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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Review: Black Mass (2015)

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Sam S-P

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BLACK MASS is a frustrating beast. I’d recommend you just watch THE DEPARTED again instead as it’s a much better Boston gangsters and informants movie  that was partly based on Whitey Bulger’s story anyway.

In the 1970s and 1980s, few names struck as much fear into the hearts of those who lived and worked in South Boston as James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp). Bulger and his gang’s rise becomes meteoric when he strikes a deal with FBI Agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) for free movement and non-interference with his crimes in exchange for information on Bulger’s competitors. But can Bulger ever be truly controlled, and is anything really worth Connolly selling his soul to the devil?

The makeup used in the film to transform the cast into infamous figured at various stages of their life isn’t quite J. EDGAR-level awful, but it’s bad. One of the first things we see in the film is poor old Jesse Plemons caked in jarring old-age makeup in close-up, then we see him in an unconvincing curly wig as a younger man a few moments later. We are forced of course to regard Johhny Depp looking nothing like Whitey Bulger and more like Gary Oldman as Dracula with Day-glo eyes throughout. Particularly illusion-shattering is a scene where Bulger is exercising at home before doing something nefarious and you can actually see the prosthetic skin fold around his neck as he does sit ups. I think the intention was to make him look more demon than human, presumably to emphasise the monstrosity of his character, but it’s too much. He ceases to be a chilling real-world monster and becomes a cartoon character.

The plotting is all over the place. We never get any real sense of what the FBI are actually getting out of their deal with Bulger. We just have lots of disconnected crime vignettes where Whitey gets to order the death of whoever he likes while the feds turn a blind eye. Agents pass some apparently important piles of evidence around and Connolly rockets up the ranks, but we don’t know why. You need more connective tissue, thematic juxtaposition or at least a consistent build of momentum to keep a story like this from coming off the rails.

The script by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth is generally uninspiring stuff, the aesthetic throughout the film is grey and dull. Does every major movie set in Boston have to feature a St Patrick’s Day parade? I know Bostonians are proud of their Irish links, but there’s more to their culture than that. In short, there’s very little for a solid cast like this to really get their teeth stuck in to.

Depp is fine, and so is Edgerton, both good at the long hard stare and conveying godlike levels of arrogance. It’s good to see Depp having to put some thought into a performance again, but the way they’ve made Bulger look is so distracting that it gets in the way of truly appreciating Depp’s skill, and I never found him scary as a character. Benedict Cumberbatch on the other hand is stunt-casting of the highest order. He plays Bulger’s senator brother so they’ve given him jowls to  square off his face and make him look more like Depp, which he still doesn’t. His coasting performance and wobbly accent suggest he wasn’t the best man for the job, but is simply in the film because SHERLOCK is so massive.

Scott Cooper is a good director – he got great performances out of his cast in CRAZY HEART and he brought a striking look and a hard edge to OUT OF THE FURNACE. He may have attempted too much here or just never quite grasped what was required to tell this story in a compelling way. Black Mass is not a terrible film – at least Johnny Depp is trying again – but the spell is broken all too often and the whole thing becomes disjointed to the point of incomprehensibility. SSP

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Review: Wild Card (2015)

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Sam S-P

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I like a Jason Statham movie as much as the next guy. There’s also a certain pleasure in seeing Statham being beaten up by a toupee-wearing Max Casella early on in the film, and in a goon having his forehead sliced open in slow-motion with a credit card, but very little else to recommend in WILD CARD.

Swindler/hard man Nick Wild (Jason Statham) gets an assignment to chaperon a young millionaire (Michael Angarano) on his first trip to Las Vegas. While his employer behaves himself, trouble still finds Wild when he comes to the aid of a friend (Dominik García-Lorido) who has been roughed up by a mobster (Milo Ventimiglia).

I will admit that director Simon West (CON AIR) makes everything look very nice – all dingy noirish interiors and dusty shafts of light penetrating the gloom. The action is merciless and creatively choreographed to use as many props for brutal offense as possible, like Jackie Chan with added mortal injury. As a side note, are bars in America really that dark or is it just in movies? Please write in.

