I like Oasis as a band, I don’t love them. Both Gallaghers are magnetic, but incredibly abrasive personalities. SUPERSONIC is Oasis in their own words, so you do get the arguments and the clashes, but no major revelations. “Liam’s got a better walk than me” says Noel mockingly when asked about his brother’s positive points. I really liked the scene reconstructions taking audio recordings and applying them to cleverly edited archive footage (credit to SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL director Mat Whitecross for entertainingly twisting reality) but elsewhere it feels very style over substance. I think Noel probably over-estimates the band’s impact on the music world at large, but if the band are directly involved, you’re not exactly going to contradict him are you? Yes, Noel is talented (as far as I’m concerned, he is Oasis) but the band’s charisma and catchy riffs can only take them so far. Definitely one for the fans. SSP
Review in Brief: Supersonic (2016)
Review: Eagle vs Shark (2007)
Who says games are destroying our social skills?: New Zealand Film Commission/Unison Films
You can always spot a Taika Waititi project, and EAGLE VS SHARK is unmistakably that. He’s got a unique comic voice and an appealing sideways view of the more painful and complex aspects of our world. Just look at how he juxtaposes a mortifying death with an awkwardly hilarious funeral scene straight after in HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE, or how characters grapple for meaning and understanding in this, his feature debut. He also likes silly songs, which is very endearing in a filmmaker.
Lily (Loren Taylor) is lonely and unfulfilled, until she gets to know fellow misfit Jarrod (Jemaine Clement) at a costume party. An odd romance blossoms and Lily travels with Jarrod back home so he can confront his arch-enemy.
“Life is full of hard bits, but between all the hard bits are some lovely bits” as mused by Lily may be one of the most simply profound meditations on our short time on Earth I’ve ever heard. Taylor co-wrote the story with Waititi and this quote is typical of the low-key wit of the script at large (another highlight is Jarrod’s botched attempt at a threatening phone call, “Tell him justice is waiting for him” / “OK Justin, I’ll tell him”.
If NAPOLEON DYNAMITE explored crippling battles with depression and played violent video games instead of drawing ligers, it would probably turn out something like this. A hugely dysfunctional family, colourful locals and a protective, small-town mentality towards unusual behaviour (especially if said unusual behaviour happens to belong to a member of your family).
I like that the film doesn’t make excuses for Jarrod’s behaviour. He comes across as a tool, just as he should. He’s a tool with depression, and we should feel sympathy for him, but we should also feel for the misery he puts his family and Lily through. Anyone who’s been through similar experiences with a family member or friend will likely find their heartstrings plucked most painfully by seeing how Jarrod’s dad (Brian Sergent) closes himself off to his family and the world at large following an immense loss, but equally you’ll feel for Jarrod unable to confront his issues healthily or prove himself in his father’s eyes.
There’s an absolute killer of a scene towards the end that sums up what has gone wrong with Jarrod’s fractured family, when Lily asks Jarrod’s dad to answer what should be a very easy question about his son. Animals are key to the story, and at the same time not relevant at all. Our cute-peculiar pair get to know each other at an “animal party” and identify with and feel a connection to creatures they feel a bond with, and misidentifying with an animal, or having someone else misjudge your character causes much pain and upset. Stop-motion animation is also used sparingly, but to moving effect in realising a symbolic companion piece. Who’d have thought mouldy apples could be affecting?
Eagle vs Shark is a pleasantly surprising and sometimes profound dramedy packed with Waititi’s trademark quirks. It’s a small story without spectacle, but also an intimate one which refuses to simplify mental illness and its impact on friends and family. This could have been a downer, but Waititi and Taylor have a light touch and help to make this a quirky highlight of last decade. SSP
Review in Brief: Justice League Dark (2017)
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK is appropriately dark and pleasingly weird, with incantations, jumping between plains of reality and a giant poo monster charging round a hospital. Yes, you read that last one right. It’s not every day you see Batman (Jason O’Mara) forced to take a back seat and leave saving the day to those with the right skill set, but that’s the intriguing premise here. It’s nice to have a group of comic book characters the vast majority won’t be that familiar with (Constantine, Zatana and Swamp Thing among others) and coming to learn what they’re about on the job, as it were. After some sleuthing and an entertaining spellcasting duel, the film unfortunately ends in the standard superhero battle in a city (not far enough removed from the second half of SUICIDE SQUAD for me) but there’s more than enough oddness and neat visuals to recommend. SSP
Netflix Original Triple Bill: Ghosts, More Ghosts & Greetings Cards
Another day and still a load of original content produced for streaming on Netflix. As ever it’s a varied(ish) bunch and I’d sooner recommend some efforts than others.
