Tuesday 11 December 2018

Mowgli (2018)

Mowgli, the second film in recent years to present a human-CGI version of The Jungle Book is far removed from the Disney versions. 

For those wondering if the world needed two versions of The Jungle Book so close together, stop asking stupid questions - of course the world didn't need it. The real question is whether Mowgli tells the story in a sufficiently different way that the audience won't be bored by it - and for my money (or Netflix subscription) the answer is yes.

Available on Netflix, Mowgli also received a limited cinema release with a 3D version of the film. Disney's retread of The Jungle Book put 3D to stunning use, and is one of the few films where it made a real difference. However, with Mowgli the effect is for the most part fine, but not required.

The film is a much darker take on the story, which is probably slightly more in keeping with the original Kipling tales than the singing, cartoon version. 

The animal fights in the film bring to mind the saying of 'Nature, red in tooth and claw' - although  in terms of violence probably no worse than watching a super-cut of all the animal kills from David Attenborough's documentaries. There is a moment late on in the film though that would probably be enough to traumatise thousands of childhoods.

There's also a dark mysticism within the film with the roles of Kaa and Hathi taking on a particularly mythic dimension rather than playing the comedy roles that the Disney cartoon foisted upon them.

There are niggles here and there with the film - it's not perfect, but it is a worthwhile addition to the adaptations of Kipling's stories. It's biggest problem will be with finding an audience - probably too adult for most children, but due to its source material, not so likely to be the first thing on the adults' viewing list either.

Monday 26 November 2018

Quick Reviews

It's been a while since I last wrote a post, and there have been a few films that I haven't reviewed, so I thought I'd write a brief summary of them.

First Man (2018)

Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong and Claire Foy as Janet Armstrong. It's been said that it's not a film about the Moon Landing, but rather a film about Neil Armstrong that culminates in the Moon Landing. That's pretty much like saying that Field of Dreams wasn't a film about baseball. First Man has space travel all the way through it - even before Armstrong sets foot inside a space capsule, the film makes it clear that he's already 200,000 miles away from anyone else, isolated in his grief at the death of his daughter.
Emotional drama aside, the film also offers a decent look at the behind-the-scenes events leading up to the landing, and despite knowing the outcome, the depiction of landing is an incredible, nail-biting, claustrophobic sequence.

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Drenched in atmosphere, a crime thriller that doesn't really hit the mark because the script wasn't really up to scratch. The first act feels very much like a stage play, which opens up a little with a story that's slightly reminiscent of early-Tarantino (characters in love with their own voices; chaptered, non-linear structure). The characters never really gel, and the multiple narratives don't so much entwine as get tangled together messily.

Columbus (2017)

If you like films where two characters wander about a town talking about modern architecture as they come to terms with grief and life choices then this is absolutely the film for you. Like the previous year's Paterson, it's the cinematic equivalent of taking a pleasant walk.


The Wife (2018)

Feminist politics and the literary world collide in a drama that looks at the difference between perception an reality in the disintegrating marriage between a Nobel-nominated author and his wife who "doesn't write". Filmed mostly in Glasgow passing for Stockholm, there's a lot to like about the film, but ultimately it didn't feel as if it packed quite enough of a punch.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)

A film that is all over the place. An excellent central performance from MacKenzie Foy, some decent dialogue, a couple of lovely shots of Victorian London that demonstrate some understanding of the basic geography of the city rather than being the usual Disney mash-up, all suggested the film was off to a good start - but then it descends into pseudo-Labyrinth meanderings through an incoherent fantasyland.
It's entertaining enough, particularly if you can see the fun in Keira Knightley's helium-voiced, demented sugarplum fairy - but too incoherent in its internal mythology.

Widows (2018)

Well-directed, decently plotted, although the surprises are well-worn (they pulled something similar in the first Mission: Impossible film - that's even assuming you didn't see the Widows TV  series on which the film was based). Word of warning - the film goes from quiet to very loud very quickly in the early scenes, so probably not for those who are easily startled.

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Compelling central performance from Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, and a great soundtrack. The rise and fall and rise again narrative is either a (mostly) fun and fascinating look behind the scenes, or a disjointed mess depending on how you want to approach the film.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

There's either too much going on in this film, or not enough. Some brilliant sequences, some fascinating but too short expansions of Rowling's Wizarding World, versus some overlong, dull talky bits.
Unlike the first in the series, the film suffers from not feeling like it can stand on its own. Although Fantastic Beasts 1 had unfinished business with its villains, it told a complete emotional story for the protagonists. Film number 2 upends all of that and leaves pretty much all of the plot threads dangling. The only piece of business that's actually resolved is the answer to a question that we didn't know needed to be asked, and which didn't really hold any great emotional impact - except perhaps to the die hard fans.
That said, I still enjoyed it and will no doubt go and see it again.

Robin Hood (2018)

The last version of Robin Hood I had seen (the one with Russell Crowe) left me with very low hopes for this one. Robin Hood is one of those characters whose tale is told and retold so many times, that it's difficult to get excited about what amounts to another cover version of the same old story with each new creative team declaring they have some new way of looking at the character, that usually amounts to the camera lenses being coated with an extra layer of mud.
However, with no pretensions to high-art, the latest version of Robin Hood manages to do something that Crowe's endeavour missed: be fun.
It's completely cheesy, ridiculously contrived, the saccharine opening sequence really doesn't set the mood at all well, but from the Iraqi War-styled Crusades sequence, the film kept me entertained throughout.
It's less a retelling of The Adventures of Robin Hood, and more Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves meets The Mark of Zorro meets Batman Begins with the anachronistic production approach being along the lines of First Knight meets A Knight's Tale with a bit of Lord of the Rings thrown in for good measure.
In other words it's a complete melange of dozens of other influences, which makes it either an unbearable mess, or the best B movies adventure of the year.

The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)

Nowhere near up to par with the books of the original Millennium Trilogy, the film manages to be a better piece of ScandiNoir than the recent incoherent adaptation of The Snowman, but its James Bond world-threat storyline doesn't feel appropriate for the original character of Lisbeth Salander.
As a 'Girl' story, it doesn't sit right, but as a Scandi-Jason Bourne-style thriller, it's entertaining enough.





Sunday 7 October 2018

Venom (2018)

Venom is a film about a man with a symbiote living inside him that occasionally surfaces to give him superpowers and save the day.

Venom the film is a bad movie with a better movie inside it that occasionally surfaces to save it from being a complete disaster.

The film is overlong in the first act, underdeveloped in the second, so by the time the third comes along, it's barely kicking into its groove.

It has the feel of an 80s TV pilot - one that wasn't successful enough to go to air, but had glimpses of something intriguing.

The good it in it: Tom Hardy's double-act as Eddie Brock and Venom. This is absolutely the selling point of the film, and something that I felt worked really well. But we spend too long getting to it, and then the relationship development takes all of a single line of dialogue.

There are some action scenes that rather than being an edge of the seat white-knuckle ride, only really make it into the moderately interesting category. There are two things missing for me: emotional heft and decent camera placement. I felt as if I was watching from a distance rather than being in the middle of the action. The scenes aren't terrible, they're just not as good as they should have been.

The one thing the film managed was to leave me wanting more of the Brock/Venom partnership - only wrapped up in a better film next time, please.

Assuming there is a next time.

Sunday 2 September 2018

Cold War (2018)

From an aesthetic point of view, Cold War is immaculate. Shot in black and white in the Academy ratio (4:3), it feels like an artifact of the time in which the film was set. Or rather times, as Cold War takes place across a couple of decades. The style of the film, at least to my untrained eye, seemed to be photographed appropriately to each period with the early scenes in a much more primitive, almost documentary-style with the later Parisian scenes feeling much more lush and polished.

The story is interesting, a relationship between two people that was reminiscent of the uneven romance in La La Land, but told in a more consistent manner. Also with less dancing - but there is quite a bit of singing - mostly variations of the same song as it evolves over the years.

