Review: Special Correspondents (2016)

Posted on May 14, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Special Correspondents (2016): Bron Studios/Stage 6 Films/Unanimous Entertainment

There’s no accounting for taste, but if you laugh at someone giving the alias “Frank Wankovich” to get into a place they shouldn’t then there really isn’t any hope for you at all. If you didn’t laugh at that, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you – SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTS doesn’t get much funnier.

Superstar radio correspondent Frank Bonneville (Eric Bana) and sound engineer Ian Finch (Ricky Gervais) are sent to Ecuador to report on the outbreak of a civil war. When they lose their plane tickets and passports, Frank and Ian decide to fake their reports stateside, until the situation escalates considerably as their lies becomes ever more elaborate and out of control.

Where did it go wrong? Well for a start, Vera Farmiga is so much better than this material. As Ian’s wife Eleanor, she gets one of the film’s only instances of real awareness, where she instantly susses Frank’s non-too-flattering deal-breaker for deciding who he sleeps with is merely down to how far away they live. She’s also responsible for the funniest, most skin-crawling section of the film where she breaks into an awful saccharine charity song seemingly promoting the search for her husband on a talk show. Eleanor is easily the most interesting character we meet, a creature of pure ego and no conscience, but you almost want Gervais to make her a bit nastier still to better contrast with the morally bereft Ian and Frank.

There’s precious little humanity in this story, and for something aiming to be a satire of the real world, that’s a fatal flaw. A blink-and-you’ll-miss it moment that should have been a more prominent moment in the film has America Ferrera’s dense but good-natured Brigida point out to the bickering pair of journalists that it would actually be a good thing if the civil war ended before they arrived to do their report. If only Gervais had the guts to push the criticism of how journalists cover disasters further, or even decided to make his jokes more crass or cringe-inducing as is his comedy hallmark.

What the film does attempt to discuss is people not caring about anything beyond getting the job done. It doesn’t matter at first to Ian and Frank that they’re faking it as long as they have something to show for it, that they can carry on doing what they want to do. It doesn’t matter to the radio station boss (Kevin Pollak) how much danger his reporters are in as long as they get they have something to show for it, that his radio station comes out on top.

It is true that as radio is an audio medium there is always the question of how do we know the voices we hear  are really who and where they say they are? It’s an act of complete trust on the part of the listener. Also pretty amusing and almost thought-provoking is the idea that an unsubstantiated or outright made-up rumour could be embraced by and given a life of its own by news outlets were it not for journalistic ethics. Ian and Frank make someone up in their reports and others give this figure life at an alarming rate, but this doesn’t go anywhere.

Does nobody working on this film understand what “live” means? I know it’s meant to be played for comic effect, but anyone who’s ever listened to a report from a war correspondent on the radio knows there is at least some kind of delay and that they can’t really provide a live commentary to action going in around them, because no journalist is reckless enough to stand in the middle of it.

Even putting aside clumsy handling of the material and inaccuracies, this script just isn’t funny enough. Ricky Gervais is generally a good comic actor and an even better writer, but judging by Special Correspondents and THE INVENTION OF LYING from half a decade ago I’m not convinced he’s a director. There’s no discernible style to his films and when he is required to be in front of and behind the camera his contributions usually amount to gurning and setting punchlines up for the more talented performers in his cast. His upcoming David Brent film might fare better as he can focus on revisiting a character he loves, but here he’s just treading water. SSP

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Review: Brooklyn (2015)

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Brooklyn (2015): BFI/BBC Films/HanWay Films

If there was one thing I wasn’t expecting in a swooning transatlantic romance it was the sight of Saoirse Ronan humiliatingly relieving herself in a bucket. Said scene takes place during a harrowing stormy Atlantic crossing early on in the film, and it is moments like this, coming pretty frequently throughout, that really make BROOKYLN. Every romantic flourish and declaration of burning passion in this story is balanced by something grounded and real.

Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) leaves her small village in Ireland for Brooklyn, New York and a better life. Her meekness soon gives way to confidence that comes with experience and big city living, but she is no less certain about what her future holds when she is torn between suitors on both sides of the Atlantic, her independence and her family back home.

