Review: Carol (2015)

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Sam S-P

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When the awards come for CAROL, and come they will, it’ll be impossible (and unfair) to split Blanchett and Mara. One cannot exist without the other – the reason both actors work so well on screen how skillfully they play off of each other’s performances, how sensitively they covey Carol and Therese’s love. I doubt we’ll see joint Oscars, but you can hope.

When Therese (Rooney Mara), a shop assistant with artistic aspirations encounters elegant older socialite Carol (Cate Blanchett), the spark between them is instantaneous. Both have had disappointing relationships with men and live in an era where women are still shackled and homosexuals reviled and feared. How will they keep their love a secret as they embark on a romantic road trip and with the odds so stacked against them can such a relationship ever hope to survive?

I don’t remember the last time I saw a more convincing romance on screen. As far as I could tell, that was real love in Mara’s eyes! The very deliberate ways our two leads are introduced makes the incredible contrast between their personalities, social class and background incredibly stark. Therese wakes in a moldy urban flat that is so cold she has to turn on the oven in the morning to keep from freezing. Carol breezes through the toy shop Therese (awkwardly wearing enforced Santa hat) works at all glamour – fur coat, controlled posture, seemingly complete confidence in who she is and the quality of life she is used to. You have the grounded, more rounded person and her otherworldly opposite who has far more life experience but many more issues as well. Opposites attract and all that. The pair’s relationship heats up quickly following their cute and seemingly innocent first encounter, and before you know it these women from different worlds are fully indulging in their passion for one another. Mara and Blanchett are perfect as our beleaguered lovers and you want their relationship to work despite knowing in our hearts that it this will be near-impossible living in the time and place that they do.

Tasteful as the love scenes in Carol are, there is so much fabric porn in this movie! It’s a touching romance between two people, sure, but lovers of fashion and the materials to make fashion are extremely well-served as well. You’re almost too distracted by indulgent fabrics at a key character moment when Therese paws  over her beloved’s elegant outfits while she is out of the room. Even when they are apart, they absolutely must have some form of connection through the senses to survive.

The heartfelt screenplay and gutsy performances envelop you with the help of Carter Burwell’s shamelessly romantic soaring score. The film has a very classical Golden Age of Hollywood feeling in general and this certainly feels like a novel that would have been adapted much earlier were it not for the sexuality of the lead characters. The pacing in measured, the plot upsets and heartbreak comes just about where you’d expect it, but when you’re spending time with such a lovely couple you don’t begrudge Carol’s old-fashioned construction.

The off-screen/page story behind Carol is almost as compelling as the script Phyllis Nagy adapted from the page. Semi-autobiographical and published as THE PRICE OF SALT by Patricia Highsmith (under an alias to avoid scandal), you can only imagine the artistic and moral quandary the author was under in getting this particular work out there. She wanted to tell the truth about how two women can feel for each other but feared being branded obscene, ruining her reputation and destroying her career if she put her own name to it.

I love stories of affairs of the heart that are left unresolved, just like they usually are in real life. Director Todd Haynes leaves our lovers on an ambiguous but positive note. At least I like to read the film’s final shot – Carol giving Therese a knowing look from across a crowded room – as positive. Considering the time of year it’s set and theme of love conquering all, this could become a festive staple, that is if you don’t mind not quite knowing whether you feel uplifted or downbeat when the credits roll and you’re about to tuck in to your Christmas lunch. SSP

 

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Review: Turbo Kid (2015)

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Sam S-P

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Future cult classic alert! It takes an incredibly delicate touch to zip back and forth between a wholesome tale of friendship and the most exaggerated ultraviolence imaginable and have it work in harmony. TURBO KID is a bit of a marvel in that regard and is unquestionably the best BMX-based post-apocalypse movie you’re likely to see.

In the future, society has broken down and scavengers and raiders roam the wasteland on bikes (not the noisy kind). A kid (Munro Chambers) with a tragic past and a love of superheroes meets a strange girl (Laurence Leboeuf) in the wilderness and gets drawn into a battle against a tyrant (Michael Ironside). Only his super-suit and his trusted BMX can save him and free everyone else.

