It might be about as subtle as an airstrike, but drone warfare thriller EYE IN THE SKY fields an interesting debate. Just how far can you push “For the greater good”? In the moment, if you could save more lives, how many would you be willing to sacrifice? Under immense pressure, would you make the wrong decision? The stunt-casting of Helen Mirren (who is very good) and to a lesser extent the late Alan Rickman (who is sadly only OK), is distracting and the film perhaps relies a little too much on stereotypes for story purposes. But Gavin Hood’s film (easily his best since his South African breakthrough TSOTSI) is having a difficult conversation and never pushing the argument outside a morally grey area. The thought that some of the most significant actions in warfare can be run out of a shed on the other side of the world is a chilling one indeed, and presented in this manner it is nerve-shredding, captivating stuff. SSP
Review in Brief: Eye in the Sky (2016)
Review: The Host (2006)
I only came to feed the ducks: Showbox Entertainment/Chungeorahm Film
To shamelessly appropriate and warp the catchphrase of a beloved cartoon character, THE HOST is smarter than the average monster movie. I stumbled on this one on DVD years back, and it’s since become a firm favourite along with the rest of genre auteur Bong Joon-ho’s oeuvre. My affection for the film is not for the monster, as good as it is, but because of the very odd but very real family’s quest for healing and their need to stay together.
When a monster emerges from the Han river and takes their youngest member, the Park family must stop squabbling long enough to find it and bring their dysfunctional unit together again. But the Korean government and some shady American scientists are up to something and lock down Seoul to prevent unwanted snooping…
As is common with monster movies from GODZILLA onwards, the creature itself (in this case a newt-dolphin-garbage crusher thing) is not the biggest threat to our heroes, rather it stands in for a greater evil of society: this time it’s the corruption of the Korean state-run institutions and the morally questionable invasive interference by the USA in Korean affairs.
Writer/director Bong not only made The Host a smart and entertaining thriller, but a tender family drama and a rip-roaring comedy. The hilariously dysfunctional Park family are all great characters, and you can really empathise with their plight as they frantically search for their youngest, Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-sung) who has been taken by the monster. Song Kang-ho makes a compelling central protagonist, and makes the perpetually napping failure Gang-doo a comical but tragic reluctant hero, and he is reunited with fellow regular Bong Joon-ho collaborators Byeon Hee-bong, Park Hae-il and Bae Doona playing the rest of the constantly bickering Park family. Their squabbles and ever-increasing desperation in failing to find Hyun-seo, though undeniably poignant, also provide plenty of opportunity for humour.
Bong is a true master of black comedy, extremely skilled at getting a laugh out of the most unexpected situation. Take the scene where the Parks gather around the shrine for the dead and missing post-monster attack. In most films, this scene would be a solemn one, but here Bong uses the family’s extreme reaction to their plight, the unanimous blame of Gang-doo for the accidental loss of his daughter, and the insults the family can’t resist trading with each other for their various shortcomings (“Look Hyun-seo, your aunt brought you a bronze medal!”) to provide the funniest moment of the film. It’s a perfect balance of tone, of the dark and the light, of tragedy and comedy as the Park family clumsily grapple with each other in their hysteria and collapse, wailing on the floor in a wailing heap.
The more restrained, emotionally raw moments in the film are nuanced and affecting, particularly the lip-wobbling moment when the family patriarch Hee-bong finally opens up to his children and confesses how much he truly cares for his eldest son Gang-doo while said son is apparently fast asleep. The action works well on its own terms too with the CGI holding up remarkably well considering the film’s modest budget, and every set piece driven first and foremost by where the characters find themselves in their respective arcs.
Bong Joon-ho continually pushes boundaries and challenges genre filmmaking conventions, but never loses sight of what really matters – character, above all else. You’d have to be a complete moron to dismiss The Host as just another dumb creature feature. It’s sharp and layered, grounded and very much about this world and real human experiences despite its sci-fi trappings. I’m so grateful for this film introducing me to Bong’s filmography. I wrote my university dissertation on the way he views Korean society through his work, and he has become one of my favourite filmmakers since. SSP
Review: Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Major bummer: Dreamworks/Arad Productions
Out of the two unnecessary live-action remakes released this month, I’ll take the one with some evident passion behind it. Mamoru Oshii’s anime GHOST IN THE SHELL worked because it allowed you time to think. For every iconic image, brutally stylish act of violence or grim neon cityscape, it gave the plot room to breathe and the themes time to sink in, with every scene saying something important. Evidently, something was lost in translation.
