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

thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

thedullwoodexperiment

Tag Archives: Sienna Miller

The Catcher Was a Spy (2018)

21 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Baseball, Ben Lewin, Drama, Literary adaptation, Mark Strong, Morris "Moe" Berg, Nuclear bomb, Paul Rudd, Review, Sienna Miller, Thriller, True story, World War II

D: Ben Lewin / 95m

Cast: Paul Rudd, Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Jeff Daniels, Tom Wilkinson, Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti, Giancarlo Giannini, Hiroyuki Sanada, Connie Nielsen, Shea Whigham

In the years before the US enters World War II, Morris “Moe” Berg (Rudd) is a catcher for the Boston Red Sox. Regarded as the “strangest man ever to play baseball”, Berg is an average player, but of above average intelligence, being able to speak seven languages fluently, regularly contribute to the radio quiz programme Information, Please, and read and digest up to ten newspapers daily. A man of singular interests but also leading a very private life, Berg pursues a relationship with a woman, Estella (Miller), that he won’t acknowledge publicly, while on a trip to Japan, he takes it on himself to shoot footage of the Tokyo harbour. After Pearl Harbor, Berg uses the same footage to wangle himself a desk job with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Soon though, his expertise in languages lands him a job in the field: to track down the noted physicist Werner Heisenberg (Strong) and determine if his work for the Nazis will give them a nuclear weapon – and if it will, then Berg is to kill him…

Another tale of unsung heroics set during World War II, The Catcher Was a Spy (a title that’s both derivative and clever) is a movie that takes a real life person and spins a mostly true story out of events they took part in, but does so in a way that alerts the viewer very early on that, despite the mission, Berg won’t be put in any danger, so any tension will evaporate before it’s even got up a head of steam. So instead of a movie that should be increasingly tense and dramatic, we have a movie that plays matter-of-factly with the material, and is presented in a pedestrian, if sure-footed manner. Working from an adaptation of the book of the same name by Nicholas Dawidoff, director Ben Lewin and writer Robert Rodat have fashioned a moderately engaging espionage tale that moves elegantly yet far from robustly from scene to scene without providing much in the way of emotional impact. Partly this is due to Berg’s own nature, his muted feelings and intellectual prowess being ostensibly the whole man, and while the movie and Rudd’s performance adhere to Berg’s character, it leaves the viewer in the awkward position of being an observer and not a participant.

With Berg introduced “as is”, and with only the most minimal of character arcs to send him on, the movie soon becomes a wearying succession of exposition scenes, or opportunities to show off Berg’s gift for languages (which Rudd copies with aplomb). The early scenes with Estella show Berg trying to be “normal” but not quite knowing how to, give way to the mission to find Heisenberg, but the movie’s switch from domestic tribulations to wartime emergency – Berg literally has Heisenberg’s life, and possibly the fate of the world in his hands – dovetail at the same pace and with the same lack of urgency. Even a sequence where Berg, accompanied by military man Robert Furman (Pearce) and friendly physicist Samuel Goudsmit (Giamatti), try to thread their way through a town overrun by Germans lacks the necessary sense of imminent peril needed to make it work. Another issue is Andrij Parekh’s humdrum cinematography, which deadens the effect of Luciana Arrighi’s murky yet effective production design. Against all this, Rudd is a good choice for the enigmatic Berg, and the moments where he expresses Berg’s self-doubts, offer a rare glimpse of the man behind the façade. But, sadly, these moments aren’t plentiful enough to offset the flaws that dog the rest of the movie, and which keep it from being far more impressive than it is.

Rating: 5/10 – proficient enough without providing much more than the basics of Berg’s life as a catcher or an OSS man, The Catcher Was a Spy isn’t dull per se, just not as compelling as it could (or should) have been; Rudd aside, a quality cast is left with little to do except recite their lines in a competent manner, and any notions of political or intellectual morality are left undeveloped or overlooked.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Lost City of Z (2016)

24 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Adventure, Charlie Hunnam, Drama, Explorer, Hidden civilisation, Historical drama, James Gray, Perceval Fawcett, Review, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, South America, Thriller, Tom Holland, True story

D: James Gray / 141m

Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, Tom Holland, Edward Ashley, Angus Macfadyen, Ian McDiarmid, Harry Melling, Franco Nero

