A Few Thoughts More: Her (2013)

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Sam S-P

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Spike Jonze’s HER was the cinematic high-point of 2013 for me, though I didn’t actually get to see it until the beginning of this year. I still stand by what I said in my original review, which you can find here, but I’ve had a few more thoughts since then.

I’m overjoyed that Her holds up to a re-watch, and I actually found myself getting more out of it, noticing subtleties for the first time, and found it an even deeper, richer viewing experience overall the second time round.

Joaquin Phoenix is having a phenomenal few years. I didn’t particularly enjoy THE MASTER, but I can’t deny Phoenix was a force of nature in it. His performance as Theodore Twombly couldn’t be more different, but it’s just as complex and layered. As the human face of the film (since, ya’know, the other main character doesn’t have a face), and as good as Johansson and Adams are, it is Phoenix for the most part who is responsible for  conveying the story’s humanity, making a genuine connection with us. As he gradually strips back the layers of vulnerable, endearing, but not always wholly likable character, he reveals us all for what we are, flaws and all, before promising us a brighter future when Theodore makes it through the other side of his relationship rut. Few might consider Phoenix, known for playing intense weirdos, as a romantic lead, but I’m so grateful Jonze saw something there, because his low-key sensitivity and unexpected grasp of awkward comedy (particularly in the cringe-inducing and odd sex scenes) is a winner.

I never really picked up before the interesting things the film does with sound. Most narrative films feature an original music score or a selection of pre-existing popular music to heighten the emotions of a given scene. Her is no different, with Arcade Fire and Karen O contributing compositions, but much of the music is experienced by the characters as diegetic sound since the world presented in the film has everyone constantly connected by an earpiece. No-one is left alone with their thoughts in Jonze’s future, and Theodore walks around future LA with a constant soundtrack in his head, whether he’s listening to music (“Play melancholy song”… “Play different melancholy song”), talking to Samantha or talking to her about the music she has just composed for him. Sound is such a crucial part of the emotional development of the characters, and tellingly Theodore’s good times with Samantha come with music and laughter, and his haunting flashbacks of his previous relationship are accompanied by an eerie silence.  The last thing we hear in the film, referring back to an argument about necessary and unnecessary breathing, poignantly, is a single breath.

In a film full of great ideas, one of the best is Jonze’s old-meets-new future aesthetic. In a world that relies almost completely on integrated technology day-to-day, it makes sense that people would still want to hang on to something tangible. Everyone dresses their apartments and themselves like it’s the 1950s, computer monitors are encased in varnished wood, books have become prized and rare luxuries, and people still want to receive hand-written letters despite paying someone else to write them.

While the most heart-rending punch comes a couple of scenes earlier, it’s entirely thematically appropriate that the highest point of the emotional crescendo that is Her’s finale, comes from Theodore finally composing a letter from himself to one he loves. He is finally a whole person, able to express his soul to someone with a physical presence all thanks to a life-changing experience with someone existing without one. SSP

 

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Review: Carrie (2013)

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Sam S-P

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From the start I’d like to say that I do like Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation of Stephen King’s CARRIE. I don’t see it as a classic of the horror genre by any means, but it’s mostly solid stuff, and was given a real boost by De Palma’s distinctive aesthetic and Piper Laurie’s terrifying turn as Carrie’s mother. I’d heard mixed things about Kimberly Pierce’s remake, yet another film that claims to be returning to the source material but that still ends up making reference to the earlier cinematic adaptation (see also: TOTAL RECALL).  All-in-all, I thought Pierce’s Carrie was pretty decent, at least as good as De Palma’s and with a different enough take on the story that comes from having a female director at the helm of a film about being a woman.

The book, and both films, follow Carrie White (here played by Chloë Grace Moretz), an introverted teenage girl raised by a fanatically religious mother (Julianne Moore). Carrie becomes terrified by the simultaneous onset of her first period, and the discovery that she can summon destructive telekinetic powers in moments of emotional upset. After being cruelly mocked by her classmates for her ignorance about the way a woman’s body works, she is rescued by her kindly PE teacher (Judy Greer) who makes sure the lead bully (Portia Doubleday) is excluded and banned from attending the highschool prom. As her tormentors plot humiliating revenge against Carrie, she researches and learns to control her powers, and only needs someone to push her too far again to unleash hell.

The kick-off point for the plot of both films, the now infamous shower scene is executed much more tastefully and sensitively by Pierce. As well as the shock factor, it works much better as a dramatic moment here as Moretz really sells Carrie’s horror and confusion. De Palma’s version always felt too seedy, and he seemed to be enjoying spending time in the steamy girls’ locker room a little too much. This scene is followed by an amusingly awkward conversation in the office of Carrie’s principal (Barry Shabaka Henley) who is desperately trying to avoid talking about the intimacies of the female anatomy with Ms. Desjardin, who has just come to Carrie’s rescue. He clearly just wants to get them out of his office as soon as possible and not have to deal with, or understand the situation, a reaction many men would have if the subject came up in conversation. 

