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 in Brief: Train to Busan (2016)
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.
Review in Brief: Bad Neighbours 2 (2016)
It may open with Rose Byrne vomiting into Seth Rogen’s face during sex, but as comedy sequels go, BAD NEIGHBOURS 2 isn’t all that bad. I liked the first film well enough, but I actually think this sequel makes some significant improvements. In a flip on the last film it is Mac and Kelly who have to behave themselves for an arbitrary time limit in order to sell their house, and their new adversaries are a sorority led by Chlöe Grace Moretz whose actions in the plot and our sympathy for them as characters are based on a very real, and very stupid limitation written into American college rules (as Selina Gomez says, Google it). Zac Efron is still the unquestionable MVP – just look at the perfectly timed moment when Teddy has a disgusted epiphany about how sexist every one of the parties his frat house threw. There are plenty of darker and curveball gags in and amongst the expected gross-out humour as well, like when one of the sorority girls says of their first frat party “It was super rapey in there”. I laughed, I still care about these characters. Sometimes, that’s enough. SSP
Review in Brief: The Witch (2015/16)
The first half of THE WITCH – slow, rich, slow, unforgiving, slow, naturalistic, and did I mention slow? – is far more successful than the second. There’s a gradual, creeping dread and very little of note that is actually happening. It’s this fear that something might be just around the corner, that we’re just on the verge of a real fright that keeps you on edge here. It’s paranoia over what might happen that gives this story its punch. When the horror finally comes, I’m sorry to say it’s not that successful or that scary. Horror films have scared us with not a lot before (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT) but if you feel you absolutely have to show something at the end, make it something worthy of the build. The matter of who is responsible for the strange happenings is kept pretty ambiguous until right at the end, then the reveal kills all of that and leaves nothing in doubt. I got a strange dark comic thrill from William’s (Ralph Ineson) very Medieval solution to all of his children accusing each other of being witches, and the film doesn’t flinch from the harshness of living in this time and place, but in the end it just didn’t scare me. SSP
Review: Manchester by the Sea (2016)
We’ve all had moments like this, maybe not on a boat: Amazon Studios/K Period Media
The Oscars are almost upon us and once again I’ve only managed to see about half of the movies in the running. LA LA LAND might be the bookies’ favourite, but MANCHESTER BY THE SEA is my pick to take the top honour. Sometimes honesty and groundedness is more lasting than heady escapism, and Kenneth Lonergan’s drama certainly made far more of an impact on me.
Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is forced to take a sabbatical and travel from Boston to Manchester to look after his nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges) following the sudden death of his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler). Lee does not want to stay in a place filled with so many painful memories and is far from the most ideal, or willing guardian, and Patrick responds badly to the interruption of his full social life. Will they be able to find a compromise and just get along?
Affleck has always been good, but he’s never quite been this good. He turns Lee’s social awkwardness into an art form- at first, you think he just doesn’t care because he’s not a people person (see his passive-aggressive responses to his building tenants and his blunt refusal of any advance made by a woman). But as the story progresses, you come to realise how much daily agony he is in over his past and that he is simply protecting himself, his only way to get through life and stick to routines with as few personal ties and distractions as possible. I’m not convinced Lee was ever a particularly extrovert person even before his tragedy – we see him open and happy with ex-wife Randy (Michelle Williams) in flashback, but he always had a confident and determined older brother in Joe to take the majority of the limelight and to look out for him.
While Michelle Williams gets second billing, and Randy is an important contributing factor to where Lee finds himself, she is hardly in the film in terms of screentime and the emotional core comes from the very real reluctant relationship between Lee and Patrick and the unflinchingly honest way Affleck and Hedges play it. In their hands, faltering relationship advice from an emotionally repressed guardian and bickering about priorities becomes far more compelling than a marriage that can’t survive a tragic accident. The supporting players (especially Kyle Chandler and CJ Wilson) all put in strong work, but it all comes back sooner or later to the reluctant family forced together by circumstance.
The film wasn’t as unrelentingly miserable as I expected, either. Serene seascapes juxtapose the trauma and tragedy is punctuated with darkly funny moments, just as real life is. Patrick insists on seeing his father’s body and does a full 180 straight out the door with a grimace and a “nope” immediately upon seeing the cadaver (“How does he look?”/”He looks dead”). Bravely, even the story’s emotional crest, where we witness the very moment of Lee’s eternal torment, is broken by a problem with a stubborn ambulance gurney.
