as well as can be expected with some of Stein and Parker’s more utilitarian dialogue, and overall Huisman and Palmer make for an interesting pairing, their characters not quite the star-crossed lovers they’re made out to be, but competently played nevertheless. By the end though, the sci-fi elements have been shoved aside so that the thriller elements can be pushed to the fore, and there’s a stretch where the familiarity of the narrative – or the obvious nature of it – casts a pall over proceedings as the screenplay manipulates the story into getting Dylan and Sarah, and her jealous ex-boyfriend, Jonas (Reid), to the station on time for the 2:22 deadline. Faced with these strong-arm tactics, the movie has no choice but to go along for the ride and hope that the drily philosophical dictum quoted at the end, “A star shines brightest right before it dies”, strikes the viewer as poignant instead of ironic.

Rating: 6/10 – narrative trips and tumbles aside, 2:22 is a modest sci-fi thriller with modest ambitions, but ones that should be applauded nevertheless; that it doesn’t work entirely is down to the lack of focus in the storyline, and some occasionally lazy “hey, kids, let’s connect the dots for the viewer” decision making, but though it’s very rough around the edges, you could do a lot worse, sci-fi wise, than to give this “out of its comfort zone” movie a chance.

Hangman (2017)

23 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Al Pacino, Brittany Snow, Crime, Drama, Johnny Martin, Karl Urban, Murder, Review, Serial killer, Thriller

D: Johnny Martin / 98m

Cast: Al Pacino, Karl Urban, Brittany Snow, Joe Anderson, Sarah Shahi, Chelle Ramos, Steve Coulter, Sloane Warren

Not every movie can be accomplished, original, or a must-see. In fact, the majority of movies – the vast majority – often have the effect of making you wonder just how they got made in the first place. And why. Sometimes it seems that there’s a lot of people out there with money to burn. Other times it’s as if a movie has been made on a dare. Some movies challenge the very notion that quality was ever a consideration when the movie itself was being made. And some movies provoke such an abject response – what the hell is all this? – that there’s nothing for it but to carry on watching in the vain hope that the whole sorry mess will find some way to improve (not that it does though). There are literally thousands of these movies made each and every year, and if there’s an end in sight to all of them, then it’s so far off in the distance as to not to be there at all.

And so we come to Hangman, the latest movie to feature Al Pacino in a performance that makes him look like a disinterested bystander and not the lead character. It fits so neatly into the genre of underwhelming thriller movie that should never have been made, that it’s almost scary. It’s bad in a way that actually elevates average movies into looking and sounding better than they are, and provides further evidence – if any were needed – that if you take a script that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and film it, then the finished product won’t make any sense either. A project that has been in development since at least 2011, Hangman arrives to dispel the notion that if you spend enough time on something then you can iron out all the kinks and grooves in a script and make something of real quality. Let’s make this clear: whatever time Michael Caissie and Charles Huttinger spent on putting the screenplay together, it wasn’t enough.

In a feat akin to shoving a square peg into a round hole, the makers of Hangman have taken one of the world’s most famous and enduring guessing games, and tried to make it the modus operandi of a serial killer (Anderson) whose motivations remain obscure and unconvincing throughout. And not only that, but the word the killer is challenging the police to solve isn’t even in English, a decision that further adds to the confusion created over the killer’s psychological state, and what drives him to murder. All this is as tortuous as it sounds, and the plot – such as it is – quickly surrenders any high ground and goes meekly along with whatever delirious developments Caissie and Huttinger’s screenplay can come up with. This leaves Pacino’s retired detective Archer, and Urban’s moody active detective Ruiney (pronounced Rooney), led by their noses from one staged, and unlikely, crime scene to another while they are gifted clues by a script that really doesn’t care how poorly constructed it is.

The presence of Snow’s Pulitzer-nominated journalist, Christi Davies – no offence, but really? – on assignment to shadow Ruiney for an article, adds a further level of creative insult to the mix as her “signed off by the mayor” involvement sees her included in crime scene searches, put at risk by Archer and Ruiney at almost every turn, and provided with a back story that should be relevant but isn’t. As for the serial killer himself, he’s yet another “brilliant” psychopath who’s always several steps ahead of the police, and can stage the most elaborate murder scenes at the drop of a hat. Thankfully, he’s also susceptible to the kind of cod-psychology musings that Archer comes up with when they finally meet, and Christi’s life is in danger. There are other characters, and much less important ones at that, such as Ruiney’s captain, Lisa Watson (Shahi), who finds herself targeted by the killer, potential suspect, Joey Truman (Ramos), and a raft of even more minor characters who are there to make up the numbers (or the killer’s victims). It’s a measure of the script’s desperate attempts to give these characters some kind of “life” on screen that Ruiney’s wife may have been the killer’s first victim some time before, Watson is in a wheelchair, and Joey and the first victim are lesbians into BDSM.

Wandering through it all, though, as if his reputation as one of the finest actors of his generation, or his position as joint president of the Actors Studio didn’t mean a thing is Pacino. The actor looks permanently surprised in so many scenes it’s hard not to think that each time it happens it’s as if he’s just realising how bad it all is. Whether he’s mumbling his lines or reacting just a beat too slowly to what’s happening around him, it’s a performance that could easily qualify as his worst, even worse than his portrayal as himself in Jack and Jill (2011). There’s no spark here, no animation in his performance, just the sign of an actor treading water and going through the motions. It’s a sad sight, and adds another level of dismay for the viewer to contend with. In contrast, Urban at least tries to inject some energy into his role, but he’s held back by his character’s bull-headed nature and one-note demeanour. Snow fares no better, and the movie wastes her talent as an actress by having her follow her male co-stars around while waiting to be the killer’s eventual last victim.

Making an even worse fist of things than he did on Vengeance: A Love Story (2017), director Johnny Martin continues to show a lack of aptitude behind the camera that, in conjunction with the terrible script, means the movie has no chance of succeeding as the clever, gritty thriller it so desperately wants to be. Whether he’s putting the camera in the wrong place or leaving his talented cast to fend for themselves, Martin does little to lift the material or make it interesting. As a result, the movie lacks pace and intensity, and stutters from scene to scene without any apparent attempt to connect them into a meaningful whole. By the time Archer and Ruiney come face to face with the killer, it’s doubtful just who the average viewer will want to see put out of their misery more: the killer, Archer and Ruiney, or themselves.

Rating: 3/10 – spectacularly awful in a way that, surely, couldn’t have been intended, Hangman is a low-concept thriller that misfires at every step, and makes for one of the laziest, most apathetic movies of 2017; wrong on so many levels, this should be held up as an object lesson in how not to construct and shoot a movie when the script isn’t there, the director hasn’t a clue, and its main star can’t be bothered.

Crown Heights (2017)

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

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Carl 'KC' King, Colin Warner, Drama, Lakeith Stanfield, Matt Ruskin, Miscarriage of justice, Murder, Natalie Paul, Nnamdi Asomugha, Review, True story

D: Matt Ruskin / 100m

Cast: Lakeith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha, Natalie Paul, Amari Cheatom, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Bill Camp, Luke Forbes, Zach Grenier, Josh Pais, Ron Canada, Nestor Carbonell, Skylan Brooks, Sarah Goldberg, Adriane Lenox

Crown Heights ends with a sobering statistic: of the 2.4 million people currently in prison in the US, it’s estimated that 120,000 are likely to be innocent. The movie, winner of the Audience Award for US Dramatic Film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, examines a case that, though it all began back in April 1980, could still be relevant today, both for its victim and his friends and family. Following the murder of sixteen year old Melvin Grant in a reported drive-by shooting, eighteen year old Colin Warner (Stanfield), is arrested and accused of being the driver when the murder was committed. Despite his protests, the police tell Colin that they have an eyewitness and they know he’s guilty. The case proceeds slowly but inexorably to trial, where the eyewitness, fourteen year old Clarence Lewis (Brooks), retracts his original testimony and clears Colin of any involvement. But it makes no difference. With Colin connected to his co-defendent (and actual shooter) Anthony Gibson (Forbes), he’s convicted and sentenced to fifteen years to life.

And so begins twenty-one years of incarceration thanks to a combination of mistaken identity, perjury and official misconduct. The police aren’t interested in whether or not Colin is innocent, the district attorney is in cahoots with the police, and it doesn’t matter that there’s no physical evidence or actual eyewitness testimony to place Colin at the scene of the crime – his fate has miscarriage of justice written all over it. Once in prison, Colin pins his hopes on various appeals but they’re all denied. On the outside, his friend Carl ‘KC’ King (Asomugha), tries his best to have Colin’s conviction overturned but encounters setback after setback. It’s not until Carl meets attorney William Robedee (Camp) that there’s a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. Robedee examines the case and determines that the only way for Colin to have a chance of being released is not to try and have his conviction overturned, but to reinvestigate the case and prove once and for all that Colin wasn’t involved in the murder of Melvin Grant.

How Robedee and Carl achieve this is forms the basis of the movie’s final half hour, but before then director and screenwriter Matt Ruskin confidently and credibly explores the way in which Colin was effectively framed by the police, first as Melvin’s killer, and then, when Gibson was arrested and admitted committing the murder, as his accomplice. The relentless nature of the police’s efforts to see Colin convicted is reflected in scenes where the lead detective (Grenier) goads and intimidates potential witnesses (whether they are or not) into identifying Colin as the killer. And in some of them the district attorney (Pais) hovers in the background, impassive and implacable. It’s a tragic situation, made all the worse by the implicit sense of impotency that soon settles on Colin as his fate slowly unfolds and the enormity of the injustice he’s facing becomes more and more apparent, and more and more soul-destroying. Once in prison, Colin struggles to find his place, briefly uniting with his Trinidadian brethren, and challenging the authority of the guards before settling into a more stoic existence.

Further injury is added to the insult he’s already experienced when his parole hearing focuses on his previous bad behaviour rather than the strides he’s made since then. Even a blossoming romance involving Antoinette (Paul), a young woman from his neighbourhood (the Crown Heights of the title), isn’t enough to completely dispel the despair Colin begins to feel more strongly as the years pass by. As the beleaguered Colin, Stanfield plays him throughout and is quietly impressive, drawing out a solid portrayal of a man betrayed and ignored by an unjust system, and sometimes justifiably angry at the way he’s treated. It’s not a showy, attention-seeking performance, but rather an attempt to reflect the ways in which Colin sought to keep himself from submitting to self-pity or just giving up altogether (though he comes perilously close to doing both at times). Ever since his debut in the original, short version of Short Term 12 (2008), Stanfield has become an actor to watch, and here he shows an empathy and an understanding for Colin’s situation that is both intuitive and well judged, impassioned and subtly observed as well.

The movie stays with Colin for most of the first hour, and charts the various setbacks he experiences, until it shifts the focus to Carl and his renewed efforts to see his friend restored to freedom. This section of the movie is just as much about one man’s determination to see justice done as it is about the price that justice demands. Carl nearly loses his wife, Briana (Blake), and his children in his efforts to free Colin, and the movie asks the question, is such a selfless and dogged pursuit ever worth the potential pitfalls or drawbacks? Sensibly it leaves the answer for the viewer to decide, but Carl’s commitment and the subsequent drawing together of the people who can prove Colin’s innocence is assembled with a methodical adherence to the rules of evidentiary procedure, and proves unexpectedly gripping. As the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place, the viewer should be asking themselves, why didn’t the police do this in the first place?

Questions such as these arise throughout the movie, but Ruskin is wise not to explore them too closely or for too long. He even avoids highlighting the obvious issue of the institutionalised racism prevalent in the police force at the time, and leaves it unsaid, more of a given than something that needs explaining. Similarly the pressures of being in prison are given expression through Colin’s attempts to fit in, and Ruskin allows these moments to play out matter-of-factly and with few overly dramatic embellishments. The movie remains steadfast in its approach from start to finish, with Ruskin displaying a command of the material that makes it all the more effective, and all the more emotive when it needs to be. Aside from a handful of sequences where Colin imagines he’s free – sequences that have a hallucinatory, visually powerful feel to them – the movie has a dour, unsettling visual style to it that reflects Colin’s mindset and situation, and which is used with an admirable sense of restraint. Ruskin has put together a modest, yet haunting movie that tells its tale simply but with a depth that’s borne out of the writing and the performances, both of which complement and dovetail around each other with a modest skill that is the hallmark of the movie as a whole.

Rating: 8/10 – a low-key gem that sneaks up on the viewer and gradually reveals just how good it really is, this could have been yet another angry tirade against an uncaring and unfair system, but Crown Heights is more than that, and it deserves a much wider exposure than it’s likely to receive; with Stanfield and Asomugha heading up a splendid cast, and Ruskin able to subvert or overcome so many of the clichés that are inherent in this type of movie, this is sincere, moving, and if those statistics are to be believed, entirely relevant as a commentary on the current US criminal justice system.

Battle of the Sexes (2017)

20 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Andrea Riseborough, Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs, Drama, Emma Stone, Jonathan Dayton, Review, Sexism, Sport, Steve Carell, Tennis, True story, Valerie Faris

D: Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton / 121m

Cast: Emma Stone, Steve Carell, Andrea Riseborough, Natalie Morales, Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Alan Cumming, Elisabeth Shue, Austin Stowell, Eric Christian Olsen, Jessica McNamee

Ah, the Seventies, a golden era for cinema, but not quite so good if you were a woman, or more specifically, a sportswoman. The disparity between what the men were paid and what the women were lucky to receive, by comparison with modern standards, was insulting. Battle of the Sexes, the latest from the directors of Little Miss Sunshine (2006), is very loosely based on the efforts of women tennis players such as then champion Billie Jean King (Stone) and several of her fellow players to break away from the United States Lawn Tennis Association, and establish their own independent, Women’s Tennis Association. In doing so, they not only challenged the entrenched male perspective that women’s tennis was somehow “inferior” to men’s tennis, but also that “people” didn’t want to watch women’s tennis because it wasn’t exciting enough.