Haunted house calling: Netflix
I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE (2016) Yes, it’s another haunted house story where a rich invalid still lives inexplicably alone in a ridiculously creepy house. It’s Gothic central. It’s not at all original plot-wise, but the same can’t be said for the way this story is told or for its unique aesthetic.
Director Oz Perkins and DP Julie Kirkwood do some really interesting things with lighting and focus to build the creepy atmosphere. At times your eyes are made to strain, the camera refocuses as your own vision does…then you see something. Or you think you did. The story is a real slow-burner, but the payoff is unnerving and Ruth Wilson’s performance keeps the whole thing together.
The narration might be a bit overwrought, the framing devices (probably intentionally) confusing, and what did and didn’t really happen is left very ambiguous, which might not be to every viewer’s taste (I don’t really mind). The film starts off trying to say something profound about ghosts, pretty much the same that was said with THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE, and though it never quite reaches that height, it marks out Perkins as a talent with a distinctive style to watch for in future.
Pitching to the phantoms: Netflix
SPECTRAL (2016) This is the kind of film that has soldiers shooting at a ghost, and when that doesn’t work and their bullets pass straight through their target, they switch to heavier ammunition. Of course, when they work out the ghosts are allergic to iron, they conveniently end up in an iron foundry for a HOME ALONE tooling-up montage.
It so wants to be a supernatural version of ALIENS, even down to including a Newt-alike, but the characters just aren’t there. There’s no memorable dialogue or any meaningful moments among the grey action. Also, the poster made it look like James Badge Dale had a laser sword, which he doesn’t (it’s actually a camera that sees in a different spectrum) so I felt a bit cheated.
As shonky as SPECTRAL is for the most part, I’ve got to give Dale props for throwing in “If I reverse the polarity” in his tech babble speech and managing to keep a straight face. In fact, he’s such a consistently reliable actor he almost sells the whole silly concept. This might have made a cool video game, or even a passably entertaining TV series with more time for characters and world-building, but it doesn’t make a one-off movie that’s anything more than drab and unaffecting.
The only face for card shopping: Netflix
GIRLFRIEND’S DAY (2017) Here’s an idea for BETTER CALL SAUL fans: let’s whet their appetite for Season 3 with something nowhere near as good that still stars Bob Odenkirk. Let’s give them something that thinks it’s THE BIG LEBOWSKI but is probably closer to the Coens’ LADYKILLERS remake. This has nothing to do with the Coens, but it’s clearly what they were shooting for with deadpan black comedy and every supporting character being needlessly quirky.
Sadly, Odenkirk doesn’t get to play Saul Goodman again. Ray Wentworth is Saul after a purge of life and soul. He still drives a rubbish car, is down on his luck and is framed in Hopper-esque wide shots, but he is a poor cousin of the dirty lawyer with a heart of gold.
The film has an appealing weird streak running through it (I hope there really is an alternative bar only frequented by those working in the greetings card industry out there), but it feels chopped to bits and Lord knows what the message was supposed to be. I know it didn’t really matter what the inside of the Girlfriend card said, but it does matter what an audience was meant to feel at the end of this, and I mostly just felt bewildered.
Best of the bunch: I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, because it’s got a clear gameplan and artistry on its side. SSP
Review in Brief: David Brent: Life on the Road (2016)
Things haven’t gone too well for David Brent (Ricky Gervais) even by the standard of the last time we saw him on THE OFFICE. Now he’s just a guy and not the boss, no one is obliged to put up with his rubbish anymore. In LIFE ON THE ROAD he’s the most tragic he’s ever been; just as inappropriate and blind to the discomfort of others as ever, but now chucking every penny to his name at a rock tour that doesn’t leave Berkshire. The songs are just bad enough to be comic songs, but well performed enough to be conceivably real. This line is exploited wonderfully in a coda at the end that establishes which real pop star Foregone Conclusion ended up performing with after Brent (mild spoiler) returns to his office job. The film admittedly sags at points, but the cringe-factor is still there and even after all these years you love to hate spending more time in this sad little man’s company. SSP
Review in Brief: Train to Busan (2016)
It must be a nightmare thinking up new ways to portray zombies, but the walking-seizuring, rictus-grinning infected of TRAIN TO BUSAN are certainly original, creepy and funny creations. You don’t need much of a shake-up in terms of the confined location – we’ve had zombies in a mall, zombies in an apartment block, zombies in an airport, zombies in a North London pub – so zombies on a train isn’t a stretch. This is classic South Korean genre fare, with black comedy and broad slapstick to accompany the horror, and as a Korean export, it’s also a zombie film where you don’t see a gun until the last 5 minutes of screen time. There’s no reason for it to be 2 hours long, and the latter stages of the journey feel padded and unnecessary, but with an incredibly likeable bunch of characters and a worthwhile message (be a good person even in the worst of situations) it’s a pretty satisfying ride. SSP
Review: Moonlight (2016)
Magic in the moonlight: A24/Plan B Entertainment
It took winning the big Oscar for it to come to my local cinema, but MOONLIGHT was well worth the wait.
