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Tuesday 17 December 2013

New Release Review: 'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug'

                                               
click to enlarge
My goodness that was long. Really really long. Fortunately The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (or The Hobbit 2, as most everyone is going to call it) isn't as soporifically boring as its predecessor; not an accolade worth framing, but a fact I greatly appreciated it.

The story so far: Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and his dwarf companions, plus Gandalf (Ian McKellen), have made a reasonable start on their journey to the Lonely Mountain, where they're going to try to steal from a dragon. Other things happened in the first film, but 'happened' may be too strong a word: a lot of the happenings consisted of little more than eating, singing and a spot of walking. At the start of the second film our heroes are still working hard on the walking - and as they plod along, dark forces are rising. So far, so familiar. A trilogy of films in which there's lots of walking and some evil rising? I do believe this ground has been thoroughly covered elsewhere. To add to the feeling of déjà vu a lot of the dialogue sounds like its been lifted wholesale from the original trilogy: Gandalf speaks of an evil slowly manifesting (tick), tells a cobbled together fellowship that a path is probably safe, when it's no such thing (tick), and has to abandon the group to check out a gut feeling he has (tick). This gives the impression that Tolkien's Middle Earth can only support a very narrow form of storytelling. Which I doubt. The more likely reason for the déjà vu is that Peter Jackson can't let go of The Lord of the Rings. Time and again he tries to tie The Hobbit to the original trilogy in ways that it neither wants nor needs. The most notable example being the inclusion of Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and a love interest, Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly). Their storyline has been invented wholesale by Jackson, and the only reason it's remotely bearable is because Lilly has (by my count) at least three facial expressions more than Liv Tyler, who had an equivalent role in The Lord of the Rings.

Elsewhere things are more promising. Freeman is still great as Bilbo, the soaring vistas are as jaw dropping as they've ever been, and the action is more involving and less video game-y than in the first film. The choreography during these sequences is particularly inventive. Especially the brilliantly absurd barrel fight, during which one dwarf takes down several squads of orcs whilst tumbling down a mountain. It's a scene reminiscent of Jackson's early films, which were prone to demented flights of fancy. The down side to this moment is it crystallises one of the film's main problems: the orcs are the least lethal creature in all of Middle Earth. Their kill count is - and this is being very charitable - a little low. They're terrible at their job. I'd estimate that at least two hundred orcs die for every elf, hobbit, or dwarf they kill. Maybe three hundred. If the film weren't two hours and forty minutes long then this might be less apparent. But because it goes on (and on, and on) there's plenty of time to muse on its flaws and incongruities. Such as: who would work as a builder in Middle Earth? Aren't the chances of dying whilst carving a stone step into a miles high mountain pretty high? Whose paying to have the work done? Is it just more work done by the orcs? Are the orcs slaves? If they're not slaves then why would they sign up to the orc army? Where are all the female orcs? Are there little orclings being left fatherless by all the death and dismemberment left in the wake of Bilbo and the others? The random ruminations go on.

Long story short: The Hobbit should still be a single film. No it doesn't matter that Jackson is also adapting the appendices. If Tolkien thought the notes and histories he put into the appendices should be in the book itself, then he'd have put them in the book. Unfortunately we're not going to be getting one film, but maybe one day someone will put together the anti-Director's Cut, a single three-hour film. A simple tale of one hobbit's journey, unadorned by superfluous storylines and tedious discussions on what everyone's father, or father's father, did or did not do to get them into their present circumstance. Focus on Bilbo, and focus on the greed that drives the men, the orcs and the elves, and you have a story worth telling. I'd bet that could be done in a single 180-minute sitting, and it'd be a film worth seeing. I can't say that of what Jackson has produced so far.

Overall: 6/10
or
The Actual Story: 8/10
The Appendices: 6/10
The Newly Invented Twaddle: 4/10

Monday 9 December 2013

New Release Review: 'Blue is the Warmest Colour'


What people find sexy differs wildly. Me? I've always found a fleeting touch, stolen glance, or first kiss carries a greater charge than the point to which it's all leading. Anticipation is everything. (In films that is. In real life I find... I find it to be none of your business what I find. Move along.) Blue is the Warmest Colour is 90% stolen glances and 10% getting down and dirty. In a film with a running time of three hours, that's an awful lot of down and dirty.

Supposedly the story is about 17-year-old Adèle's affair with the sultry and self-involved art student Emma (Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, respectively), but an hour passes before they first talk, let alone touch. The relationship is at the centre of the film, but it's not what it's about. It's about belonging. Adèle is forever trying to find where she fits in. She dates a boy, but that doesn't feel right; she's kissed by a girl in her class, but that leads nowhere; she hangs out with various disparate groups: artists, lesbians and, later on, colleagues (as well as, a little too randomly, and with next to no explanation, a gay best friend who materialises from nowhere), but she rarely feels at ease with any of them. It's during the film's early stretch, when this theme is front and centre, that the story is at its most promising. When Adèle's friends call her out on her distant manner (and her new friend Emma, who they all feel looks decidedly lesbian-y) Adèle has to lie to save face. When Emma first meets Adèle's parents she's also moved to lie, mentioning a non-existent boyfriend, as Adèle's father doesn't seem the understanding type. Abdellatif Kechiche, who directed and co-wrote the film, doesn't spend long on these moments. Moments which are fascinating and dramatic in a way that a lot of what follows isn't. The scenes of posturing, smoking and talking about philosophy and art (which are numerous, and so quintessentially French that they're verging on parody) are passable, but could easily have been scaled back so that more time could be spent on the turning points in Emma and Adèle's relationship. And then there's the sex scenes...

I'm all for sex. Sex is great. (Again, I'm talking about in film. Perverts.) But here it feels glaringly out of place, despite the subject matter. The act itself isn't the problem, it's how it's handled. Most of the film is shot in natural light with a roving camera, but in the sex scenes the lighting takes on a harsher quality and the camera is often in a fixed position; usually one that will give the clearest view of the sexual gymnastics. It looks seedy rather than real. I didn't come away thinking Adèle and Emma are falling for each other, or are passionate about each other. I didn't feel I understood their relationship better. What I did come away with was a clearer idea of the practicalities of lesbian lovemaking. (Although numerous lesbian critics have their own qualms about these sequences. Namely about whether they're more about fantasy than reality.)

It's circuitously frustrating that one of the film's greatest strengths - stretching out the central relationship so that what would feel clichéd instead feels like life - is also its greatest weakness. Cut back the running time and you have a fairly straightforward tale of love and loss, but if you draw it out it becomes all to apparent that Adèle is nowhere near as interesting as everyone around seems to think she is.

Overall: 6/10

Monday 25 November 2013

New Release Review: 'The Hunger Games: Catching Fire'


"If I want a movie that doesn’t end I’ll go to a French movie. That’s a betrayal of trust to me. A movie has to be complete within itself, it can’t just build off the first one or play variations."

So said the current reigning geek god, director Joss Whedon, when talking about Empire Strikes Back, but he might as well have been discussing Catching Fire; a movie with a long start, plenty of middle, but no discernible end.

Catching Fire picks up not long after Katniss and Peeta's surprise win (unless you happened to know the books are a trilogy, in which case it was markedly less surprising) in the first film. Katniss is now stuck playing up the fictional (or was it? *shrug*) romance that got the people of the Capitol to fall for her and Peeta, and that kept them both alive. Now an uprising is in the offing in the districts surrounding the Capitol, and Katniss must help quell it because it's somehow her fault - thanks to some very hazy logic - and the best way to do that is to convince the people that what she did in the arena was done out of love and not defiance.