Saoirse Ronan pitches Eilis’ awkwardness perfectly as a frightened stranger in a new land. Her performance is a beautiful thing; layered, endearing and honest, and as her interests and interactions in New York develop she grows as a person until she drives every relationship she comes to make. Eilis becomes rather assertive over the course of the film and we see that New York and the people she meets change this humble Irish village girl forever (just compare her faltering, painful first attempts at customer service in a NY department store to how powerful and assertive she has become when she returns home and confronts a tormentor). Julie Walters and Jim Broadbent are reliable as ever as Eilis’ no-nonsense landlady and church patron respectively, Fiona Glascott makes a big impact with limited screentime as Eilis’ sister Rose, and young talent abounds with Emory Cohen and Domhnall Gleeson giving each of Eilis’ suitors charm and frailty to spare.

I found myself unavoidably and poignantly thinking of a photo of my own grandparents as a young couple seeing Eilis and Jim walk along the beach, such is their manner and the way they dress (though Jim perhaps incongruously for the period isn’t smoking). You might instantly be more drawn to Tony than Jim or vise versa for a number of reasons, but screenwriter Nick Hornby adapting Colm Tóibín has done a really good job at making both men sympathetic and equally enticing prospects. Really it all comes down to what kind of life you personally would like to lead.

The tinkling ivories and throbbing strings of Michael Brook’s rich soundtrack give way to steadily more Celtic musical influences at key moments in the story, which might feel forced stylistically in the wrong hands but is handled delicately, just right here. This is particularly affecting in a scene set in a Christmas soup kitchen for lonely old Irish men and a sole beautifully raw voice singing in the tongue of his forefathers cutting through the happy hustle and bustle.

A world-spanning love story that defies the odds is nothing new for literature or Hollywood, but the time, place and issues of displacement and finding home help make this a particularly compelling and fascinating tale of social struggles. Irish and Italian-American stereotypes are employed and played with for comic effect to an extent (amiable squabbling around dinner tables and protective family values) but the central honest story about what millions of real people went through post-war to find new lives overseas is never overshadowed. Director John Crowley has a precise eye for performance and what makes people now and then tick. All the key players have come together to create a rather handsome film and uplifting soul food to boot. It says something when about the only real criticism I have is that the film could stand to be a little longer, to make the big moments bigger moments.

It’s pretty baffling that Brooklyn came away from Awards Season so lightly adorned. Despite what the marketing campaign, buzz and assumptions about the romantic literary-to-film genre might have you believe, it’s one of the cleverest, most emotionally driven and least pretentious critical darlings of 2015. It’s a treat from start to finish, and destined to be a firm favourite. SSP

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Review: Get a Job (2016)

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Get a Job (2016): CBS Films/Double Feature Films

In a world of streaming dominance, it’s now not all that unusual for major releases with big stars to not get a coveted slot at your local multiplex. Oddly, GET A JOB did get a big screen release in the USA but has thusfar to my knowledge been denied this everywhere else. I rented it on iTunes in the UK, and was less than optimistic when I realised it came from Dylan Kidd, one of the people who tried to remake PEEP SHOW.

Wannabe online marketer Will (Miles Teller) has a fancy degree but no career prospects as he gets caught in a series of soul-crushing jobs to keep up his comfortable lifestyle. Meanwhile his housemates and his girlfriend Jillian (Anna Kendrick), not to mention his dad Roger (Bryan Cranston) find themselves struggling to stay in jobs that are anything more than a means to an end.

Will’s eye-rolling at his dad’s oft-told story of self-made success is cute enough. Roger’s heartfelt (and unbeknownst to him, recorded) confession that he just needs to get an interview, to allow a potential employer to see the real him, works. I really don’t know why aren’t seeing more characters in young adult comedies struggling to get paid work writing or creating content on the Internet, or films that follow the middle-aged unemployed desperate to start again, both prevalent and bittersweet issues in society today. In both cases these seldom-explored and potentially enlightening subject areas are wasted, and that’s a shame.

God this is lazy comedy. It’s all based around unlikable characters being unlikable hitting snags when they encounter people more unlikable than them. Will is a nasty, egotistical piece of work. Who honestly cares when he locks horns with his even more repulsive boss Katherine (Marcia Gay Harden)? You don’t want him to one-up her, you just want their encounters to end in Mutually Assured Destruction. Everyone we meet is a stereotype – jock, stoner, creeper, grafter, nympho, nerd – the script by Kyle Pennecamp and Scott Turpel lacks wit and awareness throughout and only raises a grimace when they crack out a gross-out set piece built around human and animal bodily fluids.

