Review: Where to Invade Next (2016)

Posted on September 18, 2016 by Sam S-P
where-to-invade

Where to Invade Next (2016): Dog Eat Dog Films/IMG Films

Michael Moore famously doesn’t beat about the bush (or Bush). WHERE TO INVADE NEXT (should that be phrased as a question?) opens with a montage of Washington DC’s landmarks accompanied by the whir of helicopter blades and an action movie drum score. Moore sets the tone with his first sardonic statement: “I was quietly summoned to the Pentagon to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff”. He then proceeds to reel of a list of wars the USA has lost. The only logical next step of course was to go and see what the US of A was missing from around the world.

In a series of “polite invasions”, Michael Moore journeys to distant lands with a big flag to steal all their best ideas to bring back to the United States.

It’s a neat idea for a documentary – send Moore on a travel log to highlight things other countries do better than the USA, and stick it to The Man at every opportunity along the way. There’s a lot to like about America, and I really think Moore is proud of his nation, but at the same time his home country’s faults have always infuriated him.

Countries he visits are assessed with tongue-firmly-in-cheek according to fun facts (for Germany: “none”), threat level and notable citizens. Any shots taken are playful (Moore’s incredulity at the best-educated country on his travels, Finland, also being home to the Air Guitar World Championship and the sport of “Wife Carrying”). Along the way he aims to steal paid, even incentivised vacations for stress relief from Italy, happy, stimulated and non-competitive students from Finland, women’s rights and government-funded contraception and abortion services from Tunisia. He even brings back a message from Portuguese cops to their American counterparts: “As long as you allow the death penalty to exist, human dignity can’t be protected”.

It’s pretty positive stuff from Moore for once, unless he’s taking snide swipes at the country he is trying to fix, that is. “Taxes in America pay for the basics – police, fire, roads, water, war, and bank bailouts”. Playful jibes and stereotypes give way at points to his anger at his home nation seemingly refusing to give into reason when he has a point to make – Moore sees American prisons as the modern equivalent  of the slave trade in the way inmates are trapped in an infinite loop without reprieve, for instance.

I don’t think he really needed to bring up Hitler and WWII atrocities in the Germany segment as it doesn’t really add to his thesis. As sincere as showing German schoolchildren marking and understanding what their grandparents did, it’s just there because it’s expected of a trip to Germany and Moore wasn’t going to leave without touching on the subject. It all comes across a bit Hallmark, a bit cheesy-inspirational for the sake of it and is at odds with Moore’s more cutting analysis elsewhere. A later segment highlighting Anders Breivik’s attacks in Norway in 2011 has more of a place and more impact as it feeds directly back into what Moore was talking about – Norway’s seemingly lapse attitudes to crime, punishment and justice.

Moore’s persona can be love-hate for many. I’d say that he attempts to cover too many subjects, and too broadly, and that he’d be better tightening his focus and attempting fewer arguments in a more detailed and analytical essay. He does, and has always, made sweeping generalisations, but he also highlights some interesting points as evidence to back up his argument. Where to Invade Next may only be genuinely thought-provoking occasionally, but it is consistently entertaining. SSP

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Review: Zootropolis (2016)

Posted on September 15, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Zootopia/Zootropolis (2016): Walt Disney Animation Studios

ZOOTROPOLIS (which has the much better title of ZOOTOPIA in the States) is not only the best film of 2016 so far but also may well be the most important. It’s the usual pristine, vibrant and peppy animation from the House of Mouse but with far more going on below the surface.

Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) is a bunny with a dream. Not content with her family’s safe and comfortable life of carrot farming, she moves to the big city to become the first ever rabbit cop. Tasked with demeaning and menial work by her superiors, Judy gets the chance to prove her worth when, with the reluctant help of fox grifter Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) she begins to unravel a conspiracy to tear animal society apart.