Catching Fire is split roughly into two halves: the first sees Katniss trying to appease President Snow (Donald Sutherland) by convincing the districts that she really loves Peeta, the second, inevitably, details her return to the arena. It's during this stretch that Catching Fire is simply playing 'variations' (to again borrow from Whedon). The first film had the rather disturbing sight of children killing children; in the sequel it's the past winners who do battle, and they're not so young anymore. So instead it's just people killing people - which dials back the 'disturbing' somewhat. That this part of the film is at all affecting is almost entirely down to Jennifer Lawrence's faultless, and forceful, take on Katniss. Too many of the other actors fair less well: Sutherland underplays Snow's menace and comes off as a creep, rather than creepy; Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the mastermind behind the traps in the latest arena, seems to have wondered in off a completely different filmset (possibly a small quirksome indie film about waistcoat collectors); and Lenny Kravitz continues to be Lenny Kravitz. Which isn't exactly a criticism, but he does stick out a tad. Of the remainder most get short shrift and don't get to leave a mark, good or bad. Both Katniss's supposed love interests are given only a cursory amount of time (out of the fairly sizeable 2 hours and 26 minutes), suggesting that director Francis Lawrence is as disinterested in the Twilight-like love triangle as I am. More problematic is the fact that neither Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) nor Gale (Liam Hemsworth) are anywhere near as interesting as Katniss. They're noble and well meaning but have little else that defines them. So why be Team Gale or Team Peeta? Why not just be Team Katniss?

Balancing out the bad: there's the film's playful dissection of celebrity (which it unfortunately forgets about once the games begin), the special effects work from the perfectionists over at Weta (who have done a better job of realising the arena than Suzanne Collins, the author of the books, managed), a slightly unhinged Jena Malone as one of the returning winners, and Sam Claflin as the lantern-jawed Finnick Odair - who makes a bigger impression in his first 60-seconds on screen than either Hutcherson or Hemsworth have managed over the course of two films. Hell, he practically had me swooning. I realise I was essentially saying 'scrap the teams' earlier, but I do believe I'm Team Finnick.

Ultimately Catching Fire feels like a film of moments. Good ones. But they come round so very rarely.

Overall: 6/10

Monday 18 November 2013

New Release Review: 'Philomena'


As Philomena's credits rolled the collective audience at my screening let out a unanimous 'ahhhh', of the oh-how-sweet variety (as opposed to the oh-the-horror variation). It's that reaction - and the fact that most of those cooing over the film were racing towards pension age - that'll keep far too many people away. It looks like a film made for my mother and your mother and, really, everyone's mother. It looks like a film by the director of the at times too placid, and TV-movie-esque, The Queen (which it is). It looks unlikely to bother anyone; but it's so much better than how it looks.

Philomena is based on a true story written by ex-journalist Martin Sixsmith, here played by a very deadpan Steve Coogan. Sixsmith is approached with a dilemma: Philomena (the perpetually award-worthy Judi Dench) has been searching for her son for 50 years, having signed him away to a nunnery when she was very young, for reasons of guilt, as well as her lack of means. Sixsmith agrees to meet Philomena and, seeing an angle for a newspaper column, grudgingly takes on the 'human interest' story. The pair travel to Ireland, America, and back, bickering mildly as they go. Now that description sounds as dry and restrained as Coogan's performance. It doesn't get across what makes the film so effective: it's an odd couple movie. Sixsmith is the tight-laced one, distant, bitter and scathing, and an atheist through and through. Philomena is the goofy one, prone to non sequiturs, a keen romance novel reader, with an unwavering belief in God. Their chemistry is so good you'll hope for a series of films with the mismatched pair. (Here I'd like to propose the title Philomena II: Philomena Strikes Again.) The circumstances that have brought them together may be dour, but the time spent with the pair never is. It is, by a long shot, the funniest film I've seen this year.

Stephen Frears, he that directed it, has an almost quintessentially TV movie themed story on his hands, but unlike some of his previous efforts Philomena is shot and acted in such a way to transcend those issues. It helps that it looks great, but more important than its looks, it helps that it has Dench and Coogan to hand, who make the story into more than just tabloid news fodder. There are evil nuns, minor conspiracies, religious differences, and other tensions besides, but Philomena manages to ground it all with humour as dry as the Sahara. Which isn't to say it's a perfect film. Stephen Frears, he that directed it, does his best to offer a counterbalance to each theme and character: religion:atheism, drama:comedy, good:evil, tabloid:high-art, and inevitably struggles to marshall all the competing elements. Is Philomena being exploited by Sixsmith or is there a balance between both their needs? A more difficult question to parse, is Frears (and Coogan and Jeff Hope, who wrote it together) guilty of the same? There's obviously no malice on their part, and Coogan and Dench's real life counterparts have given their blessing, but the film still struggles to answer those questions, and is often too forgiving of Sixsmith, pushing him towards several unlikeable acts, then letting him off the hook before he has to see them through - leaving the film's most important questions hanging unanswered. That the film is conflicted might not be so bad. In a warped way it suits the material to a tee.

Overall: 8/10 

Monday 11 November 2013

New Release Review: 'Gravity'


I don't like being underwater, feeling my lungs burn for oxygen. Even with scuba gear it doesn't get much better: being told to regulate your breathing, to take it slow and steady, leaves you wanting, needing, to do the opposite. It's an alien environment, and we're far from well adapted to it. Gravity takes that feeling and runs with it. Set 420 kilometres above the Earth, in a zone called the thermosphere, Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is working on the Hubble Space Telescope when things go awry - and the outer reaches of our atmosphere isn't a place where you want things to awry. Left tumbling through space after satellite debris tears into the telescope, Stone's first problem is... Well her first problem is that she's tumbling through space. Her second problem is that her oxygen is running out. At this point Gravity is barely 10-minutes into its story, and things aren't going to improve much for Dr. Stone.

Let's start with the plaudits: Gravity is beautiful. It's either a string of virtuoso set pieces (I counted at least six) or it's just one big set piece. The hyperbole on the posters is, for once, actually accurate: it's 'nail-biting' and 'armchair-rending', it'll have your 'stomach twisted in knots' and your 'lungs screaming for air'. There wasn't one shot, one moment, that made me question whether what I was seeing was real. It was so immersive, so believable, that when Stone's oxygen ran low I switched to short steady breaths, just like I'd been taught; when Stone couldn't breathe, I didn't breathe; when she needed to hold on tight, or else be thrown into oblivion, I held tight (albeit to my armchair, which is probably less structurally sound after I'd pulled at it for 90-minutes). Gravity is a thrill ride.

Now, with that hearty backslapping out of the way, onto the nit picking. Gravity is a survival tale set not just in the most brutal environment in existence, but also the most isolated (or isolating?). Our heroine is truly alone - and we are alone with her. Which is where things get problematic. Bullock is great as the distant, anxious, specialist whose on her first space mission, but there's no reason to care about Stone. Bullock is playing an everywoman in the same way that Harrison Ford and Jimmy Stewart played the everyman, and the point of such a character is that we're able to put ourselves into their shoes. And we do (not least because Cuaron often uses a first person perspective, forcing us to see things through Stone's eyes), but to really make that work, to really make the film a masterclass of filmmaking - which Cuaron's Children of Men was - you have to care about Stone beyond a general feeling of 'Ooooooh, gee, I'd hate to be in that situation'. In Children of Men the characterisation may have been secondary to the technological wizardry, but in Gravity it feels like characterisation comes third or fourth on the list of priorities.