Miles Teller seems to alternate between making brave choices and proving his versatility (as in WHIPLASH) and taking easy roles where he gets by being insufferably smug (most comedies he does, including this one). The ever-reliable Anna Kendrick is completely wasted as Will’s careerist girlfriend Jillian and she doesn’t really get anything meaningful to do until the last 20 minutes of the movie. After a decade of really interesting and eclectic roles, Bryan Cranston has fallen back on playing (admittedly well) another mild-mannered working dad, another Hal. Someone else who doesn’t have to stretch himself is John C McGinley, who plays Doctor Cox again, remembering to change his shirt but not his behavioural tics.

This was probably good-intentioned to start with, it probably aimed to give well-educated young people at a loss in life a little bit of hope. Kendrick gets to make the final inspirational “I don’t know what to do with my life but that’s OK” speech before Teller nullifies it shortly after by summing everything up with a trite advertising slogan. The people involved probably didn’t intend for Get a Job to be so condescending either, but with such a lack of good jokes that’s pretty much the only feeling you’re left with, that you’re being relentlessly talked down to. Sometimes you struggle to understand why studios push back release dates or show such little faith in their products, but here they were completely right to give up hope, just as anyone watching Get a Job will. SSP

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Review: Pee-wee’s Big Holiday (2016)

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Pee-wee’s Big Holiday (2016): Pee-wee Pictures/Apatow Productions

Awww, now I feel really dispirited. Pee-wee Herman’s frivolous adventures may never have been high art, but they were at least always bouncy, fun and creative. After Paul Reubens appeared on stage as the character for years, in 1985 Pee-wee made his big screen debut in PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE. This was also the feature debut of a certain Tim Burton and proved to be a zany treat. Another movie, a TV show and over 20 years in the wilderness later, Pee-wee returns to Netflix in somewhat shambolic fashion and oddly lacking in energy for his BIG HOLIDAY.

Pee-wee Herman takes a break from his idyllic small-town life, job and toys to travel to meet newfound friend and kindred spirit Joe Manganiello in New York for his birthday party.

The first stretch of the film feels very Pee-wee and is an almost direct lift from his Big Adventure, a sequence colourful, playful and pleasingly complete with elaborate contraptions to get Pee-wee out of bed, dressed and (mostly wasted) breakfasted. Mark Mothersbaugh’s jolly score is clearly inspired by Danny Elfman too, and it makes you wonder why Mr Elfman didn’t want to return.

There’s the expected air of silliness about some of it, but sadly a lot of the jokes just don’t land. The plot also gave me major Big Adventure Déjà vu (minus the bike). To be picky, Pee-wee doesn’t even really go on holiday (this character going somewhere for leisure a-la Jacques Tati might have been amusing), he just meanders across the country to attend a party. I’ll admit that it’s a bizarre but amusing reference that the women who briefly kidnap Pee-wee en route (Jessica Pohly, Stephanie Beatriz and Alia Shawkat) resemble the gals from Russ Meyer’s FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! but elsewhere the sense of imagination is sorely lacking. A scene midway through where a farmer’s numerous randy daughters try to seduce their bow-tied guest in particular just feels wrong. I see Pee-wee as an asexual being and his relationships should be kept platonic and innocent where possible.

There is more imagination and deranged wit in a single episode of PEE-WEE’S PLAYHOUSE than there is in the entire runtime of his latest big(ish) screen adventure. Where are all the surreal asides and the sense of unrestrained anarchy? As soon as Pee-wee sets off on his state-spanning trip the film just settles in and seems to go through the motions. It’s all just a bit lifeless and uninspired.

Don’t get me wrong, Reubens looks great for a man of 63, and he admirably tries to slip back into Pee-wee’s well-worn slip-ons. He’s still got the vitality, the energy of a toddler and the right jerky physical control for the character, but the voice has not aged well. Where’s the shrill honking laugh and stroppy whining when things don’t go his way? The reason Pee-wee makes such a strong connection with viewers is that he inherently sweet but also throws his toys out of the proverbial pram when he feels he’s been mistreated no matter what age he actually is. Here Pee-wee doesn’t exactly feel like he’s grown up but he’s certainly not as bouncy and irreverent as he used to be.