At the same time, film by its nature is a visual medium and characters don’t half seem to enjoy explain what’s just happened in the plot to the audience. Characters don’t evolve through their experiences or communicate their arcs through performance, they tell you what has happened to them and how they feel. It’s so basic and uninvolving. When the film does use any symbolism it’s the blindingly obvious kind – just once I’d like to see a film set in Vegas without a character contemplating a difficult decision with neon signage superimposed over their face.

Let’s take a moment to remind ourselves that William Goldman wrote BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and THE PRINCESS BRIDE. His name was plastered all over the marketing as a draw second only to Statham. Wild Card – a film which has a side character that thinks the British are a race – doesn’t quite hold up. The writing in any scene where Nicky isn’t fighting his way out of his current situation is dull, listless, and nasty. Nicky plays an insufferable human being in the film’s opening scene, then it’s revealed it was all an act to aid in an elaborate scheme, but then he carries on behaving like an unappealing tool for the rest of the movie. Protagonists don’t have to be nice, of course, but they have to be interesting.

Another key scene revolves around Nicky doing the one thing you really can’t do in Vegas – card counting. He’s doing it blatantly, cleaning the casino out and gathering a crowd, but he isn’t asked to leave. I know, check your brain at the door and all that, but be consistent, make your film world’s internal logic work, make it tie with your action.

Even if the screenplay was up to scratch, the cast would have to do a lot more to bring it to life. Jason Statham rarely gets plaudits for his in-depth character work, but he’s shown in the past he can do comedy (CRANK), drama (SAFE) and most shades in-between (LOCK STOCK, SNATCH). Here, he’s just going through the motions with support from an uninspiring García-Lorido and a laughable Ventimiglia. Michael Angarano is OK but there’s nothing to his character and Stanley Tucci is wasted appearing in a single scene.

I wasn’t expecting the Earth from Wild Card, so I suppose I wasn’t  overly disappointed. Even for Jason Statham fans it might be a struggle to sit through, for though it delivers the bone-crunching action you’ve come to expect, there’s no fun or vitality to the characters, story, or scripting so everything ends up feeling really laboured once the punching stops. If I were you, I wouldn’t bother. SSP

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Looking Back and Looking Forward: 2015

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Sam S-P

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It’s that time of year, where every critic professional and amateur alike publishes some sort of Best of the Year list. This time last year, I thought 2014 was a mixed bag. 2015 may have been even more so. There have been absolute triumphs, but there have also been complete disasters.

What follows is my Top 10 and Bottom 5 movies released in 2015 as it stands at this moment in time. As always, I’m British, so we won’t get a lot of the Awards Season movies until early next year.

The Best:

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10. TURBO KID Really this one should be experienced rather than described, but you may find yourself surprised how  creative and deliriously fun a story about a teen and his bike fleeing a gang boss in a nuclear wasteland can be. Full review of TURBO KID upcoming.

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9. COP CAR Stand-out young stars with a bright future, a talented and no-nonsense director keen to make his mark and the most spellbinding role for Bacon in years makes this movie really rather special. Full review of COP CAR here.

ST. JAMES PLACE

8. BRIDGE OF SPIES  Spielberg very close to his best, diving into a so-strange-it-could-only-be-true Cold War story told from the perspective of flawed, frightened, and funny ordinary people. Hanks is great, Rylance is even better. Full review of BRIDGE OF SPIES here.

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7. CAROL Two exquisite lead performances, not a hair out of place and a slow-burning story overflowing with passion makes this the romance of the year. Expect a call from Mr Oscar, where I’d be happy to see Blanchett or Mara awarded, and thrilled for them both to be. Full review of CAROL upcoming.

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6. THE LADY IN THE VAN A great adaptation with Smith mesmerising as a mad old biddy with Catholic guilt and Jennings as Bennett and Bennett. Cutting wit and leisurely, down-to-earth storytelling surpasses the film’s apparent modesty. Full review of LADY IN THE VAN here.