A throwback to the kind of big budget adventure stories made in the Seventies and Eighties, with location filming designed to heighten the events shown, The Lost City of Z concerns the efforts of military man turned explorer Perceval “Percy” Fawcett (Hunnam) to find a city he believes is hidden somewhere in the Amazonian jungle. Covering the years between 1905 and 1925, the movie introduces us to Fawcett the military man while he’s posted to Ireland, and finding it difficult to advance through the ranks thanks to what a senior officer refers to as, “an unfortunate choice in ancestors”. Good fortune arrives in the form of a secondment to the Royal Geographical Society, where he is asked to map an area of jungle on the Brazil-Bolivia border.

Fawcett accepts the commission, and finds himself in the company of fellow military men Henry Costin (Pattinson) and Arthur Manley (Ashley). While they carry out their task, Fawcett finds what he believes is evidence of an advanced civilisation that once existed within the jungle but which has remained, until now, undiscovered. When he returns to England, and presents his findings to the RGS, they and he are ridiculed, and the idea that the indigenous tribes are anything but “savages” is dismissed. Fawcett does, however, find an ally in RGS member James Murray (Macfadyen), who agrees to fund a further expedition in search of what Fawcett is calling “the lost city of Z”. And so in 1911, Fawcett, accompanied again by Costin and Manley, and with Murray in tow, returns to the Bolivian jungle.

The expedition, however, suffers a series of setbacks, from the loss of equipment to Murray’s inability to deal with the harsh, uncompromising environment. Forced to turn back despite Fawcett’s conviction that they are close to finding the lost city, the trio return home just as war in Europe breaks out. They find themselves fighting together in France, and during a push across the Somme in 1916, Fawcett falls victim to a chlorine gas attack and is temporarily blinded. Invalided out of the Army, Fawcett believes his exploring days are now behind him. That is, until his son, Jack (Holland), convinces him that they should travel together to Bolivia, and make one more effort to find the lost city. And so, in 1925, the pair set off into the jungle in an effort to prove once and for all that the fabled city and its ancient civilisation did exist.

Based on the book The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (2009) by David Grann, James Gray’s adaptation is sincere, meticulously researched, beautifully shot by Darius Khondji, engaging on a Boys’ Own adventure level, and yet, despite everyone’s best efforts, not as interesting to watch as it should be. The tale of Fawcett’s obsession should be strong, compelling stuff, but thanks to Gray’s adaptation covering such a long period of time, the movie suffers from being episodic, and as a result, feels hesitant in some scenes and overly confident in others. Gray handles the material well, but the narrative’s stop-start approach – something that Gray in both roles as screenwriter and director fails to find a solution for – means that it’s always difficult for the viewer to maintain interest in a story that, ultimately, isn’t going to lead anywhere.

If you already know the outcome of Fawcett’s third expedition to the Bolivian jungle, then this movie won’t necessarily be of interest. Having to wade through a succession of failures before this point, the movie does its best to make each disappointment and setback in Fawcett’s life part of a never-give-up, never-say-die attitude that drives the man forward, but the key word in Grann’s title – “obsession” – never really applies, and that’s partly due to Gray’s script, which never portrays Fawcett as passionate in his beliefs. It’s also due to Hunnam’s less-than-charismatic performance, one that will have viewers wondering why Costin and Manley stick with Fawcett for so long, and how he managed to attract backers for his second and third expeditions. Watching the movie, it gives the impression that the idea of a hidden civilisation in the Bolivian jungle is more enticing than the idea of Fawcett being the man to lead the search.

The expeditions themselves lack any tension, even when Fawcett and his companions encounter a tribe of cannibals, and though Gray shows an impressive capacity for framing the jungle scenes in such a way that they feel other-worldly, these sections of the movie go by without making as much of an impact as Gray was no doubt aiming for. There are also signposted moments that are straight out of Predictable Storytelling 101, such as when Fawcett holds a book up in front of his face and an arrow pierces it, stopping just inches away from hitting him. Or the moment where Murray demands an apology from Fawcett, and he agrees to do so, and then turns and apologises to Costin and Manley instead.

