I can almost guarantee somewhere down the line THE LOVE WITCH is going to be studied. It’s going to be that really weird one you watch on your film course in order to write an equally weird essay neither you nor your lecturer will fully understand. From the perfectly-pitched melodramatic performances, enhanced colours, sumtous costumes and pristine photography, it absolutely knows what it is. It won’t be for everyone though; you really have to lean into the schlocky tone as much as the film itself does (think Hammer Horror by way of late 60s B-Movies). The performances played in this style are good, especially from lead Samantha Robinson. Writer-director Anna Biller also impresses with her sure vision in this, only her second feature as director. It’ll be fascinating to see what Biller does next, hopefully continuing to plow her own very unique furrow. SSP
Review in Brief: The Love Witch (2017)
Review in Brief: Bright (2017)
“Only a Bright can control the power of the wand”. That’s really how BRIGHT opens. Then we see “Curse the police” on a wall. Whatever its intention, Bright comes across as a massive piss-take of Black Lives Matter. Just in case the film was being too subtle, Will Smith says “Fairy lives don’t matter today” before beating it to death “LAPD style”. Then there’s “Are you a cop first or an orc first?” followed by the former beating the latter to a pulp curbside. 2017 was not the year to poke fun at institutional racism. This insults campaigners, victims and Police doing a difficult job in one fell swoop. Having a quietly racist black cop and references to diversity hires and diversification is about as deep as this gets, and that’s really surface-skimming stuff. Joel Edgerton does his best under inflexible prosthetics but Smith drifts and everyone else is buried under a pile of overacting, half-baked mythology and badly bungled social commentary. The hunt for Netflix’s big break in blockbuster filmmaking continues. SSP
Review in Brief: Bloody Milk (2017)
It really has been the year for depressing farming dramas hasn’t it? First-time UK filmmakers gave us THE LEVELLING and GOD’S OWN COUNTRY, now comes France’s offering, BLOODY MILK. Director Hubert Charuel must have drawn on some of his own experiences growing up on a dairy farm, though you have to hope his family never had to go through the soul-crushing experiences depicted here, his camera capturing every emotional beat and jolt of pain in both man and cow. Pierre (Swann Arlaud) makes bad judgement after bad judgement to save his herd and livelihood when disease starts to spread, but only ends up digging a deeper hole for himself, his friends and his family. He’s not a particularly likeable protagonist, but you can understand the terrible choices he makes even as you wince on his behalf. Bloody Milk has got a smattering of nominations from film festivals this year, but it really deserves to be widely seen for its unfussy presentation and heartbreaking central performance. SSP
Looking Back and Looking Forward: 2017, Part 1
2017 has been an…interesting year in Hollywood. For all the high points, the last 12 months will be remembered for the low. But if we’re considering the films themselves, well it’s far more positive. As I say every year, I live in the UK, so have yet to see a lot of the Oscar hopefuls like Steven Spielberg’s THE POST, Pixar’s COCO and (particularly annoyingly for me) Guillermo del Toro’s THE SHAPE OF WATER. This list may change, but for now here is how it stands at this moment in time, so from 10 to 6…
Best of 2017:
Passion: Inflammable Films
10. GOD’S OWN COUNTRY Romantic but with real grit, wellies planted firmly in bleak-beautiful West Yorkshire and with one of the most honest, passionate relationships on film. The performances and the assured direction make this rather special. Full review here.
Buddies: Marvel/Disney
9. THOR: RAGNAROK A shot of pure, unbridled joy in a dark, dismal year; Taika Waititi was born to bring his sense of mischievous reinvention to the Marvel Universe. It’s almost too funny, but is elevated by the pulp-prog production design and being just so different from the competition. Full review here.
Introspection: Netflix
8. JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND Beguiling, insightful and appropriately bewildering, Jim Carrey in on his best behaviour in front of the camera discussing when he was at his least manageable while playing an anarchic comic icon. He’s not the easiest person to like as himself, even less so when he’s inhabiting a character, but it remains a fascinating and unusual study. Review in brief here.
Risk-takers: Lucasfilm/Disney
7. STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI Not your dad’s Star Wars, but an entertaining, gutsy and quite different new take on the galaxy George Lucas created 40 years ago. I really don’t care so much of Star Wars fandom feel stung by it; Lucasfilm can’t keep making the same movie for the next 20 years, and TLJ pulls the rug out and dazzles with difference. Full review here.