It must have taken a great act of willpower for Chloë Grace Moretz to bury her natural charisma so deep inside to play Carrie White, contorting herself into an awkward stance and a nervous vocal performance without ever quite becoming a caricature. Sissy Spacek naturally felt like the out-of-place individual that Carrie is meant to be, but Moretz’s performance is arguably more impressive simply by the virtue of being so different to everything she has done before.

Julianne Moore makes for a far more sympathetic Margaret White. Whereas Piper Laurie in De Palma’s film was an irredeemable almost cartoonish monster, Moore’s character is a worn-down shell of a woman. Her religious zeal drives her to do horrible things, but her pathetic, fragile nature held together only by self-harm and unshakable piety never allows us to not pity her. Carrie could conceivably be considered more the antagonist in this version of the story, even when Moore’s version of her mother (perhaps inevitably) dons Piper Laurie’s nightdress and proffers a kitchen knife in an creepily familiar way whilst booming out scripture.  Carrie seems to get a handle on her powers much earlier on in this film, perhaps even to the extent that she could be accused of premeditating her vengeance rather than just becoming thrall to her powers. It’s still a horror about the paranoia of monstrous femininity, but Pierce, who clearly has more of an insight on the subject than De Palma or even King, suggests that if such a gift/curse of a power did manifest in a teenage girl, she might just have some fun with the utter chaos she could cause. I mean, just look at Moretz’s expression as she waves her hands around like a teen Jean Grey to psi-murder her classmates – if that’s not ecstasy brought about by horrible death, then I don’t know what is!

I didn’t really like what the film did with Carrie’s bullies. They weren’t the most memorable characters in De Palma’s film, but at least they were consistent. Here, though Chris is irredeemably nasty throughout, and she and her boyfriend Billy (Alex Russell) take far too much pleasure in slaughtering a pig one moment, then they get cold feet about their evil masterplan the next. I’m not exaggerating when I say that in a single scene they both flee the scene of their crime in Billy’s car, in a panic about what punishment they will be subject to if they’re caught, then not 30 seconds later, Carrie appears and Chris orders Billy to run her down.

It is perhaps inevitable that a remake relies more heavily on spectacle, and Pierce certainly makes the most of advances in visual effects in depicting Carrie’s terrible power. Still, the final act doesn’t quite fit comfortably with how restrained the rest of the film is. It’s an extravagant action sequence complete with buildings collapsing, gruesome deaths and explosions, one of which, Carrie almost walks away from in slow-motion. It certainly isn’t dull though, and apparently it depicts more closely what occurs in King’s novel, ideas that were discarded in De Palma’s version for budgetary reasons. The more sophisticated effects allow for moments of quiet, eerie beauty as well as action, such as when Carrie smashes a mirror in a bathroom at school and makes the shards float to reflect a distortion of her smiling face back at her. But the slo-mo is overused by Pierce and is unintentionally funny when combined with a game show “action-replay” effect used in the most iconic scene in the story.

I guess the main thing that Pierce’s Carrie is missing, crucially for a horror film, is any real scares. King is a master of delivering abject horror on the page, and De Palma and Spacek made “Creepy Carrie” live up to her name, and had Piper Laurie on hand to provide the genuine fear factor. I can’t really fault Pierce, Moretz and Moore taking the characters in a new direction and updating the story for today’s audiences, but if a horror film isn’t scary, no matter how well filmed and performed it is, then it has unavoidably failed in what it set out to do. SSP

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Review: Out of the Furnace (2013)

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Sam S-P

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OUT OF THE FURNACE is one of those movies I’ve been highly anticipating since the first trailer was released. It looked like a gritty, powerful social drama with an impressive cast and a decent director (Scott Cooper of CRAZY HEART), and now I’ve finally seen it, I’m happy to say it does, for the most part, meet my expectations.

We follow Russell Baze (Christian Bale), a modest steelworker with family problems. Though he’s got a steady (if hazardous and underpaid) job and is in a happy relationship with Lena (Zoe Saldana), his father (Bingo O’Malley) is terminally ill and his younger brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) is getting into debt with underworld types as he refuses to throw the fixed underground bare-knuckle fights he has turned to in order to give his life a purpose since returning from Iraq. A tragic accident puts Russell, the one stable element in the Baze family, behind bars, during which time Lena moves on, his father dies and Rodney in put in peril by an encounter with a crime lord (Woody Harrelson) who doesn’t take kindly to anyone standing up to him.

