My First Comic Con: Manchester, July 2015

Posted on July 28, 2015 by Sam S-P

11742849_10153503851167430_4704998470709478136_n (Sadly I’m the slightly disappointing Star-Lord, not the awesome Ant-Man)

This weekend I attended my first ever Comic Con. Thinking that the main event in San Diego might be a little much for a convention virgin, I and a group of friends plumped for a more modest affair – Manchester. Following my weekend, I believe this may be the start of a beautiful friendship.

What first struck me when I walked through the doors of the Manchester Central expo was just how accepting and full of life the event was. There were no judgements here, only compliments, encouragement, and happiness. Our group’s takes on Star-Lord, Thor, The Punisher and Quicksilver were fine, but Great Scott, were there some creative people in that hall! There were countless takes on Jokers and Harley Quinns, Batmen and Spider-Men; WARHAMMER Space Marines that inspired envy in all who beheld them and ditto Garrus from MASS EFFECT, plus loads of people dressed as brightly-coloured characters from various anime series which completely went over my head. There were also a lot of people in civilian dress, but they were having just as much fun. Everyone was having the time of their lives mingling with their fellow fans, strutting their stuff or buying some really cool stuff.

The other great thing (that I didn’t wholly expect) was how much of a family affair convention-going can be. Couples and single parents alike brought their children along and the whole family had a great time, particularly the dad dressed as Wreck-It Ralph with his daughter as Vanellope. One dad asked me to pose with his son who was a very convincing Rocket Raccoon, which was lovely.

I’ve always been obsessed by films, have an occasional intense interest in a particular TV show, comic or video game. Anime and manga has mostly passed me by, but in this kind of arena it doesn’t really matter – there are just as many who like superheroes but not Japanese animation as vise versa. Everyone can find their place at a Comic Con if you love something passionately enough, and of course no-one can love everything. No-one can even have a passing interest in everything.

I didn’t really get in on meeting the Con’s famous special guests, but I walked, posed, photographed, and boy, did I shop. I was particularly pleased with my purchase from the autographed photos stall, a certain character image from my all-time favourite superhero movie signed by Alan Cumming.

I’m sure every attendee took some very special memories away from the Con, as well as bags fit to burst with geek memorabilia and a mountain of photos that hopefully don’t show the sweat patches too much. My personal favourite moment was watching a friend posing as Thor with a Deadpool acting very Deadpool right behind him.

Next year San Diego? Maybe it’s a little soon. London? Very possibly. We’d better start getting our costumes together. SSP

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We Need to Talk About Disney

Posted on July 23, 2015 by Sam S-P

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Indulge me if you will to have a bit of a rant. Walt Disney Studios is flying higher perhaps than ever before, owning as it does the box office bulkheads Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar. Needless to say Disney’s acquisition of these three pillars of imagination allows for a near-monopoly on cinematic entertainment over blockbuster season. They are the modern film studio.

The pool of creativity Disney has access to is truly enviable, and they can do more or less anything. So why, in the name of good old Uncle Walt, are they so fixated with remaking their animated back catalogue – all still perfectly satisfying as they are – in live action?

We’ve already been subjected to THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, which had HARRY POTTER aspirations but padded a short to within an inch of its life; MALEFICENT, which featured several moments that were staggeringly inappropriate for children but also unashamedly featured a shot-for-shot redo of the most famous sequence in SLEEPING BEAUTY. Last year saw the release of CINDERELLA, still to come we have BEAUTY AND THE BEAST; THE JUNGLE BOOK; MULAN; PINOCCHIO and the just-announced THE SWORD IN THE STONE.

So Disney have had a few knockbacks. More-or-less every big project not drawn from in-house, safe-bet material has been considered a flop by Disney bigwigs. The real failures of TRON: LEGACY, JOHN CARTER, THE LONE RANGER and TOMORROWLAND may have been exaggerated (at least they all took risks) but for Disney anything less than a mega-hit just wasn’t good enough. Is this really reason enough to give up and fall back on extravagant remake after extravagant remake?

Even putting aside the monotony of this particular production cycle, the quite frankly depressing lack of new ideas (even sequels require some innovation, remakes not so much), for me the most worrying thing about Disney’s current creative preoccupation is that it diminishes, even dismisses, the films and immensely talented artists behind them that built the company from the ground up. It almost seems to say “cartoons are OK, but imagine how good it would be if it is real?”. Animation is not a lesser form of artistic expression, and it never will be. All filmmaking is a simulation of reality, and live action has no more claim to truly representing the world we live in than animation does.

