Birthmarked (2018)

17 Wednesday Oct 2018

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Andreas Apergis, Comedy, Drama, Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais, Experiment, Marital problems, Matthew Goode, Michael Smiley, Nature vs Nurture, Review, Toni Collette

D: Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais / 90m

Cast: Toni Collette, Matthew Goode, Andreas Apergis, Jordan Poole, Megan O’Kelly, Anton Gillis-Adelman, Michael Smiley, Fionnula Flanagan, Suzanne Clément

Ben (Goode) and Catherine (Collette) are two scientists who are interested in examining the whole Nature vs Nurture debate through an idea for an experiment they have. Newly married and with a baby on the way, their idea is to raise their own child and two adopted babies against their genetic predispositions. They’re lucky enough to find a backer for their experiment, Randolph Gertz (Smiley), and they raise the children in a remote cabin in the woods, home-schooling them as well and focusing their minds on becoming an artist (their own son, Luke), an intellectual (their adopted daughter, Maya), and a pacifist (their adopted son, Maurice). They’re aided by an ex-Olympic level Russian marksman called Samsonov (Apergis) who defected to the West in the Seventies. With twelve years of a thirteen year experiment having passed, Gertz’s assessment that the children aren’t extraordinary examples of Nurture over Nature prompts Ben and Catherine to try harder to get the results they need, but their efforts come at a cost to their marriage, their professional relationship, and the needs of the children…

Somewhere in the midst of Birthmarked there’s the germ of a good idea struggling to be noticed. Like the children that are the subject of Ben and Catherine’s slightly less than ethical experiment, the movie wants to be something it’s not allowed to be: sprightly, perceptive, and engaging. It is funny in places, though in a law of averages kind of fashion that only highlights how much of Marc Tulin’s screenplay doesn’t gel cohesively, and it has an appealing cast who are at least trying their best to put over the material, but thanks to some poor decisions along the way, the movie coasts on too many occasions, and never hits a consistent stride. A great deal of what hampers the movie from being more successful is its inability to focus on one storyline over the rest, with Ben and Catherine’s marriage drawing more and more attention during the latter half, while each individual child receives occasional turns in the spotlight, but not in such a way that we get to know them. Then there’s Gertz, the obvious bad guy of the piece, and his equally obvious machinations (revealed late on but easily guessed at long before). Add in Samsonov’s presence – friend or foe? – and you have too many characters who lack substance, and who only occasionally drive the movie forward.

All this has the misfortune of making the movie uneven and feeling like the cinematic equivalent of a patchwork quilt that has several panels missing. Hoss-Desmarais, making only his second feature, has no answers for any of this, and though some scenes work better than others, often this is due to the cast’s efforts instead of his. Goode plays Ben as a rather blinkered, the-experiment-is-all character who behaves badly for no other reason than that the script needs him to, while Collette goes from entirely reasonable to inexplicably depressed over the course of a couple of scenes in order to provide the last third with some unneeded secondary drama. The young cast are often the best thing about the movie, and that’s largely due to their playing their roles like ordinary children (which they are, despite the intention of the experiment), and there’s some beautifully austere winter photography by Josée Deshaies that at least provides the action with a backdrop that reflects the muted dramatics. In the same way that Ben and Catherine’s experiment lacks coherence in the way they deal with any problems that arise, the movie also struggles to offer a consistency of tone or content. Maybe the movie, like the experiment it’s exploring, needed a longer nurturing period before committing itself to audiences.

Rating: 5/10 – sporadically amusing, with a cast that play their roles as capably as possible, Birthmarked is moderately appealing for the most part, but is mainly frustrating thanks to the opportunities it wastes; too wayward then to work effectively, it’s a movie that should be watched under proviso, or maybe as an experiment in itself.

Monthly Roundup – July 2018

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Abby Kohn, Action, Amanda Seyfried, Amy Schumer, Ari Aster, Backlash (1956), Christopher McQuarrie, Comedy, Donna Reed, Drama, Dwayne Johnson, Edward Lexy, Fred Ellis, Gabriel Byrne, Henry Cavill, Hereditary, Horror, I Feel Pretty, John Sturges, Lily James, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Marc Silverstein, Mary Clare, Michelle Williams, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard, Murder, Musical, Mystery, Neve Campbell, Ol Parker, Rawson Marshall Thurber, Richard Widmark, Romance, Skyscraper, Thriller, Tom Cruise, Toni Collette, Western

Hereditary (2018) / D: Ari Aster / 127m

Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd

Rating: 7/10 – following the death of her mother, miniaturist artist Annie (Collette) and her family begin to experience strange phenomena that hint at supernatural forces at work around them, and which appear to be malevolent in their intentions; this year’s critics’ favourite in the horror genre, Hereditary does boast a superb performance from Collette, and creates a fervid atmosphere in its first half that is genuinely unnerving, but this is a movie where the sum of its parts isn’t equal to a satisfying whole, and what should have been a tense, psychological thriller becomes a grandstanding Rosemary’s Baby for the new millennium, an outcome that robs it of much of its impact.

Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard (1940) / D: Fred Ellis / 64m

Cast: Mary Clare, Edward Lexy, Nigel Patrick, Janet Johnson, Anthony Ireland, Irene Handl, Vernon Kelso

Rating: 7/10 – the predicted deaths of two members of a Psychic Society leads Scotland Yard to assign their lone female detective, Mrs. Pym (Clare), to the case in an effort to track down the victims’ killer; a boisterous little crime caper with a delightful performance by Clare (in her only starring role), Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard retains a freshness nearly eighty years on that some movies can’t manage after eighty days, a feat that can be attributed to Ellis’s sprightly direction, a handful of engaging secondary performances, and a script – based on stories by Nigel Morland and adapted by Ellis and Peggy Barwell – that knows when to be amusing and when to be dramatic, and when to be delightfully daft (which, thankfully, is often).

Backlash (1956) / D: John Sturges / 84m

Cast: Richard Widmark, Donna Reed, William Campbell, John McIntire, Barton MacLane, Harry Morgan, Robert J. Wilke

Rating: 7/10 – while searching for his father’s killer, Jim Slater (Widmark) crosses paths with a woman (Reed) who may be connected to his father’s death, and who may be able to provide him with information that will lead him to the man responsible, an outcome that, when it happens, isn’t as straightforward as he’s been led to believe; a tough, muscular Western with psychological and film noir elements, Backlash is also a taut, uncompromising revenge tale that doesn’t pull its punches and which takes a sudden narrative turn halfway through that puts a whole different spin on Slater’s journey, something that Widmark handles with his usual aplomb, and Sturges – who would go on to helm Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and The Magnificent Seven (1960) – handles the twists and turns with confidence and no small amount of directorial flair.

Skyscraper (2018) / D: Rawson Marshall Thurber / 102m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber, McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell, Hannah Quinlivan

Rating: 4/10 – the world’s tallest building, The Pearl, is ready to open but needs a final sign-off from security analyst Will Sawyer (Johnson), but when terrorists set the building on fire, Sawyer has a greater problem: that of rescuing his family who are trapped above the fire line; there was a time when a movie like Skyscraper would have been a must-see at the cinema, but this Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno mash-up (scripted by Thurber) is a soulless, empty spectacle that can’t even put Sawyer’s family in any appreciable peril, wastes its talented cast by having them play one-dimensional stereotypes, and which uses Sawyer’s disability as a narrative parlour trick whenever the plot needs it.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) / D: Ol Parker / 114m

Cast: Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper, Andy Garcia, Jeremy Irvine, Josh Dylan, Hugh Skinner, Jessica Keenan Wynn, Alexa Davies, Celia Imrie, Cher, Meryl Streep

Rating: 7/10 – with the reopening of her late mother’s hotel just days away, Sophie Sheridan (Seyfried) is worried that everything won’t go according to plan, while the story of how a young Donna Sheridan (James) came to own the hotel in the first place, plays out simultaneously; if you liked the first movie then you’ll definitely like Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, another love letter to the music of ABBA, and a movie that has no simpler ambition than to charm its audience at every turn and provide fans with as good a time as before, something it achieves thanks to generous dollops of good-natured humour, a talented cast giving their all, and an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach that works wonders on what is very familiar material indeed.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) / D: Christopher McQuarrie / 147m

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley

Rating: 9/10 – a mission in Berlin to retrieve three plutonium cores leads Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team into a high stakes race-against-time chase across the continents as they try to avert a terrorist attack orchestrated by the followers of arch-nemesis Solomon Lane (Harris); number six in the franchise, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the best entry yet, with hugely impressive action scenes, the strongest plot so far, and a surprisingly emotional core drawn from the interactions of the characters that puts this head and shoulders above every other action movie you’ll see this year – and who would have bet on that?

I Feel Pretty (2018) / D: Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein / 111m

Cast: Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Tom Hopper, Rory Scovel, Adrian Martinez, Emily Ratajkowski, Aidy Bryant, Busy Philipps, Lauren Hutton, Naomi Campbell

Rating: 5/10 – when an insecure woman, Renee Bennett (Schumer), who works at an international cosmetics company suffers a blow to the head, she wakes seeing herself as beautiful and capable of achieving anything – but in reality she looks exactly the same; what should be an immensely likeable shout out to the power of self-belief, I Feel Pretty is hampered by the bludgeoning approach of the script (by directors Kohn and Silverstein), and the incredible ease with which Renee powers her way up the corporate ladder, aspects that are at least more palatable than the way in which the men are treated as accessories, something that, if the roles were reversed, would likely cause an outcry.