Also problematical is Fawcett’s relationship with his wife, Nina (Miller). She accepts his going to Bolivia in 1906, and is supportive of the trip. But when it comes time for the 1911 trip, Nina wants to go with him, and the pair have an awkward argument where Fawcett plays down her physical ability to make the journey there and back, and she argues that she has endured childbirth (twice by now) and if she can weather that particular experience then the jungle shouldn’t be any worse. Again, it’s an awkward exchange that feels out-of-place – and designed to give Miller something to do other than play the otherwise doting wife – and feels even more out-of-place when their oldest son, Jack, suggests a third trip and she agrees without so much as a murmur. Perhaps Gray felt the need to include a slice of proto-feminism amongst all the testosterone flying around, but if so, it’s not something that works.

By the time Fawcett and his eldest son get to Bolivia, viewers will probably be wondering how this is all going to pan out. Those in the know will find Gray’s choice of endings (technically, there are three) unlikely, overly poignant, and at odds with the tone of the movie thus far. That said, Gray does give Miller another chance to stand out from the overwhelmingly male cast, and while wish fulfilment is the order of the day, it sits uncomfortably with what we know of Fawcett and that last trip.

Overall, The Lost City of Z is a sterile drama that never hits any emotional highs and struggles to provide the audience with a sense of just how important Fawcett’s search for a hidden civilisation really was back in the Georgian era (or even if it was). There’s the usual degree of sexism sitting alongside the kind of blinkered attitudes that seem to define the period, and though Gray keeps the movie interesting on a visual level, with spectacular scenery and beautifully composed individual shots aplenty, it’s on a dramatic level that the movie fails to gain traction, becoming a succession of scenes that aim for a classic adventure feel, but which lack the depth to elevate it to such lofty heights. An adventure then, but one that offers scant reward for both its characters’ efforts, and the audience’s.

Rating: 6/10 – not as compelling or as rich in detail as viewers will need in order to gain maximum enjoyment from it, The Lost City of Z wastes its potential by making Fawcett’s “obsession” a strictly pedestrian affair; Gray delivers on the production side but can’t seem to work his magic on his own script or the cast, leaving the movie feeling like it’s always about to step up a gear while remaining steadfastly in neutral.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Mini-Review: Live by Night (2016)

21 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Ben Affleck, Brendan Gleeson, Crime, Dennis Lehane, Drama, Elle Fanning, Gangsters, Ku Klux Klan, Literary adaptation, Prohibition, Review, Sienna Miller, Thriller, Ybor City, Zoe Saldana

live-by-night-poster

D: Ben Affleck / 128m

Cast: Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Remo Girone, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Matthew Maher, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, Robert Glenister, Chris Cooper, Miguel J. Pimentel, Titus Welliver, Max Casella

Undermined by a leaden script, Live by Night is writer/director/actor Ben Affleck’s third movie as a multi-hyphenate, but after the successes of Argo (2012) and The Town (2010), his latest project is a plodding affair that looks good thanks to Robert Richardson’s usual exemplary cinematography, but otherwise remains remote and uninvolving. The tale of a small-time Boston crook, Joe Coughlin (Affleck), who finds himself at odds with Irish gangster Albert White (Glenister) through his relationship with White’s girlfriend, Emma Gould (Miller), this adaptation of the novel by Dennis Lehane starts off well but soon gets bogged down by messy plotting and too many characters who randomly come and go.

Coughlin’s romance with Emma ends badly, leading him to offer his “services” to White’s rival, Maso Pescatore (Girone). Pescatore sends Coughlin down to Florida, to Ybor City, with instructions to take control of his rum-running operation and ensure that White’s activities in the area are curtailed. Once there, Coughlin, aided by trusted friend Dion (Messina), soon streamlines Pescatore’s operation and squeezes out all the competition. In the process he establishes a business relationship with a Cuban family, and begins an affair with the sister, Graciela (Saldana). Things run smoothly until Coughlin’s working with the Cubans as well as a group of local Negroes, attracts the ire of the Ku Klux Klan. Coughlin tries to come to an amicable arrangement with them, but the Klan’s leader, RD Pruitt (Maher) refuses to play ball, leading Coughlin to make an arrangement with Pruitt’s brother-in-law, Chief Figgis (Cooper) that has unforeseen consequences.

