Review: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Sam S-P
kiss kiss

There are friends, and there are friends who will help you move a body: Warner Bros/Silver Pictures

Nobody writes stupid as well as Shane Black. Much like his contemporary Aaron Sorkin, he doesn’t write people talking how people actually talk, but within his own distinct worlds his dialogue for bewildered characters crackles almost as much as Sorkin’s dialogue for the brilliant. He’s also really funny and self-aware, a master of salty one-liners and wry commentary on increasingly bizarre events taking place, all served up in a pleasing black comic broth that is his directorial debut, KISS KISS BANG BANG.

Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr) is a swindler living in a town of swindlers, Los Angeles, more specifically Hollywood, LA. When he reconnects with childhood friend Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) at a party, people start dying in strange circumstances and along with PI “Gay” Perry (Val Kilmer), the three of them are drawn into a sprawling mystery straight out of a pulp rag.

With Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Black has fun pointing out the worn-out conventions of the detective genre, but indulges himself in a fair few along the way as well. Usually I’d get annoyed by a filmmaker who makes fun of cliché but still commits the same tropes to screen with an eye-roll, but Black pitches it about right. The plot is convoluted as one might expect from a pulp mystery story and the twists come thick and fast just as you think you’ve figured everything out. The fictional series of Harry Gossomer novels that feed the plot and drive character action as well as giving Black an excuse to reference tried-and-tested formulae (such as foreshadowing that two unrelated plot-lines will inevitably turn out to be connected and realising when the body count isn’t high enough  just before the resolution of the mystery).

Despite heavily referencing other noirish stories and employing well-worn tropes, what is refreshing is that characters also react to the bizarre turns of the plot and the grisly deaths with an appropriate whimper. We see some nasty things as the mystery unfolds, but it never feels sensationalised, just portraying a dark, real world. Nobody is unfeeling in this story and many are changed, and not necessarily for the better. When Harry is forced to take a life, Downey plays it as a soul-destroying catastrophe.

Juxtaposed against the added realism is Black’s trademark postmodern commentary. And Christmas, because of course a Shane Black picture is set in the holidays. In a blatant nod to SUNSET BOULEVARD (that I, to my shame didn’t pick up on first time round), Harry introduces himself to us while staring into a pool. “I’m Harry and I’ll be your narrator this evening” is just a taste of Downey’s anti-hero’s disdain for the events and how they are being relayed (by him and by the filmmakers). We know Downey cracks wise well, but he also brings a compelling flawed humanity to Harry, and along with Michelle Monaghan’s fiery turn as Harmony and Val Kilmer’s career-best as the sardonic Gay Perry, Black has assembled one of the best lead trios around.

Shane Black films are always entertaining, but he may never strike as perfect a balance as he did with this, his directorial debut. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is clever without being smug, self-aware without being glib, playing to the cast’s strengths without just recycling what they’ve done before. If you don’t like Black’s other work, you’re definitely not going to like this, because it is very “him”, but if you’re  a fan of his writing for mismatched buddy movies or this one has passed you by, Kiss Kiss is well worth checking out. SSP

 

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Review: A Ghost Story (2017)

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Sam S-P
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Sheet’s got real (sorry): Sailor Bear/Ideaman Studios

A GHOST STORY is completely and utterly its own thing. Films have explored these themes before, but rarely have we had an extended narrative from a spirit’s perspective that didn’t use that fact as a twist.

M (Rooney Mara) loses her husband C (Casey Affleck). As a ghost, C observes M in her grief as time marches on in his little corner of the world.

A Ghost Story explores and exploits the varied thematic poignancy of a sheet wonderfully. Early on in the couple’s tender love scene it’s a sensual object, as we transition to the morgue it’s a sombre and lifeless thing, as the soul in the shroud starts observing time passing around him it draws your eye and adds a strikingly, endearingly weird element to serious subject matter.

