What if JOHN WICK (the movie, not the character) hated you? That’s POLAR. There’s no killer’s code in this tale of hitmen (and women) offing each other and humanity is shown to be pretty much done for on a moral level. You get all the ultraviolet carnage you might expect, but our grizzled protagonist Duncan’s (Mads Mikkelsen) opponents are cartoony to the point of parody. Grief, guilt and horrible torture are handled absolutely straight, but you’ve also got an opening singalong and Mads taking on a gang of assassins in the buff, only assisted by clever camera angles. It’s tonal whiplash that’ll leave you reeling. Then there’s Matt Lucas playing a Bond Villain by way of LITTLE BRITAIN, which is so bizarre a choice I still haven’t decided whether it kills the film or not. It likely depends whether the filmmakers are in on their own jokes. SSP
Review in Brief: Polar (2019)
Review: Searching (2018)
Serious screentime: Screen Gems/Stage 6 Films
If I hadn’t already written my year end list, this would have shaken things up. SEARCHING is a game-changer, no question. How it was put together on a technical level, the final presentation and the revolutionary ways that information is delivered to us, where our eyes are drawn on the screen(s) and our instincts tricked, it’s all something else. It’s also a good old-fashioned mystery-thriller with a pure emotional wallop.
A widowed father (John Cho) searches for his missing teenage daughter using the technology and social media that has always been part of his family’s daily lives. But as as the mystery of her disappearance deepens and gains national attention, David comes to realise he hasn’t really known Margot (Michelle La) for a long time.
One thing I wouldn’t have expected from a film like this is an opening scene to rival Pixar’s UP for economic, beautifully simple storytelling of feelings. You’re under the film’s spell from the very start, utterly compelled.
The film takes us on a real ride, an agonising maze for audience and protagonist to navigate by way of Apple and Google. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, say twenty minutes before the end when it looks like it’s going to end in a functional but unsatisfying way, our focus is shifted and a plot device that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in narrative film before is deployed to take us to the finish line breathless, shocked and reeling.
It’s a film about unsaid things. Technology gives us so much control over what to say, when and to who – up until the point you press that send button, any impulsive thought can be taken back, no harm done. But there’s little that’s natural about talking by text, email or instant messaging, nothing spontaneous or truly human with that barrier, that safety net.
Technology isn’t really demonised, how could it considering how David uses it as a tool for good? How could it when it’s the main plot driver, the chosen asthetic and framing device of the story and the film world? You’re watching a film about, and incorporating multiple screens on a screen of your own. You’re reading this review of the film about screens on a screen. Dangers are acknowledged, human relationships filtered via technology don’t come across as particularly healthy, but as a species our lives are so inextricably tied to our devices, accounts and easy access to any information that we can’t really function without it.
David realises quite early on in his search that he never really got to know his daughter. From her birth he is shown to incorporate technology heavily in their lives, primarily to preserve memories and stay in touch, but he never seems to truly talk to Margot, and especially not from outside the confines of the screen. He seems to allow her a certain amount of independence and privacy for her age because he trusts that he can always reach her if he needs to. It’s this complete trust in technology over his living, breathing daughter that starts the chain of events leading to her disappearance.
Searching is a film like no other released in 2018. Others may have filtered their story through the prism of technology, and it was the very basis of found footage horror films from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT onwards. But Searching never feels contrived, the emotions and the characters never lessened by the form the story has taken. Everything is heightened by technology here and the expertise writer-director Aneesh Chaganty uses every tool at his disposal makes the prospect of this and any future project a truly exciting one. SSP
Review: Stan & Ollie (2018)
Way out way back: BBC Films/Entertainment One
I love slapstick comedy, and because I love slapstick comedy I love Laurel and Hardy, the masters of it. I’ve got my dad to thank for that. The makers of STAN & OLLIE clearly love Laurel and Hardy too, and that affection and respect really comes across in a straightforward, heartwarming but by no means schmaltzy way.
After years of declining popularity, Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C Reilly) embark on a European tour with the hope that the profile and profits will revitalise their career in Hollywood. But the tour takes its toll on their health and their relationship, and the crowds turning out for the early shows are underwhelming to put it mildly.
I listened to an interview with Stan & Ollie’s director Jon S Baird where he talked about the leads’ different methods of getting to the essence of their characters. Coogan started with the voice and built Stan’s character outwards whereas Reilly needed to move in his fatsuit before he could build Ollie’s character inwards. You very quickly forget that it’s not actually Laurel and Hardy you’re watching, the precision timing of the routine recreations, Reilly’s spot-on Ollie bounce and Coogan’s aimless amble as Stan.