Zootropolis is a great analysis of prejudice, holding an unforgiving mirror up to Western society and making great use of the workings of the animal kingdom as allegory. Presumptions are made about particular animals, their instincts and their predispositions to particular careers. You come to Zootropolis to become anything you want, only that’s not possible for some animals. Bunnies will always be cute (“We can call each other that, but…”) and foxes will always be scheming.

Obviously as a take on race relations this animation can’t be as explicit as, for instance, last year’s STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (“You can’t arrest them just for being black!”) but there’s still some pretty merciless satirical commentary here. Look at how quickly the animal police force both turn on their carnivore colleagues and swoop down on meat-eating citizens in the street following some disturbing events reaching the media (“It’s not like a bunny could go savage”, “But a fox could, huh?”).

It’s not all serious of course. The gags are rapid-fire, ranging from visual jokes based around animals’ physiology and behaviour such as the already infamous and painfully funny sloth-manned DMV scene to much bluer references to rabbits’ famous promiscuity (Hopp’s hometown population sign is constantly fluctuating, she comments herself offhand that her kind are “good at multiplying”). Judy and Nick’s uneasy relationship is classic cop movie stuff, but it’s given an honesty and real heart by Goodwin and Bateman’s top-notch voice work. Elsewhere the cast is filled out with as diverse personalities as Idris Elba, Jenny Slate and Maurice LaMarche, all making their animated avatars (some of the most expressive ever created by Disney) distinctive and as real as anthropomorphic animals can possibly feel.

Zootropolis is not only funny and witty, but it’s built around a really good noir mystery that plumbs the murky depths of four distinct habitats as districts of a vast animal city. For once the workings of this bizarre animated world are incorporated into the film’s plot – they’re not anthropomorphic animals just because that’s what you do in a cartoon, but their evolved state and advanced society teetering on the verge of reverting back to a more savage time is an essential part of the plot development. Aside from indulging a few of the usual buddy movie conventions towards the film’s end, the way key information is gradually and shockingly revealed makes this more akin to CHINATOWN than FROZEN.

With the depressingly high number of hate-fuelled atrocities committed every day and reported by global media, Zootropolis couldn’t be more timely. There’s a lot that kids will like here, but this is a hard-hitting, relevant and adult animation at its core, probably destined to be appreciated even more by parents than by their children. Who’d have thought that Disney would be the studio with their fingers on the pulse and prepared to show audiences the world over what they really are? SSP

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Review: The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016)

Posted on September 10, 2016 by Sam S-P
huntsman

The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016): Roth Films/Universal Pictures

As Aslan, sorry, the narrator (Liam Neeson) begins to recount how Snow White and the Huntsman’s journey continues, we get an immediate sense of how bottom-rung this fantasy, and how desperate this mid-quel, really is.

Snow White has locked herself away in her castle and Eric the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) has returned to his old way of life. When the evil Queen Ravenna’s (Charlize Theron) slightly less evil sister Freya (Emily Blunt) makes a push from her frozen fortress to find the fabled magic mirror and bring winter to the world, Eric, fellow warrior with a troubled past Sara (Jessica Chastain) and a gang of tag-along dwarves are all that stand in her way.

The charming, but only intermittently Scottish Hemsworth teams up with the even more intermittently Scottish Chastain for much of the film’s runtime. In fact, scratch that last part – Hemsworth’s accent may not be any worse than Mel Gibson’s in BRAVEHEART, but Chastain sounds like Groundskeeper Willie. Don’t get me wrong, I like the concept of her character – like Eric the Huntsman, only better in every way – but her performance is simply awful. At least Emily Blunt delivers another solid turn, taking cold (hur hur) detachment to an art form, even if she is just doing a gender-flipped Mr Freeze from the Emmy-winning BATMAN animated episode “Heart of Ice”. The much-publicised return of Charlize Theron as the hiss-worthy Ravenna is mostly for the effects-heavy finale, a conclusion that is visually eye-popping and entertaining enough but completely devoid of soul, a big problem for a film that is supposed to have the central theme of love ruling people.