This patriarchal view was espoused by the likes of Jack Kramer (Pullman), the head of the USLTA. It was refuted by Billie Jean and her (apparent) agent/manager Gladys Heldman (Silverman). Kramer’s blackballing of the women players who refused to play in any of the USLTA’s tournaments proved to be an unintended blessing in disguise, as it allowed them to find their own sponsorship and play in their own tournaments, and for more approrpriate sums of money (when Billie Jean won the US Open in 1972 she received $15,000 less than men’s champion Ilie Năstase). The movie depicts the effectiveness of this approach in establishing the quality of women’s tennis, and bringing it to a wider public, but then along comes Bobby Riggs (Carell), a one-time world tennis champion in the late Thirties and Forties. Riggs, a tireless self-promoter, challenges King to an exhibition match, asserting that he can beat any of the top women players purely because he’s a man. King initially declines his offer, but when he beats her rival, and current world number one, Margaret Court (McNamee), Billie Jean feels she has no option but to play him, and hopefully, advance the cause of women tennis players immensely. But if she were to fail…

Battle of the Sexes is an enjoyable mix of comedy and drama that has an ambitious streak that’s about a mile wide. Not only does it focus on tennis’s version of the glass ceiling, but it also finds time to explore the wider sexism of the time, as well taking a sideswipe at the era’s unhappy approach to gender equality and sexual liberation. Alongside the grandstanding of the match itself, King’s burgeoning awareness of her true sexual identity is dealt with by her having an affair with a hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett (Riseborough). This aspect of the movie is played out with a great deal of restraint, not just in how it’s presented physically, but also emotionally, with Billie Jean trying to put the genie back in the lamp and pretending nothing has happened. She can’t, of course, but the movie does make the viewer wait for her to stop pretending; after all, everyone else around her knows what’s been going on, including her husband, Larry (Stowell). In the end, the relationship becomes less and less important in the grand scheme of things, and the idea that it was somehow better to address the issue of Billie Jean’s sexual preferences than not, becomes more and more apparent.

Sadly though, and while the movie is enjoyable, it’s ultimately too lightweight for its own good. With themes such as sexism and sexual politics thrown into the mix, there’s ample opportunity for the movie to provide probing examinations of both these themes, but instead it skirts around them, looking to come up with a telling bon mot rather than something more substantial (in one of the movie’s more corny moments, Alan Cumming’s unsurprisingly gay fashion designer, Ted Tinling, tells Billie Jean that one day, they’ll both be able to love freely). There’s also no real sense that anyone is being held back or hampered from doing anything, or that any obstacles can’t be overcome (and at the first opportunity). Billie Jean’s affair with Marilyn relies on Larry being completely understanding about “everything” and not causing a fuss, while Gladys gets their first tour up and running with ease, and every run in with Kramer sees him being knocked down a peg by King at every turn, leaving him looking and sounding like a sexist bogeyman, something that is too simplistic an approach to work effectively (and which even Pullman struggles to pull off). All the real drama is saved for the match, but by then it has to work extra hard to reel in the viewer, who probably has a good idea (if not an actual one) as to the outcome.

Stone is terrific, rescuing some of the milder and less interesting portions of the movie by virtue of her commitment to playing Billie Jean and her ability as an actress to fold herself into the character, so that she brings her own vulnerability as a person to the role and uses her own feelings to establish that character’s interior life. It’s a much subtler performance than you might expect, and Stone is to be congratulated for the layers she brings to her portrayal, shading Billie Jean’s personality in such a way that it helps overcome the script’s more pedestrian moments. Matching her for commitment and sincerity is Carell, a perfect choice for Riggs who plays him as a man whose public persona is used to hide the insecurities he feels since retiring from the one thing that he’s good at (he does play the senior circuit but is unfulfilled by it). Carell has a great deal of fun with the role, and the viewer has every right to have fun right along side him, but Carell also ensures there’s an air of melancholy about Riggs that’s equally affecting.

Faris and Dayton assemble the material with a deft appreciation for the period it’s set in, and the politics of the time, but it’s Simon Beaufoy’s subdued screenplay that holds them back from making this entirely successful (which makes one wonder how the movie would have turned out if original choice Danny Boyle had been able to direct it). Still, they do manage to elicit good performances from the cast, and if there’s not enough in the way of truly emotional or dramatic highs and lows, they do keep things ticking over with a great deal of style and visual panache thanks to Oscar-winning DoP Linus Sandgren. If the movie doesn’t quite achieve its own ambitions, it’s still a good effort that can be enjoyed and appreciated for what it is, even if the material does lack depth and it decides not to take a more extensive look at its various themes and topics.

Rating: 7/10 – a movie that tries hard to draw parallels with modern day issues surrounding sexual politics, Battle of the Sexes is buoyed by Stone and Carell’s performances, and a giddy sense of the absurdity of the whole situation surrounding the “battle”; but while it’s enjoyable on a basic level, any attempt to look deeper under the surface will reveal a movie that trades too heavily on what’s superfluous and not enough on what’s meaningful.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)

19 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Adam Sandler, Art, Ben Stiller, Comedy, Drama, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Family, Netflix, Noah Baumbach, Relationships, Review

D: Noah Baumbach / 112m

Cast: Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Elizabeth Marvel, Grace Van Patten, Judd Hirsch, Rebecca Miller, Candice Bergen, Adam Driver, Matthew Shear, Sakina Jaffrey, Gayle Rankin, Michael Chernus

Harold Meyerowitz (Hoffman) is a semi-famous sculptor who hasn’t had a show in years, and who has become somewhat marginalised within the New York art world. His work is admired by those that know of it, but his contemporaries, such as L.J. Shapiro (Hirsch), are still exhibiting and still getting the recognition that Harold thinks they don’t deserve. Harold is on his fourth marriage – to Maureen (Thompson) – and has two children from his first, Danny (Sandler) and Jean (Marvel). Danny is in the midst of separating from his wife, and has a precocious teenage daughter, Eliza (Van Patten), who is about to leave for college. Jean is a spinster but leads an otherwise happy life. Harold has another child from his third marriage, Matthew (Stiller), but he lives in LA, and works as a financial consultant. He’s successful, and has a young son he would like to spend more time with. This is the family Meyerowitz, and despite outward appearances, many of which they foster themselves, they all need help (oh boy, do they need help).

What’s impressive about Noah Baumbach’s latest feature is that he takes a stereotypical dysfunctional family, and spins that stereotype ever so slightly off its axis, so that each nugget of information about any of the characters seems fresh and unexpected, even though a closer inspection reveals tropes and metaphors that we’ve seen countless times before. This is due to Baumbach’s very eloquent and very astute screenplay, a piece of writing that manages to include a number of complex and yet succinct observations on the nature of father-son relationships and the effect that an inwardly scared parent can have on their children. It’s no surprise that Baumbach has chosen to examine the issue of what children need from their parents as this has formed the basis of much of his work in the past, from The Squid and the Whale (2005) to While We’re Young (2014). But this is easily his most impressive and most fully realised project, and it has a smoothness and an ease about it that makes it all the more enjoyable to watch.

The main focus is, at first, on Danny. With his marriage coming to an end and Eliza going off to college, Danny has to reassess what he’s going to do with his life (he’s been a house husband up until now, having chosen that as his “career” instead of being a musician). He and Jean get involved in arranging a retrospective of Harold’s career, but Baumbach is quick to make the viewer realise that this isn’t being done out of love or affection, and not even necessarily out of respect for their father’s work. Like so many other things connected to Harold that they do, it’s done because they view it as the right thing to do; it’s a familial obligation. But Harold is obsessed with how his work is perceived, because his work is the only thing that, to him, makes him stand out from the crowd. He’s constantly seeking approbation from everyone around him, and insists he receives it from his kids. But if they don’t, then he’s oblivious to both them and their needs. Such is their lives as adults, such was their lives as children.

Harold’s narcissistic expressions about himself, and his short-fuse dismissal of anyone he deems unimportant, has had an unpleasant effect on all three of his children. Danny has spent an enormous amount of time and energy in raising Eliza so that they’re more like friends instead of father and daughter. As a result he’s a better father than Harold was to him, but the irony is that in its own way, it’s as unhealthy as the relationship Danny had with him as a child. Baumbach makes the point well: too little attention or love can be just as bad as too much. But while that may seem obvious (and it is), it’s the way in which Danny tries to strike a balance between the two, and without necessarily being aware that he’s doing it, that makes all the difference. Jean has her own reasons for keeping her life separate, and though it seems that she’s perhaps the most “adjusted” of the three, this later proves to be incorrect. And then there’s Matthew, who professes to be “over” his father’s ability to make him angry for having a successful life (Harold is almost as obsessed by money as he is by maintaining his reputation). Matthew, like Danny, is trying to be a better father than Harold was, but he can’t seem to connect with his son, despite his best efforts.

Watching these four people struggle to communicate with each other, and struggle to find the answers that are often in front of them, should be frustrating for the viewer, but Baumbach, and the sharpness of his script, helps avoid all that. The family dynamic is entirely credible and perfectly judged, with superb performances from all concerned. Sandler has only been better once before, in Punch-Drunk Love (2002), and here he proves that he can be a fine dramatic actor when he wants to be (which isn’t often enough). Sandler displays a warmth and a heartfelt sincerity as Danny that allows the viewer a way in to the Meyerowitz family and its myriad issues. He’s a sweet, caring guy trying to do his best, and he has enough self-awareness to know that he doesn’t always get it right. Stiller is equally as good, channelling Matthew’s anger at being unfairly singled out for Harold’s praise as a child when the praise, and what it related to, wasn’t important to Matthew at all. In support, Marvel, Thompson and Van Patten offer touching performances, while there are a clutch of more minor roles that allow for a few scene-stealing moments (Chernus as a snippy nurse is a treat). But this, perhaps expectedly, is Hoffman’s movie, his portrayal of Harold as a manipulative, emotionally remote artist one of the best things he’s done in years.

Baumbach approaches the material and the characters with a great deal of care and attention, and it’s this that makes the movie so effortlessly dramatic, and so effortlessly funny. Nobody behaves in a manner that might seem odd or inappropriate because that’s how they’ve always behaved. With some questions there’s an answer provided, but many’s the time when Baumbach keeps the viewer in the dark, as if to say, “these characters still need time to figure things out, and it’s not going to happen before the movie’s over”. It all adds up to a remarkably humane and sympathetic look at expectations between the generations, and how personal legacies can hamper the growth of those who are raised in the shadow of them. Thoughtful and considerate of its characters’ foibles and muted aspirations, Baumbach’s latest is a sprightly mix of drama and comedy that succeeds on both fronts, and is his best work yet.

Rating: 9/10 – that rarity: a comedy-drama with heart as well as intelligence, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) is a cautionary tale that never once feels forced or that it’s struggling to find its own voice; the characters linger in the memory, along with Baumbach’s clever script and fluid direction, and a number of quality performances, making this a movie that everyone should try and see, and especially as an alternative to more mainstream, big-budget moviemaking.

Justice League (2017)

19 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Amy Adams, Batman, Ben Affleck, Cyborg, DCEU, Drama, Ezra Miller, Gal Gadot, Henry Cavill, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Review, Sci-fi, Sequel, Steppenwolf, Superheroes, Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Zack Snyder

D: Zack Snyder / 120m

Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, J.K. Simmons, Ciarán Hinds, Amber Heard, Joe Morton

If Justice League required the writing of a school report card, then that report would likely say, “Must do better.” A movie that furthers Warner Bros.’ insistence on building the DC Extended Universe one laborious movie at a time, this is unlikely to upset fans (who may well point to its lighter tone as reason enough to be happy with the finished product), but it should still provide cause for concern for anyone able to watch the movie objectively or without a vested interest. Although this is an improvement on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), there are still plenty of problems on show, some of which seem inherent in Warner Bros.’ approach to the DCEU, and some that have arisen out of the efforts made to address those same problems. If Justice League is to be as financially successful (if not critically) as previous entries in the DCEU – and early box office returns are casting doubt on this – then even more lessons need to be learnt.

The movie begins with the world mourning the death of Superman (Cavill), and crime apparently on the increase (though strangely, it’s hate crime that the movie chooses first as an example). Batman (Affleck) is still fighting criminals, as is Wonder Woman (Gadot), but an encounter with a strange, alien creature, a Parademon, leads the Caped Crusader to believe that a major threat is coming to Earth (alas, how and why he believes this, is left unexplored, possibly because it would add yet another plot hole to the many already on display). Wonder Woman confirms this, telling him that Earth is being targeted by Steppenwolf (Hinds), the “ender of worlds”. Steppenwolf and his Parademons are looking for three Mother Boxes, power sources that if linked together, could destroy Earth entirely (why he’d want to do this is another plot hole left for the movie to fall through). With one box entrusted to the Amazons on Themyscira, the second to Atlantis, and the third hidden by man, Steppenwolf collects the first two with unseemly ease, leaving Batman and Wonder Woman with only one choice: to find other people with “abilities” who can help try and defeat Steppenwolf; and yes, you guessed it, save the world.

Batman recruits the Flash (Miller) in record time, but has little luck with Arthur Curry (Momoa), the so-called Aquaman. And then there’s Cyborg (Fisher), part man, part machine, whose existence is due to his scientist father’s use of the third Mother Box (conveniently discovered for this very purpose) after his death in a car accident. Keeping hold of the third Mother Box long enough to resurrect Superman (more of which later), Batman and his new friends, including a newly motivated Aquaman, trace Steppenwolf to an abandoned nuclear power plant in Russia (plot hole alert!), and attempt to stop him uniting the Mother Boxes and destroying the world. In the process, Batman, the archetypal loner, learns to become a team player (even though everyone in the Justice League is, effectively, an archetypal loner, it seems to be more relevant to him than anyone else).