That said, Gravity is impressive. It is astounding. But, more than anything, it's a roller coaster ride in space.

Overall: 8.5/10

Tuesday 5 November 2013

New Release Review: 'Thor: The Dark World'


The unimaginatively titled Thor: The Dark World opens thusly: the coming Convergence (also known as: plot convenience) allows the Dark Elves - the sworn enemy of Odin and his brethren - to travel where they like. They intend to use the Aether (also known as: the MacGuffin) to make themselves invulnerable and convert the dark matter of the universe into, um, darker matter? Or something. Honestly I'm not sure. Anthony Hopkins' Odin seemed as bored giving the exposition as I was on hearing it. The main thing to take away is that the Dark Elves should be kept away from the Aether, which has found its way into the bloodstream of Natalie Portman's astrophysicist (because if it didn't then Portman would have nothing to do). Whilst all this is going on Tom Hiddleston's Loki sits in a cell, stealing the film whilst going nowhere and doing nothing, having misbehaved a tad during the events of Avengers Assemble.

MacGuffins are a given in action films, and even more so in comic book ones. They're not always a bad thing. They can be used well. The first film had a MacGuffin of its own, The Tesseract, but it was smartly deployed. In Thor: TDW there's no sense of weight or history to the barrage of MacGuffins we're told about. The Marvel comic books might have a long history involving the Dark Elves, the Aether, and the rather handy Convergence, but in the film they feel conjured from thin air. They're handy plot devices and little else. Somewhere out there is a cut of the film that shows why Malekith (Christopher Eccleston), leader of the Dark elves, has such a bee in his bonnet about Asgard; but after test screenings Aaron Taylor, the director, decided to cut them in favour of more Loki scenes. Now I'm all for more Hiddleston, but the scenes that have been added in - 'jammed in' as even Taylor admits - are fairly obvious. They're fun enough, but they slow things right down and tell us zero, zilch, and nada, about Malekith.

The film mostly focuses on getting Thor (Chris Hemsworth) - probably the least interesting character in the film after Kat Denning's intern Darcy - from one punch-up to another; which is a problem because Thor is just Superman with a hammer. He's an indestructible titan. At one point he gets punched in the face, repeatedly, by a demonic looking Dark Elf who is imbued with the power of something-something-blah-blah. After taking a beating that ought to have liquidated his organs and crushed every bone in his body, Hemsworth sits up with a couple of a slight scuff mark on one cheek. Yes, he's a superhero, and ought to be able to take the hits reasonably well - but there's no danger here. The only reason the final action sequence is even remotely entertaining is because of a fun distortion of time and space that means the battle rages through the air, atop skyscrapers, over mountains, and on different planets; but at no point is there any reason to fret over Thor's safety. He's a god. He'll be just fine.

That said, it is fun. And funny. Very funny in fact. None of the moments rival the first film's Thor-in-a-pet-shop moment, but Marvel still understand that Thor (and his brethren) are a little hard to swallow, even in a world full of men and women wearing capes and tights, and instead of ignoring that fact they highlight it, make fun of it, and in doing so the gods of Asgard almost seem to fit in.

Overall: 6/10

Monday 28 October 2013

New Release Review: 'Ender's Game'


A goodly few find science fiction to be silly, indulgent and puerile. There's certainly plenty that's just nonsense and fluff, but the same is true of any genre. Its worth is in how it can wrestle with big ideas by changing their form so that we come at them from a new perspective. Ender's Game (the film, rather than the book) is nine-tenths fluff, one-tenth big idea. That it is, for the most part, fluff isn't entirely director Gavin Hood's fault - it's just mostly his fault.

Condensing the set-up of Orson Scott Card's novel into a paragraph is probably futile, but here goes: Ender (Asa Butterfield) is being trained to become a master tactician because of an attempted invasion by an alien race 50 years before his birth. He's sent to battle school, which is on a space station in Earth's orbit. (Half of you will have already started to tune out, but stick with it.) The literal and figurative centre of the school is the Battle Room, a zero gravity chamber where the cadets fight. There's no up or down, no east or west; tactically it's brand new territory. Which is why Ender is so important. He's young enough to set aside his preconceptions and fight in a way his elders could never imagine. This is all just lead-in. What's at the heart of the story is the quote during the opening credits: "In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him." Ender is being turned into a weapon, but to become the perfect weapon guarantees he'll be a weapon that'll never fire, because how can he destroy what he loves? That's an interesting idea right there, and it's what Hood is supposed to be exploring. What he's actually done is produced a CliffsNotes version of the novel: it hits all the major story beats, but is ultimately lifeless. There's no tension to any of it. No risk. Instead Hood spends the first two-thirds of the film shouting about how the aliens WILL come back because, um, because they WILL! Which isn't a particularly good stand-in for actual tension.

Frustratingly Hood manages to get the hardest things right (the casting of Ender and the immaculate design of the Battle Room) but drops the ball when it comes to basic storytelling. He sprints through the story to suggest narrative momentum where there is none, and in his rush forgets to explain things that would help us connect with the impossible things we're seeing (the most notable thing to go unexplained is how battles are won or lost (or even fought) in the Battle Room, which is a rather crucial bit of info - if we don't understand that then we don't understand why Ender's as good as he is).

Hood is a workmanlike director, usually better suited to grounded dramas (Tsotsi) than anything sci-fi inflected (X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Here he simplifies Card's award winning book to such a degree that it'd be indecipherable to any who hasn't read it. It's only in the last few scenes that the film seems to escape its first act, finally telling the story it had been hiding in plain sight. But then it ends, and the credits roll.

Overall: 4.5/10

Minor spoilers! (highlight to read)
In a flashback/stock footage of the alien invasion we do battle against the invaders with fighter jets. Not futurist-type ones, but the ones we presently use. Jump forward 50-years and our tech, particularly that of our spaceships, is so powerful it would give Lord Vader and his Death Star pause. How did that happen exactly? And how did we build them and send them many many lightyears into the aliens home system by the time the story starts? From what I remember of the book this isn't an issue as we do battle with tech of a comparable level. Not sure why Hood changed that. It just adds to the film's many problems.

Monday 21 October 2013

New Release Review: 'Captain Phillips'


Paul Greengrass isn't very good with titles. In the tedious and patronising Green Zone the characters are in the Green Zone (the international zone of Baghdad); in United 93 we're on the plane United 93; in Captain Phillips we mostly follow - drum roll! - Captain Phillips. They're not terribly evocative titles but they're a good snapshot of what Greengrass is about: he's fact based and to the point.

