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FILM REVIEWS
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SPECTRE
SPECTRacular?
WARNING:
SPOILERS LIE AHEAD
Following in the triumphant footsteps of Skyfall was always going to be problematic. How does one equal, let alone trump one of the best and most successful Bonds to date? The answer is you reassemble the same players, scribes and even the director and go about trying to make a better film. Have Sam Mendes and his team succeeded?
The short answer is no. Not that SPECTRE is a bad film: this 24th instalment is operatic, hugely entertaining and stands as one of the best in the 53-year old franchise. The snag is that the Daniel Craig tenure has been so strong (aside from the rightly maligned Quantum of Solace) that this recent instalment doesn’t quite manage to satisfy as much as Casino Royale and indeed Skyfall.
It all starts in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead. A Touch of Evil extended tracking shot follows Bond (Daniel Craig) and culminates in a sizeable explosion and helicopter scuffle that kicks off SPECTRE with swagger and stylish panache. On his return to Blighty, our hero is grounded by M (Ralph Fiennes) and instead of taking a fortnight’s leave, he defiantly ricochets from Rome to Morocco in search of answers to questions posthumously left by his previous superior (Judi Dench, who ‘cameos’ here on several occasions).
While the rogue Bond pieces the clues that will lead him to the daughter of a familiar foe (Lea Seydoux) and to the titular criminal cabal, London-based M, Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Q (Ben Whishaw) all face forced retirement: new MI5 superior on the block Max Denbigh, codenamed C (Andrew Scott), plans to shut down the 00-section for good. He schemes to replace it with the Nine Eyes program, an extensive surveillance system which, as M describes, would be “Orwell’s worst nightmare”.
The first half of SPECTRE is fantastic. From the gun barrel sequence - which has now rightfully found its way back to the start of the film - that breath-taking pre-credits opening, the hypnotic credits courtesy of Daniel Kleinman, all the way to a Rome-based boardroom via an Austrian alpine clinic, the film is everything you want it to be. Aside from Sam Smith’s whiney-but-narratively-sound theme song, the pace is strong, the tone is confident and Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography is flawless. There is a Skyfall-like sense of dread that is expertly carried on in SPECTRE’s first hour and tension is expertly weaved within the post-Snowden plot. There is also a continued sense that there is a human being behind the 007 number and the script does an excellent job of injecting some old-style Bond wit into the harder edged Bond of the Craig era.
As for the cast, they are all impeccable. Léa Seydoux does a great job with a character that isn’t afforded the same depth as Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd but still manages to come off as more than the token conquest. Her Madeleine Swann is somewhat underwritten but she makes it work... and as far as Bond girl names are concerned, this Proustian appellation has got to be the most literate in the franchise yet. We’ve come a long way since Pussy Galore.
Ben Whishaw and Ralph Fiennes both get more screen time and it’s for the best, since they flesh out the beloved characters and are on scene-stealing form. As for Daniel Craig, he is Bond. Even in the underwhelming Quantum of Solace, he has always made the character his own and in SPECTRE, he relishes the deadpan quips with more aplomb than in Skyfall. He brings a more playful Bond to the table while remaining his introverted self throughout and has now got the balancing act down to a T. It’ll be a sad day if this is to be his swansong as Bond.
The problem with SPECTRE is that after the excellent From Russia With Love / The Spy Who Loved Me-reminiscent train fight with monosyllabic henchman Mr Hinx (Dave Bautista), things start falling apart. Once Christoph Waltz properly gets his late entrance in the You Only Live Twice-light lair, the proceedings have lost their urgency or suspense. Waltz was born to play Franz Oberhauser / Ernst Stavro Blofeld but doesn’t fully manage to surprise the audience, who are familiar with his villainous antics previously seen in Tarantino’s domain. He’s a treat to watch but his overall lack of screen time does him no favours.
However, the main issue is not Waltz, the contrived Austin Powers-esque backstory between Bond and his arch nemesis or even the grating and glossed over “Haha! It was me all along!” retcon that ham-fistedly ties the SPECTRE organisation in with the previous films in order to provide a shoehorned continuity arc to all of Craig’s films: the glaring misstep is that the weaker second act and its climax will leave you waiting for a surprising twist or even a daring beat that never comes. It’s as if the screenwriters (John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth), who have invested in a backstory-heavy approach to Bond, decided to allow the first act’s tension to dissipate and switched on the autopilot. What you end up getting is a neatly rounded film that needlessly feels it has to tie up loose ends while knowingly tipping its hat to other classic 007 films or more obscure references to Ian Fleming (watch out for the Hildebrand safe house, named after Fleming’s short - and thus far unused - story ‘The Hildebrand Rarity’). Instead of surprising the audience like they did with Vesper’s death in Casino Royale or M’s death in Skyfall, they take the predictable option that is somewhat uninvolving compared to what preceded it.
That’s all very well and good, but what could have been done differently, you ask?
Considering the Bond producers have been taking necessary risks in the wake of the dire Die Another Day, why not shake things up a bit more: make the criminally underused Monica Bellucci the head of SPECTRE. Ultimately, she could have been Blofeld since Oberhauser’s Star Trek Into Darkness / Khan reveal was not necessary. If Bellucci’s Lucia Sciarra was in fact the big bad puppet mistress all along, using her second in command’s daddy issues to her and SPECTRE’s advantage (much like she could have used Skyfall’s Silva’s personal vendetta against M to her nefarious ends), the crinkles could have been ironed out, certain clunky plot beats would have come off as less ridiculous and the overall scheme made less petty. Granted, purists would have been in uproar but isn’t it time Bond had a truly memorable female villain? This option could have provided the film the less signposted finale and the edge it sorely lacks towards the end.
