I am acutely aware I am late posting, I simply got caught up with other stuff yesterday and didn't have the opportunity to look through this week's releases, which is a shame as from the outside it looks likes a vital and exciting week with fascinating costume dramas from the 20th and 19th centuries as well as a independent comic book feature and a semi-return to form from a much maligned comedian. Not that my choice of film of the week can come as a surprise to anyone, it looks utterly gorgeous, features incredible artistic choices and comes from one of the most exciting British directors working today. The RLAG film of the week is Anna Karenina.
Last weekend Total Recall did indeed smash it's way to the top with the additional 5 days of previews for The Watch proving utterly fruitless when it arrived DOA. This weekend is a bit of a dilemma. Amazingly Anna Karenina has the largest opening with 419 cinemas, and there's certinaly plenty of fanboy hype for Dredd but I think Lawless with it's rising star cast and effective and ubiquitous marketing presence will take the top spot.
Anna Karenina
Joe Wright apparently decided to film Tolstoy's epic love story(s) in a theatre for budgetary reasons however just watching the trailer and reading the reviews proves this was a profound and vital choice underlining the themes of society as show and the formality of the rules of Russian etiquette.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●●●●●●○
That has to be one of the most gorgeously presented trailers of the year, making the film a must-see experience.
Lawless
John Hillcoat directs from Nick Cave's screenplay in a return to the partnership that created the superb Aussie Western The Proposition and if this country gangster pic doesn't quite hit those dizzy heights there's no shame in that. Tom Hardy and Shia Labeouf are the stars likely to bring in the punters, ably supported by eyebrow-challenged Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain and Gary Oldman.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●●○○○○○
That's My Boy
OK, I accept in theory the injustice of a Adam Sandler movie getting 4 blobs, effectively meaning it could have been film of the week on at least one occasion. Furthermore the trailer in no way makes me want to see this movie. However the reviews on this side of the pond has talked about how the loser father plot is closer to the on the knuckle Sandler movies of his early career and less like the crap he's recently been making and that should be applauded. Plus Susan Sarandon and James Caan have minor roles and they're always worth watching.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●○○○○○○
Debbe: Mir cin Vakasi
Turkish found footage horror movie with some arresting images, and suitably wide eyed acting, but lets be honest it looks like a rip of hundreds of other found footage horrors. Did anyone else think of Paranormal Activity watching this trailer?
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Dredd
The ultra-violent comic book finally gets the adaptation it deserves with Karl Urban wearing on the iconic mask (and not taking it off) and Lena Headley as the "slow-mo" drug pushing big bad. It's a shame the plot device of taking out a tower block seems so similar to the martial arts classic The Raid but them's the breaks.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Love
Poetic looking sci-fi indie in the vein of 2001 or Solaris that probably deserves a much bigger audience than it's going to get. Gunner Wright is the astronaut isolated on Space Station Mir slowly questioning his sanity in William Eubank's debut film, marking him as a talent to watch.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Night in the Woods
Talking about found footage horror knockoffs does this British flick, starring rising star Scoot McNairy and a couple of other disposable 20 somethings as they frolic adulterously around Dartmoor before a mysterious hunter comes after them resemble a certain Blair witch to you?