Captain Phillips is set almost entirely at sea, so it's off to a good start (is there a better home for Greengrass' jumpy-jarring-shaky-cam then on a boat?), and is based on the true story of the first hijacking of a ship under the American flag since the 19th century. Looking like a ringer amongst a cast of (for the most part) unknowns, Tom Hanks plays the titular captain. Moments after his introduction we meet his soon-to-be adversary Muse (pronounced Moo-say), played by the spookily good Barkhad Abdi. Phillips is tasked with guiding his container ship safely round the horn of Africa, which means going through Somali waters; Muse is tasked, by a rather angry gun wielding warlord, with interrupting that journey. What then ensues is a battle for survival, as Phillips tries to outrun and then outmanoeuvre Muse, and it'll have you either nail-biting, armchair-rending or knuckle-gnawing - yes, you'll have to pick one, I went with armchair-rending, it's less masochist. The tension is unrelenting, but it's also exhausting. An audience can't be kept cresting on a wave of relentless danger forever. Eventually it needs to crash down, giving them a moments respite, as well as some pay off. Otherwise you have to switch off, or at least step back, to get some distance from it. Most thrillers and action films work to a 90-minute running time, and I'd hazard a guess that that's because when you edge past that number, particularly with a thriller, you risk tiring out your audience. At 134-minutes Captain Phillips goes well over. That the tension never abates is impressive, at least after a fashion, but it might have been better if it had abated a tad, at least for a short spell.

It's only in the closing scenes that Greengrass eases off. And what he does, and more importantly what Hanks does, in that last stretch is staggeringly good. Greengrass has done 'real world action' plenty of times, and he's better than anyone else at it, but it's when he deals with its repercussions that I think he becomes a real (and utterly compelling) storyteller. It's almost frustrating how strongly it finishes. It's like reading a 500-page tome that, although intriguing, is often vexing, and probably isn't one you'd shout about from the rooftops; except it then has the temerity to finish with such audacity and skill that that choice - along with the earlier nail-biting options - is taken away from you. I guarantee* that as the credits roll you'll feel the same.

Overall: 8/10
Hanks' closing scenes: 11/10 (yes I'm going to 11; the hyperbole is necessary)

*As this is the Internet I'm sure someone will eventually inform me that they were left unmoved and that my guarantee is worth naught. If you really are left unmoved, the odds are you're a sociopath. You can take that as a formal diagnosis.

Monday 14 October 2013

New Release Review: 'Filth'


Adapted from the book of the same name by Irvine Welsh - a book that was considered unfilmable, although the 'unfilmable' list grows ever shorter (just this year we've had Cloud Atlas, Midnight's Children, and As I Lay Dying) - Filth looks and feels like the bastard offspring of Alfie, Fight Club and Trainspotting, and that's no bad thing. It's anarchic, raucous, and uninhibited, but it's also ever on the verge of succumbing to the chaos and madness of its chosen subject: the unhinged Detective Sergeant Robertson (James McAvoy).

The story (or, in this case, 'the psychological landscape' might be a better term) follows DS Robertson as he juggles a shot for the position of Detective Inspector, a minor phone harassment case, and a seemingly straightforward murder case. He's also got other things preying on his mind pulling him in even more directions: his drug(s) habit; his psychiatric sessions with Dr. Rossi (Jim Broadbent), which quickly take a surreal turn; and his attempts to prove himself worthy of his family, particularly his wife.

McAvoy plays Robertson like an infinitely more warped version of Michael Caine's Alfie. He's got an endless stream of patter that distracts us, the people around him, and, after a fashion, himself as well. His machiavellian scheming is so all pervasive that it would give even Iago pause. What's impressive about McAvoy's performance is that Robertson inspires fascination more than hate. He's as close to irredeemable as an anti-hero gets, but just before he goes too far Jon S. Baird (the director, and the brave man who adapted the book) plays his trump card, increasing our understanding of Robertson tenfold and, just maybe, eliciting a tiny bit of sympathy for him.

The only thing that doesn't quite work is the psychiatric dream/hallucinatory scenes between Robertson and Rossi; they're important, for various reasons, but the tone and change of pacing trips up the film every time we come back to them. But considering how many of the madcap images and ideas the film tries out and nails, it's not as problematic as it might be in a more straightforward tale. Random sidenote: Rossi is a tapeworm in these sequences (a fact that I missed at the time). Make of that what you will.*

I don't know whether to recommend Filth; it's not as simple a thing to do as it usually is. Think of a book or film that exhilarated you but left you feeling like you'd been dragged through a hedge backwards: would you ask your friends or family to go through the same, knowing that the hedge dragging feeling is guaranteed but the exhilaration might not be? My gut says that it's worth chancing. What does yours tell you?

Overall: 8/10

*As I understand it the book had some chapters which were narrated from the perspective of a tapeworm living in Robertson's intestines, so it obviously ties in to the that, but how it plays into the themes of the film and the character - beyond some talk about the tapeworm's capacity for survival - is a tad unclear. If anyone knows, or wants to take a stab at guessing, please jot down your thoughts below.

Tuesday 8 October 2013

New Release Review: 'Blue Jasmine'


I don't get Woody Allen. I feel I should say that upfront. I've never found his comedies terribly funny or his dramas particularly dramatic. His awkward and nebbish delivery - or that of his leading men doing their best impression of him - is fine for a couple of minutes but gets trying over a couple of hours. Fortunately his nervous patter has calmed somewhat over the years and even when he lets his anxieties run wild in halting monologues, delivered by leads that are created from the same recipe he's been using for years (intellectual job + stutter + bon mots), it's rather less irksome when delivered by a woman, as it is in Blue Jasmine (and in Vicky Cristina Barcelona).*

Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine, a New York socialite whose husband (Alec Baldwin) is arrested after perpetrating a massive financial fraud of the Bernie Madoff variety. Jasmine loses everything and has to move in with her adopted sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), who lives in a cluttered apartment in San Francisco. Jasmine is desperate to return to her pampered lifestyle, and she does what she can to get it back, but her tenuous grasp on reality has a habit of getting in the way. Easily the best thing about Blue Jasmine is watching Blanchett hold her head high despite (as she sees it) the demeaning circumstances she now finds herself in. She's completely believable as the slowly unravelling, entitled Manhattanite, and I don't think she's ever been better. Even when the story lost me - which happened bang on the halfway mark - Blanchett didn't.

The problem with Blue Jasmine is that it has nothing to say. Nothing really happens and no one really changes. Which is about as close to a theme as Allen comes. All the characters are in stasis, unwavering and unchanging. Plenty of good and bad happens to both the sisters - they rarely deserve the good (such as a lottery win for Ginger and a wealthy husband for Jasmine) and they mostly don't deserve the bad (their entire world pulled out from under them). Life just happens. That's the main point of the film: life happens to you, whoever you are. You didn't deserve it and you probably won't learn from it. It's a bleak and simplistic point of view.

That Allen hasn't learnt anything as a director doesn't help. He made his first film back in 1966 and there's little to distinguish what he was doing then, to what he's doing now.

My advice would be to watch Blue Jasmine as part of a double bill with Richard Curtis's About Time. That way you can follow Allen's relentless pessimism with Curtis's relentless optimism, and come out a mostly balanced human being.

Overall: 6.5/10

*I'd argue that his mannerisms are less pronounced when women 'play' him, but it's equally possible that I'm just more tolerant of a beautiful woman being hyper-verbal and nervous than I am Allen (or one of his surrogates).

Tuesday 1 October 2013

New Release Review: 'Prisoners'


I do like a good thriller. They're rather rare. What trips most of them up is the third act: the moment that all the plot threads get tidied up and explained away. Come the credits the ground is usually scattered with red herrings that added little, thematically or otherwise, and numerous instances of characters behaving moronically to make sure the plot keeps moving forward. The best thing most thrillers can do is to treat the mystery like the villain in a horror movie: the less you can make out, the less you can see, the more fascinating it is. Once we see it in the cold light of day it's almost always disappointing, plain, and drab. So when you watch a story that not only hangs together, but also engages you, there's a good chance you've experienced something rare. That's how I felt watching Prisoners.

