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Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
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It was somewhere in the middle of the third act that I realised that Mother! is not going to be financially successful. Darren Aronofsky is no stranger to weird film-making, the excellent Noah primarily baffling audiences and his criminally over-looked The Fountain vanishing without a trace. But Mother! might be one of the craziest films ever to get a major release.
Watching the trailer after seeing the full feature, you realise that Aronofsky has executed a cinematic sucker punch, reeling in the audience with the promise of a sleek psychological horror studded with A-listers and then hitting the gas and careening straight into crazytown. What audiences actually receive (and there's going to be heavy spoilers from here on out) is a movie that hates God and Christianity, arguing that it has warped humanity into something monstrous and that institutionalised religion has poisoned the world.
To achieve this, Aronofsky reworks the Bible into a creepy domestic drama. The world is reduced to an isolated house, occupied only by a frustrated poet God (Javier Bardem) and a female personification of Gaia, Mother (Jennifer Lawrence). Their relative peace is disturbed by the arrival of the first man (Ed Harris), who moves in uninvited and quickly makes himself at home.
Soon after we see him with a suspiciously rib-shaped wound in his side, his wife (Michelle Pfieffer) shows up: a similarly destructive presence who alienates and scares Gaia, culminating in the pair plucking the forbidden fruit, incurring God's wrath and being kicked out of Eden.
Soon after, Cain and Abel arrive and commit the first murder, leaving behind an indelible stain of violence that gradually corrodes the whole world. We descend into a nightmare house party that's only ended with a cataclysmic flood that drives the uninvited guests from the house. It is not in the least bit subtle, but then subtlety is highly over-rated.
The film concludes with one of the most insane sequences I've seen in cinema. Mother gives birth to the infant Jesus, who is soon snatched from her grasp by God and delivered to a crazed mob, who pointlessly kill it and then devour the corpse in a demented cannibal nightmare. The West is culturally inoculated against how freakin' weird Christianity is, but this violently strips all the liturgical mystery away and (exactly as the Catholic Church does) takes the Bible at its literal flesh-munchin', blood drinkin', word.
At this point, it's understandable at this point why audiences have rejected Mother! so violently. After all, your average moviegoer is probably not up for seeing a newborn baby being torn apart and eaten by psychos. But this imagery and these ideas comprise the core of our culture and Aronofsky makes a persuasive argument that the ecological destruction that threatens our very civilisation is a symptom of it.
As the film accelerates towards its apocalyptic conclusion, we finally understand the relationship between the patriarchal God and the feminine Mother as a theological separation of Creator from 'creature': institutionalised religion providing the philosophical framework upon which nature is brutally subjugated to man's will.
Aronofsky is frantically yelling that humanity is on the precipice of catastrophe and chaos, trapped in a cycle of narcissism and consumption and poisoned by false dreams of spirituality and immortality. The only possible conclusion to all this comes in cleansing waves of fire: Mother Nature's reset button.
Aronofsky is frantically yelling that humanity is on the precipice of catastrophe and chaos, trapped in a cycle of narcissism and consumption and poisoned by false dreams of spirituality and immortality. The only possible conclusion to all this comes in cleansing waves of fire: Mother Nature's reset button.
It's light years beyond its cinematic contemporaries (it's also objectively a technical marvel) and once the dumb-ass reactionary negativity dies down, is going to be recognised as a modern classic (at which point certain people will claim to have secretly liked it all along). Honestly, if you have the slightest interest in cinema as an art form you owe it to yourself to see this: films like this simply do not come along very often.
Right now the world feels like a chaotic, scary place with a real 'last days of Rome' vibe. Watching Mother! isn't going to get rid of those sleepless nights you've been having, but it will provide the context for them.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Monday, October 10, 2016
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Roughly halfway through Damien Chazelle's La La Land, Emma Stone's would-be actor Mia is fretting about her upcoming one woman show. "It just feels really nostalgic to me." "That's the point." Ryan Gosling's jazz pianist boyfriend Sebastian replies. "Are people going to like it?" she responds. He turns to her with that cooler-than-cool Gosling gaze and replies "Fuck 'em".
"Fuck 'em" indeed. It's a naked bit of self-examination from writer/director Damien Chazelle, who's perhaps understandably worried that the reason the big budget tap-dancing trad-musicals have all but disappeared from our screens is because nobody wants to see them. Sure, you get the odd (generally iffy) Broadway adaption here and there, but we're a long way from the days of Singin' in the Rain, West Side Story and My Fair Lady.
He needn't worry, La La Land is one of the most sure-fire critical and commercial darlings I've seen in a very, very long time. It's got two of the most bankable, adored stars in Hollywood being very funny, very sweet and dancing their socks off. It's got gorgeous faux Technicolor palette and full Cinemascope photography. It's got a script that, despite the sugar-coated trappings of the genre, manages to feel vividly real. It's got musical numbers so dazzling that, in an auditorium full of jaded film critics at the London Film Festival, the opening sequence received a spontaneous round of rapturous applause.
Set in what feels like a dream of contemporary Los Angeles, La La Land is the story of Mia and Sebastian's relationship over one perma-summery year. They first meet when cutting each other up on the freeway, Sebastian honking his horn and giving Mia the finger as he pulls past her. "What an asshole..." she mutters. But soon all too soon - despite their protestations that they despise one another and there's absolutely no chemistry between them - they're falling in love.
What follows is admittedly cut from some pretty familiar cloth: their relationship grows, encounters problems and the two engage in some soul-searching about just what they mean to each other. But despite the familiar template this still surprises, serving up a romance that's simultaneously personal and universal, and one that concludes with an astonishingly effective emotional crescendo.
The ghosts of the golden age of Hollywood haunt these characters, looming in the background of scenes throughout, and at one point Chazelle stylishly and memorably mirrors an establishing shot from Rebel Without a Cause. But the film avoids outright fetishising old Hollywood, instead subjecting it to a mild critical examination via its most extroverted manifestation - the all singin' all dancin' musical. Though Gosling and Stone might tapdance their way down the streets like Astaire and Rogers, they're rooted firmly in 2016 - one of my favourite character touches is that the screen of Mia's iPhone 4S is cracked, an incidental detail that speaks volumes about her life.