Nobody plays rough working-class Americans like Bale, which is odd because he isn’t working-class or American. Casey Affleck isn’t the first name that comes to mind to play an unstable young soldier, but he gives his all, and his outburst in response to Bale’s accusation that he should be making more of his life certainly stands out. Sam Shepherd does what he’s good at as Russell’s tough uncle – standing in the back of shot and looking dependable. You can tell Harrelson is playing a mean mother because he’s got bad teeth and is drinking something stronger in every subsequent scene (first it’s whiskey, then vodka, then something clear from a jam jar), and he’s terrifying every time he’s on screen. Sadly, Zoe Saldana and Forest Whitaker are under-served, with the former just giving Russell something to pine over when he first gets out of prison, and the latter, playing police chief Wesley, just acts as a good angel to sit on Russell’s shoulder in the second half of the film. I get why the filmmakers cast Willem Dafoe as a mid-level mobster who looks out for the Baze family, but then they dress him like the owner of a back-alley 70s adult store and he just looks laughable compared to Harrelson’s snarling, bear-like Harlan.

It’s a film of great contrasts. We see Rodney in a violent brawl juxtaposed with Russell scraping flaking paint and sealing leaky windows. Russell is always the stable brother, arguably with just as many issues, with the same amount of mistakes behind him as Rodney, but he just deals with it better. He sets himself tasks, gives himself something to aim for, whether it’s making the house more livable or trying to get his ex-wife back, whereas Rodney only knows how to relieve his tortured soul through rage, through violence.

The dialogue is realistic, naturally delivered, and fuelled by white-hot emotion. Pretty much everyone has a scene to cement who their characters are and what personal issues they are struggling to overcome. Bale as Russell says far more in his intense focus on the task at hand – whether it is doing the washing up or hunting down a monster who has wronged his family – than he does with dialogue. Harrelson as the brutal Harlan DeGroat (great criminal name) grinds his teeth and mumbles his threats near-constantly, so you rarely catch exactly what he is saying, just that it wasn’t anything nice.

Cooper and his cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi (THE GREY) pack every beautiful-depressing shot full of symbolism to decode. At about the film’s halfway point, Russell returns to the scene of a tragedy that changed his life for ever, just as his brother’s life is taking a turn for the worse. Russell stands in the dead-centre of a wide shot, isolated and alone, between a crossroads representing the difficult choice he is about to make.

For some, the plot might feel a little slapdash, loose and lacking clear drive for supporting characters, but I appreciated the openness of it, the way Scott Cooper leaves a lot up for interpretation. Several key events happen off-screen, and you only see the consequences of things happening in the reactions of the central characters. Cooper seems to put a great deal of trust in his audience filling in the blanks for themselves, which is something you see depressingly rarely these days.

The point where Cooper tightens the reigns is the film’s final act, which is straight out of GET CARTER, being as it is a deadly and intense foot-chase across a desolate industrial setting. You’re still allowed to make your own judgement about what exactly happened, but I’d have still cut to black earlier in the sequence for an even more open-ended conclusion, but that’s just me.

Out of the Furnace cements Scott Cooper’s place as a perceptive writer-director of drama who gets the very best out of his actors. The sturdy performances, emotional weight behind the story, the relevance of the themes to a contemporary audience, as well as the striking visuals smooth over any rough edges the film has (for instance, some under-characterisation). It’s certainly a film that should hold up to a re-watch, and one which refreshingly gives its audience enough credit to work things out for themselves. SSP

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The Work of Rich Kelly

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Sam S-P

This gallery contains 13 photos.

These are awesome!

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Series Retrospective: Planet of the Apes

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Sam S-P

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Haven’t done one of these in a while. With the imminent release of Matt Reeves’ DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, I thought I’d go back and examine where the Apes franchise began nearly 50 years ago, where it went, and how well each instalment, and the series as a whole, holds up today. No, I will not be talking about what a certain Mr Burton committed to film…

PLANET OF THE APES (1968)

If I had a time machine, I’d love to travel back an experience an early screening of PLANET OF THE APES and watch minds get blown. This sci-fi classic following an astronaut’s exploration of a planet where apes are the dominant species still packs a real punch.

The big ideas are still provocative and hard-hitting, mercilessly criticising religious radicals; creationism; totalitarianism; war and human nature in general. John Chambers’ superlative makeup holds up, still allowing the Ape casts’ masterful performances (particularly the depth brought by Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall) to shine through, and the aesthetic creativity and iconic imagery remains impressive. The twist at the end is astounding for first-time viewers, but the clues are all there for you on a re-watch, the film’s plotting intricate and layered. Jerry Goldsmith’s instantly recognisable, eerie soundtrack brings added vitality and is among the best of his career. OK, so Charlton Heston lights a cigar in his spacecraft at the beginning, but you can’t over-think everything!

BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970)

BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES seems at first to be telling exactly the same story as its predecessor. The opening credits play over the last five minutes of the first film, then another astronaut named Brent (James Franciscus) goes looking for Heston’s Taylor and gets chased around by the apes. You see some odd sights too, an ape sauna and a chimp student protest to name just two.