They have such real chemistry, easy and natural as they hang out back stage as you’d have with any long friendship, slick and effortless on stage in a way you could only get from years rehearsing, performing and captivating audiences. You feel like you’re intruding on very private moments when they’re out of costume, worrying about money and spending time with their wives (Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda, both excellent) and it feels odd when the personas are, if not switched all the way off, then certainly turned way down.
There are plenty of pleasing little details in there for the fans, like seeing Stan removing his shoe heels to assist with his character’s distinctive walk and the pair’s ceaseless efforts to indulge their fans out in the world with their iconic catchphrases and character quirks and even recreating entire sequences for the film just as Laurel and Hardy did for their tour.
Long-running and popular characters often take on a life of their own and in a stroke of genius Stan and Ollie are shown to fall back on their comedy personas in their real lives as a security blanket, as Ollie turns on the bumbling charm shopping for jewellery for his wife he can’t afford or Laurel trying to look innocent and vacant as he plots to get into the office of a movie producer.
Jeff Pope’s script has some sharp one-liners, like Stan’s promise that, “I’m not marrying again, I’ll just find a woman I don’t like and buy her a house!” Coogan is given plenty of room to improv too, and Stan’s habit of constantly running lines and trying out new gags often has him come out with something spontaneously hilarious, usually to someone’s back.
The only scene I didn’t buy was what was clearly meant to be the dramatic turning point in the story. Stan and Ollie’s big public bust-up feels staged, over-scripted and very obviously is meant to be “the moment”. This is perhaps the only moment when Pope could have done with dialling it back and resisting the impulse to do “the biopic thing”.
Stan & Ollie delivers just what you want from a biopic of an iconic pair. Where it could have been broad and general it’s instead tightly focussed on the contrasting highest and lowest points of Laurel and Hardy’s careers and presenting the events we know, the events that happened that we didn’t know and the events that didn’t happen but work for the story, with wit and vitality. Coogan and Reilly have rarely, if ever, been better, equally at home as Laurel and Hardy performing or living their own lives. SSP
Reviews: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
You feelin’ lucky, partner? : Annapurna Pictures/Mike Zoss Productions
I thought I’d do something a little different for the Coen Brothers’ collection of Western shorts. Taken as a whole I enjoyed the piece, though I certainly thought this was a story selection with peaks and troughs, some sections which could have done with more Coenisms and others which could have done with less. I’d put it just below WILD TALES as an anthology film, and lower still in the brothers’ wider filmography. Here’s my take on each tale in isolation, as short Western tasters.
THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS I haven’t laughed so hard at anything else this year than Scruggs’ (Tim Blake Nelson) ingenious way of dispatching an armed opponent with a saloon table. Scruggs is a singin’, guitar playin’ fast drawer who’s equally likely to burst into song as kill you. He’s also an arrogant sumbitch liable to show off his shooting iron tricks before delivering the killing blow. Of course violence begets violence and sooner or later Scruggs’ actions will come back to bite him in the ass. Underlying message: Don’t get cocky, partner.
NEAR ALGODONES It’s pretty incredible, if you think about it, that James Franco’s characters aren’t hanged more often. He invariably plays shysters, scoundrels and scumbags and he should have to pay for it now and again. After he underestimates the sheer ferocity of an unassuming and rambling elderly bank clerk (Stephen Root), Franco’s cowboy finds himself precariously noosed and balanced on a horse liable to wander (this stretch couldn’t be more Coen-y). This is the next funniest tale after Scruggs, and goes in for similar comically exaggerated violence, though it lacks a really satisfying denouement. Underlying message: Nobody’s that lucky.
MEAL TICKET Abandon hope all ye who watch this one. This is the bleakest of bleak tales and it’s really quite startling to witness a story from the Coens without even a trace of levity. Liam Neeson’s travelling showman uses a limbless thespian’s (Harry Melling) famous speeches to scrape a livelihood, but it isn’t enough for him. The pair never share a conversation and Neeson doesn’t say anything beyond drunk rambling and haggling for business and leisure. Underlying message: We’re all absolute sh*ts.
ALL GOLD CANYON “Hello Mr Pocket!” Tom Waits was born to deliriously croak that. His prospector arrives in a beautiful, unspoiled valley and starts to dig for gold. After systematically working his way along a whole riverbank eventually finds gold, and the obsession over said gold makes him a trickier than usual old timer to snuff out when another interested party appears. That’s pretty much it, except for a slightly dodgy looking CG deer that probably means something. Underlying message: Greed can help you survive.