Perhaps this latest production announcement particularly rankles with me because Disney are remaking my personal favourite of their back catalogue. The Sword in the Stone is the perfect Disney cartoon in my opinion, balancing warmth, humour and limitless imagination and bringing the complete package to us in an unfussy, endearingly scruffy and free animation style. It’s simply magic, and holds a very special place in my heart. Disney can’t make it better, and certainly not by simply putting flesh-and-blood actors on the screen.

Disney are in danger of becoming a bloated, self-obsessed yet self-hating, and above all an irrelevant force in the movie business. Even if their risks in the past haven’t quite paid off, you might as well aim high and stay brave when you have THE AVENGERS, STAR WARS and every wonderful thing Pixar dream up to soak up any shortfall. In those terms, where is the risk? SSP

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Review: Ant-Man (2015)

Posted on July 19, 2015 by Sam S-P

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I’d have never guessed that the Marvel movie of 2015 I preferred was the apparent gamble that is ANT-MAN rather than the seemingly sure thing that was AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON. It just goes to show how bang-on Yoda was in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK with his disgruntled query “Judge me by my size, do you?”

Convicted cat burglar Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) struggles to gain work after his latest spell in prison, and finds himself increasingly shut out of the life of his young daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson) until he proves he has truly changed his ways. His chance comes from an unexpected source – shutaway genius Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) – who asks Scott to help him pull off a dangerous heist for the betterment of humanity, a heist that requires Scott to use a very unusual suit…

There’s a good number of critics out there (and probably a fair few audience members as well) who are developing a certain lethargy for filmed comic book adaptations. I guess it’s understandable, as superhero movies have been the dominant summer blockbuster genre for around fifteen years now. This is by no means a modern phenomenon in the Movie Business. Westerns were all-consuming in the 50s, disaster movies in the 70s, horror in the 80s – Hollywood has always moved in trends. If we are to see a superhero movie monopoly for the rest of this decade and beyond, each example has to be very different from the last. Keeping these formulas fresh is Marvel’s specialty – they’ve done superhero deconstruction (IRON MAN 3);  superhero conspiracy thriller (CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER); and now a superhero heist movie with Ant-Man. It’s not Marvel/Disney I’m worried about, but DC/Warner Bros (grim and operatic becomes monotonous fast).

When did Paul Rudd become such a great leading man? He’s been a reliable supporting player in comedies for years, usually lumped with the smarmy best friend role, but here he’s really able to stretch his dramatic chops as well as his usual charm offensive. As Scott Lang, he looks like he’s been put through the wringer, and there’s a real pain in his eyes throughout. Michael Douglas and Evangeline Lilly convincingly play Hank and Hope’s complex father-daughter relationship, and both have a lot of fun putting down Rudd’s overconfidence. Just as Hank Pym could have ended up as just an older version of Tony Stark, Darren Cross could have just been a younger Obidiah Stane, but Corey Stoll gives him enough nuance to interest, playing Cross as a genius with the morals of a cruel seven-year-old who likes pulling the legs off of things. Michael Peña, T.I and David Dastmalchian all play stereotypes as Scott’s cronies, but they’re knowing stereotypes and fun characters with some of the funniest exchanges.Co

It’s funny, while the premise of Ant-Man sounds pretty bizarre and out-there, it’s probably Marvel’s most grounded and contained movie to date. The threat of experimental technology falling into the wrong hands and threatening the world isn’t a new premise, particularly not within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (all three IRON MAN movies, Age of Ultron had the same plot) but it is nice to see the threat pretty confined for a change, mostly limited to a San Francisco suburb and two families rather than the entire world and everything on it.

The action is superb, and very different to anything we’ve seen before in Marvel’s previous efforts. The creative use of scale inherent in portraying the character lends itself to unique, eye-popping and comic set pieces. We see normal household objects in colossal scale as miniature characters leap and flip over them as is common in shrinking movies, but we also often cut to see the action in normal scale, as lightning-fast specks bounce around the environment, which gives the action a concrete geography. There’s a very clever fight that takes place entirely inside a suitcase falling through the air, and that battle on a Thomas The Tank Engine toy that’s been all over the trailers has a killer punchline when it concludes.