I know you have to just go with fairy tales and sign up to the grammar, but leaps of faith and logic can only go so far. The narrator surmises of Ravenna”With the mirror, she was invincible”. The same is said if Freya gets hold of the magic mirror later on. Um, how? How does a method of divination equal immortality or invulnerability? It might give you a head start, and allows for a plot turn later on, but very little else. The power the mirror holds is always ambiguous, malleable to what the plot requires. Still, the liquid gold remains a really cool visual effect.

Snow White, what little we’re allowed to see of her since her performer jumped ship (or was pushed) is made out to be a great warrior, leader and ruler as part of her genetic makeup, because that was so in-keeping with the source material last time and because every fantasy has to be LORD OF THE RINGS now. Can’t these fantasy universes be their own thing? You can make Snow White dark as the Brothers Grimm did, but it’s just not an epic story of that scale and shouldn’t be forced into that mould.

The sight of known comic actors’ heads being grafted onto smaller people’s bodies is still terrifying. Because having a recognisable face to deliver sub-par standup routines is apparently more important than giving the job to someone who doesn’t need the aid of a special effects suite to perform, and who might not get as substantial an acting job elsewhere. Nick Frost obviously had enough fun last time to return, Rob Brydon has to do something when he’s not doing adverts for supermarkets, but Sheridan Smith is ridiculously talented and needs to learn to say “no” to her agent.

I can’t get overly annoyed by The Huntsman. It’s just so mediocre it’s impossible to feel much of anything about it. Aside from Blunt and Theron acting well above what this project required, it’s a repetitive, cynical and empty affair. SSP

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Passing Thoughts: Spider-Physics and a Case of Mistaken Identity

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Sam S-P

I have this physicist friend and the other day we were talking in the pub about nuclear fusion, like you do. My mind went straight to the scene in SPIDER-MAN 2 where Doc Ock attempts such an experiment to create a sustainable energy source and thought I’d see how accurate the representation of the process was. Considering the concept is illustrated in the movie by a miniature sun suspended in a cradle, I had the sneaking suspicion that anything beyond the theory was garbage.

After a cursory Google search for “Spider-Man 2 physics” I was presented with a stream of articles debating the physics in 2014’s cinematic tumor THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2. I know you might think that I’m being picky, but when one of these is my second-favourite superhero movie of all time and the other is my all-time most hated and references to them seem to be interchangeable, for me it becomes a bit of an issue. I don’t care about how Electro transmits his powers or whether Spidey could really insulate his web-shooters, I want to know if there’s any hard physics behind Dock Ock’s miniature sun!

Are we really at a point where  twelve years on writers and the public have already forgotten Sam Raimi’s groundbreaking work to legitimise the superhero genre? Can internet journalists really not be bothered to specify if they’re talking about Raimi’s spot-on story adaptation and dynamic direction or Marc Webb’s overstuffed soapy superhero faceplant?

It’s likely an issue that began with Sony deciding to reboot the Spidey-franchise so soon after Raimi walked away. That’s not an excuse, but it could be a factor that leads to confusion, though I didn’t notice the same thing happening with Fox’s FANTASTIC FOUR reboot (probably because it failed more definitively and ingloriously than its predecessor). I guess it’s just simpler to refer quickly to a first instalment and its sequel(s) by number (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 1, 2, 3 rather than their individual titles) but that still doesn’t forgive plain sloppy writing. You only have to do it once in your article, in the title or the first paragraph, so make the effort!