“C” may very well stand for Casper. I don’t think we should ignore how funny it is that for much of the movie, Best Actor-winning Casey Affleck is playing a slightly perplexed ghost standing in the corner of a room. That’s not to say C is a comic character, but the sight of him, if other characters could see him, might not induce an entirely horrified reaction. As is often the case in horror movies (though this isn’t one), children are far more aware of the supernatural, but a particularly moving moment towards the end of the film implies that C might not always be imperceptible by those he observes.

The film has a narrow focus on the most expansive of subject matters. Writer-director David Lowery  explores life, death, our perception of everything from time to love, all within one house, within one intimate aspect ratio and limited field of vision. You know, the big stuff, except small. I saw this in a moderately sized cinema, with the curtains half-closed to accommodate this purposefully narrow point of view, and I was completely enraptured, almost hypnotised, and there was so much to unpack and discuss afterwards.

What a poignant image to have two Ghosts signing at each other from houses opposite each other. C’s opposite number in the spirit world (look up who plays her, it’s bizarre) matter-of-factly stating, “I’m waiting for someone”. Imagine if this is what the afterlife is, that you can carry on, but only observe your loved ones leaving?

Rooney Mara’s pie eating long-take (not a euphemism) is likely to be the scene of the year. It’s such a simple idea, and such an affecting and raw display of pure grief. I’d do something like that if I lost someone essential in my life. Affleck and Mara both earn plaudits for different reasons: Affleck has to convey so much with so little and clearly workshopped his body language extensively; with Mara there is nowhere to hide and our image of her character is so intimate and naked.

The music and wider soundscape is subtly emotive, the repeated signature track for C causes your spine to tingle, your eyes to mist. If it wasn’t for the crowd-pleasing BABY DRIVER track selection and the thematic wall of sound in DUNKIRK (funnily enough these make up my top three films of the year so far), I’d be calling Daniel Hart’s sonically playful creation my soundtrack of the year as well.

My only real criticism is that I feel A Ghost Story could have been longer. Not a lot happens, but you’re so immersed and emotionally invested that it’s gone in a flash, and a bit more time would allow the already strong emotions to really envelop you. If my only negative is that I would like to spend longer in this world, to have more time, I think everyone involved would approve, because that’s what it’s all about: time. This is a thoughtful, fulfilling, nigh-on spiritually enlightening experience at the cinema. SSP

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Review in Brief: Fences (2016)

Posted on August 24, 2017 by Sam S-P

While FENCES loses a few points for taking a shortcut in the portrayal of a disabled character, for the most part it is powerful stuff. A well-mounted stage-to-screen adaptation with the cast of the Broadway revival from a few years back, Denzel Washington and Viola Davis are completely spellbinding. There is very little to remove you from the pain of this unflinching, gritty human story. Characters rarely even wander into a different room between scenes and any cinematic embellishments, from striking cinematography, heightened lighting or even noticeable music, is almost non-existent. Perhaps Fences is more compelling on stage with no distraction at all from the performances, the audience weighing up whether to breathe or not between tense exchanges, but if you’ve missed the latest or you don’t see live theatre all that much then you could still do far worse than giving your time to Washington’s film adaptation. SSP

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Review in Brief: Elle (2016)

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Sam S-P

ELLE is like the darkest soap opera you’ve ever seen. You get all the extra-marital affairs and mummy and daddy issues you might expect from nightly soft drama telly of the like of EAST ENDERS, but it also subjects us to a brutal rape scene multiple times a-la Gaspar Noé and takes us on an odyssey of moral repugnance in the style of Lars Von Trier. It’s a story all about taking ownership of a horrible event through action, of coming to terms with, and getting past being a victim. Paul Verhoeven has never being shy of presenting controversial views of the world, but thankfully he doesn’t fetishise the rape itself, but does present us with a unique (problematic?) perspective of events with perhaps a bit too much unnecessary spectacle. The group of characters we follow are all pretty awful people, but fascinating in their way, entertaining and hilarious to be around and thoroughly believable in their passive-aggressive bickering. Isabelle Huppert juggles so many contradictory and difficult elements in her performance that she is worth watching Elle for alone. SSP

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Review: Get Out (2017)

Posted on August 14, 2017 by Sam S-P
get out

Do you see what I see?: Blumhouse Productions/Monkeypaw Productions

You might have an idea of the general direction GET OUT is heading in, but few will guess how far down this deep and murky thematic rabbit hole writer-director Jordan Peele will take us. This is a horror film for our time, about our time.