Though crammed full of surface retro-stylings, the film consistently argues for innovation rather than slavish copying. The main vehicle for this is Gosling's Sebastian, who's initially obsessed with jazz dinosaurs and has an idea of musical purity lodged sometime in the 30s. It's only when he begins to experiment with form and removes the muso stick from up his own ass that he begins to loosen up and enjoy his art rather than merely appreciate it. Stone's Mia goes through a similar process, evolving from someone craving the approval of others to defining success in their own terms.
To convey all that while singing and dancing isn't going to be a picnic, but Chazelle simply couldn't have cast two better leads. Gosling in particular exudes a timeless style and poise, staring out from the screen with a hangdog yet confident expression that, appropriately enough, has more than a tinge of James Dean to it. He is every inch the moviestar, approaching every scene with grace and jaw-dropping cool. As a graduate of The Mickey Mouse Club it's no surprise that he can sing and dance, but few about these days could slide into a musical number so sleekly and naturally. Stone is also wonderful - the duo fizzing with refreshingly old-school chemistry.
I'd come to think that films like La La Land just couldn't get made anymore. These are insincere times, and this is a painfully sincere movie about two fools drifting in and out of love. It presents a gently loping, largely tension-free story without an atom of irony and resists the urge to insert vestigial elements like comedy best-friends and bitchy villains. It just is, functioning as a contemporary ideal of what the Hollywood studio machine once could (and amazingly, apparently still can) do best.
Damien Chazelle was already sniffing at the big leagues with Whiplash. After La La Land he's going to be white-hot. I can't wait to see what he does next.
★★★★★
What follows is admittedly cut from some pretty familiar cloth: their relationship grows, encounters problems and the two engage in some soul-searching about just what they mean to each other. But despite the familiar template this still surprises, serving up a romance that's simultaneously personal and universal, and one that concludes with an astonishingly effective emotional crescendo.
The ghosts of the golden age of Hollywood haunt these characters, looming in the background of scenes throughout, and at one point Chazelle stylishly and memorably mirrors an establishing shot from Rebel Without a Cause. But the film avoids outright fetishising old Hollywood, instead subjecting it to a mild critical examination via its most extroverted manifestation - the all singin' all dancin' musical. Though Gosling and Stone might tapdance their way down the streets like Astaire and Rogers, they're rooted firmly in 2016 - one of my favourite character touches is that the screen of Mia's iPhone 4S is cracked, an incidental detail that speaks volumes about her life.
Though crammed full of surface retro-stylings, the film consistently argues for innovation rather than slavish copying. The main vehicle for this is Gosling's Sebastian, who's initially obsessed with jazz dinosaurs and has an idea of musical purity lodged sometime in the 30s. It's only when he begins to experiment with form and removes the muso stick from up his own ass that he begins to loosen up and enjoy his art rather than merely appreciate it. Stone's Mia goes through a similar process, evolving from someone craving the approval of others to defining success in their own terms.
To convey all that while singing and dancing isn't going to be a picnic, but Chazelle simply couldn't have cast two better leads. Gosling in particular exudes a timeless style and poise, staring out from the screen with a hangdog yet confident expression that, appropriately enough, has more than a tinge of James Dean to it. He is every inch the moviestar, approaching every scene with grace and jaw-dropping cool. As a graduate of The Mickey Mouse Club it's no surprise that he can sing and dance, but few about these days could slide into a musical number so sleekly and naturally. Stone is also wonderful - the duo fizzing with refreshingly old-school chemistry.
I'd come to think that films like La La Land just couldn't get made anymore. These are insincere times, and this is a painfully sincere movie about two fools drifting in and out of love. It presents a gently loping, largely tension-free story without an atom of irony and resists the urge to insert vestigial elements like comedy best-friends and bitchy villains. It just is, functioning as a contemporary ideal of what the Hollywood studio machine once could (and amazingly, apparently still can) do best.
Damien Chazelle was already sniffing at the big leagues with Whiplash. After La La Land he's going to be white-hot. I can't wait to see what he does next.
★★★★★
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Sunday, October 9, 2016
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"Fictionalising a real-life suicide is an tricky job, primarily because the person whose tale you’re telling isn’t around to give their side of the story. On top of that, you’re making a drama with an unavoidable downer ending, you have to deal with understandably suspicious family members and friends of the deceased and, well, you’re being a bit of a vulture.
Antonio Campos’ Christine gracefully sidesteps these obstacles, presenting us with a sensitive, compelling and fantastically performed drama about a woman pushed over the edge. That woman is Christine Chubbuck, who killed herself while delivering a live news report. While her name might not be immediately familiar, the legend of the news reporter who committed suicide on air certainly is."
★★★★
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
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For all our fancy philosophisin', humans are ultimately just farty sacks of skin and meat. Beyond feelings, emotions and desires lie the needs of a biological machine: food, warmth and shelter. This is the territory of Couple in a Hole, a film about a Scottish couple reverting to a primitive existence in a hole in the middle of the French Pyrenees.
In the woods life is focused. John (Paul Higgins) spends his days foraging for food, ensnaring the odd the rabbit, tugging up clumps of edible plants and discovering mushrooms. Meanwhile Karen (Kate Dickie) spends her days in the hole, curing animal pelts and mending their clothes. At night they come together around a fire, silently consuming a meagre meal before returning to their hole to rest for another day of the same.
It's a strange, silent, feral existence. The two converse only in clipped half-sentences and appear to be undergoing some ascetic penance. Occasionally indecipherable rituals pop up: John coaxes Karen from the hole and times her as she consumes a wriggling grub, or climbs a mountain to hurl a tiny parcel of leaves from the summit.