THE GAL WHO GOT RATTLED The only tale that could have probably survived expansion to a full feature on its own. In some ways this feels more akin to a Jane Austen adaptation, what with all the comedy of manners and faltering professions of passion between Zoe Kazan’s young widow and Bill Heck’s wagon train heartthrob. It’s also unapologetically a revisionist Western, while it is potentially romantic, life is shown to be unforgiving and cruel. Underlying message: There was a little bit of hope in the Old West, but it rarely lasted.
THE MORTAL REMAINS To cap off the enterprise the Coens go for a Poe-esque story that starts to drift genres. Here’s hoping for a gothic anthology somewhere in their future. An unlikely group of traveling companions journey in a coach and discuss life, death and the universe as their prejudices towards their fellow passengers bubble towards the surface. A couple of the travellers, and probably everyone’s real destination as well, aren’t what they seem. Brendan Gleason sings a lovely song. Underlying message: Be wary of weird travel companions. SSP
Review: The Favourite (2018)
Position secured? : Element Pictures/Film4
Queen Anne is a British monarch often overlooked, dismissed, forgotten. I’m into my history and I would have struggled to tell you much about her reign before watching THE FAVOURITE. The film isn’t a history lesson, that’s not what writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos is setting out to produce, but it does accurately reflect the cutthroat nature of being a courtier and the horribleness of life at every level, more often than not in a hugely entertaining fashion.
1708, with Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) frequently indisposed by poor physical and mental health, Britain’s matters of state are handled by Lady Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), the Queen’s closest advisor, friend and lover. Lady Sarah uses her position of power to further her own aims, keeping her family in influential positions and her rivals in check, all the while professing her unconditional love of her monarch. When Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), a lady fallen on hard times arrives at court, a bitter rivalry begins.
The film doesn’t flinch at depicting the harsher aspects of early 18th Century life, from high mortality rates and rife disease to women being sold to settle gambling debts, and yet this still a properly funny film. The farcical situations, the silly visuals (both perhaps only slightly exaggerated from reality) and rapid-fire poetic swearing really tickled my funny bone. Emma Stone even gets to deploy a bit of silent movie-style physical comedy as she tries to sneak out of a room undetected at one point.
How can you possibly pick between the three lead performances when they’re so different from one another and all fit their own specific purpose? Olivia Colman may be central to The Favourite as the tragic woman-child queen, and yet it’s not really Anne’s story. Rachel Weisz is the most mesmerising she’s been in years as Anne’s confidant/lover/power-behind-the-throne Lady Sarah and Emma Stone plays Abigail as a ruthless and unlikeable manipulator who has every reason to have turned out the way she has. Lady Sarah plays dirty but Abigail plays dirtier. As great as Colman is portraying a grand figure decayed by grief, Weisz and Stone’s battle of wills is the fireworks display that you’ll really remember.
Perhaps never else in the history of the British monarchy were women so powerful and singular a force. After all, Queens Mary and Elizabeth I’s closest advisors were men. Sarah Churchill is the key difference in this period at court, the woman holding all the cards, and she is easily the most fascinating presence in the film. Representing the duck-racing, politically impotent buffoons of Parliament is Nicholas Hoult’s opposition leader Harley. Hoult must have had such fun playing an absolute cad among cads. They really should bring that old-timey insult back.
Directors who shoot period films with natural light don’t make it easy for themselves. The Favourite does indeed look great, the halls of Anne’s palace (real locations, though not the real locations) made to look both grand and grimy, spacious and imprisoning for the court’s inhabitants. The visuals and soundscape are designed to elicit particular responses in the viewer, fish-eye lenses and gnawing, repetitive musical notes accompany characters’ emotional and psychological breaks.
As I’ve said, this isn’t a history lesson but uses historical trappings to tell a good story. Several times the film seems to pause to wink, to throw something so anachronistically out there at you that you’re left sure there is another point being made. The lavish, detailed costumes look more than a little fantastical, and midway through a night of merriment at court, Lady Sarah busts out what can only be described as breakdancing moves. I’d expect nothing less surreal from the director of THE LOBSTER.