The life and times of Chiron (Alex R Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes) as he tries to find his place in the world through childhood, adolescence and adulthood.
This is hypnotically dreamlike storytelling with the camera drifting through life just as the characters do. DP James Laxton either hangs close characters’ faces, taking in every nuance minutely or we float along just out of reach as they seek the answer to who they are. You’re in a trance of pristine visuals, fluid storytelling and heart-wrenching performances throughout. Mainstream film hasn’t had a notable example of magic-realism for a while, and it’s a joy to see the style return guided so delicately by writer-director Barry Jenkins.
Little; Chiron; Black. The three chapter headings mark where and how Chiron sees himself at any given time. Don’t expect any big twists or plot turns; this isn’t that kind of story. The story may be set in deprived Miami and feature dealers, addicts and gangsters, but only two guns are produced and neither are fired. People come and go, they get out and are trapped, they change in some ways and stay the same in others.
What finds these three actors are. I believed Hibbert, Sanders and Rhodes were the same person at different stages at his life – they seem to adopt the same posture, the same phisical and facial tics, the same expressions of pain and relief, the same inner energy, determination and resolve. This is especially remarkable considering they never met during filming.
Chiron’s three key contradictory relationships that make him who he is – dealer mentor Juan (the excellent Mahershala Ali), whose relationship with Little remains innocent and never takes the dark turn you might expect; the destructive cycle of his hot/cold addict mother Paula (Naomie Harris) and Kevin (Jaden Piner, Jharrel Jerome and André Holland), who awakened, destroyed and rebuilt Chiron all over again. We see the ill-gotten gains of Juan’s business and Chiron’s mother is justified in flipping his accusations of irresponsibility back on him in a standout scene, but that doesn’t make him or partner Teresa (Janelle Monáe) any less of a kind couple. His mother may intermittently shun him, verbally abuse him and make him victim of her destructive lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean she loves Chiron any less. Kevin is a note of stability for Chiron from childhood, helping him discover his sexuality and gifting him rare moments of happiness, but he still commits the cruellest act in the film and changes Chiron forever. No wonder Chiron is living a lie as a wannabe Juan with ripped body and glittering grill when he and Kevin reconnect in adulthood. He’s never had consistency in his life and he’s been forced to metamorphosise to survive. “Chiron, is this you?” Kevin asks. At this point, he doesn’t know himself.
I found the middle chapter following Chiron in his painful and confusing teenage years to be the most compelling, though the final stretch as he reconnects with his past and looks to the future leaves things uncertain but also strangely, and soothingly, positive. We get the feeling it will turn out OK for Chiron as long as he stops putting on a front and starts being who he wants to be, not what society dictates.