I feel that most long-running stories should evolve with the times. Pee-wee should not, and to be fair he still feels caught in his very particular time capsule. But if  you’re committed to bringing back your most successful and self-defining character after a long absence, you need to bring him back with pizazz, to make your audience realise what it was that they missed so much. As it is, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday reminds you all-too-infrequently of what makes the character so unique and what makes spending some more time with him worth it. SSP

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Review: Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Posted on May 1, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Show me your war faces!: Marvel Studios

Isn’t it nice when something lives up to expectations? CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is not just as spectacular as we’ve come to expect from a Marvel movie, but it’s a grown-up, layered and very well-told story up there with the studio’s very best.

Following a costly mistake on their latest mission and the simultaneous resurfacing of brainwashed assassin Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), The Avengers are split down the middle as the UN pushes for regulation of the world’s superpowered guardians. Siding with Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) for their freedom or Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) for the world’s safety, our heroes prepare to fight for what they believe just as new players entering the field complicate matters further…

Tony sure is making up for being a bit thick last time. While most might expect to side straight away with Steve/Cap and his quest for freedom from persecution and owning up to your mistakes, Stark makes a pretty good case too. Not only did he so recently create a murderbot (twice) but he and his superfriends have caused a lot of collateral damage during their of world-saving exploits. The difficult choice each hero makes rings true as well, all coming back to what made them who they are and what they have done, good and bad. Cap rebels just as he did in the last movie he headlined, and it’s pleasingly ironic that he’s the one essentially arguing for the very American right to bear arms and Stark, a weapons maker, wants greater regulation. This is just one example of how well the film explores the central argument being by no means cut-and-dry.

This is the best-balanced ensemble released by Marvel since the first AVENGERS. Evans and Downey head up each side of this war of ideology in fine fashion, but Stan remains to tortured heart of this story with his big sad eyes and Anthony Mackie’s Falcon does a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting as well. Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch and Paul Bettany’s Vision have a lovely little blossoming relationship moment together before things escalate with superpowers shortly afterwards. Having Tom Holland’s new Spider-Man as an excitable nerd in middle of all the chaos works wonderfully, and Chadwick Boseman’s dignified and pained Black Panther bodes really well for his solo outing in a couple of years.

There’s lots of exciting bone-crunchy fight scenes throughout, the opening team excursion in Lagos making most comparable action scenes in movies (even some made by Marvel) look pretty amateurish and inconsequential. Every action sequence serves a purpose to the story, is endlessly creative (Spidey’s fight alone is more inventive and satisfying than most superhero movies in their entirety) and they’re well spread throughout the film. Here you’ll find the most polished fight choreography in any Marvel film so far here, and a lot of effort has gone into designing fun ways for our heroes to combine their powers as a team or  counter and nullify each other later on.

The obvious comparison point is BATMAN V SUPERMAN, and here Marvel really does get right pretty much everything DC got wrong. Big, meaty themes are debated eloquently (often midway through battle), every character’s actions have consequences and all the key players are given interesting things to do. One-liners fly as rapidly as repulsor blasts, psychic bolts and vibranium shields (the latter of which Spidey quips “doesn’t follow the laws of physics at all!). Even when they’re getting into the heavyier stuff, Marvel knows there is always room for some levity. My favourite comic moment of the whole film is the sight of Bucky and Falcon crammed in to a tiny car as they impatiently wait for Cap to plan their next move.

I was so pleased that the plot, for all its detours, didn’t rely on a massive conspiracy being revealed midway through as THE WINTER SOLDIER did. For much of the runtime it looks like it’s going that way, but cleverly when the twist comes screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely go big only to bring it back in again and keep it all very personal and far more hard-hitting than any amount of exploding cities could be. The way the film ties up and builds on loose plot threads of Winter Soldier and Ultron retroactively improves those entries too, which is nice.

We probably didn’t need both the return of “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt) and the addition of a new politician played by Martin Freeman, Everett Ross (no relation to Thunderbolt) since they both serve essentially the same purpose to the plot. Also, while most gags are welcome, one that is delivered straight after a key moment of hard-hitting drama didn’t feel right.

