Tag Archives: Tsunami

The Vessel (2016)

05 Friday May 2017

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D: Julio Quintana / 86m

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wave (2015)

22 Thursday Oct 2015

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Wave, The

Original title: Bølgen

D: Roar Uthaug / 104m

Cast: Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp, Jonas Hoff Oftebro, Edith Haagenrud-Sande, Fridtjov Såheim, Arthur Berning, Laila Goody, Eili Harboe, Thomas Bo Larsen

Geiranger in Norway is both the name of a fjord and the name of the small tourist village that nestles between the mountains at the fjord’s head. The area has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and features some of the most spectacular scenery in the world; as a result it’s the must-visit destination of hundreds of thousands of tourists each year. But there’s a problem, and that’s the nearby Åkerneset mountain, because at some point it will erode to the extent that a significant portion of it will collapse into the fjord and send a devastating eighty metre tsunami towards Geiranger. Simply put: the village will be flattened.

Against this background, the magnificently named Roar Uthaug and screenwriters Harald Rosenløw-Eeg and John Kåre Raake have fashioned that most unlikely of movies: a Norwegian disaster movie. But unlikely is as unlikely does, and The Wave is grounded by the fact that this type of event has happened elsewhere in Norway in the past (and the movie opens with a recap of these tragedies). Where movies like San Andreas (2015) try to impress with the size of the devastation on display, The Wave keeps it simple, and is so much better for it.

Focusing on geologist/mountain whisperer Kristian (Joner) and his family – wife/hotel receptionist Idun (Torp), teenage son/skateboarder Sondre (Oftebro), and cute young moppet Julia (Haagenrud-Sande) – the movie opens with Kristian on the verge of leaving Geiranger and the geologist’s facility where he works, and moving to the “big city”. But in classic movie fashion he senses that all is not well on Åkerneset, and instead of taking himself and his kids to the airport, he abandons them at the facility’s car park in order to go check out his hunch – which of course proves to be deadly accurate. But also in classic movie fashion, his colleagues, led by doubtful Arvid (Såheim), in a performance guaranteed to make viewers think of Charles Hallahan’s similarly unimpressed/stupid geologist in Dante’s Peak (1997), say they’ll keep an eye on things and that Kristian shouldn’t worry.

Stuck in Geiranger until the next day, Kristian drops Sondre off at the hotel where Idun works, while he and Julia spend one last night in their old home. Sondre heads off to skateboard in the basement levels with his earbuds in, and without telling anyone. With the mountain making the kind of noises that practically scream “Evacuate right now!”, Arvid and colleague Jacob (Berning) rapel down into a crevice in order to check their recording equipment, and find themselves right smack in the middle of the mountain’s decision to give up keeping it together. Before anyone can say “What was that noise?”, an eighty metre high tsunami is heading for Geiranger, and the clock is ticking: if everyone wants to get to safety, they’ve only got ten minutes to get there.

Wave, The - scene

At this point the special effects kick in, and very good they are too (the tsunami’s merciless, unstoppable rush toward the hotel is one of 2015’s most indelible images). With ten minutes proving too little time for everyone to save themselves, Kristian himself barely survives, while Julia at least is kept safe with a neighbour. Idun and Sondre find themselves holed up in the hotel’s bomb shelter with guest Phillip (Larsen) as the water level rises. What follows is the kind of race-against-time search and rescue mission these kind of movies thrive on, with Idun and Sondre facing more threats to their survival than would seem logically possible, and Kristian conveniently being in the right place at the right time to discover their whereabouts.

Hackneyed scripting aside, there’s tension aplenty in this “second half”, and the cast gamely play it straight, which adds to the edge-of-the-seat atmosphere that Uthaug creates (even if the viewer is certain it’ll all turn out okay in the end). One of the strengths of this scenario is that the family is one you can actually root for; for once they’re a family who clearly like each other and aren’t dysfunctional (it’s certainly more credible than Dwayne Johnson’s macho need to save his daughter in that other disaster movie). It’s also here that Uthaug uses his budget wisely, mixing vast swathes of destruction with more intimate location work and achieving a convincing fit with both. And there’s a decision made involving Phillip that hints at the script maybe having a darker edge in an earlier draft.

The Wave has been a massive hit in Norway, with almost a fifth of the country’s population having seen it on the big screen. Despite the subject matter – hey, let’s show what could happen when one of our mountains collapses – and its real life consequences, and not forgetting that the movie was actually shot in Geiranger, by keeping the heroics to a minimum, and dialling back on any potential histrionics, Uthaug and his cast and crew have made an effective, exciting thriller that surpasses expectations.