Apple is my joint-favourite movie character of 2015, tied with her (mild spoiler) fellow robot Ava from EX MACHINA. She’s the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl, only more deranged and with dreams of her own and a real arc to her story. She conforms to that much-criticised archetype to begin with, then Laurence Leboeuf smashes through the limitations of the character with a raw and heartfelt performance. This, combined with the earnestness of Munro Chambers’ Turbo Kid and the chemistry they have together throughout their journey helps make this story an endearing and memorable one.

It’s nice to see Michael Ironside having fun again too. All too often in recent years has he been stuck with uninspired roles playing the general in everything. He seems to have remembered that he can do a whole lot more than look sternly at computer screens. Yes, he’s playing an authority figure again here, but he gets to be a proper maniacal bastard, and his glee (and an Ironside smile is terrifying) at watching the carnage he orders unfold in front of him is palpable.

The film is a great advert for transnational filmmaking: independent film studios from Canada and New Zealand, an international cast and some production design and effects wizards who clearly deserve more widespread recognition all working in unison to produce a very satisfying whole. We’ve seen Hollywood directors (Tarantino, Scorsese) offering their patronage to independent filmmakers and lesser-known foreign auteurs before, but it’s also good to see smaller studios banding together to get their products out their under their own esteem.

Too often with sci-fi movies the effects get in the way of the ideas. Sometimes even if the ideas remain the focus they aren’t enough to make up for an uninspiring plotting and characters. Gratifyingly, the makers of Turbo Kid (writer-directors François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell) know that a compelling story starts with great characters. They don’t have to be especially complex, but they have to be well-defined and with clear motivations. It’s absolutely key that the characters here are strong and that it doesn’t take itself remotely seriously beyond making sure the central relationship works. If this aspect of Turbo Kid’s writing and performance fell flat there wouldn’t be a whole lot to fall back on because the budget is only one step removed from cardboard sets and shop-bought kids’ Halloween costumes and the filmmakers can only just afford to utilise a single quarry location.

If I’m honest, when I saw Turbo Kid advertised I expected passable schlock. Schlock is delivered in spades from the copious blood-splatter and dismemberment to the unashamedly B-movie dialogue and hammy performances. But gratifyingly overall it turns out to be a pulpy treat that overcomes its budgetary limitations and low-brow trappings with verve, intelligence and a can-do attitude. More like this please and the film landscape might become a better place. SSP

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Review: Creed (2015)

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Sam S-P

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Astoundingly, CREED works equally well as a continuation of the ROCKY series and as a film in its own right. You might have expected one or the other, but it is an impressive balancing act to have it deliver as both. Sylvester Stallone has stepped back from his baby and allowed Ryan Coogler to tell the story he wants to tell much to the film’s benefit.

Adonis Johnson’s (Michael B. Jordan) life has not been easy. He never knew his parents and has always been a fighter so spent his early years between care homes and in and out of juvenile detention centres. When he learns he is the offspring of late boxing icon Apollo Creed, he seeks out Creed’s former rival and friend Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) for training. Will Adonis choose his own path or will he proudly adopt his father’s monicker and prove worthy of it?

The fights in Creed make those found in every previous Rocky movie look amateurish in comparison. They’re fast, frenetic and crisply edited to marry with the rhythm of Ludwig Göransson’s thumping score and you’re never in doubt for a moment that it is really the actors putting in the hard work. The shape Michael B. Jordan is in, his sheer physicality and the raw emotion he pumps into every punch and moment of anguish is truly enviable.

Creed works for many of the same reasons that the original Rocky did. It’s another grounded story about a nobody in a bad place in his life becoming a somebody. Whereas Rocky was a street kid stuck in a soul-destroying rut of amateur boxing with a sideline as a thug for hire, Donny comes from money by the virtue of being his famous father’s son, but is desperate to make his own name off his own back and become a contender. He has talent and puts his all into every bout, but without the name this matters not one not to boxing promoters (his opponent’s coach threatens to call off the final high-stakes fight if Donny doesn’t change his name to Creed). Despite addressing similar themes, these touches allow for an interesting class contrast between the two movies and for barbed criticism of the all-consuming publicity concerns of major sporting events.