The burning question is, naturally, why the hell would anyone live like this? Geens (writing and directing) refuses to romanticise their wilderness, emphasising the dirt, the damp and the isolation with Herzoggian straightforwardness. Throughout the film the answers are gradually doled out as the situation unwinds. A chance spider-bite sends John into a nearby town for antivenom, which kicks off the intrusion of civilisation into their warped Garden of Eden.
Without spoiling too much, it soon becomes apparent that shutting out the world at large and retreating to a hole represents depression. Whittling back life to the fundamentals, - forcing yourself to concentrate on providing basic physical needs - is a way for the characters to avoid dealing with trauma except in the most abstract of ways. Sure, wild animals may grieve, but they also have to constantly worry about being eaten/eating.
Geens sets this out early on, showing us the butchery of a rabbit followed by John roughly massaging Karen. In both we see flesh yielding to human hands, the fat and muscle of the rabbit mirrored on Karen's emaciated and sinewy back. The rest of the film is a warped kind of healing process, with the time limit of a rapidly approaching and apparently fatal winter. John begins to secretly reconnect with civilisation, trying to figure out a way to bring Karen along with him. But her apparent deathwish makes things... complicated.
Slow-paced and meditative, Couple in a Hole is a film you have to settle into the rhythms of. Long portions go by without dialogue, forcing the audience to puzzle out what's going by observation and deduction rather than by exposition. Fortunately, Geens quickly proves an able visual storyteller, efficiently communicating the situation with a featherlight directorial touch. In general visual terms, Geens is quite literally down to earth, his camera closely following the characters down into the muck.
Despite all the mud, there are frequent moments of beauty. Sam Care's cinematography presents us a series of striking tableaux; the silhouette of John atop a mountain shrouded in fog, a shaft of light illuminating Karen within the cave or a simple head-on close-up of Karen eating worms. It's an impressive combination of visuals and storytelling, especially when performance, direction and cinematography combine to create the impression that our characters are physically becoming one with the earth.
Obvious credit is also due to Paul Higgins and Kate Dickie. You can easily tell that this wasn't the most luxurious of shoots, but each carries a perceptibly heavy weight in gaze. Higgins does a wonderful job of showing the green shoots of recovery, the highlight a wonderful and heartbreaking moment where he breaks down in tears after tasting a morsel of sausage. But it's Dickie who really catches the eye, with her far more primal performance. With her translucent skin and razor-sharp features she looks bizarrely Gollum-ish, a performance that blurs the boundaries of human and animal, conveying the most intense self-inflicted misery I've seen in ages.
It's a top class piece of cinema - psychologically, visually and performatively ambitious. It's got a great ominous synth soundtrack by BEAK> (Geoff Barrow of Portishead) and tickles all my cinematic boxes. The only flaw is that it doesn't quite stick the landing in the final scenes, though considering that everything that's come before has been rad as hell, I can't complain too much.
★★★★
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Thursday, January 7, 2016
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There are few more satisfying pleasures than watching an underdog prove their worth. This is the bedrock on which the Rocky franchise is built: from the iconic original's good-natured meat packer, right through his subsequent battles against brain damage, Mr T, Soviet super-science, shady accounting practises (a bit of a low for the series) and, in 2006's Rocky Balboa, old age.
The theme has often extended behind the scenes. Rocky faced intense scepticism from studio heads, preferring to cast Robert Redford in the lead role rather than an unknown Stallone. Similarly, Rocky Balboa was a comeback film: partly fuelled by perverse curiosity at whether a 60 year old could credibly lead a boxing film.
Writer/director Ryan Coogler's Creed has its own hurdles to clear. It's essentially Rocky VII and you'd be hard-pressed to name many other franchises that haven't run out of steam by their seventh instalment. It also has to function as an instalment in a 40 year story and as a very soft reboot, reinvigorating a now pretty damn familiar sports movie narrative.
Miraculously, Creed succeeds beyond all expectations. Michael B. Jordan stars as Adonis Creed, illegitimate son of perennial series rival/friend Apollo Creed, who was killed in the ring at the outset of Rocky IV. The first beats of the plot appear to be easing us into a well-worn groove; introducing us to young Adonis as he brawls in juvie. He's subsequently adopted by Apollo Creed's widow Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashād).
We next meet him in some back-alley sleaze bar in Tijuana, climbing into a grimy boxing ring where he furiously and effortlessly demolishes some nameless mook. Just when we think we know where this is going, smash cut to a suited and booted Adonis behind his desk at a buttoned down finance corporation, restlessly flexing his bruised hands.
Having Adonis begin the film swaddled in the cosy trappings of the upper/middle class is a bold move; the character having to prove himself as much to the audience as to the fictional boxing world. Soon he's off on a voyage of personal growth that quickly leads him to Philadelphia, where he tracks down an aged Rocky Balboa and slowly convinces him to train him. Along the way he becomes romantically entangled with musician Bianca (Tessa Thompson).
From then on it's your usual tangle of personal setbacks, runs around the Philadelphia, emotional breakthroughs and, best of all, training montages set to pumping music. Though the focus has shifted to a new generation of boxers, practically every narrative development in Creed echoes the series' storied past.
Elevating all this from sports movie of the week is that Ryan Coogler directs the fuck out of it. Clearly realising he's onto a winner, the film is packed with cinematic delights both bombastic and subtle. Most obviously striking are several balletic one shots sprinkled through the narrative. These tend to emphasise moving between environments; from a dressing room to crowded boxing ring, off the street and into a grimy gym and so on. So far, so Scorsese, right?
All this comes to a head roughly mid-way through the film in a bravura single-shot boxing match that's probably the best cinematic representation of the sport ever. This is our hero's chance to prove he's got the right stuff, his first 'proper' professional fight. Coogler's camera dances around the ring at eye-level with the fighters, swooping around to emphasise the geography of the ring, the way a fighter moves and, exhilaratingly, a smidge of what it feels like to have a very determined, very muscled men coming at you with the intention of punching you very hard in the face.