Come to see the best juggling act in town (or the Russo Brothers as they’re also known) present an almighty scrap between Marvel’s most powerful players that they still own, a feud that actually makes sense. Stay and rewatch Civil War for the in-depth ideological debate, the sterling performances and the exciting, if uncertain possibilities it sets up for Marvel movies in the future. SSP

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Review: Midnight Special (2016)

Posted on April 29, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Honey, do you have to stargaze right now?: Faliro House Productions/Tri-State Pictures

Jeff Nichols has followed up doom-laden psychological horror TAKE SHELTER and big-hearted fable MUD with MIDNIGHT SPECIAL, his biggest film to date. While there’s plenty in it to talk about, it’s admittedly far wonkier than what has come before.

A father (Michael Shannon) and a son (Jaeden Lieberher) are on the run from the government and fanatic tag-alongs. They are not criminals, but young Alton is no ordinary young boy and the cult built around him and the relentless G-men driving the search have designs on his wondrous and destructive special powers. Alton, along with his father, mother (Kirsten Dunst) and protector (Joel Edgerton) embarks on a high-risk journey for his freedom.

I can’t really fault the honest intentions behind the film (Nichols is reflecting on a father’s need to protect), or the (mostly) sparing use of special effects and eerie sound design. What I will say is that the pacing in Midnight Special is way off. Whenever the story builds any momentum it is lost again almost immediately by Nichols’ tendency to cut to a serene landscape somewhere in the American South. These still moments have their place of course, helping a story not feel monotonous and providing the viewer with time for reflection. They also kill tension when placed midway through action scenes or immediately following plot advancement. Speaking of plot advancement, we learn a lot of key information through the central quartet of characters watching news reports on what is supposed to be going on, and this is an incredibly clumsy device.

The cast are pretty good across the board, particularly Dunst’s pained, instinctual mother, Driver’s inquisitive, decent NSA man and Jaeden Lieberher’s Alton, the otherworldly “special” of the title. Shannon and Edgerton are both intense but I really struggled to penetrate their Southern drawl and at times it seemed like they were in a war of escalation in mumbling. I don’t understand why you’d hire a character actor with such presence as Sam Shepard and only give him one scene at the beginning of your film though. Nichols clearly likes working with Shepard, casting him again after Mud so it seems odd he gave him such a nothing role here.

Said scene with Shepard kicks off a storyline involving a backwater cult (unfortunately resembling the one from UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT) that goes precisely nowhere. They send some goons after the family and are working with the government to no certain ends, but they are pretty much dumped by the wayside early on.

A lot of what transpires, what characters see and what is really real is left up to the viewer’s interpretation. What we see as an audience though, despite raising possibilities aplenty, tends to collapse under the weight of even the slightest intrusion of logic.

The emotions of Midnight Special are very real, and Jeff Nichols clearly isn’t quite ready to hand in his indie credentials yet, but is this destined to be anything beyond a curiosity? It provokes discussion points, feels oddball and moody and has a very distinctive aesthetic, but the way the plot hangs together and lack of commitment to a strong central idea makes the film less than the sum of its parts. People will talk about this one, but it might be more out of frustration than passion. SSP

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Review: Hush (2016)

Posted on April 25, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Hush (2016): Blumhouse Productions/Intrepid Pictures

Coming from Mike Flanagan, the director behind the striking, eerie, uneven OCULUS, HUSH tweaks existing horror movie formula to come up with an effective and tense little chiller.

Deaf writer Maddie (Kate Siegel) can’t decide on an ending for her second novel. As she waits for inspiration to hit her and settles in for a long night, a masked man wielding a crossbow (John Gallagher Jr) tries to gain entry to her isolated house…

From the outset sound and silence are emphasised. Noiseless production company logos transition straight into the clattering and sizzling of cooking and back to the void the deaf protagonist hears. Sound editing is sometimes a devalued branch of filmmaking, but here it is key for the drama and this department deserve particular notice for this movie.

They throw down the gauntlet early by commenting that Maddie can keep her readers from guessing the ending of her stories and that’s the least that this film should achieve. For the most part it succeeds in being unpredictable and the screenplay by Flanagan and Kate Siegel is dialogue-light and compelling. The expected beats of a home invasion/slasher horror over the decades are all in there somewhere but not necessarily in the place you’d expect and there are some good plot curve-balls and shocks thrown in for good measure. A clever sequence where Maddie plays the various fatal scenarios of her trying to escape in her head with her internal commentary at how bad an idea each is reminded me a lot (in a good way) of the multiple-choice horror game UNTIL DAWN from last year.