The idea of different species of ants being used for different roles is a neat one (the flying Carpenter ants function like a scout plane squadron; swarming Crazy ants can form bridges and ladders; Bullet ants distract guards with a formidable bite) and this makes the inevitable heist planning montage feel fresh and amusingly oddball.

An idea I thought was less well executed was the concept of shrinking to a sub-atomic level. There’s a few key dramatic scenes that incorporate this idea, of taking the ultimate risk to achieve your objective. Visually, it’s interesting enough, going almost psychedelic to portray such a concept. The issue is much the same as the visual portrayal of inter-dimensional concepts in INTERSTELLAR – I didn’t like how they appeared, but at the same time I don’t know how else you’d do it better. The difference between the two films is that Interstellar (and the Nolan brothers) had ideas above their station, whereas Ant-Man and Edgar Wright/Peyton Reed made it essential to the plot and characters’ journeys.

I’m pleased they didn’t go for the over-used sick daughter plot device (a trope even used in my favourite Marvel movie Iron Man 3), but rather Lang becoming “the hero she already thinks he is”. The filmmakers really commit to Lang being an ordinary man becoming extraordinary, a guy who has made some big mistakes in his life using his pint-sized superheroics to redeem his soul. Edgar Wright may not have directed his passion project, so many may feel the final film lacks his distinct dynamism, but many of his script ideas and the general arc of his story remains, and you can’t diminish Peyton Reed’s achievement for coming in at the eleventh hour and still producing something so satisfying. SSP

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Review: Obvious Child (2014)

Posted on July 17, 2015 by Sam S-P

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As well as being both unabashedly filthy and a proud and dignified representation of real humanity, OBVIOUS CHILD boasts the simple (but criminally rare in storytelling) pleasure of seeing a strong female protagonist making a difficult decision and being allowed to see it through to the end. Abortion is still a controversial issue in many arenas, and the film doesn’t claim for a moment that it’s the right decision for everyone, but it was right for Donna, and no judgement is made about her because of it. Or at least no judgement is made within the film, I’m sure Pro-Life activists will have plenty to say.

Part-time Brooklyn standup comedian Donna’s (Jenny Slate) world is rocked when her boyfriend dumps her following yet another gig that plunders her personal life for material. At least, that seems to be the excuse until it comes to light that he was having an affair with one of Donna’s friends. After her friends and family fail to lift her spirits despite their very best efforts, Donna bumps into Max (Alex Lacy) while drowning her sorrows, and the pair have a night of drunken fun. A few weeks later, Donna notices the result of her one-night-stand.

It might sound a little odd, but it really is great to see women discussing their bodily functions so openly. Men joke about smells, sounds and stains, so why can’t women? It’s a very backward and outdated – not to mention sexist – view that it’s somehow improper or unladylike to acknowledge what a fully-functioning body does, and the film revels in bringing these issues front-and-centre for comic effect. Donna’s stand-up routines rely heavily on such material, and it’s a testament to Jenny Slate’s skill as a performer that she makes such honesty so endearing, often visibly cracking up at her own jokes (understandable – they’re hilarious).

The crux of the story (aside from the pregnancy) is Donna getting over one bad relationship and trying to preserve another. She gets pregnant following a one-night stand with a lovely fella, who appreciates her chosen profession, wants to support her, and genuinely cares for her and who she is. Slate and Lacy have brilliant chemistry and you genuinely want it to work between them in the end. Gabby Hoffmann is also good as Donna’s best friend Nellie, who is the voice of reason and wisdom for the pair, and is such an open book that she gives Donna a heart-to-heart from the toilet. Donna doesn’t have as good (or straightforward) a relationship with her parents (Polly Draper and Richard Kind) as both are distant from her in different ways despite caring deeply for their only child. She does have one particularly moving key scene with her mum, where an adult woman becomes a scared little girl all over again in the arms of her mother. In a lesser film this might be where Donna has a change of heart, but Obvious a Child is not a lesser film.

I didn’t think a side-story where Donna fools around with her fellow comedian friend Sam (David Cross) worked at all. I get that we needed a scene where Donna acts like an idiot and pushes Max away to give the story jeopardy and the characters an arc, but it’s impossible to buy that she would turn down such a decent guy for such a jerk just because he’s a fellow comedian. Though usually value for money, Cross is painfully unfunny, so mirthless that he wears an awful tie-dyed string vest back at his apartment seemingly just to give us something to smile at in place of a lack of jokes.