Enough Said (2013)

29 Saturday Jul 2017

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Catch Up movie, Catherine Keener, Comedy, Divorce, Drama, James Gandolfini, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Nicole Holofcener, Review, Romance, Toni Collette

D: Nicole Holofcener / 93m

Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener, Toni Collette, Ben Falcone, Tracey Fairaway, Tavi Gevinson, Eve Hewson, Michaela Watkins, Toby Huss, Kathleen Rose Perkins

The career of writer/director Nicole Holofcener has been an interesting and successful one, with plenty of plaudits for her movies, and healthy box office returns. She makes movies that rely on a sense of realism that you don’t see too often in other, similar-minded indie movies, and thanks to Holofcener having hired Catherine Keener for every feature that she’s made, she’s regarded as someone who makes chick flicks. Chick flicks that are intelligent and character-driven, but still… chick flicks. When the producers of Enough Said approached Holofcener with an offer to produce her next movie, they had one proviso: it had to be more mainstream than her previous movies. Holofcener rose to this somewhat insensitive challenge, and in doing so, made her most accessible, and most enjoyable movie to date.

The movie’s central character is a middle-aged, ten-year divorced masseuse called Eva (Louis-Dreyfus). She has a teenage daughter, Ellen (Fairaway), who’s about to leave home to go to college, and she’s not seeking a new partner or husband or significant other. At a party she attends with her friends, Sarah and Will (Collette, Falcone), she meets Marianne (Keener), a poet, and the two hit it off. Later on, Eva tells Sarah and Will there isn’t a single man there that she’s attracted to. Until she’s introduced to Albert (Gandolfini), that is. Within a day or two, Eva has been contacted by Marianne who wants a massage, and she learns from Sarah that Albert has asked for her number. Eva and Albert arrange to have dinner together, and the evening is a success. She begins a relationship with Albert, while at the same time she learns about Marianne’s failed marriage to a man who always pushed the onions in guacamole off to the side of the bowl before eating it. Marianne remains hyper-critical of her ex-husband, and tells Eva more and more about his “digusting habits”.

Soon, Eva begins to put two and two together, and realises that Albert is the ex-husband that Marianne disparages so much. But instead of revealing her connection to both of them – she and Marianne have become friends – Eva keeps quiet, but allows Marianne’s complaints about Albert to colour her judgment about him and their relationship. At a dinner party with Sarah and Will, Eva makes embarrassing comments about Albert’s weight, all of which lead to him asking her the question, why did it seem like he’d spent the evening with his ex-wife? Eva has no answer for her behaviour, and their relationship cools a little. It’s only when Eva finds herself at Marianne’s place and her daughter, Tess (Hewson) (who Eva has already met on a lunch date with Albert), reveals the truth about her relationship with Albert, that things come to a head. But will Albert be as forgiving of Eva as she needs him to be?

It isn’t long before Enough Said begins to exert a sincere and yet powerful fascination on the viewer, as the wit and perspicacity of Holofcener’s script begins to take hold and for once – for once – it becomes clear that this will be a movie where the characters are entirely recognisable, and where the dialogue they voice has the freshness and the vitality of everyday speech. This isn’t a movie where characters get to expound on how they feel at length, or say pithy, clever remarks that perfectly encapsulate their emotions or sum up their situation. Instead this is a movie where the central character allows their built-in neuroses and their lack of confidence in a new relationship to undermine the happiness they’re building up, and does so in a way that’s entirely regrettable but also entirely human. Holofcener based her script on some of her own experiences as a divorced, middle-aged mother of two, and with Enough Said she’s crafted a knowing, sympathetic tale that carries with it an emotional heft and a low-key, semi-jaundiced view of starting afresh when all you can focus on is the possibility of past mistakes repeating themselves.

When we first meet Eva she’s stuck in a rut of her own choosing. Ten years after her divorce she’s resigned herself, deliberately, to being a parent and a masseuse and a friend, all roles that involve being of service to others. Albert’s arrival in her life throws all that up in the air, and Holofcener’s script, aided by a shrewd performance from Louis-Dreyfus, highlights just how much his presence rattles her, even while it’s the best thing that’s happened to her in years. Eva’s confidence is further undermined by Marianne’s descriptions of Albert as the less-than-perfect husband, and with a little knowledge comes great doubt as Eva allows herself to be swept up in the possibility that her relationship with Albert will be an echo of his marriage to Marianne. It all leads to Eva sabotaging their affair and endangering the happiness she hasn’t had for so long. And Louis-Dreyfus makes it all so plausible, thanks to some detailed shading in her performance, and a willingness to risk making Eva appear unsympathetic.

The role of Albert was of course Gandolfini’s last screen portrayal, and it’s a pleasure to watch his performance, one that’s relaxed and where he’s clearly enjoying the opportunity to shrug off his bad guy image and play a gentler, more vulnerable kind of character. He and Louis-Dreyfus have an easy-going chemistry together, and though Holofcener’s script is full of naturalistic, convincing dialogue, it’s the moments where they’re improvising that provide some of the movie’s more memorable (and quotable) exchanges. Elsewhere, the bickering between Sarah and Will will be familiar to anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship, though Eva’s unofficial “adoption” of Chloe occasionally stretches Holofcener’s carefully crafted credibility. There are also minor themes relating to alienation between a parent and a child, peer pressure amongst teenagers, and undisguised snobbery, all of which have their moments and all of which add to the rich texture of Holofcener’s story. But it’s the relationship between Eva and Albert that works best of all, because it’s relatable, it’s sensitively handled, and it’s the kind of middle-aged romance that rarely turns up on our screens, and rarely with such vivid, impressive authority.