Ultimately where the movies didn't work for me was that I didn't really invest enough in either of the characters, with the male lead pulling a move about two-thirds through that immediately put my back up, which I assume was the intention: a demonstration of the true state of the relationship. However, it still informed my general disinclination to care about the fate of the character.

It's a film that's stuck with me after seeing it though - and I feel it probably bears a repeat viewing now that my expectations have been better set.

Monday 27 August 2018

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Warning: semi-spoilers within this review.

For the most part, BlackkKlansman is a mainstream piece of based-on-a-true-story entertainment. Despite being an indictment of racism, it spends at least as much time pointing out the ineptitude of the Ku Klux Klan as it does dealing with racism.

There's a distinct lack of discomfort that while it may not hammer home the horrors of racism, paints a more nuanced, and potentially more realistic picture of the experience. It also makes the film more palatable to a mainstream audience who are less likely to see a film that's going to make them experience suffering blow-by-blow and more likely to want to watch a film about a black cop who pulls one over on the white supremacists.

So, a nice safe film - until it hammers home its message at one point with a speech by Harry Belafonte recollecting a lynching from 1916, and then again in the final few minutes when a straight line is drawn between the racist past of the USA straight to present-day events. And it's heartbreaking.

As well as being a decently crafted piece of cinema, it's a film that people should be talking about. It's probably more important from an American perspective, given that nation's unique history with racism, but the echoes of those attitudes are disturbingly present throughout the rest of the European-centred world, so its relevance is definitely not limited to those shores.



Monday 20 August 2018

The Escape (2018)

For me to sum up The Escape is probably doing the film a disservice, so bear that in mind when I tell you that it's the story of Tara (played by Gemma Arterton) feeling trapped in a marriage to Mark (Dominic Cooper), who is a prime example of toxic masculinity in a nice suit, driving a nice car, living in a nice house in a nice neighbourhood.

The first part of the film is the examination of this marriage. It's a deeply sad portrayal by Arterton as the women who is yearning for more from a life that is solely defined by being wife (read: cleaner, cook, masturbatory aid, babysitter) and mother.

Cooper's role is well-drawn too. He's subtly abusive rather than being physically violent - any violence is expressed against inanimate objects rather than hitting Tara - but there's a constant threat, particularly when he manhandles her - and his sexual interactions with her are barely consensual, hanging on the line that would lead to Internet arguments about whether they constitute rape.

None of his behaviour seems particularly malicious, but rather the environment in which he has been brought up. He cannot understand why his wife is sad, he wants to fix her, but his actions are tainted by an inability to think beyond himself and his tainted understanding of the world.

By the time the titular escape finally occurs, it's a welcome relief, brilliantly handled by the filmmakers. Sound design, music and cinematography all play as important a part as the superb job done by the actors.

There's more beyond that as the film doesn't avoid the subsequent consequences and the reality of Tara's situation. The film's ending is not a resolution as such, but it is a step towards one. It's appropriate, thoughtful, and necessarily leaves a dozen questions hanging around afterwards.






Sunday 19 August 2018

Christopher Robin (2018)

Christopher Robin, AKA Winnie the Pooh and the Midlife Crisis, is an odd film in that its choice of audience appears to be middle-aged men.

Being a middle-aged man, this means that I really enjoyed the film. It was fun, funny, and had a nice tinge of nostalgia for someone who grew up with the Pooh stories.

I'm not sure how well it's going to do with a younger audience. I assume the filmmakers hope that the inclusion of Winnie the Pooh and friends will give it cross-generational appeal. I don't know how true that will be.

It appears to be trying to emulate Paddington in some regard. It doesn't succeed, in large part because Paddington was completely faithful to its source material, whereas Christopher Robin takes detours into a world that most definitely is not 100 Acre Wood.

It's not a wholly unsuccessfully detour - the scenes of Pooh and Christopher Robin navigating a London railway terminal were the best part of the film - but it does stray from the Pooh formula.

I was also not happy to learn in the film that Robin is considered Christopher Robin's surname, rather than a middle-name that is (in childhood) appended with his first name. It doesn't feel right (and is of course historically inaccurate.

I had a couple of additional minor issues with the film, but overall it was enjoyable, and I came out of the cinema feeling better than when I had gone in, which is enough to recommend it for me.

Sunday 22 July 2018

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (2018)

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (or MMHWGA as it will henceforth be called), is the film that you need in your life right now.

MMHWGA is not like other films. Other films can generally be categorised into various flavours of good and bad. MMHWGA defies such mortal definitions. It sneers in the face of quality, laughs at five-star (and one-star ratings).

You will laugh, you will cry, you will laugh again, and cry again, although not necessarily at the right parts.

Or perhaps it will be. With MMHWGA, it's impossible to discern the difference between a well-crafted joke and a failed joke that's failed so badly it becomes funny again.

If you don't walk out of MMHWGA with a smile on your face, then you should probably check your pulse and get a friend to phone an ambulance, or possibly a funeral director.

If you think MMHWGA is the best film that the universe could possibly deliver, then you may very well be correct.

If you think that MMHWGA is an attempt to shoehorn a plot out of a bunch of ABBA lyrics, that features hammy acting that wouldn't look out of place in amateur theatre, a group of A-list male actors who stand around looking awkward in the middle of musical scenes only just realising that their dad-dancing skills won't cut it, and some of the most poorly staged comedy sequences this side of 70s sketch shows, then you might also be right.

But if you don't see that as a good thing, then you are most definitely in the wrong.

In the future books will be written attempting to dissect the perfect storm that is Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again.

Very few of them will come close to understanding the truth.

Wednesday 18 July 2018

Incredibles 2 (2018)

Almost a week after seeing Incredibles 2, I still haven't made up my mind about how I would rate it.

Is it as good as the first film, better, worse? The answer is: I DON'T KNOW!!! (cue hysterical sobbing).

One things for certain is that it's very good. It's funny, heart-felt; stylistically it's a triumph; musically it's exceptional The action scenes are breathtaking, the acting superb, the animation excellent. It tells a fun story. Its use of Jack-Jack, a character who could have been irritating, works brilliantly, it ticks all the right superhero/60s spy movie boxes.

It doesn't have a volcano, and that lack of such an exceptional set-piece is probably one of the areas where the original movie wins outright.

But it does have a baby fighting a raccoon, and that might make up for the missing volcano.



Tuesday 17 July 2018

The Happy Prince (2018)

I almost didn't write this review, but as the critical consensus seems to be generally favourable to the Rupert Everett written-directed-acted film, The Happy Prince, I thought maybe I'd offer a counterpoint.

Although I knew going in to the film that this was about the end of Wilde's life, and I was therefore expecting a certain amount of bleakness, I wasn't prepared for how much of a slog the film would be.

Part of the problem was that along with all the squalid wretchedness of the piece, I couldn't find a single character to interest me. I should have been able to feel some sympathy for the state of Everett's Wilde, but the portrait of a self-indulgent man, seemingly uncaring of all the damage he was doing to the lives of those around him, made the character thoroughly unlikeable.

Not that liking a character is required for a story to be compelling - sometimes awful personalities can be fascinating to watch - but this version of Wilde wasn't even interesting to me.

The photography looked good at points. The acting was fine from a number of the players, and Everett would have been decent enough if his Wilde had been a minor cast member rather than the main character, but I was seriously tempted to walk out halfway through the film. I only kept watching out of the hope that it would get better.

It didn't.


Monday 16 July 2018

Skyscraper (2018)

The film The Towering Inferno was adapted from two books, The Tower, and The Glass Inferno.

The book Nothing Lasts Forever was apparently written after the author, Roderick Thorpe saw The Towering Inferno and then had a dream about a man being chased through a skyscraper by men with guns. That book was adapted into the movie Die Hard.

Skyscraper is about a man being chased through a skyscraper by men with guns, while the building is on fire, so we're already on two grandparents and one parent in the family tree of influences.