That unnecessary scene aside, Obvious Child in consistently funny and warm, exploring a big issue in a mature, unsentimental and non-sensationalist manner. Not only will it amuse and tug on your heartstrings, it could very well restore your faith in human dignity as well. Writer-director Gillian Robespierre is a sure pair of hands and makes for a winning double-act with the sheer charisma of Jenny Slate. I look forward to seeing what they both do next immensely. SSP

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Review: Amy (2015)

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Sam S-P

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AMY had me glassy eyed both at its beginning and end. Such is the power and the tragedy inherent in exploring the life of an astoundingly talented artist whose time was cut so cruelly short, especially when we see the upsetting contrast between the vitality of their innocence and the extent of their eventual ruination side-by-side. The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long as they say.

Documentary maker Asif Kapadia’s style lends itself incredibly well to stories with vastly differing perspectives on tumultuous lives and events such as this, as he demonstrated previously with SENNA. Talking heads now bore me to tears through their over-use, so it’s refreshing to see this alternative style of filmmaking – extensive archive footage and photos with voiceover – increase in prominence. Winehouse’s father Mitch has very publicly condemned the film as a pack of lies, particularly in relation to the way he feels he is negatively represented. He also claims not enough focus is placed on Amy’s talent and success, and too much of the film is taken up by her self-destruction.

The representation of Mitch in the film is debatable – the key point in which he appears appropriates footage from a documentary he himself commissioned and presented, MY DAUGHTER AMY, where he took a camera crew out to the Caribbean where Amy was recovering from an overdose. Aside from this, his voice is mostly absent from the story, though he is nearly always hovering in the back of shot keeping a close eye on his daughter. I personally think Mitch is over-reacting here. I don’t doubt for a moment that Mitch cared deeply for his daughter, that he would do anything to make her happy. What I do think is that Mitch never fully understood Amy or what she actually needed to become healthy again. Kapadia isn’t blaming Mitch for Amy’s untimely death (if he blames anyone it’s her despicable ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil) but rather saying no-one could have helped her after she set out on a path of self-destruction to such an extent.

As to Mitch’s latter claim, it’s complete hogwash. The rare live performance footage and early demos showcase Winehouse’s talent sublimely. We probably don’t need the lyrics of the songs superimposed over these sequences as her voice conveys everything perfectly already, but otherwise they are must-see moments for her fans. What Mitch Winehouse wants, it seems, is a film that celebrates his daughter’s achievements and whitewashes her mountain of personal, mental and narcotic issues. That would be a pointless and dishonest exercise. A hagiography does no one any favours.

Amy’s sardonic sense of humour and openness comes through as well. Just look at her pout and struggle to keep her temper when an interviewer inadvertently compares her to Dido, or her schoolgirl giddiness when she finally meets and sings with her hero Tony Bennett. The moments where she’s just hanging out with her friends and bandmates and is just allowed to be herself are the real highlights of the documentary as opposed to the voyeurism of her self-destruction.

I don’t think we’ve ever had a documentary able to make use of such extensive archive material. We live in an age where everyone documents everything, so we’ll likely see a lot more of this in future. It really hits home the extent to which the press and the media destroyed Amy when you see the number of clips of her being hounded, and the ignorance of one pap telling an obviously clinically depressed woman to “cheer up” really makes your blood boul.

Now clearly Amy Winehouse drastically cut her chances of a long life through her heavy use of narcotics (particularly in the downtime between albums) and we can’t ignore that an addict actually needs to want help for treatment to work. Kapadia’s documentary veers from uplifting to downright harrowing, much like Winehouse’s life, career, and perhaps inevitable decline. Kapadia leaves it pretty open as to who to blame for the young artist’s death on 23 July 2011. He certainly doesn’t blame the family as Mitch has claimed, but rather points to the unfortunate combination of fame and a personality that didn’t take at all well to it. Most importantly, though, the documentary is one that celebrates the life and work of a gifted and affectingly flawed human being over mourning her. SSP

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The Red Capes are Coming?

Posted on July 12, 2015 by Sam S-P

The internet is alive at the moment with talk of the first full BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE trailer that made its debut in the legendary Hall H of Comic Con yesterday.

It’s got all the fireworks, striking heroic poses and flying fisticuffs you’d expect from such a title, plus our first proper looks at Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman (in armour and wielding sword and shield), Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor (appropriately cocky and amused by the chaos erupting around him), Jeremy Irons’ Alfred (dispensing wisdom) and Holly Hunter being an awfully good sport about being an exposition machine.