The Major (Scarlett Johansson), an almost entirely cybernetic member of elite police force Section 9, hunts a hacker intent on bringing down corporations and governments. As she follows her target’s trail of destruction, she delves into her own mysterious past and unearths some shocking truths…
In comparison with Oshii’s animated world which was full of telling details, striking world-building with its own weight and presence, Rupert Sanders’ version of this story is a haze of second-hand images, all contained within an ugly and cheap-looking fake city. The shots of the Major surveying the metropolis from on high look like she’s been pasted into badly reproduced stills from the anime, and the action has no rhythm or artistry, rushing by in a blur of bullets (hitting notably more androids than people, because this had to be suitable for the pre-teens who would never bother to see it) and the 3D, with too much movement within the frame and rapid-fire editing in the action, which made my eyes sore. The only memorable images here are those lifted wholesale from the anime – the reservoir brawl, the Major scuba-diving and contemplating her reflection as she rises to the surface, the rubble-strewn spider-tank battle – and these all had far more impact hand-drawn.
The sound is pretty disappointing too. Compare the spiritual atmosphere of the original’s drums, cymbals and choir singing in ancient Japanese with the generic electro sonic durge here. Like a lot of the film, there’s just no personality to it. This film even has the cheek to accompany its end titles with the main theme from Kenji Kawai’s original score, bringing just how short the new soundtrack falls into sharp relief.
It doesn’t matter how many times the filmmakers watched the original Ghost in the Shell or its sequel; nobody involved in this project, from director Sanders to the three credited writers and Johansson, got the source material. The anime was about losing your humanity through steady replacing of body parts and upgrading of our physical forms, making us more resilient and more vulnerable in equal measure as a species. This remake is about shady corporate types putting a human brain in a robot to make her…better…at…roboting?
I wasn’t overly offended by the controversial casting at first (it was a big missed opportunity, but sadly nobody was going to finance this if it wasn’t in English and with a Hollywood name attached) but then I saw how they incorporated this decision within the film’s plot. Without spoiling the film’s (admittedly terrible) twist, they actually try and ligitimise whitewashing through literalisation. Elsewhere the cast are unable to make an impact in any way unless they’re Takeshi Kitano, and he’s only good because he’s playing the same character he’s played for the last 25 years. Also, is it just me or does it look suspiciously like Kitano was inserted into his scenes afterwards? He rarely interacts directly with the others (certainly not in the same shot) and his role mostly amounts to delivering orders in Japanese over “mind-com” and characters in different locations reacting to them. If he was on set with everyone else, he clearly wasn’t having much fun, and if he was in a room by himself, then no wonder he looks so disinterested.
The film isn’t devoid of ideas, with prostitutes on street corners displaying holographic signs of their profession hovering over their heads like a sordid video game side quest, and dealers offering you black market cybernetic upgrades down shady alleyways, but even these can be hard to pick out in this jumble. The remake of Ghost in the Shell is a mess that shouldn’t even be allowed to share the title, and the first complete disaster at the multiplex in 2017. SSP
Review in Brief: I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017)
I think the best thing I can say about Macon Blair’s debut as writer-director is that it’s a curiosity. For years he’s been a game regular as an actor in grisly genre fare (collaborations with Jeremy Saulnier stand out) and now he helms a story about a serious overreaction to a burglary. Melanie Lynskey (still amazing two decades after HEAVENLY CREATURES) is our grounded but increasingly disturbed protagonist and Elijah Wood gives good weirdo. While I’ve got no problem with the premise or the central performances the tone of the thing that’s the problem, with the supposedly sinister villains coming across as cartoony and a refreshingly shambolic shootout scene at the end quickly giving way to an unnecessary chase and a muddy (or swampy if we’re being literal) conclusion. As a show of Blair’s artistic potential, I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE is admirable and pretty unique, but as a fully satisfying finished film, I’m not so sure.