Denis Villeneuve's first english language film is as effectively restrained in its pacing as his last effort (Incendies). Waiting for the answers to Prisoners mysteries is agonising, and that burning desire for an answer will make us complicit in some dark things to come. The story: a pair of young girls disappear just outside their homes, right in broad daylight. In no time at all Alex (Paul Dano) is arrested, and never has a man looked more guilty, all greasy hair, ill-fitting glasses and - worst of all - a parka. But he isn't forthcoming and there's no proof with which to hold him. The man heading up the case, the rather incongruously named Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), is forced to let him go. Keller (Hugh Jackman) - father to one of the girls - knows it was Alex that did it. Or, rather, he 'knows' he did it in that 'my-gut-tells-me-so' fashion. Time is ticking on and the odds of a kidnap victim being found alive after 7 days is... Not good. So Keller kidnaps the supposed kidnapper and begins the task of breaking a man with the IQ of a 10-year-old.

It's a pulpy setup, but it's all so soberly shot (by the ever-brilliant Roger Deakins) and seriously acted that if often feels more like a straight drama than a thriller. Jackman gives his best performance since his criminally overlooked turn in the The Prestige. His coiled rage - at himself for losing his daughter, at everyone else for not finding her - gives every scene an edge of violence, even when he says or does nothing. Gyllenhaal is effective as the Detective, but I'm not sure his tics (particularly his hard blinks) add as much as he thinks they do, but he's never less than watchable. It's unlikely that Dano, as the possible culprit, will ever be better cast, having slowly dialled up his awkward and greasy persona that he first trialled in There Will Be Blood and has since tweaked and built upon (Cowboys & Aliens, Ruby Sparks, Looper).

The one thing that tarnishes the film is how slow Villeneuve makes Gyllenhaal's detective. There's a clue (that we're not supposed to realise is a clue) that we get at the same time as Gyllenhaal, and it's a striking enough visual that you won't forget it. Unless your Gyllenhaal. When another clue crops up that directly links to it (quite obviously), Gyllenhaal does little but blink hard and move on. I had to fight the urge to yell at the screen as if shouting at a would-be murder victim about to be stabbed. For a moment it'll look like he's got it, because how could he not? He's closed every case he's ever had. He's a supercop. But no, he just blinks at it even harder and wonders just what it's all about. Why can't he work it out? Because Villeneuve needs other things to happen first. It's the only moment the plotting slips up.

Also it's unclear what Prisoners is trying to say about vigilantism. Is it condoning Keller's actions? He wrestles with what he's doing, but not all that much. Plus it produces results, of a sort. As a study of a family torn apart and a man on the edge, the film's damn good. As a mystery thriller, it's pretty damn good too. But what it actually has to say thematically, about religion, family, intuition, and many other things besides, is less resonant and well thought out than I might have hoped.

Overall, despite its flaws: 8/10

Ish-Spoilers! (highlight to read):
There's a lot that's unclear, at least on first viewing, but the film's various plot threads just about hang together when you take the time to parse them. The visuals of the snakes and the mazes, Alex and Bob's real backstory (Bob being a sort of red herring, that actually isn't a red herring), are explained so briefly (and hazily) that they can be easily missed. I won't go into the whys and wherefores here, as I think most of you would prefer to work it out for yourselves - if you haven't already. I just thought it'd be worth noting that the film has fewer plot holes than has been suggested. It does have the odd narrative hiccup, but they're slight and do little to mar what is one of the year's better films.

Very Spoilery!
That being said, it was more than a little irksome when Gyllenhaal just walked into the actual kidnapper's house and caught them red handed because they left the door unlocked and suddenly went deaf - somehow failing to hear him knocking and shouting for them. 

Oh, and how does Alex have a driver's licence? Or any identification? When he was arrested shouldn't the police have found themselves chasing a false trail of IDs created or bought by Alex's 'Aunt'? 

Monday 23 September 2013

New Release Review: White House Down

White House Down Roland Emmerich 2012 Independence Day

''Oh my god, that's the President! He has a rocket launcher!''

It's because of that line, and that alone, that I watched Roland Emmerich's White House Down. It's a line that says 'Yes, what we're making is silly, now stop worrying about plot, character and logic, and just enjoy.' And I tried. I really tried.

It opens well enough, getting everyone in the right place at the right time, quickly introducing Channing Tatum's US Capitol police officer, Jamie Foxx's US President (a strange bit of casting that mostly works), and Maggie Gyllenhaal's Special Agent, all of whom are fairly likeable. In previous Emmerich films the plot mechanics required to get the story going have been so head slappingly stupid that a concussion is an ever present danger. Here it's all kept nice and simple. No plot somersaults required. Bad people have taken over the White House and one man (Tatum), a mostly ordinary man (except for his marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat skills, and his ability to induce shaky-gun-hand-syndrome in the baddies), must keep them from seeing through their nefarious plan to... Take over the government? Destroy America? Destroy everything but America? The actual plan turns out to be convoluted, counterintuitive and nonsensical. Which is fine because it really doesn't matter, it's just a means to an end - and that end consists of giving the President a rocket launcher. It's just a shame how long it takes to get there.

After the table setting of the opening act the film ought to have been one absurd set piece after another, interspersed with barbed (but just about respectful) bickering between Tatum's cop and Foxx's President. Instead the film pauses to move its pieces around again. For no real reason. Moving Gyllenhall over here, the baddies over there, and a bunch of other people (various heads of the Pentagon) over yonder. During which time the principals, Tatum and Foxx, sit in an elevator shaft doing nothing. No bickering, no arguing. Instead they just repeat what they see, just in case the audience can't work out what's passing before their eyes. The dynamic between Tatum and Foxx is non-existent. There's the occasional one liner, and a three stooges-type exchange when Foxx knocks Tatum over the head with a rocket launcher, but it doesn't add up to much in a film who's concept is good for about 80-minutes of screen time, but somehow goes on for 131-minutes. (You'll feel each and every one of them.)

I knew the film was going to be stupid, and I was ready to embrace that, but it actually needed to be stupider still. Too often it's trying to play it straight, aspiring to the lofty heights of Die Hard. Instead it should have revelled in its innate absurdity and taken a note out of Crank (or most any film with Jason Statham). Two decades back it would have been considered passable fare; it would sit neatly alongside the many thoroughly mediocre action films of the mid 90s (Executive Decision, Air Force One, Speed 2, The Siege, Mercury Rising, and many many others). Its villains certainly come from that era - one has the title 'King of Hackers' and couldn't look more out of place in this decade. (He can hack the Pentagon in minutes, with barely the press of a button, but he's somehow baffled by sprinklers. A plot point that also feels like it belongs in a different era.)

I'm sure Emmerich has the capacity to make a stupider film, since he already has (2012), what I'm less sure of is whether he can still make a fun one.

Overall: 3/10

Monday 16 September 2013

New Release Review: 'Rush'



I'd completely forgotten Ron Howard made Frost/Nixon. In fact after the barrage of mediocrity that was The Dilemma, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons I think I must have retroactively convinced myself that someone else made it and his other career high: Apollo 13. It's like he's two different directors, both unashamedly populist, but one is a journeyman, only interested in getting the job done, whilst the other believes in the material, heart and soul, and can make films as visceral and thrilling as the best of them. It's just a shame the latter version turns out so rarely. Fortunately that's the director we get in Rush, the true story of Niki Lauda and James Hunt's rivalry, two of Formula One's greatest ever drivers. 