It just smacks of laziness. Take the time to specify which film you are writing on – you only have to do it once in the article – and prove you know what you’re talking about. I still don’t know how tenuous the use of physics as a plot point in Spider-Man 2 is. Just a passing thought – I’ll calm down now. Of course if you spot any mistake I’ve made here then I promise to take it on the chin. SSP

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My Favourite…Comedy (RIP Gene Wilder)

Posted on September 3, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Young Frankenstein (1974): Guskoff/Venture Films/Crossbow Productions/20th Century Fox

My favourite comedy film by quite a way is YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. It’s just such a shame that I’m reviewing it with a heavy heart to mark the passing of Gene Wilder. His sad eyes, unbridled sense of mischief and perfect timing will be missed and it is without hyperbole  that I call him the greatest comic actor of his generation. Let’s take another look at his final hour, and hope that we don’t hemorrhage something in the process.

When the grandson of the infamous Baron von Frankenstein is called to Transylvania, this serious scientist (Gene Wilder) finds himself unavoidably drawn to carrying on his ancestor’s blasphemous work. Before long, the secret laboratory is reassembled and with the help and hindrance of some incompetent assistants, another unholy creation is given life…

This Mel Brooks-directed masterful spoof has gags to please all tastes, but it really helps if you know the Universal Horror movies he is so affectionately lampooning. The film looks and sounds as good, sometimes better than the black-and-white expressionist B-movies given such life by James Whale and his imitators in the 1930s and 40s. We travel to a never-Transylvania that appears – thanks to an editing gag – one stop away from New York City. There is graverobbing, an angry mob and the monster encountering a sweet little girl and a sweet old blind man.

The film features yet another conveniently American relative of the original mad scientist Dr Frankenstein (sorry, Fronkensteen), given a charming, manic energy in abundance by Wilder. Support comes in the form of a scene-stealing (and forth wall-breaking) Marty Feldman, a game Teri Garr and Kenneth Mars, both having a lot of fun with (intentionally) mangling European accents. It wasn’t a joke in the 30s films that their vaguely European setting was all and none of that continent’s cultures, every time period and none of them. It was just a shortcut and the exaggerated accents weren’t gags, just window dressing. It works better when the filmmakers are in on, and supporting, the joke.

The film works pretty well as a Frankenstein movie in addition to a parody, featuring no more bizarre plot turns than the later Universal sequels (which featured monster mashups, vampiric blood transfusions and Ygor possessing the Monster and despairing at being blind and blundering as well as inhumanly strong). It’s Wilder’s passion project, and along with Brooks he helps recreate entire sequences from one of the first film franchise pretty meticulously, peppering iconic moments with well placed gags and observations. Said well placed gags range from the silly (“Walk this way…”) to sitcom (“Sedagive?!”) to the visual (a Mel Brooks classic at the Brain Depository: “After hours please put brains through slot”).

This was introduced to me by my dad, and we still enjoy it immensely to this day. Though knowing the Universal Horror films certainly helps, I don’t think I’d seen any of them the first couple of times I saw this. It was just silly fun to me, but I’ve grown to appreciate how much of a pitch-perfect parody it is after seeing the whole Universal Frankenstein series and writing a dissertation on it. After seeing many, many Frankenstein movies it’s as faithful an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s work as any of the straighter films. Brooks and Wilder just dare to wonder what would happen if a scientist uncovered a book setting out just “How I did it” and what damage this could do.

Young Frankenstein will always hold a very special place in my heart, and Gene Wilder’s finest performance is a big part of what makes it last. His love of the source material helped immensely too, his final product turning out at times better than its sideways reference point and it made Young Frankenstein less mocking and more like laughter among old friends. Farewell Gene, you will be missed. SSP

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Review: Risen (2016)

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Sam S-P
Risen

Risen (2016): LD Entertainment/Affirm Films/Columbia Pictures

I don’t think we’ve ever had a Roman film noir before (please tell me if I’m wrong on that). If RISEN had lent more on these distinctive tropes or even retained a modicum of ambiguity by the end, it could have been something truly unique. As it is, it’s a curiosity and little more.