Rating: 9/10 – a beautifully written tale of love under unnecessary pressure, Enough Said is insightful, vital, immensely satisfying, and features two superb performances from Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini; that said, Holofcener is the real star here, and it’s a shame that there haven’t been any other producers banging on her door with the same enthusiasm since, especially as this movie is, so far at least, the very talented writer/director’s finest work to date. (27/31)

Mini-Review: Unlocked (2017)

08 Monday May 2017

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Action, CIA, Drama, John Malkovich, London, MI5, Michael Douglas, Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Review, Terrorism, Thriller, Toni Collette

D: Michael Apted / 98m

Cast: Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Michael Douglas, Philip Brodie, Makram Khoury, Brian Caspe, Tosin Cole, Aymen Hamdouchi, Michael Epp

In 2008, Peter O’Brien’s script for Unlocked made it onto the Black List. In order to make it onto the Black List that year, a script had to receive a minimum of four “mentions”. These “mentions” were tabulated from the responses of around two hundred and fifty movie executives, each of whom had to nominate up to ten unproduced screenplays that were relevant to 2008. Unlocked received five mentions, and though that keeps it quite a ways down the list, the idea that it’s on the list in the first place gives the impression that the script has some merit, that if it were to be produced, and if it did make it to our screens, then it would be a worthwhile movie to watch.

Well, Unlocked has been produced (by seven collaborating production companies), it has made it to our screens, but it’s far from being a worthwhile movie to watch. It’s yet another generic, cliché-ridden action thriller where loyalties are betrayed every five minutes, where the hero (or in this case, the heroine) goes it alone to prove their innocence, where jumps in credibility and logic are allowed to happen without any thought as to how they might harm the narrative, and where Noomi Rapace continues to show why the role of Lisbeth Salander will always be the high point of her career. It’s a movie that starts off moderately well – Rapace’s interrogator is called on to interview the go-between for an imam who’s sympathetic to terrorism, and an associate looking to release a biological weapon in Central London – and which quickly abandons that early promise by failing to connect the dots in any menaningful way, and by offering Tired Thriller Set Up No 387 as the basis of the action.

Such is the tired nature of the whole endeavour, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that this is a movie that was shot over two years ago, and which makes it to our screens now purely as a mercy release, a way of allowing those seven production companies a chance to earn back their investments. And it’s yet another movie where the quality of the cast and crew should ensure some measure of critical acclaim, but despite everyone’s involvement, this fails to happen, and the measure of the movie can be found in Bloom’s risible performance, Apted’s uninterested direction, a principal villain who sticks out like a sore thumb, and the kind of twists and turns that we’ve all seen in other, sometimes much better movies.

It’s hard to explain from the finished product just why O’Brien’s script made the Black List. Maybe since then it’s suffered from a pronounced case of rewrite-itis, and any subtleties it once had have been removed. Whatever happened between then and now, none of it has helped Unlocked become anything more than a weary, lukewarm slice of hokum. Rapace plays her character with grim determination and little else, Collette adds another high-ranking spook to her resumé, Malkovich provides the humour (welcome but still out of place), and Douglas is Mr Exposition, a role it’s unlikely anyone could have made anything out of. It’s a disjointed mess, providing few thrills and laboured fight scenes, along with a misplaced sense of relevance (chemical weapons smuggled into Britain from Russia? Really?). Ultimately, once it’s seen, this is a movie that fades away at speed, and is soon forgotten.

Rating: 3/10 – a movie that struggles to make an impact, but when it does, does so in ways that induces groans instead of applause, Unlocked could be re-titled Unloved and it would mean absolutely no difference to anyone; with too many scenes that provoke laughter – and often not deliberately – this is yet another reminder that low-key, low-budget action movies deserve more care and attention than their makers are willing to provide.

Imperium (2016)

22 Wednesday Feb 2017

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Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Ragussis, Drama, FBI, Review, Terrorism, Thriller, Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Undercover, White supremacy

D: Daniel Ragussis / 109m

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Sam Trammell, Nestor Carbonell, Chris Sullivan, Seth Numrich, Pawel Szajda, Devin Druid, Burn Gorman

At the start of Imperium, relatively inexperienced FBI agent Nate Foster (Radcliffe) helps foil a terrorist bombing on US soil. His intuitive interrogation skills attract the attention of senior agent Angela Zampano (Collette). When a truck illegally carrying quantities of Caesium-137 – a chemical used in radiation treatments – crashes and six of the manifested containers are found to be missing, the FBI immediately assume that the chemical has been appropriated by Muslim terrorists. However, Zampano believes that the perpetrators are much closer to home, specifically within the white supremacy movement. She approaches Nate and convinces him that he would be an ideal choice to go undercover and infiltrate said movement and discover the whereabouts of the Caesium-137.