Rating: 8/10 – comprised of three distinct acts – “I think we should run”, “I hate it when I’m right”, and “I’d say I told you so but I have to go save my family first” – The Wave has a great deal of heart amid all the death and destruction, and never lets its more predictable elements get in the way of telling a good story; surprisingly gritty, and with a great deal of charm, it’s no wonder the movie’s been chosen as Norway’s Best Foreign Language Film entry at next year’s Oscars.

San Andreas (2015)

04 Thursday Jun 2015

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San Andreas

D: Brad Peyton / 114m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Paul Giamatti, Ioan Gruffudd, Archie Panjabi, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Art Parkinson, Will Yun Lee, Kylie Minogue

Ray Gaines (Johnson) is a helicopter rescue pilot with the Los Angeles Fire Department, separated from his wife Emma (Gugino), but on very good terms with his daughter, Blake (Daddario). He plans to take a few days off to spend some time with her in San Francisco, but he has to shelve those plans when an earthquake destroys the Hoover Dam, and he’s called back to work. In apologising to Blake, he learns that Emma is planning to live with her new boyfriend, property developer Daniel Riddick (Gruffudd). Daniel suggests taking Blake to San Francisco himself and they leave soon after.

While Ray takes part in various rescue missions, seismologist Lawrence Hayes (Giamatti) – who was at the dam when it broke – is becoming increasingly worried that that earthquake was just a precursor to a series of much bigger, much more devastating ones. When one such earthquake strikes Los Angeles, Emma finds herself in a high rise building having lunch with Daniel’s sister, Susan (Minogue). As the quake hits she’s talking to Ray on the phone; he tells her to get to the roof and he’ll come and rescue her. Further quakes strike towns and cities up and down the California coast, including San Francisco. With Emma safe on board his helicopter, Ray receives a call from Blake: she’s trapped in a car in the basement of Daniel’s office building and it’s about to collapse.

Ray and Emma decide they have to try and rescue Blake, but the helicopter they’re in develops a fault and they crash land in Bakersfield. Managing to commandeer a plane, they continue on to San Francisco. Meanwhile, Blake has been rescued by a British engineer she met earlier at Daniel’s offices. Ben (Johnstone-Burt) and his younger brother Ollie (Parkinson) stay with Blake as she works out a way to let Ray know she’s okay. When she does he tells her to meet him in a particular place that has a special meaning to both of them. But it’s not possible for her to get there, so she heads for Daniel’s latest high rise development instead. Ray and Emma parachute out of the plane and land in San Francisco; when they realise Blake can’t get to the rendezvous site, they also discover that a tsunami is coming that will swamp the city. And when it does, Blake, Ben and Ollie find themselves trapped in Daniel’s building with the waters steadily rising, and Ray and Emma having no idea of where they are…

San Andreas - scene

A disaster movie – the moviegoer’s guilty pleasure – should always favour spectacular destruction over coherent plot, story or characterisation. It should feature enough devastation to leave the viewer slack-jawed in admiration at what the special effects wizards can achieve. It should cater to that part of us that slows down to look when we pass a road accident. And above all, it should show us something that we might all experience some day, regardless of how safe we might feel in our own little corner of the world.

San Andreas should give us all that and more. But instead it’s a curiously bloodless affair, full of moments where the cast look awestruck at some fresh new aspect of the disaster around them, and where Hayes’ doom-laden dialogue hypes the destruction to near-apocalyptic levels. There are some impressive shots it’s true, but some – such as the awkward destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge – seem too absurd to appear feasible, or are rendered in such a way that the wow factor plays second fiddle to any plausibility. This might not be too much of a concern though if what we’re witnessing is something new, but the devastation wrought in the movie, while impressively mounted, has been done elsewhere already, and San Andreas, while promising the mother of all earthquakes from very early on – one that will be felt “on the East Coast” – actually falls short of doing so.

Instead, what we have is a tale of a family’s determination to survive against all the odds, and in Ray’s case, without regard for the job he does. Once the earthquake hits Los Angeles and all points Californian, Ray becomes a solo pilot, where before he’s been part of a four-man team. He rescues Emma and then jettisons any notion of helping others with a quick “we have to find our daughter” (not that anyone’s trying to contact him with any instructions or requests for help). He’s reckless as well, putting himself and Emma in harm’s way time after time: let’s crash the helicopter in a clothing store, let’s parachute out of a plane, let’s head into the swell of an oncoming tsunami – the more dangerous the action, the more determined he seems to tackle it. In a different kind of movie, Ray would be an adrenaline junkie with a death wish; here, he’s a big-hearted father who’s doing the best he can (gosh darn it!).