610279809

The Chief’s daughter, Loretta (Fanning), begins making evangelical protests against a casino that Coughlin is building in anticipation of Prohibition being repealed. Her protests lead to the project stalling, which makes Pescatore angry enough to forget all the money Coughlin has made for him, and travel down to Florida to oversee matters for himself, a development that leaves Coughlin vulnerable, and his future in doubt.

For all the convincing period detail and the impressive production design, Live by Night is let down by Affleck’s inability to craft a cohesive screenplay from Lehane’s novel. While Coughlin’s story is told against a backdrop of violence and betrayal, the movie remains a staid, pedestrian affair that moves at a steady pace despite Affleck’s best efforts to inject some energy and verve into proceedings. Part of the problem is the number of characters that appear for a short time then disappear or pop up again for another short period. Despite the cast’s best efforts, they’re let down by Affleck’s script, which uses each character to advance the narrative, but without investing in them to any great degree. This leaves actors of the calibre of Gleeson, Saldana and Glenister stranded for the most part, with only Miller and Fanning making much of an impression. It doesn’t help that Affleck’s portrayal of Coughlin also lacks range or depth, leaving the viewer hoping that things will improve over time, and that a way in to the material with eventually arise, something that, unfortunately, never happens.

Rating: 6/10 – curiously turgid and flat, Live by Night has clear aspirations to be a crime drama with operatic overtones, but instead, remains resolutely commonplace; with too many strands that make for a stop-start narrative, and characters that aren’t allowed to make much of an impact, the movie keeps its audience at a distance, and never looks as if it will close the gap at any point throughout.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

High-Rise (2015)

09 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Ben Wheatley, Drama, J.G. Ballard, Jeremy Irons, Literary adaptation, Luke Evans, Review, Sienna Miller, Thriller, Tom Hiddleston, Tower block, Violence

High-Rise

D: Ben Wheatley / 119m

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, Peter Ferdinando, Sienna Guillory, Reece Shearsmith, Louis Suc, Enzo Cilenti, Augustus Prew, Dan Renton Skinner, Stacy Martin, Bill Paterson

First published in 1975, J.G. Ballard’s novel, High-Rise, was originally meant to be made in the late Seventies by director Nicolas Roeg from a script by Paul Mayersberg. That particular project fell through, and for a while afterwards Vincenzo Natali was attached along with Richard Stanley as screenwriter, but that fell through as well. Fast forward to 2014 and writer/director Ben Wheatley – along with his wife, screenwriter Amy Jump – develops the movie along with long-term attached producer Jeremy Thomas, and the result is an edgy, claustrophobic thriller that never quite achieves the goals it sets for itself.

We meet the movie’s central protagonist, Dr Robert Laing (Hiddleston), at a time when anarchy and violence have overtaken the residents of the tower block in which he lives. Holed up in the apartment he bought several months before, Laing is surviving against the odds, surrounded by the debris of his previously ordered and carefully maintained lifestyle. Pragmatic and sanguine about his future, the first thing to understand about Laing is that he’s showing no sign of leaving the tower block he lives in. The question that follows is a simple one: what could possibly have happened to bring Laing to this point?

HR - scene1

The movie takes us back three months and Laing’s arrival at the tower block designed by architect Anthony Royal (Irons), an experiment in social living that houses the lower classes on the lower floors, and the upper classes on the upper floors (and Royal and his wife in the penthouse suite). Laing’s apartment is somewhere in the middle, an unwelcoming collection of drably painted rooms that he makes no attempt to improve upon or make his own. He’s an aloof man, a little socially awkward, but he does attract the attention of his upstairs neighbour, Charlotte (Miller), and her son, Toby (Suc). She invites him to a party where Laing is introduced to some of the other residents, including documentary movie maker Richard Wilder (Evans) and his heavily pregnant wife, Helen (Moss).

Laing also attracts the attention of Royal, and the two meet privately, though Laing’s aloof nature keeps him at a distance from the disappointments voiced by Royal in relation to the social engineering that isn’t going as well as he’d hoped. There’s also the problem of his wife, Ann (Hawes), and her unhappiness at being cooped up in the penthouse suite, while her husband tries to perfect his plans for the tower block and the others being built nearby. With the power to the building frequently out for long periods, and the divisions between the affluent and the less well off growing wider and wider with each passing day, Laing finds himself caught between both camps in his efforts to blend in anonymously.