Adding to this Frankenstein approach, there are also elements from the TV series 24 thrown in for good measure.

With all this packed in, the film manages a running time of 100 minutes, which is remarkably short for the modern blockbuster.

Starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, it's pretty much what you would expect from a Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson film - a charismatic performance, big, ridiculous action set pieces (although the one that strained my credulity the most involved Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson climbing a ladder), and a substantial amount of cheese.

Neve Campbell, playing Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's wife in the film at first appears as if she's going to be the stereotypical female-in-distress, but the film manages to give her much more to do than be rescued by her husband (take that Die Hard), which was a pleasant surprise.

It's also set in Hong Kong, which scores it extra points as it's tied with New York for my second favourite city in the world (London beats both of those in that race).

It's unlikely to win any Oscars, but as a leave-your-brain-at-home action movie, it does its job in being an entertaining way to spend less than two hours.

Sunday 15 July 2018

Mary Shelley (2017)

On the strength of its trailer, I nearly didn't see Mary Shelley. I'd also noticed the film was receiving a lot of mediocre reviews, which reinforced my opinion that it would be a dull, self-important, ham-acted film.

However, there was enough craftsmanship on display that at the very least I thought it might look interesting, so the notion of making my own mind up about it nagged at me for a while.

My decision to see it over the weekend was made at the last minute - well the last half hour anyway. I had a nagging headache, was too hot and thought if the film was boring, at least I could have a nap in an air-conditioned cinema.

It took me about five minutes to realise my fears were unwarranted. Instead of being the trudge that I had expected, I found that I was enjoying the story.

The film is by no means perfect. At times the dialogue indulges in earnest feminist declarations, more concerned with forcing its point rather than letting it be made naturally.

Perhaps some of that is down to Elle Fanning's delivery. Although she handles the part and the accent well for the most of the time, I was left with the nagging feeling that she was spending too much effort sound 'proper'. At times it worked with her soft spoken delivery working as counterpoint to her physical acting, but it kept reminding me that she was acting rather than allowing me to be swept up in the story.

Aside from those moments though, I found much to enjoy about the film. Costuming, set design and the score were particular standouts, and minus the less subtle moments of storytelling, I was quite happy with the writing too.

Monday 2 July 2018

Sicario 2: Soldado (2018)

Warning: vague spoilers ahead.

There's a general rule to storytelling: you don't use luck to get you out of a hole because it will make the audience groan.

There's a key moment in Sicario 2 that although plausible relies far too heavily on luck. The director has explained how they went to great pains to make sure it could happen, but whether it could is not really the problem.

Stick the scene at the beginning of the film and it's not a problem. Place it where they did and it's a moment that can disrupt your audience's suspension of disbelief.

Of course the thing to realise with Sicario is it's about as realistic as the Dark Knight films. Certainly it carries at time the air of verisimilitude, but this is just a regular action film with more moral ambiguity and better cinematography than most.

The film plays with the current concerns over the Mexico-USA border, which could have been a valuable subject if it had chosen to examine the situation properly. Instead it's merely serves to bring in the guns and helicopters, and doesn't really gives us much more social commentary than 'gangs are bad, but so are US politicians'.

Ultimately, the exploitation of the of subject matter, at this time, cheapens the film in my eyes.

That's not to say I hated the film. The action scenes are very well staged. There's a lovely performance by Isabela Moner as the daughter of a Mexican drug lord, and the scenes between her and Benicio del Toro worked well, and for my money the film would have been better served if it had focused more on that part of the story.

Visually it looks great too and is definitely worth watching on the big screen. It's just a shame that it missed the opportunity to do something really great.


Sunday 1 July 2018

Leave No Trace (2018)

Every so often a film comes along where I want to walk up to people, grab them by their lapels, Eric Morecambe-style, and insist that they put everything else aside and proceed at best speed to the cinema.

Leave No Trace is one of those films.

The story of a PTSD sufferer and his teenage daughter living off grid, who are forced back into the 'civilised' world, it's a coming-of-age-tale, as well as a reflective piece about alternative living, and the harm done by well-meaning society.

As a piece of cinematic craft, it's difficult to see a single flaw with it. There's not a single scene out of place. It looks beautiful, sounds fantastic, and features heartbreaking performances from its leads Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Foster.

There's a documentary approach to the storytelling, both in the cuts that the film's editor, Jane Rizzo, makes as the characters carry out their day-to-day tasks, and in the acting of McKenzie and Foster, who deliver such naturalistic performances that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should stop looking for anyone else to fill the bill in March 2019.

Like the look and feel of the film, there's an authenticity to the story being told. It never comes close to falling into melodrama, every action seems right, proportionate. The people who populate it are generally kind, well-meaning, although often misguided. Characters are people, not symbols of the themes of the story, giving the tale the sense that it was recorded, not crafted.

It's also a film that will stay with you after you've seen it. In terms of thinking about the life lessons, in wondering if you could learn to feather wood, in comparing it with the Fox and the Hound (although that last one might just be me).

It's a film that deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible.

Monday 25 June 2018

Ocean's 8 (2018)

In an all-female re-imagining of Ocean's 11,  Ocean's 8 is an interesting entry into gender politics with what amounts to a no-boys-allowed club (and rightly so, given the all-male line-up of 11), but ultimately it doesn't bring anything new to the table.

It was a fun enough film while watching, and has a few scenes that linger in the memory, but I had a nagging sense throughout that someone had done this all before, only better.

Part of the problem is one inherent to movies with ensemble casts - characters are reduced to sketches rather than being fully realised. There was enough character in each of the main players to get a sense of who they were, but it's only tantalising glimpses that the audience gets. Saying that, what was shown was good for the most part.

I think one of the major concerns I had was with the character of Debbie Ocean. At times, particularly during the heist, she shines, but for much of the film she acts so inscrutable that she comes across as a blank slate rather than someone with whom the audience can empathise.

The film also lacks a real villain. Richard Armitage provides the main focus for the audience's ire, but he comes across as a slimy loser rather than a genuine bad guy. The fault lies not with Armitage, who is perfectly capable of being the man everyone loves to hate, but in a shallowness of character in the writing. Perhaps there's a missing scene where he drowns kittens or kicks puppies, but aside from being a louche, there's not enough to hate. There is one act of betrayal that should have been breathtaking when it is shown, but it comes across as too sterile.

There's a decent enough style to the film, decent-enough heist bits, some (but not enough) funny moments, and likeable performances from most of the cast, including a late-in-the-film-appearance from James Corden being entertaining rather than annoying (it's often a coin toss which version of Corden will appear). It wasn't a bad film; it just wasn't as good as it should have been.

Thursday 21 June 2018

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Remake

For those who aren't avid readers of Star Wars related things on Twitter, you might not be aware that a group of fans are attempting to gain $200 million in funding for a remake of The Last Jedi because as everyone knows, it was an awful movie that destroyed Star Wars and it needs to be erased from history.

Ideally, a time machine would be a good idea, but as that's not possible, now that Stephen Hawking is dead and has taken all the secrets of the universe to the grave with him, a remake is the best solution. After that, all the copies of the Ryan Johnson-written/directed film will be gathered up and put on a bonfire in Berlin, just like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

The fans intend to write a script with the input of lots of other fans. This will include not only those who hated The Last Jedi, but also those who liked it because they want to bring everyone together so that once the new film had been made, we can all agree that the version-that-shall-not-be-mentioned-ever-again was horrible.

In light of this, I would like to put my name forward to become one of the hundreds of people who will contribute to this script.

Of course the advantage to all of us contributing is that we will know how the Star Wars story really continues long before we finish filming it.

So as Shakespeare said, without further ado, here is my concept for the new and improved Star Wars Chapter VIIIa.