Donny is a great character, trapped in the social care system as a child and by his father’s legacy as an adult, with an ever-present and unquenchable thirst to prove himself. Michael B. Jordan proves that FANTASTIC FOUR was an unfortunate fluke and he embodies likability and movie star charisma throughout. He and Coogler proved to be a winning combination in the harrowing FRUITVALE STATION and you certainly hope for further hard-hitting collaborations in the future. Tessa Thompson grows beyond the love interest role with dreams and life challenges of her own as Bianca and Stallone despite stepping back to an extent turns in one of the performances of his career – tender, mature and honest.

One of my pet peeves in Hollywood movies is incessant captions accompanying a location change. One Philadelphia, PA or Liverpool, England is fine, but we really don’t need it every time we fly across the Atlantic – I think most people will be able to tell the difference between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Liver Building. I also think the film could do with a slightly different ending to Rocky. There’s doing a nod to what has come before and then there’s producing an outright carbon copy.

Despite occasional flurries of repetition, Creed manages to jolt an outdated and outmoded franchise to life once more and succeeds in being its own thing. Much like Adonis, the film escapes the shadow of its forebear. Should it have received awards recognition for something other than Stallone’s showy and poignant turn? Absolutely it should. But there’s time aplenty yet for Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan as their already vibrant careers are only just beginning. SSP

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Review: Until Dawn (2015)

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Sam S-P

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I haven’t done one of these in a while, but then again it’s been a while since I’ve played a video game with enough comparable elements to review it as I would a film. UNTIL DAWN is an absolute treat for horror fans. Who wouldn’t want the chance to influence the shape of a horror story as they take part in it?

The characters are all horror stock archetypes to an extent – the prom queen, the jock, the bitch – but all have a little something extra about them, and the decisions they make (and there are many multiple paths) all feel right for the characters. The motion-captured performances coming from among others HEROES’ Hayden Panettiere and bad guy extraordinaire Peter Stormare are pretty solid, and ever-so-slightly-uncanny eyes aside, the technology for realising convincing humans in video games is getting there. I don’t really think we needed their personalities to be summed up with three adjectives pinned to the screen when they are first introduced since we, ya’know, spend a lot of time with them to discover how they behave for ourselves, but it’s a minor misstep.

Even if you’re well-versed in horror enough to spot the many many references to specific examples of the genre, you should still be drawn in. There are nods to everything from SAW to HALLOWEEN and EVIL DEAD, but they’re not explicit steals, and a lot of these recognisable moments have been cleverly tweaked. The main story – following the aftermath of a tragic accident in a mountainside holiday lodge in Canada – borrows from tropes of teen slasher and asylum horror and later supernatural and folkloric horror as well, making for an entertaining scare concoction.

You can play Until Dawn in a meta and self-aware fashion to an extent, but the game does understandably make the characters go down certain paths as we wouldn’t have a plot without characters making stupid horror movie character decisions. So basically you’ve got the choice of making stupid horror movie character decisions or really stupid horror movie character decisions. It’s not always obvious which is which and you often have to choose fast. I was kicking myself after making my favourite character survive until the final act only to lose them after making them do something no sane person would do in their situation on my first playthrough. Second time round I managed to cut the death toll from five to three, so I must be doing something right!

There’s also plenty of SCOOBY DOO-style sleuthing and improbable (yet entertaining) dialogue to go with it. We don’t quite get “jinkies” but we do get a “holy cannoli” in response to a shocking revelation. It’s probably not advisable to dwell on the dialogue too much, but the characters are fit for purpose.

