LONDON CITY NIGHTS: Ian McKellan

Monday, May 19, 2014

'X-Men: Days of Future Past' (2014) directed by Bryan Singer

Monday, May 19, 2014 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Watching an X-Men movie in 2014 feels like sliding on a comfy old pair of slippers. For nearly half my life I've been watching a topless Hugh Jackman quip and smoke his way around wood-panelled mansions, Patrick Stewart rolling around and offering well enunciated words of wisdom and Ian McKellen clearly loving hamming it up in a leather cape and silly hat. After 14 years and 7 films these characters feel like old friends, and though their films have ranged in quality from the good-to-competent (X-Men 2) to the diabolical (Wolverine: Origins) I've always had a kernel of good will towards them, if only because they've demonstrated a consistently great eye for casting.

Days of Future Past is very much an X-Men victory lap, bringing together almost every actor and character that's featured in the series thus far for a twisty-turny time travel caper. Leaving aside the actual quality of the film for a moment, this is one of the greatest ensemble casts of the last decade, a real embarrassment of riches. Director Bryan Singer, returning to the series after a decades absence, is supremely confident with the material - the time travelling plot necessitating juggling two ensembles and two entirely different settings all served up with dollops of special effects and quickly sketched character arcs.

There's also an neatly homoerotic element to much this stuff.

The basic plot is essentially a superhero reimagining of Terminator. We open in a perpetually nighttime, post-apocalyptic hellworld of concentration camps and ruins. Skeletons litter the ground amid lightning strikes and giant, spotlight wielding killer machines. Taking the place of Skynet are the Sentinels; omniscient invincible robots able to defeat our mutant heroes by copying their powers. The X-Men have been reduced to a ragtag group desperately trying to survive, though still wearing costumes that look like they're on their way to a rave circa 1998. As a mark of how bad things have gotten Wolverine has gone a bit grey, Magneto has lost his revolutionary spark and Professor X has never looked balder.

After a bit of super science hand-wavery it's decided that the best course of action is to send Wolverine back to the 1970s to stop the war from ever happening in the first place. Thus the series spirals back on itself to the rebooted cast of X-Men: First Class - where Wolverine has to play Blues Brothers and get the band back together. With Wolverine as our guide we journey through a Kodachrome tinted soft rock superhero past of bell bottoms, paisley shirts and outrageously wide-brimmed hats. There's even a villainous Nixon caricature!

Magneto is really nailing this outfit. Supervillainy with style!

It's a pretty convoluted set-up, but Singer keeps things light and most importantly, sustains momentum throughout. Obvious effort has been expended on creating a dynamic screenplay where character goals are crystal clear at all times. While the overarching plot of preventing the future war is always on character's minds, we have pleasant little diversions into heist caper, political thriller and even a smidge of rock star psychedelia. It's a sprawling mess of a movie, but it's an entertaining, well-realised mess sprinkled with sharp dialogue and well-realised action sequences.

Some highlights are an appearance from newcomer Pietro Maximoff, a smart-ass superspeed kleptomaniac who's the centre of an equally beautiful and hilarious slow-mo action sequence soundtracked by Jim Croce's easy listening hit Time in a Bottle. Similarly enjoyable (as always) is Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, who serves mainly to deflate the film's sense of self-importance by making smartass comments through a fug of cigar smoke. Probably the best thing in the movie is James McAvoy's Charles Xavier, who we learn has been reduced to a reclusive, depressed smack addict living in the squalid ruins of his mansion - a bit like Mick Jagger in Performance.

Wolverine slots so well into the 70s that I deeply want a scummy mutantsploitation flick.

One of the crucial hurdles that the X-Men series has to surmount is that it's all too easy to sympathise with Magneto. Sure the guy may be bonkers and occasionally sadistic, but with his commitment to direct action and his cinematic superpowers he's an exciting and charismatic guy to be around, whether played by Fassbender or McKellen. By contrast, the pacifistic liberality of Professor X usually leaves him looking a bit boring. Mutants are allegorical minorities, and seeing murderous bigots being minced by a smug, hovering man in a silly helmet is deeply satisfying.