Granted, a lot of this may sound like the rantings of a disgruntled fanboy who didn’t get the narrative beat he wanted, but the fact remains that Sam Mendes and his team missed a trick. They weren’t able to sustain the thrilling urgency they put into place in the film’s first half and therefore let SPECTRE down in the strangely formulaic closing act.
SPECTRE is, technically speaking, hard to fault: it looks amazing, the cast all bring their A-game and Mendes works wonders in his second outing by making such a stylish and hugely entertaining blockbuster. It is a more playful Bond adventure that delivers the globetrotting and thrilling goods and in which individual scenes stand out, namely the opening, the meeting with QUANTUM’s Mr White and the old-fashioned SPECTRE boardroom scene in Rome. Nonetheless, it doesn’t quite satisfy as much as its predecessor. To put it in a way aficionados of star ratings would enjoy, SPECTRE started out as a five star film and settled for four stars.
While it is easy to nit-pick, the misfires don’t outweigh the bullseyes, chief of which is Craig’s spectacular turn as the Martini-swigging agent. Is it his last? It’s true that his Bond’s arc seems finished and that there is a sense of closure compared to his previous three outings. However, it’s easy to smell the tantalizing whiff of a set-up: Waltz’ captured Blofeld could easily return to exact revenge on Bond by murdering Swann in the next adventure, thereby re-approaching the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service plot and redeeming the weak showdown in this film. After all, as the first words onscreen in SPECTRE tell us: “The dead are alive”. Let’s hope Craig, Waltz, Seydoux and the MI6 team aren’t quite dead yet: since they want a neat narrative bow around Craig’s tenure, let it finish with Bond 25.
Time will tell whether his Bond will return...
- D - 05/11/15
UPDATE:
(00)7 POINTS AFTER A SECOND VIEWING OF SPECTRE
1) The pre-credits sequence in Mexico has got to be one of the best Bond openings. As for the credit sequence, Daniel Kleinman has designed one of the most intriguing, ominous and Hentai-orientated sequences in the franchise. Full marks.
2) Speaking of which, the scene between M and C in the final act mirrors Casino Royale’s pre-credits opening. It’s a nice little nod to Craig’s first outing as Bond, all the way down to the ammunition-stealing antics.
3) I failed to comment in my review how excellent Thomas Newman’s score is. Here’s me righting a wrong.
4) As mentioned in my review, there are some cheeky callbacks to the franchise and Bond canon: the Hildebrand connection, the From Russia With Love-reminiscent train fight etc. One of the more obvious Easter eggs is the white tuxedo worn by Craig, which is a direct homage to the one worn by Sean Connery in Goldfinger. However, more eagle-eyed viewers will have spotted that the car which is sent by Oberhauser / Blofeld to pick up Bond and Swann in the Moroccan desert is the same as Goldfinger’s car: a Rolls-Royce Phantom. SPECTRE’s one is silver though, not gold plated...
5) The shots fired on the bulletproof glass between Bond and Blofeld make up the tentacled SPECTRE logo, much like in the promo material and trailers.
6) I reiterate: the underused Monica Bellucci’s character Lucia Sciarra should have been revealed as Blofeld at the end, leaving Waltz’ character as Oberhauser. The screenwriters and producers lost their nerve and didn’t push the boat out by delivering a “that’s clever” moment instead of the signposted finale we got. How wonderful would it have been if after Oberhauser’s capture, another scene with a covert meeting (much like the one in Rome) showed the true head of SPECTRE announcing to the rest of the nefarious committee that her second in command has been captured by the British secret service? A tantalizing nod as to the fact that the organisation is still out there and this scenario actually gives Craig’s Bond true closure: the personal side to his mission is done. As it stands, SPECTRE needs a follow up, with Craig starring: Waltz’ eye screams revenge in that last shot of him watching Bond and Swann exit hand in hand. Like Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo, aka: Tracy Draco, aka: the only Mrs Bond, Madelaine Swann has convinced Bond that there’s more to life than MI6. As if that wasn’t enough, SPECTRE ends with them both driving off; Tracy was gunned down in Bond’s car. If an On Her Majesty’s Secret Service-esque sequel, showing Craig’s Bond out for revenge once Blofeld escapes custody and murders his gal, isn’t on the cards, it bloody should be.
7) All in all, I stand by my review and consider SPECTRE to be a strong and hugely enjoyable 007 adventure, one which will hopefully be Daniel Craig’s penultimate...
I leave you with this video, which had me in stitches:
1) The pre-credits sequence in Mexico has got to be one of the best Bond openings. As for the credit sequence, Daniel Kleinman has designed one of the most intriguing, ominous and Hentai-orientated sequences in the franchise. Full marks.
2) Speaking of which, the scene between M and C in the final act mirrors Casino Royale’s pre-credits opening. It’s a nice little nod to Craig’s first outing as Bond, all the way down to the ammunition-stealing antics.
3) I failed to comment in my review how excellent Thomas Newman’s score is. Here’s me righting a wrong.
