Blade Runner & Inception: “Questions, yes?”

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Sam S-P

This piece contains spoilers for BLADE RUNNER and INCEPTION.

Two of the most iconic Science Fiction films of all time, two distinctive and revolutionary directors putting their vision on screen, two of the biggest questions we as a species can ask ourselves. Blade Runner. Ridley Scott. Inception. Christopher Nolan. What does it mean to be human? What is reality? Audiences have their own queries over the layered plots and characters as well, and the debate over these can be heated. You just have to ask the right questions. Here’s my take on the most persistent unanswered questions of these movies.

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Blade Runner (1982/2007): Warner Bros

BLADE RUNNER (1982/2007) Mr Director’s Cut’s most frequently tweaked work got a cinematic re-release last year in its supposedly definitive form. THE FINAL CUT, as with all versions of this quintessential sci-fi-noir, provokes as much debate as ever. Ridley Scott’s vision of the future may not have come to pass quite yet, but a world controlled by China and Coca Cola is an amusingly spot-on prediction of what the mainstream film industry looks like today. We may not yet be living in Chinese-American hybrid cities, but ever-increasing globalisation and the increasing prominence of territories like China and South Korea to anyone producing forms of entertainment makes it seem like we can’t be that far off. It’s a world so rich and full of subtleties that you’ll never run out of things to spot when watching it again. Aside from the central ideas of advanced robotics, free will, immortality, memory, what is the soul?, there are references to globalisation and the dissolution of nations, off-world colonisation, designer fabrication of animals and human organs. You might groan at the thought, but it’s no wonder there’s a sequel in the works – there’s so much to explore!

Of course the area of debate has always been is Deckard (Harrison Ford) a Replicant? Of course he is – Ridley Scott has confirmed it. What I found odd after seeing the Final Cut again is that nobody seems to be asking whether Edward James Olmos’ character Gaff is also a Replicant. Deckard has a recurring dream featuring a unicorn, Gaff makes origami animals and leaves a little foil unicorn outside Deckard’s apartment at the end of the film. Gaff knows even if Deckard doesn’t what he is. It’s established with Rachel’s (Sean Young) revelation of her own origins that memories can be implanted to convince a Replicant of their humanity (which could easily have happened to Deckard as it did Rachel), but nothing is specifically mentioned about dreams. How would Gaff know about a specific Replicant fantasy unless he’d also seen it? Is it a known Replicant identifier or was it Gaff’s own dream that he thought Deckard might have shared? I might be going up a blind alley here, but I do find it odd that Gaff’s origins aren’t as closely scrutinised as Deckard’s.

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Inception (2010): Warner Bros

INCEPTION (2010) It may be a spring chicken compared to granddaddy Blade Runner, but ever since it hit our screens five years ago, Christopher Nolan’s dream heist extravaganza has (quiet intentionally) left a lot unanswered. We have a vague idea that this near-future is dominated by big manufacturing companies, that espionage facilitated by military grade dream-training technology is a huge threat to anyone with power and influence. We know Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a wanted man in exile, fled from the USA and his family after his wife died in suspicious circumstances. He is a seasoned dream “extractor”, he has been digging through many people’s minds including his own very messy one, but the key argument that still rages among fans is “from what point is he dreaming?” The most common theory seems to be that Cobb is dreaming from the point when he tests the potent sedative in the room of ailing patients. While regaining his composure he knocks his spinning top totem to the floor and therefore never finds out for certain if he has woken up. I certainly buy this, that he is certainly still dreaming at this point, but I think we can go deeper still (yes I’m thinking of that meme as well).

When Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) explains to Ariadne (Ellen Page) the importance of having a unique totem – a small item only you would recognise the feel and weight of to check if you are dreaming – Ariadne asks to have a closer look at Arthur’s totem, a loaded dice, to which he responds amused “That would defeat the point”. Only the dreamer should know their totem and only the totem’s owner can use it effectively. Cobb constantly uses his spinning top to check that reality is reality, as any experienced extractor would. The problem with this train of thought is, if we take into account Cobb’s explanation to Ariadne later, his spinning top was once Mal’s (Marion Cotillard). He kept it as a memento, a constant painful reminder, of when his dear wife committed suicide in an effort to “wake up”. So if he is using someone else’s totem, no matter how close to her he was, how could he use it to accurately judge what is real? His tool is flawed and so is the conclusion he is drawing from it, so I don’t actually think anything he is going through is actually happening. The film from start to finish is an illusion and Mal was right – Cobb is dreaming and he doesn’t know it. At least, that’s my take. SSP