Review: Legion: Season 1 (2017)
You’re a mutant, David: 20th Century Fox Television/26 Keys Productions
LEGION is bonkers and brilliant. If you were ever disappointed that Chris Claremont’s more out-there comic book stories weren’t adapted into the movies, look no further than this TV show to correct that. Although they still don’t go to space, sadly.
Following a strange accident, paranoid schizophrenic David Haller (Dan Stevens) is rescued from a mental hospital by a team of human mutants on the run from the government. David is diagnosed as a powerful psychic and is trained by his new friends to control his powers come to terms with his past. But there is something else sharing David’s mind, and too much poking around in his memories unleashes it…
“What if your problems aren’t just in your head? What if they’re not even problems?” The X-Men comics and movies have always been used to comment on prejudice. Civil Rights in the 60s comics, religious fundamentalism in the 80s and homophobia in Bryan Singer’s movies. Legion is a damning indictment of how we treat the mentally ill, particularly in institutionalised settings.
It’s a beautiful looking show with pristine surfaces reflecting tormented characters back at themselves and meticulous shot construction (notably in the pilot as an accomplished extended tracking shot follows various shady characters going about their business on multiple levels of an abandoned swimming pool). Telekinesis manifests as a far more interesting visual than in any of the X-Men movies as a swirling vortex of food and kitchenware surrounds David as a representation of his uncontrollable power, and later another character calmly conducts his powers as he would an orchestra to shield his allies from attack.
It’s a wonderfully weird show as well, featuring Lynchian hallucination scenes, disappearing doors, dance numbers and body-swapping (that’s all just in the first episode, though the dancing comes back on multiple occasions and it’s wonderful). As is natural for a show about fractured psyches, keeping track of what is really happening is a constantly shifting puzzle box. Following FARGO Season 2, unreliable narration seems to be a specialty of show runner Noah Hawley.
Chapter 6 has the characters trapped in a psychic spider’s web, reliving a world that’s “the same but different” to give the villain a proper set up. The next chapter covers the escape from that nightmare by navigating the labyrinth of David’s dangerously troubled mind. Our heroes conquer hallucinations (cue neat monochrome to represent reality), step in and out of and around time streams and David communes with his inexplicably British-accented rational mind to solve the mystery of his being (with the help of wonderful animated chalk drawings).
This is one of the most compelling ensembles in years, featuring an assembly of character actors and Hawley’s FARGO alums. The performances, the ways the cast play their powers and their torment works wonders. “Everyone keeps saying I’m sane, what if they’re wrong?” The way Stevens plays David, the answer seems increasingly likely somewhere in-between. He’s unstable, he intentionally distorts his own memories as he tries to shake off a malicious psychic parasite (portrayed by an actor who I won’t spoil). Having one character be a “dream artist” and another who takes on the powers and appearance of anyone she makes skin contact with, some trippy storytelling possibilities open up (see above).
Legion isn’t just a glossy superhero fever-dream, it’s a story that challenges how society views mental illness. Once we truly accept every facet of what makes us us, we can move forward with our lives. It’s not avoiding difficulty of living with mental health problems, or claiming that more serious cases aren’t a danger to themselves and others, but advocating that only acceptance of self and others can we be whole as a species. That is, those affected are able to find happiness with the help, support and understanding of loved ones, and once we defeat our demons (literal or otherwise). What a fine message for an out-there TV psycho-thriller. SSP
Review in Brief: Blood Father (2016)
BLOOD FATHER opens with a teenager (Erin Moriarty) being refused sale of cigarettes but able to buy ammunition, because America. There is genuine pain to Mel Gibson’s latest comeback performance and frustration at a broken justice system in addition to the expected, and tired, dad-empowerment fantasy. The film has a nice gritty-beautiful aesthetic, visceral and bloody brawls and a few reasonable gags, like John on the phone to his only friend (William H Macey, still rocking his SHAMELESS haircut) for advise on parenting, only for the camera to pull back and reveal their grubby trailers are only about 1000 yards apart. Attempts at injecting philosophical musings into the economic screenplay are laughable, as is midlife Mel missing a lot less than an apparently deadly Sicario, but brutal reality still occasionally intrudes, making this a cut above most TAKEN-alikes, even if it’s not exactly memorable on its own terms. SSP
Review: Power Rangers (2017)
Colour-coded team assemble!: Lionsgate/Saban Entertainment
Let’s be clear from the outset: I have nothing invested in POWER RANGERS at all. I never watched the show, I never had the toys, I know nothing about this property beyond the fact that they re-edited a janky Japanese show with English-speaking actors. Now comes the latest big(ish) budget reboot for the next generation, though I only saw 90s kids at my screening.