In assembling their own version of the Avengers, Warner Bros. and DC have tried to cut narrative corners by curtailing any origin stories and sidelining any character arcs. This leaves the newcomers looking and feeling like late additions to the story rather than integral parts of it. Batman and Wonder Woman are placed front and centre to provide the gravitas this series is committed to, while the Flash is used primarily to ensure there are plenty of laughs to be had (an improvement on previous entries, definitely, but by the end of the movie, a little over-used). But if any one aspect of Justice League should raise concerns about Warner Bros. and DC’s abilities to handle this franchise effectively, it’s in their treatment of Superman. The decision to kill him off at the end of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was possibly that movie’s best idea, but here his resurrection is handled so badly that it feels like an insult. Resurrected purely so that there can be a showdown between Superman and the League, the movie ignores the possibility of a much stronger and more long-term story arc* in favour of a ten-minute punch-up that’s abruptly halted by the appearance of Lois Lane. If anyone is in any doubt that Chris Terrio’s screenplay isn’t up to much (even with Joss Whedon’s additions), then this is the moment that confirms it.

The movie retains the series’ inconsistency of tone, and superficial world building, as well as its plodding attempts at exposition, as well as its over-reliance on big, flashy, hollow set-pieces that deaden the senses and lack imagination (hero hits villain with crushing blow, villain hits hero with crushing blow – and repeat, again and again). It jumps from scene to scene without the slightest concern for its own internal logic – which is continually ignored in favour of getting to the next showdown – and it takes liberties with its minor characters; if you’re not Wonder Woman, but you’re still a female character, be prepared to be given short shrift at almost every turn. Shoehorned into the narrative for no particular reason than that they’re part of the canon, the likes of Commissioner Gordon (Simmons) and Martha Kent (Lane) appear briefly and for little purpose. And yet again, the villain is the least interesting character in the movie, a fully-CGI character who is effectively a thug from another dimension, and who has all the villainous intensity of a playground bully.

For a movie that reportedly cost $300 million to make, Justice League also looks a little on the cheap side at times, with some backgrounds looking incredibly fake (check out the cornfield scene with Lois and Clark for an idea of just how awkwardly the marriage of CGI and on-set footage can be rendered). Snyder still manages to direct as if he can’t believe he’s been given the chance to shepherd such a huge franchise in the first place, and his inability to make individual scenes work as part of a greater whole remains firmly in place. As for Joss Whedon’s contribution, there are certain scenes that bear his imprint, but not enough to offset the dour approach adopted by Snyder, and even though the movie is demonstrably lighter in tone than its predecessor, the inclusion of some much needed humour isn’t enough to make up for the pedestrian plotting and the lack of a convincing storyline (or indeed, any storyline). “Must do better” indeed, and as soon as possible.

Rating: 5/10 – still unable to contend with, or overcome the issues that hold back the DCEU from achieving what it’s capable of, Justice League is what might best be described as “a happy mess”, but that’s doing the lacklustre nature of the overall material something of a favour; Gadot and Miller head up a cast who can only go with the flow and hope for the best, while the mythology building is put on hold in favour of several underwhelming scraps that reinforce the notion that whatever else happens in future DCEU movies, it’ll still be safe to assume that buildings will continue to crumble, and important storyteling lessons will still need to be learnt.

*What if the following had happened: Superman returns from the dead but is different, less interested in doing good, more selfish and unapproachable. Unwilling to help defeat Steppenwolf, the League has to find a way to defeat him themselves as a team (which they do). And so, by the time of the next Justice League movie, their foe is Superman himself, whose transition to the “dark side” has become more pronounced (oh, and there’s no Kryptonite to help them out). Now that sounds like a great storyline.

Small Crimes (2017)

15 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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

D: Evan Katz / 95m

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards (2015)

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Amber Tamblyn, Childhood, Drama, Jacob Loeb, James Franco, Jeremy David White, Jim Parrack, Kate Mara, Keir Gilchrist, Kristen Wiig, Mark Columbus, Memory, Natalie Portman, Review, Ryan Moody, Sarah Jean Kruchowski, Shadae Lamar Smith, Simon Savelyev, Thomas Mann, Vanita Shastry

D: Ryan Moody, Mark Columbus, Sarah Jean Kruchowski, Shadae Lamar Smith, Vanita Shastry, Simon Savelyev, Jeremy David White / 97m

Cast: James Franco, Abigail Spencer, Rico Rodriguez, Matthew Modine, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Kristen Wiig, Tony Cox, Jimmy Kimmel, Jim Parrack, Natalie Portman, Thomas Mann, Keir Gilchrist, Bo Mitchell, Jacob Loeb, Kelsey Ford, Tyler Labine

A collection of seven short movies adapted from the short story collection of the same name by Robert Boswell, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards is that inopportune beast, a movie with no clear, discernible focus other than a plan to relate various tales of longing and regret, and all with the same dour approach to each of the “slices of life” that are depicted. A project that was assembled by graduate students of James Franco’s UCLA moviemaking class, it’s telling that the movie was first seen at the Atlanta Film Festival back in March 2015, but is only now receiving a limited release in the US. It’s an arthouse movie, structured in a way that makes it seem more knowing and truthful than it actually is, and which proves only moderately successful in its aims and ambitions.

The seven tales on display are a mixed bunch, both in terms of their content, and in their relation to each other. The first, A Walk in Winter, sees Conrad (Franco), a young man returning to his hometown to identify the remains of a body that may be that of his long-missing mother. An extended visit to the sheriff’s office reveals a childhood beset by abuse and further mystery. The second, Guests, concerns a young boy, Charlie (Rodriguez), who has to deal with his ailing, cancer-stricken father (Modine) and a school bully at the same time. He’s the quintessential chubby kid who’s picked on because he’s different (thanks to his dad), but he’s not the pushover everyone thinks he is. In the third tale, Almost Not Beautiful, sisters Lisa (Mara) and Amanda (Tamblyn) revisit aspects of their childhood while also trying to reconnect after spending some time apart. In doing so they discover a mutual dependency that they’d forgotten about. The fourth tale, Miss Famous, features a maid, Monica (Wiig), whose antipathy towards her clients provokes fantasies where she is rich and famous.

In the fifth, Lacunae, a young man, Paul (Parrack), also returns to his hometown, ostensibly to see his parents, but also to see an ex-girlfriend, Laura (Portman), who may have given birth to their son. Paul is adamant that the child isn’t his, but he can’t resist seeing for himself. In the sixth tale, Smoke, three friends (Gilchrist, Mann, Mitchell) sit round a camp fire and tell bogus stories of their sexual exploits. Each is seeking approbation from the other two, and each story is clearly a longed-for fantasy. And in the final tale, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, another young man, this time called Keen (Loeb), attends a party where he not only hooks up with a young woman, Lila (Ford), but also finds himself in serious trouble with the law. Each tale is bookended by clips and randomly assembled stills from old home movies and family celebrations, and all of which adds a melancholy feel to the material, and which also serves to provide a sense that these tales take place in a time and a place where nostalgia doesn’t provide a soothing balm, but quite the opposite.

With any collection of stories that are meant to have a unifying theme, that theme needs to be evident – even if it’s to varying degrees – in order for the overall movie to work effectively, and also to offset the obvious problem whereby the viewer is forced to reinvest their attention every ten to fifteen minutes in a new story and new characters, while also attempting to assimilate each tale into an organic whole. This is where any portmanteau movie succeeds or fails, but in this case, it’s very nearly a draw, with three stories lacking any appreciable impact by themselves, three other stories working effectively on their own, and one having a foot in both camps. As a whole, though, the movie remains sporadically engaging, with its broader themes of memory and fantasy pushed to the fore when its more telling themes of disappointment and paralysed ambition should be front and centre. This isn’t a feelgood movie, and nor does it come with any message of hope for its characters. Mistakes have been made, and more mistakes will be made as they move forward with their lives. The question is, will any of them learn from their mistakes?

With childhood trauma leading the way in explaining why these characters behave and struggle as they do, each director approaches their tale in a way that, unfortunately, isolates each one from the rest. There’s no symmetry to the stories, and no unifying directorial approach (other than that there is no unifying approach), all of which leaves each episode feeling under-developed or prosaic. Despite some good performances – Franco, Tamblyn, Wiig, Portman, Loeb – the movie relates each tale as if it contains a singular message within itself, and a broader message for everyone to pick up as well (though just when is difficult to work out). But the problem is that with only three of the stories working effectively enough on their own – and they are A Walk in Winter, Guests, and The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards – too much of the movie feels like there should be more to it, and too much of the movie feels like it should be making more of a connection with the viewer.

That said, there’s no denying the ambition and some of the talent on display behind the camera – Moody, Columbus, and White stand out in particular – but it’s all in service to material that isn’t as compelling as it should be given Boswell’s talent as a writer (he also provides the movie with a jaundiced, earnest narration). Some viewers may find some of the tales hard to decipher, while others may feel there’s no need for any deciphering at all, but what is clear is that some amount of interpretation is required, but that it won’t benefit the viewer in the long run. Sometimes, a teenager bragging about having sex with an older woman, is purely wish fulfilment and nothing more. It doesn’t need to resonate, and it doesn’t here. This, ultimately, is where the movie falters, by failing to resonate. And no matter how much effort has been spent, and no matter how much artistic endeavour is on display, when the tale itself isn’t able to carry the viewer forward then it’s time to move on to the next one… unless the next one has the same problem.

Rating: 5/10 – a great idea for a graduate project that proves to be less than a great idea for a movie as a whole, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards wants to be engaging and meaningful, but hasn’t the consistency to make it all work; some tolerance is required to get through the more sluggish and unaffecting episodes, but despite a clutch of good performances, it remains a frustrating experience and one that should be approached with caution.

Only the Brave (2017)

13 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Arizona, Drama, Firefighters, Granite Mountain Hotshots, Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Connelly, Joseph Kosinski, Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Review, True story

D: Joseph Kosinski / 134m

Cast: Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Connelly, James Badge Dale, Taylor Kitsch, Andie MacDowell, Geoff Stults, Alex Russell, Thad Luckinbill, Natalie Hall

What to say, and how to say it…

Only the Brave tells the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a group of firefighters who were part of the Prescott, Arizona fire department. They attained elite hotshot status in 2008, only six years after they were first formed. A hotshot crew can be called upon to fight large, high priority fires in any part of the US, and due to the training they receive, are often required to work for long periods of time, in remote areas, and with little in the way of logistical support. They are quite simply, the best at what they do. And until 30 June 2013 and the Yarnell Hill fire, so were the Granite Mountain Hotshots. Led by their superintendent, Eric Marsh (Brolin), nineteen of the twenty Hotshots found themselves cut off from their escape route and having to deploy their fire shelters as the blaze swept towards them. It was not enough. All nineteen men perished.

In telling their story, Only the Brave does what a lot of biographical dramas do, and that’s focus on the good points of all concerned, tell their individual stories (well, some of them at least) with a good deal of easy-going charm, and paint a picture of deep-rooted camaraderie allied to unwavering support from their families and friends. Oh, and the rest of the Prescott townsfolk are similarly unwavering in their support. With everyone on the same page or side – as it were – the movie has to overcome the minor problem of where to find the drama it needs to tell the Hotshots’ story, and effectively. It’s a peculiar bind for a true life drama to find itself in, and it’s one that Joseph Kosinski’s direction, from a script by Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer (itself based on the GQ article No Exit by Sean Flynn), finds it difficult to overcome. In truth, the Hotshots’ tale is one full of drama and excitement, but here, it’s all a little too tepid for comfort, and a little too restrained in terms of any urgency. These are firefighters, operating in some of the most challenging conditions known to man, and yet – and yet – even when they’re in mortal danger, the movie fails to convince the viewer that they’re anywhere even near mortal danger.

Part of the problem with the narrative, and the wider material as a whole, is that it lacks urgency in its firefighting sequences, and its homebound elements are moribund and unappealing. Away from the forest fires, the movie maintains two distinct subplots, both of which involve children, albeit for different reasons. Marsh is staunchly against having kids, but his wife, Amanda (Connelly), is becoming less and less agreeable to this, and wants to start a family. Meanwhile, rookie firefighter and junkie trying to go straight Brendan McDonough (Teller), has just become a father even though at first, Natalie (Hall), the young woman who has given him a daughter, wants nothing to do with him. But while Brendan tries to be a good father, Eric ensures he avoids any discussion with Amanda about having kids. These storylines are meant to provide texture and depth to the proceedings, and to help the viewer get to know these characters as real people, with real lives and real feelings. But these storylines exist in a vacuum, wheeled out between scenes of firefighting in order to give the cast something more to do than trudge around New Mexico (where the movie was shot).

There’s more than a faint whiff of soap opera about these scenes, with Brendan unable to connect with his infant daughter because firefighting keeps him away from home for long stretches, and Amanda driving home one night and falling asleep at the wheel (the car’s a write-off but she walks away with barely a scratch). Minor incidents like these come and go, but these too exist in a kind of vacuum, introduced by the script and then quickly abandoned because their dramatic potential is limited. Even when Brendan is bitten by a rattlesnake, what could have been a nerve-shredding race against time to get him to a hospital is glossed over in a matter of minutes, and has all the impact of watching an infomercial. There’s bags of potential in the Hotshots’ story and their tragic demise, but it’s all wasted thanks to the tepid nature of the script and the distant nature of Kosinski’s direction. There are long periods where the movie feels flat and lifeless, as if it’s going through the motions, and even the CGI-augmented forest fires lack a true sense of their enormity and the devastation they must have caused. And if the depiction of raging, out of control fire isn’t gripping, then how is anything else in the movie going to work anywhere near as effectively?

While the ball is dropped dramatically and often, leaving the viewer to wonder why this movie was made in the first place – this is, after all, another US movie that celebrates failure by calling it heroism – the above calibre cast do their best, but aren’t helped by some redundant dialogue (“I’ll probably be home by lunchtime,” says Eric on the day of the Yarnell Hill fire), or paper-thin characterisations (Bridges’ role as a supporter of the Hotshots is remarkable for his not being given a reason for being so). Brolin gives a solid but unspectacular performance, Teller does the same, all of which leaves it to Connelly to inject some much needed energy into the often dull, often banal proceedings. (Kudos though to the casting team of Jo Edna Boldin and Ronna Kress for hiring an actor called Forrest Fyre to play the Prescott mayor.)