It’s probably the best film exploring the idea of control and manipulation I’ve seen since EX MACHINA. It’s all about the shifting balance of power and the dirty tactics used to retain a position of influence, whether your motivation be ambition, self-preservation, selfishness, love or a combination. Also like Alex Garland’s android chamber piece, this tale of a constantly shifting balance of power ends in a way that can be interpreted in several ways. I think I’d have to see it again but for now I’m struggling to make total sense of it, but I was utterly enthralled by the story that brought me there. SSP
Review in Brief: Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018)
Sometimes there is a place to laugh at really loud and long farts and murdering Bruce Wayne’s parents by time travel. TEEN TITANS GO! TO THE MOVIES is that place. I’m a bit old for the show the film spins off from, but any fans of superhero movies (unless you think dark and moody is the only way to go, you’ll be the but of most of the jokes) should titter at some of the gags, geeky references and unapologetic silliness. For all the plot devices thrown in, this is essentially a series of linked skits, but it’s no less enjoyable for it. It’s bright, joyous and mischievous, the antidote to so many overly serious comic book adaptations over the last decade. Kids will love it, and parents, especially superhero fans, will find a lot in to like too, though they might not thank Robin (Scott Menville) for what he asks his audience to do just before the credits. SSP
Review: Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
What have you two tired adults done with Jane and Michael?: Disney/Lucamar Productions
Like everyone who’s reviewed this what I’m going to ask is (brace yourself) is MARY POPPINS RETURNS practically perfect in every way? Not quite, but its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses and its style and intentions are quite admirable. The original is one of the most pivotal films of my childhood and Returns is a thoroughly in-keeping and worthy continuation of the same world and characters.
Twenty years after first wishing for a nanny from the sky, Jane and Michael Banks (Emily Mortimer and Ben Whishaw) now adults with responsibilities, worries and tragedy in their lives once again find themselves in need of their magical guardian’s help. Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) comes back to a very different Banks household looking at an uncertain future.
So let’s get the important bit out of the way: Emily Blunt is very good. She is, as many have pointed out, posher that Julie Andrews (except for one alarming music hall number where she comes over all Cockney) but she’s got the same mischievous glint in her eye and even arguably a little more of a melancholy undercurrent to her take on the character.
Filling out the adult cast (the three kids are cute and appropriately wide-eyed), Lin-Manuel Miranda is the best possible player to get in to lead the more technically complex song-and-dance numbers as lamplighter Jack and has a seemingly bottomless well of warm charisma to spare. It is Ben Whishaw though who acts everyone else off the screen, funnily enough much like David Thomlinson in the original: both bare the brunt of the dramatic heavy lifting and undergo a transformation as the story is told, though Michael has much more understandable reasons to be less indulging of his children than his father did. Jane does unfortunately feel under-served by the script and Mortimer is given little to do beyond hints at a future romance and token gestures to her inheriting her mother’s passion for campaigning.
The songs are pretty good: very hummable, nice orchestration and a layered musical and lyrical build accompanying some spectacular musical numbers. My favourite by quite a way was the bathtub/ocean extravaganza “Can You Imagine That?” closely followed by the “Let’s Go Fly a Kite”-riffing “Nowhere to Go But Up”. It’s also got not one but two songs dealing quite explicitly with grief, which was unexpected. I will say that Meryl Streep’s song (and scene) is just awful and she’s clearly only there as another eccentric “cousin” of Mary to try out another accent and to add prestige to the poster.
In a world of unnecessary CG-animated remakes this film is now the only place we can find traditional hand-drawn Disney animation in a new release. As much as I enjoyed the new takes on THE JUNGLE BOOK and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and appreciated TANGLED and ZOOPIA on their own terms, I’ve missed this. It’s even the slightly jerky, scruffy outlined but completely alive animation the studio were using in the 60s, which is a treat for fans of that era.
Aside from the wealth of imaginative visuals and ambitious mounting of the musical numbers, I wouldn’t say there are too many surprises in store(the cameos were spoiled by the marketing). You can see pretty clearly the story’s trajectory, along with inciting incidents and jeopardy to come from the off. But it’s such a cozy, well-meaning $150 million musical blockbuster that you’ll hardly care.