In the second half, though, it becomes something else entirely. After a clumsy recreation of the first film’s twist ending, Brent discovers a subterranean society of mutated, psychic humans (who he laughably tries to lie to, even though they’re…ya’know…psychic!) and the apes raise an army. There’s some interesting stuff in here, even if a lot of it isn’t executed particularly well.  We get more criticism of religious fanaticism and militarism, as well as a general boost for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the film is shockingly violent overall. But the film is also awkwardly padded, the script lacks subtlety and the whole thing looks a little cheap. It’s the weakest instalment of the series by quite a margin, but it’s still not without merit.

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES (1971)

Charlton Heston’s hope that the previous film would be the only Apes sequel fell on deaf ears. Despite the seemingly definitive ending to Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the story continued with Zira and Cornelius traveling back in time to 1973 and astounding the world with their advanced intellectual faculties.

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES is a different beast to the two films that preceded it. They were both bleak dystopian adventures, while escape is a witty satire taking merciless swipes at hot-button topics of the day – the Cold War; animal testing; celebrity culture (presented here, in clever juxtaposition with a literal circus). The film is wisely built around the franchise’s two most compelling characters and their relationship, and Hunter and McDowall make Zira and Cornelius mesmerising, relatable and hilarious with their flawless animal body language marrying with dignified vocal work. While Planet of the Apes might be a better film overall, if pushed I’d have to say that Escape is my favourite of the series. It’s just so much fun!

CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (1972)

Another Apes film built around a phenomenal performance from Roddy McDowall, this time playing Caesar, the sole intelligent ape in a world of humans exploiting his kind as a slave labour force, and the only hope for his kind.

The thematic parallels here are a little lazy – this dystopian future is America as Nazi Germany with an ape slave trade thrown in. There’s a black official played by Hari Rhodes, so guess who’s the only human sympathetic to the apes’ cause? The script isn’t great either, but it’s considerably better than that of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and it provides enough for McDowall to get his teeth to get stuck into, and gives him a brilliant, almost Shakespearean final monologue as Caesar. The action is pretty impressive too, in a way you only get from having loads of extras in costumes charging round and laying into each other. Much of the film was remade into the solid, glossy RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, but there’s certainly something about this one, visceral and appealingly rough around the edges.

BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (1973)

Caesar (McDowall) returns as the architect of an uneasy truce between the simians and what remains of humankind. His society is rocked to the core when the violent gorillas stage a military coup and the mutated remnants of humanity emerge from their ruined civilisation baying for blood.

As the title suggests, BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES is a war film. You’ve got to admire the ambition of the filmmakers, but the combat scenes underwhelm, and have not aged particularly well. The script is solid though, and plays with some interesting ideas; war vs. pacifism; freedom vs. servitude; pragmatism vs. idealism, and provides the story with a much-needed shot of emotion arguably missing since Escape from the Planet of the Apes. McDowall again dominates as Caesar, giving him far more nuance than should be possible from behind a mask, and we’re also given an interesting villain in insecure, reactionary gorilla General Aldo (Claude Akins). The final ten minutes or so of the film is a pretty much flawless, a deliciously dark deconstruction of the plot and characters of the series.

Planet of the Apes, as a landmark sci-fi series, is in my opinion slightly underrated by most viewers. Critics are prepared to proclaim the original film a classic (which it is), while audiences hold affection for the trashiness present in the sequels, but even the the wobbliest Apes instalment (Beneath the Planet of the Apes) has far more going on upstairs than the vast majority of modern science-fiction. Taken as a whole, the series explores big ideas in entertaining ways, and never shies away from the less palatable side of human nature. Added to that the fact that every film in the series re-invented the Apes story in one way or another, and the ever-present, still astounding makeup work of  John Chambers and the consistent brilliance of franchise MVP Roddy McDowall, and you have a memorable and endlessly watchable series of important movies. SSP

 

 

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Review: Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Sam S-P

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DALLAS BUYERS CLUB is a rewarding film about mortality, against-the-odds achievement, and a brutal critique of big business pharmaceuticals, but it becomes a really great film when it gets into analysing prejudice (for all the good it does).

In the mid-1980s, charming Texan scoundrel Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) is brought crashing to earth when he is diagnosed with AIDS. He friends instantly disown him because of the sexuality associations of the disease, and he ends up at loggerheads with a medical system that is systematically failing patients in dire need. With the help of transsexual fellow AIDS sufferer Rayon (Jared Leto) and under the watchful gaze of cautious MD Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner), Ron begins a campaign of smuggling and selling life-saving drugs from abroad.

I absolutely loved Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, and was convinced he should have taken home the top award at the Academy Awards, but at that point I had yet to see Dallas Buyers Club, and honestly, Matthew McConaughey is something else entirely. He breaks his very body and his soul down to nothing in order to build it back up again in his portrayal of Ron Woodroof. Jared Leto also deserves the recognition he’s received for Ron’s transexual business partner Reyon – equal parts catty, outer confidence and inner vulnerability. I was equally impressed by Jennifer Garner playing Dr Eve, her unshakeable sense of right and wrong and her quite justifiable reasons for caution before releasing new drugs to the public essentially alleviating blame from medical professionals and putting it squarely back in Big Pharmaceutical’s court. She embodies some of the central dilemmas of the film – do you delay giving out potentially life-saving medication if it hasn’t been properly tested? Do you let terminally ill people take the risk for their own lives? Kevin Rankin is also strong as T.J, Ron’s former friend who turns against him after his diagnosis due to his deep-rooted homophobia and ignorance. He strikes just the right balance between making T.J detestable, but not cartoonily so, and equally pitiable.