4) As mentioned in my review, there are some cheeky callbacks to the franchise and Bond canon: the Hildebrand connection, the From Russia With Love-reminiscent train fight etc. One of the more obvious Easter eggs is the white tuxedo worn by Craig, which is a direct homage to the one worn by Sean Connery in Goldfinger. However, more eagle-eyed viewers will have spotted that the car which is sent by Oberhauser / Blofeld to pick up Bond and Swann in the Moroccan desert is the same as Goldfinger’s car: a Rolls-Royce Phantom. SPECTRE’s one is silver though, not gold plated...
5) The shots fired on the bulletproof glass between Bond and Blofeld make up the tentacled SPECTRE logo, much like in the promo material and trailers.
6) I reiterate: the underused Monica Bellucci’s character Lucia Sciarra should have been revealed as Blofeld at the end, leaving Waltz’ character as Oberhauser. The screenwriters and producers lost their nerve and didn’t push the boat out by delivering a “that’s clever” moment instead of the signposted finale we got. How wonderful would it have been if after Oberhauser’s capture, another scene with a covert meeting (much like the one in Rome) showed the true head of SPECTRE announcing to the rest of the nefarious committee that her second in command has been captured by the British secret service? A tantalizing nod as to the fact that the organisation is still out there and this scenario actually gives Craig’s Bond true closure: the personal side to his mission is done. As it stands, SPECTRE needs a follow up, with Craig starring: Waltz’ eye screams revenge in that last shot of him watching Bond and Swann exit hand in hand. Like Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo, aka: Tracy Draco, aka: the only Mrs Bond, Madelaine Swann has convinced Bond that there’s more to life than MI6. As if that wasn’t enough, SPECTRE ends with them both driving off; Tracy was gunned down in Bond’s car. If an On Her Majesty’s Secret Service-esque sequel, showing Craig’s Bond out for revenge once Blofeld escapes custody and murders his gal, isn’t on the cards, it bloody should be.
7) All in all, I stand by my review and consider SPECTRE to be a strong and hugely enjoyable 007 adventure, one which will hopefully be Daniel Craig’s penultimate...
I leave you with this video, which had me in stitches:
If you haven’t had your fill of Bond and have missed the Countdown To SPECTRE series,
feel free to catch up by clicking on the following links:
* Part 1: The Top 10 spy films since 2000
* Part 2: Review of Sam Smith’s SPECTRE theme song
* Part 3: The 24 Bond facts you should know
* Part 4: An exclusive interview with Blofeld’s cat
feel free to catch up by clicking on the following links:
* Part 1: The Top 10 spy films since 2000
* Part 2: Review of Sam Smith’s SPECTRE theme song
* Part 3: The 24 Bond facts you should know
* Part 4: An exclusive interview with Blofeld’s cat
BLACK MASS
The Depp-arted
First things first: yes, the rumours are true. Scott Cooper’s Black Mass is a return to form for Johnny Depp. After toe-curlingly annoying turns in endless Pirates of the Caribbean films and underwhelming performances which saw him sully his good name (The Tourist, The Lone Ranger, Transcendence, Mortdecai... the list goes on...), Black Mass is the best he’s been in nearly a decade.
Unless you’re counting his voiceover work for 2011’s Rango. Which was wonderful.
Depp plays notorious Boston gangster Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger, who has returned home to South Boston after a nine-year stint in the slammer. Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang will set out to dethrone the Angiulos and their Italian mafia family.
His return also pricks the ears of FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), who knew Jimmy as a child and who approaches him with an offer: become an informant and get FBI protection. Despite some initial hesitation and argument over semantics (Bulger sees it as a business “alliance” rather than “ratting”), the future crime lord agrees and from 1975 to the early 1990s, he exploits the Feds and puppeteers Connolly so that his empire thrives without competition.
All sound vaguely familiar? That’s because, aside from being based on fact, Jack Nicholson’s character in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was based on Bulger...
Scott Cooper competently depicts an unglamorous world of organized crime that can arise from corruption in political spheres. He addresses the asymmetrical power play between the increasingly manic Bulger and the in-over-his-head Connolly, and never forgets that the whole film rests on this dynamic.
No stranger to prosthetics, Depp, as previously mentioned, is transformed and brings his A-game. Certain shots make him borderline unrecognizable, with his demonic eyes and terrifying laugh. He’s convincing and fun to watch. Black Mass reassuringly shows that the actor can still step out of his mannered comfort zone, ditch his set of predictable tics and deliver scenes that make it hard for audiences to know what he’s going to do next.
As for Edgerton, he is spot-on as the ambitious Connolly, who is torn between street loyalties and the straight-shooting bureau. His performance is the less showy of the two but provides the calmer foil Depp needs. It’s also worth mentioning that this versatile actor has had one hell of a year with this turn as the handled handler and his excellent directorial debut The Gift, in which he also stars.
The supporting cast are all strong, with Benedict “I have more on my plate right now than a spinster at a wedding” Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard and Corey Stoll all giving it their best Boston lilts and serious frowns.
The main (and sizeable) issue with Black Mass is that the flashback-lead script by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth (based on the book of the same name by Dick Lehr and Gerald O’Neill) is clumsy, too episodic and disappointingly linear. This means there’s rarely any feeling of suspenseful build-up and that some characters are there for window-dressing. This is particularly true of the female characters, who are noticeably underused or even disappear from the narrative in some cases: Dakota Johnson, who plays Bulger’s wife, vanishes halfway through, Julianne Nicholson is restricted to being Connolly’s one-note wife and the terrific Juno Temple barely gets the chance to shine before (spoiler alert) getting unceremoniously strangled.