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is in a happy relationship with Rose (Allison Williams) and thinks nothing of spending a weekend with her parents on their rural estate. But very quickly it becomes clear that the awkwardness of Rose not telling her parents that her new boyfriend is black is the least of Chris’s worries…

Get Out an effective little suspense/horror movie but it’s also a cutting thesis on being black in America today. As a white viewer with a moral compass, you’re taken from extreme almost CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM-esque awkwardness to complete abject horror and everything in-between, and I would imagine the experience would be even more hard-hitting for black viewers. You’ll be biting your hand to stifle cries of discomfort at Rose’s extended family’s attempts to clumsily woo Chris, and you continue to gnaw through your fist as Chris’s situation becomes a waking nightmare and creeping dread and sinister revelations give way to torture and revenge violence. For every person who commits blatant and violent acts of extreme prejudice you have someone who aims to please, to prove their non-judgemental nature by pandering (unconsciously or not) and thereby proving that they do care about race, because their conversation track is changing to accommodate it. It is in depicting these different faces of ingrained racism that Get Out shows its strongest hand.

Daniel Kaluuya – still mostly unknown in the USA unless you remember him from SICARIO, considerably more recognisable if you watch TV in the UK – is a star in the making. It takes some talent to play the uncomfortable tangle of emotions Chris is struggling with and to still play it low-key. Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford do creepy well and Allison Williams, well, just watch the film.

It’s telling that a TSA agent (Lil Rel Howery) is presented as a hero in this story over the police, such is the toxic public perception of law enforcers and race relations. Because after all he’s been through, why on Earth would Chris call the cops for help? When this Rod does appeal to his uniformed fellows’ sense of duty to help him search for Chris, he is laughed out of the office. Our stomachs drop at the sight and sound of a siren towards the end of the film, a noise that should inspire hope but has become a dread sign for so many.

Many will be more on board with the slow build-up of the film, the sinister-but-you’re-not-sure-why underbelly of a certain portion of society. Others will be put off by the ending, where things get weirder and far more extreme in terms of imagery and ideas. I liked pretty much all of it, especially the weirder stuff. The story gets a bit scrappy (but still bold) in the final stretch, and some of the characters are too broad and cartoony for the tone of the wider piece, but these are pretty much my only criticisms.

While I don’t think you can tar everybody with the same brush, it seems increasingly clear that racism in all forms is a deeply-rooted problem in American society, even if has become almost Freudian in some circles. If some viewers struggle to process, understand or (bafflingly) fail to sympathise with news coverage of American race-driven police brutality and racism of all stripes, it could be down to film and television to tell this story in a way that connects through entertainment. Just as the last couple of years has year has given us projects as far-ranging as STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON and ZOOTOPIA to discuss these hot-button issues, Get Out will likely end up as one of the most significant films of 2017 and the decade. Peele has produced a biting, brutal thriller-chiller that couldn’t feel more chillingly relevant. SSP

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Review in Brief: Sing (2016)

Posted on August 9, 2017 by Sam S-P

SING is a pleasant surprise. It may be a clichéd underdog/competition story retold with singing animals, but it’s got a lot of pep and ends up being the most soulful and best-realised animations Illumination have produced so far. The characters are appealing archetypes:  the overworked stay-at-home pig mum (Reese Witherspoon) liberated only by her her passion for singing, the prickly (get it? Because she’s a porcupine) rock chick (Scarlett Johansson) stuck as a supporting player despite prodigious talent and the sensitive and talented gorilla son of a gangster (Taron Egerton) who never wanted to be a hard man. As a jukebox musical, the song selection is crowd-pleasing and the singing is great, with Egerton wowing in particular belting out Elton John. There’s a bit too much forced jeopardy in the final stretch, and you’re not going to win any prizes for guessing every single story beat, but more like this and fewer minions from Illumination would be welcome, as would lots more from director Garth Jennings. SSP

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Review: Boy (2010)

Posted on August 6, 2017 by Sam S-P
boy

Family at war: Whenua Films/Unison Films

Handled delicately, grief makes for a great film. Boiling Taika Waititi’s films down to their core themes, if EAGLE VS. SHARK was about battling depression and HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE was about finding a place to truly belong, then BOY is certainly about coping with grief.