There’s a slasher movie mask early in, but it’s ditched pretty quick. Maddie isn’t being stalked by the uncanny or the vaguely supernatural but by one very human and seriously disturbed guy who enjoys playing with his prey as much as Maddie’s cat does. Kate Siegel is dignified and raw as Maddie, John Gallagher Jr terrifyingly removed from his nice-guy support worker in SHORT TERM 12.

There’s some nice ideas built around how this isn’t the ordinary battle of wits. The killer works out quickly how handicapped his victim is and exploits her almost sole reliance on sight by hiding just out of her field of vision and Maddie in turn must survive by her wits alone, distracting her opponent and using her highly attuned other senses to her advantage (she feels the vibrations of him moving on the floorboards above her hiding place and knows he’s behind her from his breath on her neck later on). It’s a creepy movie and also an eye-opening movie about abusive sickos who get even more of a kick out praying on the vulnerable. The scariest thing the film does is exploring how liberating Ease of Access technology can be for the disabled, but equally how crippling it can be to an individual once it is suddenly taken away again.

It becomes a real battle of the senses in the film’s final act when Maddie decides her only chance is to fight and to improvise with an interesting array of household objects. The horror movie “final girl” cliché is turned on its head as Maddie really starts and ends the film as the final girl. For much of the movie it’s a two-hander between her and her tormentor. The only real thing that changes is that she decides not to be the victim.

It probably wasn’t necessary to have Maddie’s backstory explained on the dust jacket of one of her books. Couldn’t she just be a character born deaf? Her would-be killer didn’t need a backstory so why did she?

The way sound is played with throughout is interesting and it would have been even more so, not to mention braver and bolder to do the whole thing as a silent movie. Even considering these niggles, Hush cements Mike Flanagan’s position as a horror director to watch and makes me hopeful the next script he works on stands out from the crowd as proudly as this one. SSP

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A Few Thoughts More: The Force Awakens

Posted on April 23, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015): Lucasfilm Ltd/Bad Robot Productions

This piece contains spoilers for THE FORCE AWAKENS, but if you care and haven’t seen it yet then where have you been? There’s also a reference to the twist in IRON MAN 3, just FYI.

I’ve seen the seventh STAR WARS film four times now and, five months on, what I said in my original review from December for me still broadly holds true.

All the references to the previous entries in the saga and the love of the craft shown in every scene makes this an entertaining Star Wars movie. Despite annoyingly repeating the same flying-into-something-to-blow-it-up finale, it’s the chemistry between, and soul behind characters old and especially new makes this a good movie all-round.

What makes The Force Awakens such an interesting film is arguably as much the questions it doesn’t answer as those it does. JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan sure know how to leave you dangling, but they also make you yearn to find out more over the course of another adventure.

The big questions from the fandom seem to be threefold: 1. Who is Rey? 2. Who is Snoke? 3. Why did Luke leave?

As to the first question a popular fan theory points to Rey being Obi-wan’s granddaughter. I think it would be too obvious for her to be another Skywalker, although Leia does seem to give her a subtext-heavy hug during the film’s finale. I could buy the Obi-wan theory as there are references to him throughout the film (notably Rey’s Force vision), their behaviour is similar and despite being a celibate Jedi, Kenobi was in exile on Tatooine for years. I do have to wonder if Rey really has to be related to any original series character. Couldn’t she just be Rey, who is who she is purely because she is strong off of her own back, abandoned in the wasteland by unloving, unready and unknown parents? The Force might be more likely to manifest in families strong with it, but as far as we can gather (just look at Anakin) things can just happen. The Force works in mysterious ways…

Next, who or what is Snoke? Fan theories have ranged from Palpatine’s supposedly murdered master Darth Plagueis (the top result on Google) to a resurrected Darth Vader (aparently they look like they share scars), but from what we’ve seen of him the answer may be far simpler. All we know is that he chooses to manifest as a giant hologram and can exert a lot of influence over others. Snoke may well be less than meets the eye. I think it would be a bold and interesting decision to reveal the new Emperor as a charlatan who’s just really good at manipulating his image. If this were the case it might annoy some viewers, but I loved the similar divisive twist in IRON MAN 3, so you can see the kind of brave plot turns I tend to appreciate.

