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War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

10 Thursday Aug 2017

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D: Matt Reeves / 140m

Cast: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Karin Konoval, Amiah Miller, Terry Notary, Ty Olsson, Michael Adamthwaite, Toby Kebbell, Gabriel Chavarria, Judy Greer

With so many franchise trilogies out there at the moment, and with so many of them failing to maintain a consistent level of quality across all three movies, what are the odds that a series based on a previous five-movie saga – which went from genre classic to tired afterthought – would prove to be the trilogy that bucked the trend and have the most impact? For such is the case thanks to War for the Planet of the Apes, the final entry in a trilogy that has been consistently impressive from start to finish, and which has raised the bar significantly in terms of motion capture performances.

The success of the series can be attributed to the seriousness, and the sense of purpose with which each entry has been approached. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) introduced us to a world where the potential of apes superseding humans was a tantalising prospect. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) took us deeper into that world and showed how intolerance and distrust on both sides could be exploited by personal agendas. And in War for the Planet of the Apes we see the inevitable consequences that arise from attempting to avoid a future that has been predestined ever since Will Rodman created ALZ 112. The whole trilogy has been a triumph of storytelling and characterisation, and thanks to the efforts of everyone involved, has ended on such a high note that if Chernin Entertainment and 20th Century Fox do decide to continue the saga (as seems to be the plan) then they will have a massive job on their hands to equal or improve upon what’s gone before.

Since the events of Dawn… Caesar (Serkis) and his tribe have retreated further into California’s Muir Woods, but their hope for a peaceful, undisturbed existence is short-lived. A paramilitary group called Alpha-Omega has tracked them down. The group launches an attack on the apes’ home, but are repelled. Caesar spares the lives of four men, and tells them to report back to their leader, Colonel McCullough (Harrelson), that he hasn’t started this war, and he just wants his tribe to be left alone. Later, the soldiers return at night, and this time the apes suffer greater casualties than before. Caesar, determined to put an end to these endless skirmishes once and for all, decides to find the colonel and kill him. He intends to go alone, but his chief advisor, orang-utan Maurice (Konoval), gorilla Luca (Adamthwaite), and chimpanzee Rocket (Notary), all follow after him. Caesar allows them to accompany him, and while the rest of the tribe journey in search of a new home, the quartet travel to the “border” where the colonel has his base. Along the way, they encounter the daughter of a soldier, Nova (Miller), who cannot speak; Maurice insists that she continue on with them. Further on they meet Bad Ape (Zahn), a chimpanzee who helps them locate McCullough’s compound.

By this stage of the movie, many viewers may feel that they know what will happen next, and how, but one of the strengths of Mark Bomback and Matt Reeves’ script is its willingness to take the material into much darker territory than anyone might expect. To this end, Caesar undergoes both a crisis of faith and an apotheosis, and the moral certainties and imperatives that govern the actions and motives of both Caesar and McCullough are thrown into sharp relief by the similarities they exhibit. Although nominally the movie’s villain, and despite his resemblance to Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now (1979), McCullough isn’t the cut-and-dried bad guy that he first appears to be. Driven by the same fears of species annihilation that occupy Caesar, McCullough has glimpsed humanity’s future and the sight has scared him badly. Operating out of fear and a desperate sense of protectionism, the colonel behaves in ways that are both understandable and reprehensible, and it’s this dichotomy that makes the character such a good adversary for Caesar.

For his part, Caesar is still trying to deal with the ramifications of his killing Koba (Kebbell), and what that might imply in terms of his ability to lead his tribe. This element of self-doubt, itself riffing off the precept that “ape shall not kill ape”, adds further depth to a character who has always challenged the assumption that the apes’ fate is pre-determined. As time has gone by and his goal of peaceful assimilation has been repeatedly derailed by human intransigence, Caesar has become all too aware that mutual annihilation may be the eventual outcome of the apes’ struggle with their human counterparts. He knows that killing McCullough is necessary but finds that it’s not as simple as he thought it would be, partly because of the nature of the colonel’s compound (where apes are used as slave labour), and partly because he can’t fully excuse some of his own behaviour (which he sees reflected in McCullough’s actions).

The movie also deals with issues of social exclusion, both ape and human, and has a political edge that adds further realism to what is essentially a fantasy-based parable of human folly on a grand scale. There are succinct parallels to modern-day events happening in the real world that make it seem as if Bomback and Reeves have a prophetic ability that the movie can capitalise on, while for those who want to explore the idea, there’s the possibility that the apes represent another tribe searching for a place to settle in peace. All this aside, War… is further strengthened by a tremendous central performance by Serkis as Caesar. It’s been mentioned elsewhere, but Serkis’s performance is so powerful and so emotionally layered that if he’s not nominated for any acting trophies come awards season, then maybe a boycott is in order. Without Serkis, there’s little doubt that the trilogy would not have been as impressive and as compelling as it is. We’ve watched the character evolve over the course of three increasingly remarkable movies, and Serkis’s equally remarkable achievement deserves appropriate recognition.

Rating: 9/10 – a superb example of how to end a trilogy by not deviating from the path originally set out in the first movie, and by not sanitising it in any way, War for the Planet of the Apes is intelligent, emotive and complex movie making that wears its confidence on its sleeve as a badge of merit; featuring breathtaking cinematography by Michael Seresin (who was for a long time the go-to DoP for Alan Parker), expertly choreographed action sequences, clever references to the original Planet of the Apes movies, and by turns, a charged, stirring and poignant score courtesy of Michael Giacchino, this is easily one of the best movies of 2017 – paws down.