If you're knowledge of Formula One matches my own - I know nothing, times nothing, carry the nothing - fear not: Peter Morgan's script deftly guides us through the strange world of going round and round in circles in a fast car. Morgan follows the usual movie arc of 'rise and fall, and rise again', but does such a good job of tapping into what makes the central duo tic that you forget you're watching a sports movie, with all the sports movie cliches that go with it. The bloody minded focus with which Lauda (played by Daniel Brühl) and Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) approached racing, in a sport where when someone gets in a car there's a 20% chance they won't be getting out again - at least not in one piece - is astonishing, commendable, and also a tiny bit insane. Hunt is passionate, hot-headed and prepared to take any opening, even at the risk of death. Lauda is smart, calculating and indefatigable. The dichotomy between the two sounds like a Hollwoodisation, conjured for convenience, but by all accounts it's true. What's great about the script, and Brühl and Hemsworth's performances, is that we're not made to see anyone as the villain. There's no obvious character to cheer for. Lauda and Hunt are two flawed men who need to leave a mark, and driving is the only way they know how. 

Plenty of other directors have tried to get across why watching cars going fast, in circles, can get the adrenaline going. One of Howard's most effective tools here is the sound design: the pulsating engines have a bass rumble so deep I could feel it in my ribcage. The sound was so hypnotic and energising that it wasn't till the end credits that I realised Hans 'Never-Known-For-Being-Restrained' Zimmer had done the score. Making Formula One either the perfect avenue for his thrumming (and of late rather blaring) soundtracks, or the worst. I'll let you know after I've seen it again.

It's only during the last act that the film loses its way a little. The driving sequences are just as thrilling, but Morgan suddenly forgets how to write exposition. The commentators, who up until that point had been well used to gives us an idea of who/what/why/where, begin to point out things that are clear to anyone with the power of sight. Which is annoying, but bearable. What's less forgivable is how they start telling us what the characters are thinking, when Howard has already made it absolutely clear what Hunt and Lauda are going through. But it's only a slight hiccup in what is easily the best film Ron Howard has ever made.

Go see it, and be amazed at how you'll care about one car going faster than another car.

Overall: 8.5/10 

Saturday 7 September 2013

New Release Review: 'About Time'


Richard Curtis’s latest isn’t terribly surprising. Actually it's never surprising. It’s affable and charming - even if it does stumble and bumble in the fashion of most of Curtis’s lead actors - and it's often well observed, with numerous little moments that make the world feel satisfyingly lived in; but surprise never numbers among its achievements.

There might be a warped argument for the film's pervasive feeling of stolid sameness in that Domhnall Gleeson (whose name I have misspelt three different ways thus far), who plays the awkward, self deprecating bundle of energy that is our hero, is rarely caught unawares, or at least not for long, since he can live each day or moment as many times as he likes, having inherited his family's 'gift', passed down from father to son: the ability to travel to any point in his past and, if he sees fit, alter it for (he hopes) the better. His principal aim? Getting a girlfriend and... Well... Actually that's it. He does ask his father (played by a surprisingly reigned in Bill Nighy) about using the ability to get money and power, but the suggestion is waved off; that path does not lead to happiness, and that's the last we hear of that possible plot avenue. It's one of the few moments when the film does things in short hand. After that it's all long hand. If a scene could be done and dusted in three terse lines, in About Time it's likely to play out for fifteen halting ones. Fortunately no one writes semi-incoherent stuttering like Curtis, and few have ever delivered it so well as the almost excessively likeable Gleeson.

The rest of the cast are no less likeable: Nighy is better than he's been in years; Lindsay Duncan, as Gleeson's mother, has barely a dozen lines but imbues each one with a spiky, distant, yet somehow affectionate tone which leaves a more lasting impression than you'd imagine; Tom Hollander is brilliantly antagonistic as Curtis's staple screwball character; and Rachel McAdams, as the object of Gleeson's affections, continues to be effective at playing Rachel McAdams.

Curtis wisely sidesteps Groundhog Day comparisons by having Gleeson only tweak his past to line up moments rather than to perfect them. Gleeson is already a decent sort, he doesn't need to change or orchestrate things to make himself look better. (Not that he doesn't do that, but it's kept to a minimum. If he rewound time whenever he misspoke then it'd be days before we got out of the first act.) What he needs to do is stop fretting about the little things and wake up to the world around him. That's the main idea at play here, which is fine, but it doesn't need a 123-minute running time to get it across. The flip side is that if Curtis streamlined the film then it's unlikely that it'd worked half as well as it does. Part of its charm is in its meandering aimless manner, making it feel like a slice of life.

There's little that's surprising about where the story eventually goes and what Gleeson eventually learns, but it just about gets away with it because Curtis believes in it to his core and Gleeson completely sells us on his own journey to these little discoveries about life.

Overall: 7/10

Friday 30 August 2013

Disappointing Cult Classic of the Week: 'Repo Man' (1984)



Urban dictionary's definition of a cult classic:

1) Something that's really hip with a select group of people.
2) A popular [...] movie, which has gained a large following.  (NB: Pretty much the opposite of definition 1, but that's not an uncommon occurrence when looking for definitions of 'cult classic'.)
3) A movie that is weird as f**k.

The urban dictionary has some fascinating interpretations for words and phrases - honestly you could lose an afternoon (and what little is left of your innocence and naivety) to the website - but its third definition for 'cult classic' is as good a fit as any for Alex Cox's disjointed, but unfortunately never disarming, Repo Man.

The story follows teenage punk rocker Otto Maddox (Emilio Estevez showing his range by playing Emilio Estevez) who, after getting fired as a stock clerk, starts working for a car repossession agency after being tricked into helping a repo man steal a car. And that's pretty much it for Otto's story. There are several subplots going on around him - a mad scientist driving a Chevrolet Malibu full of dead aliens, a rival car repossession agency, some punk rocker thieves who turn up every so often to liven up a scene, an underground group trying to spread the word about aliens, and an FBI agent dressed as Michael Jackson circa 1979 - but they all feel aimless and displaced, as if they've been cut from a much larger whole. Whenever Otto happens across these other storylines he often doesn't even notice them, focused as he is on the thrill of taking other people's cars and getting paid for it.

The film's slapdash (and supposedly 'raw') quality is the main thing that's endeared it to people over the years; that and a punk soundtrack which for many was era defining. You can see how the film has become a cult classic (depending on the definition you're working to), praised as it was for its wry sense of humour and an irreverent approach to storytelling which ran counter to most everything else being made at the time; but it's possible you need to have come of age in the Reagan era to appreciate how unusual it was. Watching it almost three decades after its release what's supposed to be irreverent feels directionless and meandering. A section in which the 'hero' is tortured is introduced so abruptly, shot so oddly, then abandoned with almost as much immediacy that I was left wondering if I'd imagined it. In fact that's very close to how the film felt as a whole: abrupt. Sequences that should have been left on the cutting room floor, in which characters spout cod philosophy, go on and on and on; and yet other scenes, like Otto's torture at the hands of not-Michael Jackson, which actually have the opportunity to further story or character, are given only a cursory spot in the film's 92 minute running time.

That such an oddball film could make it through the studio system is considered wonderful, but baffling. That anyone would hope for more of the same I find just as baffling.