Finally, why did Luke leave? This one is brought up by Han Solo aboard the Millennium Falcon. He says that Luke began training the next generation of Jedi until his nephew Ben/Kylo Ren turned to the dark side and destroyed all his good work. Then he vanished, said to be searching for the first Jedi temple in the far reaches of the galaxy. Was he trying to find the source of the Force or a means to turn Ben back to the light or was he simply ashamed and in need of solitude. When we finally see him being confronted by Rey holding out his old lightsaber, I would imagine he is feeling conflicted. Optimists might say Luke was just waiting for the next promising student to prove themselves by finding him, but it might just be that he never wanted to be found, that he self-imposed his exile like Yoda and Obi-wan did before him.

In addition we never find out how Kylo Ren got Vader’s helmet or how Maz Kanata got Luke’s lightsaber, whether Han committed suicide or if Ben was always going to murder his father or what the New Galactic Republic is doing as The Resistance fights its war against the ambiguously powerful First Order. I’m sure we’ll find the answers to some of these questions in sequels and others will perhaps be left open to interpretation. I hope that when they do come, the answers we do get are at least interesting, or at least not the most obvious options available. SSP

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Review: The Jungle Book (2016)

Posted on April 20, 2016 by Sam S-P
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One of these is not like the other: Walt Disney Pictures

Last year I asked on this very blog what Disney were playing at in remaking their animated back catalogue. I might have to eat my words soon because I’ve really liked most of this production cycle. MALEFICENT was reprehensible but CINDERELLA was well-appointed and now THE JUNGLE BOOK is the latest roaring success.

In a re-telling midway between Rudyard and Walt, Man-cub Mowgli (Neel Sethi) reluctantly leaves his jungle home guided by Bagheera the panther (Ben Kingsley) to rejoin his own kind after a threat from ferocious tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba). His journey will not be an easy one, his story will captivate generations to come.

What a cast director Jon Favreau has assembled. Newcomer Neel Sethi makes an intuitive and mischievous Mowgli and grounds the effects-heavy story well. The impressive voice talent includes a crooning Baloo (Bill Murray); Kingsley’s boarding school master Bagheera; Elba’s seething thug Shere Khan and King Louie by way of The Godfather (Christopher Walken). Kingsley’s honeyed and authoritative narration is the perfect glue for this story and both establishes the rules of this world and underlines the moral content in the most elegant manner possible.

The entirely CGI jungle (based on real-world photographic reference material) is photo-real, the animals and their interaction with Mowgli are totally convincing and always compelling. For all the fun, very real dangers are in evidence too – we witness first-hand how much destruction fire or the “red flower” as the animals call it causes and the fights between animals are about as brutal as you could get away with in a Disney film, cutting before you actually see mortal injuries even though you know exactly how much damage these teeth and claws are doing.

The classic songs are there at key moments, with Murray doing a fun rendition of “The Bare Necessities” as a lounge track and King Louie using “I wanna be like you” as an elaborate threat. Murray’s love of performing comes across, but Walken basically speak-sings his number (tweaked by Robert Sherman himself to somehow work Gigantopithecus into rhyme) allowing for little jazzy foot-tapping but ample opportunity for Walken to intimidate and impart some far more sinister implications. I would warn that the King Louie scene might be a little intense for your littlest ones, but elsewhere there are some decent jump scares to keep them lively. Stay through the credits for some nice musical surprises as well.

I like the idea of leaving the elephants as unknown elementals, respected and feared by most and appropriately deified for the story’s setting. I also liked that man remained an enigma and that when Mowgli finally finds his way back to his own kind he sees them just like the furrier inhabitants of the jungle do – horrific shapes silhouetted against fierce firelight. I never expected Baloo to come out with a politics joke for the parents and neither did I expect to find a reference to CASABLANCA here, but Baloo lying to Mowgli about his feelings to save him towards the end of the film is just what that key scene is.

It’s not perfect by any means. An innuendo-filled scene of Baloo and his jungle pals watching Mowgli do their dirty work feels a little cheap and I don’t really think Kaa (Scarlett Johansson) piling on exposition through “trust in me” hypnosis really works either – stylistically it doesn’t really match the rest of the film and it implies the serpent is a little too omnipotent.