I’m one step removed from the impact of the film – I wasn’t alive during the AIDS crisis, and lack those vivid memories, but I can still connect with the emotional turmoil of the period that the film extremely effectively evokes. I’m lucky to have grown up in a time where we know a lot more about the HIV virus, and to live in a part of the world that isn’t paralysed by paranoia, and generally speaking, the prejudice against, and misconceptions about, the sufferers have lessened considerably.

The film’s release in 2013 might seem a little odd. Though HIV/AIDS is still a major problem in parts of the world, research into the disease and ways to manage it is ongoing, and the misconceptions about it are not as prevalent today as they were 30 years ago. While AIDS might not be as much of a hot topic for audiences today, the pharmaceutical industry seems to have changed very little over three decades, arguably still just as morally bereft as it is depicted in the 80s-set Dallas Buyers Club. The big-screen depiction of Ron Woodroof’s story has stumbled a number of times since Craig Borten wrote the first draft of his screenplay following interviews with Woodroof shortly before his death in the early 90s. Over two decades Woody Harrelson, Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling have, at various points been attached to, or strongly connected with, the lead role. While the film might have had more of an impact, provoked more debate, if it had been released in the 1990s as originally planned, the Capra-esque structure of the story – a charming all-American boy fights the evils of big business – is timeless, and there is still much audiences can discuss.

The film doesn’t shy away from depicting, quite explicitly, the ravages this horrible disease causes the human body. Aside from McConaughey’s committed, gaunt visage, Leto’s Reyon goes through hell towards the end as well, as her body inevitably gives in to the relentless immune system assault. The film also, pleasingly, doesn’t try and morally whitewash Ron as a character, in fact, for much of the runtime, he’s a bit of a bastard. He’s self-obsessed and self-serving, just as homophobic as his former friends who shunned him because of his condition, and arguably just as profiteering as the pharmaceuticals companies he is at war against. It is only through his struggles, and through his later campaigning, that he becomes a likable, empathetic person. He goes on a journey, changing noticeably in response to his situation, which is a must for a compelling character arc.

The plot at points plays it pretty fast and loose for the sake of fluidity and pacing, but I would have still liked to see a better explanation of Ron gaining his connections abroad that allowed him to form his smuggling/morally justifiable drug dealing ring. The way the film presents it, Ron turns up in another country, has a quick chat, “wink wink, nudge nudge” and he’s sorted. I’ve no idea what went on in the montage when he visits Japan, he just seems to strut through the airport, have a quick meeting, then he’s on his way out again, but this is getting picky.

Dallas Buyers Club explores a remarkable life in a balanced, engaging way, and a great cast performing a well-worth-the-wait script make it a compelling and emotional watch overall. The only really valid criticisms relate to streamlining a story in adaptation, and though the issues the film tackles have been overshadowed by more contemporary ones, the venom the film holds for big business practices and prejudice of all sorts, is just as relevant and hard-hitting as ever. SSP

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Playing Catchup: The Japanese Edition

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Sam S-P

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A few more films I’ve (to my shame) only seen for the first time recently. This time, I’ve headed to the Land of the Rising Sun, and come back better for it.

SEVEN SAMURAI (1955)

Akira Kurosawa’s seminal epic was earth-shattering on a technical level in the 50s, and remains an impressive and hugely enjoyable viewing experience today for a number of often unexpected reasons. Yes, every critic can talk endlessly about Kurosawa’s mastery of visuals, action and editing, but SEVEN SAMURAI is also surprisingly funny, with Toshirô Mifune’s Ronin Kikuchiyo making for one of the all time great poignant comic relief characters. Kurosawa also has a lot to say both about Japan of the past and Japan of the time of its making. He mercilessly attacks the caste system of Medieval Japan, and symbolically comments on Japan’s mistakes of the more recent past. There’s a lot to process, but you’re given plenty of time to indulge in the characters and setting, and the tense buildup to the final battle wouldn’t be equaled until ZULU.

PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997)

SPIRITED AWAY might be Hayao Miyazaki’s most accessible film, HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE remains my weird and wonderful favourite, but PRINCESS MONONOKE is his crowning achievement. It’s got great depth, a radical feminist/environmentalist message, incredible beauty and extreme darkness. Not in every family animated film do you see body horror, arrow-decapitations and wolves savaging people in the first hour. Miyazaki perfectly balances quiet moments that take in the serenity of nature with the abject horror of warfare and the destruction of the natural world. Like all of Miyazaki’s films, it’s the women that hold the power, while the men are there in support (though one of them isn’t entirely useless this time). Not since THE WIZARD OF OZ have we had such a memorable conflict between a female protagonist and antagonist.

MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO (1988)

Certainly Miyazaki’s sweetest, most cartoony film (I know all animation is technically cartoony, but this one is even more so). Just because it’s child-friendly and endearing doesn’t mean it doesn’t have darkness and challenging subject matter to it. MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO is deceptively simple. Two sisters move to a new house with their dad, and their imagination takes hold in their new country surroundings as they try and not worry about their mother in hospital. They have adventures, and take in bizarre wonders before being brought crashing down to reality at the end. It’s a lovely, affecting fable for kids and adults alike, plus it’s got a ridiculously catchy opening credits theme.

Most pleased I’ve now seen: Princess Mononoke (because it’s a beautiful, intelligent and emotion-fuelled manifesto by a master auteur). SSP

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Review: Dead Man Down (2013)

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Sam S-P

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Sometimes a really interesting central relationship is enough to elevate a pretty generic gangster movie, and DEAD MAN DOWN is a pretty generic gangster movie. Having a good director and a strong lead pair of actors on board doesn’t hurt matters either.

The plot follows Victor (Colin Farrell), a Ukrainian mob thug who crosses paths with Beatrice (Noomi Rapace), a brutalised woman who needs help to exact revenge on her behalf, while a long-standing score of his own that needs settling is never far from his mind. The two strike up an unlikely connection as they both come to terms with who they were, and who they are, and who they will become.

From a run-of-the-mill opening shootout involving Victor protecting his boss (a miscast Terrance Howard) from a rival gang, we transition to a low-key, charming and honest first date between two remarkable strangers. Victor and Beatrice, despite living in opposite apartments, have never met, and never realised how much they have in common. Both are immigrants, both are used to the rough side of life, both are victims of recent trauma, both are trying to better themselves and move on with their lives. Following this gentle introduction, the story then takes a much darker turn, becoming an almost Hitchcockian morally twisting tale of them fixing each other’s lives.

Not every actress would be prepared to wear scars in service of her character’s back-story, but Noomi Rapace is clever and committed enough to embrace the unconventional to make her appearances in films memorable, and has never shied away from physical transformations that embellish her performances. I’ve also always liked Colin Farrell as an actor. Yes, he’s made some real turkeys in his time, but hasn’t every prolific talent in Hollywood? No matter who he plays, no matter how tough they appear on the outside, he always imbues his characters with something else, a fragility, a well-disguised vulnerability that make them compelling.

There’s an interesting parallel between Farrell and Rapace’s characters too – Victor’s unremarkable appearance disguises the monstrous crimes he has committed deep within, whereas Beatrice is inherently a good person who is just trying to maintain a normal life, but looks more sinister (cruelly branded “monster” because of her scars by her neighbours) on the surface. The way that they both want to escape their past in different ways also makes for a fascinating watch, with Farrell’s character burying the life he is forced to forget with yet more unsavory activities, and Rapace’s character seeing him as a usefully violent guardian angel, the only means to the end of her constant physical and emotional torment.

The film has some pleasingly layered moments of character examination. There’s a scene where Victor and Beatrice have essentially drawn up a contract, agreed to their mutual relief of their suffering, and Beatrice’s mother (Isabelle Huppert), upon seeing Victor making a connection with her beloved daughter, feels compelled to dig out the family photos, asking “wasn’t she pretty?” as if her scarred daughter wasn’t present, before clawing her daughter’s hair to obscure her face, in an effort to make Victor (clearly quite shocked and uncomfortable) stay. Beatrice’s mother isn’t cruel here, just a little tactless, doing what she thinks her daughter wants (disguising her flaws) and plainly doesn’t see the offense she is causing to everyone in the room. As soon as her mother leaves the room, Rapace has Beatrice proudly sweeps her hair back again to reveal her scars once more to Victor.

Farrell has to communicate a lot with few words, and Victor becomes steadily more compelling as layers of his backstory are revealed to almost justify his deplorable actions. Sadly, the rest of the characters in Victor’s mob are a disappointing mix of stereotyped Eastern European heavies and people who don’t really convince (not for a moment did I buy that Terrance Howard or Dominic Cooper were killers).

There’s some beautiful shot composition in the interior scenes, with conversations over cafe and kitchen tables playing out like a stage play, enclosing and emphasising the emotions behind the words. Director Niels Arden Oplev has a knack for these scenes, and clearly works well with Rapace in bringing them to life. He also clearly enjoys working on the quieter moments more than the bombastic ones in his films.

It does, admittedly, become a little hard to follow who’s working for who and what everyone’s agenda is as the story goes on, but the energy and momentum rarely ceases. I can’t deny the finale becomes a big old bag of cliches either, but at least there’s a great massively destructive action scene to focus on.