Out of the Furnace (2013)

22 Saturday Jul 2017

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D: Scott Cooper / 116m

Cast: Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe, Zoe Saldana, Tom Bower, Sam Shepard

There is a song by Sparks called Talent Is an Asset. It’s a turn of a phrase to remember when watching Out of the Furnace, the second feature by Scott Cooper, because without its very talented cast, the movie would not be as good as it is, and it wouldn’t be as persuasive. Cooper has taken a spec script by Brad Inglesby (who receives a co-writing credit) – and which originally had Leonardo DiCaprio and Ridley Scott attached to it – and made a movie that alternately baffles and convinces with its plotting. It’s a movie that takes over half its running time to get to the meat of the story, and which throws in a couple of sub-plots for good measure in order to pad out said running time.

It’s a tale that begins inauspiciously, in the small town of Braddock, with steel mill worker Russell Baze (Bale) discovering that his younger brother, Iraq War veteran Rodney (Affleck), is in serious debt to local bar owner and small town criminal John Petty (Dafoe). Without telling Rodney, Russell begins paying off his debt, but an unexpected and tragic accident sees Russell sent to prison. In the meantime, Rodney returns to Iraq for another tour of duty, their terminally ill father dies, and Russell’s girlfriend, Lena (Saldana), takes up with the town sheriff, Wesley Barnes (Whitaker) without even telling him. When he eventually gets out, he soon discovers that Rodney, who is now back home for good, is taking part in illegal bare knuckle fights in order to pay off his debt to Petty. Russell challenges him to work at the steel mill instead but Rodney refuses.

Rodney compels Petty to set up one last fight, one with a big enough payout that he can clear his debt and start his life afresh. Against his better judgment, Petty arranges a fight through one of his criminal contacts, a vicious drug dealer from the Ramapo Mountains called Harlan DeGroat (Harrelson). After the fight, evidence points to DeGroat having killed Rodney and Petty, but the police are hampered by the uncooperative nature of the Ramapo community, and DeGroat never being in the same place twice. Russell decides he has to take the law into his own hands, and he goes looking for DeGroat, but has the same luck as the police. And then he hits on an idea that will bring DeGroat to him…

Out of the Furnace has two clear ambitions: to be a tough, uncompromising drama, and to provide a snapshot of rural communities along the Eastern Seaboard of America, and their daily struggles to keep their heads above water. For the most part, Cooper succeeds in making the movie tough and uncompromising, and there are several scenes that exert a morbid fascination in terms of the characters and their acceptance of the way Life makes their situations worse than they need to be. Rodney can’t see a better way out of his financial situation, and so gets regularly beaten and bruised and bloodied. Russell comes out of prison and makes only a half-hearted attempt to reconnect with Lena (an attempt that is shot down in flames in moments). And Lena rues the decision she made in leaving Russell but is in a position where she can’t back out anymore. All this makes everyone’s life that much harder, and their various predicaments are what drive the movie forward. And then Russell finds himself in another corner, the one where he feels compelled to seek revenge for what’s happened to his brother.

Decisions and consequences, then, but ones that aren’t handled that well by Cooper, and ones that follow a very prescribed pattern. A scene showing DeGroat making and injecting heroin is interspersed with shots of a SWAT team advancing on the house where DeGroat is supposed to live. Not one viewer should be surprised when the SWAT raid reveals DeGroat isn’t home and that he’s somewhere else. This scene and others play out as if we’ve never seen them before, and while familiarity can be used to a director’s advantage, here they’re just stepping stones on a path too many of us have witnessed before. Cooper also connects the dots for the viewer at almost every turn, and there’s too much unnecessary exposition propping up these scenes to make them anywhere near effective. As for the backdrop of the town’s misfortune, aside from a brief mention that the mill is expected to close, the precarious nature of people’s lives and the decline of Braddock’s infrastructure is glimpsed but receives no further exploration.

With the story following a familiar through line, and Cooper finding it difficult to make the action as urgent as it needs to be, it’s left to the cast to rescue things. Bale gives a magnetic performance as Russell, a man with a strong moral code that brooks no compromise, and he’s matched by Affleck’s tightly-wound portrayal of Rodney, an Iraq War veteran whose seen too much and uses bare knuckle fighting to punish himself for being a part of it all (an aspect of his character which is barely explored but is a more effective reason for his fighting than paying off a debt). Whitaker, Saldana, and Dafoe offer strong support, taking largely underwritten characters and fleshing them out to good effect, but it’s Harrelson who steals the movie, making DeGroat one of the scariest, and yet charismatic villains of recent years. There’s something about Harrelson playing a psychopath that always seems just right, and here the actor gives an hypnotic performance that chills and repulses at the same time. In assembling such a great cast, Cooper has been lucky in that the material has been given a massive boost thanks to their overall commitment; but if they hadn’t agreed to take part…

Rating: 5/10 – an ambitious, rural-based thriller that isn’t as muscular or compelling as its writer/director intended, Out of the Furnace suffers from a muddled structure and too many scenes that exist in isolation of each other; saved by a clutch of very good performances, it remains a movie that should have made more of its deprived-area backdrop and even more of its generic revenge-based denouement. (20/31)

Mini-Review: Wilson (2017)

20 Saturday May 2017

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D: Craig Johnson / 94m

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Judy Greer, Isabella Amara, Cheryl Hines, Margo Martindale, David Warshofsky, Brett Gelman, Mary Lynn Rajskub

Wilson (Harrelson) is a loner with a strong misanthropic streak. He’s dissatisfied by most aspects of modern day living, and feels that communication isn’t what it used to be, that people are too insular. In an effort to combat this he’ll often approach people that are on their own, and try to strike up a conversation with them (and to their obvious consternation and confusion). In the wake of his father’s death, Wilson gets in contact with his estranged wife, Pippi (Dern), and against her better judgment they take the first steps towards being a couple again. During this time, Pippi tells Wilson something that gives his life a renewed purpose: he has a daughter somewhere.