LAST OF THE JEDIS

We open with the bit with Poe Dameron facing off against the Star Destroyers and the Dreadnought, but this time there are more pilots with him and there isn't that stupid thing with him trying to distract General Hugs (sorry, Hux) with a prank telephone call. No, we have Lando Calrissian (only he's going to be played by Tom Sellek, not Billy Dee Williams, because Billy Dee Williams is too, um, he's too, oh you know what I mean), and he's with Nien Nunb, and we'll have Wedge Antilles, and his son, who can be played by one of the film's backers.

And then the bombing raid will happen, and all the ships are being blown up until there's the last one being flown by Paige Tico (we can get Megan Fox for that role), and then the ship gets hit and she's the only survivor, so she goes for the bomb release remote control and drops it ... but it's caught by BB8 because Poe's flown his X-Wing under the bomber. And he rescues Paige and they fly away and BB8 releases the bomb payload.

We get back to the Rebel fleet and instead of giving him crap, Leia's all 'Poe, you're a goshdarn hero, and you saved the fleet, and here's a medal'. And we can use outtakes from the medal ceremony in Star Wars for Carrie Fisher's part.

And Finn wakes up from his Bacta bath, but he looks different because the Bacta's turned him back into who he really was before Snoake used the force to change his skin colour and stuff, and he can be played by me.

Then we cut to Rey and Luke and Luke's explaining to Rey that the real reason she could stand up to Kylo in the last movie without any Jedi training was because he (Luke that is) was secretly puppeting her, and it wasn't her abilities after all, because she's just a stupid girl. But Luke offers to train Chewbacca in the force, because he senses that Chewie is strong in the force.

Back with the fleet, Kylo and the tie fighters chase after the lead ship, but this time Kylo pulls the trigger on his mother, because he HATES HER for making him clean up his socks from his bedroom floor EVERY GOSHDARN DAY!!!

And Leia's blown into space like before. And we can still use the bit with Leia floating through space like Mary Poppins, but this time it will be because she is dead and that's her force ghost coming back to the ship. And when she gets back to the ship, she tells me, I mean Finn that he's really a Jedi and he needs to go to the Dagobah system to learn from all the Jedi masters.

So they escape from the pursuing First Order because there's no such thing as hyperspace tracking (stupid, stupid idea), and Finn goes off to Dagobah. But when he gets there, he finds the island with Luke and Chewbacca (and Rey) because Luke's planet is really Dagobah, where the sea level has risen because of all the rocks that have been falling into it, so there aren't any swamps left.

And Finn and Chewbacca are taught the ways of the force by Luke and ghost Ben Kenobi and ghost Annakin Skywalker (who's played by the old guy and not Hayden Christensen) and ghost Yoda and ghost Leia (although she just makes the tea and gives people medals) and ghost Samuel L Jackson. And Rey falls in love with Finn and there's kissing and stuff. Then the Jedi go and fight Snoake, who puts Poe into carbonite until the next movie and Chewbacca and Wedge Antilles' son go off to find him on Hoth where a gangster wampa has collected him because it like carbonite sculptures, and Finn has to console both Rey and Megan Fox and the end.

Oh yeah, and there's a big spaceship battle as well.

Do you think I'll get the job?

Wednesday 6 June 2018

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)



Fallen Kingdom is a different beast to 2015's Jurassic World. If you're looking for another take on The Lost World sub-genre of movies, you're not going to get it.

Instead of taking its cues from the likes of King Kong, Fallen Kingdom is closer to the Universal horror films of the 1930s and 1940s. Like the hybrid monsters of which the Jurassic World films are so fond, Fallen Kingdom splices DNA from the likes of the Dracula, Wolf Man, and Frankenstein movies.

There are also strong traces of the Island of Dr Moreau, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes added into the mix.

There are a couple of nice story choices in the film. There's a degree of predictability - or perhaps that should be inevitability - but that wasn't unwelcome.

It has a darker feel than the other stories - some of the deaths feel nastier and I wouldn't say it was the dinosaur film you want to take your toddlers to see, but like the previous films it leaves the blood-letting off camera for the most part.

As to where on the spectrum of the films it sits for me, I still haven't made up my mind. The original Jurassic Park has never been bettered, and it still hasn't, and I  have a fondness for the first Jurassic World particularly with the bright optimism of its early scenes that Fallen Kingdom doesn't possess.

There are elements of the film that some will take issue with - there's a choice made by one of the characters while escaping from a dinosaur that made perfect sense to me, particularly in light of the aesthetics of the story being told, that will probably annoy more than a few. The action is also more of the comic book variety than some of the more grounded stunts of the original Jurassic Park.

 But for doing something different, for me it's a welcome addition to the extended tale. It gives Bryce Douglas Howard a chance to show off her action hero skills. It made me chuckle a few times (particularly with one of the news report's scrolling captions). And I think I might want to see it again.


Sunday 3 June 2018

Jeune Femme / L'Amanat Double (both 2017)

Some weekends it's seeing Solo twice, others I end up seeing nothing but French language films.

C'est la vie, as they say ... somewhere.

Jeune Femme is also known by the international title of Montparnasse Bienvenue (because Jeune Femme was so difficult for international audiences to pronounce?). It's chiefly a character study of Paula, a young (she would argue with this definition) woman trying to find her place in the world after being dumped out of her cushioned existence by her photographer ex-boyfriend.

She's introduced to the audience while head-butting a door and screaming at her boyfriend, and she's pretty much full-on from that point.

Self-absorbed, spoiled, and apparently without a useful survival skill in the world, she doesn't start as the most sympathetic character, but the film peels away at her layers, even as she tries to put more on as she tries out different identities, and with its climax gives a sense of what happened to throw her life so off course in the first decade of her adult life.

It's a smartly-made film. Definitely won't appeal to all, but it's rewarding to those for whom it will.

L'Amant Double (the Double Lover) is on a completely different level. A mind-bending, lurid, psychosexual thriller, it's been described by some as Hitchcockian, but I'd call it more De Palma-esque, as it's at least two degrees removed from Hitchock.

It's a film that probably requires two sittings, just to try and figure out where all the joins are. While I was watching, I developed at least five different theories about what was going on, and in my scattershot approach actually managed to pick-up on some of the clues that were layered into the film.

Again this definitely doesn't have broad appeal. It's an insane, exploitative, slow-burning piece of cinema with emotionally-distant characters. On the positive side, its completely bonkers execution and twisty-turning plot can be a lot of fun.

Tuesday 29 May 2018

The Breadwinner (2017)

Based on a children's novel by Deborah Ellis, The Breadwinner is the story of a young girl living in Taliban-run Kabul who disguises herself as a boy so that she can support her family after her father is imprisoned.

The team who have adapted this into an animated movie are responsible for The Secret of the Kells, a film more suitable for a younger audience than The Breadwinner, which was rightly given a 12A certificate (PG-13 in the USA).

It's not a violent film (although there is violence - mostly off camera), but it's subject matter is quite intense dealing with themes of fanaticism, child marriages, abuse of women, death of children.

However, along with its heavy subject matter, it also carries a lightness of spirit amid the oppression. It's a story that understands the need or different shades in the telling, so it isn't the relentless grind that it could have been.

There are parallels to the story of Malala Yousafzaim, as it deals with an educated, literate girl in a world where men forbid women from reading, although there the similarity ends as this is a smaller tale and the lead character's actions are more personal, inspiring in the small struggles, but under a more overtly repressive regime.

It is also at times a beautiful film, particularly with its landscape shots of Kabul, which would be beautiful pieces of art in their own right.

Ultimately it's the type of film that deserves to be supported. It's well crafted, tells an essential story, and there need to be more of its kind in the world.

Monday 28 May 2018

Solo (2018)

As of it's opening weekend, Solo has been under-performing at the box office. There are a number of reasons being given for this: fan hatred of the last film spilling over into this one, too many Star Wars films in too short a time, too much competition (Infinity Wars and Deadpool 2), the lead actor not being a clone of Harrison Ford (although Donald Glover may well be one of Billy Dee Williams).