Connecting with a group of neo-Nazis led by Vincent (Szajda), Nate quickly earns their trust, and sets about making himself useful to them. Through Vincent, Nate is introduced to Aryan Alliance leader Andrew Blackwell (Sullivan), and other members of the movement, including atypical supremacist Gerry Conway (Trammell) who espouses supremacy ideals but leads an otherwise quiet suburban life. In turn, Nate’s attendance at a Unity Conference allows him to meet Zampano’s main target, an ultra-right-wing radio talk show host called Dallas Wolf (Letts). Wolf has ties and contacts to most of the organisations within the white supremacy movement, and Zampano is certain that he will know of any “action” that any of them may be planning. Nate gives Wolf the impression that he can help him boost the circulation of his radio show, in exchange for knowledge of any imminent “action” that Wolf may be aware of.

At a rally, a fight breaks out and Blackwell is injured. Nate helps him get away, and later receives an invitation to the Aryan Alliance’s new compound (which the FBI is unaware of). There he sees plans relating to the water network for Washington D.C., and fears that the Caesium-137 will be used to poison the water supply. Needing confirmation from Wolf, he pushes the talk show host, but Wolf refuses both the money offered to help expand his circulation, and to have anything further to do with Nate. At the same time, Blackwell is dismissed as a potential threat by the FBI. With his undercover work seemingly at an end, Nate makes one last visit to see Conway. Still “in character”, Nate relates how much he wants to make a difference to the world as it is now. And to his surprise, Conway reveals that he has the Caesium-137, and that Nate can make a difference to the world…

Imperium does two things that are dramatically unexpected: first, it makes it appear incredibly easy to infiltrate a white supremacist organisation, and second, it makes it appear equally incredibly easy to divert suspicion when an agent’s identity is called into question. There are two main occasions when it looks as if the game is up, and Daniel Radcliffe’s wide-eyed right-wing ingénue is in danger of being exposed, but apparently the trick is just to get angry, accuse others of duplicity or stupidity – or both, and treat the accusation with complete disdain. As for providing proof, don’t worry; due diligence isn’t exactly high on a white supremacist’s list of priorities. They may be paranoid, but they’re not stu- Oh, hang on. Sadly, it’s this unconvincing approach to the material that undermines much of director Daniel Ragussis’s screenplay, leaving the movie itself to struggle from scene to scene in maintaining the viewer’s interest.

It’s not so much that Imperium is a bad movie per se, but it is a movie that never grabs the viewer’s attention completely, making it an exercise that’s more frustrating than engaging or compelling. Also, there are problems with the character of Nate that Ragussis never seems to find solutions for. His initial naïvete and inexperience in field work (let alone being undercover) – illustrated by his being told to keep his weapon holstered in the movie’s opening sting operation – is highlighted in almost every scene until he’s facing Vincent across a table in a diner and making out he’s a disgruntled ex-Marine who doesn’t know why he was in Iraq. Nate gives an assured, confident performance that is completely at odds with his real, somewhat nerdy personality. He’s Serpico in suspect Levi jeans, and has an answer for everything. And despite the occasional protest to an uninterested Zampano, that’s how he remains.

This leaves the movie lacking in tension, as Nate goes about his task of infiltrating the white supremacy movement catching lucky break after lucky break and fending off any concerns about his being less than “racially superior”. And even though he’s been chosen for his empathy for others, where you might think that would lead to a kind of Stockholm Syndrome scenario, instead Nate appears largely unaffected by the hatred he encounters, and emerges from his undercover work psychologically unscathed. It’s this lack of depth, or any consequences to his involvement with such ideologically extreme people, that hurts the movie the most, as the script moves him from scene to scene, gathering intel but never being affected by what he sees and hears. This leaves Radcliffe, normally more than capable of inhabiting a role, somewhat stranded and unable to pull together a cohesive performance.

Inevitably, and despite the idea of there being a deadly chemical out there that could be used in a dirty bomb with the potential to kill thousands, it’s not a threat that anyone watching Imperium could take seriously. The various white supremacy protagonists are shown to be less than organised, preferring to squabble among themselves rather than combine their efforts and really make a difference (for which we should all be grateful), and their lack of guile and sophistication makes them a less than worrying “villain”. Only Gerry seems to be properly motivated, but in a very real sense he comes across as a left-wing idea of how a white supremacist should talk and behave; then they’d be more approachable, a notion that doesn’t make any sense at all.