Ook!: Fox
6. WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES The most mesmerising performances of the year, lots of nice, crunchy thematic underlayering and the emotionally satisfying resolution to a three film arc over spectacle for spectacle’s sake. This has become the thinking person’s blockbuster series and it goes out on a real, and unconventional, high. Full review here.
Worst of 2017:
Charmless: Fox
10. KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE The scale and noise has been ratcheted up, but the charm is all gone, the goodwill squandered, and if it wasn’t for Mark Strong’s admirable efforts there would be no one at all to root for. When the best thing in your spy movie is Elton John,you should worry. Full review here.
Lack-uaman: Warner Bros
9. JUSTICE LEAGUE You can’t suddenly decide to add colour and jokes this far into a franchise and expect everyone to forget how misjudged and messy all the other instalments (with a notable exception) were; at this point it just looks like a criminal waste of money. I think this was meant to inspire hope and wonder, instead the story and characters frustrate and bore. Full review here.
Hug?: Universal
8. THE MUMMY Another misguided effort to run before you can walk, to shoot for the “shared universe” franchise at the expense of the story being told, Tom Cruise on not-particularly-charming form does little to make this feel anything more than generic. The sad thing is I do want to see the Universal Monsters return, but not with the deadweight of the Dark Universe dragging. Review in brief here.
Brooding: Netflix
7. DEATH NOTE You don’t have to have seen the anime to know this doesn’t work; it’s not because it’s westernised, it’s because it’s po-faced, badly acted and chooses the least interesting ways possible to explore an original idea. Netflix keeps attracting talented filmmakers, but maybe someone needs to be on quality control. Review in brief here.
Saul-lite: Netflix
6. GIRLFRIEND’S DAY This desperately wanted to be a Coen Brothers project, but it got the tone and execution so profoundly wrong that it becomes and embarrassing chore to sit through. I suspect it wouldn’t have got a Netflix release at all if they weren’t trying to drum up support for BETTER CALL SAUL Season 3 at the time. Netflix are having a pretty terrible year as far as their original movies are concerned (thank heavens for their TV and documentaries) and this isn’t even their worst movie on this list… Review in brief here.
What were your favourite and most hated movies released in 2017? Join me next time for Part 2 of my Best and Worst of 2017. SSP
Review in Brief: Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond – Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (2017)
JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND is a must-see for fans of Jim Carrey, Andy Kaufman and especially Milos Forman’s superlative oddball biopic MAN ON THE MOON. Impossible as he’s shown to be going “method” throughout filming, the only thing Carrey seems to regret is that the studio wouldn’t allow all his behind-the-scenes footage to become part of the film proper, further blurring performance and reality. The documentary boasts my favourite quote of the year from an introspective Carrey: “At some point when you create yourself to make it, you’re going to have to either let that creation go and take a chance on being loved or hated for who you really are, or you’re going to have to kill who you really are and fall into a grave as a character you never where”. He really struggles with just being him and is visibly uncomfortable sitting in front of camera in his street clothes it is to discuss arguably his greatest, most committed performance. Appropriately baffling, unexpectedly moving. SSP
Review: Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017)
Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying: Lucasfilm/Disney
There was a lovely little moment in THE FORCE AWAKENS where Leia (Carrie Fisher) after reuniting with Han (Harrison Ford) comments with a wry smile, “Same jacket” and her paramour responds, with mock hurt in his voice, “No, new jacket”. This exchange pretty much summed up a lot of people’s feelings about Episode VII – was the jacket different enough? Now comes Rian Johnson’s THE LAST JEDI, which is nothing if not different.
Despite the destruction of their superweapon, the evil First Order are bearing down on the heroic Resistance forces and are close to completely wiping them out. As General Leia (Carrie Fisher) commands the retreat, Rey (Daisy Ridley) tries to convince Luke Skywalker to rejoin the battle against fallen apprentice Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and his master Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis).
Luke was right; this did not go the way I thought. I knew a Star Wars film from the director of LOOPER and BRICK was going to be different, but I didn’t realise it would be quite this tricksy. As many thrills, laughs and revelations as The Last Jedi offers, Johnson makes you work for it.
A lot of the conflict and the meat of the relationships between the key characters is built around the lies and the failures of the Jedi, encapsulated by Luke’s repeated put down others’ misunderstanding of the Force, “Every word of what you just said was wrong”. If the saga has always been about a single idea, it’s about keeping balance, and this film especially is about maintaining this balance at any cost.