Dead Man Down isn’t a patch on Oplev’s previous directorial effort, but then again THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was something quite special. It’s as slick and good-looking as the preceding Swedish thriller, and has some compelling character beats, but the generic screenplay is disheartening, and the casting, with the exception of Farrell and Rapace, leaves a lot to be desired. I can’t tell whether I’ll still be thinking about Dead Man Down as the years go on, but it’s interesting and unusual enough to bare a re-watch, and promises much for Oplev’s directorial career. SSP

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Review: RoboCop (2014)

Posted on June 15, 2014 by Sam S-P

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Is it bad to be annoyed that I don’t hate José Padilha‘s ROBOCOP remake quite as much as I expected to? Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad, but not THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 bad.

In an updated take on the dystopian crime film, we once again follow Detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) a good cop working in the crime-infested near-future Detroit. The US Senate has repeatedly blocked bills to allow for the ranks of the police to be bolstered by intelligent robot agents, and the OmniCorp technology conglomerate headed by Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) see a lucrative business opportunity when Murphy is mortally injured in an attack on his home. Murphy is transformed into RoboCop, the first successful fusion of man and machine, and rejoins the fight against crime while simultaneously trying to reconnect with his young family, and himself.

The film’s attitude to the justice system in the USA (including their policing of the world) is so cruel and cavalier that it’s difficult to tell whether the filmmakers are joking. This wouldn’t make for bad (if incredibly unsubtle) satire if they were kidding, but I don’t always get that sense. Samuel L. Jackson’s current affairs TV personality proclaims in the film’s opening sequence that without relying on robots to do the dirty work abroad, “it would be American soldiers pacifying these people”. “These people” in this case are the citizens of Tehran, who apparently require American pacification in this film’s universe (with no explanation given for why, beyond the US/Iran troubled relationship). Jackson’s character is a parody of a certain kind of political commentator, just not a particularly clever one.

Also in the opening sequence, we get Iranian suicide bombers laughably spelling out to each other, and to the audience, that “our goal is to die on television”. OmniCorp’s evil marketing team (headed by Jay Baruchel) rarely say anything that isn’t re-stating how nasty and money-obsessed they are (“we’re gonna make a lot of money” Baruchel’s character beams) and there’s even a scene that sets out their super-evil re-branding strategy before they casually mock their disabled potential RoboCop test subjects for not being white or muscular enough (just in case we were still in doubt about who the bad guys are). At least in Paul Verhoeven’s original, the OmniCorp baddies were just guys in suits who got on with the business of being evil rather than talking extensively about it. Jackie Earle Haley is entertaining as the army’s sneering robo-expert, but you don’t get extra points for Haley turning in a good performance any more because he’s great in everything.

In contrast to the pantomime villains and boring protagonists (Kinnaman is certainly no Peter Weller), we have Gary Oldman playing a jolly nice doctor who helps amputees get used to using their new prosthetic limbs, and setting up the film’s main story arc (“too much emotion will throw the system”) as well as providing general exposition throughout to make up for some bad storytelling.

I do understand why the filmmakers repeatedly reference the military drone concern – for a contemporary audience, it’s still a raw subject and gives the film a little added clout. I also appreciated the reprisal of the iconic theme tune from the original films, and I liked that an updated version of the original suit makes a brief appearance, if only they didn’t paint it a generic black to turn him into a poor imitation of Batman just because Michael Keaton (still seemingly obsessed with his most famous role) said so. The choice of song to play over Robo’s final training exercise also has an odd brilliance to it, and I’m amazed it hasn’t been used to punctuate and provide rhythm to an action sequence before. Elsewhere, the action is unremarkable. There’s a big shootout that is essentially a re-tread of the Verhoeven film’s finale, but without creativity and wit, in total darkness illuminated only by gun-flare and infra-red. It does perhaps provide a justification for Robo’s new “tactical” stealth bomber look, but then you have to ask why he has a glowing red Cylon visor to give his position away.

What I didn’t like about the film was that it took itself so damn seriously. RoboCop was always high-impact and ultraviolent (for good reason) but it was never gritty (again for good reason). The humour, gore and razor-sharp satire struck a perfect balance in ’87, but here we have something slick, grim and ultimately, really dull. I don’t honestly think you can make a good film about violence without showing violence. Violence is depicted here, sure, but it’s neutered violence, edited in such a way to achieve the desired certificate to boost profit margins. Here we can almost entirely blame the well-publicised studio interferance, but it’s still a problem that affects the film as a whole. Robo’s “birth” scene in the original film was horrifying and personal – he looked into his murderer’s eyes as they brutally tortured him and eventually took his life, and we were right there with him. Here, he’s blown up in wide shot by persons unknown, and we’re meant to be behind him again when he goes after the culprits, despite the fact we actually haven’t seen them commit crimes, but just have to trust what we’ve been assured happened off-screen.

The only real laughs come from the bizarre combination of Sam Jackson’s vocal warmup exercises coming out of the MGM lion, and from “If I Only Had a Brain” playing over one of Robo’s training simulations. A tweaked “I’d buy that for a dollar” is not funny.