Boy (James Rolleston) seems perfectly happy with his rural life making his own entertainment, keeping an eye on his younger brother and idolising Michael Jackson. That all changes on the day when his tearaway dad Alamein (Taika Waititi) turns up on his doorstep asking to be part of his life again. But are Alamein’s intentions pure? Judging by his reputation it seems unlikely.

Boy seems to be Taika Waititi’s most personal film to date. You have to think he drew from his own life experience, a Maori cultural perspective of growing up in a small town in New Zealand in the 1980s. What a stoke of luck to have found James Rollerston to play such a winning lead after he only fell into the role early in production. As Boy, he radiates likeability as speaks direct to camera on his unique world view and uniquely New Zealand turn of phrase. He also radiates raw pain in a manner of an actor beyond his years as Boy’s world slowly crumbles around him. Waititi casting himself as Boy’s mostly absent dad might be considered narcissistic if the writer-director wasn’t prepared to play Alamein as such a disappointment. You completely buy that this old punk would appear to be the coolest guy around to his impressionable young sons, but when you get past the posturing, the bargain basement wisdom and the natural charisma, there really isn’t a whole lot to him but his selfish drive and using his family as a means to an end.

Waititi is never afraid to acknowledge that a lot of our time on Earth is a pretty miserable experience. All we can really do is treasure the few bright spots and hope for the best. Boy’s hero worship of his absent dad is a coping mechanism, along with his obsession with Michael Jackson and playing war on the beach. While much of his life is fun and games, endless daydreaming and long summers, he also has to act as a very real guardian to his younger brother. Boy is both younger and more grown up than his years.

The final flourish of the film shouldn’t really be ruined, but I’m too excited about it not to. Just skip ahead a paragraph if you want to go into this quirky curiosity completely cold. So, basically, after all the plot threads are resolved and the character arcs reach their natural conclusion, the whole cast break into doing the “Thriller” dance crossed with a Hakka. It almost goes without saying that this is an out-of-leftfield stroke of genius, but the film is playful with its presentation throughout with film spoofs and animation all springing from Boy’s mind over-compensating for his continual disappointment.

Taika Waititi is easily up there with my favourite directors of all time. His work is playful and extremely funny but not in the least bit maudlin. With Boy, Waititi wears his heart on his sleeve and highlights a seldom explored cultural perspective to make his most mature and profound film to date. With his imagination and his mastery of balancing a variety of tones, I can’t wait to see what he does with THOR: RAGNAROK later this year. SSP

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Review in Brief: Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Sam S-P

KONG: SKULL ISLAND is what it is, and what it is is a big, dumb monster brawl. The just-post-Vietnam War setting is just window dressing to the standard, laboured story setup. While the creatures are impressively realised, clearly nobody has given this ecosystem beyond cursory thought: some beasties are big, others aren’t, trees and mountains don’t seem any more verdant or towering to support the ecosystem. But switch your brain to low power mode and when things get going it’s a lot more fun, with gruesome demises of flunkies (plenty available as the helicopters they arrive on seem to breed between scenes) and brutal ape-on-lizard-thing combat. You’d be fully justified to ask for characters with more than one defining trait apiece and a more memorable script, the best line being from a soldier worrying about riding in a makeshift boat: “This thing looks like it’s made out of pure tetanus”. At least this occasionally cracks a smile, unlike GODZILLA. SSP

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Review: Dunkirk (2017)

Posted on August 2, 2017 by Sam S-P

dunkirk

“We shall never surrender…”: Warner Bros/Syncopy

Some directors just need to get a film out of their systems. For Steven Spielberg it was SCHINDLER’S LIST, for Christopher Nolan it is surely DUNKIRK.