We get a general idea of the direction the plot will be going. Following that really boring fight between Superman and Zod at the end of MAN OF STEEL, Kal-el (Henry Cavill) is worshiped as a god by some (a skull-faced cult, because of course), and seen as a menace to the planet by the rest, which brings him into violent conflict with Batman (Ben Affleck).

I’d say it’s a slick, pretty solidly put together piece of marketing. It shows you enough,  but doesn’t go overboard and leave you with nothing to experience for the first time when it hits the big screen. Still no appearances by Aquaman and the rest of the Justice League, but there’s time yet. It was a surprise to see Michael Shannon’s Zod make an appearance on a slab, and it makes me think someone (likely Luthor) might be conducting experiments on it to find the Last Son of Krypton’s weakness, which could be why we see Lex gazing at a lump of Kryptonite behind glass later in the trailer. Speaking of Lex, this brief look at Eisenberg with strawberry blonde locks (they’ll be going at some point) strutting around and seemingly just enjoying the show, is very promising.

What is less clear at this stage is what his final repeated proclamation: “The red capes are coming” actually means. If it was just “the capes are coming” then it could refer to all these superheroes making a splash on Planet Earth, but “red capes” seems more specifically to refer to Superman. We do see some paramilitary types overwhelming Batman in the trailer, and they look to have Superman’s “Not an S” crest emblazoned on their arms, so could it be possible that Luthor is manufacturing an army to support Superman (or at least to give that impression). We also see Supes looking an awful lot like he’s bowing to Luthor, so has Lex got some leverage over his alien nemesis? There’s certainly a lot to think on.

It looks like they’re going for grand, operatic super-serious superheroics again. The scale of the thing, and Zack Snyder sticking to the same muted colour palette as he used for Man of Steel pretty much confirms that this will be the way DC/Warner Bros will be taking their comic book adaptations for the foreseeable future. Fine, but that could get monotonous fast. At least we’ll have SUICIDE SQUAD as a bit of (hopefully) light relief post-Bats vs Supes, and who knows, maybe one of the dueling icons might crack a smile at some point? Or maybe that’s what Lex is for. SSP

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Review: Terminator Genisys (2015)

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Sam S-P

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Arnie is back as the Terminator with a resounding clunk. While TERMINATOR GENISYS isn’t quite the mirthless Hunter-Killer crash TERMINATOR SALVATION was, it hasn’t earned the right to be mentioned in the same breath as any of the first three films either, especially James Cameron’s originals. Speaking of Cameron, he endorsed this one over TERMINATOR 3 as the official third instalment of the franchise. Oh dear.

As the future war between machines and mankind draws to a close, Skynet’s secret weapon, a time machine, allows them to send an assassin back in time to end humanity’s resistance efforts before they begin. The resistance leader John Connor (Jason Clarke) sends his trusted lieutenant Kyle Reece (Jai Courtney) in hot pursuit to protect his mother Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) only to find she already has a guardian (Arnold Schwarzenegger).

The first half hour or so of Genisys is just fine. It’s a sort-of Terminator franchise greatest hits really, featuring a battle in the future, time travel back to 1984, new vs old Arnie and the (re-cast) T-1000. After that the film completely derails itself.

I get that there had to be callbacks – that’s partly what the fans are paying for. The recreation of Arnie’s nude arrival and confrontation with the biker gang from THE TERMINATOR works, as does the reprise of John Williams’ iconic musical cue for the reveal of aged Arnie ready to do battle with himself from 30 years ago. Oh by the way, you know that fight that has been hyped to death in every single trailer? It amounts to a pretty uninspiring 2 minutes of punching and conveniently placed shadows.

While the initial musical reprise works, I’ve no idea why director Alan Taylor, composer Lorne Balfe, and especially executive music producer Hans Zimmer thought it would be a good idea to use it again and again at the most inappropriate moments (the worst being when Arnie is literally just sitting down in the back of a truck). It’s just completely unnecessary, like bringing a claymore to a knife fight.

The great thing about the Terminator movies (Salvation aside) is that despite the twisty time travel mechanics they’ve always worked really well as linear chase movies. It always comes down to a simple game of cat-and-mouse between the evil robot of the day and [insert name] Connor and their designated protector. The biggest problem with Genisys (aside from the title) is that it has absolutely no momentum. There are too many story tangents that don’t go anywhere and rarely any clearly defined reasons for why characters make the decisions they do.