With such tonal and narrative problems at the heart of the movie’s premise, Ragussis has assembled a movie that only fitfully engages the viewer, and which doesn’t seem to know just how effectively white supremacist groups are operating currently in the US, and just how much of a threat they really are (again, on this showing, not very much at all). There’s a good, thought-provoking movie to be made from the issue, but this isn’t it, and though the likes of Collette, Letts and Druid as a young neo-Nazi rise above the material for the most part, spare a thought for Radcliffe, stuck with carrying the movie for most of the running time, and whose director couldn’t get him to stop looking so scared and wide-eyed in scenes where he had no need to look scared and wide-eyed.

Rating: 5/10 – not quite a disaster, but certainly not as impressive as you might expect, Imperium is a sluggish, uncertain, and poorly assembled movie that never does itself justice; hampered by a script that feels under-developed in large stretches, this is passable stuff that requires patience and forgiveness in order to reap the few rewards it has to offer.

Mini-Review: Krampus (2015)

13 Sunday Dec 2015

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Adam Scott, Allison Tolman, Comedy, David Koechner, Drama, Elves, Horror, Michael Dougherty, Review, Santa Claus, Toni Collette, Toys, Xmas, Yuletide

D: Michael Dougherty / 98m

Cast: Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell, Emjay Anthony, Stefania LaVie Owen, Krista Stadler, Lolo Owen, Queenie Samuel, Maverick Flack

If Krampus is someone (or something) you’ve never heard of before now, then you’re probably not alone. He (or it) is a figure from Austro-Bavarian Alpine folklore, an anti-Santa who punishes those who’ve been wicked. Michael Dougherty’s movie isn’t the first to feature the creature – if you’re a completist you can check out Krampus (2012), Krampus: The Christmas Devil (2013), Krampus: The Reckoning (2015), and A Christmas Horror Story (2015) as well – but this latest incarnation is very different from all the rest in one particular respect: it’s less concerned with being a horror movie.

Of all the horror movies you’re likely to see in 2015, Krampus will always retain the distinction of being scare-free, relatively bloodless, and more interested in creating a mood it can’t fully sustain. It’s also keen to impress with its focus on the extended dysfunctional family that finds itself trapped in one home in the run-up to Xmas and besieged by the title character, his trusty elves, and a bag full of demonic toys. (These last elements sound great but hold that thought for a moment…)

The set up is simple enough: pre-teen Max (Anthony) still believes in Santa Claus, but the dismal, selfish attitudes of his mother’s sister’s family leads him to tear up his usual letter to Saint Nick and cast it to the wind. For this, a terrible snowstorm sets in, the other residents in the street disappear, and Krampus turns up to carry everyone off to whatever underground realm he’s come from. In the process, the two families who have little liking for each other learn to come together and defend themselves against the supernatural force that’s determined to make them suffer for being “naughty, not nice”.

What follows is designed to wring more laughs than scares or shocks from the material, and while the movie throws in a couple of sequences that are designed to leave the viewer perched on the edge of their seat, the threat is undermined by the makers’ determination not to upset their audience with too much blood and gore, or strangely, by making Krampus himself about as threatening as having your nails buffed. What is effective is a sequence set in the loft space where several of Krampus’s demonic toys attack Scott, Collette and Tolman, and it’s this that remains the movie’s stand out scene. But even then, the toys are too reminiscent of the puppets created by Full Moon Features, so much so that it wouldn’t have been a surprise to see Jester or Pinhead pop up at some point.

Elsewhere, Dougherty uses his cast to fairly good effect but makes several characters one-note or underwritten – Ferrell’s bitchy mother, Tolman’s perplexed-looking sister – while the budget keeps Krampus sidelined until the final fifteen minutes. His elves launch an attack on the house that seems more arbitrary than properly planned, and the inclusion of growing numbers of ugly snowmen in the house’s front yard is meant to be menacing but is more of a distraction. It all ends with the kind of narrative trickery that is more confusing than conclusive, and leaves the viewer scratching their head in bewilderment.

Rating: 5/10 – a valiant attempt to make a Xmas horror movie with a difference, Krampus lacks bite and a truly scary monster; needing a greater sense of peril to work properly, and less bickering between the characters, it’s a movie that runs out of steam far too quickly and never recovers from doing so.

A Long Way Down (2014)

14 Monday Jul 2014

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Aaron Paul, Adaptation, Comedy, Drama, Imogen Poots, New Year's Eve, Nick Hornby, Pascal Chaumeil, Pierce Brosnan, Suicide, Toni Collette, Valentine's Day

D: Pascal Chaumeil / 96m

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Imogen Poots, Aaron Paul, Sam Neill, Rosamund Pike, Tuppence Middleton, Joe Cole, Leo Bill, Josef Altin

On New Year’s Eve, four very different people find themselves on the roof of a London tower block, and all with the same idea: to commit suicide. There’s disgraced TV celebrity Martin (Brosnan), shy, apologetic Maureen (Collette), politician’s daughter Jess (Poots), and pizza delivery guy JJ (Paul). With all of them unable to go through with their plans (and each actively stopping the rest from jumping), the quartet decide to make a pact: that none of them will try to kill themselves until Valentine’s Day. Later that night, Jess accidentally O.D.’s in a club; with the aid of Jess’s boyfriend, Chas (Cole), the others get her to hospital. News of their attempted suicides reaches the press and they all become minor celebrities. Martin suggests they use the attention to make some money, and they take part in interviews, and talk shows. When one talk show appearance goes wrong, the four decide to go away together on holiday.