Wilson soon tracks her down. Her name is Claire (Amara), she’s seventeen-years-old, and she’s a little overwhelmed when Wilson and Pippi suddenly turn up out of the blue. They try to spend time with Claire, but it’s difficult as they want to keep Claire’s adoptive parents in the dark about it all. Eventually the three of them embark on a trip to visit Pippi’s sister, Polly (Hines), and her family. The visit doesn’t go so well, and Polly works out that Claire’s parents don’t know where she is. The police are called, and Wilson is arrested on a charge of kidnapping. He winds up in prison for nearly three years. When he gets out, he finds that people are still as insular as ever, and that his life is about to take a turn for the better – probably.

Adapted by Daniel Clowes from his own graphic novel of the same name, Wilson was meant to be director Alexander Payne’s next project after Nebraska (2013), and with that knowledge in mind it’s tempting to wonder what the movie would have been like if he’d stayed on board. It’s not that Wilson is a bad movie, but it is one that can’t quite decide whether it wants to be a relationship drama, a bittersweet comedy, or something else entirely. What it is in the end, is a movie that flits back and forth between drama and comedy, and in the process fails to do adequate justice to either of them. The drama lies somewhere in the relationship between Wilson and Pippi, and the longer we see them together the easier it is to understand why she left him in the first place. Wilson bemoans how little people communicate, but doesn’t understand that the way he does it, it isn’t always appropriate.

The comedy is almost exclusively laid at the feet of Wilson himself, with said inappropriate behaviour causing all sorts of (mostly humorous) problems. But sometimes he sounds as if he’s being belligerent instead of caustic, as if between them Clowes and director Johnson have lost something of the character’s tone in translation. Harrelson gives a good performance, offering an interpretation of Wilson that ranges from manic to brash to insensitive to contemplative and all the way back to manic. Dern is also good as Pippi, a woman with “a past” that she’s trying to overcome. There are hints that Pippi has an addictive personality, and Dern reveals this added layer to good effect throughout. But the movie as a whole doesn’t make Wilson as sympathetic a character as it needs to, and the fallout from this is that Wilson the movie becomes an exercise in watching boorish behaviour being rewarded through a series of unlikely reversals and setbacks.

Rating: 6/10 – a mixed bag approach to the material – much of it lifted wholesale from Clowes’ graphic novel – means the narrative plods along in places and gives Wilson a patchwork feel that it never overcomes; the kind of movie that may well find itself ripe for reappraisal in ten years’ time, right now it’s an unconvincing look at one man’s studied ignorance of others, and his inability to recognise his own shortcomings.

Now You See Me 2 (2016)

27 Saturday Aug 2016

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Now You See Me 2

D: Jon M. Chu / 129m

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Daniel Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Morgan Freeman, Jay Chou, Sanaa Lathan, Michael Caine, David Warshofsky, Tsai Chin

Ten questions you need to ask yourself while watching Now You See Me 2:

  1. Why would prison authorities allow convicted criminal Thaddeus Bradley (Freeman) access to computer equipment that would enable him to make threats against the Four Horsemen (“You will get what’s coming to you. In ways you can’t expect.”)?
  2. Pigeons? (Yes, pigeons.)
  3. How does Lula (Caplan) know so much about the Four Horsemen, including the reason why Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher’s character from the first movie) isn’t around any longer?
  4. Why is Dylan Rhodes’ (Ruffalo) attendance at a Four Horsemen “event” more suspicious to his FBI colleagues than his talking into his sleeve?
  5. How convenient is it that Bradley has just the form Rhodes needs to get Bradley out of jail?
  6. Chase McKinney (Harrelson) – unfortunate stereotype or unfortunate stereotype?
  7. How likely is it, in a sequence that lasts nearly four and a half minutes, that not one of the security guards notice the playing card as it’s whipped, zipped and slipped from one Horseman to another?
  8. How do lines such as, “But I don’t agree that we have a sackful of nada, ’cause we’re all here. That’s a sackful of something” get past the first draft stage?
  9. When did the FBI’s remit extend outside of the US?
  10. Could the screenplay by Ed Solomon have ended on a more absurd, ridiculous note than the surprise reveals made by Bradley?

Now You See Me 2 - scene

Rating: 4/10 – another poorly constructed sequel that plays fast and loose with logic, Now You See Me 2 wants the audience to like it as much as the mass London crowds go crazy for the Horsemen; slickly made but soulless, only Caplan makes an impact, and the magic tricks lack the first movie’s sense of fun, leaving the movie to rattle on for two hours without anyone having to care what happens to the characters (which is both a bonus and a relief).

Triple 9 (2016)

21 Saturday May 2016

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Triple 9

D: John Hillcoat / 115m

Cast: Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Woody Harrelson, Kate Winslet, Aaron Paul, Gal Gadot, Norman Reedus, Teresa Palmer, Clifton Collins Jr, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michelle Ang

Another script liberated from the Black List (this time from 2010), Triple 9 reaches us after having been optioned back in 2012 and with John Hillcoat firmly attached to the director’s chair. Back then, Shia LaBeouf was in place to play the lead, and Nick Cave was providing the score. But funding proved to be an issue and the movie languished in development hell until 2014 when financing was found and distribution rights were secured as well. Before then, LaBeouf left the project and was replaced by Charlie Hunnam, who in turn was replaced by Casey Affleck. During pre-production, casting choices also included Cate Blanchett and Christoph Waltz in the roles eventually taken by Kate Winslet and Woody Harrelson. And Nick Cave left as well, to be replaced by Atticus Ross.

All this is mentioned because Triple 9 is a movie that could and should have been better than the finished product. Whether or not it would have been with the talent proposed above we’ll never know, but upon consideration it’s unlikely it could have been any less disappointing. For a crime/action/drama/thriller with a top-notch cast and a director whose previous movies include The Proposition (2005) and The Road (2009), Triple 9 never really gets to grips with its own storyline, or makes the relationships between the characters at all convincing.