Jerusalem, 33 AD. The proclaimed Messiah of the Hebrew faith Yeshua (Cliff Curtis) has been put to death by Crucifixion at the order of Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth). Thinking that a potentially disastrous uprising has been quashed in the province of Judea, a desperate investigation is undertaken by Pilate’s Tribune Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) when the Nazarene’s body disappears from his tomb one morning. 

The Roman War Machine and the uncompromising way they kept Judea in check for so long is uncompromisingly realised. The cruel brutality and efficiency of crucifixion as a way to control a population’s dissenters, their taking down of the expired before they are cold to make room for more examples to the Empire is a horrific visual.

Following Yeshua’s Crucifixion, Peter Firth’s greasy take on Pilate asks Clavius,”The Nazarene – you found him different?”, to which his tribune responds blankly, “I found him dead”. Clavius is unflappable and rational from the off, the very last person you would expect to have any kind of experience to make him question his faith. It’s a bold move to present Biblical miracles so straight, so matter-of-fact, but the earnestness and the varied characters, who all feel like real people acting like real people in that time period would (Curtis is a disarming Yeshua and his disciples are shown to range from harmless hippies to rebels and world-weary old men) help a great deal to sell it.

The Romans see Yeshua as a fanatic who might gain a “monopoly on piety” in Judea and beyond. The miraculous resurrection is explained away as the Hebrew plot for his body to be stolen in the night by his followers to inspire divine worship. That is, until the loyal Hebrew priests seem just as bewildered as the Romans when a miracle does occur.

It’s a neat time-sensitive plot device, that Clavius has to find an intact corpse before it decomposes beyond recognition in order to debunk any claims of divinity. By the state of the body pits we fleetingly see below the ghastly frames that slowly bled the life out of so many, time really is a factor.

I had to turn on the subtitles pretty early because either the sound-mixing is terrible or everyone is mumbling all the time. The scenes of Romans searching Hebrew homes and of Yeshua performing miracles unfortunately bring to mind LIFE OF BRIAN. The production design in general is about on par with Monty Python’s Bible comedy, and that’s not a criticism because they spent a lot of money on location shooting and costumes.

The way the story of Risen is structured, from the cynical Clavius’ perspective, you’re expecting there to be a final twist. There isn’t really, which might make those of a non-religious persuasion struggle. If this is you, just think of it as a “what if?” story. What if a non-believer saw something they could not explain? Clavius’ journey eventually brings him to admit that “I cannot reconcile this with all I know”. It’s a well-mounted and performed tale with a solid script from Kevin Reynolds (yes, as in the guy behind ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES). Regardless of your beliefs – and it thankfully never gets too preachy, not being a Bible movie per se – it’s engaging enough. It’s not going to be for everyone, and it might have been more worth recommending if they’d have made more of the mystery in this historical mystery thriller. SSP

 

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Review: The Shallows (2016)

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Sam S-P
shallows

The Shallows (2016): Columbia Pictures/Ombra Films/Weimaraner Republic Pictures

JAWS gave sharks a bad name. The SHARKNADO series gave shark movies a bad name. THE SHALLOWS doesn’t exactly redeem sharkkind, but it’s an effective, no-nonsense thriller that makes me hope to see more films in this vein in the future.

When surfer and surgeon-in-training Nancy (Blake Lively) arrives at an isolated Mexican beech to reconnect with an important place to her recently-deceased mother, she expects little more than to hit the waves and find peace. Then a run of bad luck finds her injured and stranded on a rock tantalisingly close to the shoreline and a ferocious shark between her and safety…

Stunning underwater photography courtesy of Flavio Martínez Labiano highlights the beauty of the ocean ecosystem and its ability to obscure deadly predators. Every time the camera dips below the surface you are braced to catch a glimpse of a dark shape hunting. Be warned though, for however good the film looks when its set pieces are achieved practically, there are some pretty dodgy CG beasties in there as well. A scene involving the sudden appearance of jellyfish in particular rankles.