The trip proves to be yet another disaster, with JJ unknowingly befriending a journalist (Middleton) and further tensions arise when he also reveals something about himself that only Jess knows (and has kept to herself). The group return to London and go their separate ways (though each in their own way keeps tabs on the others, except for JJ). As Valentine’s Day draws near, JJ vanishes. On the day itself, the others find him back on the roof of the tower block, and ready to kill himself.

Adapted from the novel by Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down takes a serious subject and uses it as the springboard for a sporadically dramatic, essentially lightweight comedy that never quite fires on all cylinders, and has enough awkward moments for two movies, let alone one. The problems lie in the characters themselves. Martin’s back story includes time in prison for sleeping inadvertently with a fifteen year old girl, and this is treated largely as an excuse for amusement, with Brosnan mugging for all he’s worth when the subject is brought up. Maureen has a severely disabled son, Matty (Altin) that she no longer feels she can support adequately, but it’s obvious that she has a really good support network around her so the dramatic elements of her situation never really ring true. Jess is almost a caricature of every wild child and rebellious daughter of an establishment figure you’re ever likely to encounter, and her sadness over the disappearance of her sister is briefly explored and then forgotten. As for JJ, his character is the most maddening of them all, with his failed musical background and resulting depression proving hard to sympathise with, or appreciate.

While the movie works hard to flesh out these characters, and make their individual problems worthy of our concern, it’s unable to do so by virtue of their predicament being too artificial for its own good. At no time in the movie do you really feel that any one of these disparate people really, truly wants to kill themselves, and so any drama in the two rooftop sequences that bookend the movie is immediately eliminated. And as mentioned above, their individual dilemmas, particularly Martin’s, don’t hold the attention as well, or as much, as they should. This all leaves the movie lurching from one lacklustre scene to another, its attempts at humour proving occasionally successful, its dramatic approach having no bite, and its supporting characters – from Jess’s dad (Neill) to Pike’s deliberately insensitive talk show host – endorsing the view that the main four characters aren’t that interesting.

As a result, it’s fitting that the performances are as equally uninspired as the movie itself. Brosnan plays Martin as a bit of a buffoon, good-natured but with an often spectacular misunderstanding of the people around him, his unfortunate “indiscretion” treated like a minor inconvenience blown out of all proportion. Brosnan’s an accomplished actor but here he seems unable to get to grips with such a poorly crafted character. Collette has the least showy role, and fares better than the rest, her understated performance as Maureen the nearest the movie gets to providing someone for the audience to relate to; her scenes with Altin are genuinely affecting, but belong in a different movie. Poots plays Jess as a whirling dervish, snappy and borderline obnoxious, her quieter scenes more convincing than the ones where she’s supposed to be the challenging anti-establishment rebel. Paul, meanwhile – the predictably token American in the cast – does his best with a role that becomes more and more important as the movie goes on, but he can’t overcome the clumsy way in which JJ is written.

There’s a better movie to be made here, and while it’s clear the material is a challenge, A Long Way Down doesn’t even attempt to play up the more darkly humorous aspects of the group’s situation or elevate the drama inherent in such a premise. The movie seems determined not to make things too uncomfortable for the audience, to play things down to make them more palatable (and presumably, more box office friendly). It’s an obvious decision on the part of the producers (unfortunately) but it doesn’t help the movie at all.

Rating: 5/10 – not as dramatic or as funny as it looks, A Long Way Down struggles to be as emotionally involving as it should be; with no one to connect with, the movie loses focus early on and never really recovers, leaving its characters to stumble on until the movie’s predictably feel good ending.

Lucky Them (2013)

02 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Disappearance, Documentary, Drama, Ex-boyfriend, Lost love, Megan Griffiths, Music journalist, Musician, Oliver Platt, Review, Road trip, Ryan Eggold, Stax magazine, Thomas Haden Church, Toni Collette

D: Megan Griffiths / 97m

Cast: Toni Collette, Thomas Haden Church, Oliver Platt, Ryan Eggold, Nina Arianda, Ahna O’Reilly

Ellie Klug (Collette) is a music journalist working for Stax magazine. Ten years before, her then boyfriend – and well-loved musician – Matthew Smith disappeared; his car was found abandoned and it was assumed he’d committed suicide, though his body was never found. Ellie has never really recovered from Matthew’s disappearance, and has yet to put it behind her. Her boss, Giles (Platt), challenges her to write a story about Matthew and how much his music means ten years on. Ellie is hesitant but grudgingly accepts the assignment, though she’s unsure of just what she’s going to write. Her friend, Dana (Arianda), asks the all-important question: doesn’t Ellie want to know, once and for all, what happened?