I can certainly see myself playing through the game (which amounts to seven or eight hours) again to get a few more of these guys through their waking nightmare. I can also see co-writers Larry Fessenden (who also stars) and Graham Reznick (who also worked in the sound department) do more of these. Whether they will continue this particular tale and make use of however many characters survived your actions (as they did with MASS EFFECT) or just apply similar mechanics to different horror sub-genres remains to be seen. I’d whole-heartedly recommend you experience Until Dawn yourself and see how much it compels and scares you. SSP

 

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Review: Room (2015)

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Sam S-P

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It’s been a long time since a film affected me to quite this extent. ROOM got to me on a primal level, it cut into my soul and left me a blubbering wreck coming out of the cinema. It isn’t so much the dark subject matter – kidnapping, children born into captivity, the difficulty of readjusting to a “normal” life – it’s the way writer Emma Donoghue and director Lenny Abrahamson treat this story. No matter how bleak things get, their takeaway is relentlessly positive.

For seven years, a woman (Brie Larson) has only known a tiny room. She has the luxury and the curse of memories of her life before her imprisonment, but her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) only knows Room. Luckily, Ma is clever and iron-willed, and after seizing their chance mother and son find themselves outside and ready to meet a much larger world.

This story could easily have been a rather depressing ordeal. Yes, it’s tragic that this young woman was taken and imprisoned against her will and that she had a child as a result of her rape. It’s sickening that a man kept her as his property for so long and that the child he fathered never knew anything beyond Room, his entire world. But Ma and Jack have each other and always will, they make the best of it and they dream of the stars.

I’ve always loved films exploring reality and humanity’s often warped concept of it. Ma was once an everyday girl with an everyday life before she took pity on a stranger and found herself trapped in his shed. She knows how wonderful the world can be but does not overburden her young son, dividing things into the “real” (things he can touch within Room) and the “unreal” (things on TV and the glimpse of sky and space they can see through their tiny skylight). Ma is determined to give Jack the best quality of life she can with the limited resources available to her. Just because you’re trapped in a single room doesn’t mean you can’t keep active and play. Jack’s concept of reality is of course a narrow one, but once he finally experiences the outside world he has some massive conceptual adjustments to make.

The entire film is from Jack’s wide-eyed, ever-wondering perspective. The first half is his world of Room in microcosm – he gives every object he knows a name and lives a repetitive, if happy, existence with his mother who tries to stay strong for him. In the second half of the film Jack’s world explodes outwards and he has to come to terms with an infinitely more complex, bewildering and beautiful outside.

As he demonstrated with FRANK, Lenny Abrahamson doesn’t pull his punches when it comes to talking about mental illness. Discussing it in too much depth would spoil a lot of the film’s moments of high drama, but suffice to say Ma isn’t the same person who went into Room, and her close self-introspection and heavy press intrusion nearly destroys her. We don’t see very much of her captor (Sean Bridgers), and we don’t get a rationale for his monstrous actions, but he’s clearly a very disturbed individual and also clearly very human.

Stylistically, Abrahamson doesn’t over-embellish. If you’ve got a script this soulful, themes so vivid and performances so exquisite, you don’t need to do anything showy to elevate the material. Jacob Tremblay is a revelation as Jack – natural, fizzing with energy and capable of conveying far more than his years might suggest in an expression or with his steady and frequently funny narration. Sorry, Cate Blanchett, but I think Brie Larson might have pipped you to the post for Best Actress. Larson’s performance is tender, unglamorous and the purest representation of unshakeable willpower.

Room is an experience, pure and simple. It’s emotionally rending but will leave you feeling uplifted in the best possible sense and taking in every little wonder in our very big world. Abrahamson, Donoghue, Larson, Tremblay and everyone involved in making this remarkable film have produced a tribute to the resilience of love and the importance of physical and emotional freedom that is nothing short of transcendent. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to cry myself to sleep to Stephen Rennicks’ painfully beautiful score drained but very thankful for my world beyond this room.  SSP

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Review: The Revenant (2015)

Posted on January 24, 2016 by Sam S-P

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I’m one of a rapidly shrinking camp that still thinks that BIRDMAN deserved to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards last year. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu is an iconoclast out to shake things up in Hollywood by being stylistically bold and making life very difficult for himself, his cast and his crew. I can’t dismiss the amount of work put into THE REVENANT, the commitment to reality to the extent that the cast fought very real hypothermia to come to terms with their characters’ struggles. What I can do is admit that for me, it didn’t quite work as a film.