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5. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD Miller finally gets to realise the carnage of his considerable imagination in one of the best chase movies of all time. The spectacle is dazzling and palm-sweatingly practical in its execution, but the dense symbolism and careful characterisation allows it to compete with any number of quieter releases this year. Full review of FURY ROAD here.

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4. SICARIO Villeneuve’s latest is a striking and gritty thrill ride as visually arresting as it is razor-sharp in its commentary on the unwinnable War on Drugs. Blunt proves her range and re-emphasises her raw talent in the lead, and del Toro is gifted with one of the best roles of his career. Full review of SICARIO here.

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3. MR. HOLMES McKellen and Condon reunite triumphantly to tell a Sherlock Holmes story that isn’t really a Sherlock Holmes story, but a close and often painful examination of the cruelty of dementia. Real heart, thought and artistry has gone into this. Full review of MR. HOLMES here.

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2. STAR WARS: EPISODE VII – THE FORCE AWAKENS The most anticipated movie in a year of most anticipated movies is pretty damn great. Thank The Maker! Abrams was just the guy for the job and balances tipping his hat to the franchise with bold new strides. Ridley, Driver and Ford are great and I was grinning ear-to-ear throughout. Full review of THE FORCE AWAKENS here.

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1. EX MACHINA With intelligence and sheer imagination to spare, but with very few visual embellishments to hide behind, this is an intimate chamber piece and big idea sci-fi rolled into one knockout package. Garland needs to direct more, and Vikander, Isaac and Gleeson make for a formidable trio. Full review of EX MACHINA here.

The Worst:

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5. FOCUS A vanity project for Smith, and a waste of Robbie’s considerable talents. It might have worked as an undemanding romp if it wasn’t so damn pleased with itself, or if it was even a fraction as clever as it thinks it is. Full review of FOCUS here.

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4. ALOHA How the mighty have fallen. Crowe mostly uses his tedious sci-fi-romance-garbage movie to guilt trip his audience about cultural sensitivity. He then expects us to sympathise with an irredeemable Cooper and a so-quirky-it’s-irritating Stone. Full review of ALOHA upcoming (if I can be bothered).

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3. TERMINATOR GENISYS This was the one Cameron endorsed. The resulting stew is a cynical and embarrassing pile of half-baked ideas, actors who clearly want to be elsewhere and not a single memorable action beat. Full review of GENISYS here.

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2. FANTASTIC FOUR The press didn’t kill this movie, the studio did. Whatever Trank intended his creation to be, it instead fell straight off the slab and soiled itself. Despite crimes in the edit, the cast and design team would have had to put a lot more in to make this even passable. Full review of FANTASTIC FOUR here.

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1. MORTDECAI This caps off my worst films of 2015 not because it’s awful (and it is) but because it didn’t have the pressures of either of the previous two entries on this list. It has a decent cast, a proven filmmaker at the helm and largely untapped source material to mine, but it does nothing with any of them. It’s painful to sit through and watching it will make you a less well-rounded person. Full review of MORTDECAI here.

The Most Disappointing of 2015:

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AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON You can’t fault Whedon’s ambition and Olsen and Bettany certainly make their mark. Returning players however make baffling decisions, storylines collapse under their own weight and most crucially of all, Ultron doesn’t work as a character.

The Big Lesson of 2015:

There are a lot of spy movies. Not all are created equal. For every KINGSMAN and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE that gets it right, you’ve got a SPECTRE that gets weighed down by formula and a MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. that tries to make itself look more interesting than it actually is.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everybody, I look forward to seeing most of the awards buzz stuff in January and a helluva lot more (hopefully different) superheroes in the months beyond. SSP

 

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Review: Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015)

Posted on December 21, 2015 by Sam S-P
Force Awakens

A new hope: Lucasfilm/Bad Robot

First, a disclaimer: STAR WARS is one of my favourite things in this, or any, galaxy. It was my childhood playground and will always have a very special place reserved in my heart. Now arguably the most highly antipated film event of the decade is here as THE FORCE AWAKENS hits cinemas the world over.