As a tribute to the fallen firefighters of the Granite Mountain Hotshots – Brandon was the group’s only survivor – Only the Brave defaults towards being trite and devoid of meaning on too many occasions for the movie to be anywhere near successful. This is hammered home by a scene where Amanda puts aside her grief to help prop up Brandon and disavow his (understandable) sense of guilt at being alive. It’s a scene that screams Hollywood! at the top of its voice, so lacking in subtlety and credibility is it. Sadly, the movie also coasts along for much of its running time as well, and by the end, you’ll be wondering if any of this will have been worth it. The firefighters’ story could have been an exciting, terrifying tale of extreme bravery and making the ultimate sacrifice. Instead, any bravery is smoothed aside, and as for an ultimate sacrifice, it’s a shame that the firefighters’ sacrifice has led to this turgid and shallow exercise in hagiography being made in the first place.

Rating: 4/10 – top heavy with dramatic clichés, and enough soap opera dialogue to stun the fiery bear Marsh sees in his dreams, Only the Brave is a disappointing addition to the “men in peril” sub-genre of true stories; with Kosinski unable to connect with the material, neither can the viewer, making this an uneasy recreation of a group’s tragic, and unwanted, claim to fame.

The Villainess (2017)

12 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Action, Ak-Nyeo, Assassin, Drama, Jung Byung-gil, Kim Ok-bin, Review, Shin Ha-kyun, Sleeper agent, South Korea, Sung Jun, Thriller

Original title: Ak-Nyeo

D: Jung Byung-gil / 123m

Cast: Kim Ok-bin, Shin Ha-kyun, Bang Sung-jun, Kim Seo-hyeong, Jo Eun-ji, Lee Seung-joo, Son Min-ji, Min Ye-ji, Kim Yeon-woo

Beginning with a bravura Hardcore Henry-style action sequence where a lone female takes on a warehouse full of goons before despatching their boss (who may have killed her father), The Villainess makes one thing very clear: this isn’t going to be the kind of generic, Hollywood-style action thriller we’re all used to. Instead, this is going to continue the trend where the Far East shows us just how to put together an exciting, pulse-pounding, and above all, gob-smacking slice of mayhem, with its shoot/stab/gouge first, don’t even bother with questions afterwards characters lashing out in all directions and sending blood flying all over the place (even on the camera lens). This is brutal, uncompromising, stunt-filled stuff that combines excellent fight choreography with sometimes astonishingly fluid camera work, and yet still finds the time to tell a compelling story of love and revenge, as well as layering the action with an emotional weight that is expertly expressed by its cast.

Our heroine is called Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin), a young woman whose father is killed over his possession of a rare and valuable jewel. She witnesses his death as a young girl, but is saved from being killed herself by aspiring gangster Joong-sang (Shin). He raises her as his own and trains her in the art of assassination. When she becomes an adult, her feelings for Joong-sang lead her to marry him. But shortly afterwards, he’s killed, and apparently by the man we see Sook-hee kill at the beginning. Having avenged both her father’s death and her husband’s in one fell swoop, Sook-hee allows herself to be arrested, but instead of being put on trial she finds herself being recruited into a secret South Korean government agency. There, under the watchful eye of her commander, Chief Kwon (Kim Seo-hyeong), Sook-hee’s skills as an assassin are added to, and she is offered a chance at a normal life if she works for the government for ten years as a sleeper agent. She agrees, and is soon set up with a new life as an actress, and with an apartment for her and her daughter, Eun-hye (Kim Yeon-woo) (Sook-hee was pregnant with Joong-sang’s baby when she was arrested).

Sook-hee moves in on the same day as her neighbour, Hyun-soo (Bang), and they soon strike an easy friendship. But Hyun-soo also works for the agency, and is there to keep an eye on Sook-hee. Their relationship becomes gradually more and more romantic until he asks her to marry him, ostensibly as part of his cover but because he has fallen in love with her for real. She’s sent on a couple of missions, neither of which is entirely successful, but it’s the third assignment she’s given that makes all the difference. Tasked with carrying out this assignment on her wedding day, Sook-hee is shocked to discover that her target is someone from her past, someone who she believes is dead. With her loyalties potentially in question (the hit is botched), Sook-hee is watched even more closely by the agency, while also coming to the attention of her target. Soon, no one is safe as Sook-hee’s past comes back to haunt her, and no one in her present day life is safe from harm…

The Villianess tells the bulk of its story in non-linear fashion, skipping backwards and forwards between episodes of Sook-hee’s life as a child, her time with Joong-sang, and her time working for the government. Thanks to a taut script by director Jung Byung-gil and Jung Byeong-sik, there isn’t an ounce of narrative flab on the movie’s carefully constructed bones, and each development and revelation in the script is expertly crafted to provide the maximum effect as Sook-hee first tries to adjust to a “normal” life and at last finds a measure of true happiness, and then sees it all put at risk. As she fights to preserve life instead of wantonly despatching it, the movie invests Sook-hee’s character with a desperate craving for the peace she’s never truly known. And though when that peace is destroyed she reverts to the crazed killer instincts she has managed to keep under wraps, for once it’s entirely understandable that she does so. Revenge is an easy motive in too many action thrillers, but here there’s an emotional element to it all that makes Sook-hee’s murderous retaliation all the more credible.

As with so many of the best action movies coming out of South Korea these days, the movie isn’t just about the action, and there’s strong character development to offset some of the more predictable aspects of the script (it’s not an original story by any means but it is better assembled than most). As the tormented Sook-hee, Kim Ok-bin gives a terrific performance, tough as nails when in a scrap, and yet tender and vulnerable in her scenes with Bang and Kim Yeon-woo. Bang portrays Hyun-soo as a bashful romantic with a floppy fringe, and his role is a nice counterpoint to the testosterone-fuelled bellicosity of his other male colleagues, as well as some of Sook-hee’s fellow students. In the pivotal role of Joong-sang, Shin is equally as tough and tender as Sook-hee, and this ambivalence in the character makes him more intriguing than expected.

But when all’s said and discussed, and despite the need for a compelling narrative to fill in the gaps between the action sequences, The Villainess is still a movie that stands or falls on the quality of said action sequences. And it doesn’t disappoint at all. The opening sequence is a blast, slickly choreographed and edited (and with yet another bloody showdown in a corridor; what is it since Oldboy (2003) about corridor fights?), and as brutal as anything you’ve yet seen. Individual set pieces punctuate the rest of the movie, and maintain a similar intensity despite being briefer, but then Jung ups the ante and provides viewers with an incredible final showdown that includes Sook-hee and the principal villain fighting on the outside of a building, and a section involving a bus where bodies are flung all over the place, even through the rear window and onto the bonnet of a car. It’s impressively bonkers, and shows more visual invention and technical prowess in roughly twenty minutes than most Hollywood action thrillers manage in two hours (even John Wick isn’t this outrageous). If there is to be a Hollywood remake, rest assured it won’t be as good as it is here. But then, we all know that already, don’t we?

Rating: 9/10 – with a great deal of heart and soul amidst all the blood and broken bones, The Villainess is fierce, imposing stuff that has plenty of OMG moments as well as quieter, more character focused moments that help elevate the material throughout; bold in its visual design and enervating cinematography (take a bow, Park Jung-hun), this is everything you could ever want from a South Korean action thriller, and a lot more besides.

The Only Living Boy in New York (2017)

11 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Affair, Callum Turner, Cynthia Nixon, Drama, Jeff Bridges, Kate Beckinsale, Marc Webb, Pierce Brosnan, Review, Romance, Writing

D: Marc Webb / 89m

Cast: Callum Turner, Jeff Bridges, Kate Beckinsale, Pierce Brosnan, Cynthia Nixon, Kiersey Clemons, Bill Camp, Wallace Shawn, Tate Donovan, Anh Duong, Debi Mazar, Ben Hollandsworth, John Bolger

Pity poor Thomas (Turner). He’s the quintessential college graduate who can’t work out what he wants to do with his life. His father, Ethan (Brosnan), is a brusque senior editor at a publishing firm, and his mother, Judith (Nixon) appears to be a nervous soul who surrounds herself with people from the arts in order to offset her nervous disposition. Thomas has been discouraged by his father from becoming an author, and he doesn’t seem to have a fall-back career to help him move forward. Instead he spends time with his best friend Mimi (Clemons). He’s in love with Mimi, but his love isn’t reciprocated. One day, Thomas meets W.F. (Bridges), who’s just moved into his building. They strike up a friendship, and soon Thomas is sharing his woes and actively seeking advice from his new-found friend. Soon after, while Thomas and Mimi are out together one evening, they see Ethan in the company of another woman. From this, Thomas decides to find out who the woman is, and to stop any affair she and her father may be having.

The woman is Johanna (Beckinsale), a freelance book editor who has been working on and off with Ethan over the past year. Thomas tells W.F. about his father’s affair, but instead of being equally outraged or supportive of Thomas’s efforts to sabotage the affair, W.F. questions his motives, asking him if he, Thomas, wants to sleep with Johanna instead, and making it plain that this is the reason why Thomas wants to put an end to the affair… Of course, this is all true, and in the way that only the movies can offer, Johanna proves receptive to Thomas’s advances and they begin their own relationship. It’s at this point in the movie when it’s likely that many viewers will throw their hands up in the air and cry, Wish Fulfilment! It’s also the moment when the movie, struggling already to make us care about Thomas or any of the other characters, throws in the towel and decides to play out its insubstantial narrative with all the emotional finesse of an after hours drinking contest.

It’s always hard to work out just who qualifies as the potential audience for a movie like The Only Living Boy in New York, with its self-torturing central characters, middle class aspirations, mock intellectualising (W.F. quotes Ezra Pound at one point), and lazy approach to character building. Oh, and let’s not forget the usual number of occasions where people talk in riddles and never… explain… themselves… fully. It’s hard to understand just why so many of these movies get made, especially when the aim is to try to make these tortured souls and their mock-important lives relevant to the average viewer. Even if this is exactly the social milieu that you inhabit, and even if many of the characters on display reminded you of people you actually know, would you still be interested in watching them whine about how hard done by they are, or how sad or lonely or misunderstood they are? (It’s probably very unlikely.) So if even the people this truly relates to aren’t likely to engage with this particular story, why should anyone else?

Granted, some viewers might be attracted to the movie by the talent involved. Actors of the stature of Jeff Bridges and Pierce Brosnan will always garner interest in any movies they appear in, but on this occasion, they’re at the mercy of a script that challenges the audience to be emotionally involved at nearly every turn. No matter how good the performances – and Brosnan is very good (which is really nice to see after some of the movies he’s made in recent years) – if the script isn’t up to it, or isn’t as compelling as it should be, then no amount of acting experience can compensate for a story that carries little or no emotional weight. And Allan Loeb’s screenplay has exactly that problem: it’s dry and superficial, and any sympathies for Thomas et al. can only be arrived at by a huge amount of effort on the viewer’s part, and an effort that isn’t rewarded at any point during the movie. Even when the movie tries to be clever with the introduction of a back story that, once mentioned, gives away a large chunk of the plot, it stumbles on looking for a payoff that won’t feel forced or intrusive (hint: it doesn’t succeed).

Following on from the much more engaging experience that was Gifted (2017), director Marc Webb does his best to make the various plot developments more interesting than they are, but too often finds himself trying to coax some much needed animation into the material, and struggling to provide any sense that all this is happening in the real world and to “real” people. He’s not helped by Turner’s less than stellar performance, his interpretation of Thomas unnecessarily making viewers wonder just why Johanna would sleep with him, or why Mimi – in a plot “twist” that can be seen coming from space, let alone a mile away – eventually decides she really does love him. It’s a role that unfortunately exposes Turner’s limited range as an actor, and especially in his scenes with Bridges, and it sometimes he does more harm to the movie than even the script. Bridges is good value as always, Beckinsale is trapped by a character arc that is actually one long downward spiral, Nixon does anxious (and should be on medication) because that’s the only thing we know about Judith, and Clemons shows flashes of inspiration as she attempts to make Mimi more than just the best friend whose knowing comments get ignored by the main character.

In the end it all builds to a confrontation that lacks energy, emotion, and purpose (except to help wind things up quickly). An awkward, and unnecessary, coda undermines everything that’s gone before, and is so dramatically redundant that it’s like a slap in the face to the viewer. It reinforces the notion that whatever message the movie is trying to make, whether it be about relationships and how hard they can be, or finding one’s way in the world (by sleeping with your father’s mistress; always a good starting point), or even selecting a career based on what you know you can’t do, the movie itself hasn’t fully made up its mind what that message is, or even if it’s sure about it. In that way it’s a lot like Thomas himself: confused, hoping for inspiration to strike, and held back by so many missed opportunities to do the right thing.

Rating: 4/10 – a glossy snapshot of a semi-privileged lifestyle that proves as empty as the shallowness of the characters and their wretchedly expressed desires, The Only Living Boy in New York is pretentious on one side, and wilfully obtuse on the other; a tale that lacks passion despite its use of affairs and sexual exploitation, it’s another exercise in trying to make middle class angst interesting when we’ve seen it waaaaay too many times before.