An ancient intergalactic conflict reignites and the latest generation of Power Rangers are chosen to defend their home from all incoming threats. Can a group of five teenagers unite and learn to wield the powers bestowed upon them?
As admirable as trying to further diversify the team is, having the Rangers sit around a campfire and literally explain the way their characters have been written was a bit on-the-nose for me. The actors all do reasonable enough work (the young actors – I don’t really know what Elizabeth Banks was shooting for as the villain), with Jason (Dacre Montgomery) and Billy’s (RJ Cyler) motivations firmly established in an early scene where the former open-handed slaps a bully in defense of the latter. Unfortunately the others who appear just in time for the accident that gives them their powers (Ludi Lin’s Zack and Becky G’s Trini in particular) are hurriedly and inconsistently defined. Why is Trini considered a weirdo, because she wears a beanie and doesn’t talk a lot? Just once, can’t we have a teen with a sad family backstory express themselves in another way than just being a tool? Characters contradict themselves too, with Zack putting on a hard-man act but more than happy to open up because it’s the aforementioned “share with the group” scene, and when it’s revealed that Kimberly’s (Naomi Scott) guilty secret is the distribution of a friend’s explicit pictures, she feels so guilty that she immediately shows Jason the incriminating evidence.
Anyone who was fooled by the moment where a key character apparently dies for about 10 minutes needs to watch more movies. The way this sequence is played, with the score and cast changing drastically to sombre and serious is frankly laughable. Half of the time the film’s style overshadows the material. I’ll give director Dean Israelite his dues for pushing for a distinctive visual style (Matthew J Loyd of COP CAR makes the opening fleeing from the police far more interesting than it should be by smoothly rotating the camera as the action progresses) but the script (credited to 5 writers) just doesn’t live up to it.
The action is fluid and glossy, but confined to the final 20 minutes. The Rangers grapple with rock monsters on the ground and Goldar, a walking mountain of liquid bling, from their dinosaur-shaped mech suits, Zords. I feel like the Zords should be cooler: as they are (much like a few other elements of the film) they’re fine, but they don’t inspire a “OMG that’s cool” reaction. Perhaps we needed more time to take in the designs or they needed more character within the action. It’s easier to make out what is going on in the set-pieces than in say, TRANSFORMERS (which gets a name-check), but it’s a conventional action finale that won’t stay with you other than breaking the record for the number of times characters mention Krispy Kreme.
I can’t feel strongly either way about Power Rangers. It’s competent, it’s admirable in the manner it tries to revive the franchise for a modern audience and there are some pleasing stylistic touches. But the character work, despite the actors’ best efforts, is mishandled, it’s tonally more than a little weird and the action should have been better spread across the film. The Power Rangers fan friend I saw this with reckoned this was a decent version of the mythology, but I find myself thinking it would take something truly special to bring me back to this world. SSP
Review in Brief: Sing Street (2016)
John Carney is clearly fascinated by the process of making music. ONCE explored the breakthrough album, BEGIN AGAIN the production and business side of the industry. SING STREET captures music making at its most pure – getting a group of friends together, trying things out and having fun. The musical sequences manage to avoid too many comparisons to THE COMMITMENTS by colourfully working their way through the 1980s in pop music with nailed-on pastiches of the decade’s trends. One of my favourite moments is one of the most simple – two brothers sitting on the stairs contemplating their deeply unhappy mother as she sits on the front doorstep with her back to them. Carney has gathered a really talented musical ensemble, particularly the astounding multi-instrumentalist Mark McKenna (who gets to show off hilariously in a montage where he proceeds to play a succession of increasingly obscure instruments). You’ll be uplifted and humming to yourself for a long time afterwards, I promise. SSP
Review: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Dressed for the occasion, but who wears it better?: Walt Disney Pictures
Even for Disney, it’s an audacious move to out-musical your own musical. THE JUNGLE BOOK upped the spectacle and downplayed the songs, CINDERELLA was out to make sense of its protagonist in her time and place and again skipped the singing. Their latest glossy remake BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is the animated film and more, with faithful reproductions of iconic images and songs, orchestration and choreography all amped-up and given real broadway oomph.