Thirty years after the fall of the Galactic Empire, rebel hero Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamil) has disappeared without a trace. In his absence, a new and sinister presence, The First Order, has emerged and, led by the ferocious Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) they seek to once again subjugate the galaxy. Now a Stormtrooper deserter (John Boyega) a canny scavenger (Daisy Ridley) and a hotshot pilot (Oscar Isaac) seek to halt the advancing darkness and preserve the light.

I wasn’t keen on the idea of JJ Abrams inheriting this universe, these characters. He’s a great marketer, but thus far I’ve seen very little evidence of him being anything beyond a journeyman filmmaker. But with the care and attention he clearly lavished on The Force Awakens, I’ve been proven wrong. For every nod to the past and safe story decision, Abrams and returning EMPIRE STRIKES BACK screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan also take an almighty risk for good measure.

The film had me from the very first shot. Star Wars has always done opening sequences well, from the never-ending Star Destroyer bearing down on the tiny fleeing Blockade Runner above Tatooine in A NEW HOPE to the fireworks of the naval battle in space about Coruscant in REVENGE OF THE SITH. Here, we see an unremarkable little dusty planet nestled amongst the stars as it is slowly and ominously eclipsed by the silhouette of a Star Destroyer, its blinking lights blending with the space around it.

Kylo Ren makes his mark as a great villain early on too. He’s not as iconic as Darth Vader of course, but that’s one of the main points of his arc, and his character’s brilliant alternate corruption angle (the exact opposite of Vader’s crisis of conscience) makes him stand out from innumerable black-clad movie baddies. He’s also got a entertainingly twisted sense of humour, asking a torture victim “Are you comfortable?” and once a lackey informs him of a mission failure he throws a massive wall-slashing tantrum followed by a snide “Anything else?”.

Ridley, Driver, Boyega, Isaac, Ford all turn in series-best performances. Ridley is the real breakout as Rey, strong-willed and intelligent with great comic timing, especially when she’s getting frustrated at Finn not being the sharpest tool in the box. Boyega plays Finn the way a lot of Star Wars characters should be – terrified and out of their depth, and Isaac is pure moviestar charm on legs as Poe Dameron. Driver incredibly manages nuance from behind a mask, and becomes the twisted heart of the story when it comes off. It’s lovely that Ford got his famous response to a fan in there, “I used to be” in reply to “Aren’t you Han solo?” and he does a lot of the heavy lifting dramatically speaking as well as still being pretty sprightly for a man in his seventies.

This is not the gleaming Star Wars of the Prequel Trilogy. We are firmly back in the territory of a dirty, lived-in sci-fi world, with subtle design touches and little character moments that hint at the workings of the larger world without ever having to sit down and explain it all. New droid BB-8 is a joyous creation and a welcome, expressive and impressively realised addition to the cast.

The film features what is unquestionably the nastiest lightsaber fighting in the series. You really fear for these characters and know that a single mistake means a mortal wound. The battles in general feel like they have more jeopardy – the skirmish that opens the film is brutal, looking like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN under blaster fire, and our heroes actually feel vulnerable in the action for the first time in the series.

Some cast members are sadly underused, though it seems like they are building towards more focus on them in the sequels. There are a few recycled plot elements as well – the generational destiny/cyclical time  thing doesn’t bother me so much as there being far more plot ideas to use in a Star Wars movie than flying into something big to blow it up.

Niggles aside, The Force Awakens left me pretty well satisfied as a Star Wars fan. It got right what JURASSIC WORLD got so wrong. If you’re going for a soft reboot of your franchise with reverence to what has come before, then you have to preserve that sense of wonder. While the new Jurassic film had its moments, the callbacks and attempts to pay tribute to what had come before felt hollow. The Force Awakens feels like a work of real love for the material, and ends up being a bold new entry in the galactic saga and a sturdy foundation to build on in the future. SSP

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