Triple 9 - scene3

The plot revolves around the efforts of a Russian mobster’s wife, Irina Vlaslov (Winslet), to free her husband from prison. In order to achieve this she hires a group of men consisting of three criminals – Michael (Ejiofor), Russell (Reedus) and his brother Gabe (Paul) – and two corrupt cops – Marcus (Mackie) and Franco (Collins Jr) – to steal a safety deposit box from a bank vault. This they do, but Irina refuses to pay them because what was supposed to be in the box isn’t there, and instead she insists that they have to take on another mission: the theft of data about her husband from a government storage facility.

In order to do this successfully, Marcus suggests they employ a triple nine scenario, an officer down situation that would see all other available officers sent to that incident’s location. He chooses his new partner, Chris (Affleck), to be the fall guy for their plan, and he begins to set things in motion. Using a local gang member as a patsy, Marcus arranges for Chris to be at an abandoned housing project on the day of the theft, but his plan doesn’t work in the way he’d hoped: a triple nine call does go out over the air but it isn’t Chris who is the officer down. Meanwhile, Michael and Franco retrieve the data from the storage facility, but what follows is a series of double crosses as everyone involved in the theft acts in their own, often murderous, interests.

Triple 9 - scene2

By the time these double crosses occur, the average viewer may well be wondering if they’re going to have anyone to root for. Certainly, Matt Cook’s well-regarded script seems hell-bent on eliminating as many of its lead characters as it can, and it may come as a surprise to discover just who is still standing come the movie’s finale, but with most of said characters getting what they deserve, each demise carries with it an increasing sense of ennui. It’s simply too difficult to care about any of them, whether it’s Ejiofor’s earnest gang leader, or Harrelson’s rule-bending detective. There’s not enough investment in any of the characters for an audience to identify with them or feel sympathetic towards them. Even Chris, with his arrogant sense of right and wrong, comes across as the kind of guy you’d avoid having a drink with.

There’s also the issue of the various sub-plots that are threaded throughout the movie, from Michael’s attempts to secure custody of his son – he just happens to have had a relationship with Irina’s sister, Elena (Gadot) – to Detective Allen’s (Harrelson) investigation into the bank robbery. While these and other sub-plots link together, they do so haphazardly and often without any sense that they’re always operating in the same milieu as the main plot or storylines. And it doesn’t help that, ultimately, the data in the storage facility (and the release of Irina’s husband) is treated like a McGuffin, used to drive the story forward but having no relevance over all.

Triple 9 - scene1

With the script and the drama proving too unwieldy and convoluted – the lengths Marcus goes to in setting up Chris being shot take up too much of the running time and seem unnecessarily complex – the characters are reduced to loosely sketched mannequins, moving around and reacting to things as the whims of the script dictate. The final half hour should have most viewers scratching their heads in amusement at the clumsy way in which Cook tries to wind things up neatly and with a bow on top. Instead of providing the audience with a satisfying and thrilling ending, the movie fizzles out and ends with a whimper and not a bang. It’s a movie that starts off promisingly with a well-staged bank robbery and getaway chase, and ends with an unlikely (and dramatically inert) confrontation in a car park.

Thankfully it’s not all doom and gloom, though that’s definitely the world the characters’ inhabit. Against the odds there are good performances to be had, with Ejiofor and Mackie giving their characters a far better grounding than the script allows them, while Winslet exudes icy menace with almost every glance. Affleck and Harrelson work well together, and there’s sterling support from Paul as the gang member who develops a conscience when confronted with the reality of the triple nine scenario. Fighting against the material, Hillcoat does manage to imbue proceedings with a nervous energy, even if he’s not able to be consistent, and the action sequences, even if they are reminiscent of Heat (1995), are still rousing enough to impress. And finally, there’s Nicolas Karakatsanis’ superb cinematography, which adds a febrile intensity to Hillcoat’s nervous energy, making the movie a pleasure to watch for its visuals if not its story.

Rating: 5/10 – with precious little back story for any of the characters, and a sense that Cook’s screenplay needed another pass, Triple 9 is a hard movie to get to grips with; stubbornly lacking in focus, it unfolds with all the inevitability of a tragedy but without the emotional content that would make it all the more rewarding.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015)

20 Friday Nov 2015

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Mockingjay Part 2

D: Francis Lawrence / 137m

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Donald Sutherland, Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Willow Shields, Sam Claflin, Elizabeth Banks, Mahershala Ali, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Natalie Dormer, Evan Ross, Elden Henson, Wes Chatham, Michelle Forbes, Patina Miller, Stanley Tucci

Picking up after Peeta’s failed attempt to kill Katniss, the final instalment in The Hunger Games series begins with a problem for both the makers and the audience to consider: should the movie launch straight into the rebels’ expected attack on the Capitol, or should it hold back and spend some time reiterating the relationships between Katniss and Peeta and Gale, and begin to explore the similar machinations of President Snow and his potential successor, Alma Coin? The answer is the latter, and while this decision allows for further layers to be added to Katniss’s ever-present self-doubt (and sets up the ending), it also has the effect of reminding the viewer that we’ve been here before – and in each of the three previous movies.

One of the series’ strengths has always been the way in which Katniss appears to be a stranger to herself while everyone around her finds her actions entirely predictable. It’s an idea that continues here, with the Mockingjay being used at every turn, even when she acts independently. But it’s in danger of becoming as unwieldy a plot device as the idea that President Snow has a camera in every home in Panem (as well as in every shop, and on every street corner… you get the idea). We get it. And if the decision to split Mockingjay the novel into two parts was so that the final movie could be all about the rebels’ final push on the Capitol, then why are we still going over old ground?