One of the finest moments in the film uncovers the great lie of this galaxy far, far away: Empire, Rebels, First Order, Resistance, it doesn’t really matter. When the cargo manifest of a weapon smuggler’s ship reveals that deals have been cut with both sides numerous times, it becomes clear that when intergalactic war is involved everyone finds themselves in the grey area sooner or later; anyone could conceivably be a villain from a certain point of view. ROGUE ONE tried to explore this idea and bottled it, TLJ really takes it to the limit.
Mark Hamill plays a very different Luke Skywalker. For much of the time we’re with him he is a shell, a shadow of his former hopeful self. He has his reasons for losing his drive, for completely cutting himself off from the galaxy to become a spiky space Ranulph Fiennes, and while it doesn’t end up quite as black and hopeless as I thought it might, it’s pretty dark stuff. We get the odd flash of the old Luke, where Hamill really comes alive, such as when R2-D2 reconnects with him using “a cheap move” and Luke warns him to “watch the language” when on a sacred island.
It’s so nice to have weird Benicio del Toro back; shady hacker “DJ” is like one of his roles from the 90s, all strange vocal tics and physical mannerisms. I think Gwendoline Christie’s shiny enigma Captain Phasma is in this even less than she was last time. Even Ade Edmondson from BOTTOM (one for the Brits) is around more than Phasma as straight man to Domhnall Gleeson’s gleefully pantomimey General Hux. Speaking of Gleeson, he often threatens to steal the show, or at least he does when the superb newcomer Kelly Marie Tran isn’t on screen.
TLJ is not the most visually interesting film Johnson has done (though it contains strong singular images he gives in to the tried and tested Star Wars aesthetic) until we reach the very different red salt plains and crystalline caverns of the final act. However, we are gifted with two awesome action sequences in the form of the grin-inducing derring-do battle in space that opens the film and the ferocious clash with a room full of Snoke’s formidable Praetorian guards that ends the second act.
The film’s best and most revealing scenes are unusual trans-galactic conversations between Rey and Ben/Kylo, and Ridley and Driver completely nail these fascinating dialogues. Gone are the days where everything is settled over the glow of locked lightsaber blades, now people talk and psychoanalyse each other.
I will say that the film is at times unnecessarily oblique in revealing certain plot points; I’m not talking about the big ongoing mysteries, more the practicalities of what is going on at a given moment. There’s a few points when characters knowing a key piece of information early would help their present situation, but they are kept in the dark a little longer seemingly just to keep them on the same level as the viewer. The plotting does feel freer and looser, which is fine, though the second act could have stood to be shaved down a bit, not to mention getting rid of an unnecessary chase sequence.
I have absolutely no idea where the resolution of The Last Jedi leaves us, or what is coming next. Maybe that’s a good thing. Tragic real-work events means there are unexpected storytelling challenges going forward, and I think they’ve now missed out on the opportunity to neatly tie everything up. However they finally resolve Leia’s storyline, this is a memorable and touching final appearance for Carrie Fisher.
If Force Awakens hit the reset button, then The Last Jedi has fearlessly taken the saga into uncharted territory. I personally really liked it for its sheer bravery, but I’m not convinced every fan will. I wouldn’t say it’s a crowdpleaser like The Force Awakens or Rogue One, but it’s a bolder, deeper, more beautiful film and perhaps the most blatant deliberate act of iconoclasm in Star Wars history. It’s about time this Galaxy Far Far Away got a shakeup. SSP
Review in Brief: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Guy Ritchie can’t do the fast-slow-fast-slow thing in every film. Like everything else he’s done, KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD is grey and self-serious but with breaks for “banter”. There are modern street clothes, dialect and hairstyles in the pre-medieval period, a cheeky cockney hero (Charlie Hunnam, sleep-walking) going up against an evil geezer (Jude Law, gritting his teeth). Much like the equally wobbly WARCRAFT, the film’s take on magic – dangerous, unpredictable, elemental – is interesting. Everything else is a grab-bag of things we’ve seen before, and better, elsewhere. We might have once plunged deeper into this world and learned its rules, but any concrete explanations for what is going on and why is kept on the periphery, whether it once existed and was excised for pacing or not. Whatever the reason for the film’s choppiness, we’re unlikely to return for a sequel, which I’m fine with. SSP
Review: Marjorie Prime (2017)
I’m not going to win this staring contest, am I?: Passage Pictures/BB Film Productions
MARJORIE PRIME took me by surprise. It’s a very well-acted, thoughtful chamber piece and dialed-back sci-fi has had great form over the last few years, but I wasn’t quite expecting the emotional content to hit me like a train. It’s cerebral, but it’s also full to the brim with soul.