An early scene where Nancy is grabbed and dragged underwater outdoes Jaws for scares. It’s amazing to see how technical advancements have helped make images like this more primal and effective, and though they now could technically show everything, like with Jaws it’s more high-impact when something is left to the imagination. Lively’s raw performance is always front-and-centre, especially a moment where the camera is tight on her face as she reacts to the shark’s most gruesome kill out of shot. Unfortunately this effect is somewhat ruined when we are shown the result of this attack straight afterwards.

The setup featuring lots of slow motion and somewhat indulgent camera angles for Nancy undressing and lying on her surfboard is more than a bit BAYWATCH. Nancy’s wetsuit couldn’t be more revealing, consisting as it does of a jacket that hugs her breasts coupled with bikini bottoms. I’m not saying she’d be wearing a lot more while surfing around Mexico, but it’s pretty obvious why she wears what she wears; to make the most of those aforementioned camera angles. When the story kicks in, you can forget about a lot of this and we get a taut horror movie jammed full with classic genre tropes (isolated locale, countdown to death, locals with forbidden knowledge). Towards the end it goes all unashamed B-Movie and we end up with a silly, but enjoyable final stretch that mostly ignores physics, biology, reason…

The film is better when the shark acts like a shark and not Jason Voorhees. Nancy works out its hunting pattern and the distance she needs to cover in time in planning her escape, but the shark very quickly forgets about the convenient floating hulk of dead whale meat and decides it would prefer to go for the far more insubstantial injured surfer and is prepared to force its way through rock and metal to get to her. At some point, even the most relentless predator driven by bloodlust would go back to the food source that required less effort for more sustenance. I know you wouldn’t have much of a story if the shark just went back to the whale, and I’d almost let this pass if it was a more aggressive species of shark than the go-to Great White, but again the filmmakers don’t let little things like realism get in the way of the excitement.

Using sharks as plot devices will always be a bit B-movie material, but there’s no reason why you can’t make good B-movies. The Shallows is a very good B-move, a sweaty palms thriller and a natural world horror with scares to compete with Jaws. It wouldn’t work at all if you didn’t care about the one character you spend the whole movie with (not counting the seagull) but Blake Lively’s determined performance binds the whole thing together and helps make this one of the pleasant surprises of the summer. Film has done it again and taken away the appeal of going back into the water. SSP

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A Few Thoughts More: Batman v Superman

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Sam S-P
batman-v-superman-ultimate-edition-henry-cavill

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition (2016): DC/Warner Bros

This piece contains spoilers for BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE and its Ultimate Edition extended cut.

I still stand by my original review of Batman v Superman, but after watching Zack Snyder’s extended cut of the already unwieldy film built around a ten minute clash between comic book titans, I have a few more thoughts.

After opening with the first of many overblown and confusing dream sequences, I will say that the scene of Bruce Wayne charging through Metropolis on a rescue mission, in the process giving us a ground-level view of the destructive finale to MAN OF STEEL is quite effective. Ben Affleck is a really good, melancholically charming Bruce Wayne throughout really, it’s just a shame what they decided to do with the Bat, though admittedly his fight with the warehouse full of thugs is the film’s best action scene (despite all the killing).

So what new delights can be found in the Ultimate Edition? Jimmy Olsen (Michael Cassidy) gets to introduce himself before being killed in Africa. A couple of insert shots make it clearer that Louis Lane (Amy Adams) was being used by the CIA to facilitate a sting operation unbeknownst to her, so she comes across as less reckless for  the sake of it, still just a damsel, but a slightly less stupid damsel. You get to see Ben Affleck’s bum. Snyder is a little less inclined to cut around people being shot or stabbed. The point of the Senate explosion scene is more apparent. Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) gets to do a little investigative reporting. Still foggy is Lex Luthor’s (Jesse Eisenberg) game in all this, though he does briefly commune with a special effect. Lex admits he is insane and Batman makes sure he is transferred to Arkham Asylum for special treatment. That’s your extra 30 minutes.