Love of My Life (2017)

10 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Anna Chancellor, Brain tumour, Comedy, Drama, Ex-husband, Hermione Norris, James Fleet, Joan Carr-Wiggin, John Hannah, Review, Romance

D: Joan Carr-Wiggin / 106m

Cast: Anna Chancellor, John Hannah, James Fleet, Hermione Norris, Hannah Emily Anderson, Katie Boland, Greg Wise

Extended families, eh? What can you do with them? (Run as fast and as far away as you can is the best answer.) In the movies, there’s another answer: use them to ask questions about love and fate and dying and the meaning of a life, and much more besides. This is the main idea behind Love of My Life, an uneven look at what happens when a middle-aged woman, Grace (Chancellor), is told that she has a brain tumour that, hopefully, surgeons can remove in five days’ time – or maybe not. Grace is an architect, and she’s married to Tom (Fleet), her second husband after her marriage to prize winning author Richard Feekery (Hannah) broke down when he had an affair with Tamara (Norris). Grace and Richard had a daughter together, Zoe (Boland); she lived with her father who married Tamara. Grace married Tom and they had a daughter as well, Kaitlyn (Anderson). Now, Grace’s ill health brings them all together over the course of the few days before her operation.

Everyone has a different reaction to the news, of course. Grace tries to be optimistic and carry on as usual, going to work and making sure that the latest project she’s overseeing continues as planned. Tom goes to pieces, and hits the bottle in order to numb his feelings of despair (and also because he’s a bit of an alcoholic anyway). Kaitlyn is concerned, obviously, but allows herself to be reassured by her mother. Richard turns up unexpectedly, professing his love for Grace and intent on winning her back. Zoe comes with him, and though she too is upset by the news, she has her own problems that occupy her thoughts more. And then Tamara arrives as well, convinced – correctly – that Richard wants to seduce Grace, while also suspecting that Grace wants him to. As the day of the operation approaches, old animosities and betrayals are aired with ever increasing frequency, relationships shift and slide in the wake of secrets revealed and feelings expressed, life changing decisions are made, and one character does something so irretrievably stupid and selfish that you can’t believe you’re seeing it. There’s definitely a lot going on, but is it enough?

Curiously, the answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no, and it largely depends on which character is speaking at any given time. Grace is meant to be the voice of reason, the sensible one treading a median line through all the tantrums and the emotional wreckage that’s been cast up by the news of her tumour. She’s also the audience’s connection to the material, and how she behaves governs how the audience responds to it all. She’s attractive, intelligent, has terrific relationships with her daughters, can be self-deprecating when needed, clearly loves Tom despite his being a bit of a bumbling, blithering idiot (note to casting directors: is James Fleet the only actor who can play these roles?), and comes to realise that the work she’s doing as an architect hasn’t been challenging her – so she changes things for the better. In essence, she’s exactly the kind of person you’d want to be if you found out you have a brain tumour that might prove to be inoperable. In the capable hands of Anna Chancellor, she’s also witty, charming, and a delight to spend time with.

But this is the movies, and inevitably, there have to be challenges, obstacles for Grace to overcome on her way to the operation. And this is where the movie begins to wobble. If we had been presented with a portrait of a woman whose illness prompts her to reassess her life and change things for the better, this could and should have been a warm, endearing movie about the power of self-belief and second chances. That would have been a drama worth seeing. Instead, we have a “dramedy” where Grace (and the audience) has to contend with a collection of supporting characters who, Kaitlyn aside, are self-indulgent, self-important, and relentlessly self-flagellating in their efforts to make you feel sorry for them. Richard is the misunderstood genius – with words at least – using every trick he knows to remind Grace of the wonderful time they had when they were married, as if all that negates the affair he had with Tamara. Richard’s level of self-interest is at least consistent, and is actually more convincing than when he begins to reveal a more sincere, and more soulful side to his relentless self-aggrandising.

At least, though, some effort has gone into writer/director Joan Carr-Wiggin’s script into making Richard at least halfway interesting, and something of an acceptable foil for Grace’s more credible behaviour. If there hadn’t been that effort, we would have been left with a handful of supporting characters seemingly designed to test our patience and our sympathies. Tom is, as already mentioned, a bumbling, blithering idiot, and he behaves stupidly throughout, making you wonder why Grace is with him in the first place. Tamara, played by Norris as a combination of Wicked Witch and jealous harpy, is manipulative in a way that can only be regarded as comic, while Zoe might as well have “airhead” tattooed across her forehead, such is the vacuity that she expresses at pretty much every turn. Kaitlyn survives by virtue of being as level-headed as her mother, something that the viewer has to be thankful for, as the only other character of note is Grace’s boss, Ben (Wise), who she may or may not have hidden feelings for. Seeing these characters interact so ungraciously, and with scant regard for each other’s emotions or histories, isn’t very appealing, and Carr-Wiggin rarely stops them from trying to impose their own ideas and desires on each other, and without any moral imperative to stop them (that Grace has a brain tumour and might just die seems to carry no weight at all with any of them).

The script does try to make some informed (or what seems like informed) comments on life and love, and envy and lust and regret, but it does so in such a way that any effect is muted by the attitudes of the characters. There’s always a degree of sermonising in this kind of movie, and it’s often trite and unprepossessing; Love of My Life embraces this kind of posing and tries to be relevant and incisive all at the same time. That it’s not successful in its aims is purely down to the way in which Carr-Wiggin manipulates her happy bunch of malcontents into acting and sounding like children who’ve been naughty and had their favourite toy taken away as punishment. Against this, only Chancellor and Anderson emerge unscathed, with Chancellor proving that she’s a much better actress than the material she’s working with, and Anderson giving a measured performance that some of her more experienced co-stars could have done well to adopt for themselves (to be fair, though, Hannah tries his best, and gives an earnest portrayal as Richard, but he’s just not sympathetic or likeable enough for anyone to care). In the end, what happens to the people orbiting around Grace fails to engage the viewer, and this takes away from learning more about Grace herself, and what makes her (actually) so intriguing.

Rating: 5/10 – with some obvious humour, a spirited if slightly curtailed performance by Chancellor, and a jumping off point that could have led to something more, Love of My Life ends up being yet another movie where a number of self-absorbed characters bemoan their lots in life – and as if this was anywhere near interesting; a muddled time frame doesn’t help (there are moments when five days seem to be four), and a dull, uninspired visual design helps even less, leaving the movie feeling less than the sum of its parts, and straining too hard to be relevant or meaningful.

M.F.A. (2017)

09 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Balboa University, Clifton Collins Jr, Drama, Francesca Eastwood, Leah McKendrick, Master of Fine Arts, Natalia Leite, Painting, Revenge, Review, Thriller, Vigilante

D: Natalia Leite / 92m

Cast: Francesca Eastwood, Clifton Collins Jr, Leah McKendrick, Peter Vack, David Sullivan, David Huynh, Marlon Young, Jess Nurse, Mary Price Moore

A movie that invites the viewer to play an extended version of Spot the Influence, M.F.A. (that’s Master of Fine Arts in case you didn’t know) is a splatter cake of references and themes from other features, most of which are really obvious, and which have an unfortunate tendency to interrupt the narrative, and pull the viewer out of the strange effect that the movie creates in between these interruptions. So every now and then, the viewer is forced to exclaim, “Hey! That’s from [insert relevant movie title here]” before being able to reconnect with art student Noelle (Eastwood) and her attempts at university-based vigilantism. That’s the first, really obvious influence: Michael Winner’s seminal Death Wish (1974). But don’t worry, there are plenty of others to pick out. (There’s a game derived from Withnail & I (1987) where the viewer is required to have a drink every time one of the characters has a drink; you might want to train for it. You could play a similar sort of game with M.F.A. and have a drink every time a movie influence, or reference, appears on screen.)

At first, this is all kind of fun, but the movie soon runs the risk of adding all these references to the detriment of the script as a whole, with Eastwood’s revenge focused antagonist seemingly at the mercy of every pause and insert that writer, producer and co-star Leah McKendrick can come up with. It all begins well enough with under-achieving Noelle in danger of failing her class and not graduating due to a lack of emotion in her paintings. As if this wasn’t bad enough, she gets an invite to a party by a guy she likes, Luke (Vack), and while she’s there he takes her to his room and rapes her. Understandably shocked, she’s further shocked by the attitude of her best friend, Skye (McKendrick), who tells her to forget about it, and a school councellor, Mrs Sanders (Moore), who questions Noelle as if she were making it all up. When Luke invites her over to his place as if nothing has happened, he ends up dead and Noelle begins to walk a very dark path of revenge and cold-blooded murder.

By this stage, the movie has begun its salute to Death Wish, and has done so via a shout out to The Hunting Ground (2015). We learn that Balboa University, the fictional campus where Noelle studies, has never acknowledged the rape of a student within its grounds in its entire history, and the script winds this into the narrative in an effort to make a point about contemporary gender politics, but while it’s a noble aim, it feels just as forced as the idea that a counsellor would dismiss a claim of rape entirely (especially these days), and just as forced as the idea that because they’re male and likely to be sports stars, rapists will always get away with it (even if there’s widely available video evidence to prove they did it). The script adopts then a very black and white attitude that seems intent on providing Noelle with a reason for going all Paul Kersey, but which also doesn’t forget to include moments of sexploitation when she does so (her first targeted victim has to be seduced before he dies). Despite this kind of direct approach, the combination of McKendrick’s screenplay and Leite’s direction doesn’t ensure this means an effective approach, and the two elements tend to work against each other.

Of course, Noelle isn’t satisfied with avenging her own assault, though it’s only when she becomes aware of another rape – that went unpunished – that she decides to do something more. As she works her way through a list of rapists, Noelle finds that her art work gains that missing emotion, or passion, that was holding her back. This idea, that murder can be an inspiration for artistic expression, has been seen several times before, including the likes of House of Wax (1953) and Color Me Blood Red (1965), but here it seems like an afterthought, so long does it take for Noelle to begin using her new feelings in order to improve her work (which of course is immediately recognised as being significantly better by her tutor and the rest of her class). And of course, once she begins killing her fellow students, Noelle has a detective on her trail called Kennedy (Collins Jr), who’s always one step behind her until the end (though like Rick Deckard in Blade Runner (1982) he doesn’t actually do any detecting, but is gifted her identity when an intended victim survives her attack on him). The tropes and long range subtleties of low budget horror thrillers are all present and correct, from the ease with which Noelle carries out her crimes, to the fetishisation of Eastwood herself, as she’s called upon to wear revealing outfit after revealing outfit before finally appearing nude.

With M.F.A. throwing together so many disparate elements, and sometimes in the same scene, it’s inevitable that the movie itself doesn’t always work as well as intended. Some of the dialogue is clunky and several moments of exposition sound like they’re being read from cue cards, but in a strange way the movie is quite hypnotic to watch. This is partly due to the various influences on display (which one will the viewer spot next?), and partly due to Eastwood’s committed performance, which anchors the movie and helps gloss over some of the longueurs that occur when the script tries to be didactic. Utilising a sympathetic approach to the character of Noelle that she manages to retain even when she’s wearing her vigilante hat, she gives an emotionally redolent, purposeful performance that could well prove to be her break-out role. In support, Collins Jr has very little to do except grow a beard very quickly, while McKendrick is erratic as the poorly written best friend whose involvement in Noelle’s life leads to an easily anticipated tragedy.

But again, even with all this going on, the movie is worth a watch, it’s strangled dynamic proving unexpectedly gripping in places, and with a dark thriller atmosphere that, for the most part, is well handled by Leite and which adds power to the material. There are brief moments of levity, a few nods to the kind of life Noelle could have had if she didn’t become a vigilante, and a couple of painful instances where Noelle’s self-awareness has the potential for self-destruction. The ending at least is dramatically satisfying, even though the build-up to it is wayward and not entirely confident in what it’s trying to say. A good try, then, and one that shows promise for all concerned.

Rating: 7/10 – thematically bizarre, and unabashedly dogmatic in places, M.F.A. is nevertheless a dour but entertaining, low budget rehash of the vigilante movies of the late Seventies; with a persuasive central performance by Eastwood, it’s a movie that wears its influences on its sleeves, and which isn’t afraid to mix things up – even if that mixing isn’t too successful – in order to tell its uncompromising tale.

Guest in the House (1944)

08 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Aline MacMahon, Anne Baxter, Cuckoo in the nest, Drama, John Brahm, Ralph Bellamy, Review, Romance, Ruth Warrick, Thriller

aka Satan in Skirts

D: John Brahm / 121m

Cast: Anne Baxter, Ralph Bellamy, Aline MacMahon, Ruth Warrick, Scott McKay, Marie McDonald, Jerome Cowan, Margaret Hamilton, Percy Kilbride, Connie Laird

A semi-remote house on the cliffs of Maine, a psychiatric patient who can’t help her manipulative ways, a family about to be torn apart thanks to jealousy and the propagation and belief of certain lies, and a dark, brooding atmosphere to cap it all off. Welcome to the psycho-noir theatrics of Guest in the House, a movie that is as brazen and as wanton as it can be given the decade it was produced, and which was unfairly derided on its initial release. Time hasn’t been entirely kind to the movie, as seeing it in its original full length is now very difficult – most extant prints run around one hundred minutes – but it’s definitely one to seek out and admire for its fervid tone and rampant paranoia.

Adapted for the stage by Hagar Wilde and Dale Eunson, from a story by Katherine Albert, this screen adaptation by the wonderfully named Ketti Frings (who would go on to write the screenplays for The File on Thelma Jordon (1950) and Come Back, Little Sheba (1952) amongst others), and with an uncredited contribution by André De Toth, is a cuckoo in the nest tale that concerns Evelyn Heath (Baxter), who suffers from a heart condition and a traumatic past. She’s been a patient under the care of Dr Dan Proctor (McKay), and now they’re engaged. Having decided that she needs peace and quiet in order to recover from a recent bout of ill health, Dan brings her to his home on the Maine coast, and persuades his family to let her stay there indefinitely. Although she’s initially fearful of her new environment, and stays in her room a lot, Evelyn soon earns the sympathy of Dan’s family – his artist brother, Douglas (Bellamy), Douglas’s wife, Ann (Warrick), their daughter, Lee (Laird), and Dan and Douglas’s aunt Martha (MacMahon) – as well as their good friends, Miriam (McDonald), who lives there and works as a model for Douglas, and Mr Hackett (Cowan).