HR - scene2

Wilder, and his distrust and disapproval for those more privileged than himself, proves to be the catalyst for the kind of hostile rule breaking that makes the more well off residents angry and afraid that their ordered existence is in jeopardy. A party gets out of hand, and sees the beginning of the end of order within the tower block, as residents band together in various groups to impose their own versions of order on each other, but with the upper classes holding the upper hand – and crowing about it. But even their confidence proves short-lived, and Royal’s attempts to calm things aside, no one knows how to restore order to everyone’s satisfaction. It’s not long before mutual hatred leads to violence and murder, and the breakdown of civilised behaviour amongst the tower block’s denizens.

In adapting J.G. Ballard’s highly regarded novel, Wheatley has retained the Seventies period setting – all browns and oranges in the colour scheme, many of the male characters sporting excessive facial hair – and has created an isolated (and isolating) sense of space in the tower block designed by the well-meaning yet naïve Royal. With the building’s harsh lines and overwhelming size offering a sense of foreboding that’s hard to ignore, the movie’s visual design is at once disconcerting and strangely inviting, an uneasy mix of large, empty spaces and claustrophobic interiors that draws in the viewer and keeps them as unsettled as the residents of the lower floors. It’s an impressive achievement, the tower block’s dark shadows and labyrinthine feel a potent mix that is hard to shake off.

HR - scene3

Class divisions are at the core of the movie though, as Ballard’s clinical dissection of suburban mores and failings is given a thorough, if overbearing, once-over by Jump’s screenplay. Prejudice and bias, arrogance and denial, contempt and xenophobia, malice and psychosis – the script piles it all on with darkly comic attention to detail, and yet in such a fashion that none of it is as effective as the script, and Wheatley’s often fevered direction, would like. All these elements are combined in such a way that each of the characters experiences them to some degree or other, but not in a way that enhances the descent into self-induced madness and chaos they endure, or even the emotional fallout that results. The residents all behave appallingly, but in the same way that they find themselves trapped within the building, so too does the script trap them in a web of limited motivation, unexplained choices, and hasty reversals. The result is a movie where everyone behaves as if they’ve lost control of their ability to reason, while at the same time, behaving with a single-minded purpose: to destroy their lives and the lives of those around them.

If the bulk of the cast and characters are all required to behave in a fashion that suggests mass-induced paranoia, then it could be said that Jump and Wheatley are creating a world where this is inevitable when such class divisions are thrown together into a huge melting pot. Animosity will prevail, both seem to be saying, and it doesn’t matter how cultured or couth you may be, you’ll lower yourself accordingly in order to survive. Which leaves us with Laing, a character who starts off as being intriguing but soon becomes a cypher, a man it’s hard to identify with or even root for. As the tower block begins to disintegrate around him, he retreats from the carnage going on outside the door to his apartment, and gives in to emotional and physical lethargy, avoiding the world he’s now a part of, and retreating into himself. The movie loses its protagonist, and descends into an extended series of scenes where the focus becomes muddled due to the decision to explore various forms of maladroit behaviour in a mannered, and compromising way. The narrative, ostensibly about Laing and his reaction to the events going on around him, loses steam and becomes weighed down by stylistic excess and a repetitive disregard for its own narrative.

At least the performances, though mannered and harking back to the period in which the movie is set, are uniformly enjoyable, even if they’re often required to spout clichés and banal justifications in support of their actions. Hiddleston does extremely well as the odd man out, the outsider blessed with the ability to see beyond the tower block and the state of disillusion everyone is feeling, but who nevertheless finds himself embroiled in the angry wishes of the mob. Irons is astute and nowhere near all-seeing as Royal thinks he is, which adds to the character’s tragedy. Miller is fine as the object of several men’s lust, while Evans adds another powerful role to his career CV as the man whose anger makes him more dangerous than anyone else.