Even putting aside Batman killing pretty indiscriminately in some sequences, his branding of criminals (I know, it’s a classic sadistic Frank Miller idea) is beyond cruel. Terrifying and incarcerating them isn’t enough for him – it’s that every criminal he catches from common muggers to serial killers live a day-to-day hell akin to that suffered by child molesters in real prisons because of this brand. Does he really brand everyone he finds outside the law? Should he brand himself? I guess at least Snyder and his writers ask this question, unfortunately they actually have a character ask it rather than exploring it in a more nuanced way (maybe in a film you should use film language?).

“The world only makes sense if you force it to” really is one of the worst movie lines in recent memory, and it’s immediately followed by Supes and Bats ceasing their hostilities because both their mothers’ names were Martha.

Why the hell does Superman need to watch the news? Isn’t he supposed to be near-enough omnipotent or is that just knowing where Louis is? Apparently the latter as he doesn’t realise his mother has been kidnapped until Lex tells him so.

So the new stuff is negligible, and seeing the film as a whole again  hasn’t changed my opinion. Affleck, Jeremy Irons and Gal Gadot come out of it OK, but this film is still broken on a fundamental level and I am actively dreading the release of JUSTICE LEAGUE at the end of next year. Sort your creative team out, DC/Warner Bros. SSP

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Review: The BFG (2016)

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Sam S-P
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The BFG (2016): Amblin Entertainment/Walt Disney Pictures/Walden Media

In 2016, the release of a new Steven Spielberg movie is still an event, and he’s only becoming more prolific as time goes on. But for whatever reason THE BFG hasn’t been taken to people’s heart. It’s an admittedly odd story, the kind of story that can only work if you ignore any potentially creepy implications. Sadly nothing seems innocent anymore. Except for fart-propelled corgis, that’s pretty innocent.

Ten year-old Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) escapes her dreary life in a London orphanage when she glimpses a giant walking the streets. Fearful of being discovered by more aggressive “human beans” the kind-hearted BFG (Mark Rylance) brings Sophie back home with him and the pair form a fast friendship. Unfortunately, the BFG is not the only inhabitant of Giant Country, and his kin are much bigger, meaner and less vegetarian…

This is a faithful enough adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story, but the pacing and tone of the thing is really weird and not particularly in-keeping with the material. Rather than Dahl’s frivolous and small-scale tale of friendship with hints of darkness you have a cheerfully melancholy, wannabe fantasy epic with stop-start slapstick set pieces. It’s not an entirely unenjoyable hodge-podge, but it’s a pretty unsatisfying one.

I wish more was done with the concept of the BFG’s dream-catching. The scenes we have are colourfully imaginative, the labeled jars categorising the trapped dreams are nice throwaway gags (many, of course, involving being unexpectedly naked). We really only get two scenes of the BFG imparting dreams on others, and only one of these has any real visual flair. Maybe a bit more of this and a bit less Giants faffing about it would have worked in the film’s favour.

Scale is used in some really interesting ways. Most of the action is from Sophie’s perspective and at her level, and Barnhill navigates giant sets lit and photographed ingeniously by Janusz Kaminski. The dream-catching sequence is lovely, but the best set piece in the film sees the less friendly giants tearing the BFG’s house apart looking for his new human bean friend as she hides between his bric-a-brac.

Both leads are excellent and make their characters playful, grounded and heartfelt, but I don’t know whether their relationship entirely works. Barnhill is from the classic Spielberg child mould – big, expressive eyes, attitude in abundance and a killer disbelieving face. Rylance is a very sad Big Friendly Giant, but I wouldn’t say they quite manage to pluck heartstrings like Elliot and ET, Albert and Joey, or even Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. It’s an issue when your main characters don’t ask each other’s names until 40 minutes into your film, and while their relationship is always appealing and watchable, it’s rarely compelling. The BFG still clearly misses his previous companion too much, and it is when he is laying bare his grief for his lost boy with his shrine-like bedroom in a nook in his lair that your feel for him far more than you do for his affection for Sophie.