Douglas is an attentive and supportive substitute for Dan, and though she has feelings for Dan, she soon decides that she needs to clear the way in order that she and Douglas can be together permanently. She begins by insisting that Dan returns to the clinic where they met and continue his work there; she also maintains that she’ll be reunited with him when she’s better (so no patient-doctor dilemma there). With Dan out of the way, Evelyn sees to it that, one by one, everyone else is either forced to leave the house or leaves of their own accord thanks to the web of lies she weaves. A once happy and carefree household becomes a hostile, prejudicial environment where not even Lee is safe from Evelyn’s machinations. And as Douglas becomes more and more withdrawn from the people who love him, and falls victim to Evelyn’s plan, his antipathy and anger towards them appears to be the one thing, that if it remains unchecked, will see Evelyn achieve everything she’s aiming for.

Guest in the House is a movie that betrays its stagebound origins at almost every turn, and while there’s an awful lot of scenes that require the cast to go up and down stairs as if it’s going to break out into a farce at any minute, these scenes do serve to highlight the increasing aloofness of the characters from each other, and the dramatic significance of what goes on behind the closed doors on the house’s upper level. The house is used in quite a clever way, looking and feeling bright and airy and welcoming (particularly to Evelyn) at the beginning, but becoming increasingly claustrophobic as the movie continues. This is helped tremendously by Lee Garmes’ cinematography, which adds more and more shadows to bolster that sense of claustrophobia, and which acts as a measure of the psychological effect that Evelyn’s plotting has on all concerned. The weather too transforms from bright and sunny to dark and stormy, further adding to the sense of impending disaster, and in the hands of director John Brahm (himself brought in after original director Lewis Milestone fell ill, and second choice John Cromwell was unavailable), the movie’s tone becomes equally as dramatic and the characters more and more isolated thanks to their location.

As a psychological thriller, its success or failure rests entirely on the character of Evelyn, and though there are times when her manipulation of others is likely to strike viewers as entirely too obvious, and Baxter’s performance borders too often on being overly melodramatic, in the end it’s the effect she has on the other characters that is compelling rather than whether or not she’s credible in her actions and her dialogue. Seeing Douglas and Ann’s marriage unravel makes for disturbing viewing, not just for the ease with which Evelyn makes it happen, but for the way in which Douglas – our hero, at least at the beginning – embraces it. Overlooked for the most part, it’s Douglas’s descent into antagonsim and dissent that is the movie’s strong suit, and the psycholgical underpinnings that allow him to do so are exploited superbly, making Bellamy’s performance much better than usual – it’s a far cry from the second-string romantic roles he played in movies such as Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) and Affectionately Yours (1941).

The cast as a whole contribute solid, considered performances, and there’s fine supporting work from the likes of MacMahon and Warrick, and Hamilton as the housekeeper whose morality is offended by the lies that Evelyn fosters. It all races to an over the top finale that stretches credibility quite a bit, but where a degree of ambiguity may have made for a better ending, what there is is satisfying (for the most part) on a dramatic level, if not a psychological one. Brahm orchestrates the sometimes over-ripe material to maximum effect, and throws in odd visual moments that are startling in their appearance, such as Evelyn looking intently out of a rain-swept window. Elsewhere, there are times when certain scenes wouldn’t feel out of place in a Hitchcock movie, and despite its often florid approach, it maintains a mordaunt sensibility that keeps the viewer in thrall to the unfolding narrative.

Rating: 8/10 – not a masterpiece by any means, but still a terrific example of what might be described today as a “home invasion” thriller, Guest in the House is subtler than it looks, and more gripping than you’d expect; with a troubling, unsettling subtext relating to sexual desire to make it even more interesting, it’s a movie that deserves to be rediscovered, and hopefully in its full length version.

NOTE: At present, there is no trailer for Guest in the House.

Ingrid Goes West (2017)

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Aubrey Plaza, Drama, Elizabeth Olsen, Friendship, Instagram, Matt Spicer, O'Shea Jackson Jr, Review, Social media, Wyatt Russell

D: Matt Spicer / 98m

Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O’Shea Jackson Jr, Wyatt Russell, Billy Magnussen, Pom Klementieff

In today’s social media obsessed society, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t have some kind of social media account, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, or any of the myriad other “services” that allow people to connect with each other, and in doing so, provide them with a sense of belonging that they might not otherwise be able to achieve. Being “liked” is important to so many people across the world that it’s become akin to having an addiction, but instead of drugs, it’s about being recognised and having your life, and your lifestyle, acknowledged, admired, and affirmed. If you have thousands of followers (millions if you’re a global celebrity), then what does that do for your self-esteem? And equally, what does it say about the people who follow you? With all the advice that’s out there about being an individual, and being true to yourself, how does social media support that?

That’s just one of the broader issues addressed in Ingrid Goes West, a movie about appearance and image and wanting to find your place in life. Ingrid Thorburn (Plaza) is a fantasist who’s never learnt how to make friends the “normal” way. Instead she looks to Instagram as a way of meeting new people and beginning new relationships, but at the same time she’s not aware of the ephemeral nature of those relationships. Believing that if she receives a Like on a post then it means she’s made a new friend, Ingrid is predisposed to believing that she has a long-lasting friendship, and that she is important to that person. At the beginning of the movie, Ingrid gatecrashes a wedding and sprays mace in the bride’s face. Why? Because Ingrid wasn’t invited. Later, the truth is revealed: there was no friendship, it was all in Ingrid’s head. A brief spell in a mental hospital combined with the recent death of her mother leads Ingrid to try and reassess her feelings, but she’s undone by an Instagram posting by a social media influencer called Taylor Sloane (Olsen). Ingrid comments on Taylor’s post, Taylor responds politely, which prompts Ingrid to decide to move to California, and using over sixty thousand dollars she’s inherited, do her best to become Taylor’s new best friend.

How she does this involves liking the things and places that Taylor recommends, and doing some low-level stalking. Then she kidnaps Taylor’s dog, Rothko, and returns him the next day, leading to Taylor and her husband, Ezra (Russell), admitting her into their lives and the three of them becoming friends. As the movie allows Ingrid the opportunity to make a real and lasting friendship, it also shows how she’s incapable of doing such a thing. Ingrid weaves a web of lies when she doesn’t need to, and does so not just with Taylor and Ezra, but also with her landlord, Dan (Jackson Jr), an aspiring screenwriter and Batman afficionado. But though she does all this, she manages to avoid any major trouble, keeping herself just this side of “normal”, and managing to gain a degree of trust from both Taylor and Ezra that Ingrid herself is unable to return.

Inevitably, things start to go wrong. Ingrid’s lies and ulterior motive for getting to know Taylor begin to unravel, but in the process, the movie cannily shows how similar Ingrid and Taylor are, and how both women, in their own ways, are seeking approval and affirmation from the people around them, and the wider world. The role of social media is hugely important to all this, and the dependency that both women have is explored in a way that tries to be non-judgmental but which can’t help but come down on the side of taking a step back and not using social media as a guide to life. Ingrid has mental health issues, so her obsessional behaviour can be explained, but Taylor has used Instagram to create a public profile for herself that isn’t too far from her real personality. So, the movie asks, which character has the real problem? (It’s still both, but at least the movie is trying not to be simplistic in its approach.) In the end, Ingrid is forced along the road to despair, while Taylor remains seemingly unaffected by having a de facto stalker in her life. Though how Taylor would feel about the twist the movie reveals in the final scene, would be worth seeing.

There’s a sincerity and a purpose about Ingrid Goes West that makes its forays into the darker side of social interaction, whether via electrronic devices or in person, far more astute than is readily apparent. This is not a comedy, though there are humorous moments, but instead it’s a tragedy, one that attempts to highlight how the perception of peer pressure isn’t the preserve of troubled teenagers, but can also affect adults as well, and have a much more lasting, negative, effect. The script, by director Spicer (making his feature debut) and David Branson Smith, maintains its tone as a tale of social horror throughout, even going very dark during an ill-judged section of the movie that involves kidnapping and attempted murder, but always returning to the notion that everyone, even the good-natured Dan, is struggling to find themselves and their place in the wider world. Ingrid thinks she’ll find her place by associating with someone she believes is “cool”, while Taylor thinks that’s she’s already found her place by sharing her opinions about what she believes is “cool”.

The pervasive nature of social media in our daily lives is reflected by the number of photographs Ingrid takes (as if it won’t be real unless she can record it), the number of posts Taylor shares, and the number of followers that both accrue over time. Both have convinced themselves that their engagement with social media will improve their lives – Ingrid, literally – but both women look and sound as shallow as their dependency makes them. As Ingrid, Plaza gives a desperate, sharply expressed performance that is by turns sympathetic and horrifying, her character’s emotional detachment a reflection of the focus she needs to maintain in order not to ruin things. She treats Dan badly, betrays confidences without a second thought, and doesn’t have a clue about real relationships. Olsen is equally as good as Taylor, the self-made social media guru who’s lost sight of the person she once was, but who can recognise herself in Ingrid’s need to be a part of something bigger than either of them. Jackson Jr brings a much needed sweetness to the role of Dan, but Russell is hampered by his role as a pretentious “artist” who wouldn’t dream of doing anything so banal as selling his work. With stylish cinematography by Bryce Fortner and perfectly judged editing from Jack Price, this is a trenchant, relevant look at a generational battleground that shows no sign of abating, or improving.

Rating: 8/10 – a persuasive and intelligent drama that doesn’t hold back in terms of showing how desperate some people can be to “fit in”, Ingrid Goes West is blackly comic in an “if-you-don’t-laugh-you’ll-cry” kind of way that emphasises the dramatic nature of the material; with terrific performances from Plaza and Olsen, and confident direction from Spicer, this is a cautionary tale that should resonate with anyone who’s liked a post by somebody they don’t know in the hope that their like will be liked as well… and so on.

Brigsby Bear (2017)

06 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Abduction, Brigsby Bear Adventures, Comedy, Dave McCary, Drama, Greg Kinnear, Kyle Mooney, Mark Hamill, Matt Walsh, Review, TV show

D: Dave McCary / 97m

Cast: Kyle Mooney, Greg Kinnear, Matt Walsh, Mark Hamill, Michaela Watkins, Ryan Simpkins, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Alexa Demie, Claire Danes, Kate Lyn Sheil, Beck Bennett, Jane Adams

James Mitchum (Mooney) is in his mid-twenties and has never strayed beyond the immediate confines of the underground bunker that he and his parents, Ted (Hamill) and April (Adams), live in due to the outside air being poisonous (though the cause is left unexplained). James has grown up watching a TV show called Brigsby Bear Adventures, which concerns a bear called Brigsby and the adventures he has in space as he tries to stop the evil Sunsnatcher from destroying all the light in the universe. Brigsby is aided by two twins, the Smile Sisters, who are roughly eight or nine. James knows the show inside out, and for good reason: it’s the only TV show he’s ever seen. But James’ life is turned upside down when police arrive at the bunker, and it’s revealed that James was stolen as a baby from his real parents, Greg (Walsh) and Louise Pope (Watkins).

United with his birth parents, and his younger sister, Aubrey (Simpkins), James finds much that is puzzling about this new world he’s been thrust into, and his obvious lack of social skills don’t help, but the one thing he has that he can rely on, the one thing that continues to make sense to him, is Brigsby Bear. But when he’s informed that Ted created the character and made all the shows himself, instead of trying to put this information into the context of his “abducted” life and its structure (the video tapes of the show that Ted made were as much educational as they were entertainment), James decides to make a Brigsby Bear movie, and use it as a way of completing Brigsby’s story. James’s reasoning is plain: if Ted can no longer finish the story, who better than James? With the aid of some of Aubrey’s school friends, including budding movie maker Spencer (Lendeborg Jr), and admirer Meredith (Demie), and police detective Vogel (Kinnear) (who helps with “access” to some of the show’s original props), James sets about making his dream come true.

If you see a movie that’s more sincere and more touching than Brigsby Bear in 2017, then that movie definitely needs to be brought to everyone’s attention, because this movie is both those things and much, much more. A feelgood movie that takes a truly original notion and explores it with unexpected depth and compassion, Brigsby Bear is a terrific, wonderfully constructed movie that touches on universal themes of acceptance and individuality and belonging, and does so in such a well thought out and affecting way that it’s hard not to find yourself smiling to yourself without always realising it while the movie is playing. Conceived and written by its star, Kyle Mooney, and his friend, Kevin Costello, James’s own adventure is one that is both touching and heartfelt, and which pulls the viewer along by the sheer exuberance that emanates from the screenplay and its use of the characters involved. James isn’t a socially awkward teenager in an adult’s body, he’s a socially awkward adult with a teenager’s mindset. But his commitment to Brigsby Bear isn’t a sign of a child whose emotional growth has been stunted by prolonged exposure to the show. Instead it provides clear evidence that James has absorbed many of the life lessons that Ted has tried to teach him; all he has to do now is recognise the situations in which he should use them (it’s an interesting subtext – that Ted has actually done a good job of being a father to James despite the circumstances – that, sadly, isn’t followed up).

That he gets so many things wrong becomes understandable, but Mooney and Costello’s screenplay, ably realised by McCary, also shows how James develops as a person, and how he learns from his mistakes. Mooney is superb as James, always seeming as if he’s just on the verge of working out some diffuse mystery, and always in a way that keeps everyone around him slightly on tenterhooks, unsure of where his enthusiasm for Brigsby will take him. It leads to some wonderfully charming moments that emphasise and highlight the joys of extremely low budget movie making, and how the making of this particular movie serves as a final chapter for the first part of James’s life; it’s his way of putting the past behind him and beginning to move on. And as he reconciles his past with his future, more lessons are learned and James’s growth as an individual helps him to forge the new relationships that will allow him to rebuild his life.