It's a resolutely unglamourous depiction of boxing, underlining the many lines of dialogue where the characters explain that the brief satisfaction victory gives you isn't worth the brain damage, broken bones, humiliation, short career and, memorably, having to have someone wipe your arse when you're too mangled to manage it yourself.
This core fight is so good that it runs a serious risk of making the final bout a bit anticlimactic. But Coogler once again proves he knows his shit, pulling out a fresh bag of expressionistic cinematic tricks, making the thunking body blows and ringing knockout punches echoes of the film's emotional whomp.
This is ably aided by Coogler's own script and uniformly excellent performances. Stallone in particular is better than he's been in years, turning in a downright moving, naturalistic portrayal of an old punchbag shouldering his fair share of regrets. Rocky is recognisably Rocky, after all these years.
But it's Michael B. Jordan who bears the full dramatic burden. Adonis Creed is a that rare thing in Hollywood: a fully developed black male protagonist. Jordan knocks the role out of the park, managing the tricky task of making the character's love of violence neatly congruent with his intelligence and sensitivity.
It's just an all-round excellent movie, in which everyone is bringing their A game. It succeeds as a Rocky movie, it succeeds as a sports movie and, importantly, it blindingly succeeds as a movie in its own right. Frankly, if you're watching one of the blisteringly edited and scored training montages and don't want to jump out of your seat and start running marathons you may have something wrong with you. It's a dynamite experience.
★★★★
Creed is released on 15 January.
Elevating all this from sports movie of the week is that Ryan Coogler directs the fuck out of it. Clearly realising he's onto a winner, the film is packed with cinematic delights both bombastic and subtle. Most obviously striking are several balletic one shots sprinkled through the narrative. These tend to emphasise moving between environments; from a dressing room to crowded boxing ring, off the street and into a grimy gym and so on. So far, so Scorsese, right?
All this comes to a head roughly mid-way through the film in a bravura single-shot boxing match that's probably the best cinematic representation of the sport ever. This is our hero's chance to prove he's got the right stuff, his first 'proper' professional fight. Coogler's camera dances around the ring at eye-level with the fighters, swooping around to emphasise the geography of the ring, the way a fighter moves and, exhilaratingly, a smidge of what it feels like to have a very determined, very muscled men coming at you with the intention of punching you very hard in the face.
It's a resolutely unglamourous depiction of boxing, underlining the many lines of dialogue where the characters explain that the brief satisfaction victory gives you isn't worth the brain damage, broken bones, humiliation, short career and, memorably, having to have someone wipe your arse when you're too mangled to manage it yourself.
This core fight is so good that it runs a serious risk of making the final bout a bit anticlimactic. But Coogler once again proves he knows his shit, pulling out a fresh bag of expressionistic cinematic tricks, making the thunking body blows and ringing knockout punches echoes of the film's emotional whomp.
This is ably aided by Coogler's own script and uniformly excellent performances. Stallone in particular is better than he's been in years, turning in a downright moving, naturalistic portrayal of an old punchbag shouldering his fair share of regrets. Rocky is recognisably Rocky, after all these years.
But it's Michael B. Jordan who bears the full dramatic burden. Adonis Creed is a that rare thing in Hollywood: a fully developed black male protagonist. Jordan knocks the role out of the park, managing the tricky task of making the character's love of violence neatly congruent with his intelligence and sensitivity.
It's just an all-round excellent movie, in which everyone is bringing their A game. It succeeds as a Rocky movie, it succeeds as a sports movie and, importantly, it blindingly succeeds as a movie in its own right. Frankly, if you're watching one of the blisteringly edited and scored training montages and don't want to jump out of your seat and start running marathons you may have something wrong with you. It's a dynamite experience.
★★★★
Creed is released on 15 January.
Friday, December 18, 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
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And it starts so promisingly...
That booming John Williams opening note, the iconic logo and an opening crawl that convincingly promises high adventure. Then it's off: colossal spaceships eclipse a planet, on whose surface we find Max von Sydow and Oscar Isaac under assault from the forces of a retooled Empire. It's immediately recognisable as that good ol' grubby-as-hell Star Wars universe. And it's like we've never left.
The duff prequels are already forgotten a couple of minutes in, and it feels like J.J. Abrams has achieved the impossible: a successful relaunched of Star Wars, With the nervous anticipation with which you watch a high-wire act without a safety net, we're introduced to a new generation of Star Wars heroes and villains and, even more tantalisingly, reunited with our old friends Han, Leia, Chewie and the rest. We explore exciting new worlds populated by reassuringly rubbery aliens. We learn of galaxy spanning threats, mystical mysteries and are teased by prophetic hints.
It's all good. Then, sometime around the middle of the film, it curdles. What initially felt like understanding gradually shifts towards shameless aping. By the time The Force Awakens rolls credits it's proved Aesop right: "familiarity breeds contempt".
It's not as if The Force Awakens is a bad movie. I'm no die hard fan of the series, but even I feel a giddy thrill at watching the Millennium Falcon dive and wheel through the shattered corpse of a Star Destroyer. The simple synthesised hum of a lightsaber presses my buttons, as does the screaming blare of a passing TIE fighter, or the friendly beep-boop-beep of droids old and new.
I can't deny the emotional tug of Han Solo's return, especially as (miraculously) Harrison Ford gives a shit. Neither can I fail to enjoy newcomers like Oscar Isaac's dashingly square-jawed Poe Dameron or John Boyega's Finn, each of whom smoothly and personably slide into the series canon alongside the more familiar names
I'm also impressed by Abram's subtle metanarrative. New protagonist Rey opens the film inhabiting the broken remains of the franchise, subsisting by selling off tiny fragments of the previous films to unscrupulous buyers. She's surviving on our childhood dreams, both her fictional existence and The Force Awaken's success dependent on how effectively they can mine the past.