Mockingjay Part 2 - scene1

To be fair, it’s the price the movie makes for being faithful to Suzanne Collins’ source material. But what it also does is to make The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 longer than it needed to be, and curiously sapped of urgency once Katniss et al begin their progress toward the Capitol. There are too many scenes where characters stop to muse on their individual plights, and Peeta tries to sort out if his memories are real or lies constructed by his torturers in the Capitol. At first glance it’s all meaningful, and yet another indication of how careful the makers have been in grounding the action, but do you know what? It’s Part Four – we already care about these characters. All we want now is for Katniss to come face to face with President Snow, and for the promise of all those booby traps we’ve seen in the trailer to give us a thrilling, rousing, edge-of-the-seat kick-ass end to everything.

What we’re looking for is the kind of series’ ending we got with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011), but the action sequences, though expertly staged and choreographed – and which winnow out the surplus characters – just… don’t… bring it. It’s a strange awareness to have, to realise that the best action scenes have all appeared in the earlier movies, but there it is: even the underground fight against the Capitol Mutts suffers from over-familiarity as Katniss shows off the same bow skills we’ve seen before from Legolas and Hawkeye. And as mentioned before, there’s a distinct lack of urgency to it all, as the movie’s rhythm is maintained at such a steady pace that even when Katniss and her comrades are out-running a booby-trap at full pelt, you can sense the editing team of Alan Edward Bell and Mark Yoshikawa making sure it’s not shown at too full a pelt or their hard work elsewhere might be jeopardised.

Mockingjay Part 2 - scene2

And yet, somehow – somehow – the movie overcomes these drawbacks and proves to be a fitting end to the saga. It’s still an intelligent, and intelligently made, movie, and the effort in maintaining the good work achieved in the previous movies is clear to see, with returning director Lawrence once again steering things to tremendous effect. He’s aided by a returning cast who all clearly want to be there, and who are committed to ending the series as best they can. And for the most part, they succeed. Lawrence doesn’t put a foot wrong as Katniss, miring her in doubt and misplaced guilt, and keeping her insecurities to the fore in a performance that becomes all the more impressive for having been sustained across four movies. Hutcherson impresses the most (four words I didn’t think I’d ever write), his PTSD Peeta being a difficult role to pull off, but he makes short work of it, and in doing so, makes Peeta the most sympathetic character in the whole series.

Completing the “romantic threesome” is Hemsworth as Gale. Four movies in and he’s still the series’ one weak link, an actor so stiff he could throw himself at the enemy instead of shooting them, and still score a death. (Now if Sam Claflin had played Gale, then the often tepid romance with Katniss might have been more compelling.) Sutherland continues to play Snow with effortless malice; without his silky venom to play against, the rebellion would have appeared less than necessary. As his rival for power, Moore strikes a more strident note as Coin, and as Coin’s true nature becomes more and more clear, the actress withstands the temptation to become the series’ answer to Cruella de Ville (the clue’s in the hair).

Mockingjay Part 2 - scene3

Further down the cast list, Harrelson is sidelined early on; the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman has a few scenes that hint at a bigger, if obviously curtailed role; Claflin brings his trademark smirk to playing Finnick Odair, as well as a much needed sense of fun; Banks hangs around on the periphery of things as Effie; and Tucci is shoehorned in as Caesar Flickerman in a TV segment that goes against an earlier scene where Snow (very severely) chastises an underling. Everyone is present and correct, and director Lawrence coaxes good performances from everyone, making it incredibly easy for the audience to continue rooting for their favourite characters.

Whatever your feelings about The Hunger Games franchise – and there are plenty of nay-sayers out there – this has been one of the most surprisingly intelligent and well produced projects of the last ten years. Jennifer Lawrence has proved to be an inspired choice as Katniss Everdeen, and the world of the Districts has been so convincingly constructed that the plight of their inhabitants has been echoed by events taking place in the real world even now. And even though Suzanne Collins originally wrote her novels for the YA market, these are remarkably adult movies, with a strong sense of moral culpability and responsibility. A triumph then, and when all is said and done, one that few of us could have seen coming.

Rating: 8/10 – narrative hiccoughs aside, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is still head and shoulders above any other dystopian YA sci-fi series out there, and is a great showcase for what can be achieved if the intention is not to soft pedal any serious themes inherent in the material; thrilling (just) and chock-full of great performances, this is a fitting swansong to a series that has surprised and entertained audiences for four years and this despite getting increasingly bleaker as it’s gone along.

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (2005)

07 Thursday May 2015

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Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, The

D: Jane Anderson / 95m

Cast: Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, Trevor Morgan, Ellary Porterfield, Laura Dern, Simon Reynolds, Martin Doyle, David Gardner

In the Fifties, hard-working mother of twelve, Evelyn Ryan (Moore) is a champion contester, winning prizes ranging from a couple of dollars to bicycles to washing machines, and sometimes, larger cash prizes. But with her husband Kelly (Harrelson) drinking away his wages, these prizes often serve as ways to prevent or avoid financial hardship from overwhelming the family entirely.

Raising ten kids, Evelyn often has to find creative ways of managing their finances, and while some of her wins help keep things going, she finds Kelly’s self-loathing and violent outbursts always stop them from having to stave off creditors such as the milkman, Ray (Reynolds) and the bank. Their family life is a mix of minor crises – one of her sons is arrested for theft, their car breaks down when Evelyn and daughter Tuff (Porterfield) take a trip – and major ones – Kelly remortgages their home without telling anyone, Evelyn suffers a fall and cuts her wrists on broken glass.