I did find the music a little incessant at times. When emotions are running so high and the situation is so grounded in the real, you really don’t need any more prompts to feel. I’m also not sure the loose plot structure with past and present blurring to represent Lee’s hazy view of things was entirely necessary. For me, the story might have had an even greater emotional crescendo if the story was told straight and chronologically, especially considering the lengthy runtime, but that could be down to your preference in filmmaking style.
Though faultless performances and characterisation across the board and a sure hand behind the camera, Manchester by the Sea grabs you by the soul and doesn’t let go. I know La La Land is lovely, but this is the real keeper, one that’ll keep eliciting a reaction as long as modern families are funny, sad and complicated units. SSP
Review in Brief: My Scientology Movie (2016)
I’m not the least bit surprised Louis Theroux chose this topic for his first documentary feature. Nobody combines disarming politeness, stillness and causing mild annoyance in his subjects as interview techniques quite like Theroux. The film spotlights what is widely known about Scientology, but also highlights lesser-known and more sinister aspects of the faith: deliberately fostering high-profile celebrity members, paying to advance up the ranks and the aggressive hostility shown towards anyone asking…well, anything. Theroux might undersell the subject matter through self-aware B-Roll and reconstruction (though the latter was unavoidable) but MY SCIENTOLOGY MOVIE remains funny and disturbing, but never more enrapturing or entertaining than when Theroux holds his ground and you find two parties unwilling to talk to each other but quite willing to film each other in order to s how the footage that those on their side. It’s eye-opening, entertaining and chilling stuff. SSP
Review: The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)
Did not consider capes when he built this: DC/LEGO/Warner Bros Animation
The opening gambit in THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE has Will Arnett’s gravelly Caped Crusader passing comment on the logos of all the production companies involved, and this made me wish he could do the same for some of the Oscar front-runners. The self-referential tone continues throughout the film, though you wonder if they’d have been more brutal in their dismantling of BATMAN V SUPERMAN and SUICIDE SQUAD if they weren’t all in production at the same time. And if Warner Bros let them. The fact remains that this nearly the best cinematically-released Batman movie since THE DARK KNIGHT.
After saving the day once again, Batman (Will Arnett) denies the Joker’s (Zach Galifianakis) place as his arch-nemesis, and thus drives the Clown Prince of Crime to seek the biggest, meanest supervillains around in order to make a statement. Batman must gather his allies Robin (Michael Cera), Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) and Alfred (Ralph Fiennes) to face the biggest threat in Gotham City’s history, and in the process perhaps he will learn to stop being such a miserable loner.
Lego Batman digs playfully at Batmen past and present, with Tim Burton/Michael Keaton coming under fire for “the parade with the Prince music”, Adam West being “That weird one in the 60s” and even Christopher Nolan’s much-lauded serious treatment of Batman is mocked with the deadpan”All the important movies start with a black screen”. While this film gets very big and very silly towards the end – to the extent that there’s sometimes far too much visual information on screen at once to get the desired toybox car crash effect – at least they acknowledge the ridiculousness of the enterprise. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with admitting the bizarreness of comic book material, with emphasising that this isn’t real life and these worlds operate according to their own laws. Just have fun with it. If you’re going to have an invasion by outlandish threats from another dimension and an entire city teetering on the edge of a literal void, make it bold, colourful and over-the-top, don’t just do a shower of grey rubble.
They dip into Warner Bros’ vast back catalogue of IP in addition to DC Comics (having the characters from the two biggest fantasy franchises in history at the ready is certainly handy from a marketing perspective) and cast an impressive array of talent to cameo. It’s great that Billy Dee Williams finally gets to play Two-Face after 28 years, but why not give him more than two lines?
The film plays with Batman and the Joker’s complex relationship in the unexpected manner of a kind of twisted rom-com. It’s Arnett’s show, but he bounces beautifully off the ensemble, chiefly as a reluctant father to Cera’s upbeat Robin and a reluctant frenemy to Galifianakis’ needy Joker. Everyone knows how good he was as a parody of the gritty take on Batman from THE LEGO MOVIE (“Darkness! No parents!”), but Arnett actually manages something few previous performers of the role have managed: genuine character development. This is a film about Bruce Wayne moving on, finally letting his guard down and embracing a new family. It’s about not being afraid to be hurt again. It’s pretty deep for a toy-based kids movie.
For years now, Warner Bros have been killing it with their animated superhero movies. Once again, by having a little fun and lovingly referencing, rather than worshiping, the source material, they have produced something hugely entertaining and worth your time. The gags come thick and fast, the busily detailed animation gives you plenty of eye-candy and the vocal talent provides plenty of feelings to feel. I don’t know how much further this particular joke can be stretched, though it’ll probably do for just as long as the live-action DC adaptations suck. SSP
SSP Thinks Film 