I'm guessing that one of the biggest reasons is the feeling that the film was unnecessary. There wasn't a huge cry for a Han Solo origin film in the first place. Did we actually need to see the first meeting of Han and Chewbacca? Did we need to see the Kessel Run? Did we need to see Han winning the Millennium Falcon from Lando?

The easy answer would be no.

My answer, on the other hand: if it leads to a fun, entertaining movie, then why not?

Solo is certainly entertaining. There are decent action set pieces, some gorgeous scenery, laugh-out-loud moments (I'm still smiling about one particular gag), fun characters, nice call-backs (particularly to The Empire Strikes Back), and it offers a broadening of the Star Wars universe that show a little more of what's happening on the ground.

Alden Ehrenreich performs a decent Han Solo, once you get over the fact that he isn't Harrison Ford. The mannerisms are fairly spot on, given that this is a younger, greener version of the character first encountered in the Mos Eisley cantina. Hopefully it won't be his last big screen outing - there's still scope for a few more Solo adventures before Star Wars in Han's life.

Directing by Ron Howard is solid. There's a clarity to his filming that tells the story well without resorting to a lost of fancy cutting and showy shots. He also manages to create a film with a consistent look, despite the behind-the-scenes mess that the film found itself in. Hopefully he'll get the chance to do another film in the series that's all his.





Monday 21 May 2018

Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece (British Museum 26 April - 29 July 2018)

Two things that I happen to like, Rodin and Ancient Greece, are currently being combined in the British Museum's latest exhibition.


His art is fairly represented with bronze casts of The Thinker and the Burghers of Calais and a plaster cast of The Kiss being among the more easily recognisable pieces.

The exhibition also features a number of pieces from Greece to to show Rodin's influences. Given that he visited the British Museum on a number of occasions, the works on display show his direct inspiration.

The information presented around the exhibition at times presents informed, interesting details of his life and works, particularly around 'The Gates of Hell' and its various spin-offs (which include both The Kiss and The Thinker).

At other times, the display cards are less successful offering up "what Rodin must have been thinking", or a critical appraisal of the art, which reports intent and interpretation as if they are facts.

It's an interesting collection, although not as meaty as some of the previous exhibitions at the British Museum, which starts off well, but seems to lose its way about halfway around the room.












Wednesday 16 May 2018

Deadpool 2

Deadpool 2 is the Monty Python of superhero movies. Not the Monty Python's Flying Circus Monty Python, but the Monty Python and ... Monty Python.

It's archaic, it's crude, it's rude, it's an inheritor of the theatre of Grand Guignol, it borders on the surreal, and it's very funny.

It's also a film where the jokes work so much better if you're steeped in comic book lore, have seen every single X-Men film and are familiar with the complaints about superhero films from X-Men Origins: Wolverine to Justice League.

It's bigger, longer and more expensive than the first Deadpool film - and packed with more meta references and fourth-wall shattering. The film is worth watching for one action scene alone, largely thanks to new arrival Domino (Zazie Beets), who deserves a film of her own.

Hint to those who are going to watch it: there are mid-credit scenes that you'll want to stay around for, but there's no end credit scene - which disappointed a lot of people who'd hung around while the credits rolled.


Tuesday 15 May 2018

Entebbe (2018)


Entebbe (aka 7 Days in Entebbe) is a film that seems confused about its purpose.

Although it’s largely shown from the often-sympathetic perspective of one of the hijackers, Wilfried Böse played by Daniel Brühl, it doesn’t really side with the terrorists. Brühl is shown as a slightly naïve idealist, which is about as deep as his character goes.

The Israeli side of the film largely consists of Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi) and Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan) debating over how best to secure the release of the hostages. The end title cards suggest that the intent of this is to indicate the importance of establishing a dialogue between Israel and Palestine, but there’s nothing persuasive about any of the onscreen arguments.

There’s also a subplot about the relationship between one of the Israeli commandos and his dancer girlfriend. The subplot appears to be completely detached from the rest of the film, and only seems to serve the purpose of allowing the director to intercut dance sequences into the film’s main action set-piece.

The hostages exist only as brief sketches of the people caught up in this situation. Aside from scared expressions and the bloodied figure of one hostage who is violently interrogated by his captors, there’s little attempt to spend much time with them. For the most part there’s an emotional gulf between their experiences and the audience.

Performances are decent enough with Brühl as the standout part, but overall the film didn’t really work for me.

Anon (2018)

Anon is a film funded by Sky Cinema and currently showing in the UK on limited theatrical release and on Sky's movie channels.
I don't have access to Sky, but I did manage to catch this on the big(gish) screen - which probably helped my dodgy eyesight as it made the letters on screen a lot easier to read.

And there are a lot of letters on screen.

For video game players, there are familiar reference points. While in a game, hovering a cursor over an object or NPC (non-player character) will often bring up information about the object of focus, in Anon focusing on another person will bring up details of that person's history - a sort of instantaneous Linked In/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram search.

Everything the citizens of the world of Anon see is recorded too - recordings which people can chose to share, or which the police can access with people often acting as the witness to their own crimes.

It's a set-up that would probably fit right in with Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror TV series. Only Black Mirror feels more cinematic than Anon ever manages to be.

There's nothing visually persuasive about the world that writer-director Andrew Niccol has created, the film is saturated with typical dystopian-grey; the characters that inhabit said world for the most part might as well have been cut from the same grey-cloth (Clive Owne delivering a typically Clive Owen-performance). It's a watchable enough piece, but when Brooker's series manages to be more visually compelling and more memorable, the film feels as if it's arrived ten-years too late on the scene.


Tuesday 8 May 2018

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

Thanks to the magic of cinema, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was filmed in Devon.

I think that sums up my nagging feeling that there was something slightly manufactured about the film. There are a couple of areas where I was let down - Lily James's interactions with Florence Keen (playing Kit) also felt a bit forced.

Other than those minor quibbles, the film is a charming, if slight look at both post-war Britain and the German occupation of the Channel Islands during the war. It doesn't bring any great depth to either, the main thrust of the tale being the relationships that James's character develops with the members of the eponymous society, but it doesn't completely ignore the ugliness of those times.

As a piece of entertainment, with no claims on cinematic greatness, it worked perfectly fine for me. It's only worth avoiding if the sight of any sentimentality whatsoever is enough to send you into spasms of revulsion as it is very much a film about the feels - although sufficiently understated to appeal to a British audience.


Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017)

Mary and the Witch's Flower is the latest film from director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, an alumnus of Studio Ghibli, where he directed Arrietty and When Marnie Was There.
The film is the first release from Studio Ponoc, which was founded by Yoshiaki Nishimura, previously a producer at Ghibli.

The film’s parentage is pretty self-evident from the start. From its animation style, the choice of protagonist, the heavy use of flying, and like a few of Ghibli’s films (When Marnie Was There, Arietty (based on The Borrowers), Howl’s Moving Castle) being based on a book written by a female British novelist, it looks and feels like something that Ghibli could have produced.

The film literally starts with a bang with the opening action sequence, and although it quickly settles a slightly more relaxed tempo, there’s a constant sense of energy to it. It looks gorgeous, can easily hold its head up with most of Ghibli’s output, and shows a promising future for Studio Ponoc.

More importantly, it shows that the type of films that Hayao Miyazaki made will continue to be created, long after he finally decides to let retirement stick.



Tuesday 1 May 2018

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) - No Spoilers Review

Starting with the negatives, Infinity War has two potential flaws.

The first is that it has a huge reliance on what has come before. If you try watching Infinity War without having seen most of the other Marvel movies, then you're not going to know who's who, why they are where they are, dozens of references to events in previous movies, and half of the jokes will probably miss completely.

If you're going to cram before seeing it - which is also advisable if you only have a vague recollection of what's gone on before, this is what you should be watching:

Iron Man (you can probably skip both The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2, if you're in a hurry), Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, Avengers, Iron Man 3 (no real requirement for Thor: The Dark World), Captain America: Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Ant-Man is non-essential), Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther.