Overall: 2/10

Friday 23 August 2013

New Release Review: 'Elysium'



Want to explore a real world issue by examining it in a new light? Then sci-fi may be the genre for you! In theory.

After Neill Blomkamp's spin on the racial divide in South Africa in District 9 we now get his take on the gap between LA's servant class and the wealthy to whom they tend. The set-up: the very rich have fled Earth to live on a space habitat (or 'ringworld' to those that know their sci-fi) which orbits our world, whilst the other many-many-billions-of-us gaze up at the sky and hope that one day we can buy a ticket there and get shot of the over populated, over polluted Earth. Matt Damon plays one such habitat gazer. After an accident leaves him with a significantly shortened life span he races to find a way onto the rather well defended habitat where the med-pods the wealthy use to keep themselves healthy will save him.

Despite going out of his way to introduce storylines about immigration, healthcare and the rich/poor divide, Blomkamp then studiously ignores them for the rest of the film's running time. Those knotty issues are just backdrop. Even Damon's storyline takes a backseat to Blomkamp's real interests: ponderously large futuristic weaponry and over choreographed action sequences. There's one beautiful shot in which he details the annihilation of a robot in slow motion - a shot we get twice, just so we can fully appreciate it - and it looks amazing, but it means nothing; perhaps the best summation of the film. If we could invest in someone then things might have been different, but characters are introduced hazily, and die arbitrarily. There's a voice-over that comes in several times, a memory from Damon's past, reminding him that he's destined for great things; which is twaddle. Nothing that happens in the film is destiny, it's just happenstance. The film isn't exploring fate versus choice, it's just throwing in a portentous flashback to give weight to a story that has none.

Elysium only comes alive when Sharlto Copley (who played the bumbling jobsworth on District 9) is onscreen. His mercenary is indifferently written but Copley has enough charisma to make him memorable. No one else gets out with their credibility intact - except perhaps Damon, but that has more to do with how forgettable his role is than anything else. Jodie Foster does a watered down (and strangely accented) version of her part in Inside Man, William Fichtner glowers a lot (and that's about it), and Wagner Moura seems to have been told to do his best Nic Cage impression: all nervous energy and awkwardly tilted head.

One thing Blomkamp has done a great job of is making the Earth look worn and weathered. The security robots and air transport are immaculately designed and rendered. It all looks credible, it just doesn't sound credible. The world doesn't quite make sense. That wouldn't be as critical to the film if it had a beating heart, instead it has a electro-pulse-cannon-thing in its place.

The overall effect is of having watched a friend play a video game for an hour and a half, not once pausing to ask if you'd like a go. An unforgivable act.

Overall: 3/10

MINOR SPOILERS:
(Highlight to read)
The mission that drives a large proportion of the plot is an attempt to turn the citizens of Earth into citizens of Elysium, via the never-very-cinematic art of hacking a computer, which would give everyone access to the med-pods they so desperately need. In an ideal world I'd have been rooting for Damon and the handful of others that join him on this mission. Instead I was worrying about the practicalities of the plan: It's not possible for everyone to go to Elysium; it's got a population of 10,000. Everyone can't just head up there, it wouldn't be sustainable! Mostly they're just after the med-pods, but how many uses can they get out of them? How many are there? They're obviously a finite resource. I don't imagine they'll work particularly well by the time person number ten billion gets their turn.

More importantly, the master plan has nothing to do with fixing Earth. What they're doing is little more than putting a band aid on a heat shot wound. Nothing's going to change, it's just a temporary fix.

Wednesday 21 August 2013

TV/DVD Release Review: 'Broadchurch'



Broadchurch is classified as a crime drama. That's not really accurate. A crime kicks off the story - the death of a young boy - and we get to know the people (and suspects) of Broadchurch through a police investigation, but the real focus is on tracing how the loss ripples through the community. By casting the almost over qualified Olivia Colman and David Tennant as the detectives investigating the death the show manages, briefly, to look like it's aspiring to be a classy procedural in the vein of Prime Suspect and Cracker. Tennant's detective, who's new to the town, forces Colman to shift her perspective and view the people of Broadchurch, many of them friends of hers, as potential murderers. It's an interesting arc for Colman, it's just a shame no one noticed that Tennant wasn't given one. He does get a compelling, slowly teased out, backstory that is part of the reason for his dogged approach to the current case (although the trope of the detective that pushes himself to the limit, desperately trying to close the case at all costs, was well worn about a century back), but he gets nothing to do in the present beyond belittling Colman (always amusing) and scowling. Although he does the scowling thing rather well it hardly stands-in for character development.

A further frustration is that the pair aren't much good at the whole detecting lark. Practically every clue is handed to them, wrapped in a neat bow, and more often than not these tip-offs could have been given to them at any time during the eight episodes, but they're only deployed when the plot needs them. Structuring a murder mystery isn't easy, and sometimes you have to come up with the odd contrivance to keep a clue back, but there ought to be a rhyme and reason to it, rather than it being immediately apparent that it's just convenient for the writer. Instead of giving Tennant and Colman the opportunity to do some actual detecting most of the screen time is used up making it clear that anybody could be the culprit. (IF YOU WANT TO AVOID EVEN TINY SPOILERS THEN SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH) Which is fine as that's part of the point of the show and fits well with where Colman's character arc goes, but it works rather less well when there's just a handful of characters that are never considered for the crime, and one in particular who's so pointedly boring, beige and forgettable that you'll immediately clock that they're going to play a big part in the final reveal. Which wouldn't be an issue if the red herrings weren't so damned red herring-y (it's a word now, get over it). You shouldn't know that the suspect is innocent - and that you're being lead a merry dance - until, ideally, the very last episode. In Broadchurch you know it in scene one, episode one.

Fortunately Broadchurch isn't really a detective show. Instead the focus is on detailing the different stages of grief in a way few shows (or films) ever have. If the show were only about dealing with that pain, and how you'd look just about anywhere to find answers or a way to deal with it, then it'd be pretty close to perfect. Unfortunately Chris Chibnall, the creator and writer, spends a great deal of time pretending its classification is accurate. The best thing you can do is ignore that pretence. Broadchurch is a straight drama, and for the most part it's a damned good one.

Overall: 7/10

Monday 19 August 2013

New Release Review: 'The Conjuring'



The progression of a horror lover: age 7, get hooked on theme park rides; age 9, watch Jaws, try to unlearn how to swim, fail, decide to stay the hell away from any and all bodies of water; age 13, start on serial killer movies; age 16, discover the J-horror films, learn to sleep with one eye open; age 21, finally get around to watching the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, wonder if they'll ever be quite so freaked out ever again.

If, during your youth, you went through any of the above, you'll know every move The Conjuring is going to make. There are four and half months left in the year but I'd say the odds are good that The Conjuring will be the best not-remotely-surprising horror film you'll see in 2013. The story, supposedly true, details the traumatic experience of the Perron family, who made the slight hiccup of moving into a haunted house. The only slight wrinkle to the overly familiar haunted house story is that half the screen time is spent with the husband and wife paranormal investigators (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) who are talked into helping the family. The film reminded me of a well oiled TV comedy which follows the simple rhythm of 'line, line, gag, line, line, gag', only here it's 'build, build, scare, build, build, scare'. It knows how to tease out these moments, but none of them are in any way new. It's almost like James Wan, who previously directed Insidious and the mostly decent first Saw film, went through a checklist of horror tropes and wondered how well they'd work if they were all on the screen at the same time. If Wan had paired down the fairly large cast and fleshed out some of the characters a bit more then there would at least be an opportunity to invest in them. Instead, despite the film being 'Based on a True Story', no one feels real, they're just archetypes.