Directed with confidence, and with a focus on the emotional core of the screenplay by McCary (making his feature debut), the movie is quirky, and infused with a sweet-natured humour that allows for easy laughs throughout, but not at the expense of the sentimental nature of the drama. Some viewers may find that the movie isn’t “dark” enough, as if the initial set up should lead on to darker material, but that idea is quickly undermined (and dismissed) when Vogel asks James if the Mitchums ever “touched” him. James confirms this, saying it happened often, and demonstrates by shaking Vogel’s hand. This isn’t a movie where any physical or psychological damage to its lead character is either mandatory or relevant – there are plenty of other movies where those aspects are addressed. Instead it’s a movie that in its own compassionate way, avoids those issues but only because it’s not the story it wants to tell. (And even when James is sent to a psychiatric hospital, there’s still the opportunity for laughs rather than misery.)

With great supporting turns from the likes of Kinnear (as a cop with thespian leanings), Danes (as a domineering therapist), and Hamill (as the not quite so evil abductor that you’d expect), the movie is also careful to portray the Pope family dynamic as one of protracted confusion mixed with dwindling hope that James will ever be fully integrated into that dynamic. The script provides answers to many of the questions it raises (including that one), but is shrewd enough to keep James’s future an enigma that even he may never solve. This ambiguity allows the movie to end on a high note that is actually more poignant and more apt when considering where James’s story began, and which is in keeping entirely with its off-kilter nature. Few movies this year are likely to be as engaging or as captivating as this one, and that’s because this movie is a true one of a kind.

Rating: 9/10 – with its fully rounded central character, offbeat yet creative scenario, and effortlessly endearing atmosphere, Brigsby Bear is like a surprise present you weren’t expecting – at all; smart, funny, and genuine, it’s a movie that eschews moralising for optimism, and does so in such a warm, convivial manner that it’s entirely too hard to resist.

Breathe (2017)

04 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Andrew Garfield, Andy Serkis, Claire Foy, Drama, Mechanical respirator, Polio, Review, Robin Cavendish, Romance, Tom Hollander, True story

D: Andy Serkis / 118m

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Tom Hollander, Stephen Mangan, Hugh Bonneville, Jonathan Hyde, Ed Speleers, Steven O’Donnell, Miranda Raison, Harry Marcus, Dean-Charles Chapman, Sylvester Groth, Diana Rigg

In December 1958, while working in Kenya, twenty-eight year old tea broker Robin Cavendish (Garfield) was struck down by polio, leaving him paralysed from the neck down and dependent on a mechanical respirator in order to remain alive. He was brought back to England where at first he was given three months to live, and then a year. His own reaction was to have his respirator turned off. He saw no future for himself and wanted his wife, Diana (Foy), whom he’d recently married and who was still only twenty-five, a chance at a better future for herself. To her credit, and his good fortune, Diana refused to entertain the idea, and told Robin in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t going to give up, even if he wanted to. They also had an infant child, Jonathan, to consider. Still facing a bleak future though, Robin’s only wish was to leave the hospital where he was effectively confined. Against the advice of his doctor (Hyde), he left the hospital, and the Cavendish’s moved into their own home in the countryside, where Diana took on the roles of wife, mother and nurse with the help of friends such as Colin Campbell (Speleers), and her twin brothers Bloggs and David (both Hollander).

In the way that only real life can manufacture, that could, and perhaps should have been the end of Robin’s story, but a truncated lifespan wasn’t on the cards. With the aid of his friend, Oxford professor Teddy Hall (Bonneville), Robin conceived the idea of a wheelchair with a built-in respirator that would allow him to leave the house, and eventually go on trips with the further aid of a converted van. Now more mobile than he could have ever predicted, Robin decided to show the progress he’d achieved to other disabled people, and the medical community. Thanks to private funding, Hall was able to construct a fleet of wheelchairs such as Robin’s, and these enabled other disabled people to leave hospital, and to function in the “outside” world. Robin soon became an advocate and champion for the rights of the disabled, and by the time of his death in 1994, was regarded, quite rightly, as a medical phenomenon, having lived with his deteriorating condition for thirty-six years.

The directorial debut of Andy Serkis – it should have been his version of The Jungle Book, but delays on that production have pushed it back to 2018 – Breathe is exactly what it looks like from the poster and anything you may have heard about it: a tale of inspiration and personal courage. Though Serkis is best known for his motion capture performances as Gollum, King Kong and Caesar, as a director he’s clearly learnt a lot from those he’s worked with over the years because the movie is an assured, likeable production that tells its story in a measured, positive manner that allows the viewer to fully understand Robin’s plight, and the feelings that come with it. Thanks to an equally assured script by William Nicholson, Breathe tackles the various issues related to quadriplegia (though it studiously avoids the issue of sex) with sympathy and no small amount of understanding, most of which is provided by yet another excellent performance by Andrew Garfield. Following on from impressive turns in Silence (2016) and Hacksaw Ridge (2016), Garfield makes sure that every emotion, every feeling, every consideration or decision that Robin makes is clearly expressed so there can be no misunderstanding for the viewer. It’s a performance that also reflects the innate humanity that Robin possessed, and his complete and utter love for Diana, something that could have caused the movie to become cloying and overly sentimental, but which Serkis avoids through a combination of his knowing direction and Garfield and Foy’s awareness of, and immersion in, the characters.

Inevitably, it’s not all triumph over adversity and lives lived happily ever after. This is a movie that starts off on a bright summer’s day at a cricket match where Robin and Diana meet. It couldn’t be more lovely, a replication of happier days when falling in love seemed so easy and uncomplicated. But once he’s struck down by polio and his lifestyle is curtailed, Robin’s life takes on an urgency and a scariness that makes for a number of scenes that are nail-biting even though we know the outcome must favour Robin. At home, their dog catches the lead to the respirator and pulls it out of the electrical socket. We already know that he can’t survive for more than two minutes without it (or someone using a manual respirator), and Serkis plays out those two minutes to the second, creating tension even though we know everything will be fine, but still making the viewer apprehensive and nervous as to how he’ll be saved.

Other moments such as the wheelchair respirator blowing up on a trip to Spain, and the deterioration of the lining of Robin’s lungs, serve as reminders as to the reality of his situation, and they’re used for maximum impact. But if there’s one scene, one image that highlights both Robin’s past predicament, and those of thousands of disabled people across the world at that time, the Sixties, it comes during a visit to a German hospital that is highly regarded for its treatment of the disabled. It’s the movie’s most impressive moment, one of tragedy and despair as we see rows of disabled people like Robin stacked on top of each other in gleaming iron lungs. And when Robin enters the room, the reaction of the head doctor (Groth) is one of horror and embarrassment: horror at the difference between Robin and his patients, and embarrassment at being so badly caught out for treating said patients so appallingly. It’s moments like this one, where the movie challenges the medical and social attitudes of the time that adds depth to the narrative and reminds us all that Robin wasn’t just making these improvements to his life for his own sake, but for the thousands of others just like him.

Breathe is also one of the most beautifully realised movies of the year, with Serkis and cinematographer Robert Richardson combining to provide a richly detailed series of shots and compositions that are often breathtaking in their simplicity, and in their ability to add an emotional layer to scenes that accentuate and support the performances at every turn. The score by Nitin Sawhney is another aspect of the production that Serkis uses to good effect, never allowing the music to overwhelm a scene or prove intrusive, using it instead to provide another sensitive layer to the proceedings. Garfield and Foy have a definite chemistry that makes the enduring love between Robin and Diana entirely credible, and there are terrific supporting turns from Hollander and Mangan (as Robin’s doctor in later life). In covering nearly forty years of one man’s life, the movie is necessarily episodic, and there are occasional lulls in the drama as the story moves from one period to the next, but other than this and some of the supporting characters having little to do except hang about marvelling at Robin’s progress, this is an admirable and accomplished feature debut by Serkis that isn’t afraid to “go dark” when it needs to, and which is inspiring without sounding like it’s preaching.

Rating: 8/10 – a sincere and affecting look at a man’s life and the positive choices that can be made even in the face of extreme adversity, Breathe is a testament to Robin Cavendish’s determination to still lead a fulfilling life, and the equal determination of his wife, Diana, that he should be able to; a moving and immensely entertaining movie, it bodes well for any future turns behind the camera that Serkis embarks on, and is one of the few “lead character with a disability” movies that doesn’t seem like it’s been made just so it can garner nominations and win awards in the year ahead.

Hampstead (2017)

03 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Brendan Gleeson, Comedy, Diane Keaton, Drama, Hampstead Heath, Harry Hallowes, Joel Hopkins, Lesley Manville, Review, Romance, Squatter, True story

D: Joel Hopkins / 103m

Cast: Diane Keaton, Brendan Gleeson, Lesley Manville, Jason Watkins, James Norton, Simon Callow, Adeel Akhtar, Alistair Petrie, Hugh Skinner, Will Smith, Brian Protheroe, Rosalind Ayres, Deborah Findlay, Peter Singh, Phil Davis

Hampstead is a curious movie, one that’s inspired by a true story, but structured in such a way that it seems to be deliberately insulting the memory of the real-life person that Brendan Gleeson’s character is based on. That man was called Harry Hallowes, an Irishman who was evicted from his flat in Highgate, London in 1987 and who built a makeshift home for himself in a corner of Hampstead Heath. When property developers tried to evict him, the case went to court and he was able to claim squatter’s rights because he had been “resident there” for over twelve years. In 2007 he was awarded the deed to the half-acre of land on which he was living; it was worth over £2 million. Hampstead takes that story and makes it into a lightweight romantic comedy that flits along unobtrusively and in banal fashion while making it more about Diane Keaton’s American widow in London, Emily Walters, than it does the movie’s fictional Harry Hallowes, Donald Horner.

Emily lives in an apartment building overlooking Hampstead Heath. Her husband has died leaving her in financial difficulties that she’s doing her best to ignore. She works part-time in a charity shop, but otherwise is fairly aimless, and spends much of her spare time trying to avoid her friend, Fiona (Manville), who also lives in the building and who is doing her best to set up Emily with a new man. One day, while looking through her husband’s things in the attic room she finds a pair of binoculars and uses them to look out over the heath. She spots Horner’s makeshift home, and becomes intrigued enough to continue spying on it, and eventually him. When she sees him being attacked, she calls the police, but doesn’t come forward until a few days later when she sees him in Highgate Cemetery. They become uneasy friends at first, then a romance develops, but it’s when Emily learns about the efforts to evict Donald that she finds a new purpose in her life and determines to help Donald whether he likes it or not.

It’s a measure of Robert Festinger’s underwhelming screenplay that Donald’s plight can only be addressed through the intervention of a woman who’s looking for some meaning in her life. That she takes on his cause for herself is both selfish and self-serving, but the script ignores this in its efforts to make Emily appear selfless instead. As a result, she isn’t quite as sympathetic a character as perhaps was intended, and she comes across as a busybody with good intentions rather than the supportive friend (and eventual lover) that she’s meant to be. It makes watching long stretches of the movie difficult as Emily, under the guise of making a difference, does so in order to make herself feel better about her life. In other movies this might be acceptable – it’s a standard character arc, after all – but when this is in service to someone else’s story, someone who actually existed, then it comes across as insensitive and inconsiderate. Was Hallowes’ story so undramatic that it needed a fictional character, and a self-centred character at that, to give it relevance and/or meaning?

The answer is obviously No, but still, it’s the path the movie has chosen to take in its efforts to tell a version of Hallowes’ story. On that basis though, the movie is still unsuccessful in its aims as it tries to create a romance out of convenience, and a drama out of necessity (there’s broad humour in there too but it’s not the movie’s strongest suit). The movie ambles along during its first half, building the relationship between Emily and Donald, and making it all so innocuous and inoffensive that when they eventually sleep together, it’s hard to actually believe that they did anything more than just sleep together. In this particular rendition of “normal life”, sex is something to be referenced but not explored, or regarded as believable. This further undermines the credibility of the relationship between Emily and Donald, and makes it seem even more artificial than Festinger and director Joel Hopkins would like.

With the central relationship so hamstrung by the needs of the script, and with Hopkins unable to make more of it than there is on the page, it’s left to Keaton and Gleeson to do what they can with the material and hopefully flesh it out. But neither of them is able to do much more than provide the odd frisson to their roles, and despite their best efforts, both Emily and Donald remain as insubstantial at the end as they were at the beginning. Character traits are embedded from the word go, and they remain firmly in place throughout. Emily may appear emotionally tougher by the end, but it’s not because of her time with Donald, but because she has no choice in the matter; she either toughens up or goes under, and the script naturally chooses the former for her. Donald though, remains the same throughout, and in a chauvinistic approach that the movies love to continue peddling, gives Emily no choice in how their relationship will continue after the court case (it also makes Emily look as if she hasn’t been paying attention to anything Donald has told her about his lifestyle, and why he lives the way he does).

In the end, Hampstead doesn’t have enough substance and/or depth to make it all work, and the movie ambles along quite predictably and with a soupçon of charm to help guide it over the rough spots. The courtroom scenes are played for humour rather than the drama that’s required, the supporting cast all meld into one with the exception of Manville’s deliberately obtuse friend and Watkins’ would-be Romeo to Emily’s Juliet, and there are too many occasions where the movie is trying way too hard to appear whimsical or poignant. Felix Wiedemann’s cinematography is a welcome bonus, as is Stephen Warbeck’s score, both elements helping to give the movie a boost from the obvious nature of the material, but when all’s said and done, this is a movie that takes a remarkable story and uses it as a backdrop in order to tell an unremarkable story that, sadly, we’ve seen hundreds of times before.