Similarly fun is the eventual appearance of amusingly named master villain 'Supreme Leader Snoke' (Andy Serkis). Abrams is too classy to take overt jabs at Lucas, but having the villains in thrall to a gigantic CGI projection is a well pitched wink, contrasting Lucas' 'evil' digital poison with Abram's heroic latex n' rubber puppets and makeup.
But, despite all that loveliness, The Force Awakens underwhelms. Firstly, it becomes apparent at the halfway mark that The Force Awakens is a loose remake of A New Hope. We start in the desert with a lost droid that's found by a wistful teenager. She proceeds to be sucked into an intergalactic war where she learns the power of the force and helps destroy a planet-sized doomsday device. Along the way we visit a space bar inhabited by all varieties of bug-eyed alien, escape an Imperial base and witness a planet being destroyed.
A slavish repetition of the series' greatest hits is a bit unambitious: what initially appeared to be a bold continuation of styles and themes becomes wheel-spinning. Worst of all, it fails to live up to A New Hope. Among many other deficits, Rey's transformation from naive peasant to brave warrior isn't a patch on Luke Skywalker's hero's journey, the make-up of this post-Return of the Jedi universe is never explained and a planet destroying superweapon that eclipses the Death Star is introduced and destroyed with a narrative shrug.
Secondly, the film falls prey to Marvel-esque franchise-itus. The Force Awakens is designed to usher in a profitable new era for the franchise with, god help us, one new instalment each year. As such, the film is crammed with narrative strands that I assume will be addressed years from now in Rian Johnson and Colin Trevorrow's sequels.
Granted you expect all that, but still, it lessens the emotional heft of the climax. For example, powering much of the plot is that Adam Driver's Kylo Ren is extremely upset at Han, Luke and Leia. This anger has driven the Ren to the dark side, resulted in the disappearance of Luke Skywalker and provides the bedrock for key events in this film's climax.
Problem is - we've got no idea what he's so goddamn miffed about! This deflates tension from what should be heart-pounding scenes. I assume we'll eventually find out sometime in 2019 or so why he's angry, at which point these scenes might have an ounce of pathos. Until then, the back-end of the film just doesn't work.
It doesn't take much thought to understand why The Force Awakens is riddled with these deficiencies. Disney paid $4 billion for Star Wars with the intention of launching a cinematic universe with no apparent end. The inaugural film thus functions primarily as a prologue, establishing tone, cinematic style, introducing characters and, most importantly for Disney, encouraging the audience to return for whatever they dish up next.
To Abrams credit it does all that. Unfortunately it means The Force Awakens isn't much of a film in its own right - if you were feeling particularly uncharitable you could dub it a feature-length teaser for the myriad pleasures Disney are yet to release. What's left is an nakedly commercial product uplifting by a smattering of artistry and a heavy nostalgia kick.
A mild, yet painful, disappointment.
★★★
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Thursday, November 5, 2015
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"The Hallow opens with a radio broadcast about shrinking forests, our hero kicks off the plot by marking trees to be chopped down and laid over the top of the credits is footage of chainsaw wielding lumberjacks mercilessly picking over bare stumps. I’m detecting a distinct anti-logging message. Thing is, The Hallow eventually posits that this forest is home to terrifying killer fungus monsters and after the finale, I was firmly on the side of the loggers: they should burn the trees down and salt the ground so nothing will ever grow here again."
★★★★
The Hallow opens Friday 6th November.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
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Malala Yousafzai is so intensely inspirational that were she fictional you'd have trouble suspending your disbelief. She's like something out of legend; the forthright, passionate schoolgirl standing up to the cruel Taliban and fighting for young girl's rights to an education. That would be impressive in and of itself, but then came the cowardly bullet to the forehead, brain surgery, a miraculous recovery, a best-selling book, global tours, meetings with world leaders and, to crown it all, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Not too shabby for a 16 year old.
Davis Guggenheim's He Named Me Malala latches onto this epic streak right away. Opening with a pastel-painted Raymond Briggs-esque animated sequence, we hear Malala explain the origins of her name in Pastun legend. We're swept into a battle between retreating Afghani warriors and English cavalry. A lone woman, Malalai climbs to the top of a cliff and yells words of encouragement to the beaten men - they turn around and win an unlikely victory over the English, though not before Malalai is struck by a stray bullet and martyred.
It's a fine opening to a documentary, neatly allegorical to Malala's story. These mythological strokes are contrasted with scenes of casual domesticity: Malala teasing her brothers, playing Snap with her family and studying for her GCSEs. The twin poles fuel Guggenheim's documentary, which not only tells her story but explores how an 'ordinary' girl can change the world.
Malala makes for a compelling subject. She's intelligent, passionate and opinionated yet also very obviously a child. There's a humourous disconnect between watching someone give a passionate, clear-minded speech to the UN one moment, and giggling girlishly over Roger Federer the next. In the one on one interviews she quickly proves a careful operator, careful to make sure that conversation remains on her political campaigns rather than on herself.
This throws up a little friction in the piece: sometimes the most interesting character moments are also the least relevant. There's segments where Guggenheim playfully needles Malala over whether she would ever ask out a boy, drawing out nervous laughter and blushes. It's interesting to see her as a teenager rather than as an exemplar of humanitarianism, but the more we focus on her as an individual, the less we concentrate on her politics and effects of her campaigns.
Malala is an inescapably political figure who has stated her ultimate ambition to be Prime Minister of Pakistan. We only catch snatches of this crucial side to her; for example when she quizzes a caught-off-guard Barack Obama about the legality unmanned drone strikes. Guggenheim doesn't dwell on this (or for that matter, show us Obama's answer), merely using the exchange as further evidence of her bravery. Thus, Guggenheim treats Malala apolitically; displaying no curiosity into the ideology that underpins her passion for reform.
That ideology being socialism:
"I am convinced that socialism is the only answer, and I urge all comrades to struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and oppression." - Malala's 2014 message to Pakistan's International Marxist Tendency.