The only even vaguely affecting scene is Murphy’s gradual waking from his coma dreams as his comfortable, vital suburban life morphs around him into a cold, dead laboratory around him (a decent metaphor for his character). In the other family-based scenes, Padilha and co need to learn that it takes more than a simplistic piano theme to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. We have to be made to care about the characters, but here Alex Murphy and his wife and son (Abbie Cornish and John Paul Ruttan) are just too bland.

Aside from the odd glimmer of potential and fan-pleasing references, the RoboCop remake is incredibly disappointing. It’s dour and polished and attempts to be political, but without someone skilled at balancing the atonal elements of violence, comedy and satirical commentary like Paul Verhoeven at the helm, the film lacks bite, and underwhelms as a whole. The studio put pressure on José Padilha to tone down the violence when his film’s budget escalated, which accounts for some of the film’s problems, but that still doesn’t excuse the protagonists not making a connection, the villains monologuing, and the general “tell, don’t show” attitude of the script as a whole. No-one will remember this one a year from now. SSP

 

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Review: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Sam S-P

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Sometimes a clever little tweak to formula is enough to make a film memorable. EDGE OF TOMORROW is a solid and entertaining sci-fi action film, with good performances, but it wouldn’t be particularly notable if you threw out the unconventional plot structure. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that it’s not complex, as it’s always engaging, and so well put together that you won’t mind.

It’s the near-future and planet Earth is under attack. Try as the armies of the world might, they are fighting a losing battle against an alien foe who can seemingly anticipate every move they make. Armed forces publicist Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) lands in London just as a massive all-out offensive against the alien “Mimics” is being planned, and is forced to join the troops on the front line when he tries to blackmail the wrong general (Brendan Gleeson). His first day in battle does not go well, and Cage is killed by one of the creatures he is fighting. Miraculously, he wakes up again on the morning before battle, and gradually realises he is stuck in a time loop that allows him to predict and correct humanity’s tactical errors, and with the help of fearsome veteran Rita (Emily Blunt) they begin to concoct a plan to finally end the war.

Tom Cruise is the best he’s been since THE LAST SAMURAI, and refreshingly doesn’t seem to be playing Tom Cruise for the first half of the movie – Cage is cowardly, inept and awkward, and only grows into the Cruise action man role through practice, and out of necessity. Emily Blunt convinces as Rita, a formidable warrior woman, and it’s nice to see the relationship between the lead male and female not go quite the direction you’d expect. It’s great to see Bill Paxton in decent stuff again, and has all the best lines in the film as the philosophising Master Sergeant Farell. It must have been a bit odd for Paxton to be playing the veteran and watching a group of young actors playing a squad of kitted-out alien-fighting soldiers (and Cruise), inhabiting the very roles he occupied 30 years ago, but he seems to relish playing a figure of authority, the one who with the task of beating them into reasonable shape.

The battle scenes are intense and visceral, with a few of Doug Liman’s usual directorial flourishes to punctuate the action. The central premise, of Cage dying over and over as he works out how to win, also allows for a fair amount of black humour, particularly funny as he becomes more and more frustrated with his situation and what is expected of him. He’s shot, stabbed, crushed, exploded and run over throughout the film, so even if you’re not usually a Tom Cruise fan, you might get a cheap (if a bit wrong) thrill out of seeing him dying again and again.

The look of the film is somewhere between ALIENS, ELYSIUM and GEARS OF WAR, with power armour that augmenting a soldier’s movements and armaments (here called “exo-suits”), the general look of the military hardware on display, and the film being just about as violent as you can get away with at this certification. The Mimics are scary, glowing, biomachanical masses of tentacles and teeth, and present a real challenge for the unfortunate soldiers fighting them on the D-Day-esque beach battlefield.

The film’s final act has some added tension thanks to a late twist foreshadowed in an earlier scene, but as the story progresses, it only becomes more conventional. That’s not to say Edge of Tomorrow is ever dull – the pace keeps up throughout, and there’s a pleasing vitality to every scene, but Liman never quite manages to match the creativity and novel fun of the film’s first half on narrative and action terms. As criticisms go, this is a pretty minor one, and doesn’t take away from the fact that what is good is really good. I don’t even really mind that Edge of Tomorrow is a really boring movie title (better to stick with Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel title ALL YOU NEED IS KILL), I was just having too much fun to care.

I’m not sure if there’s any deeper message to the movie beyond warfare is an endless and pointless cycle, but as I’ve said, not every sci-fi has to be 2001 or BLADE RUNNER level of complexity, and sometimes there’s a pleasure in a simple (if tweaked) story well-told. The story also ends on an ambiguous note, that so few modern blockbusters have the courage to do (unless they’re shamelessly setting up a sequel). I’d highly recommend Edge of Tomorrow as an interesting enough, meticulously constructed thrill ride that makes you glad Tom Cruise is still in good enough shape to do what he does, and that doesn’t take himself all too seriously while doing it. SSP

 

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