The bad Giants lead by Jermaine Clement’s thuggish Fleshlumpeater just aren’t scary enough. They look more like concept art rejects from BRAVE than the pale nightmares of the David Jason animated film. Those monsters frightened me witless when I was small, but this gang of squabbling bullies don’t seem to be much of a threat to anybody beyond the BFG, and even then they just push him around in elaborate schoolyard games.

Spielberg’s adaptation of The BFG has the right spirit for a Roald Dahl story, boasts a pair of strong lead performances and has memorable flights of fancy. Tone and storytelling is where it tends to fall short, not being funny or scary enough and distinctly lacking in peril. Kids might struggle to find enough excitement to keep them glued to the screen and adults will likely want more heart and soul. Sadly, it’s a near-miss. SSP

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Review: Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Posted on August 15, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Bone Tomahawk (2015): Caliber Media Company

Another day, another Western. America’s favourite film genre just keeps on going, but as long as they’re as vivid and interesting as BONE TOMAHAWK you don’t tend to mind.

When a young woman is kidnapped by cannibalistic raiders, a ragtag rescue party goes hunting. Sherriff Hunt (Kurt Russell), his deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), the victim’s determined husband Arthur (Patrick Wilson) and cocky gentleman gunfighter Brooder (Matthew Fox) have one hell of a journey ahead, and time is running out to bring Samantha (Lili Simmons) back in one piece…

Bone Tomahawk is really, and completely unexpectedly, funny. The film opens with a pair of drifters brutally offing a guy in his sleep with only a blunt knife and a big rock in order to rob him (a sight so unforgiving and extreme I emitted a strange cry-laugh). The first time we meet Jenkins’ doddery deputy Chicory recovering from a heavy night he ruminates on corn chowder actually tasting like corn: “Things are startin’ to line up” and the strongest whiskey sold in the local saloon makes you feel “Like a tree fell on ya!”. The film doesn’t overlook the bleakness of life in the West, but it acknowledges the humour in even the darkest of situations. That is human nature, after all.

The film is very careful to emphasise that the cannibal antagonists aren’t from any of the major Native tribes, but in fact horrify their fellows. Despite this deliberate act of preemptive apology it is a good thing that we are now allowed to depict monstrous Native Americans as well as monstrous settlers on film, as surely both must have existed. Thankfully we’ve long left behind racist representations of the Native “other” in Westerns, but there is certainly space to show rotten apples in any society.

This is a slow-burn character Western that transmutes into an outright splatter horror film by the end. We are given three quarters of the story to get to know the lead trio, often bickering, before they reach their goal. Do you remember how badly THE LONE RANGER botched the tonal dissidence between horror and Western tropes? Bone Tomahawk succeeds at every turn that Disney’s flawed effort failed, and tone change from black comedy to horror reminded me a lot more of another Western from the last decade, THE PROPOSITION.

Kurt Russell has had a great year for bewiskered Western antiheroes, but he’s certainly more sympathetic, and far more competent as Sherriff Hunt than he was as The Hangman in THE HATEFUL EIGHT. Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox and Richard Jenkins are a winning combination of contradictory characters. Once the the group do arrive at their destination it all becomes more harrowing than any decent person could imagine.

I will say that the film, for all its commitments to realism and its own individual style and tone, does give in to Hollywood Western formula as it goes on. Characters refuse to die until their job is done, people don’t miss when it matters, the female lead is a damsel and little more, there is  big and heroic sacrifice to cap off the story.

The 2010s (or whatever you’re supposed to call this decade) have been a great few years for the Western. THE SALVATION, SLOW WEST, A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST. I might be joking about one of those (except for the moustache song). As long as you throw a few curved balls in there, take a sideways glance at the familiar you can keep providing audiences with the same thrills the best in this genre delivers. SSP

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