The returning characters, so well-defined in previous instalments here are vapid and unlikeable, mere shells of their previous portrayers. Emilia Clarke’s performance is fine, but she talks like a women from 2015 despite Sarah being from 1984 – particularly annoying given the amount of time and effort the crew have put into recreating the streets from the first film, even using the same colour palette and lighting – and somewhere along the way Sarah Connor has lost her edge too. Clarke is sadly no Linda Hamilton. Jai Courtney is certainly no Michael Biehn. He isn’t even an Anton Yelchin. Jason Clarke is clearly having a lot more fun playing his role than we are in watching him, but at least our laughing at Schwarzenegger is intentional – his (sometimes underrated) comic timing just about salvages several scenes.

The first three Terminators all had one jaw-dropping, usually practically achieved, action set piece. The Terminator had that spectacular petrol tanker explosion; T2 had the superlative LA flood channel chase; Terminator 3 had the sublimely destructive crane pursuit through the city. Here there’s really nothing of note. I’m writing this about 48 hours since seeing Genisys and I’m already struggling to recall much of anything. I think there was a helicopter chase in there somewhere, but I think the editing was a bit too quick to really appreciate it. If nothing else, you’d expect a big tentpole action movie like this to be able to deliver on the action. But I guess in the same year as MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, every other action film will ultimately come up short.

It was a big mistake for the marketing team to ruin the only real twist in the tale almost out of the gate. I’m not going to spoil it here, but good luck avoiding it because they decided to put it on the poster! The whole enterprise just smacks of attempting too much too soon, Paramount executives’ desperate attempt to churn a few more of these out before Cameron gets his Intellectual Property back in 2019. A few smiles raised by Arnie back in his most famous role and the machines looking shinier than they ever have before can’t make up for such lacklustre efforts everywhere else. SSP

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Review: Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Posted on July 3, 2015 by Sam S-P

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One thing’s for sure – Andy and Lana Wachowski will never make a dull film. Even their misfires – and JUPITER ASCENDING is certainly one of those – are fascinating.

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), the daughter of a Russian immigrant, appears completely unremarkable save for her being the product of her parents’ hugely romantic chance meeting. Every day is the same for her, working as a cleaner with her mum and aunt in Chicago, so naturally Jupiter dreams of something more, and fixes her eyes on the stars. Meanwhile, far out in space an ancient and tyrannical dynasty have their eyes fixed on Jupiter, and on Earth…

I won’t deny I had a massive grin on my face at times. Take the dazzlingly creative chase where two people are trying to escape from a fleet of spaceships with one pair of hover boots, or the amusing sci-fi civil service scene riffing on Douglas Adams and Terry Gilliam (and actually featuring the one of those who isn’t dead yet). It’s aesthetically stunning throughout really, showcasing first-class makeup and CGI, and aside from a monotonous final act the action rarely disappoints. It’s also nice to see the Wachowskis’ commitment to wirework and advanced rigs when staging complex action still remains.

The ideas – big science fiction ones – are good too, it’s just a shame they’re not given the screentime to bear fruit. Nurturing planets until they are at just the right stage to harvest their previous lifeforce – that’s a great idea. Designer genetics for anyone vain enough or seeking to adopt a useful animal trait – that’s a great idea. An intergalactic family feud manifesting as a war over resources, and more importantly for their vanity – that’s a great idea. But for a film do preoccupied with its visuals, Jupiter prefers to tell, rather than show more often than not, and reduces too many of its characters to exposition-o-matics.

There’s no avoiding the fact that our lead protagonist Jupiter, as likeable and grounded as she is made to begin with, does a lot of falling through space, being knocked out, and (rather creepily) being redressed while unconscious, usually by men. She even comments on the latter point in dialogue, and when a character seems to realise they are being exploited for the sake of the plot they are part of, you know you’re in trouble. Her canine super-soldier escort Caine (name taken straight out of the sci-fi/fantasy handbook) is cool in the action scenes, but Channing Tatum too mumbly and not enough is made of his wolf-like traits. Most of the rest of the cast might as well have not bothered, especially Sean Bean, who treads water and only occasionally seems to remember he has bee vision. Eddie Redmayne is a lot of fun as the big baddie, and does his very best Ralph Fiennes-as-Voldermort camply strained rasp, but he disappears for half the movie, leaving us with boring substitute antagonists.