So that's over a day's worth of backstory. Take it a movie a day, and you can be sure that Infinity War is still showing in cinemas (although you might find it hard to find Black Panther still playing).

The second flaw - and this is as close as I'm getting to spoilers, so you might want to blink for the rest of this paragraph if you're really sensitive - is the cosmic reset button. You'll get the idea when you see the film - I'm not saying anything more.

On the positive side, by relying on the groundwork laid by the previous films, Infinity War manages to hit the ground running. For the followers of the Marvel Universe, it's a huge pay-off in terms of jumping straight in without messy character introductions. The filmmakers assume you know these characters, assume you understand the relationships between them, and so don't waste any time.

The film is essentially one big love letter to the tradition of the comic book crossover.

For those like me who grew up reading American superhero comic books, the structure of the piece is incredibly familiar. Marvel and DC comic books broadly fell into three categories: on a monthly basis you would have the solo books (Captain America, Iron Man) and the team books (Avengers), and then on a more occasional basis (although these days it happens more and more frequently) you would get the crossover book.

These events would pull together characters from any number of comics (including some who didn't usually get a monthly outing). For DC Comic fans it probably started with the Justice League/Justice Society annual crossovers, reaching its most cosmic with the Crisis on Infinite Worlds story, which brought together DC's entire line. With Marvel you had the likes of Secret Wars and Infinity Gauntlet (from which Infinity War is partially adapted).

In these crossover stories, to deal with the large number of characters, they would split off into smaller teams to deal with a divergent tasks, all of which would eventually play back into the main story - a structure on which Infinity War heavily relies.

The other element to those stories tended to be the scope. Threats were not merely a couple of masked terrorists with a plan for world domination, these crossover events relied on godlike antagonists, threats that affected the whole universe, or the fabric of reality itself.

In that regard, Infinity War delivers. It's the largest scope of any of the Marvel movies so far. The movie looks and feels big (also long at 2 hours 40 minutes). With juggling all of the characters, we don't get enough of some them (for my money Captain America and Black Panther both get short-changed in screen time), but given the amount of people fighting for their cinematic minutes, it's impressive how many are well-served.

Tonally there's also an impressive balancing act. The Guardians of the Galaxy are consistent from their two outings, Thor feels as if he's continuing directly from Ragnarok, Captain America and the earthbound Avenger s might have stepped straight out of Civil War.

For my money, this is the best of the Avengers movies by far. Not my favourite overall in the Marvel Universe, but I can say that I enjoyed pretty much every minute of the long running time.

Sunday 15 April 2018

Rampage (2018)

I have recollections of the Rampage arcade game. I don't think I ever played it, but at the time it was an interesting enough concept to draw my attention.

Of course video games have come a long way since then, and what might have been vaguely interesting to a 15-year old is not quite as much a draw to someone in his late forties.

So Rampage would have been a miss for me. Only it starred Dwayne Johnson, whom you could place in one of those Yule log fire videos and it would be a billion times more watchable. And it was directed by Brad Peyton who made San Andreas (also starring Johnson), which was big, dumb and incredibly fun.

Placing Johnson in the movie definitely makes it much more watchable. And Brad Peyton manages to produce a few decent set pieces. But the movie really failed to work for me in a couple of key areas.

The first might be a result of disaster fatigue. Every big budget movie these days seems to destroy at least one American city. Those that best succeed for me are the ones that bring in the destruction at a ground level - Cloverfield, Godzilla, even Peyton's San Andreas all remember the human element. With Rampage I never felt the sense of real world consequences to the carnage. The hyper-kinetic editing didn't help in that regard either, with some scenes being lit too poorly for such quick cuts, so it was difficult enough to follow what was occurring to feel any genuine sense of peril.

The second was the escalation. The film starts relatively small - a bust up in the zoo, a hunt for an over-sized wolf in a forest, but then when it gets to the city the carnage ramps up to 11 and really has nowhere to go from there. I was sitting in the cinema, wishing for some sense of climax to the film, but it was probably less satisfying than watching someone playing the old arcade game.

For the most part I didn't actively dislike the movie, but after walking away from it, I was left with a rapidly increasing sense of dissatisfaction.



Monday 9 April 2018

The Quiet Place (2018)

There's a lot of buzz about The Quiet Place being the best horror film of the year (we're only into April, so that might be a bit premature). Fortunately, I hadn't heard much of this before I saw it, which meant I saw it with no expectations. In fact I nearly didn't watch it at all, as I was feeling lazy and didn't know if I wanted to bother.

Ninety minutes later and I was practically bouncing out of the cinema wanting to tell everyone how much I enjoyed the film.

For those who who can't stand the gore that has proliferated through much of modern horror, The Quiet Place will come as something of a relief. It isn't entirely blood free, and there's at least one wince-making moment (that's telegraphed so far in advance that I was fully prepared to be looking away when it happened - so I don't actually know what was shown on screen at that point), but for the most part it's about the tension and the fear, not voyeuristic depictions of bodily harm.

It's also notable that for all the tension and the scares, it's a movie that doesn't leave you walking away feeling battered senseless. There's a careful management between tension, action and the slower moments (I would have written quieter moments, but in the context of the film, that wouldn't make sense). It feels like a roller coaster horror film lensed through an Indie film-making sensibility.

The story plays on primal fears - be quiet or the monsters will get you. It appeals to childhood fears, inhabiting the same landscape as the Grimm Fairy Tales, but it's also very much an adult tale about protecting your family.

Like last year's Get Out, The Quiet Place should do a lot to redeem the image of horror as a respectable genre. In fact, I can see future generations of filmmakers being inspired by this - although hopefully they'll take away the right lessons from it.

Perhaps I'm over-selling it, but I genuinely loved this film. For a relatively novice director, John Krasinski has crafted something very special, which should do wonders for his directing career, if he ever gives it a chance amid all the acting gigs.





Tuesday 3 April 2018

Ready Player One (2018)


Ready Player One has been on my radar for a while now. I read the book several months ago and enjoyed it, although I was mildly irritated by the juvenile-toned wish-fulfilment aspect to the writing. Knowing that Steven Spielberg was supposedly directing it (although he was also supposed to be directing Robopocalypse, which had been MIA for five years, until being handed over to Michael Bay), I held out the hope that the film version might address some of those issues.

Ove the past couple of months, the trailers started arriving. At first, I wasn’t particularly interested, until the release of one with a cover version of Pure Imagination playing over it managed to push all of my geek buttons. I quickly moved from being mildly interested to completely obsessed, even though I knew there was every chance that I was going to be completely disappointed.



Unfortunately, I had decided to go away for the weekend when the film was being released, which meant I had to wait for a full FOUR DAYS before being able to see it.

I had one or two problems while watching it. The first was that I managed to tip my seat up in the cinema to the point that I almost crushed the person sitting behind me. That has no bearing on the film at all, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

The second was that I really needed another couple of hours sleep to be able to concentrate properly. As a result, parts of the film felt like a particularly vivid dream.

Aside from that, Ready Player One pretty much met all of my expectations (the optimistic ones at least). Aside from the advances in the technology used to make the film, it felt like a leftover from the 1980s (the last decade when they really knew how to make sci-fi blockbuster films that weren’t part of a franchise). Ernest Cline, the author of Ready Player One, was born one year after me in 1972, so it’s not surprising that many of his cultural touchstones intersect with mine.

The story is a cross between Tron and The Last Starfighter (the latter being an inspiration for the author’s second (and lesser) novel, Armada), covering some of the same territory as Tad Williams’ Otherworld books and the Sword Art Online anime series. While the script isn’t particularly deep, it does neatly reflect some of the concerns about the direction today’s society is taking – particularly in the ever-increasing divide between ultra-rich and trailer park poor (in this case trailer parks are now mini-cities with trailers stacked vertically on top of each other).

Geek-culture references come thick and fast. Chucky, Back to the Future, Batman, King Kong, Akira, Silent Running, The Shining, Star Wars, Jurassic Park are some of the few that come immediately to mind, but there’s so much more than that. In terms of copyright clearance, Ready Player One makes The Lego Movie seem a mere dilettante in comparison.

When I was fourteen, this would probably have been among the best films I had ever seen. As it stands, it’s a film that I liked an awful lot. It’s not perfect, but it’s more than good enough. And I’m looking forward to seeing it again.

Monday 26 March 2018

Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

I think I watched a different film to all the critics.

I missed the original Pacific Rim in the cinema. I did buy the Blu-Ray when it came out - thought it was okay, but it wasn't quite the amazing film that I had been hearing about. I think the lack of a huge screen probably didn't do me any favours.

So when I saw Uprising, I picked a cinema with a large screen and then sat at the front so that I had to look up to see the top of the screen. I don't know if that made it a better experience, but it certainly didn't seem to hurt.

To some regard, the story reminded me a little of Independence Day Resurgence - it shared elements around the world having rebuilt itself, the social scars left by the war, the military screw-up leading the fight. Like ID4 2 (or whatever it was abbreviated to), there's enough of a hint of the post-post-apocalypse world to make it appear intriguing, but soon enough we're back with the military and the glimpses of the larger society are just glimpses.

Much of the movie actually appears to be something of an assembly from other similar films (there are bits of Transformers DNA in there too), but overall there was nothing that screamed "I don't work" at me.

The characters could have been more original, the story could have been told better (although it does take some interesting turns), and some of the fight scenes could have been more coherently staged (I had to work at figuring out who was in which Jaeger (Giant Robot Suit) for a start), but it was entertaining, it held my interest and I didn't feel the need to close my eyes and take a nap - so all of those are good things.

Overall not as good as the original (how many sequels are?), but as a piece of big, dumb fun entertainment, it works well enough.

Isle of Dogs (2018)

Two important points to note:

1. This is not about the similarly titled area of London
2. It is not a kid's film

Isle of Dogs is the second animated feature (the first being The Fantastic Mr Fox) to come from writer-director Wes Anderson. Set in Japan in the near future, it's a fable about persecuted minorities told in the form of the tale of a dog-hating mayor who uses the excuse of snout fever to banish all dogs to a refuse island.

One of the few stories I've read about this accused Anderson of cultural appropriation - a label that seems to be applied with expanding frequency. The writer took affront (although perhaps that's putting it a bit took strongly) about Anderson's western-lensed view of the Japanese.

Except it's not really a Western view as much as it's a Wes Anderson view. For anyone who's seen another Wes Anderson movie, this is yet another Wes Anderson movie. The comedy is as dry as the Sahara and equally ridiculous. The subject matter is treated both with ridicule and love, which is a constant throughout Anderson's films. Yes, it's a western view, but it reads as a love letter to Japan rather than a misappropriation of western culture.

Beyond that point, it's a beautifully quirky piece with some heartfelt voice performances - particularly from Bryan Cranston's Chief. I preferred it over The Fantastic Mr Fox, as I didn't have the memory source material playing with my expectations.



Monday 19 March 2018

Tomb Raider (2018)

I've been an on-and-off fan of the Tomb Raider franchise since playing the first game on the Playstation back in the late '90s. High adventure, exotic locations, lost civilisations and a heroine who was part Indiana Jones, part James Bond and part Lady Penelope managed to fill a void that had been not been properly filled since the release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989.

I lost touch with the franchise after the third game, although I was eager to see Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. An enthusiasm that latest until about twenty minutes into the film. What seemed to me to be a formula that a filmmaker could hardly go wrong with turned out to be a formula that a filmmaker could easily go wrong with. Badly cut together with a film score written in two weeks (for which the composer apologised), and a story that is ultimately forgettable (seriously, I can't remember anything at all except a vague recollection of some nonsense about time travel, a clock and huskies).

I do have something of a soft spot for the sequel, The Cradle of Life, which I felt managed to at least attempt to reproduce the sense of adventure that the Tomb Raiders films should have - and it had an Alan Silvestri score which is usually a Very Good Thing. But it's ending was a bit pants, and everyone else seemed to hate it, so that was that for Angelina's Tomb Raider.

Fast forward ten years and Tomb Raider is being rebooted for the (then) current generation of games consoles with greatly improved graphics and a stripped-down origin story for Lara Croft. It also happened to be written by Rhianna Pratchett, a writer I was familiar with in part because of her parentage but perhaps moreso because she had written Overlord, a video game that works as an anti-Lord of the Rings comedy.

The game ranks among my favourites in terms of both fun gameplay and - in what is becoming more expected from video games - a decent story. Narratively it blows both of the Tomb Raider films out of the water.

The recently released Tomb Raider film owes much to that game. The stripped-back Lara Croft, the main location, the mythology, some of the stunts, and even the colour pallet are all rooted in the game. It's definitely its own beast though, diverging considerably from the story told in the game, but there's no doubting its influence.

That's all evident in the trailer, so it was with this expectation that I went to see the film.

I'll start with the conclusion: I liked it. I liked it enough that I saw it twice in the same weekend. It's a huge improvement on Lara's previous cinematic outings.

That's not to say it's a great film. For me it's a solid B. It's fun, exciting in parts, there's an absolutely fantastic central performance from Alicia Vikander who seems custom-built for the part. It's pacey with very little chance of causing the audience to nod off. Even the slower sections (i.e. when Lara's not running from something, shooting something, or falling off something) still manage to engage and maintain interest.

It also manages to capture the essence of the game. The action in some cases could have been lifted straight from it - but not in the sense that you're watching a character being manipulated through a series of actions by someone with a game controller - Vikander's performance raises it above that.

The film is let down in a couple of areas though. Firstly, the story takes too long to get going. We spend too much time cycling around London in the opening reel - something where the film could have learned from the narrative of the game, which instead drops us in media res in the middle of a shipwreck.

The other letdown is that it isn't quite big enough. The final act manages to hit a lot of the right spots for puzzling solving under pressure in a deathtrap tomb, but the climactic action feels more like an opening level of a game rather than the full fireworks finale. It felt as if budget constraints had limited the extent of the storytelling.

Ultimately, it's a film that made me want a sequel - hopefully Lara can progress way beyond level two.

Monday 5 March 2018

Red Sparrow (2018)

I've read a number of articles comparing Red Sparrow with Atomic Blonde. Both are violent spy thrillers with a female protagonist.

It's a lazy comparison.

Atomic Blonde for all its insistence on visceral violence that leaves its scars is a comic book movie. Its "realistic" portrayal of people getting hurt means having the actors wince a lot, but ultimately being as indestructible as in any James Bond film.

Red Sparrow is not a comic book film. It's still an unrealistic twisty-turny thriller, but for sheer gut impact it's a far superior piece of work.

I don't know if I liked the film, but I did admire the craft that went into it. In terms of knowing where the plot was going, it kept me guessing between the possibilities that Jennifer Lawrence's character was a double agent or a triple agent. It delivered a character who when presented with two options would keep picking a third one, and as a result managed to keep surprising me throughout. And it delivered one of the most painful looking moments in recent cinema history - I think I audibly gasped at this moment.

There's also the debate over whether the film is sexually exploitative or sexually liberating. After all the lead character is taught to use sex as a weapon, there's a "voluntary" rape scene (it's a little more complicated than calling it one or the other - both people are in the wrong - the man far more so), but these are not treated as being good - so are they exploitative and likely to set back the feminist cause, or are they deliberately provocative and worth discussing? Or will not enough people see the film to actually care?

Ultimately, I think it's a film that will alienate too much of its potential audience to be a huge success. 