So it's impressive that Days of Future Past puts the legwork in to actually get us onside with Professor X's viewpoint and recognise that Magneto is, as writer Grant Morrison memorably put it, "a mad old terrorist twat with daft ideas based on violence and coercion." Fassbender still imbues the character with basic decency and a strong conscience but before our eyes we see him warping into a damaged, wounded person for whom the ends very much justify the means.

This is basically Magneto vs Nixon.

Things are pretty sharp visually too. Singer recognises that after umpteen superhero films we're unlikely to be particularly wowed by Wolverine popping his claws out or Storm creating lightning - so interesting twists are made on their powers to keep things fresh. One particularly effective move is an action sequence shot in handheld faux Super 8. It echoes the Zapruder footage, and from this new perspective the image of a blue skinned, naked woman with bright red hair is once more scary, alien and bizarre.

It's surprisingly invigorating material for a sixth sequel and by the time the credits roll it feels as if the X-Men franchise has had new life breathed into it. I'd never consider myself an outright fan of these movies, but purely through their tenacity they've gathered some emotional resonance. There's a unexpected nostalgia in revisiting the bustling hallways of Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, and for a brief moment I'm once more that excited teenager sitting in a cinema in 2000, not quite able to believe that a major studio has made a fun, sharp and exciting blockbuster X-Men movie.

★★★★

X-Men: Days of Future Past is in cinemas May 22nd.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug' (2013) directed by Peter Jackson

Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

The biggest compliment I can give The Desolation of Smaug is that after 160 odd minutes I would happily have watched more. High praise indeed for a film I was faintly dreading. The previous instalment, An Unexpected Journey, was chintzy as hell, narratively sprawling and generally bloated in the worst possible way. Had Peter Jackson pulled a George Lucas on us? Were we in for three Christmases of CG-smeared disasterpieces smugly trotting through our cinemas, shitting all over the reputation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy?

The answer, thankfully, appears to be no. The Desolation of Smaug isn't amazing, but it is solidly good with more than the occasional elevation into actually great. I know this trilogy was all filmed at the same time, but there's at least the illusion that criticism of An Unexpected Journey was taken on board and this film tweaked for the better. Gone are the peril-saturated, incomprehensible kitchen sink action scenes! Gone are the portentous Wizardly conversations! Gone are the endless meal scenes! They've even ditched the songs. In its place is a narrative with a clear sense of momentum and direction,;well acted characters with interesting motivations and snazzy costumes; there's even an honest-to-god proper woman in it.

The story picks up where we left off, the Dwarven warriors, Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins still on their way to the Misty Mountain. Between them and it lies a bear-man, a forest full of talking spiders, a load of freaky mean elves, a fearsome metal-faced orc captain, Evil Mayor Stephen Fry and a big honking dragon. The only fly in the ointment is a dull side-plot involving Gandalf wandering around on his own for little apparent reason. It's a small fly though, and there's a lot of ointment to go round. Jackson's self-indulgence does shine through from time to time, but on the whole the film is commendably propulsive - pointing itself in the direction of the Misty Mountain and stamping on the accelerator.

It's always nice to see the characters in real sunlight. Little things I know, but it helps.

Along the way we see Martin Freeman's Bilbo continuing to evolve, even developing a vicious and scary streak that's hard to square with the gentle hobbit that left Bag End last December. But though the journey has given him new reserves of bravery this is still the same old Bilbo Baggins. Crucially he's still visibly terrified half the time, but is now able to act decisively even through his fear. As the only character not wrapped up in manifest destiny and mystical prophecy, he's a vital anchor of humanity in an alien sea.

The calibre of this cast means there's no real weak link, though there are highlights and lowlights. Jackson takes obvious care to give each of the dwarves a character moment and at least one line - some of them finally becoming more than scenery. Orlando Bloom's Legolas feels like a bit of an odd duck though, bearing little resemblance to the chronologically older Legolas of Fellowship of the Ring. This Legolas is a snarling, uptight murder machine - a walking blender with pointy ears. One surprising low point is Ian McKellen's Gandalf, whose increasing lack of interest appears to be a symptom of his being dispatched from the A-plot and relegated to battling against a demon green screen.