Life was tough for early Nineteenth Century fur trappers. Living in the wilderness and battling the elements for months on end, their lives were unforgiving and a near-constant test of their endurance. In 1823 while leading a potentially lucrative expedition, experienced trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) found himself on the business end of a bear, and soon found himself abandoned by his party and fighting for his life. The film follows this struggle for survival and Glass’s drive to get his revenge on the man who betrayed him (Tom Hardy).

I am so sick of the “Noble Savage” representation of Native Americans. It’s slightly less offensive than the faceless barbarians portrayed in early Westerns, but it’s still incredibly patronising. Glass as our protagonist being a friend of the native and more in touch with nature than his associates are also tired conventions. Of course our hero is at one with nature, bending it but never breaking it. His spirit animal is probably an eagle.

Iñárritu’s direction, like with Birdman is showy and full of ambitious long-takes. Here I found this hugely irritating. The action scenes are nail-biting and gruesome, the life-saving bushcraft techniques explored fascinating, the human struggle very real. But did we need the camera to constantly float in mid-shot to one side of characters like a non-corporeal documentarian? It’s impressive to see the camera tracking through a battlefield rapidly switching focus as combatants are offed, but it’s not immersive and just brings you out of the story too much elsewhere.

The fantastical elements of the story and Glass’s tragic family history I found a little forced and unconvincing. I don’t get what the dream sequences were supposed to mean, and the real Glass didn’t have children. For this story the writers have decided this already remarkable man needed a deceased native American wife and mixed race son (Forrest Goodluck) to give him something to shoot for that isn’t carrying a valuable pelt on its back. Tom Hardy’s Fitzgerald almost comments directly on this when he admits fur trapping and getting paid for it encompasses his whole life.

Fitzgerald is meant to be a boo-hiss villain throughout, but considering the nightmarish extreme survival situation the characters find themselves in, I found myself agreeing 100% with his view that they should shoot Glass to put him out of his misery and be on their way. There is no room for a gentle touch in such a harsh environment, and you definitely would leave a man behind if it meant the difference between life and death for everyone else. It’s almost as though the writers realised halfway through that we had no rational reason to hate Fitzgerald, that he was the character that made the most sense, so they made him commit cartoonish atrocities to make him more despicable.

The much talked about bear attack scene looks a little out of place. It’s well done, but the effects still look slightly off compared to definitively real surrounding film. At first Glass quite wisely plays dead after his first tussle with tooth and claw, but he then proceeds to shoot the thing as it wanders back to its cubs, causing it to come back and finish the job! Think it through, Mr One-with-Nature.

Probably the most interesting thing about the film is its sound design. The first and last thing we hear over a black screen is Hugh Glass’s laboured breathing. The sounds of nature throughout the film are heightened to the point of discomfort – all to emphasise how unforgiving the natural world can be.

Should Leo win his Oscar? Probably. He should have already won one for THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, but the Academy doesn’t like endorsing people playing horrible, if fascinating, human beings. He grew his hair, he spent months in the cold and his performance has a genuine intensity. Should The Revenant win anything else? Probably not, as it works better as an experiment than as a story. SSP

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Review: Ted 2 (2015)

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Sam S-P

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It would be nice if TED 2 avoided the comedy sequel trap of doing the same thing again only bigger and less funny. It doesn’t. This is first-draft “that’ll do” comedy with recycled FAMILY GUY riffs to fill in the gaps. If a joke doesn’t get a laugh the first time it won’t the next three times either, which is something Seth MacFarlane consistently seems to fail to understand.