A vain and greedy prince (Dan Stevens) is cursed to live as a beast until he can inspire true love through his actions rather than his appearance. When ahead-of-her-time dreamer Belle (Emma Watson) comes across the Beast’s cursed castle while searching for her missing father, two of society’s outcasts find an unexpected connection.
As unnecessary as this remake in theory is (the animation being one of those near-perfect examples of the form), director Bill Condon and every artist and craftsman involved do this re-telling justice. Alan Menkin returns along with Tim Rice to embellish the already beautiful songs (I loved the liberal sprinkling of notes on the harpsichord throughout and the unexpectedly dark additional line about war widows in “Gaston”). Rest assured, the new rendition of “Be Our Guest” is truly glorious, one of the most impressive musical numbers I’ve seen and understandably the most expensive in history since Emma Watson is the only “real” element in the hugely complex sequence. Watson, Stevens and Ewan McGregor as candelabra maître d’ Lumière all show off their formidable vocal range and Luke Evans may well have been born for his role belting out songs as the ultimate goofy narcissistic baddie Gaston.
They had to get the central pairing spot-on, and though Watson is charming and Stevens able to convey a lot of pain and disguised vulnerability through his sexy-Beast CG makeup, I wasn’t as instantly compelled by their relationship as I was in the animated version. Maybe it was because the animated Beast was more bestial in his appearance and physicality, his contrast with and love for Belle more marked, whereas Stevens’ Beast is a very tall and attractive man with big blue eyes, velvety fur and hipster beard (Belle even cheekily asks him if he’d consider growing it back when he returns to human form at the end). But then Beast shows, and gifts, Belle his library and with it his heart,and they had me. The couple connect through a love of literature, feeling outcast and pain in their past (more explicit in this version) and present. Anyone who doesn’t feel their heart flutter slightly as the unlikely couple begin their tentative and tender waltz clearly left their heart outside.
The production design, from lovingly crafted costumes to meticulously detailed and decorated sets and CG character designs, is decadent. The opening sequence featuring Beast’s initial transformation at a extravagant ball (Stevens looking and acting like a silent movie LeStadt) grounds the world in time and place and gives the designers cues to draw upon throughout as we rely increasingly more on CG to populate this story. The rich colours, glittering gilt and marble and expansive spaces with iridescent light were almost too much to take in in IMAX, especially as Belle and Beast whirled around the ballroom.
I will say the film’s early steps are slightly faltering, introductions unnecessarily stretched out and I’d have liked some references to Cocteau’s LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE beyond “handy” wall lighting, especially considering Condon’s choice of French end credits. Though the film is currently the longest of Disney’s remakes, I think it could have also stood to be longer still to expand on some of the briefer musical sequences. Disney may have out-musicaled their own musical, but if money wasn’t an object (and bring Disney, it probably wasn’t) then this could have been pushed even further.
Beauty and the Beast does not disappoint, in fact it dazzles. Condon emphasises theatricality in all things and brings out the story’s innate melodrama through an accomplished ensemble singing their hearts out in stunning surroundings. Only great passion could have justified this remake, and that is what comes across above all else: love for these characters, this music and this world. SSP
Review in Brief: Eddie the Eagle (2016)
EDDIE THE EAGLE does exactly what it needs to do. It’s undemanding and feelgood, and wisely doesn’t claim Eddie Edwards (Taron Egerton) changed sport in any lasting way (he didn’t). Eddie himself even admits that he is only allowed to compete because Olympic officials couldn’t be bothered to change the rules for qualification for half a century.The ski-jumping scenes are visceral and exciting, making great use of Gopro-style cameras to capture the fear and adrenaline of the athletes. Matthew Margeson’s Vangelis-riffing soundtrack in reassuringly 80s. The sporting movie clichés are out in force, with early success halted by a grievous career-threatening injury, the team have their fallouts and there’s at least three training montages. Olympic sport has become institutionalised, officially sanctioned and without colourful madmen, and that’s a real shame, but telling the stories of these quirky and unique talents still has appeal, especially when it’s presented in such a likeable fashion. SSP
SSP Thinks Film 