Rating: 6/10 – a movie that lacks recognisable depths in its characters, and avoids giving them appreciable feelings in the process, High-Rise takes its setting’s microcosm-in-sharp-relief and expands on it without fully exploring the consequences of anyone’s actions (even Charlotte’s); maddening for how good it could have been with a sharper attention to relevant emotional details, it’s still a thought-provoking movie, albeit one that loses its audience by letting its characters flail about unnecessarily and to little benefit.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Burnt (2015)

01 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

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

Burnt

D: John Wells / 101m

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

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

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

Burnt - scene1

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

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

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

Burnt - scene2

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

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

Burnt - scene3

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

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

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Monthly Roundup – May 2015

31 Sunday May 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Antonio Banderas, Art heist, Artificial intelligence, Ballard Berkeley, Bat Masterson, Berlin, Boston, Bullying, Burger Beard, Chappie, Christopher Plummer, Clancy Brown, Comet, Conrad Phillips, Crime, Dave Franco, Dead body, Drama, Emmy Rossum, Eric Stonestreet, Father/son relationship, Frank R. Strayer, Gay bar, George Pastell, Glory holes, Hugh Jackman, Impact, Irene Ware, James Marsden, Joel McCrea, John Miljan, John Travolta, Joseph M. Newman, Julie Adams, Justin Long, Karl Urban, Ken Scott, Krabby Patty formula, Matthias Schoenaerts, Monthly roundup, Murder at Glen Athol, Murder mystery, Neill Blomkamp, Peter Maxwell, Philip Martin, Plankton, Review, Romance, Sam Esmail, Sharlto Copley, Sienna Miller, SpongeBob Squarepants, Swarf, The Duke, The Forger, The Gunfight at Dodge City, The Loft, The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Thriller, Tom Denny, Tom Wilkinson, Tye Sheridan, Unfinished Business, Vince Vaughn, Wentworth Miller, Western

There’s a phrase that everyone will be familiar with: “Too many [insert item here], too little time”. When it comes to the number of movies that I watch in any given month, that phrase is apt in relation to the ones that get reviewed here on thedullwoodexperiment. I would love to have the time to post reviews of all the movies I see, but it’s just not practical; and besides which, some movies just don’t merit the attention (Annabelle (2014), for instance). Sometimes it’s a case of choosing one movie over another, sometimes Life gets in the way of blogging and a movie falls by the wayside. To combat this, and to give these “other” movies their due, I’ve decided to present, at the end of each month, a brief “review” of all the other movies I’ve seen. There won’t be any synopsis, or proper full-length analysis, just the title, director, running time, cast, and then the traditional two sentence ratings summation. So, let’s see which movies didn’t quite make the cut in May 2015.

The Forger (2014) / D: Philip Martin / 96m

Cast: John Travolta, Christopher Plummer, Tye Sheridan, Abigail Spencer, Anson Mount, Marcus Thomas, Jennifer Ehle, Travis Aaron Wade

Rating: 5/10 – Travolta’s art forger comes out of prison to spend time with his dying son (Sheridan) and pull off an audacious robbery; a derivative, occasionally unappealing crime drama that tries to do something different with its dying child angle, The Forger is nevertheless a movie whose “one last heist” scenario has been done to death elsewhere, and with far better results.

Forger, The - scene

The Gunfight at Dodge City (1959) / D: Joseph M. Newman / 81m

Cast: Joel McCrea, Julie Adams, John McIntire, Nancy Gates, Richard Anderson, James Westerfield, Walter Coy, Don Haggerty, Wright King, Harry Lauter

Rating: 6/10 – Western legend Bat Masterson (McCrea) tackles corruption supported by Haggerty’s devious sheriff in Dodge City and faces romantic problems as well from minister’s daughter Adams and saloon owner Gates; a middling, mildly diverting Western, The Gunfight at Dodge City benefits from McCrea’s solid, no-nonsense performance and Newman’s underrated abilities behind the camera.

Gunfight at Dodge City, The - scene

Comet (2014) / D: Sam Esmail / 91m

Cast: Justin Long, Emmy Rossum

Rating: 7/10 – Long and Rossum are the soulmates whose on-again-off-again relationship is examined over the course of six years; with the narrative continually fractured and reassembled, Comet is replete with the kind of “serious” romantic musings that sound alternately pretentious and profound, but the two leads have a definite chemistry and this helps immensely in making the movie as enjoyable as it (largely) is.