After helping to give his Thunder Buddy for Life John (Mark Wahlberg) his Happily Ever After, Ted (Seth MacFarlane) wants to move on with his own life by marrying his beloved Tami-Lynne (Jessica Barth). Ted hits a snag when he looks into adoption as the Supreme Court declares him, being a teddy bear who was wished to life by a child, not a real person, in doing so invalidating his rights. With the help of John and young Lawyer Samantha (Amanda Seyfried) Ted must convince his nation that he is just as human as them.

The opening credits scene is a spectacular number, but in practice ends up being a lesser version of MUPPETS MOST WANTED’s intro. Maybe Macfarlane should do the next Muppets outing or failing that a full-blown musical rather than another movie of this ilk.

With Mila Kunis’ Laurie written out of proceedings, there’s nothing to ground the story, no heart except for Tami-Lynn. Amanda Seyfried’s stoner lawyer is not an adequate replacement, and she’s really thinly drawn. By ditching Laurie and introducing a character more like John as a potential romance (a kind-of creepy one at that considering their age gap) the writers have completely backtracked on his arc in the first film. John has de-evolved as a character and is right back where he started. Ted’s journey to personhood isn’t enough to carry a story on its own when everyone around him and often he himself is so two-dimensional.

Giovanni Ribisi being super creepy as Donny is still the best thing about this story, and this time he’s got an amusingly Machiavellian Hasbro executive (John Carroll Lynch) and a terrible wig on his side. Donny even gets to reprise his best moment from the first film. You can’t blame MacFarlane and co. for getting Sam Jones back or one of the judges in BOSTON LEGAL on board for a scene either, but it’s a one-note gag that probably isn’t worth it in the long run.

I won’t say I never laughed, but it’s nowhere near as funny as last time. Liam Neeson’s stoney-faced supermarket cameo got a giggle, so did the slapstick Comic Con brawl at the end of the movie, and I still like Ted and John’s distasteful names for new batches of strong weed, but that’s about it. I always find it difficult to review comedies given that comedy is such a personal thing. For me, cruel and crude insults and out-of-place and half-baked references don’t make for memorable comedy.

What will Seth MacFarlane do next? His adult animated comedy series continue to be enduringly popular and he is a sought-after (though divisive) public speaker and occasional crooner. What he really seems to want to be is a real film director, and thus-far he seems to have hit a pretty solid wall in this aim. He’s good at concepts, good at the overview, but in guiding the ship and producing an end product that actually works he seems to stumble. MacFarlane perhaps needs to check his ego at the door next time and focus his talents on one aspect of the creative process – whether writing, producing, voicing myriad characters – rather than spreading himself this thin. I wouldn’t watch another TED movie, but I would pay to see if MacFarlane could direct an old-fashioned razzmatazz musical without including any toilet humour. SSP

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Review: The Hateful Eight (2015)

Posted on January 17, 2016 by Sam S-P
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The Hateful Eight (2015): Double Feature Films/FilmColony

With THE HATEFUL EIGHT Quentin Tarantino may well have invented a new sub-genre: the misdirection-Western. The mystery that is seemingly a key plot point from the second act onward is, in fact, pretty incidental. While this might disappoint some, the film is more about the slow-burn of eight character reveals, with sleight of hand, deception and glorious ultraviolence aplenty along the way.

When a group of strangers – bounty hunters, authority figures and ne’er do wells – take shelter from a blizzard in an isolated Wyoming cabin during the aftermath of the American Civil War, tensions soon ramp up and it becomes clear that just about everyone is not who they say they are. Who, if anyone, will survive the night with their lives, secrets and consciences intact?

Tarantino puts forward an interesting thesis on the American justice system. Thanks to the current negative public perception of what the police will resort to in order to “protect and serve” and their bias against certain segments of society, Marquis Warren’s (Samuel L. Jackson) fiery speech on the difficulties of being a black man in a divided country packs a real and uncomfortably topical punch. That said, Tarantino also seems to advocate capital punishment in some circumstances by the end of his film. There’s no reason why you can’t believe the truth of both of these opinions.