Lee Pace's Thranduil particularly stands out among the new members of the cast. Pace chooses to go full ham, obviously relishing the opportunity to wear a silly hat, chew the scenery and strut around like he owns the place (which he does). Fortunately, Thranduil is King of the Asshole Elves, so his close-talking dickish style fits the character like a glove. Also fun on the elf front is Evangeline Lilly as the warrior elf Tauriel. It's a bit unfortunate that they take the time to create an entirely new female character, then promptly saddle her with a sappy romance that concludes with her deciding to skip the fighting and play nurse, but hey, it's at least a step in the right direction from the sausage-fest of the last film.

Gandalf regrets ditching his friends as he finds himself in a much worse movie.

Even with that relative embarrassment of riches there's one undisputed star of this film. A main attraction that's putting asses on seats: Smaug. Mercifully, he's a peeved, fire-breathing, extremely scaly success, a near perfect marriage of dynamic CG and outstanding voicework by Benedict Cumberbatch. Though a CG dragon is hardly a new sight in cinema, this one not only has to breathe fire, bash things about and desolate stuff real good, he has to be able to act. (and yes I remember Dragonheart too but I'm pretty sure it hasn't aged well).

They pull this off so well that it's actually possible to simultaneously be terrified and sympathise with him, which was the last thing I expected to feel about a monstrous killer beast. Sure he's a bloodthirsty monster who's first introduced to us annihilating a town, but his annoyance at being disturbed from a nice nap by a load of mewling, lying adventurers feels genuine. This is all the result of a carefully designed face, with perfect burning eyes that allow him to retain his bestial nature even when coolly addressing Bilbo in Cumberbatch's syrupy smooth high-falutin' tones.

Pictured: an actor that's pleased as punch with his silly hat.

Though a river-rapids battle mid-way stands out as a clever, well realised action sequence, it's the Smaug sequence that people are going to remember when they think of this film. At it's basic level, the scene involves around a visually stunning gigantic Rube Goldberg machine that our characters swarm over, all contributing to a final beautifully glittering money shot. The only thing that slightly tarnishes this otherwise perfect bit of choreography is that for all the dramatic oomph of scene, it doesn't really affect the narrative at all other than annoying an already very annoyed dragon.

So colour me impressed (especially given my decidedly mixed reaction to the press event). My attention never fully wavered over the mammoth run-time and as the credits rolled a part of me wished they'd start playing There and Back Again right away. It was with a pleasant jolt of surprise that I realised that I now cared about what was going to happen. I can't give better praise than that.

★★★★

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is on general release from 6 December

Director: Peter Jackson / Screenwriters: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Guillermo del Toro / Cast: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lilly, Aidan Turner, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Stephen Fry, Ken Stott / Runtime: 161 min

Friday, December 14, 2012

'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' (2012) directed by Peter Jackson

Friday, December 14, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Watching this film is like meeting an old friend you've lost touch with. I enjoyed the 'Lord of the Rings' films when they came out in the early 2000s, even to the extent of watching the extended editions. I haven't watched them since though, and the thought of putting any of them on feels like a big investment of time. Besides, all of that wizards, goblins and orcs stuff is a bit... ridiculous sounding, right? And, whilst it can be fun meeting that friend you've lost contact with, sometimes you quickly remember why you never stayed in touch.

This first instalment of the three-part adaptation of 'The Hobbit' doesn't shy away from throwing you right back into the thick of it. We open with a monster bit of exposition involving dwarf kings, sunken cities, magical rocks and killer dragon attacks. Straightaway Jackson has cranked everything up to 11, everything is achingly epic, majestically framed and bombastically scored. On some level I can see why: it was the enormous battles in the previous trilogy that were the most memorable action sequences and if nothing else this film is an attempt to recapture the magic in a bottle that made the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy such a critical and financial success.

Ian McKellen killin' it as Gandalf.

It's a bit of a relief when we finally get to Bilbo Baggins' cosy hobbit hole, where things become a bit more familiar. At times the film feels like a reunion, you're meeting all your own favourites one more time. There's Elijah Wood as Frodo (not looking like he's aged a day) and Ian Holm as Bilbo and so on! They're (nearly) all here! I think about half of the characters from the previous films turn up all told, and I'm sure there'll be more in the other two films that makes up this 'Hobbit' trilogy.