He Named Me Malala instead seeks to claim Malala as a paragon of soft humanism, viewing her activism firmly through the a neoliberal prism. Guggenheim presents a world of stark good and evil, ignoring the geopolitical climate that fuels the quasi-fascist groups that Malala pits herself against. To hear the film tell it, the Taliban, Boko Haram and their ideological brethren are just 'the bad guys', existing in a vacuum and purely to spread fear.
What that adds up to is a feel-good experience for Western liberals: the documentary equivalent of a warm, snuggly blanket to wrap yourself in. Then again, at least it succeeds at doing that.
I think He Called Me Malala, with its dreamy animated interludes, simplistic morality and straightforwardly inspiring narrative, is a perfect film to show in schools, giving children a taste of what standing up for your opinions can achieve and a beginner's guide to oppression.
For adult audiences it's a touch too saccharine, especially when the syrupy string score kicks in at the emotional high-points and (god help us) a dreary Alicia Keys song specially written for the movie begins blaring out. Ultimately, He Named Me Malala is a film that wants you to feel more than think: and as such does an unintentional disservice to its subject.
★★★
He Named Me Malala is on general release from 6th November.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
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With Spectre Daniel Craig surpasses Connery and is now officially the best James Bond ever. Save for
the stumble of 2008's Quantum of Solace,
Craig's films have delivered CPR to an ailing franchise that was in
serious danger of disappearing up its own arse in a flurry of crap
jokes and crap CGI.
For
my money Skyfall was
an all-time series high; a critique on the very idea of James Bond,
not to mention being sumptuously gorgeous and brilliantly performed.
Three years later we're back with the same director, screenwriters
and aesthetic sensibility. So, is this as good as Skyfall?
No.
But
don't get me wrong, it's a very, very good movie. The conceit is that
the actions of the three previous Craig Bond villains have been
orchestrated by globe-spanning ultrasecret organisation SPECTRE.
Beginning with an astonishing set piece action sequence in Mexico
City, Bond travels to Italy, Austria and Morocco in hot pursuit of
the organisation and its shadowy director (Christoph Waltz).
Meanwhile
back in London M16 is facing big changes. They're being merged with
M15 and are now under the command of Whitehall wonk Denbigh. He's
masterminding a global, multinational surveillance network that will
combine the intelligence gathering resources of the world superpowers
into one system. The individual agent is, as Denbigh puts it,
"prehistoric",
arguing that whatever a lone gunman can do a drone can do cheaper,
safer and more efficiently.
This
is a post-Snowden critique of intelligence work; shrewdly pitting the
'old-school' of M, Moneypenny, Q and Bond against their modern
counterparts. Given how much quasi-illegal snooping these characters
usually do dividing everyone up into good spies and bad spies is a
teensy bit hypocritical, but seeing Bond essentially going toe to toe
with modern GCHQ is so fun so I'll allow it.
Naturally,
the globetrotting story takes us to some gobsmackingly pretty
locations; all shot with a compositional rigour that's the equal of
anything in modern cinema. It's a cliche to say that every frame is a
painting - but seriously - every single shot stuns. Whether it be a
monochrome Bond framed between Brutalist pillars and giant cross, an
abandoned desert train station, a low-lit Roman garden or a gently
jangling luxury train carriage - it's the movie-going equivalent of
sipping fine wine.
The beauty is evident from the first couple of minutes; Mendes orchestrating a
brainmeltingly complex, Scorsese-bothering one-shot that zips through
a busy Dia De Los Muertes parade, through a packed hotel, ducking
into a elevator, through a hotel room, out the window and along the
rooftop. It's a dizzying statement of intent; the film eager to
impress us the audience first with its cinematic credentials, then
with its explosions, collapsing buildings and easy sense of style.
A
cinematic bounty like this is nothing to be sniffed at, and in
combination with Craig's magnetic Bond, an excellent supporting cast
(with particular credit to Léa Seydoux's cool-as-ice Bond girl) and
a graceful yet tense score by Thomas Newman, makes for 148 minutes
that fly by in the blink of an eye.
Yet
it's not quite as good as Skyfall.
That film had something important to say about Bond; dissembling him
into his constituent parts and trying to figure out what makes the
character still popular 50 years after Dr No.
It boldly met the character's latent imperialism, misogyny and
establishment credentials head on, ending with a character boiled
back to his essentials and stronger than ever before.
But
you can only pull that trick once every couple of decades. Spectre
finds itself with comparatively little to add to on its central
subject. There's a thematic line that runs about three-quarters
through the film of Bond as the walking dead; a man thats immersed
himself in violence so long that he has become a figurative angel of
death.
After
all, he opens the film dressed as a skeleton, casually (and
repeatedly) states his profession as 'killer', is referred to as a
relic of the past and is continually shot in monochrome, Craig's
scalloped features lit to give the impression of a skull.
Disappointingly this imagery peters out in the final act with no
symbolic resolution - something Skyfall managed
in spades with its low-key Highlands church showdown.
This feeds into the nagging feeling that the final act isn't as it should be. Belief begins to strain a bit as Bond enters a bizarrely convoluted puzzle/bomb sequence that never quite gels as well as it should. It ends on a perfunctory note, quickly wrapping up its ambitious story of global surveillance networks and omnipotent crime gangs and zipping off in a swanky car as if everything's hunky dory. That said, it's never dull - it's only when you sit back for a moment that you spot the fraying in the narrative seams.
One
element of Skyfall
that Spectre does
successfully develop is exploring classic Bond imagery. Christop
Waltz' baddie has a genuine straight-up evil lair, complete with
needlessly complex torture device and legions of uniformed goons. He
even wears a Nehru collar and pets a white cat! You'd think that
Austin Powers would
have conclusively rendered this stuff laughable, but Spectre
plays it straight and pulls it off beautifully.