What a shame that Moonlight will only be talked about in relation to that Oscar gaff for the foreseeable future.What I predict is that only one of the two films will be lasting, still significant in years to come, and it’s not this one. Moonlight is an achingly beautiful story and an important and high-impact one to be told in today’s America. SSP
Review in Brief: Blair Witch (2016)
From the off, you get a reference to “footage assembled from DV cards” and it’s clear the world has changed since Adam Wingard took over this series. Following film school students trying out technology for a documentary class makes a lot of sense, added to that the familial connection to the original victims. It’s equivalent to the rebooted EVIL DEAD having a character go cold turkey as a justification for teenagers going on a trip to an isolated cabin in the woods. Maybe this much real-world logic shouldn’t be brought into horror as sooner or later your scare story is going to have to rely on someone doing something stupid. “We faked it because it’s real” soon becomes a reality as events become more explicitly supernatural than last time, and if you weren’t already claustrophobic by the time the finale comes round, you will be. I think because they show more it’s more frightening, but less scary than the original. If that makes sense. If it doesn’t, I’ll be over here staring at a corner of a room. SSP
Review in Brief: Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016)
Compared to the mostly patchy (read: awful) world of TV show movies, Jennifer Saunders can take comfort in the knowledge that ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS: THE MOVIE is by no means the worst example. I really hope the slightly out-of-date fashion references were intentional, because being a little behind the times is a very Ab Fab thing to be. Kate Moss, Gwendoline Christie and Lily Cole are so 2014, darling. As always with Ab Fab it’s a fight for our attention between Joanna Lumley’s disgusting scene-stealer Patsy (highlight: taking a taser shot without reaction on a budget airline) and the heart and soul, Edina’s long-suffering daughter Saffy (Julia Sawalha – “I ruined my life trying not to make my mother happy”). Jane Horrocks’ airhead assistant Bubble, while sadly absent for much of the film, has its best line, admitting that she hadn’t “fed” Eddie’s Twitter account, “and it died”. In the latter stretch featuring, of all things, a car chase, things go from cringe humour to just painful viewing, but the highs (just) outweigh the lows in Edina and Patsy’s final outing. SSP
Review: Logan (2017)
They’ve been through a lot, but they’re bonding: Donner’s Company/Kinberg Genre
The title LOGAN is a mission statement. Finally, after six (full) movies filled with claw-popping, re-treads and contradictory flashbacks we are asking who he is. We know he was born James Howlett, served in the military and as a mercenary, was experimented on and turned into a living weapon, but by breaking Wolverine down into his component parts we will finally learn what makes him him.
In the not-too-distant future the man once known as Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) finds himself caring for Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) who is losing grips on reality and his psychic powers, as well as slowly being killed himself by the metal that makes his bones unbreakable. With the X-Men gone, he drifts, gets by and keeps to himself, until a remarkable young girl (Dafne Keen) crosses his path with formidable cybernetically enhanced mercenaries in persuit.
Logan is by quite a way the bloodiest mainstream superhero movie ever made. The opening scene has Wolverine stabbing a bunch of would-be carjackers in the face and hacking off their arms, and the scarlet just keeps spraying from there. It’s also appropriate that such a red-stained film has blood as one of its key plot, and thematic points.
I loved the low-key (as this genre goes) first half of the film. This highly unconventional family on the run, made up of surrogate dad “Chuck”, reluctant but determined care-giver “James” and the silent Laura who has to learn to be a child as well as a weapon. As slick as the action is throughout and as broody as the atmosphere is, everything but the core relationships are expendable. The best scenes are just funny, weird and tender family relationship moments. The introduction of the senile Professor X doing laps of his room and raving a muddle of previously held conversations, news reports and cereal adverts before telling a patronising Logan to f-off the moment he becomes lucid; Logan finally realising what it’s really like to have a daughter when Laura finally starts – and doesn’t stop – talking; the “family” joining another they meet on the road for their first meal in a long time and reminiscing about their old school for those with “special needs”. This is the flesh on the Adamantium skeleton, what connects and really delivers on an emotional level.
As reliably poignant as Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart’s final outings as their characters are, Dafne Keen is the real breakout. As the enigmatic mini-berserker Laura (known as X-23 and later adopting the Wolverine mantle in the comics) she has to say so much with so little, and if we have to have more X-MEN movies, I’d be far happier that they focussed on her growth than the main ensemble, who for me are done and dusted. Her stoic facial expression as she rides a coin-operated horse outside a convenience store alone is more compelling than any character beat in ORIGINS: WOLVERINE.
The references to previous X-movies are played fast and loose with props scattered around sets and Logan and Charles’ pained and half-remembered recollections of their lost friends which works well and keeps your attention on the these characters and where they find themselves now. I did think that the meta-textual stuff (Logan sneers as he finds a comic that the X-Men adventures were exaggerations or completely made up) could have either been leaned on more heavily as genre satire or cut entirely to give a serviceable and already emotionally supercharged story less baggage.
I had few complaints at all until they brought in something out of nowhere to pose a physical threat to Logan, and once the big bad guy’s grand scheme is revealed it just doesn’t add up. I can’t believe James Mangold thought it would be a good idea to recycle a plot device from Origins, but he does that, and as the finale becomes more superhero-y I began to lose interest.
Hopefully Hollywood will learn a lot from Logan’s belated victory lap, and hopefully they’ll learn the right lesson. The lesson is not, “let’s make everything gritty and bloody because that’s what sells now”. It’s that character is far more important than any spectacle you can put on screen. It should be obvious really, but DC/Warner Bros and even Fox itself forgot that with the last X-movie.
SSP Thinks Film 