As the children grow up and begin to leave home, in the Sixties, Evelyn is contacted by Dortha Schaefer (Dern), a fellow contester who invites her to join a select group of women called the Affadaisies. All are contest winners several times over and all live similar lives of domestic drudgery enlivened by their successes. Her first trip to meet the group (where the car breaks down), leads to her being late home, and scares Kelly into thinking that Evelyn has left him. The ensuing confrontation sees Evelyn standing her ground for the first time.

But when she discovers that Kelly hasn’t repaid the mortgage he took out without her knowing, Evelyn has to fall back on winning a major contest sponsored by Dr Pepper. If she can win, then it will mean their being able to keep their home, and the family, together.

Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, The - scene

An adaptation of the memoir by Terry “Tuff” Ryan, and with a screenplay by her, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio is an overly saccharine but enjoyable distraction from the usual dramatics of real life stories, and features yet another effortless performance from Moore. On the surface, Evelyn is a recognisable fixture of the Fifties: the outwardly downtrodden housewife who’s a lot more clued-in than people think. Moore had already portrayed a more dramatic version of the role in Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven (2002), but here she accentuates the nicer, more even-tempered qualities of her character, while retaining an inner steeliness that is more than a match for the violent paroxysms displayed by Harrelson’s Kelly.

As befitting an actress of Moore’s stature and skill, Evelyn Ryan isn’t just a perma-grinned caricature of a Fifties housewife, and nor is she written that way, but Anderson’s only-just-dialled-down-from-day-glo approach to the material often gets in the way, making Evelyn seem impossibly irrepressible despite endless provocation. But Moore shows the character’s strength and determination to keep her family together, and the willingness to make sacrifices to achieve that aim, in such a way that the viewer can only admire Evelyn and the efforts she goes to to ensure everyone is cared for and supported. She’s selfless beyond the call of duty, and Moore inhabits the role in such a way that you never question her motives or her view of the world around her.

Against this, Harrelson has his work cut out for him, as Kelly does appear – initially at least – to be the very embodiment of an emasculated man, his deep-rooted anger at the way his life has turned out eating him from within and spilling out in booze-fuelled rages. But Harrelson shows how hard Kelly is trying to be better, even if he can’t quite achieve it with any consistency, and the scene where Evelyn returns home from visiting the Affadaisies, and Kelly is mad with panic, shows a man who is terrified of being left alone with his demons. In a separate scene we learn the reason for his frustration and anger, and when it’s revealed, the level of Harrelson’s empathy for the character becomes apparent. Always hovering in the background, afraid and uncertain as to how to engage with his children, Kelly is the alcoholic elephant in the room, and Harrelson imbues him with a desperate, overwhelming neediness that makes him surprisingly sympathetic.

Covering over ten years, the movie does tend towards the repetitive in terms of its depiction of Evelyn’s success with contests, presenting as it does a parade of problems that are resolved by the acquisition of an appropriately helpful item (and culminating in the Dr Pepper contest), but there’s enough incident in-between times to make up for the feeling that it’s all been done before, and will be again. The sexual politics of the time are held up for scrutiny, with Doyle’s oily bank manager downplaying Evelyn’s role in financial matters, and Gardner’s blatantly unhelpful priest who exhorts her to “try a little harder” in her marriage.

Away from the performances, it’s the recreation of the Fifties and the early Sixties (in many ways a simpler time for the average American family) that most impresses, with Edward T. McAvoy’s production design, matched by Clive Thomasson’s set decoration, providing the movie with a look and a sheen that DoP Jonathan Freeman exploits at every opportunity. And Terry Ryan’s script is often at its most enjoyable when reprising Evelyn’s abilities at coming up with winning slogans and rhymes, their hokey cleverness a perfect summation of Evelyn’s own outlook on life: cheery, slightly folksy, and always optimistic.

Rating: 8/10 – some may find Evelyn Ryan’s unremittingly cheerful attitude to life a little too much to stomach, but to do so would be to miss the point of Moore’s performance and Terry Ryan’s reminiscences of her mother: that she viewed life as an adventure, whatever the circumstances; as such, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio scores heavily and brightly as a tribute to a woman whose unwavering attitude can – and should be – looked upon as inspiration for us all.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014)

28 Friday Nov 2014

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Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1, The

D: Francis Lawrence / 123m

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Donald Sutherland, Elizabeth Banks, Sam Claflin, Jeffrey Wright, Mahershala Ali, Willow Shields, Natalie Dormer, Stanley Tucci

Having been rescued from the Quarter Quell Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence), Finnick Odair (Claflin), and Beetee (Wright) find themselves in the underground fortress that is the new District 13, and which has been built beneath the ruins of the old District 13. While Finnick despairs the loss of his lover, Annie Cresta, and Beetee sets about helping the district leaders with their plans to take the fight to the Capitol, Katniss is asked to become the Mockingjay, the symbol of the resistance. She refuses, blaming the District 13 leaders – headed by President Alma Coin (Moore) and ex-gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee (Hoffman) – for not trying to save Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson), Annie, and Johanna Mason who are all prisoners in the Capitol.

Heavensbee decides it would be better to convince Katniss another way, and he arranges for her to visit the ruins of District 12. There she sees the devastation and the remains of her people and is visibly shocked by what’s happened. She agrees to become the Mockingjay but on the condition that the captured Victors are rescued and granted full pardons. Coin agrees and Katniss becomes a part of the rebel propaganda campaign, appearing in videos that are broadcast across the districts and eventually, into the Capitol. These videos lead to uprisings in some of the other districts, including the destruction of the dam that provides the bulk of the Capitol’s electrical power.

An attack on District 13 follows but the underground fortress isn’t breached. Coin sends a team led by security chief Boggs (Ali) and Gale (Hemsworth) to rescue the captured Victors. They find their way in with ease, helped immeasurably by Beetee’s jamming of the Capitol’s security signals. But when Beetee’s transmissions are interrupted, and President Snow himself reveals his awareness of the rescue attempt, the safety of Gale and Boggs and the rest of the team hangs in the balance.

Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1, The - scene

It’s a rare movie in any franchise that opens with two scenes showing characters in utter despair, but The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is so confident in its set up, and what it needs to do in this necessarily darker episode, that these two scenes act both as a brief summation of where the story has been and where it is now. It’s also exposition given added weight by an emotional heft that exposition generally doesn’t carry, and gives notice that the writers – Danny Strong and Peter Craig – aren’t going to take the easy route in adapting the first part of Suzanne Collins’ final book in the Hunger Games trilogy.

In fact, this is an even more carefully assembled, and thought out, screenplay than the one that made The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) so effective. Here, the political machinations are more exposed, the betrayals and compromises crueller than ever, and Katniss’ sense of being alone (even with Prim (Shields) and her mother, and Gale to support her) heightened even more. It’s a movie that looks at the loss of hope and the suspension of faith, and emphasises the way in which personal sacrifice almost always comes at a cost. It’s a bleaker, more anxiety-ridden movie, and in being true to the original source, furthers the series’ own integrity.

The introduction of President Snow’s District 13 counterpart, Alma Coin, is handled incredibly well, with Moore proving an excellent choice in the role. Fans of the book will know where the narrative takes President Coin, but for now the script provides very subtle clues as to the nature of that direction, and Moore gives a clever, finely tuned performance that provides a perfect foil for Sutherland’s spider-like turn as the malevolent Panem president. (It’s a shame that the best verbal sparring is reserved for Snow and Katniss – seeing Coin and Snow exchanging words would be an intense and fascinating encounter.) Moore isn’t on screen a lot but when she is, Coin is an enticingly vivid presence.

But the focus is, of course, on Katniss, and the way in which she deals with this new direction in her life. Lawrence is an intelligent, perceptive actress and she handles the demands of the role – again – with a fierce determination that matches the character and the journey she’s making. Katniss may not be the most emotionally stable young woman you’re ever likely to meet, but she has an inner strength that Lawrence brings to the fore with accomplished ease. Watching her reaction to the horrors of a devastated District 12 shows just why it’s now so difficult to imagine anyone else in the role, so completely does she inhabit the part.

The rest of the characters share varying amounts of screen time, with Gale having a larger part to play this time round, and Effie Trinket (Banks) also benefitting from an expanded role (that wasn’t in the novel; Banks’ previous performances convinced Collins the character needed to be more involved in the final two movies). A newly sober Haymitch (Harrelson) proves less effective as a character, but the actor rises to the challenge of providing the same (required) turn in each movie. Heavensbee reveals himself to be a clever, thoughtful manipulator, and Hoffman has fun with the role, a genial smirk never too far from his features. The relationship between Katniss and Prim continues in the same fashion as before, with their mother still given a background role, and Katniss’ affection for Gale is barely mentioned, leaving her (presumed) love for Peeta to take centre stage. This dynamic, always in doubt during the previous two movies, begins to coalesce into something more tangible here, and leads to one of the most heart-rending, and shocking, scenes in the series so far.

Returning to the director’s chair, Lawrence continues to be a wise choice for the hot seat, and keeps the focus on the characters and their relationships to each other, emphasising the emotional ups and downs that Katniss has to overcome, and the difficult path she has to take as the rebels’ figurehead. Lawrence also keeps the action on point, each sequence plotted and designed for maximum effect, and he brings the other featured districts to life with a well thought out economy. There’s another stirring score courtesy of James Newton Howard, and Jo Willems’ photography maintains the visual style of the previous movie while adding a grittier sheen to things.

Rating: 9/10 – with one more movie to go, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is a memorable, thrilling addition to the series, and perfectly sets up Part 2; with a handful of superb performances, and a director firmly in control of the material, this instalment stands as a perfect example of how to make a bridging chapter relevant and exciting in equal measure.

Free Birds (2013)

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

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Free Birds

D: Jimmy Hayward / 91m

Cast: Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Amy Poehler, George Takei, Colm Meaney, Keith David, Dan Fogler, Jimmy Hayward

With an opening sequence reminiscent of Chicken Run (2000), Free Birds has scrawny, unliked turkey Reggie (Wilson) trying to convince his fellow meals-in-waiting that being picked for “turkey paradise” isn’t as great as it sounds.  When the US President arrives at their farm to choose that year’s Pardoned Turkey it’s Reggie’s luck to be chosen.  After adapting to a lifestyle spent watching TV and ordering in pizza, Reggie ends up being coerced into helping fellow turkey Jake (Harrelson) who is determined to travel back in time to the first Thanksgiving and ensure that turkeys are taken off the menu forever.  Using a time machine called S.T.E.V.E. (Takei) that is hidden underground at Camp David, Reggie and Jake travel back to 1621 to the Plymouth plantation and meet up with the local turkey colony led by Chief Broadbeak (David).  With the planned Thanksgiving feast only days away, and the turkeys being hunted by cruel Myles Standish (Meaney), it’s up to Reggie and Jake to convince Chief Broadbeak and his daughter Jenny (Poehler) to take the fight to the settlers.

While it’s high concept storyline and Back to the Future-style plotting offers nothing new, Free Birds tries its best to entertain, throwing in a few clever jokes and keeping it light.  It’s not too demanding, and for children below the age of ten it should be diverting enough but there’s a lack of charm that seriously hurts the movie’s chances of broadening its audience.  The storyline is weak and underdeveloped, and there’s too much reliance on Reggie’s verbal schtick to pad out the uncomfortable dialogue.  With many of the ideas and speculations from Robert Zemeckis’ trilogy trotted out like badly tuned homages, Free Birds also proves derivative rather than referential, leaving the underused Takei to save the day as the time machine.