There’s also the pervasive feeling once the film is over that it hasn’t shown much we haven’t already seen: there’s enough to keep audiences intrigued but never fully engrossed. The final act in particular lacks a satisfying pay-off, leaving a slightly bland taste in the mouth.
Black Mass features some excellent performances but is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. It doesn’t hold a candle to Scorsese’s classics or other recent, more memorable gangster films like Sexy Beast, Eastern Promises and yes, Eyebrows’ very own The Departed.
That being said, Cooper's film is worth seeing for the two central performances and if you’re an unconditional fan of the genre. For those who are familiar with the well-established crime drama genre, there’s very little here that sets Black Mass apart from the competition.
- D - 13/10/15
RED ARMY
Ice Ice Rusky...
Writer / director Gabe Polsky’s fascinating documentary chronicles the heyday of the Soviet ice-hockey team and their dominance over the sport. The centre of this narrative is the charismatic Viacheslav “Slava” Fetisov, former captain of the USSR team and bona fide national treasure.
We soon learn that the all-conquering players were flagbearers for their country but also pawns in the Soviet propaganda machine at the height of the Cold War. The Red Army, as they were known, was coached by Anatoli Tarasov, who likened hockey to ballet by emphasizing the fluidity and teamwork necessary to outplay other teams. In an overzealous moment that rubs his superiors the wrong way, Tarasov was replaced by KGB-appointed Vicktor Tikhonov; under the new oppressive regime, the athletes were underpaid, isolated from their families and subjected to brutal training.
A mutiny of sorts began after a previously-unthinkable defeat by the US at the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid: Slava and several other disillusioned players eventually ‘defected’ to the West and started playing for the NHL.
The director interweaves archive footage and interviews, using Fetisov’s story as a springboard to insightfully explore the link between sport and politics: both the Soviet and US systems used ice hockey and the exploits of the players as a means of glorifying their respective ideologies. For instance, footage shows former US coach Herb Brooks speaking to President Carter over the phone following the 1980 Olympic victory, stating that the defeat of the Red Army was proof that “our way of life is the proper way.”
Neither side comes out unscathed, with the documentary addressing the age-old American Dream and delving into a fascinating time in recent history. We get the sense of a protracted public relations battle between two superpowers, which merely resulted in both sides excelling in prolonged name-calling.
Or: 'The Cold War'.
Red Army manages to shine both as a sports documentary and a compelling insight into the machinations of Cold War politics and their effect on identity. It is also a deceptively complex portrait of a bellicose interviewee: Slava goes from being a national hero and an ostracized friend to a former athlete without a nation who now belongs to the system he once fought. He personifies the many ironies and contradictions of this surprising story, which adroitly balances the poignant and the humorous.
Polsky, while often a grating interviewer, has delivered one of this year’s most absorbing documentaries, one that ends on a slyly humorous note and is more than deserving of your time.
- D - 10/10/15
PAN
Smells Like Barrie Prequel
The “boy who wouldn’t grow up” never seems to get old in Hollywood. Whether it’s Disney’s classic, Spielberg’s Hook, 2003’s traditionalist live-action Peter Pan, Finding Neverland or endless straight-to-DVD Tinkerbell fodder, JM Barrie’s creation seems to be a bottomless well of inspiration.
Now, Atonement director Joe Wright helms yet another adaptation, a prequel that aims to give us the untold backstory of how Peter became The Pan.
This origins story has a promising Dickens-meets-Narnia start: Peter is an orphan in 1940s wartime London, a cheeky urchin who sleuths for answers as to why so many children keep disappearing from the orphanage. He uncovers the mystery and is kidnapped by an RAF-bothering floating pirate ship, who naps the kiddies for Blackbeard’s mining effort in Neverland. However, the imaginative opening is dragged down by a stock messianic storyline, shaky special effects, a pointless Cara Delevingne cameo and an unoriginal finale set in Superman’s fortress of solitude. Wright, who is never short of ideas, throws so many at the screen that the overall effect is more messy than masterful.
The cast all play to the back row and just about keep things afloat: newcomer Levi Miller steps up to the challenge of portraying the feather-capped waif; Adeel Akhtar (Four Lions) excels as the bumbling Smee and the wonderful Rooney Mara (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Trash) makes the best of being short-changed as Tiger Lily. The standout is Hugh Jackman, who goes full panto as Blackbeard, a villain who is inexplicably introduced to the sounds of his under-aged slaves chanting to Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.
Apparently, grunge managed to find the second star to the right and went straight on till morning...
While Blackbeard isn’t one of the most memorable villains in recent memory, Jackman chews the scenery for all it’s worth and softens the blow of Garrett Hedlund’s dreadful work as the young James Hook. The latter desperately attempts to channel Harrison Ford and plays the antagonist-to-be as an over-enunciating rogue that is as grating as John Powell’s bombastic score.
“To die will be an awfully big adventure”, wrote Barrie. Pan is awfully big in scale and, fortunately, isn’t enough of a shipwreck to have you praying to walk the plank. Children will enjoy the OTT ride and adults will soldier through the retina-assaulting barrage of primary colours to find some slightly macabre moments. It ultimately stands one of those prequel stories, like Sam Raimi’s Oz The Great and Powerful, that you didn’t ask for but still manages to entertain, despite its many flaws.
- D - 08/10/15
THE NIGHTMARE
Nighty night...
Henry Fusili’s 1781 painting ‘Nightmare’ depicts a woman asleep while a gargoyle-like incubus crouches on top of her and a possessed horse emerges from a thick crimson curtain in the room. It’s a startling image, inspired by the waking dreams the painter experienced.
Several centuries later, not much has changed and this phantasmagorical painting, glimpsed in Rodney Ascher’s documentary The Nightmare, remains a creepily accurate representation of what many suffer: sleep paralysis.
The director has moved on from interviewing The Shining obsessives in his 2013 documentary Room 237 and here approaches eight suffers of sleep paralysis. They describe their night terrors and experiences in stylishly shot talking heads, which are interspersed with equally stylised re-enactments of their terrifying anecdotes. These recreations go from mildly chilling to downright sinister, allowing the director to blur horror film tropes with non-fictional content.
The testimonies have striking resemblances and Asher thrives on these eerie similarities. However, he doesn’t seem to have any interest in actually explaining sleep paralysis and prefers to eliminate a wider perspective that the medical community could have provided.
Some research is touched upon: several artworks, books and films are shown, including A Nightmare on Elm’s Street, Jacob’s Ladder and Insidious. While the influence of cinema on human consciousness is mentioned, this fascinating avenue feels skimmed over. This, complemented by the absence of a scientific discussion in favour of close focus on the testimonies, means that the documentary tends to lack build-up and momentum.
The emphasis on the first-hand accounts does allow The Nightmare to distance itself from a run-of-the-mill TV documentary and brings a certain immersive, cinematic quality to the proceedings: we are privy to the subjects’ afflictions. That being said, it leads the viewer to wonder whether a sparing-but-interesting segment regarding theories behind the causes of the phenomenon could have feasibly enriched the piece without compromising the mood.
If Room 237 was a portrait of obsession, The Nightmare is a very personal investigation into a frightening affliction. It doesn’t work as well as Asher’s previous offering and does come off as repetitive despite its brief 90-minute running time. Nevertheless, the film still manages to captivate and unsettle in equal measure, mostly because the filmmaker has confidently created a compelling genre hybrid.
- D - 02/10/15
SICARIO
Zero Dark Druggy
Ever wonder what PTSD feels like? Well, now you don’t have to. All you need to do is get yourself to your nearest multiplex theatre, buy a ticket to Denis Villeneuve’s latest film and allow yourself to be put thought the motions. From the suspenseful opening raid to the noir-ish final minutes, the tension is unrelenting, the violence unpredictable and you won’t get a minute to unclench that armrest.
Even seasoned reviewers will find their hands still shaking as they try to type a worthy review...
Following a brutal raid on a safehouse owned by the notorious druglord Manuel Diaz, FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is somewhat forcibly volunteered to be a part of a tactical unit which aims to dismantle Diaz’ cartel and take him down once and for all. The task force includes the flip-flop wearing Matt (Josh Brolin) and the cryptic yet intensely driven Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), who both keep Kate - and her concerned partner Reg (Daniel Kaluuya) - in the dark about her involvement and their ethically shady tactics. As Alejandro tells Kate: “You’re asking me how a watch works. For now, just keep an eye on the time.”
Denis Villeneuve can’t seem to put a foot wrong. The director manages to excel in every genre he tackles: whether it be the mystery drama of Incendies, the bleak kidnap thriller of Prisoners or the doppelgänger nightmare that is Enemy, every film has seen the filmmaker intelligently go from strength to strength. Now, he has orchestrated not only a blood-pressure-elevating action thriller but also a compellingly different take on the drug war that pits the US government against the Mexican drug cartels. Sicario deals with the ‘war’ but also addresses the emotional implications of the violence on both sides of the law and both sides of the border.
He and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan achieve this principally by immersing the audience into a punishing world via Emily Blunt’s character. Like her, viewers have to keep up with what’s going on, will be drip-fed knowledge about the drug war and will begin to question the motivations of the characters. What could have been an all-too-effective audience cypher is made into so much more by Blunt, who credibly imbues Kate with a whole palette of emotions. She is naïve but capable, action-savvy yet vulnerable, often cold but never unsympathetic and the only morsel of backstory we ever hear is a recent break-up. Few actresses could have pulled it off. Blunt does.
However, while she, Brolin and oh-my-hasn’t-he-grown-up-since-Skins Kaluuya are on top form here, none of them giving a needlessly showy performance, the stand out is undeniably Del Toro. He manages to make Alejandro everything yet nothing at the same time: a former prosecutor, a wounded man, a merciless gun-for-hire with little regard for due process. We are witnessing a man who has understood he had to lower himself to his enemy’s level, a man who’s let the abyss become him. Even if a comparison could be easily made with Del Toro’s Oscar-winning turn in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, the character of Alejandro, while just as magnetic as Javier, is more complex.
No matter how formidable the script and the performances, what makes Sicario one of 2015’s best films are the visuals. Cinematographer Roger Deakins, with whom Villeneuve had previously worked with on Prisoners, delivers some of this year’s most electrifying and stunning photography. Each shot is immersive, making the beautiful aerial shots feel dauntingly involving and even the most visceral bursts of non-sensationalized violence transfixing. Marry these visuals with the perfectly judged momentum the director creates, the careful use of Johann Johannsson’s menacing score, complete with pulsating horns, and you’ve got an exquisitely visceral thrill ride, the zenith of which can be seen in two pulse-racing scenes: the Michael Mann-esque highway shootout and the night-time assault sequence, filmed with handheld cameras in both night and thermal vision. The results give the last act of Zero Dark Thirty a run for its money and will leave jaws dropping in amazement.
Overwhelming, unflinching and understatedly thought-provoking, Sicario is an impeccable thriller that won’t only top end of year lists but that trumps some of the most intense films released in recent years. If there’s any justice, Villeneuve’s film stands as an early bet for the Oscars. If Academy members fail to recognise this, I churlishly hope a trigger-happy sicario knocks at their doors.
- D - 28/09/15
THE INTERN
... needs to be let go
After this summer’s spandex-clad, frenetic blockbuster season, what better way to usher in the autumnal months than to kick back and indulge in a relaxing comedy that Robert De Niro walks out of interviews about?
Or so you’d think...
Set in a whitewashed Brooklyn, The Intern follows Ben (Robert De Niro), a good-natured 70 year-old widower who wants nothing more than to break the retirement funk he’s been forced into. In comes Jules (Anne Hathaway) who, like every onscreen Hollywood career woman, is incapable of keeping on top of both her professional and family lives. She has founded a company specializing in online fashion, which allows her to kookily ride her bike in the office and whose new senior intern program allows Ben to get back in the game. Cue the old guard teaching those cheeky, Apple-worshipping, emoticon-using scamps a thing or two about life and maybe, just maybe, Jules and Ben’s odd-couple dynamic will open her eyes to what truly matters.
From the opening musical cues of The Intern, you know you’re in for a syrupy ride. Not a problem: no one walks into a Nancy Meyers (What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give) film expecting hard-hitting fare. There’s a feel-good formula to her films that is comforting, usually making her films nothing to get annoyed about.
Unless it’s The Holiday.
And The Intern, which is a whole new low.
It transforms what could have been an inoffensive and heart-warming anti-The Devil Wears Prada story about an unlikely friendship into an infuriatingly smug confection that wouldn’t be so annoying if it wasn’t trying its hardest to hit the right notes. It yearns to be empowering but comes off not only as cringe-inducing but patronising. The usual generational gags are worn out, nothing is actually said about Generation Y and genre tropes are not just acknowledged, they’re galvanized, as if Myers thought no one had ever seen a comedy before. Worst of all, it is woefully confused about its gender politics, painting women as confident equals to their male counterparts one minute and in the other, neurotic caricatures who can’t confront their cheating partners, need to be monitored when drinking and can only muster a good cry in a bath.
What are you left with? Telegraphed ‘laughs’; trailer-tailored dialogue such as “It’s moments like this when you know you need someone you can count on”; a distractingly chipper backing score; De Niro rehashing his ‘look-I’m-old-now’ shtick that Meet The Parents and Last Vegas had already milked dry; an overly twee Hathaway and an underused Rene Russo, whose turn in last year’s Nightcrawler seems a long way away.
Bring back What Women Want and stay well away from this overlong, painfully condescending film about how wonderful it is when *cue the twee score that was clearly taken from a Dove commercial* wisdom is imparted and life lessons are happily learned. Even its main star knows it’s garbage, as he turns raging bull and walks out of interviews in mid-promo for the film.
Make no mistake: seeing The Intern will only bring on a bad case of the autumn blues.
- D - 24/09/15
ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
Be Ill Rewind
From its title alone, this Sundance-championed film sounds like the kind of overly quirky, try-hard indie fare that most astutely avoid. When you realise that this story of a “terminally awkward” high-schooler who makes film parodies with his best mate and is forced to befriend a classmate diagnosed with leukaemia is adapted from a young-adult novel, alarm bells should be ringing.
What the world doesn’t need now is yet another voice-overed, coming-of-age story that clumsily tramples over a tragic subject.
It’s true that on paper, Me and Earl and The Dying Girl comes off as a The Fault in Our Stars-riffing atrocity. However, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s film stands as one of 2015’s most agreeable surprises, one that not only subverts expectations but creates something fresh and ingenious from an ostensibly worn-out premise.
The director manages a vital balancing act: the tone of the piece is calibrated so that the drama doesn’t eclipse the comedy, the self-awareness never veers into smugness and the inventiveness on show never crosses the line into self-flattery. He has knowingly played with genre conventions and thanks to Jesse Andrew‘s spot-on adaptation of his own novel, delivers a moving, often hilarious and relatable tale. The visuals are a treat, especially the sparingly used and Grondry-esque stop-motion segments; while the French filmmaker is a clear reference point, Gomez-Rejon makes these animated interludes go beyond Be Kind Rewind and instead recaptures some of the magic created by Son Of Rambow. In many ways, he makes Me and Earl and The Dying Girl a film about filmmaking, without belittling the core narrative or alienating less cineliterate audience members.
Few films could combine clever and funny film homages (Death In Venice becomes ‘Death In Tennis’; Rosemary’s Baby is ‘Rosemary’s Baby Carrots’ and ‘A Sockwork Orange’ parodies...you get the picture), one of the funniest accidental drug trips since 21 Jump Street and possibly this year’s most understatedly moving last act.
The cast are all excellent, with Thomas Mann and Olivia Cooke believably portraying the aloof Greg and the cancer-stricken Rachel. Both hit the right notes and while many will unfairly lump their characters and performances respectively in the nerdy film buff and Manic Pixie Dream Girl category, there’s much more to it than these familiar tropes. As for RJ Cyler, the newcomer is something of a revelation as the titular Earl, Greg’s ”co-worker”. He is at times the clown, often the foil but also the lynchpin that forces his friend to deal with real emotions and break his cycle of superficial relationships. His subtle turn gives the film a lot of its heart. The addition of some hilarious supporting performances from Jon Bernthal as a hip history teacher and Nick Offerman as Greg’s culturally enlightened, non-sequitur-spouting father (“Do you know that you can smoke a hornet?”) round off a varied portrait of surprisingly believable characters.
Me and Earl and The Dying Girl is a film that will delight cinephiles who will knowingly chortle along with several Werner Herzog references, amuse those looking for a wryly funny dramedy and move even the most hardened. It shares the spirit of last year’s Kings of Summer and always manages to avoid mawkish clichés that could undermine its honesty. It is a film whose familiar premise doesn’t begin to chip the surface of what it accomplishes, one that deserves a leap of faith.
Don’t make the mistake of dismissing this deceptively original and poignant film.
- D - 21/09/15
45 YEARS
There’s a ghost in the attic...
Kate and Geoff Mercer (Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay) are a childless, retired couple living a simple life. They have been married for the titular 45 years and since their 40th anniversary was postponed when Geoff underwent bypass surgery, both are preparing to celebrate this unconventional wedding anniversary.
Their married life is thrown into crisis when Geoff receives a letter from the Swiss authorities: the body of his ex-girlfriend Katya has been discovered, 50 years after she fell into a crevasse while the pair were on holiday. The corpse is perfectly preserved by the glacier and the letter adds that Geoff is marked as her next of kin. The news and further revelations trigger some understandable turmoil for both husband and wife, with Kate finding herself slipping into a metaphorical crevasse of her own. She can’t be angry about something that preceded her time with Geoff but a fissure has opened...
Adapted from a short story by David Constantine, Andrew Haigh’s drama about a mild-mannered, dog-walking Brit who wakes up to the possibility that her married life has been irreversibly tainted by her husband’s past could have been dully melodramatic. Instead, a subtle and intricate character study is masterfully crafted, one which benefits from layers of meaning and a distinctively un-stagey execution. Haigh’s script contributes to making this tale of mistress-less infidelity both simple and deceptively complex; it offers up potent marital musings (which marriage mattered / is ignorance truly bliss?) and some of this year’s most dramatically memorable moments.
Every scene, every camera angle has its importance, with the decision not to make a musical score for the soundtrack being a particular judicious one. The attic scene in particular is breath-taking. There is a metaphorical ghost in the attic and the way the camera sits behind the projector screen, immobile and watching the flicking images as they come is chilling. Each noise of the projector has an impact and the reveal of another hidden layer to the haunting is not only wonderfully executed but tense in ways horror films dream of being.
As for the cast, both Rampling and Courtenay are superb. She imbues Kate with a quiet authority and a measured vulnerability, mirrored in her more youthful and tailored wardrobe. Her unique distress could have failed to make an impression in the hands of a less experienced actress, but Rampling’s Kate is utterly convincing. As for Courtenay, this may be his finest hour. The way he subtly changes, awakening Geoff’s past habits (he takes up smoking once more and his class status clashes more with that of his wife’s) is done with brilliant economy. Both screen veterans understand the value of the slightest gesture, the pregnant pause and the results are quite simply mesmerizing.
Towards the end of 45 Years, Geoff says: “As we get older, we stop making choices”.
The multiple implications of this sentence shall not be revealed here, but it is important that you make the choice to seek out this profound and haunting film. From it’s Haneke-like opening to its paralyzing ending with that music cue, you’ll be glad you watched one of this year’s very best.
- D - 15/09/15
THE VISIT
The Kids Aren’t Alright...
(SPOILER-FREE REVIEW)
(SPOILER-FREE REVIEW)
The life of an M. Night Shyamalan apologist is not easy. This is the filmmaker who went from being hailed as the new Spielberg to the man who inflicted Lady In The Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender and, most unforgivably, After Earth on an unsuspecting public. Furthermore, they were consecutive.
One can try to forgive, but forgetting is an impossibility.
Maybe it’s because expectations couldn’t get any lower but much to the surprise of this reviewer (and his deserved scepticism), the director’s latest effort breaks the cycle of duds and is what one might charitably call a return to form.
Not past form, mind you, but form nonetheless.
Becca (Olivia De Jonge) and her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are both sent to their estranged grandparents’ house. Their mother had a falling out with her parents years earlier but has sent her children to rebuild some broken bridges.
Becca, being an aspiring filmmaker, aims to make a documentary about the benevolent ‘Pop Pop’ (Peter McRobbie) and the ever-so-sweet Nana Doris (Deanna Dunagan), who live in a cold and isolated Pennsylvania town. However, as their week-long visit progresses, the children realise something is amiss, especially when Pop Pop gives them a Gremlins-reminiscent house rule: do not leave your rooms after 9:30pm...
There’s plenty wrong with The Visit. The use of the found footage / hand held camera is grating and does feel like Shyamalamadingdong is trying to ride the already long-exhausted Blair Witch Project wave, in hopes of making his very own Paranormal Activity. The subgenre can still surprise (see Josh Trank’s Chronicle) but here only serves to remind you how annoying the tired tropes are. Unlike Trank or Elliot Goldner - who made the excellent and overlooked The Borderlands - this is a director who can’t come up with a plausible reason as to why these people are filming themselves, specifically when in peril.
The corny dialogue will prompt eye-rolling, especially when it comes to filmmaking buzzwords spoken by Becca; it’s as if the director needs to prove he has a solid grasp on basic concepts and filming techniques. The less said about the child’s rapping, which will make you yearn for Zooey Deschanel’s dead eyes in The Happening, the better.
However, somehow, it just about works.