I’m not sure what children will make of it, whether parents are still showing them the original or if whole families are being dragged along at the behest of misty-eyed adults. I watched Mary Poppins Returns with my parents, but they’ve been showing me the Julie Andrews/Dick Van Dyke one ever since I was able to gawp at a screen. Nostalgia is a powerful tool, but a certain level of craft and affection for the material helps as well. SSP
Review in Brief: Leave No Trace (2018)
LEAVE NO TRACE is a small story with big themes and emotions. Nothing quite matches the film’s first act with father and daughter living in the wilderness, surviving, getting on but not really communicating before we’re hit with the stark contrast between the tranquility of nature and the excess noise of civilisation. Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) is young enough to adjust to a new life, being curious and optimistic by nature, whereas her dad Will will always be a damaged and vulnerable man who will never feel safe among others again. Who are we to judge what is the right way to live? The look of utter bafflement on Will’s face as he is tested by psychological profiling programme (which very quickly leaps to asking if he’s dong it “for The Prophet”) says it all really. The final act feels less organic and relies on a few too many coincidences, but the film remains a showcase for director Debra Granik and her talented actors. SSP
Review: Bumblebee (2018)
Never gonna give you up… : Allspark Pictures/Bay Films
Finally, a decent TRANSFORMERS movie. Was that really so hard? Something you should know about me is that I’m a Transformers guy, that next to STAR WARS it’s the franchise of my childhood (one day I’ll post my BEAST WARS retrospective…). I’ve never done a full-length review of any of the previous movies on this blog because, frankly, there wasn’t enough to talk about. BUMBLEBEE cost about half what the previous two Michael Bay joints did, and it’s at least twice as good. They get the basics right for a start, always asking, why should we care about what happens to these characters?
Grieving for her dearly departed dad and drifting through life, teen Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld) stumbles across Transformer hero Bumblebee hiding in a scrapyard. The pair form a bond quickly, but before long are being pursued by enemies both human and alien.
They definitely hired based on the eyes for this one. Who better to befriend the Transformer with the biggest eyes than the young actor with the most expressive eyes in Hollywood? Charlie and Bee’s relationship is simply charming. Their relationship being a tactile one makes a big difference as well; Steinfeld was presumably always acting to the air or to a ball on a stick, but she’s always physically connecting with her big yellow robot bud and Bee saying everything he needs to in response all without the speech he has lost. Rarely after their initial meeting are they not sharing the same shot and interacting, which goes a big way toward selling both the effect and their bond-at-first-sight. It’s also refreshing to see the tag-along for the adventure not forced straight into the role of the love interest. There’s chemistry certainly, but as Charlie says gently to Memo (Jorge Lindeborg Jr) towards the end, “We’re not there yet”.
The robo-brawling is still big and loud but isn’t it nice to always be able to tell what is going on? It’s great to see the momentum of transformation being used in fights with a strong sense of space too, giving them weight and avoiding the two indistinct-special-effects -fighting-each-other problem. There’s also only three Transformers with a major part to play in the movie; one goodie and two baddies, which is enough really.
I’ve never really understood why the Transformers still need to transform on their home planet Cybertron. Wasn’t the whole point to be Robots in Disguise to blend in among the humans and more easily traverse Earth? Also having John Cena (I didn’t know they made military uniforms in his size…) point out that the baddies have very obviously evil bad guy names doesn’t make the stupidity of the film’s American government any easier to swallow.
Not only are the period details very 80s, but so is the style of the film at large. It’s a sun-dappled teen coming-of-age movie with well-meaning but annoying parents, hissable authority figures and cheery musical montages, of course. It’s a bit John Hughes, a bit Spielberg and a bit Zemeckis basically. It’s this sameness that holds the film back a bit to be honest. Yes, it’s different to the other Transformers movies, but it’s so similar to so many other genre movies from 30 years ago, which probably knowingly is when the story is set. Still, if a formula works, it works.
We may have seen many of the beats and this shape of story before, but it is the emotional resonance and the character relationships that make Bumblebee border on special. I had a tear in my eye at the end of this film about this awkward girl and her robot bestie who turns into a car, and nothing Michael Bay has ever done really made me feel anything. Travis Knight’s (KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS) live-action debut cements his position as a storyteller gifted in both presentation and human connection (or humanoid robot, or humanoid animal representations of your parents….). SSP
Review in Brief: Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (2018)
The only implausible thing about Ben Wheatley’s latest jet-black dramedy is that any family would willingly submit to everyone being in the same location at the same time for anything other than a wedding or a funeral. We are sent drifting through this massive house, catching snippets of overlapping, interrupted conversations, the tail ends of arguments and bad blood aplenty bubbling to the surface. The semi-improvised or improvisation embellished script along with some particularly fraught moments helps the whole thing come across as real, and perhaps suggests COLIN BURSTEAD as an interesting double feature with Thomas Vinterberg’s FESTEN (you’d watch this one second as its if not more cheerful, certainly funnier). Everyone’s on their game and play off each other in a believably petty fashion, but Ben Wheatley’s lucky charm Neil Maskell (KILL LIST), Hayley Squires (I, DANIEL BLAKE) and the ever-reliable, and unusually vulnerable-feeling Charles Dance are undoubted highlights. SSP
SSP Thinks Film 