This
era of Bond is the best the series has been in 50 years. Craig has
surpassed Connery, delivering a Bond that's vicious, erotic and
empathetic; able to make us laugh and switch to utterly menacing at
the drop of a hat. In Mendes we have a director who can successfully
marry dramatic pathos and things going kaboom - who treats the
material with intelligence and style. Together they've made Bond a
series that's not just respected for its action credentials and
inbuilt cultural cachet, but a genuinely exciting cinematic event.
If,
as he insists, this is Craig's final Bond, then he's left the series
in better shape than it's ever been. This is top flight movie-making.
★★★★
Spectre is on general release now.
Monday, October 12, 2015
Monday, October 12, 2015
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"I entered the BFI IMAX, the largest and loudest screen in the United Kingdom, at 18:20. At a shade after 18:40, Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room began. About two hours later I stumbled, disorientated, mumbling and drooling, onto the sandy banks of the Thames.
I can’t say I wasn’t warned; Guy Maddin himself had introduced the film, off-handedly joking that what we were about to see a) has the potential to induce aneurysms, b) that he’d be surprised if there was anyone left by the time it was finished and c) that he himself would only dare to watch the opening scenes before skedaddling backstage."
★★★★
Friday, June 26, 2015
Friday, June 26, 2015
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In which we observe a talented and charismatic woman gradually descend into alcoholism and mental illness, culminating in her skinny corpse being wheeled into the back of a van. This is the story of Amy Winehouse, as told by Senna director Asif Kapadia. The magnificent Senna (maybe the greatest biographical documentary ever) ended with its subject dying in mangled wreckage. Amy ends in much the same way, surrounded by the final shreds of her talent, dignity and sanity.
It's easy to forget just how quickly and brightly Amy Winehouse burned. The release of Back to Black in 2006 made her an immediate icon, her tattoos, beehive hairdo, Camden-style , confessional lyrics and that voice defining her as something new, propelling her to fame and wealth beyond her wildest dreams. Five short years later she was dead.
Working almost entirely from archive footage, Amy traces the singers teenage musical beginnings, ascent through the music industry and eventual drugged out stupor. It's an incredibly bleak film; every pre-fame image of the young, smiling and vivacious artist tainted by our knowledge of what's to come.
Leaving aside the emotion for a moment, it should be emphasised what an outstanding researcher and editor Kapadia is. God only knows how many hours of footage he must have trawled through to construct this film, piecing together a narrative from thousands of disconnected video clips from many different sources. It impresses upon you how thoroughly a contemporary life can be documented; a mosaic assembled from cameraphones, news reports, television shows and family videos.
Context comes from contemporary interviews with key figures in her life. Cleverly Kapadia doesn't use the bog-standard 'talking heads' style, preferring to overlay the interviews onto relevant footage. This draws up a gentle documentary tension; in the interviews with figures the film treats critically, what they're saying and what we're seeing don't quite add up. The overall effect is that, by the time the credits are rolling (with new footage still playing over them), we feel as if we've genuinely gotten to know Amy Winehouse.
This is, of course, an illusion. How can you truly understand someone through two hours of edited clips? But it's an effective illusion, Kapadia manipulating our perceptions of his subject in order to subtly communicate his message. This proves to be a critique on the exploitation of talent, laying out who 'used' Winehouse and why.
But it's less a process of identifying and condemning 'villains' and more a critique on the processes that allowed them to behave in the way they did. For example her father, Mitch Winehouse, doesn't come out of this looking especially amazing, but he's more stupid than malicious. Another potential villain, her ex-husband Blake Fielder winds up as just another victim - a mirror of Amy Winehouse minus both talent and charisma.
The real villain of the piece soon rears its head; a voracious media fuelled by you and I. There's a epilepsy warning before the film that proves entirely warranted when the paparazzi swing into action, jostling the increasingly confused looking singer in a nightmare strobe world of flashes and screaming. If this is what life is public is like, no wonder so many celebrities go bananas. Kapadia reserves most of his venom for the media, condemning the comedians that made light of her condition, the salacious news reports that wallowed in her misery and the intrusive cameramen that jammed lenses in every private moment.
Paradoxically, Kapadia is quite happy to use that stolen footage in his film. In an affecting moment we see a paranoid-looking Winehouse staring through the slats of her bedroom window, shot through a telephoto lens. It's faintly hypocritical to condemn the tabloids then use their footage, but it's hypocrisy with a point. In watching Amy you feel an extreme empathy with her, as if you're on the same side. Yet, in effect, by delving through a jigsaw puzzle of her private moments you're engaging in precisely the same behaviour that drove her to an early death.
By the time we see her body laying under a blanket you should ask yourself exactly what you're getting out of this. "Aw, what a sad story" sentimentality? Smugness in watching someone successful fail? The vicarious thrill of watching a hedonist burn out? We all try to fit Amy Winehouse's biography into a preordained narrative, scratching away at reality until she's less a human being and more a romanticised archetype.
I can't deny Amy's quality: the music is amazing, the subject is fascinating and Kapadia's technique is second-to-none. But the process of watching the film turns us into vultures, greedily stripping the last chunks of meat off her mouldering carcass. Clearly no lessons have been learned from this whole affair; presumably the next talented and troubled hot young musician that comes along will suffer much the same miserable fate. It's for that reason that I found Amy such a profoundly sad experience.
★★★
Amy is released 3 July 2015
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Thursday, June 25, 2015
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The Tribe sounds like a parody of arthouse cinema. It's from the Ukraine. It's shot in bleak government buildings. It's brutally violent and unflinchingly sexual. The characters communicate entirely in sign language - Ukrainian sign language. There is no dialogue. There is no score. There are no subtitles.
Every inch of The Tribe appears designed to baffle, annoy and perplex your average cinemagoer. This makes it an exceedingly unfriendly film in almost all regards, yet, to those with a certain level of cinematic patience and the stomach for the uncomfortable, Slaboshpitsky's film pays dividends.