Part of me wonders if I'm being too harsh on the film. As a jaded horror fan, long LONG since desensitised, I can't appreciate The Conjuring for what it is because the tricks are so very familiar, but that doesn't mean the film didn't use them well. In fact I'm pretty sure it did, as the casting, atmosphere and pacing evoked the '70s setting - and the horror films from that period - perfectly. Maybe after each of us has watched three decades of horror films we should accept that what comes next isn't for us but for the next generation. I'm not sure that I really believe that's the case, but I do think there's a false nostalgia in the way we remember the horror films we grew up with. Our parents and grandparents probably have the same perspective, one generation having had Psycho, the next The Exorcist. Both sets could easily find themselves thinking that what came next pales in comparison. Maybe each of us just has a finite number of scares in us?

Overall:
For the jaded: 6/10
For the unjaded: 8/10

Friday 9 August 2013

New Release Review: 'Only God Forgives'



Only God Forgives really shouldn't be playing in the big cinema chains. To get the most out of the film, and I'm not sure there's really all that much to be got, it ought to be seen at your local art house cinema; or better yet, it should be set up as an art installation. You could stroll past it, catching a glimpse of its moody, mannered aesthetic and its heavy handed approach to sex and death, oedipal desire, and justice, and then you could move on, having been briefly intrigued, but knowing full well that you really weren't missing much.

The story, in as far as there is one, mostly follows Julian (Ryan Gosling) as he's coaxed into avenging his brother's untimely death, which came about at the behest of Lieutenant Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), a police officer with a seriously Old Testament approach to punishment. Those expecting a continuation of the work Gosling and director Nicolas Winding Refn did on Drive should tweak their expectations somewhat. Only God Forgives has much more in common with Refn's earlier effort Valhalla Rising. Both films exist in a netherworld between our own and something like purgatory, or hell. In the heavily atmospheric Valhalla Rising that was a good fit: it being set a thousand years ago in a brutal wasteland where death is ever present. In Only God Forgives that same portentous tone becomes much more trying, even laughable; and coupled with a poised and distant aesthetic, and lighting as heavy handed as its themes, the film ends up being wilfully inaccessible.

It reminded me of nothing so much as the early student films I saw at film school. The script is a wisp of a thing; the cinematography is only notable because of lighting so stark that the colours red and blue have a greater screen presence than most of the cast; and as for the cast:

  • Gosling isn't an actor that's been capable of suggesting his characters have a rich inner life, so when he's given barely a dozen lines and has to spend most of the film conveying his feelings through glances, it works... Not terribly well. 
  • Kristin Scott Thomas, as Julian's foulmouthed mother, seems to be having fun, cast against type, but she's just one amongst a slew of people to not care about. 
  • Pansringarm is at least captivating to watch, yet Refn seems to be going out of his way to undercut the man's natural charisma by having him sing karaoke. Twice. In full.

If Refn scrapped all the pseudo dream sequences and hallucinations the film would probably have come to less than 50 minutes. He should probably make a cut of just those segments and put it in an art gallery and see how it fares. It'd be a good fit. Or at least a better one; because as a piece of cinema it's seriously lacking.

Overall: 1.5/10 

Friday 2 August 2013

DVD Review/Overlooked Gem: 'Stoker'


Stoker Chan-Wook Park Sketchy Reviews

Stoker isn't the most original piece of cinema you'll see this year, but the odds are it'll be the most archly beautiful. The film is one shot after another of hauntingly disturbing imagery, all of it as immaculately presented as the family of the title. At the start of the film the Stoker's numbers have diminished by one as India's father is killed in a car accident. Stepping in to fill the void, to look after both India (Mia Wasikowska) and her mother (Nicole Kidman), is Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), a man they didn't even know existed. Anyone who's seen Shadow of a Doubt will find that set-up eerily familiar, right down to the name of the uncle, but the story quickly goes places even darker, if no less Hitchcockian.

It's strange, and rather refreshing, to watch a film in which the cards are all laid down in the first five minutes. Everything you need to know about each character is given to you before their first scene is over; there are plenty of little wrinkles to their story, slowly revealed, but they'll fit neatly in with what you've already learnt. This is because Stoker's more interested in power dynamics: the scenes with the family at dinner, feigning civility as they pressure and maneuver, are unbearably tense precisely because we know (for the most part) who everyone is and what they're after. That tension is, more often than not, broken by director Chan-Wook Park's dark sense of humour; and the moment the tension's been relieved he gets right on with building it back-up. It's highly effective, and it'd make Hitchcock proud.

Stoker often feels like a modern retelling of a forgotten Brothers Grimm tale. The story certainly has a simple timeless quality to it. In keeping with that - except for the occasional shot of a mobile phone, and a sheriff's car that must have been made in the last quarter of a century - there's little to tell you where we are between 1960 and 2013. I keep wanting to refer to it as a fable, but a fable needs to be about animals, mythical creatures, and the like. Perhaps it's a parable. Both are (comparatively) short, have a broad sweep to their story telling, and linger in the consciousness because the idea at their core is so simple and compelling.

Which is to say: I rather liked it.

Overall: 8/10

Monday 29 July 2013

New Release Review: 'The World's End'

The World's End Edgar Wright Simon Pegg Shaun of the Dead Sketchy Reviews

Ageing is weird. Acting older and wiser, when you're probably not, is weird. It's that idea that's the springboard for The World's End. Gary (Simon Pegg), a man with no interest in becoming older and wiser, is set on reliving the past by completing the Golden Mile: twelve pubs, five friends, and a lot of pints. Except that his friends have no interest in reliving they're youth, and when Gary gets them all back in the twee town they grew up in few people seem to remember them. Maybe the town moved on too. Or maybe something altogether stranger is going on.

Like Edgar Wright's previous films The World's End is another genre mash-up. It's part comedy, part action, and part sci-fi; roughly in that order of importance. So it's surprising that during the film's midsection it almost drops the comedy entirely and gives straight-drama a go. Gary and his friends have been carrying their disappointments with them for years, buried deep down; watching them bubble back up as the characters regress with each pint is easily the best thing about the film, but the more they open up the less it feels like a comedy, and since that's the backbone of the film, the less I laughed the less cohesive the film felt.

Wright calls The World's End the last of his 'Cornetto Trilogy' (the previous two being Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead). It isn't. It just makes the film easier to promote. The main connecting tissue between each film - besides their cast - is a fondness for fence-based physical humour, men with arrested development issues, genre-mashing, pubs and, of course, cornetto ice cream. (Although the set-up and structure is so reminiscent of Shaun of the Dead that it's almost a warped remake.) Wright will make a fourth, a fifth, and sixth film dealing with much the same because that's his wheelhouse. That's what interests him. I don't have a problem with more of the same, so long at it's funnier. Much funnier.

Overall: 6/10

Minor Spoiler!:
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The rather odd ending coda seems to exist solely to create a world in which Gary can revel in the past, refusing to change. Which feels like a get out clause; an overly elaborate way to avoid making him face up to his inability to change. Even if it had worked for me The World's End had tried on so many different genres by that point that when it switched again it had exhausted all the goodwill I had for it.