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Review: The Hallow (2015)

Posted on May 28, 2016 by Sam S-P
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The Hallow (2015): Fantastic Films/Occupant Entertainment

Folkloric horror is perhaps the most fascinating and rich sub-category of film’s best-trodden and most mutable genre. Every culture on Earth has their own legends, fables, superstitions and things that go bump in the night ingrained, and film has mined that for decades as inspiration for everything from THE WICKER MAN to JU-ON and KRAMPUS. Ireland boasts perhaps my favourite examples of cultural folklore that I’ve previously mostly encountered through animation, and through HELLBOY, and it is this that writer-director Corin Hardy expertly and ingeniously appropriates for THE HALLOW, a horror with a distinctive atmosphere and effective scares.

Following a move to the Irish countryside for work and a new life, a couple (Joseph Mawle and Bojana Novakovic) soon find themselves beset on all sides by The Hallow – the forest’s original denizens will not stop until the invaders are no more. Adam and Claire must fight for their lives and the life of their young baby, who these not-so-nice fairy folk seem to have taken a liking to, all the while one parent is not quite acting themselves…

You can tell that Hardy has a background in set design. Everything you see from makeup to animatronics and set dressing is as real as possible, designed specifically to stand up to close scrutiny. His production design team can be very proud of making such a small film look so much more expensive. The only times the cracks show is where the perfectly serviceable practical effects are enhanced with CGI, but these shots are thankfully few and far between.

The creatures who torment our heroes, the titular Hallow, are a chilling creation. Elemental, relentless and disturbingly trapped between what is recognisable in nature and something that looks and feels very wrong. As always, clever use of shadowy environments and performers in suits leave a much bigger impression than more showy special effects ever could. Joseph Mawle throws himself fully into his role as Adam, and his slow but sure corruption by the parasitic arm of the Hallow, is impressively realised with stages of makeup and a steadily more manic and unpredictable performance. It is this jeopardy, that we don’t know for around half the film’s runtime whether Adam is really Adam, that gives Bojana Novakovic’s tender, instinctual performance as Claire its heart and its real impact.

It’s the human emotion that carries this, as all good films. It’s an economical scary story, but the scares are more implied for the film’s first half. Much like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, we care about this family and want them to settle and to survive, and it is this concern more than any amount of disturbing imagery that frightens us the most. The disturbing imagery does come thick and fast too when the plot gets moving (there’s some baby…things that are just horrible), the effects stand up and there’s refreshingly few jump scares thrown at us. It’s a creeping, nagging dread we’re subject to more than short, sharp shocks.

Hardy has also brought a story complete with an important and timeless moral. The primary aim of the film may be to scare the bejesus out of us, but if we could also look after the environment and stop interfering with nature as well, then that would be grand. Irish folklore is all about balance and about responsibility to our planet. Anyone who lacks respect for nature better beware its protectors who have been part of it for far longer than you have.

What would horror movies do without characters using flash cameras to see their way through the dark? The Hallow does occasionally lean on cliché and some genre tropes – arrogant city couple ignoring local warnings; isolated location far from any help – have been seen countless times before. But with a bold message, rooting this story definitively in a tangible place rich in lore and the real, lived-in design of its visuals and sound makes The Hallow stand out from many of its creepy contemporaries. SSP

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Fargo Season 2: Tall Tale Made in Weirdness

Posted on May 24, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Fargo (2015): MGM/FX

The following piece contains spoilers for Season 2 of FARGO.

The first season of the TV companion piece to the Coen Brothers’ classic movie had me completely and utterly hooked. I felt sure no-one could hope to measure up to the Two Headed Director’s finest feature. Then along came a stunning television anthology by Noah Hawley that built on the film’s themes and rented the character archetypes, but told an entirely new story set twenty years later. The second season pulls much the same trick as the first, relocating the action to thirty years before Season 1 and ten before the film, but rather than another morally murky noir, this time it’s a no holds barred gangster epic.

Season 2 of Fargo continues to move well, treading lightly and building slowly with rushes of extreme violence and even extremer acts of (barely) human monstrosity. The character work is smart and nuanced and the performances are universally excellent, particularly from Kirsten Dunst in a career-best turn. The show and the talented artists getting it out there take time with constructing beautiful visuals to compliment the action as well, with numerous still winter vistas and pristinely framed interiors throughout. With all this, plus a distinctive editing style and keen weaving of gender politics and representation of some very different ideas of what it means to be an American family at the back end of the 1970s, they were always on to a winner.