The Jungle Book is a treat for all the family and should please fans of Disney’s iconic animation and Rudyard Kipling’s fables alike. Favreau’s film is visually splendorous, emotionally affecting and hugely entertaining throughout. If this is any indication of the quality of Disney’s future re-adaptations, their dominance of the film and entertainment industry will likely continue for a long while yet, and that might not be a bad thing. SSP

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Review: Victor Frankenstein (2015)

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Sam S-P
VictorFrankenstein

Victor Frankenstein (2015): Davis Entertainment Company/TSG Entertainment

I know you shouldn’t pre-judge, but I was preparing to get angry at VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN. I do try and avoid preconceptions, but Frankenstein feels very personal to me after dedicating an awful lot of time and effort to my MA dissertation on the numerous adaptations. Well now I’ve seen it – was I wrong to jump to conclusions? Not entirely.

The life of a hunchbacked clown (Daniel Radcliffe) is changed forever when he is rescued from the circus by Doctor Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy). Given physiotherapy, a name and a purpose in life, Igor uses his considerable surgical skills to facilitate his master’s experiments to create life from death…

I am so sick of “you know this story” as the lead-in to a reimagining. At the very least it’s condescending and seems specifically designed to justify telling a tale for the umpteenth time and pre-emptively thwart anyone criticising deviations from the source material.

As with most Frankenstein movies there are more references to the pre-war Universal series of films than there are to Mary Shelley. The Monster is brought to life with electricity, he has a flat head (“Why? / Because I like it!”), Henry Frankenstein from James Whale’s 1931 film is name-checked and Igor was not a character in any form before Bela Lugosi requested his creation for SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. OK they do drop “The Modern Prometheus” into dialogue, but this nod to the novel’s subtitle is about all that’s going for Shelley.

I will say Victor Frankenstein has incredible production design. The sets, costumes, hair and makeup, gears and mechanisms fell lived-in, grimy and gothic. Speaking of hair, I would love to know Igor’s trick to get his locks so perfect and glossy using only a cutthroat razor and a bar of soap. Igor’s imagining Da Vinci-esque anatomy diagrams over living, breathing things is a neat and well-visualised idea and the scenes of what passed for surgery in the Victorian era are shudder-inducingly convincing as well. They didn’t have that many sophisticated methods in the 1800s, but the techniques available were at once brilliant, harsh and cruel.

James McAvoy is wonderful as Frankenstein, a raving, conniving charlatan who only succeeds because of the brilliance of his assistant. It may be an unfaithful depiction of Shelley’s layered and guilt-ridden dreamer but it’s certainly an entertaining character. I wouldn’t give up him shouting about “babies in vats” at a high society function for any amount of nuance. Elsewhere, Radcliffe is just OK as our mistreated genius and there really isn’t much of anything to Andrew Scott’s zealous policeman or  Igor’s would-be love interest Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay).

Scott’s Inspector Turpin is monumentally thick. Though he might not recognise the now straight-backed fugitive Igor just from a rough sketched wanted poster, he somehow still struggles to find Frankenstein, a well-known lecturer and surgeon with a daily routine even after he put on a very public demonstration that went awry. He just asks Igor again, “Get me Frankenstein” and duly he does. Another minor detail, he calls him “Mr Frankenstein” and I don’t think even the most inept and god-fearing cop would ignore a suspect’s title in the interview process.

The issue here is that the filmmakers claim to want to tell the story of Frankenstein’s under-appreciated assistant, a self-aware sideways glance on Shelley’s tale, but writer Max Landis can’t fight the temptation to tell the same old story. Victor Frankenstein is fine when it’s exploring new avenues (the colourful circus opener and Igor finding a new life for himself are the strongest elements) but when it returns to Shelley or Universal Horror it becomes quite tedious. Shelley’s themes aren’t explored in any great depth, it’s not compelling and The Monster (Spencer Wilding) itself only appears for the last set piece of the film and there only as a brute to throw his creators around for five minutes. I don’t have an issue with it not being Shelley’s verbose and conniving creature, (only Robert De Niro and Rory Kinnear have really played the character from the page so far) but if it’s going to be silent and animalistic it’s got to be in some way sympathetic as well – that’s why Boris Karloff’s pitiful child-monster worked.

A talented production design crew and McAvoy thoroughly enjoying putting the “mad” back in mad scientist are not enough to recommend Victor Frankenstein. At the very least it had to be different, but instead of focussing on the promised and potentially interesting growth of Igor as a character it gets stuck with flogging an inferior Shelley/Universal Horror homunculus. SSP

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