It’s a good thing then that Johnson is more than capable of helping the viewer ignore or forget these contradictions, putting in an emotive performance that sees him remind everyone why he’s the go-to guy for this kind of big-budget nonsense. Whether he’s ripping car doors off their hinges, or holding his breath underwater for minutes at a time, Johnson’s amiable muscularity fits the needs of the script admirably, even when Ray is called upon to relive a past tragedy. As a chip off the old block, Daddario provides an earnest counterpoint to Johnson’s grim-faced determination, while Giamatti bleeds sincerity as the tormented seismologist who saw it all coming. Spare a thought however, for Gugino – along for the ride and little else – and Gruffudd – asked to become a prick in the space of a nano-second. Both actors are ill-served by Carlton Cuse’s ill-focused screenplay, as is Johnstone-Burt, who’s called upon to play the kind of stereotypical good-natured bumbling Brit who sounds like minor royalty.

Behind the camera, Peyton orchestrates all the mayhem with a good eye for packing the frame with as much incident as possible, and there’s an effective score from Andrew Lockington that supports the action without overwhelming it. Fans of the disaster genre will particularly approve of the many building falling into/against/onto other building shots, and the refreshingly practical effects work used to show that a movie of this sort doesn’t have to be all digital. Others, though, may look at all the devastation and wonder, why does a lot of it have problems with scale?

Rating: 6/10 – while it’s enjoyable in a big dumb leave-your-brain-at-the-door kind of way, San Andreas has a script that features enough fault lines to warrant a warning sign all its own; a movie where the spectacle never quite inspires the awe or wonder it needs to, it fits neatly into the category of guilty pleasure but without really doing too much to earn its place there.

Godzilla (2014)

20 Tuesday May 2014

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godzilla_485dca15

D: Gareth Edwards / 123m

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Victor Rasuk, Carson Bolde, Juliette Binoche

Opening with a montage of grainy black and white footage from the Fifties that reveals the real reason for all those atomic bomb detonations in the Pacific – Bikini Atoll et al – the movie fast forwards to 1999 and the discovery in The Philippines of a massive skeleton and two egg sacs, one of which bears the signs of a recent hatching. At the same time, the Janjira nuclear plant in Japan is experiencing a series of seismic anomalies that has plant supervisor Joe Brody (Cranston) worried that these anomalies may cause damage to the plant. While his wife Sandra (Binoche) investigates below ground, there is a reactor breach and the plant is destroyed.

Fifteen years on, the site of the Janjira plant is still a quarantine area.  Joe’s son Ford (Taylor-Johnson), now living in San Francisco with wife Elle (Olsen) and young son Sam (Bolde), receives a call telling him that Joe has been arrested for trespassing in the quarantined area. Ford travels to Japan to find out what his father is up to. They go back to the Janjira plant and are promptly arrested. They are taken to a secret facility within the plant where a chrysalis containing the creature that destroyed the plant is being studied by scientists Ishiro Serizawa (Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Hawkins). The chrysalis hatches, releasing a massive winged monster that devastates the facility before flying off. Ford, Serizawa and Graham join an American-led mission to track the monster, which is heading for Hawaii.

In Hawaii, the creature – known as a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) – is discovered feeding on the reactor of a Russian submarine. The military attack the MUTO but it proves too much for them. Godzilla arrives to battle the MUTO but it flees. Serizawa sees the creature is headed toward the US and realises it’s trying to reach its mate, the inhabitant of the other egg sac from The Philippines, and which has been housed in a secure nuclear waste repository in Nevada. This MUTO, the female, hatches and begins heading towards the coast (but not before laying waste to Las Vegas). Serizawa is afraid the two MUTOs are making their way to each other with the intention of breeding… and if his calculations are correct, they’ll meet in San Francisco.

The military comes up with a plan to destroy the MUTOs using a more-powerful-than-usual nuclear weapon (basically two nuclear warheads strapped together). Ford goes along with the team assigned to getting it offshore far enough that it will destroy the creatures but cause minimal damage to the coastal region, but the female MUTO wrecks the train it’s being transported on and eats one of the warheads. The other is saved and flown to San Francisco. The two MUTOs meet there and capture the remaining warhead, which the female uses to build a nest for her offspring. Godzilla arrives to battle the MUTOs. While they’re distracted, Ford destroys the nest and regains the warhead, but it’s damaged and he can’t disarm it. He gets it to a boat and heads out to sea in the hope of getting far enough before it explodes. Meanwhile, Godzilla battles the MUTOs…

Godzilla (2014) - scene

One of the most eagerly awaited movies of 2014, Godzilla arrives trailing a ton of hype and pre-release fervour, but sad to say this is a major disappointment. The story is nonsensical and at almost every turn throws up a WTF? moment. There are inconsistencies galore, some of the worst dialogue so far this year, a sad waste of a more than capable cast, an incredible lack of tension or threat throughout, and the usual reliance on mass destruction to provide any thrills.  Here are just ten reasons why Godzilla doesn’t work:

1 – The characters are paper-thin and serve no purpose other than to mouth expository dialogue of the “This must mean…” variety.