The French coastline, May 1940. With the Allied army surrounded and with the sea blocking their escape, a massive civilian effort gets underway to evacuate as many servicemen as possible as the fight continues on the beaches, on the seas and in the air above. The experiences of a soldier (Fionn Whitehead), a civilian sailor (Mark Rylance) and a pilot (Tom Hardy) are just three stories among thousands trying to flee, liberate, or survive Dunkirk.

In a masterstroke, Nolan uses three time different dilations to tell three interconnected stories. One week on the beach, one day on the sea, one hour in the air. I watched this with a couple of people who found this jarring until the moment when the timelines crossed, but I thought it worked extremely well. To represent the different experiences of Dunkirk and involvement in various stages of, or the entire battle required something special in the edit.

Hans Zimmer and the sound department do sterling work on the soundtrack to ratchet up the tension with a staggeringly complex soundscape. The storytelling is elemental, built around earth, air and water, but Zimmer also works in a key sound effect into his score for each environment; a ticking watch/sea mine for the beach, an industrial engine chug for the sea and the telltale whir of an engine for the sky. These sounds weave in and out, pitch up and down with the story, even crossing over and merging at the point the characters’ paths cross.

You’re thrown headfirst into the chaos, with soldiers dying messily and without ceremony, explosions throwing up great clumps of sand and waves lapping over your field of vision. The aerial sequences are eye-popping and tactile (you get that when you use real planes) and for someone who isn’t great at flying, made my stomach plunge. As an experience, Dunkirk is going to be hard to top, especially if you’ve seen it in IMAX with the image and wall of sound all-encompassing. You feel like you’ve been through an ordeal, that you can still taste the salt water and feel the sand caught in your nails and teeth. Much like DEEPWATER HORIZON (a lesser film, but similar in tension) it benefits from a tight runtime, remaining gripping rather than becoming an uncomfortable slog.

There are images in Dunkirk that won’t leave me for a while. Columns of soldiers seemingly queuing in an orderly fashion on an endless beech awaiting rescue. The gruesome but strangely beautiful sight of a line of corpses becoming shrouded by sea foam. The simple and unglamorous humanity of a soldier trying to find a moment in and amongst running for his life to relieve himself.

Admittedly a few moments in the final, somewhat forced few minutes made me want to do my best Graham Chapman impression and say, “Now stop that, it’s just getting silly”. It just seems a bit off in tone and style to the rest of this grounded, matter-of-fact film. Maybe Nolan got caught up in the moment and thought the film was missing some emotional beats from the finale.

In Churchill’s eyes, Dunkirk was a military disaster, and true enough it was a defeat for the allies. But in human terms, it was one of the finest hours for the British people, and that is what Nolan’s film commemorates. This is not a story of historically significant Great Men, but ordinary people, both brave civilians bringing our boys home and worn down servicemen, many of whom would have been branded cowards by their superiors despite the relentless enemy onslaught they faced, somehow managed to get through this. Dunkirk is an impeccably-crafted tribute to these men, to this moment and between restrained, raw performances from the ensemble and a tight focus on small stories within the main event ends up being Nolan’s most captivating and emotionally resonating film to date. SSP

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Review in Brief: Prevenge (2016/17)

Posted on August 1, 2017 by Sam S-P

We’ve had plenty of schizophrenic serial killer movies, but PREVENGE must be the first where the voice telling the perpetrator to kill is her unborn child. Our antihero is utterly miserable in her pregnancy, so turns to killing and maiming, but only those who have wronged her…and witnesses. Writer-director-star Alice Lowe doesn’t shy away from the fact that it’s not just pig-headed ignorant men who ostracise mothers-to-be; women can be far crueler (the parting advice from an job interview is “Sort out your own business before you interfere with everyone else’s”). It won’t be to everyone’s taste, especially if you tend to struggle with unflinching depictions of the darker aspects of humanity (though I don’t know whether we’re really meant to be on Ruth’s side). Lowe/Ruth is right, nature is “a bit of a c*nt”, but drastic changes in our bodies clearly can inspire immense creativity in artists. Immense, twisted creativity. SSP

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