What really makes the second of Fargo though doesn’t become clear until the final two episodes. Officer Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson) rushes to rescue his murder suspects (Dunst and Jesse Plemons) from a risky tri-state police operation to lure the Gerhardt crime family out into the open. Their plan works – the Gerhardts come armed to the teeth for Peggy and Ed thinking they are responsible for the death of two of their own (they’re half right) and proceed to massacre the lawmen protecting them. In the chaos, Lou comes close to being killed by man-mountain Bear Gerhardt (Angus Sampson) until something distracts both of them. Would you believe me if I said it was a flying saucer? If you don’t, then you should, because that’s exactly what it is hanging over their heads. What the Fargo, right?

The Coen Brothers famously claimed “This is a true story” before the main title of their movie, such is the fashion for biopics and true-crime dramas. Many of the film’s viewers even bought it for a while – their tale was so bizarre yet grounded and unromantic it could only be real. This belief was the whole premise of the flawed but interesting indie KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER after all. The thing is, not a word of it wasn’t made up. Fargo the series has adopted the same tag, and throughout year 2 the concept of what is real and what isn’t has been toyed with. We’ve had constant references to odd goings on, hints that something is out of the ordinary in episode after episode, always slightly out of reach or beyond our field of view. Martin Freeman narrates Episode 9 as an informative and authoritative look through real crime records, though he constantly reiterates that they will never have all the facts. With that in mind, that Fargo is admitting to being strange fiction masquerading as strange fact, why not sprinkle UFO references throughout your show and have a actual convenient flying saucer turn up to save one of the lead characters?

No film, not even documentary features can claim to be showing you the absolute truth, only a version of it. As a medium, film is made in the editing process so what we see is always second-hand and always heavily manipulated to the filmmaker’s whims. Now Fargo and its creative team have come out and admitted through long-form storytelling they are using the trappings of truth to tell increasingly extravagant lies, they are liberated, free to comment on the contradictions of true-crime tales on film and do whatever they like in the show’s future. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and fiction masquerading as truth can be stranger and more enlightening than either. SSP

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Review: X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Posted on May 22, 2016 by Sam S-P
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X-Men: Apocalypse (2016): Fox/Bad Hat Harry

Well, as superhero movies go it’s certainly better than BATMAN V SUPERMAN. This time they try out a bit of self-aware humour when Xavier’s new students come out of seeing RETURN OF THE JEDI agreeing that “the third one is always the worst”. This was probably intended as a belated apology for LAST STAND but could equally apply just as well here – X-MEN: APOCALYPSE is the scrappiest and least successful of the mutant prequel trilogy.

When the first mutant Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) awkakens after a long enforced hibernation and seeks to bring about the end of the world, only Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and his burgeoning team of X-Men stand in his way. The X-ranks may have grown to include psychic Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), concussive blaster Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and teleporter Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) but Apocalypse has indoctrinated four powerful followers to go up against the X-Men as well, most prominently a certain Master of Magnetism (Michael Fassbender).

As ensembles go, it’s another impressive but wonky one where not everyone gets their moment to shine. McAvoy is still the series MVP as a Professor X with more humour and more pain to his portrayal and Sheridan is a fine new addition as an uppity Cyclops with endearingly awkward chemistry with Turner. Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult have clearly had words with their agents and ended up with less time in blue. In their place, Smit-McPhee is on full blue duty as a jollier, more mischievous take on Nightcrawler. Apocalypse’s multiple powers have near-unlimited scope and yet somehow he doesn’t feel all that threatening, interesting or comprehensible a character despite Isaac’s best efforts behind the makeup. Fassbender gets the thankless task of floating and staring dreamily into the middle distance for much of the film’s final act and the other horsemen do little more than stand around and scowl (Olivia Munn’s Psylocke might get a couple of lines and opportunity to swing her energy blade around but still essentially functions as window dressing straight from the comics).

We get another inventive Quicksilver (Evan Peters) high-speed action sequence that’s bigger, funnier but somehow less satisfying than the kitchen scene in DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (maybe they picked the wrong song?) plus a trippy psychic battle between Professor X and Apocalypse, but elsewhere the spectacle left me cold, even bored. There’s only so much time you can watch sand cyclone and buildings tear apart and reform in Egypt before you get horrible TRANSFORMERS 2 PTSD flashbacks. The fight scenes are incomprehensibly edited and pretty basic in terms of choreography and we don’t really get a sense of the X-Men working as a team until just before the cut to black at the end. At one point some of our heroes are taken to a key location from an earlier film that adds nothing to the story, only a pretty violent stop-off and fanservice.