Rating: 4/10 – amiable, and watchable enough if you approach it with few expectations, Hampstead rarely gets out of first gear, and when it does it’s only to slip into neutral, where it stays out of being comfortable; Keaton and Gleeson’s performances are undermined by the paucity of the material (and Hopkins’ static direction), and the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the real-life Harry the Hermit are given less than their due, something that should have been addressed before even the first draft was considered.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (2017)

02 Thursday Nov 2017

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2015 Paris Agreement, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Bonni Cohen, Climate change, Documentary, India, Jon Shenk, Review, Sequel, Tacloban City, The Climate Reality Project

D: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk / 98m

With: Al Gore, John Kerry, Konrad Steffen, Philip Levine, Eric Schneiderman, Marco Krapels, Lyndon Rive, Piyush Goyal, Cristina Gonzales Romualdez, Alfred Romualdez, Christiana Figueres, Dale Ross

When Al Gore’s campaign to educate people about the dangers of climate change was adapted for the screen in 2006 as An Inconvenient Truth, few could have predicted the effect that a small-scale documentary would have around the globe. The movie won a Best Documentary Oscar at the 2007 awards, and has been used as an educational tool (with some clarifications) in various school systems the world over. It was the first movie to address the issue of climate change head on, and in a way that the average person could understand. And it made a number of predictions about the way that climate change would affect the world in the coming decades unless governments worked together to prevent the situation from worsening.

Eleven years on, and Gore is still out there, still attempting to educate as many people as he can about the continuing climate change issue, but with the aid of over three and a half thousand activists who use Gore’s presentation in their own communities to foster greater awareness. This is the Climate Reality Project, begun by Gore in 2006, and one of the elements of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power that shows to what extent things have either moved on or changed, or even remained the same, since the release of its predecessor. What definitely hasn’t changed is Gore’s passion for the issue, and his seemingly tireless pursuit of getting the message across that traditional fuel methods such as coal and gas can no longer be allowed to be the first choice of countries looking to provide reliable energy sources for their populations. It’s a message he gets across, though, through Scotland being able to provide one hundred per cent of its electricity in August 2016 from wind power, to Chile’s solar market, which has grown from 402mw at the end of 2014 to 848mw at the end of 2015, and in 2016, was estimated to reach approximately 13.25gw.

Gore puts forward a strong case for renewable energies such as solar and wind power to take the place of fossil fuels, and he’s able to show that even in the US, where conservative attitudes might decry the message Gore is trying to get across, that some cities have already elected to provide one hundred per cent renewable energies for its citizens, and that as with An Inconvenient Truth, the need for change isn’t seen as a political one, but a moral one, an imperative that should be agreed across the political spectrum. That these cities have taken up the challenge and made it work is one area where Gore’s passion and commitment have been rewarded. But as with any crusade, it’s not all plain sailing, and even though Gore has continued to press for environmental change, it’s still an uphill battle against vested interests and political inertia, a fact that’s cruelly pointed out by a coda added to the movie after filming had been completed. Here, we see Gore’s dismay at hearing of President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation.

Alongside Gore’s promotion of renewable energies, the 2015 Paris Agreement is the movie’s secondary focus, showing how Gore helped to bring about India’s commitment to the agreement and the behind the scenes efforts that brought this about (though it does make it look as if Gore was the sole instigator, which isn’t entirely true). The movie also finds itself in the midst of an unfortunate event that occurred two weeks before the conference, where a live twenty-four broadcast featuring Gore and some of the conference’s key players had to be cut short in the wake of the November 2015 terror attacks, including the mass shooting at the Bataclan theatre. Gore makes an impromptu and heartfelt speech that is the movie’s most emotional moment, and it serves as an unexpectedly poignant reminder that climate change, important an issue as it is, isn’t the only global issue that needs addressing at this moment.

But where the movie really hits home, as with its predecessor, is in its presentation of the many increasing natural disasters that have occurred in the last ten years, and the reasons why they’ve happened. Gore visits a Swiss Camp Climate Station in Central Greenland where he has to climb a ladder to go inside the main hut, something he wouldn’t have had to do a few years before, but has to now because the surface mass of the area has dropped so much in such a short time. He talks with the mayor of Tacloban City in the Philippines which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, and includes footage of the destruction, footage that in recent years we have become all too familiar with from other devastated cities around the world. But most telling of all is the footage relating to the flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy in parts of New York in October 2012. Gore predicted this could happen in An Inconvenient Truth, and that it would affect the site of the World Trade Centre memorial. He drew a lot of flak for suggesting this, but was proved absolutely right. This is the point in the movie where you have to ask yourself, what more does the man have to do to get our undivided attention?

When he’s on stage giving his presentation, Gore is energised and persuasive and committed and often angry. But privately, there are moments where he looks tired and a little despairing, as if doing all this for the best part of twenty years is beginning to take its toll. It’s a sobering thought, but Gore will be seventy years old next year, and though he doesn’t always look it, there are times when he does and it’s these times that give rise to the idea that this sequel is perhaps the best chance he’ll have to bring the issue of climate change back to the attention of a general public who may have forgotten the warnings he made over ten years ago. Gore has fought long and hard over this issue, and the movie does spend time exploring what continues to motivate him, and why the issue is still so important to him that he devotes so much of his time to it. It’s a key element, one that wasn’t there as much in the first movie, but it does go hand in hand with the still timely message that none of us, not even a “recovering politician” such as Al Gore, can afford to ignore.

Rating: 8/10 – not quite as powerful as its predecessor, but still a necessary reminder that there’s a long way to go before the issue of climate change can be seen to have been addressed effectively, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is a salutary ode to the power of one man’s commitment to change; if it’s a more personal movie in that sense, that’s not a bad thing, as Gore continues to be the best guide a lay person can have in understanding why climate change is still so divisive, and why it still remains the most important issue facing future generations, generations who may not have a choice in the world they’ll inherit.

Jungle (2017)

01 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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

D: Greg McLean / 116m

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh! the Horror! – Happy Death Day (2017) and Jigsaw (2017)

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Billy the Puppet, Callum Keith Rennie, Christopher Landon, Confessions, Drama, Horror, Israel Broussard, Jessica Rothe, John Kramer, Masked killer, Matt Passmore, Michael Spierig, Murder, Peter Spierig, Review, Sequel, Tobin Bell

Happy Death Day (2017) / D: Christopher Landon / 96m

Cast: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Charles Aitken, Laura Clifton, Jason Bayle, Rob Mello, Rachel Matthews

For Theresa “Tree” Gelbman (Rothe), her latest birthday is not a day to acknowledge, laced as it is by the tragic death of her mother three years before, who also shared the same birthday. Waking up in the dorm room of schoolmate Carter Davis (Broussard), Tree spends most of her day being unpleasant to her friends and sorority housemates, skipping a planned lunch with her father, meeting her lover, professor Gregory Butler (Aitken), and planning to attend a party later that night. But on the way to the party she’s attacked and killed by a masked killer in a subway tunnel. Tree wakes up on her birthday in exactly the same place and in exactly the same circumstances. As the day continues the strangeness of reliving the same day a second time causes Tree to avoid the subway tunnel and stay at her sorority house. There she finds that her housemates have arranged a surprise party for her birthday. Reassured that she won’t be killed a second time as well, she hooks up with one of the boys she likes, but the killer appears and kills her again. And Tree wakes up on her birthday in exactly the same place and in exactly the same circumstances…

Yes, it’s another horror-themed variation on Groundhog Day (1993), with Tree forced to relive her birthday over and over again until she can discover the identity of her killer. Along the way there are plenty of red herrings, almost everybody she knows is a suspect at one time or another (even her father for a few moments), and her efforts to avoid being killed are entirely a waste of time. Eventually she manages to persuade Carter of what’s happening to her and he suggests that she use each day to work out who the killer could be. Of course, he doesn’t know he’s done this and so Tree is still left to work it all out for herself, and when one attempt leaves her in the hospital and not dead somewhere, she becomes aware of the presence, at the hospital, of a serial killer, John Tombs (Mello), and becomes convinced he’s her killer. But that particular idea leads to a quite different revelation, one that provides the movie with its inevitably obvious twist in the tale.

For a movie that was first announced a decade ago, Happy Death Day does at least feel a little fresher than most teen-based horror movies, and it’s blend of terror, college campus hijinks and waspish humour is at least attractive to watch, and the script’s determination to do something a little bit different with its familiar premise is to be applauded, but it’s still a movie that doesn’t follow its own agenda or guidelines too convincingly, as evidenced by the killer popping up wherever they’re needed to on any given day, and leading to the assumption that they’re aware of the time loop Tree is experiencing, and that they’re somehow ahead of it (and especially when they still manage to turn up inside a locked room). Of course, the script also takes the opportunity to show Tree the error of her rude, dismissive ways, and the time loop acts as a learning curve, which at least gives Tree a chance to grow as a character, even if it’s not really necessary.

Tree is played with a great deal of tenacity and conviction by Rothe, and as she’s in every scene, it’s fortunate that she’s as good as she is, as in the wrong hands, Tree could have been a character that the audience might not have had any sympathy for. As it is, Rothe is a terrific heroine, caustic and unlikeable to begin with (“Who takes their date to Subway? Besides, it’s not like you have a footlong”), to responsible and more able to deal with the problems in her life, such as her deteriorating relationship with her father. Sadly, the rest of the characters don’t fare so well, with Broussard’s potential new boyfriend coming across as too fresh-faced and bland to attract Tree in the first place, and Matthews’ obnoxious sorority leader, Danielle, giving new meaning to the phrase, “stupid is as stupid does (and says)”. Landon, who’s yet to make a completely successful horror movie after the entertainingly flawed Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) and the unnecessary Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014), shows an understanding of the various masked killer tropes the script relies on, and how to use them to the movie’s best advantage, but he’s not quite able to combat the many non sequiturs that crop up throughout. And if the killer’s look is too much like Ghostface from the Scream franchise – but with a baby’s visage instead – it doesn’t actually hurt the movie, but it’s not an intrinsically scary image either.

Rating: 6/10 – a pleasant enough diversion in these days of overly lacklustre horror movies, Happy Death Day isn’t as bad as it sounds from its tagline, but it’s also not as good as it’s premise may promise; Rothe is a great choice for Tree, and Landon stages the murder scenes with a great deal of visual flair, but ultimately, and despite a good effort from all concerned, it still can’t overcome the familiarity of the material to make it stand too far out from the crowd.

Jigsaw (2017) / D: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig / 91m

Cast: Matt Passmore, Tobin Bell, Callum Keith Rennie, Hannah Emily Anderson, Clé Bennett, Laura Vandervoort, Paul Braunstein, Mandela Van Peebles, Brittany Allen, Josiah Black

John Kramer (Bell), the notorious serial killer known as Jigsaw, and who never actually killed anyone, has been dead for ten years. But now, bodies are popping up all over the city that are clearly the work of Kramer – or is it a copycat? Despite mounting evidence that Kramer is still alive, the police, in the form of Detective Halloran (Rennie) and his partner, Detective Hunt (Bennett), as well as coroner Logan Nelson (Passmore) and his assistant, Eleanor Bonneville (Anderson) aren’t so convinced. After all, Kramer’s body underwent an autopsy – as seen in Saw IV (2007) – so it can’t be him. Soon, as the body count rises, and the finger of suspicion points toward Detective Halloran, Logan and Eleanor find themselves in a race against time to find the remaining “contestants” in Jigsaw’s latest game before they are forced to kill themselves or each other in order to survive and be set free.

By the time of Saw 3D (2010), the most recent in the series, the Saw franchise had become so convoluted that any attempt at following a logical narrative was almost as difficult as working out Pi to the thousandth degree. There were so many acolytes doing Kramer’s work, before, during and after his demise, that it was impossible to keep track of where they all fitted in to the overall narrative. And now we have an eighth movie that presents us with another acolyte doing Kramer’s work, and without spoiling anything for anyone, we have Kramer himself putting another unlucky group of sinners through the usual series of tests that will see them sliced, diced, maimed, tortured, and eventually killed. The how of it all is quite cleverly done, but this is the best thing about a seventh sequel that, like its immediate predecessors, seeks to play games with the series’ timeline, and cause its audience to spend much of the movie’s running time scratching their heads in confusion.

In tone, this is reminiscent of the first two movies, the ones that introduced and then expanded Kramer’s back story in such a way that you could still keep track of things before they got all gnarly and as tangled as the barbed wire in the Twisted Pictures logo. Newbies the Spierig Brothers have certainly got the look and feel of the series down pat, and while they recreate the grim and gloomy texture that infuses the series as a whole with due care and attention, in doing so, what they haven’t done (and neither has the script by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger) is to make this entry stand out from all the rest. The traps are all present and correct, and they are as fiendishly constructed as you’d expect, but somewhere along the way, the production has failed to make them as visually effective, or their outcomes as disturbing as in previous entries. In some ways, the traps in Jigsaw are the least gruesome in the series as a whole, and in that sense, the danger for the characters is lessened, making their ordeal less effective. It also doesn’t help that the confessions that Jigsaw/Kramer is looking for aren’t that effective either, with only one of them having any kind of impact.

If the intention was to kick start a new run of Saw movies, with new characters and new scenarios that could be sent off in a variety of new directions, then Jigsaw isn’t the movie to herald in that new run. Tied too much to the previous entries, and lacking in anything appreciably new that might energise proceedings, what we’re left with is a movie that feels more comfortable as a cinematic version of a Greatest Hits album (look out for one character’s “hobby room”, and the return of Billy the Puppet), and which harks back to the series’ early days almost in tribute of them. In the end, the movie feels tired and unnecessary, adding little to the canon and providing a bland experience for fans and newcomers alike. The performances are serviceable, though Bell is good value as always, and the twists and turns of the narrative aren’t as compelling or persuasive as they’ve been in the past. Kramer is fond of saying that “the truth will set you free”. Well here, the truth is that Lionsgate, who didn’t want to make another Saw movie until they heard a pitch they thought was worthwhile, should have waited a little bit longer.

Rating: 5/10 – lacking tension in its trap sequences, and with even fewer characters to connect with than usual, Jigsaw is a stunted attempt at rebuilding the Saw franchise; Bell’s presence helps, but it’s not enough to rescue a movie that trades on former glories while being too respectful of them, and which doesn’t try to establish its own identity.

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