Being re-introduced to all these characters while knowing their ultimate fates in the Rings trilogy is risky business. I generally avoid prequels, they seem to fall into a wink-wink nudge-nudge jokiness where the film-makers drop hints of their eventual destinies. The most recent offender was 'X-Men: First Class', where James McAvoy as Professor X pretty much says "gee, I sure hope I don't go bald!". The nadir, of course, are the Star Wars prequels. So I was worried that we'd go down the same route here, with portentous overtures made to what happens in the previous films. Thankfully most of that gets avoided here, 'The Hobbit' confidently stands up as a film on its own.

Lots of dwarves.

The performances from both those returning and the newcomers are uniformly excellent. It's like if you get enough British character actors in one place some kind of critical mass is reached, and everyone's performances get boosted by what's going on around them. Everyone is good here, although there are a few stand outs. Sylvester McCoy is convincingly and pleasantly bonkers as the mushroom-addled woodlands wizard Radagast. Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee are obviously both amazing and emit gravitas like no-ones business, but they get to wear priestlike robes and pose with their wizard sticks. McCoy does all that, but while having bird-shit streaked down his face, being high as a kite and somehow selling us that a sled driven by rabbits is perfectly sensible.

Another performance of note is James Nesbitt as the dwarf Bofur. There are an awful lot of dwarves in this film, and I'm sure if this were being produced and directed by anyone other than Peter Jackson these 13 guys would be compressed down into 3 or 4. Obvious trouble has been taken to visually differentiate them and give each of them at least the sketch of a personality. One of the reasons I enjoyed the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy so much is that while it had huge, world-shaking action sequences, it also took the time to show us smaller, personal character moments. Bofur gets probably the best one of these. The dwarves just want to go home to their stolen city, and at one point Bilbo inadvertently deeply offends Bofur by angrily exclaiming that dwarves are suited to living rough, and that they don't really know what's it like to miss their home. Nesbitt manages to convey anger, sadness, resentment and finally acceptance in about 5 seconds. It's probably the neatest little character moment in a film that consciously cranks up the epicness at every opportunity.

Martin Freeman being great.

But the biggest and most effusive praise for a performance has to go to Martin Freeman's Bilbo, who is immediately and eminently likeable. At the beginning of his story he's an unimaginative grump, extremely put out by the way his neat and tidy house is invaded by hungry, chaotic dwarves and a slightly cheeky and dismissive wizard. As an audience we've come to see this film for adventure, but Freeman does such a good job of making this insular little man relatable that we find ourselves wishing these imposing and dirty brutes would just shove off and leave us alone.

As the character experiences more and more of the world he begins to find his feet, and learns how to deal with hardship and extreme danger. I guess this development will conclude in the final of the three films, but the change we see in his temperament even in this first third feels enormous. We're so on side with him that when we see him weighing up whether to be brave or courageous, we don't urge him into battle purely because it'd be exciting to watch, we do it because like him, we've decided that it's the right thing to do.

I like a protagonist in a film like this who doesn't even know how to swing a sword.

Quite unobtrusively, Bilbo is the character through whom the central themes are conveyed. They're not big or complicated themes, one of them boils down to that we should strive to make the world a nicer place even if it is through tiny, individual acts of mercy and kindness, something that would feel simplistically soppy in less capable hands. The other is the importance of having a home, a place to treasure, to call your own and to fight for. Bilbo has this, the elves have it in Rivendell and the dwarves want it. Again, this seems a very small thing to ask for, but much like the titular hobbits, the film underlines that it's the small things that are important. Freeman's unobtrusive, underplayed performance concentrates on the small things. You see him fiddling nervously in tense scenes, being the only person to appreciate the true wonder of the scenery and (my favourite) feeding an apple to his pony when he thinks no-one's looking. From top to bottom he's an utterly human, compelling presence, and watching this we can know that whatever happens in the next two films in the trilogy, Freeman has totally nailed it.