A lot of the material is doom-laden, relying on us as an audience realising that Apocalypse destroying everything would be a bad thing (but still requiring exposition dumps from guys in suits) but mercifully there are some chucklesome gags as well. These come from Xavier’s cringe-worthy belated reunion with old flame Moira Mactaggert (Rose Byrne), Cyclops’ uncontrollable destructive power in the midst of an idyllic place of learning and a strategically placed F-bomb. Other moments I think we were meant to take seriously, chiefly Magneto’s attempt to settle down as a steelworker in the Polish countryside (really) are difficult to keep a straight face at.

As patchy as the X-Men series has been over the last 16 years, when I hear that John Ottman theme build and the titles shoot forth (usually along DNA strands, this time through time itself) I still can’t help but get chills. I love the X-Men and all they represent, but even I am getting a little weary at this stage. Yes it’s nice to see a proper X-Men team, looking as they should, by the end credits, but it’s been a long old slog to get to that moment. Bryan Singer could have probably done with half the cast, a good polish on Simon Kinberg’s screenplay and more coherency of character and plot as a whole and it might have resulted in something that’s more than sporadically entertaining. SSP

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Review: Trainwreck (2015)

Posted on May 19, 2016 by Sam S-P
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Trainwreck (2015): Apatow Productions

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but Amy Schumer is a formidable comedian. It’s a real backward-looking shame the marketing team for TRAINWRECK felt they had to both promote it as a Judd Apatow project (he directs, but was not responsible for the concept or screenplay) and jumped straight to comparing it to BRIDESMAIDS (the perceived go-to funny women movie). This is unquestionably Schumer’s show. It’s not even “one for the girls” (and I almost wretch using that phrase) but should make anybody who doesn’t have a problem with dirty humour guffaw until their sides hurt at a relentless stream of gags just as filthy as anything Apatow or any of his frequent collaborators penned themselves.

Lifestyle magazine columnist Amy (Amy Schumer) has a problem with men. She meets and beds plenty of fellas on wild nights out, but avoids commitment like the plague. She is content enough with her lifestyle choices, taking little responsibility for herself but happy to care for her ailing father (Colin Quinn) as her younger sister (Brie Larson) settles down to a cosy family life. But then a chance meeting with a sports doctor (Bill Hader) shifts her perspective on life irrevocably. 

Roughly half of the film presents itself as a sort of anti-rom-com, with Amy dodging out of the way of love with gusto. She didn’t have the best role model growing up in an unfaithful dad (seen in a really dark doll-based opening flashback) and therefore forms her strong and flawed attitude to relationships early. The film’s second half loses its straightforwardness and honesty and reverts to formula to an extent as Amy finally falls for a man as much as he falls for her. The film never loses the feelgood factor though and it has a killer final set piece.

What a glorious personality Amy is – she may be crass with a warped idea of healthy relationships, but she’s a good person at heart and an endearing character to spend time with. Schumer not only delivers the laughs in abundance (sometimes with a line or a pratfall, often with a look) but also shows her dramatic range, drawing on her real-life experiences in Amy’s far more emotionally raw moments later on. John Hader makes a good straight man to Amy as well as taking his character on not quite the expected route for the love interest. Strong support also comes from Brie Larson as Amy’s younger but maturer sister and a terrifyingly dolled-up Tilda Swinton as Amy’s vile boss. Before this movie I had no idea who John Cena was. He’s great in this though, and has since proven himself to have natural comic timing in addition to his willingness to poke fun at himself. Cena’s unintentionally homoerotic, rapidly escalating argument in a cinema is hands-down the funniest scene of 2015.

I don’t follow American sports or sports stars. I’m sure there are references and in-jokes I missed because of this (something Schumer, who I think is a massive sports fan in contrast to the character she plays doubtless intended). Even I know who Lebron James is though, and he turns out to be a really good comic actor too – who knew?

Through Apatow wasn’t the creative driving force, like most of the films he has directed Trainwreck does suffer from Overlong Comedy Syndrome. But because Apatow stepped back and Schumer is playing her A-game, the humour and heart stay with it throughout, despite it running out of steam towards the end. You don’t object to spending more time with Amy and the jokes never stop coming, but once she’s started to confront her problems in earnest further diversions become slightly annoying. This is a minor criticism and nothing that should put you off watching one of finest, filthiest and least vain comedies in years. Following Trainwreck Amy Schumer should have her pick of projects – she is not someone to be underestimated. SSP

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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
civil war

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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