I don’t know enough about, or generally notice, a film’s aspect ratio to comment on whether it is clever used or not. The demanding technical requirements for presenting the film how its director wished may well have been the reason UK cinema chain Cineworld pulled it, or it could have been for pettier business reasons. What I do know is that this film looks amazing throughout. The stillness and the careful, almost obsessive, construction of wintery vistas and the oppressive prison that is the interior setting of the majority of the story may well make it Tarantino’s most beautiful film to date.

Both of Sam Jackson’s best performances over the last decade have been with Tarantino. In DJANGO UNCHAINED, he was a self-hating pro-slavery houseboy determined to hold on to his position of relative status, in his way the most despicable character in a film of despicable characters. Here, as Civil War veteran Major Marquis Warren, he is the Oscar-worthy heart, soul and mouthpiece of the film, brimming with fury and ever-ready with a deadpan retort. Almost as good as Jackson is Walton Goggins. Playing maybe-Sheriff Chris Mannix, he gets a lot of the funniest moments as the bigoted idiot among the Eight. The latest on Tarantino’s long list of career reinventions in Jennifer Jason Leigh who makes scene-stealing feral prisoner Daisy Domergue terrifying and funny in equal measure, wisely avoiding becoming a parody of the mentally ill. Tarantino’s slick-as-usual script gives everyone in the impressive ensemble their moment and every character multiple shades, ambiguities and contradictions.

Tarantino usually likes to launch straight in with a shock and a spatter of scarlet (or inky black if he’s shooting in black-and-white). The Hateful Eight is is measured, almost glacial in its pacing. Tarantino is taking his time and doesn’t care if you notice it. The first shot, of religious icon smothered in snow remains unbroken throughout the slow crawl of the opening credits accompanied by the primal build of Ennio Morricone’s score. Nothing much beyond introducing the characters actually happens before the first hour is through. Fret not though, everything kicks off in the film’s second half and, gratifyingly, you have no real idea which way the plot is heading.

The release of a new Quentin Tarantino film is always an event and it never takes long for the comparisons to begin. QT’s Eighth film (if you count the KILL BILL volumes as one) comes within a hair’s breadth of his 1990s heyday in ways that, for me, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and Django didn’t quite reach. As well as tearing into American injustices without mercy, it’s hugely entertaining and every stylistic quirk and plot twist or character blindside has a clear purpose for being there. Let us indulge Mr Tarantino for taking his time and leaving things unresolved for the sake of the impact of this story once it all gets going. SSP

 

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“Alas…he won’t be joining us for the rest of his life” (RIP Alan Rickman)

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Sam S-P

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January 2016 will go down as a cruel time for the arts. Just days after transcendent musician David Bowie passed away at 69 from cancer, character actor extraordinaire Alan Rickman has died at the same age from the same dreadful disease.

Comfortable on the stage or screen, in front or behind the camera, Rickman was versatile and wickedly talented. He made his feature film debut in DIE HARD and completely stole the show from Bruce Willis by portraying one of the all-time great movie villains. Despite being a pretty off-the-cuff performance (he was cast days before filming), Rickman as self-styled terrorist leader Hans Gruber was a pleasingly simple villain – charismatic, tailored, claiming to be fighting for a greater cause but in fact just in it for the money.

Rickman continued to play villains in Hollywood with ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES as a campy and wisecracking Sheriff of Nottingham who shared more than a little DNA with Rowan Atkinson in BLACKADDER II (leather, earring, codpiece, sneer) and a perverted Judge Turpin in SWEENEY TODD for over a decade later.

Rickman didn’t – despite his (inaccurate) scary public perception – just play villains. He had a leading man’s presence, distinctive looks and deep, drawling voice allowed him to show a different side as shy and tender Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee’s SENSE AND SENSIBILITY and again as Emma Thompson’s midlife crisis-suffering husband in LOVE ACTUALLY and he even indulged in a bit of knowing self-deprecation in stardom parody GALAXY QUEST.

No-one’s careers are without blemishes (voicing the Caterpillar in Tim Burton’s lumbering ALICE IN WONDERLAND and agreeing to appear in the risable GAMBIT remake sans clothing spring to mind) but Rickman always seemed to put his all into whatever he tried his hand at.