Marjorie (Lois Smith) is 86 years-old and suffering from dementia. She spends many of her waking hours interacting with a “Prime”, a hologram of her dead husband Walter (Jon Hamm) that her family have brought in to remind her of her key life events and daily routines. As the decades pass by, more Primes join the family and help them keep the memory of loved ones alive.
It’s an agonising process many families go through, but the process of having a family member steadily lose their memory is the basis of a pretty dark exchange between Marjorie and Walter at the beginning of the film: “I could tell you a story – you liked that last time” / “I’ll have to take your word for it”. He tells her the story of his proposal and in one of her more lucid moments she suggests that next time he might improve it by lying. Who’s to say he hasn’t done this before? Who’s to say he was wrong to do so if he did?
It’s a creepy but all-too-plausible idea, that of giving a dementia sufferer an intelligent hologram as a companion, confidant and career when their own family are unable to give their own time. There are already robots to help the elderly, are we that far away from abandoning the physical altogether? The idea that this would also allow the new generation to meet a family member who passed before their time also hits home.
As warped as the relationship is, it’s nice to see an older female lead in a relationship with (a representation of) a younger man, and Smith and Hamm make for a sweet, genuine pairing. I completely buy Geena Davis as Smith’s daughter: it’s something in the smile and something else in her disdain for most people. She’s as charming and real as you could wish for and I love the idea she grows to resent Walter Prime’s relationship with her mother despite their far-from-harmonious relationship and presumably agreeing to it in the first place for her own peace of mind.
Marjorie Prime is about not letting go, the need to preserve memories of the good times. As Marjorie clings on to what little she can recall with the help of a representation of her husband at his best, later everyone makes use of a Prime to remember and understand somebody after they’ve gone.
I was not the least bit surprised to learn this is based on a play, a play starring Lois Smith at that. The intimate setting and subject matter and the close study of a small cast of characters has translated from the stage, the performances doubtless dialled back a bit for the closeups. The final image of the three primes together, pooling and comparing their memories in an effort to feel something about…anything, is a lasting, haunting one. The cast playing the primes give such modulated, careful performances it’s amazing that they can provoke such a reaction. They’re a bit off, a bit uncanny, but so keen to be as real as possible to the people they keep company. Marjorie Prime is complex in its ideas and characterisation but incredibly simple in its direct connection to the heart. In short, it’s something special. SSP
Review in Brief: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
Luc Besson has never been short on ideas, and what a story to carry those ideas, the one that inspired much of the aesthetic of both THE FIFTH ELEMENT and STAR WARS. VALERIAN opens with a hypnotic and feel-good montage of human/alien peace and love set to David Bowie. Sadly, this sequence is all we see of most of these imaginatively designed extraterrestrials, and the stunning production design throughout the film is all-too-often passes by in a blur. Other than a scene-stealing Rhianna, the characters leave a lot to be desired, with Dane DeHaan horribly inconsistent as Valerian and Cara Delevingne valiantly making the best of not a lot as Laureline. If the screenplay was given focus and we were given more time to pause and take everything in, to really absorb this bizarre fireworks display of a universe, Valerian could have been on par with Fifth Element. What we actually have is something that transfixes and frustrates in equal measure. SSP
Review in Brief: Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT somehow feels like an arse-achingly long sit but incredibly rushed at the same time. I don’t blame Michael Bay and his writers room for putting out the silliest Transformers movie yet, but maybe cutting the amount of plot in half and actually explaining what’s left might help? You get King Arthur, secret societies, the transformers meeting their creator, the black ops transformer hunting parties from the second film, the resurrection of Planet Cybertron from the third, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) turning evil for about ten minutes and a surprise revelation about Planet Earth all in one movie. It’s really too much and none of it actually matters. About the only thing they explain, for some reason, is that WWI and WWII were things that happened (er thanks Anthony Hopkins). Whole plot threads, arcs and entire characters are dropped and picked up and dropped again, sometimes to disappear entirely without acknowledgement; the whole thing is a mess. It’s an expensive mess, but a mess all the same. SSP