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Raaz 3: The Third Dimension
The third installement in this popular Hindi horror franchise which uses the odd connection of possessed women to link the films. It doesn't have a massive opening but it should do please the faithful.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Tabu
Portuguese movie that sits firmly within the arthouse bracket with two seemingly unconnected storylines about a devout woman in modern Lisbon and a pop band covering the Everly Brothers in 1960's Mozambique. It won the FIPRESCI prize at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival for it's imaginative and unique contribution to cinematic art.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
When Pigs have Wings
Random comedy about a struggling fisherman who's life takes a turn for the bizarre when he finds a live pig in his net. With gross-out humour played against real-world religious and political strife this looks like a fascinating project.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Ajj de Ranjhe
Punjabi film that supposedly satirises the relationship between the police and the youth of modern cities. Still it's a pretty cast and probably involves a few nice tunes.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
St. Georges Day
I'm not sure I completely understand the marketing strategy that sees this date specific London gangster flick opening 5 months off from the feats day it's named after but given it's unimaginative plot revolves around football hooliganism, one last heist and strip joints I'm guessing they were happy to see the inside of a cinema.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
Sunday, 9 September 2012
Choosing the best medium (Out this week - 07/09/12)
Thursday, 9 August 2012
The Dark Knight Rises
2012. Dir: Christopher Nolan. Starring: Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anne Hathaway. ●●●○○
Last week I admitted to being lazy, this week I'm going to admit to being a coward. I've been holdign back on my The Dark Knight Rises review because my opinion may be unpopular. So here we are, three weeks too late, I didn't much like the closing chapter to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. I felt it to be an ambitious, glorious piece of film-making sadly let down by an overstuffed, incoherent and dull plot. It is both an improvement and a let down compared to Nolan's previous work and I only hope he pares down his narrative fancies for whatever non-chiropteran project he works on next.
Seven years have past since the thrilling climax of The Dark Knight when Bale’s Batman took the fall for Harvey Two-face Dent’s murderous rampage and Gotham has radically changed. The Dent act, which allows draconian charging for organised syndicates has virtually destroyed the Falcone family interests and created a crime free zone, whilst an arrest warrant sits over Batman’s head. Bruce Wayne, with no crime to fight, has sunk into a deep depression, brooding over the death of Rachel Dawes and shut off from all society; an effort to create a cold fusion generator macguffin was thwarted when a Hungarian scientist pointed out how easy it was to turn it into a bomb and the entire R&D budget has been sunk in keeping the device, handily stored under the city, leaving Wayne industries close to insolvency, all in all things are not looking good for Batman.
Yet something under the city is stirring, gangs of youths are disappearing into the sewers, lulled by the promise of jobs still denied to the Gotham underclass. A few switched on cops led by aging Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and angry young pup (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are imagining the worst and wondering when the bat signal will once again need to be turned on. Even sophisticated jewellery thief Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) knows enough to spout warnings of a war coming, an inexorable tide that will bring the rich and powerful of the city tumbling to the streets. Yet even Kyle isn’t completely prepared for the changes, because it’s no campaigning Victorian with concerns about social harmony, nor is it the financial meltdown the real world has experienced, Gotham has a more substantial foe, international terrorist and towering brute Bane (Tom Hardy in a mask) is about to reveal himself as Gotham’s reckoning.
Two paragraphs of exposition on and I’ve yet to mention other key characters brought forward from previous movies (Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy) and new batch (Marion Cotillard, Matthew Modine, Tom Conti, Ben Mandelsson) all of whom almost have story arcs of their own to get through, even if the arc precludes the possibility of character development. Inevitably many of actors get shafted in the screen play, we've seen plenty of Morgan Freeman's witty and taciturn technogeek, and not just in this trilogy, but Marion Cotillard who really should make an impact in order to justify her ropey romance with Bale and her third act journey, yet Miranda Tate is always a cypher to the audience, seemingly there only to give the fanboys something to shout about at the end.
Instead of the supporting cast Nolan turns the camera back on the Batman, returning to the story of a scared orphan falling down in order to learn how to get up, an angry child emotionally scarred by his parents untimely death and his battle to clean up the streets. It's thematically linked to the first film in that examination of Bruce Wayne's psyche and the surrogate parental relationships formed with butler, Alfred, and Liam Neeson's Ra's al Ghul and the infamous League of Shadows.
Against this most introspective of comic book hero's it takes a really special performance to steal the limelight, and alas Tom Hardy's Bane whilst superficially fulfilling the flipside to Wayne - a man who started with nothing intent on destroying the world order rather than protecting it not to mention the yin and yang of their masks - is given so little to do about from a couple of rousing, only just decipherable speeches and a chance to pummel the Batman. Indeed Bane is able to build an army and mount a revolution yet the audience aren't given a chance to understand what makes his men follow him, not just into battle but also to a sacrificial alter.