Comet - scene

Murder at Glen Athol (1936) / D: Frank R. Strayer / 67m

Cast: John Miljan, Irene Ware, Iris Adrian, Noel Madison, Oscar Apfel, Barry Norton, Harry Holman, Betty Blythe, James P. Burtis

Rating: 5/10 – two murders and a dying confession confuse matters for a detective (Miljan) who’s just trying to take a vacation – next door to where the murders have taken place; packed full of seemingly endless exposition and no shortage of suspects, Murder at Glen Athol is a sprightly murder mystery that packs a lot in but not always to its best advantage.

Murder at Glen Athol

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015) / D: Paul Tibbitt / 92m

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Tom Kenny, Clancy Brown, Bill Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass, Mr. Lawrence, Carolyn Lawrence

Rating: 7/10 – when the formula for Krabby Patty is stolen by the notorious Burger Beard (Banderas), SpongeBob (Kenny) is forced to team up with Plankton (Mr. Lawrence) to get it back… and venture above the surface; freewheeling fun with the denizens of Bikini Bottom that features lots of gags and the usual bright visuals, but takes an awfully long time in getting to the “sponge out of water” part.

SpongeBob Movie, The

Chappie (2015) / D: Neill Blomkamp / 120m

Cast: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Ninja, Yo-Landi Visser, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Sigourney Weaver, Brandon Auret, Johnny Selema

Rating: 6/10 – with a robot police force firmly established in Johannesburg, the introduction of artificial intelligence leads to one robot, named Chappie, learning what it’s like to be human; disappointing outing from Blomkamp that never quite gels or seems sure of what it’s trying to do or say, but does feature an excellent performance from Copley.

Chappie

Impact (1963) / D: Peter Maxwell / 61m

Cast: Conrad Phillips, George Pastell, Ballard Berkeley, Linda Marlowe, Richard Klee, Anita West, John Rees

Rating: 5/10 – when newspaper reporter Jack Moir (Phillips) is framed for robbery by arch-nemesis “The Duke” (Pastell), he swears to get even when he gets out of jail; a low-key crime drama that seems busier than it is and which gets bogged down in the mechanics of Moir’s revenge plot, Impact does allow for a welcome appearance by Berkeley aka Fawlty Towers‘ Major, and an above average performance by Pastell.

Impact

The Loft (2014) / D: Erik Van Looy / 103m

Cast: Karl Urban, James Marsden, Wentworth Miller, Eric Stonestreet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Isabel Lucas, Rachael Taylor, Rhona Mitra, Valerie Cruz, Kali Rocha, Elaine Cassidy, Margarita Levieva, Kristin Lehman, Robert Wisdom

Rating: 6/10 – the discovery of a woman’s dead body in the loft apartment shared by five married men for their secret liaisons prompts them to suspect each other of the crime; alternately gripping and implausible, The Loft is a modern day cautionary tale that loses credibility with its solution then recovers with a great twist, but still has the air of a thriller that its writer never quite got to grips with.

Loft, The

Unfinished Business (2015) / D: Ken Scott / 91m

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson, Dave Franco, Sienna Miller, Nick Frost, James Marsden, June Diane Raphael, Britton Sear, Ella Anderson, Uwe Ochsenknecht

Rating: 5/10 – Swarf salesman Dan Trunkman (Vaughn) has to overcome all sorts of obstacles to land the contract that will save his fledgling company from going under, including a visit to a Berlin gay bar; a bit of a strange fish, Unfinished Business suffers from being two separate movies joined at the hip: one a raucous comedy, the other a thoughtful study of bullying, but together they don’t make for a cohesive whole, and it’s yet another movie where Vaughn coasts along on former glories.

Unfinished Business

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Blog Stats

  • 383,041 hits

Recent Posts

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

Top Posts & Pages

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

Blogs I Follow

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

Archives

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

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Rubbish Talk

Film 4 Fan

A Movie Blog

Fast Film Reviews

for those who like their movie reviews short and sweet

The Film Blog

The official blog of everything in film

All Things Movies UK

Movie Reviews and Original Articles

movieblort

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

Interpreting the Stars

Dave Examines Movies

Let's Go To The Movies

Film and Theatre Lover!

Movie Reviews 101

Daily Movie Reviews

That Moment In

Movie Moments & More

Dan the Man's Movie Reviews

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

Film History

Telling the story of film

Jordan and Eddie (The Movie Guys)

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

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

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: