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Showing posts with label Emily Blunt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emily Blunt. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
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I bet every review of Edge of Tomorrow is going to mention Groundhog Day, but the comparison is irresistible. The blood of the Bill Murray classic has been transfused into the still warm body of the Starship Troopers franchise and the resulting film is a bit of a Frankenstein's monster. But instead of Punxatawny Phil we have Tom Cruise in science fiction hero mode, Andie MacDowell is wielding a giant sword and the cute groundhog is replaced with a horde of bloodthirsty tentacled monsters.
I've got a pet theory that Tom Cruise works best in a film where he plays a smarmy bastard that gets taken down a peg or two, and at the beginning of Edge of Tomorrow he's rarely been smarmier. Faced with a somewhat generic alien invasion of Europe, he's Cage, a former advertising executive turned military PR man with designs on staying as far away from any actual fighting as possible. His oily cowardice angers a General (a largely wasted Brendan Gleeson), who promptly pressgangs him into the front lines of an upcoming invasion of Europe. Sweaty, terrified and miserable as hell, Cage is strapped into a clunky robot exoskeleton and tossed into the beach sequence from Saving Private Ryan. He dies horribly.
Then he wakes up. It's the same day all over again. Once again he's thrown onto the battlefield, but this time survives a little longer before once more biting it. As he undergoes this endless cycle of death and rebirth he gradually becomes a better soldier, learning how to fight the monsters, use his equipment and stay calm on the battlefield. The problem is, no matter how hard he fights, the monsters always win. Enter the Full Metal Bitch (Emily Blunt). She knows exactly what's going on with Cage's time loop, and the two resolve to use it to end the war once and for all.
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| Tom Cruise is about to die horribly. Again. |
Very quickly it turns out that the concept of being trapped in an endless time loop is intrinsically pretty funny, even if the human race is on the brink of destruction. Liman can't resist working through a series of extremely Groundhog Dayish time travel gags, the highlight being a short montage of Tom Cruise dying in various silly ways which amused me no end. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Cruise: while I can't deny his supercharisma and basic everyman likeability I take a sadistic pleasure in watching horrible things happen to him. Whether he's getting his face ripped off in Vanilla Sky or murdering clones of himself in Oblivion I'm enjoying myself, so any film where the most expedient way out of a sticky situation is to shoot Tom Cruise in the head (thus resetting the timeline) is a-okay in my book.
By quite a wide margin Edge of Tomorrow boasts the highest Cruise-deaths-per-minute in cinema to date, and I'd recommend it for that alone. Fortunately it's also got more going for it. Emily Blunt is quietly excellent as the buttoned down supersoldier, a warrior that's precisely as robotic and precise as the exoskeleton that powers her. Initially she seems a bit flat, but quickly you realise her emotional numbness is the logical psychological result of dying thousands of times and ultimately failing. She's so impressive as a cold-blooded monster-murderer extraordinaire that it becomes a bit disappointing when she begins to thaw and show her true personality. But Blunt keeps a tight leash on the character and Liman never quite lets Cruise overshadow her in the badass stakes.
Similarly impressive are the robotic exoskeletons. Though they must be computer generated they have an utterly believable clunky weight to them, the soldiers fighting and moving like Ripley in the Power Loader in the climax of Aliens. We're never quite allowed to take them for granted, and with weapons bristling out of them like a Swiss Army Knife designed by 2000AD they serve to keep the action sequences full of surprises and neat moments right up to the climax.
Unfortunately the same can't be said for the rather uninspired alien designs. They're essentially a blob of tentacles with a mouth in the middle, and though they move in a disarmingly quick manner the film never quite shows what they do to kill a man. Paul Verhoeven in Starship Troopers knew enough to show them disembowelling a man in the opening sequence, immediately underlining how dangerous his bugs were. By comparison, Liman's monsters are a bit bland and chew their way through the soldiers in a boringly antiseptic manner.
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| They've basically got to get a doohickey to find out where that space onion lives. |
The screenplay also has a worringly tendency to dip into clunky exposition and technobabble to the point where characters look like they're trying not to crack up at the rubbish they're forced to say. Harold Ramis and Bill Murray knew better than to explain the 'how' of their time loop, but as science fiction Edge of Tomorrow seems to feel obliged to try, leading to some largely tedious scenes where characters stare at spinning holograms and blithely spout a load of portentous sounding drivel.
That all said, Edge of Tomorrow is inarguably a superior summer blockbuster. The time loop gimmick is a beautiful, if unoriginal, storytelling tool and Liman exploits the possibilities of it to the fullest. The whole thing falls apart like a house of cards if you think about it too much, but though there's the odd creaky moment the whole affair just about hangs together. Much as I hate to admit it, science fiction Tom Cruise is a safe bet right now. After all, the man enjoys silly alien stories so much he literally made it his religion - what finer recommendation could you ask for?
★★★★
Edge of Tomorrow is on general release from May 30th. Don't bother with 3D on this one.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
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As we glide through the clouds the voice of Death assures us that we're all going to die and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. It's a pretty harsh way to open a sentimental film about a young girl, yet his words ring truer the longer the film goes on. The Book Thief is a film about the power of stories; the internal narratives we forge for ourselves, the realities imposed upon us by authority and the liberating power of the written word. However, as Neil Gaiman correctly identified: "the real problem with stories [is that] if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.”
Adapted from the novel by Markus Zusak, The Book Thief charts World War II of a young German girl called Liesel (Sophie Nélisse). It's 1938 and her younger brother is dead, her mother is 'disappeared' Communist - with nowhere else to go she's placed with a non-descript German couple, Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson). After a frosty beginning the three form a close-knit family unit, growing together as Europe tears itself apart.
As the years tick by Liesel gets an abridged version of the domestic German experience during the war; witnessing book burnings, her schoolmates becoming indoctrinated into Nazism, Jews having their shops ransacked and bundled into cars and the men in her life gradually being conscripted into the Nazi war machine. The most notable development is the arrival of Max (Ben Schnetzer), the Jewish son of an old war buddy of her adoptive father. The family hide him in their cellar and soon he and Liesel form a strong friendship, Liesel reading to Max from banned books she's appropriated from book burnings and private libraries and Max gently encouraging Liesel to express herself creatively through her writing.
For much of The Book Thief the war seems a distant concern. It's something you hear reports of in the newspaper, but the propagandist stories give little real insight into what's going on in the outside world. This puts Liesel's picturesque town in a bubble, a close-knit community where Nazism is an alien invader rather than something that's naturally sprung up within the community.
Pervical's film softly paints a picture that comes close to absolving the average German citizen of responsibility for the rise of Nazism. The majority of the townspeople we meet in this movie are kind, intelligent and understanding, most of them apparently secretly opposed to Adolf Hitler but intimidated into stepping into line and subsequently into uniform. The only 'true believers' we meet are obvious villains, cartoon pastiches of cruel bullies. While the Nazis obviously were cruel bullies The Book Thief presents us with an reductively Manichean world. In this film Nazi indoctrination becomes something that happens to other people, as opposed to the reality that racist, xenophobic, totalitarian fascism is something that, given the right conditions, can take deep root inside every human being.
Fortunately what the film lacks in narrative subtlety it more than makes up in careful visual storytelling. From the opening shot of clouds we quickly swoop down to following a train travelling through a snowy white field, white steam billowing from the smoke-stack. All too often these characters are surrounded by pure white snow, piled in heaps on the ground and gently fluttering down from the sky around them. This snow is the psychic echo of the pillars of ashes emanating from the ovens of Dachau that, unbeknownst to these townspeople (and certainly to the young Liesel), are burning not so far away. With the snatching of Jews from their shops, and later ragged, emaciated concentration camp victims marching down the street, they sense that something is deeply wrong but lack the information to articulate it - this unfocussed yet keenly felt guilt drifting in their streets, clogging their gutters and freezing their rivers.
Much like young Liesel, the film has it's heart in the right place yet occasionally struggles to articulate itself. From Death's opening lines we're know we're building to a morbid conclusion yet we get there by a frustratingly circuitous route: the film is never dull exactly but it comes perilously close. This largely a structural symptom, there's a few different mini-plots going on at once, and as these end there's pauses in the action where nothing much of interest is happening.
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| Geoffrey Rush is one of a very small group of actors who can retain our sympathy while dressed in a Nazi uniform. |
Preventing this stop-start narrative technique from torpedoing the film are the excellent performances throughout, with particular praise due to Geoffrey Rush's ultra-paternal Max - a rock of warm humanity within the nightmare of fascism. Emily Watson also impresses as the gradually thawing Rosa, effortlessly morphing from evil stepmother to nobly pragmatist. Roger Allam is a decently ambiguous Death (though his intonation distractingly recalls The Stanley Parable). But it's Sophie Nélisse that deserves the real plaudits, believably portraying the lead character over multiple years - somehow physically embodying every single stage of adolescence.
The only real problem with the performances is that there's the disappointing decision to have our leads speaking English with wobbly German accents rather than just speaking German. Annoyingly they decide to pepper the dialogue with the odd German word ('Ja' and 'Nein' instead of 'Yes' and 'No etc), as if they're scared we'll forget this is taking place in Nazi Germany (the omnipresent Swastikas kind of give it away...). Even more bizarrely they're not consistent about it, so some characters speaking in subtitles and some don't. This isn't so much of a problem when you're properly engaged in what's on screen but it definitely undercuts more than few dramatic moments.
Nobody is going to argue that the central message of the importance of books and how they teach you to viewing the world through a poetic questioning lens isn't a vital one, yet in my opinion it's a touch too vague, too fluffily humanistic to act as a true riposte to the horrors of Adolf Hitler. That said, the muffled sniffles from the audience as the credits roll is testament to the film at least succeeding on a emotional level.
★★★
The Book Thief is on general release from February 26th
Monday, June 18, 2012
Monday, June 18, 2012
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| Somewhat inevitably, there is a lot of flannel in this film. |
As I’ve said before, I appreciate films that wear their heart on their sleeve, and ‘Your Sister’s Sister’ definitely does that. The film is a very pared down three character comedy/drama about personal interactions, unrequited love and the shifting nature of romantic relationships. I’m unfamiliar with writer/director Lynn Shelton’s previous work (aside from an episode of Mad Men), but this is one of those films that you can sense has arrived onscreen with very little interference from outside parties.
Our three characters are Iris (Emily Blunt), Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Jack (Mark Duplass). As the film begins Jack is Iris’ best friend, and upon seeing his general emotional troubles orders him to spend some time alone at her family’s remote cabin. Upon arriving, he discovers that Iris’ sister, Hannah is unexpectedly staying there. The two get drunk and have sex, waking up the next morning to discover that Iris has arrived. The stage is thus set for a series of secrets, confessions and shifting allegiances between the three characters.
There is a purposeful tranquillity to the film, and even when emotions run high we never feel like things are running out of control. These are characters more likely to go and sit on their own and think rather than make violent emotional outbursts. In terms of pace the film meanders along at its own speed. There are no ultimatums or deadlines, no-one seems to be rushing anywhere. Indeed at one point one character leaves the other two for an indeterminate amount of time to be alone, and it is silently accepted that they will reappear when they’re ready.
This sense of calm is boosted by the set, a remote but fairly luxurious cabin out on an island. It sits on the shores of a great, still lake, and frequently the characters will sit (in slightly consciously cinematic poses) contemplating it. The house has a lot of earthy, natural tones with hardwood floors and exposed wooden beams and pillars – it intrinsically feels like a calming place. The various characters’ bedrooms feel somewhat womblike, with beds that seem to encourage people to curl up into a fetal position. The solitude and focus is aided in part by the lack of technology at the cabin. There are no mobile phones there, no internet and seemingly no television. This is explicitly pointed out in the script as a plus point – a lack of distraction is portrayed as inarguably a ‘good thing’. The characters inhabiting this peaceful world have nothing to get in the way of their interactions with each other, indeed several conversations take place while the characters are lying in bed with each other.
All three leads put in fine performances. They’re all slightly lost and emotionally damaged, some more obviously than others, and they all have their various secrets that get revealed over the course of the film.
Mark Duplass is very good as Jack – playing a kind of muted Seth Rogan type. It has become a bit of a cliché in the last half decade for films to show us a “realistic” male character as opposed to a film star type. Generally this translates into a somewhat scruffy looking unshaven semi-slob with a heart of gold. This character type started as a subversive take on a male lead, but has quickly become a sort of dominant role in modern male orientated ‘gross out’ comedies. He’s the kind of character that as soon as you see him, you know that by the end of the film he will have gained a new understanding of responsibility, learned something about what it “truly” means to be a man and generally grown up a little. By now this character arc is well trodden and explored ground. ‘Your Sister’s Sister’ does not deviate spectacularly from this type. However, in keeping with the pared-down and realistic tone of the drama, some of the more outré elements are eliminated very quickly. The performance differs from its other, more comedic cousins in that the character does not begin the film blissfully unaware of his own failings. The underlying emotional core of Jack is that his brother died over a year ago, and he is still coming to terms with it. He knows he’s a bit messed up over it, and accepts his best friend Iris’ advice to spend some time thinking about to do with his life. As the narrative progresses and he becomes more entangled in the sister’s lives we see him both having responsibilities thrust upon him, and also coming to terms with his own life. The film never completely neuters his caustic side though, and he’s funny in a self-deprecating way right up until the end credits.
Hannah, as played by Rosemarie DeWitt is another character that dangerously approaches cliché. She’s the lesbian, vegan, older step-sister of Iris, and we quickly learn that she has just ended a 7 year relationship with her partner. She occupies the same kind of space as the slightly off-beat, but not culturally threatening friend that mainstream romantic comedies tend to have. Even though she does fulfil a number of stereotypical tropes though, DeWitt’s performance here is generally subtle and underplayed. Her veganism is used occasionally as the punchline for a joke, but never directly at the character’s expense and refreshingly her lesbianism is not particularly dwelled upon, and is treated as entirely ordinary. Her mannerisms and self-confident style are swiftly and efficiently sketched out by DeWitt, and she deploys a wickedly flirty smile to devastating effect.
Her sister, Iris, as played by Emily Blunt is arguably the least interesting of the three, purely by dint of the fact that she begins the film with the least problems. She is a fairly ordinary girl working in a creative field who has her head screwed on straight and gives good advice. It’s interesting to see how Jack and Hannah shift their allegiances in relation to her. The film spends a lot of time examining the importance of the sororal relationship between Iris and Hannah, using Jack’s bond with his dead brother as a point of comparison. Iris tends to be placed on a pedestal, something (initially) to be emulated or desired, and she only really becomes interesting as a character in her own right when she’s swept into the inter-personal conflicts that drive the narrative. Iris seems like a difficult character to get under the skin of, and at least initially Blunt has to play her as reactive instead of proactive, but she reaches some impressive emotional heights in the final act. Even so, purely by dint of her playing a more psychologically healthy character she has to work harder to make her interesting to us.
I think the film can be criticised on a character level for violating the rule of ‘show, don’t tell’ a bit too often. In the case of Jack we are explicitly told he is damaged and emotionally crippled, but we aren’t really directly shown this. The first scene of the film is him causing a ‘scene’ at a memorial for his dead brother, but while he may be acting in a socially awkward way, he’s absolutely correct in what he says. His pain in the film seems to arise from events within the narrative of the film rather than from his past. We’re just told that he’s a mess at the start, rather than explicitly seeing it. Then again, an overly melodramatic scene of him being unnecessarily abrasive and rude would run the risk of alienating the audience from one of the primary characters and somewhat spoil the tranquil atmosphere that the film creates. Still, throughout the film we are told repeatedly exactly how the characters are feeling at any one moment, and even though the dialogue never feels artificial, it prevents us from coming to our own conclusions about what is going on. I always feel a little more emotionally invested when I’m allowed to intuit character motivations and feelings rather than being told them.
In spite of this slight deficiency, it’s still easy to get wrapped up in the lives of these people. They react to events realistically, in a reflexive non-cinematic way. A drunken and clumsy sex scene towards the start of the film is simultaneously depressingly and hilariously realistic in its brevity. The way the film treats sex in general is right on the money- it adeptly captures that shift between drunken and sober logic. It feels easy to convince yourself when you’re drunk and horny that sleeping with someone’s sister or best friend isn’t going to have any consequences and hey, we’re both single, and well – they’d probably be cool with it anyway right? Moments like these where the characters deal with their frantic self-justification, excuses and lies is when the film seems most honest and works best.
It’s also nice that even though the film lives or dies by the audience’s ability to empathise with the leads, it does not shy away from having them act extremely unpleasantly. It’s difficult to try and gauge the razor thin line between what a character can do and keep the audience on their side. For example, in one scene Iris and Jack put butter in the vegan Hannah’s mashed potatoes as a joke. There is some excellent acting from DeWitt here as she acts with decorum and but while also expressing her disgust with the breach of trust. It shows a confidence in your characterisation if you’re prepared to let the audience view your as leads bullies. Even if the characters later make up, you run the risk of leaving an unpleasant impression. There is a much larger breach of trust later in the film which echoes the moment with the mashed potatoes and takes our characters even closer to the moral event horizon, and it is a credit to both the performers and the writer/director that we still basically like these characters even through those moments.
‘Your Sister’s Sister’ is solid character-based drama, and while this is hardly a film with an edge-of-your-seat white knuckle narrative, it more than succeeds in making you care about the various emotional complexities of three slightly damaged people. There is a slightly trite plot twist towards the end of the film that seems a little bit over-engineered and telegraphed, but it at least sets up a fantastic ending. Lynn Shelton makes it all look effortless and easy, this is a simple story with few locations after all, but there is a lot going on beneath the surface. This film is intelligently written and constructed, the performances are all well gauged and while it may not be an epoch changing, genre-busting triumph it does everything it sets out to.
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