When considering the film I find myself constantly returning to Bane, his plan and his motives. Each time I confuse myself more and more, did Bane want to stir up a revolution to overturn corrupt capitalist society, or was the whole thing a ruse to get Batman so riled up he crawls out of a hole? Doesn't Bane and his key accomplices know the bomb will explode? Did Nolan not think it would be interesting to see the results of Bane's tyrannical overthrow, or was a montage of the rich being thrown out of their hotels enough to satisfy? It's not even as if the politics of the film hit the zeitgeist, Bane doesn't represent the 99% as he's pushing not for equality of opportunity and social justice but another kind of inequality. Even the attack on Gotham's own stock exchange isn't to break the bank but to make some high value transactions of his own. It's the filmic equivalent of Robespierre and Idi Amin keeping the masses in place by routinely executing the old order and redistributing wealth with reckless abandon.
Thank God for Anne Hathaway, from the moment she appears on screen her cat-burglar (geddit???) steals every scene, by turns vulnerable, playful and vindictive, she's the proof Nolan could help create significant, rounded female characters (sorely missing from most of his back catalogue).
Technically this film delivers in spades. Wally Pfister knows how to use IMAX cameras like no-one else in the business, there were times I was as giddy as a school-girl watching the camera work. Lindy Hemmings costumes, always a highpoint of the series once again impress, from the stylish duds of Gotham's partying rich to Gary Oldham's cardies and from the utilitarian suggestion of cat to Anne Hathaway's suit to Bane's coat, which I fully expect to see everywhere this winter.
Overall though I have to say it doesn't matter how much I try to big up the successes in The Dark Knight Rises, the bar was simply too high to climb. Flawed and unwieldy this is not the closing episode any of us wanted and I can really only recommend it to fans of the Batman.
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
2011. Dir: Tomas Alfredson. Starring: Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and John Hurt. ●●●●●
It's a rare thing for cinema to transport the audience into another time and place for the duration of an entire movie. Sure a costume, flick of cigarette or particular line reading has the power of evoking a period but for the feeling to last for two hours is a special achievement. It is immensely gratifying that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy completely immerses you in cold war paranoia of the early 70's, not just through garish wallpaper and and donkey jackets, but through structure and storytelling. Emulating the pacing of early Coppola or Friedkin this thrilling non-thriller may become one of the most essential additions to the spy genre.
"There is a mole, right at the top of the circus." So say bitter old-school Control (John Hurt - musky and paranoid) and brutish bag-man Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy) his stoicism losing to a desperate bid to get out of the game, even officious civil servant Simon McBurney is beginning to believe it. So much so that 'retired' agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is called back to the circus - be prepared for a lexicon of MI6 shorthand - to uncover the mole, to hunt down the source of the rumours and, if necessary, identify and bring to account whichever of the most senior spooks has turned traitor. The prime suspects, who've been allocated codenames from the popular children's rhyme, are Tinker (Toby Jones), Tailer (Colin Firth), Soldier (Ciaran Hinds) and - missing a couple of possibilities - poor man (David Dencik) with Smiley himself as a unlikely fifth candidate.
To say anymore would spoil the tension bubbling through the actual plot, with bluff and double bluff Smiley uses a determined mixture of flat foot detection and psychoanalysing body language to fit together the conflicting evidence. Don't go in trying to figure out the culprit, the same subterfuge that obscures the truth from Smiley will stand in your way but instead concentrate of the subtleties of the filmmaking, of the minor gestures. It is in these undefinable moments, tactical conversations, moving folders in libraries, shared glances at parties, that the masterpiece shows itself.
Film fans used to the high-octane car chases and hand to hand combat of the Bond and Bourne spy franchises will be unused the to unflashy world of real espionage, a world that novelist John le Carre knows well from his own days in the service, but it's the down-at-heel workaday nature of the job that gets the blood pumping when necessary. Brief bursts of gory violence occur off-screen, petulance is the only cause to raise voices, the characters within pine for the glory days of the Second World War when the battle lines were clearer, cleaner, not hidden in murky shadows.