Now, given that the film's entirely in unsubtitled Ukrainian sign language (which, surprise surprise, I don't know) my plot summary is going to be a bit vague. The Tribe explores the seamy criminal underbelly of a deaf school somewhere in the Ukraine, examining how pupils are exploited by the teachers and each other. The lead is a new pupil (Grigoriy Fesenko), who is soon up to his eyeballs in prostitution, petty theft and casual violence.
Though for the most part we see things from his perspective, this is also the story of two girls (Yana Novikona and Rosa Babiy) who spend their nights as prostitutes to a car park of truckers. The new pupil is soon tasked with acting as their pimp, though complications arise when he falls in love with one of them. Problems begin to mount as two of their teachers make preparations to sell the girls into sex slavery in Italy, causing the new pupil to descend into violent revenge.
Or at least, that's what I think was happening. You spend a lot of The Tribe trying to figure out what's going on at any given time. This isn't the most complicated of plots but the obvious language barrier prevents any complex characterisation and narrative. So you start approaching the film in archetypes, one person's 'the mean one', another's 'the creepy teacher', 'the violent kid' and so on.
Even without language its hard to completely lose the plot, but even if that did happen you could spend a happy two hours wallowing in Slaboshpitsky's awesomely portentous style. This is cinema as sledgehammer; the film composed of long, unblinking shots that follow the characters in and around their environment. For example, in one shot we track four children moving through a park, as we pan right more join them until 20 or 30 are perched on crumbling brick walls. Then vicious beatings break out, complete with the deaf children silently signing their enthusiasm for it.
All this is set within a crumbling, graffiti-covered frozen world entirely devoid of beauty. You can practically smell the rot emanating from the ruined ceilings and stained walls. These locations, hopefully soon earmarked for the wrecking ball, are lit by fluorescent lights that give everyone an unhealthy malnourished pallor. This hellish environment drags the film gently towards horror; especially in The Shining-esque tracking shots that explore the endless corridors of this hell-school.
And y'know, not only does it look nightmarish, but the events in it aren't exactly super happy joy time either. Be prepared for vicious beatings, abuse of a boy with Down syndrome, joyless mechanical sex, bashing in of skulls and one of the most disturbing abortion scenes I've ever seen in a film. Seriously - I've sat through the famous ultra-nasties (120 Days of Sodom, A Serbian Film and so on), but parts of The Tribe made me genuinely nauseous.
Part of it arises from the lack of vocalisation from the cast. The frantic signing feels less like we're watching the children communicate with each other and less like a portal straight to their hearts. There's something very 'off' at watching atrocities happen in dead silence, with just the faint hum of the strip lighting and exhalation of breath after blows functioning soundtrack. Some part of your brain rebels, insisting that something intangible is very wrong with this picture.
So is it a film that I can recommended? Well, it's technically, artistically and performatively outstanding in practically every way - from the precision-tooled elegance of the long tracking shots, the desaturated colour balancing, not to mention the cast of deaf Ukrainian teenagers, all of whom turn in excellent performances. But under all that there's a whiff of sadism, Slaboshpitsky going out of his way to create a viewing experience that crawls under your skin.
It's one hell of a cinematic achievement, but by God it's not for everyone. If you're the kind of person who enjoys viciously 'difficult' cinema you'll be in your element here: Slaboshpitsky turning in a film that meanders into the same bleak stylistic territory as Satantango, Antichrist or the works of Michael Haneke. If you count those among your favourites, by all means dash to The Tribe. If you're more of a Disney kind of person, I'd advise giving it some serious thought before watching this. You might never be the same again.
★★★★
The Tribe is on limited release now.
Even without language its hard to completely lose the plot, but even if that did happen you could spend a happy two hours wallowing in Slaboshpitsky's awesomely portentous style. This is cinema as sledgehammer; the film composed of long, unblinking shots that follow the characters in and around their environment. For example, in one shot we track four children moving through a park, as we pan right more join them until 20 or 30 are perched on crumbling brick walls. Then vicious beatings break out, complete with the deaf children silently signing their enthusiasm for it.
All this is set within a crumbling, graffiti-covered frozen world entirely devoid of beauty. You can practically smell the rot emanating from the ruined ceilings and stained walls. These locations, hopefully soon earmarked for the wrecking ball, are lit by fluorescent lights that give everyone an unhealthy malnourished pallor. This hellish environment drags the film gently towards horror; especially in The Shining-esque tracking shots that explore the endless corridors of this hell-school.
And y'know, not only does it look nightmarish, but the events in it aren't exactly super happy joy time either. Be prepared for vicious beatings, abuse of a boy with Down syndrome, joyless mechanical sex, bashing in of skulls and one of the most disturbing abortion scenes I've ever seen in a film. Seriously - I've sat through the famous ultra-nasties (120 Days of Sodom, A Serbian Film and so on), but parts of The Tribe made me genuinely nauseous.
Part of it arises from the lack of vocalisation from the cast. The frantic signing feels less like we're watching the children communicate with each other and less like a portal straight to their hearts. There's something very 'off' at watching atrocities happen in dead silence, with just the faint hum of the strip lighting and exhalation of breath after blows functioning soundtrack. Some part of your brain rebels, insisting that something intangible is very wrong with this picture.
So is it a film that I can recommended? Well, it's technically, artistically and performatively outstanding in practically every way - from the precision-tooled elegance of the long tracking shots, the desaturated colour balancing, not to mention the cast of deaf Ukrainian teenagers, all of whom turn in excellent performances. But under all that there's a whiff of sadism, Slaboshpitsky going out of his way to create a viewing experience that crawls under your skin.
It's one hell of a cinematic achievement, but by God it's not for everyone. If you're the kind of person who enjoys viciously 'difficult' cinema you'll be in your element here: Slaboshpitsky turning in a film that meanders into the same bleak stylistic territory as Satantango, Antichrist or the works of Michael Haneke. If you count those among your favourites, by all means dash to The Tribe. If you're more of a Disney kind of person, I'd advise giving it some serious thought before watching this. You might never be the same again.
★★★★
The Tribe is on limited release now.
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