Ellie is still unsure. While she works out the best way to approach the assignment she meets aspiring musician Lucas (Eggold). They begin a tentative relationship, but Ellie isn’t sure about about committing to this either. At a bar she bumps into Charlie (Church), an ex-boyfriend who decides it would be a great idea if he made a documentary about Ellie’s search for Matthew (as he’s just completed a documentary filmmaking course). They embark on a road trip, visiting places that were important in the early days of Ellie and Matthew’s relationship, including his home. They also have a lead on Matthew’s whereabouts, footage of a singer in a club who may or may not be the missing musician. Although the man who says he shot the footage turns out to be a fraud, Ellie comes to believe the footage really is of Matthew. Meanwhile her relationship with Lucas becomes more serious, and when Charlie announces his engagement to Charlotte (O’Reilly), Ellie and Lucas are happy to go as a couple.

With the story on hold, Ellie attends Charlie’s wedding by herself, Lucas having gone to L.A. for talks with a record company (though he promises he’ll be back in time). When Lucas fails to turn up, Ellie winds up in bed with one of the other guests. Lucas discovers them together; to make matters worse she insults Charlie as well. Ellie hides away in her apartment, ignoring her calls and fixating on the supposed footage of Matthew. It’s only when Dana shows up to jolt her out of her misery that Ellie realises she may know a way of finding Matthew after all. She apologises to Charlie and they resume their road trip…

Lucky Them has several themes woven through its meandering script, though none of them are particularly original. There’s lost love, perceived betrayal, irreconciled emotions, and they all lead to Ellie’s unwitting withdrawal from Life. She’s a close approximation of the person she was ten years before, surrounded by reminders of the time she spent with Matthew, and tortured by not knowing why he disappeared (and if she’d only admit it, still in love with him). Ellie hasn’t moved on from that time, hasn’t found a way to let go of the past. She takes part in Life at a superficial level and derives no real enjoyment from it; she lacks passion, though it’s instructive that she becomes more expressive when talking about Matthew’s disappearance to a woman in a bar, almost defending him. She’s also easily led, allowing Giles to dictate the nature of the assignment to her, allowing Lucas to pursue her and almost force their relationship into being, letting Charlie decide about the documentary and cajoling her to reveal more and more about herself during the filming. Without the people around her, Ellie would be living her life completely in the past.

As Ellie, Collette has a tough time making the character sympathetic. She’s a walking bundle of apathy and negativity, and while the reasons for her being so are clearly outlined, it doesn’t help draw the viewer in; there’s no point at which you’re hoping that she’ll turn everything around (though obviously she will). With Ellie being so emotionally constipated, Collette doesn’t quite manage to make her a more interesting character, and settles for a kind of low-key cynicism in order to provide Ellie with a defining trait. Charlie refers to relationships being unable to last if they can be summed up in a single sentence (e.g. “I was the exotic aesthete to her mid-Western homebody”). For Ellie, the extrapolation would be, “A woman who refuses to see the good life going on around her”. With this obstacle established from the beginning, Lucky Them struggles to give the viewer anyone to root for.

That said, it’s a relief that screenwriters Huck Botko and Emily Wachtel have come up with the character of Charlie, a socially awkward, dry-humoured man who doesn’t always appreciate the finer points of social interaction or etiquette. In Church’s more-than-capable hands, Charlie is the movie’s saving grace, a direct, emotionally distant demi-pedagogue who’s funny throughout and the kind of true friend that Ellie really doesn’t deserve. Church adopts an almost stentorian way of speaking that makes Charlie sound pompous at first until you realise just how awkward his manner is. He’s also a bit of a bully, but in a caring, let’s-have-none-of-that-nonsense kind of way. As the movie progresses, Ellie warms to him, and they bring each other out of their respective shells. It’s these moments that have the greatest resonance in the movie, and as played by Collette and Church are also the most emotionally rewarding.

With Ellie proving such a poorly drawn character, and with her troubles being entirely self-inflicted, Lucky Them often goes off at a tangent in its efforts to hold its audience’s attention, and the search for Matthew often takes a back seat while Ellie continues to behave selfishly. The answer to the question, is Matthew alive after all, is resolved in a satisfying manner, but without all the digressions could have been arrived at a lot sooner. The subplot involving Lucas is both predictable and dull, while Giles is the kind of patrician mentor figure who seems out of place in today’s publishing world. It’s not surprising then that the movie is directed in unspectacular fashion by Griffiths, and there’s little in the way of visual styling or flair, while the soundtrack is populated by a succession of indie tracks that only occasionally enhance what’s happening on screen (though fans of Rachael Yamagata will enjoy the end credits song she provides).

Rating: 5/10 – a disappointing exploration of how someone copes when the person they love most disappears suddenly without explanation, Lucky Them flounders for most of its running time and rarely convinces; saved (rescued even) by Church’s note-perfect performance, and best approached as a curious mix of emotional apathy and (very) low-key romanticism.