Oldman gives the performance of his lifetime, disappearing under thick rimmed specs and owlish complexion his tendency to steal the scenes is leashed as swoops on the outskirts of the screen, gently allowing the other actors show their worth, giving the characters the freedom to display their tells. The entire supporting cast is first rate too, with special mention going to Kathy Burke as former surveillance expert with a suspicious mind and Benedict Cumberbatch as Smiley assistant, spying on his own and underlying the themes of sacrifice and misplaced loyalty that seep through the production.
The design of the movie is grubby and drab, reflecting the austerity of the low-growth pre-EEC Britain and the inherent murkiness of the cold-war. Every surface is covered in a sheen of cigarette tar and once bright wallpaper and carpets look limp and ageing in the backgrounds of unkempt flats and liberal boarding houses.
In spite of this the movie belongs to director Tomas Alfredson, coming hot off childhood vampire fable Let the Right One In, he proves here his steady eye and tension building pacing are the real deal. He's gambled with a high-profile remake exploring themes the original wouldn't have dared to consider and taken this complex and dense plot yet made it so delicious to follow we accept and understand every facet of the story.
There is no question that I recommend this movie to any filmgoer. A superb piece of work that deserves your patronage.
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
Red Riding Hood
2011. Dir: Catherine Hardwicke. Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons, Gary Oldman and Julie Christie. ●○○○○
Well let's just get this clear straight off the back. I am not the intended audience for Red Riding Hood, however I went to see it on a Thursday afternoon during Easter holidays and the (sparse) audience around me was in the majority were ealry teenage girls, and like me they were shifting uncomfortably in the seats whilst this shockingly inept piece of filmmaking rolled (and not just when the projector turned itself off in disgust).
Perhaps I should be more generous, as there are elements of the film I liked - lovely costumes for instance however poor scriptwriting, acting and direction combine to destroy any positivity I have about the piece.
So using the traditional fairy tale as it's core, Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight inspired picture focuses on the love triangle faced by the eponymous cloak clad heroine (Amanda Seyfried pouting to hide her gritted teeth) as she decides between hunky poor woodcutter (Shiloh Fernandez), rich but faintly dull blacksmith (Max Irons) or being ripped to shreds by the local werewolf.
Meanwhile her faintly ludicris family - a sacrificial sister who's the first victim of the wolf, heart-broken Virginia Madsen, alcoholic Billy Burke and kooky Grandma Julie Christie - as well as the crowds of other largely unnamed villagers have to deal with the sudden arrival of master werewolf hunter Father Solomon (Gary Oldman turned up to eleven). Each of the major characters gets the finger of suspicion pointed towards them at various points, including Seyfried's best friend, the village simpleton and the local priest through lingering pov shots and incidental music.
In a BBC interview Hardwicke claimed she was trying to raise post 9/11 parallels, where we begin to suspect all our neighbours and friends and trust braks down. Gary Oldman even gets a speech to this effect, but that good intention fails because we really don't care about the characters. Frankly they could all have been werewolves tortured and murdered by Oldman and I really wouldn't have cared.
If I were Seyfried I'd have ignored both of her potential suitors. Irons is at least worthy, but his delivery is immensely dull, but Fernandez is off handed and stroppy throughout and has a look of Tim McInnery around him which really took me out of the picture. Trust me, slap a 'tache on Shiloh and you'll want to call him Darling.
The elder cast members are given short shrift too - Madsen has either endless exposition to remind the audience of the parallels between her and her daughter's choices and Christie doesn't even have the good fortune to get eaten by the wolf in real time we only find out in flashback during the reveal. Oldman is clearly having a lot of fun with his screentime but he's so wildly over the top it's pantomimic and off-putting, although the silver fingernails are a nice touch.
The below the line talent is scarely better served with the clean wooden huts and furry white rabbits bouncing around appearing to come out of a children's TV show combined with a horrid soundtrack and giddy swishy camera movements. Complete with a trite and cliche ridden script.
Easily the worst of the 20 odd films I've seen so far this year I can honestly recommend that you steer a wide berth from this monster of a movie.