Rickman will  be synonymous with different roles depending on your age and your interests. For me, a 90s child, he will always be Severus Snape, the most interesting, entertaining and contradictory character in the HARRY POTTER franchise. Rickman’s unique cadence and upright physicality were easily mocked, but perfect for portraying the dark heart of JK Rowling’s wizarding saga.

For all the high points in his varied career, the thing that really made Alan Rickman special was that he never seemed to look down on any project or anybody he was asked to work with. Fantasy or real-world, drama or comedy, family oriented or decidedly more adult, he brought great characters to life with passion and has left an indelible impression on generations. SSP

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Review: Aloha (2015)

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Sam S-P

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Hey they used the old film studio logos and fanfares – that probably means something, right? A lot in ALOHA probably means something, but I’ll be damned if I can puzzle out what Cameron Crowe wanted his movie to say, or to be.

Returning to Hawaii after a decade, famed military contractor Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) is asked to oversee a land blessing before it is developed into a valuable space launch site for his employer. His government handlers may have other plans, and Brian must also contend with affairs of the heart – his re-married ex Tracy (Rachel McAdams) and his spunky airforce guide Allison (Emma Stone). 

What would possess you to write into your script that Emma Stone is 1/4 Hawaiian and 1/4 Chinese when she so obviously isn’t? If the characters in this film don’t seem to believe it (and they don’t) then how are we meant to? Allison doesn’t need a reason to get all weepy when the native Hawaiians do something traditional to their culture. Giving a character a mixed heritage doesn’t automatically make them a more rounded or compelling character if they are still lazily written and inappropriately cast.

Every conversation in Aloha is needlessly quirky, full of tics and affectations and trying so hard to be cute. This is probably to cover up for the fact that most of the film is so clumsy and disjointed and not all that interesting. Crowe is just trying too hard to be liked, long gone are the ALMOST FAMOUS days when he was charming and perceptive.

Crowe has come up with a really unimaginative future where NASA, the military and telecoms companies have blended into one capitalist amoral mass. It allows for about as much excitement as you’d expect, with characters often engaging in contract discussions that sound very much like they’re on the phone to their own internet providers. When the dialogue doesn’t lull you to sleep and tries to be clever it fails to say anything about our world today or where it is heading. Yes people use technology a lot in their daily lives and we aren’t reaching for the stars the way we used to – and?

I really don’t get this film’s take on Hawaiian culture. Crowe probably intended to be respectful but comes across as more patronising. Cooper’s character is the audience surrogate who offhandedly insists he knows all about the local customs but in reality has very little respect for them. Crowe is judging us by expecting us to identify with Brian despite the fact that he’s an arrogant and abrasive toolbox. Crowe wants us to know how sensitive and culturally aware he is and is prepared to deliver his knowledge like a sugar enema with Stone going “wow” or commenting on how touched she is by taking part in local customs every few minutes.

There’s actually a scene where Allison appears to be getting a kick out of Brian describing how he has been shot multiple times. Then she has sex with him seemingly just because he survived and that’s spiritual…or something. Maybe give this scene another pass at the scripting stage?

The sight Bill Murray doing an awkward dancefloor shuffle with Emma Stone and Alec Baldwin shouting really loud is not worth the price of admission. Murray and Baldwin might as well have not have not shown up at all as they only have a couple of scenes apiece that don’t add anything of real note to the story. Both of their characters’ contributions to the overall plot could have been achieved offscreen.

McAdams and John Krasinski both appear to be starting in a different, and much better, relationship drama to everyone else, but they don’t get enough time to elevate the rest of the film. There is one well thought out moment that hints at the Crowe of the past, with two guys sharing a silent moment with meaningful looks, their looks subtitled amusingly for the audience’s benefit.

When all’s said and done, why should I care? I don’t care enough to be offended, or even to be annoyed. I’m just permanently disinterested watching Aloha. Did I mention it’s really boring? SSP

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