The script is mostly diabolical, and is very talky without saying anything. It does feature one of the most awful, yet genius lines of dialogue in recent years: “Bees have been genetically engineered to sense royalty”. That is just fabulous. You could put that on a T-shirt. Mythology-wise, you feel very much like you’re receiving the cliff notes, Jupiter Ascending Abridged if you will. It’s like you’re only half-hearing a really interesting conversation at a busy party. This is particularly disappointing when you remember how much time and effort the Wachowskis put into establishing the complex workings of the worlds of THE MATRIX, CLOUD ATLAS, hell, even SPEED RACER. You usually have a general idea of what is going on in the plot thanks to the siblings’ sheer dynamism, but you never exactly feel involved in this story or its characters’ exploits.

The Wachowskis really badly want this to be DUNE meets CINDERELLA, but it ends up being a pale imitation of both with a few high points and plenty of visual flare. Not a complete waste of your time then, rather a beautiful, frustrating, curiosity. SSP

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Review: Mortdecai (2015)

Posted on June 29, 2015 by Sam S-P

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MORTDECAI may well be not only the worst film Johnny Depp has ever starred in, but also the most painful performance of his career as well.

A farce set in the art world’s underbelly in an ambiguous decade, we follow Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp), an art dealer in serious tax debt who reluctantly accepts a mission from MI5. That mission is to track a stolen painting containing a secret that is sought after by some rather unsavoury individuals, all in exchange for Her Majesty’s reprieve.

The story? Well, apart from the quite frankly desperately cobbled together synopsis above, there really isn’t one. Instead we are given a series of seemingly unrelated sketches, each boasting gags less funny than the last. Farces are meant to be entertaining confusing, not annoyingly incomprehensible. Characters in these kinds of stories are meant to be endearingly lost, not bilious morons without merit.

Detestable from the very start, Charlie Mordecai opens the film with an odious ode to his new facial hair. I know it’s an intentionally exaggerated performance, but Depp chose that wormy smile, that slurring upper class sub-FAST SHOW diction, and it all starts to grate even before the movie’s two-minute mark. Mortdecai is impossible to like – though good characters almost never have to be likeable – but he’s completely one-note as well. The character’s inconsistency gets to me as well. Is it possible to bumble and stumble through life to such an extent and have an encyclopaedic knowledge of art and social history? If that’s a comment on the English upper classes, then it’s not a very good one. Either David Koepp is picking and choosing when to make Mortdecai an idiot or he doesn’t realise how bad his screenplay is. Funny voices and silly behaviour alone do not make for a good comedy film. There have to be actual jokes, or at the bare minimum, wit. Inspector Clouseau was always an idiot, but he was a lucky idiot and he saved the day through sheer fluke. Mortdecai is a selective idiot that exposes glaring weakness in the film’s screenplay.

Gwyneth Paltrow is wasted as Mortdecai’s wife Johanna, which is a real shame as as the brains of the relationship she could have been a really interesting character. Paul Bettany, on the other hand, appears to be part of another much better comedy film as Mortdecai’s hired muscle/valet Jock. Bettany is so endearingly dedicated to his master, is such an earnest hard-man throughout that you almost forgive him for not saying no to the uttering dialogue comparing women to cars. Ewan McGregor is fine as an MI5 agent. Depp must have been thrilled to get his (somewhat baffling) acting hero Paul Whitehouse to cameo as what appears to be a reprisal one of his sketch show characters.

There’s some really ugly scene transitions that look like the map scenes from INDIANA JONES mocked up in a Computer Aided Design programme from the late 90s. Making these an essential part of the globetrotting was a mistake. The film’s editing in general is a little haphazard in all honesty.

Mortdecai saying that the moustache he has recently committed to will “eventually come to fruition”, the “Oo golly I’ve read about this!” response to being drugged in a toilet, and a moment of pure slapstick while out on a hunt, all raised a slight smile. Acting surprised at the extent of his debt by quipping “I didn’t realise I was so deep in Her Majesty’s hole”, didn’t.

Using vomit in an action sequence without going over-the-top requires a lightness of touch. Koepp doesn’t manage it in Mortdecai, and you just think “Did you really have to?”. The same goes for well over half of the crude gags in the film – I’m not saying you can’t have toilet humour, but these jokes have to be funny enough to justify their being there. At the film’s 20-minute mark, where we’ve just had two successive gagging at the moustache gags (there was more to come on that score), I was seriously conducting hurling the laptop I was watching the film on at a sturdy wall. There’s just so little on offer to make the pain the viewer is being put through worth it.