Monday 26 February 2018

The Phantom Thread (2017)

I didn't think I was going to watch The Phantom Thread. I detested the trailer for it - a loathing born from the awful piece of music that accompanied it. I know that trailer music is not the same as the music used in the film, but I expect it to be representative of mood - and the mood this music represented was not one I cared to experience.

However. a few people have mentioned how much they liked the film, so I thought I'd give it a punt.

The opening of the film didn't inspire much hope in me. The characters were cold, the action overly finickity, and lacking engagement.

Then the film introduces Alma (Vicky Krieps) and the whole mood (and my engagement) shifted.

The story lies somewhere between Gothic Romance and fairy tale in the relationship between the characters. Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) remains a difficult character to like throughout, but still manages to elicit enough sympathy that I was rooting for Alma to win him over.

The story also managed to completely wrong-foot me. Its ending was both unexpected and completely in keeping with the previous actions of the characters.

It's not a film that I'm likely to rewatch in the near future, but it is one that's stuck with me since I saw it.

Oh, and I had no problem at all with the music.

Tuesday 20 February 2018

The Mercy (2018)

To say that I found the end Title Card the most moving thing about The Mercy might be doing the film something of an injustice, but it's true.

I walked in to see the film without any knowledge of the true-life events behind the story, aside from those that I had gleaned from the trailer, which were quite a few.

The story is engagingly told for the first half. Sadly the at sea parts offered very little novelty and felt very much like movie-making-by-the-numbers to me. At this point I was more engaged with the story of what was going on back on dry land.

The acting is fine. Colin Firth gives a slightly less sympathetic performance than usual - in fact it's only his presence that elevates the part into being more than someone you would quite happily want to be lost at sea. Rachel Weisz is the real star turn - unfortunately her part doesn't give her enough to do and I spent much of my time wishing that someone would give her a role that really made use of her abilities.

It's not a bad a film. It's one that shows promise with certain scenes - and perhaps if the trailer hadn't tried to tell the entire story, it's one that might have offered a few more surprises. Ultimately, what it was lacking was the mystery. We only know glimpses of what really happened with Donald Crowhurst's voyage, and a little more mystery might have taken the film a lot further.

Monday 19 February 2018

The Shape of Water (2017)

I'm not convinced The Shape of Water should have been eligible for this year's BAFTAs, considering it was only released the Friday before the ceremony. I think it's one thing for the film industry to award themselves as many prizes as they want (wasn't there something about how only monkeys and the incumbent US President claps themselves?), but if BAFTA seriously wants to engage with cinema-goers, it would help if it wasn't so elitist and gave folk the chance to make up their own minds before telling them which films are good and which aren't.

To be fair, the reason I imagine that BAFTA is pushing films that only scrape a release before the ceremony is that the delay between the US release and the UK release means that BAFTA is worried that compared with the Oscars, it's going to look like last year's news. Perhaps they need reminding that the 'B' does not stand for America.

With that off my chest, on Friday I took a day off work to see the film (well that and and Lady Bird, another prematurely BAFTA'd film) and found myself sitting in a cinema with a sinking feeling of deja vu.

A couple of weeks before, I had been sitting in the same cinema (Curzon Aldgate, I'm looking at you) waiting for Early Man to begin. Only it wasn't so much a case of Early Man, as Delayed Man and then Didn't Bother to Show Up At All Man.

It all started with a lack of adverts, which wouldn't bother most people (and as long as the lights are up, I spend those ten minutes reading), but it's an indicator that the the wonderful state-of-the-art digital projection service, where you don't need actual projectionists had failed to start.

As the rest of the audience was content to sit there (occasionally asking each other if the programme should have started by now), I went off in search of someone to do something. I don't know how I ended up in the position of being the person who always goes off whenever there's something wrong in the cinema as I've always considered myself as the person least likely to cause a fuss, but I guess that's what comes with getting old(er).

By the time I return to my seat, someone has kindly turned it into a shrine to their shopping - proof that no good deed goes unpunished.

Unlike with Couldn't Get Out Of Bed Man, the cinema staff managed to start the film (might have been a case of turning it off and turning it on again), the upside to the issue being that they skipped all the adverts and went straight to the trailers (often the best part).

I had been prepared for The Shape of Water to disappoint me hugely. I remember the fuss made about Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, which I though was okay, but not the masterpiece that some friends were making it out to be. I liked his Hellboy, but not so much Hellboy 2, and the rest of his films have been interesting, but unlikely to make it to the top of my favourite films list.

I'd also been coming across a bit of a backlash about the film from certain folk - yes it looked pretty, but it didn't engage them.

I was captivated for almost all of the film's running time. There's one sequence (the musical one, if you go see it) that felt out of place to me, but other than that I absolutely loved it.

It won't work for everyone (that's proven), and it requires a pretty huge suspension of disbelief, but if you can get over the unlikely romance (and there are big fat clues about how not unlikely it might be), then there's a lot to like.

It's been accused of being derivative, but for me that was one of the strengths of the film. del Toro has taken inspiration from dozens of sources and mashed them into something that worked on multiple levels for me.

The Alexandre Desplat score is possibly the best work he has done - I've been listening to it a lot and have found myself humming bars of it when waking up (yes, I wake up humming film scores, what of it?). The Production design is beautiful, and the directing shows del Toro at the top of his game.

In short, all of the BAFTAs that The Shape of Water won are properly deserved in my book.

Even if it was a a year too soon.







Thursday 15 February 2018

Ocean Liners: Speed and Style (3 Feb 2018 – 10 Jun 2018)

The V&A  is rapidly becoming one of my favourite museums. Aside from the sheer amount of interesting material they have on permanent display throughout their buildings (V&A also run the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green), their temporary exhibitions are incredibly well mounted - and they have four running simultaneously.

The latest one to open is Ocean Liners: Speed and Style, which should appeal to transport-philes, lovers of art deco, people nostalgic for the golden age of Hollywood-style glamour, and frankly anyone whose artistic soul hasn't withered and died.



The exhibition prides itself as a comprehensive look at Ocean Liners, at it certainly works at meeting that claim. Handsomely mounted, with the room design and soundtrack creating the right mood, it provides an almost embarrassingly rich collection of liner-related material.

Like a number of the V&A's exhibitions, the exhibition starts strong and builds from there.

The first room starts with a look at the booking office. Posters and brochures advertise a number of different ships and routes.





Calling this a brochure might be a bit of a misnomer, as a number of  Lines used hardback books for their advertising - at least for the first class experience.

Might not want to book this particular voyage
The exhibition then moves on board, with furnishings and fittings from a number of different lines




Speed and Progress by Maurice Lambert. Relief panel from the Queen Mary.

A Torah Ark from the Queen Mary's synagogue

Panel from the first-class smoking room on the Normandie.

Bronze plaques from the Normandie depicting wheat and grapes.

Dancer with Three Seagulls by Marcello Mascherini

Panels from the first-class ballroom, and cocktail table from the SS United States, which was fitted-out with fireproof fixtures as the result of a fire on the SS Normandie when it was being refitted as a troopship during World War II.

A trip below-decks looks at the engineering and ship-building side, as well as including a look at liners during wartime.


Pattern for the casing of a steam turbine on the QE2.
Propaganda after the sinking of the Lusitania.



The exhibition continues onto the promenade deck.




Leisure is covered with the history of swimming pools on board ships, as well as details of various other entertainments.

Semaphore flags as they would have been displayed by a ship-board swimming pool. They read: come on in the water's fine.

Deckchair from the Titanic.


First class travelers would show off their glamorous evening wear coming down the ship's Grand Staircase before dinner in a ritual known as la grande descente, which is reflected in a visual display looking like something from a 1930s Hollywood musical.




The exhibition finishes with the cultural impact of ocean liners with excerpts of films such as The Poseidon Adventure, The Man with the Golden Gun, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and art inspired by the great ships.

The end of the exhibition also includes a reminder that not all ocean voyages end well.

Flotsam from the Titanic.

Hong Kong Railway Museum

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