Despite this smorgasbord of acting treats, this film has several big problems, most of which are primarily a question of pacing. After the action-packed opening, things quickly down-shift when we're hanging out in Bilbo's hobbit hole. I'd heard about this before seeing the film and I must admit it wasn't quite as slow as I'd been told. Even the two dwarf musical numbers weren't quite as dull as I'd feared. Quite frankly I had the opposite problem at the other end of the film. In the last 45 minutes to an hour or so there is so much action that it becomes wearying. We watch our characters dashing around, narrowly avoiding death so often that any sense of danger quickly saps from the film. There are some excellent battle scenes here, but these tend to be the ones on a smaller scale. It's far more scary and dynamic seeing our characters struggling to take down three trolls early in the film than it is seeing them fighting an innumerable army where each foe is less of a threat to their lives and more of an obstacle to dispose of without thought.

Hugo Weaving as Elrond

There's one quiet lull after a huge action sequence that feels well earned; these are visually exhaustive action scenes, every corner of the screen teems with life and we can sense the character's fatigue and relief that it's over. But it's not! Straightaway we're into another half hour long action sequence that's as intense and dramatic as what's just come before it. Keeping the tension and excitement so amped up has a detrimental effect on the audience, by the time we're mid-way through the 'finale' of the film I was tired out and waiting for the credits to show up. There is only so much sustained 'epicness' I can take in one go before boredom inevitably begins to set in. It's one thing to be bored during a long dialogue scene, there you can at least tell yourself that this is exposition that needs to be established that'll pay off further down the line, but if you're bored during a big action set piece then the film has bigger problems.

This conscious 'epicness' and self importance is another issue. 'The Hobbit' is a fairly short and relatively light-hearted children's book. The film feels slightly at odds with this, at once straining to be as 'big' as possible while also slavishly staying accurate to the book as much as possible. In practice this makes the light-hearted scenes feel a bit out of place. For example, the dialogue of the three hungry trolls feels like its strayed out of a film with a much more comedic tone, as does Bilbo's improvised cooking advice for them. I see this tonal confusion as a consequence of adapting 'Lord of the Rings' before this. The built-in audience wants more 'Lord of the Rings', but book of 'The Hobbit' isn't that. For one it was published nearly twenty years before 'Lord of the Rings', and isn't quite as self consciously 'important' as 'Lord of the Rings' can get.

Thorin (Richard Armitage) and a dwarf I'm not of sure of, hey there's a lot to keep track of!

These films are probably in the right when they treat the prose of Tolkien as sacrosanct. There's a reason why these stories are so iconic and well-loved, and deviating from them too far is risky. Sticking close to the source material worked well enough in the previous trilogy anyway. Here though, there are some problems. The main one being the almost complete lack of women in the film. Cate Blanchett as Galadriel is the only female presence, and all she basically does is stand around looking like an angelic statue. Aside from this the film is a total sausage-fest. Nearly everyone apart from Bilbo has some kind of enormous beard and you feel like you've wandered into a 'bears' night at a gay club. Maybe an all male adventure story wasn't such a weird thing in 1937, but it stands out as pretty odd in 2012. Young girls seem to enjoy these films just as much as boys, and it seems like a shame that the film is entirely devoid of any strong female character.

Additionally, while the film is obviously pretty, that can also get wearying in its own way. Some scenes set at sunset take on an unbearably chintzy feel, where everything is so perfectly lit and composed that it feels more like we're staring into a Thomas Kinkade painting rather than any kind of believable reality. I prefer these films when they're at their muddiest and chaotic. So these saccharine sweet, overlyidealised compositions rub me up the wrong way, strong arming the audience into a sense of wonder rather than letting us imagine we're feeling it spontaneously.

Ugh, tone it down a bit guys. We get it. It's pretty.

So it's a mixed bag. I'd say it's worth seeing purely to see some brilliant and touching performances, as well as the absolute pinnacle of production design and special effects. But the structure all of this is woven together on is mis-shaped and bloated. Funnily enough Bilbo himself summed it up best when he said:

“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

Incidentally I feel a bit duty bound to mention the technical side of the film, namely the HFR framerate. All I will say is that I saw it in 24fps 3D and thought the film looked magnificent. I have spoken to a friend who went to a HFR screening, who didn't think of much of it at all. I won't bother going back to see it in HFR, and I don't think you're missing out if you skip it.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is on general release from today.

LONDON CITY NIGHTS