TURKEYS

The characters are painted with broad brushstrokes, leaving the cast with too much work to do to make the audience connect with anyone.  Wilson plays Reggie like a nerd with a persecution complex, rarely deviating from the standard vocal patter he uses in live action movies.  Harrelson is saddled with a bigger problem playing the loveable lunkhead Jake, a character so one-dimensional it’s amazing the actor manages to add some light and shade to his performance.  Takei aside, the rest of the cast make next to no impression at all, and the roles could have been played by anyone without any significant improvement or change.  With the script proving so undercooked, it’s often a relief to see that some ideas – the Hazmats, the President’s narcoleptic daughter – have managed to find their way in to alleviate matters.

Visually, Free Birds looks colourful and richly detailed but the movie lacks that zing that computer animation can bring to the big screen.  The time travel sequences look like they were filched from an Eighties animated movie, and the backgrounds don’t always look convincing.  That said, there are some stand-out sequences, the attack on the turkey’s hideout being one of them, but on the whole the movie isn’t visually strong enough to grab the attention; there’s not enough going on in the frame to fully occupy the viewer.

Hayward orchestrates the various elements with a lack of flair that keeps the movie treading water for most of its running time, and while he has a strong background in animation – he directed the much better Horton Hears a Who! (2008), as well as working on several Pixar movies – it’s a shame he’s let the material (co-written with Scott Mosier), and what appears to be a limited budget, get the better of him.

Rating: 5/10 – not the complete bust it sounds like but definitely one for a younger audience; a chore for adults then but leavened, thankfully, by some quirky humour.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

10 Tuesday Dec 2013

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Hunger Games Catching Fire, The

D: Francis Lawrence / 146m

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Lenny Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright, Amanda Plummer, Sam Claflin, Toby Jones, Jena Malone, Willow Shields

Picking up from the end of The Hunger Games, part two of the franchise – Mockingjay is being adapted into two parts, due in 2014 and 2015 respectively – sees Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) trying to fit in to a post-Games world where she is now seen as a symbol of hope for the beleaguered districts.  Becoming increasingly aware of the social injustice around her, Katniss tries her best to balance protecting her family from the less-than-veiled threats of President Snow (Sutherland) against the increasing demands made of her to be the symbol that promotes the resistance.  With things made even more difficult by her mixed feelings for Peeta (Hutcherson), and the attentions of Gale (Hemsworth), Katniss finds herself struggling to find her way in a world that is changing rapidly both around her, and because of her.

Aware of her increasing importance to the resistance movement, President Snow plots to destroy her with the help of new Games Master Plutarch Heavensbee (Hoffman).  In order to do this the next Hunger Games is designed to pit Katniss against the remaining winners in a kind of Best of the Best tournament.  She also has to contend with Peeta taking part as well and trying to keep him safe.  For his part, Peeta wants to keep Katniss safe in order for her to remain a beacon of hope.  With both of them striking deals with Haymitch (Harrelson) to protect the other, Katniss is unaware that their are deeper political manoeuvrings going on behind the scenes, manoeuvrings that will have a greater effect on her life than she could ever imagine.

As that awkward beast, the middle part of a trilogy, Catching Fire builds on the first movie’s strengths and benefits immensely from an even more assured and commanding turn from Lawrence.  She dominates proceedings from start to finish, eclipsing her co-stars with ease – no mean feat given the calibre of actors such as Hoffman and Sutherland – and gives such a layered, intelligent performance that it almost threatens to overwhelm the rest of the movie.  Full marks to director Lawrence and screenwriters Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt then for making Catching Fire such an exciting, dramatic episode that grips throughout, and successfully juggles the widening story arc with more intimate moments and the kind of cutting-edge visuals we’ve come to expect from big-budget sci-fi movies.

Hunger Games Catching Fire, The - scene

With the movie in such assured hands, Catching Fire is free to impress on even further levels: the gritty realism of District 12 contrasted with the spectacular opulence of the Capitol, both triumphs of art direction and production design; the costumes courtesy of  Trish Summerville (her costumes for Effie Trinket (Banks) are even more outlandish than those of the first movie); the score by James Newton Howard, by turns austere,  stirring and richly evocative from scene to scene, supporting effortlessly the emotional and physical elements; and the superb photography by Jo Willems, a feast for the eyes and even more impressive when seen at an IMAX cinema – the Hunger Games tournament is played out in the full IMAX format; it adds a whole new dimension to the movie, and the scale is suitably impressive: the lagoon seems impossibly huge and the forest thickly impenetrable.

But the scale of the movie is nothing without the characters that inhabit it, and here the cast display a greater confidence in their roles, while newcomers such as Hoffman, Claflin and Malone fit in with ease.  As already noted, Lawrence is excellent, while Hutcherson and Hemsworth overcome the limitations of the source material to forge much stronger characters than you’d expect.  Sutherland is as icy as the President’s name implies, and Hoffman creates a devious sadist in Heavensbee: all self-satisfied smiles and preening behaviour.  Tucci excels (as always) as the overly coiffed broadcaster Caesar Flickerman, Wright and Plummer have small but important roles as fellow Victors Beetee and Wiress, and once again, as Haymitch, Harrelson proves what a versatile actor he is by nearly stealing the movie out from under Lawrence – but only nearly.

With two more films to come, the producers have given themselves a hard task to overcome.  Catching Fire, in terms of the novels, was the point at which author Suzanne Collins began to lose her grip on the overall storyline.  Where Katniss and Peeta and Gale go from here is already known by millions; the trick will be to turn what was a largely disappointing resolution to Katniss’s story into something as exhilarating as this adaptation.  It will be interesting to see if they manage it.

Rating: 9/10 – a bold adaptation that retains all the strengths of the novel, and manages to jettison all the aspects that marred it; a rare sequel that stands on its own and towers over its predecessor.