2 – The cast are required to do little more than gawp and gasp at the destruction going on around them. Seriously, why employ actors such as Juliette Binoche (who had to be persuaded to take part), Sally Hawkins and David Strathairn if you’re going to give them so little to do?

3 – Inconsistency No. 1: Godzilla’s arrival in Hawaii causes a tsunami, but not when he arrives in San Francisco (perhaps the budget didn’t stretch to two such sequences).

4 – Ford has a son who isn’t put in jeopardy once; instead the writers have Ford save some random Asian-American kid when the train they’re on is attacked by one of the MUTOs (plus having Ford save his own son would have added some much needed emotional resonance to the drama).

5 – Elle is seen escaping from the destruction of San Francisco, but at no point is she in any peril; in fact she survives unscathed. What was the point of showing this (other than to give Elizabeth Olsen something more to do than make phone calls and look worried a lot)?

6 – Ford is introduced as an adult as an explosive ordnance disposal officer (and a lieutenant at that), but this skill is never utilised (it’s his relationship with his dad and his dad’s data that keeps him along for the ride).

7 – The MUTOs, even though they are supposed to be MASSIVE, seem able to appear and disappear at will.

8 – The MUTOs are attracted by nuclear radiation but the male MUTO, the one that hatches at Janjira, doesn’t stop to munch on the rest of Japan’s nuclear plants (there’s nearly fifty of them). Is MUTO love really that strong a call?

9 – How many times do the same buildings have to be destroyed in San Francisco before anyone is supposed to notice?

10 – Inconsistency No. 2: Why, if the MUTOs are supposed to have migrated towards the earth’s core for their radiation fix, is one found so close to the surface in The Philippines (and what has sustained the egg sacs)?

11 – And why was the Russian nuclear submarine found perched in the trees (on a mountainside) in Hawaii when it was earlier reported as missing at sea?

Yes, that was eleven reasons instead of ten but that just goes to show how lazy the screenwriters – all five of them! – were in assembling this narrative mess. It’s sad when a project that’s been in development for as long as this one has, falls at the first hurdle because the filmmakers couldn’t spot the problems inherent in the script (though with five writers having worked on it, maybe they did). And while this is a Godzilla movie, and what we’re looking for is some outstanding monster-on-monster action, does the rest of the movie have to be so bad? Well, the answer seems to be yes. And because the filmmakers have opted for a slow-build, let’s-keep-Godzilla-hidden approach, the effect of all this underwhelming drama is that the audience are soon praying for things to hurry up so they can get to the big showdown without lapsing into complete slack-jawed lethargy.

Once all three monsters reach San Francisco the movie does pick up, and the battle between them goes a long way toward redeeming things, though there’s still far too much cutting away to see what the human characters are up to (as if we care by now). There’s also a slightly corny moment where Ford and Godzilla share a look, but it’s the one misstep in a section where the filmmakers do get it right. And we get to witness Godzilla’s famous nuclear breath, something that will have fans cheering in their seats.

So, it’s not all bad, and the visuals (as expected) are often stunning to behold. The much-touted HALO drop is still eerily effective despite the long-term exposure given it in the trailers and the movie’s print ads, and the scenes of devastation are effectively rendered (as expected). The MUTOs have a realistic-looking solidity about them (even if they look like second cousins to the kaiju from Pacific Rim), and Godzilla himself is a leaner, meaner looking version of himself (though the problem of scale is still an issue – he’s taller in some scenes and shorter in others depending on the background). Monster-wrangling for the second time, director Gareth Edwards shows his obvious empathy for the material and despite its limitations, rescues large chunks of it from the mangler. He has a visual style and flair that is reminiscent of early Spielberg, and he has a firm grasp on how to stage the final showdown, paying special attention to the framing and using the most effective camera angles. There’s a kinetic energy to these scenes that is lacking in the rest of the movie, but it does add up to a more satisfying conclusion.

Rating: 4/10 – woeful for the most part, and just plain horrible to sit through at others, Godzilla lurches on to the big screen like the big, lumbering beast he was in the Fifties and Sixties (though minus the saggy underbelly); embarrassing to watch at times, and with no clear idea of what to do for the first ninety minutes, the movie is only slightly better than Roland Emmerich’s 1998 version, and is saved by the panache of its final showdown.