There’s one good line in the entire film, when Mortdecai insults a thug laying into him with: “Your mother and father only met once, and money changed hands…Probably less than a twenty!”. Another line that McGregor comes out with early on succinctly sums up the film: “Are you quite finished buggering around?”. Koepp has been a good writer in the past, and has shown particular skill at adapted screenplays, but should probably take a break from directing. Depp has been a good actor, but his career has been on the ropes for a while and he needs roles that amount to more than pulling faces to his stoney-faced audience. SSP

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Review: Whiplash (2014)

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Sam S-P

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Who needs bells-and-whistles action scenes when you can make the simple sight of someone drumming for another’s approval this intense? I don’t particularly feel that any of the final list of potential Best Picture Oscar winners really deserved to be named the best of 2014 (the snubbing of NIGHTCRAWLER and MR. TURNER particularly rankles) but WHIPLASH probably comes closest out of The Academy’s selection.

Andrew (Miles Teller) has a dream of being the next jazz drumming great, the next Buddy Rich. He’s well on his way to being a musical prodigy, attending a well-regarded music college and performing in some of the best bands in the country. But someone wants to crush Andrew’s dream, and that man is the psychotic and malicious bandleader Terence Fletcher (JK Simmons). Egos collide and the battle to achieve perfection begins, but who will triumph in this battle of wills, Andrew or Fletcher?

Yes, Simmons deserves every one of his plaudits, making Fletcher an unknowable sneering hurricane. He’s arguably the most formidable on-screen mentor/abuser since FULL METAL JACKET, and much like that movie’s Drill Sergent Hartman, you want to despise him but can’t quite bring yourself to, mostly because of the way he grinds people down is so darned funny-uncomfortable.  His profane, homophobic outbursts are awful, but hilarious. Simmons’ terrifying presence and what he does to Andrew and others over the course of the film would be enough to make him memorable, but I also loved the subtle, almost playfully supernatural trappings of him as a character. Fletcher is a ghoul, a spectre with the uncanny ability to appear at any moment to completely and utterly destroy you. No other man alive could make a criticism like “not quite my tempo” drip, nay gush, with such menace.

You can’t take anything away from Miles Teller, either. The film hinges on Fletcher having someone’s misery to feed off, like a smart-casual Dementor, and Teller brings to sweaty, blistering and bloody life Andrew’s near-constant suffering. Teller has been playing drums since he was a child, and does around half of Andrew’s on-screen performing, a real achievement in addition to evoking all the complexities and misery of his character.

As well as the nerve-shredding band practice and performance sequences that act as the film’s set pieces, Whiplash gives us the most uncomfortable breakup scene since THE SOCIAL NETWORK. We’re willing Andrew not to go through with it, to not act like such a jerk to the lovely Nicole (Melissa Benoist) but we simultaneously know everything he’s telling her is true, that there is no room for her on his life as long as he plays.

It’s a stroke of genius to have Andrew’s drive morph from passion for his art to utter detest of his mentor. It’s a really good arc that inexorably binds the fate of our protagonist to that of our antagonist and comments on the fragility of creative drive and the duel nature of love and hate. At first we think Fletcher is testing Andrew down to build him back up again, the classic “for your own good” prickly mentor tack, but we soon realise Fletcher is simply abusing Andrew because he enjoys doing it. Equally, when Andrew starts to fight back, determined to beat Fletcher at his own game and prove he is that good, it’s for purely selfish reasons, to humiliate Fletcher rather than to achieve musical transcendence.

The one scene that I didn’t buy, Andrew’s car crash and subsequent bloodstained stagger to perform, could conceivably have been inspired by the experiences of Teller and his director, Damien Chazelle, both of whom have been involved in such trauma in recent years. Chazelle even returned to work the day after his crash, much in the same way Andrew still somehow makes it to perform. Why not use your own experiences to add a bit of (admittedly unnecessary) dramatic clout to your movie?

Dramatic flourish aside, Whiplash is a hypnotic, exhausting experience boasting two of the best performances of the year. It’s too carefully rehearsed and meticulously put together to be considered truly “jazzy”, but as a chronicle of two human beings using music as a tool to tear each other apart, it’s a dark delight. SSP

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