Once the first twenty minutes have passed, things get interesting. The low-budget aspect begins to be a blessing for Shyamalan, whose back-to-basics approach makes the scares rather effective. It also does that most surprising of things: it legitimizes the found-footage, albeit clumsily. The style matches the substance, with the form contributing to the narrative, setting up clues and misleading us in the way that POV / found footage can.
Of course, there is a trademark twist. While the rug pull, which shall not be spoilt here, can be spotted before the reveal, it is not gratingly obvious. It isn’t the most satisfying either but does feel like the audience was effectively duped, and not in a stupidly elaborate way. This is due to the found footage, the often self-aware tone but also the solid turns from McRobbie and Dunagan, who expertly filter the unsettling into their good-natured attitude, as opposed to suddenly flipping a switch and turning sinister. Their performances will remind you that while children often take centre stage in horror films, seniors can be just as terrifying.
The Visit will polarize and it won’t be easy to persuade paying customers to shell out for a film whose director, sadly, has become the butt of many jokes. However, it is far from the worst thing you’ll see this year, and that’s not something that could have been said about Shyamalan’s previous films. Its moralistic ending, which aims to cement it as a horror parable, is clunky and spoils things somewhat, but all in all, The Visit stands as a small but promising sign that should see the director tiptoe his way back into the good books of cinemagoers. It will at least make this reviewer stop calling him Shyamalamadingdong.
For now...
- D - 13/09/15
THE FALLING
The Virgin Faintings
Set in an English girls school in the late 60s, The Falling chronicles a mysterious outbreak of mass fainting. This epidemic begins with Abigail (Florence Pugh), a schoolgirl who has a newfound proclivity for courting the opposite sex. Her extra-curricular antics and fainting fits worry Lydia (Games of Thrones' Masie Williams), who fears the gap between them is widening and that she’s losing her best friend. In the aftermath of an unexplained tragedy, Lydia experiences a fit of her own and it’s not before long that other classmates also start to drop like flies. Is this “hysterical contagion” - as the male physician diagnoses it - genuine or a defiant act staged in solidarity, or even something rooted in the supernatural?
Carol Morley’s enigmatic film stands as one of this year’s most intriguing offerings. The most obvious touchstones are Peter Weir’s Picnic At Hanging Rock and even Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides; both films deal with the mysteries of youth and supressed female sexuality in an infectiously oneiric manner. The Falling also anchors its protagonists in the same otherworldly resonance, as well as in a familiar school setting.
However, Morley’s film does distinguish itself from these cinematic yardsticks due to the Wordsworthian visuals within the overall English tone that seeps through Agnès Godard‘s elegant cinematography and the excellent performances. Greta Scacchi stands out as the spinster teacher Miss Mantel and Pugh is a particular revelation as the Laura Palmer-esque figure of infatuation.
The writer / director also wisely doesn’t deliver a hackneyed explanation for the collective trauma. Morley addresses the possible nature of the fainting contagion throughout the film, subtly allowing for a range of interpretations. Do the fits symbolically embody the hormonal changes these girls are going through, making it all about awakening and denied sexuality? Could the mass fainting spells be a wider expression of a repressed female nature, a way of rebelling against the educational system that denies young women full creative expression? Is it a subconscious countering of the authorities that impose a traditional role (embodied by Lydia’s kitchen-bound mother) and tell them to “try not to be so emphatic”? Or is it all about the eye twitches and do the repeated mentions of magic - with a ‘k’ - imply the occult, thereby making The Falling an update of Arthur Miller’s 'The Crucible'?
There are no easy answers and the film prefers to mirror the complexity of teenage life in its central mystery. Every viewer will bring their interpretations to a haunting film that sticks in the mind, especially because of its purposefully melodramatic fainting scenes, veritable tableaus which border on the balletic, and the dirge-like score by Everything But The Girl’s Tracey Thorn.
Not that it’s all peaches and cream. The ‘incest’ storyline is taken one step too far and ends up feeling like a superfluous subplot (the reason behind the inverted commas shall not be spoilt here) and the last 15 minutes are undeniably the film’s weakest.
Still, minor gripes aside, nothing prevents The Falling from being an impeccably directed film, imbibed in an intoxicating eeriness that will make you question everything to the point of giving you your own vertiginous flashes.
- D - 04/09/15
SOAKED IN BLEACH
Smells Like Reopened Case
Benjamin Statler’s procedural docudrama picks up where this year’s Montage of Heck left off. The latter, a Courtney Love-approved tribute for her late husband Kurt Cobain, celebrates the life of the Nirvana frontman but ends several months before his death.
While Montage of Heck was an artful if overlong commemoration, Soaked in Bleach distinguishes itself from its 2015 counterpart by making no attempt to disguise its status as wannabe cousin to Nick Broomfield’s documentary Kurt & Courtney. Like its 1998 predecessor, this new feature examines the mystery surrounding Cobain's death via talking heads and archival footage, chiefly audio recordings made by Tom Grant, the private detective Courtney Love hired at the time to track down her presumed-missing husband. It also adds dramatizations centred on Grant, who, faced with Love’s contradictory statements and a myriad of discrepancies, recorded all their conversations.
These 1994 tapes are heard as original recordings and as dialogue in the re-enactments; they are the film’s ace in the hole, proof that the fame-hungry Love was disingenuous and would stop at nothing to achieve a much-craved legacy.
Unlike Kurt & Courtney, Soaked in Bleach doesn’t hesitate to unsubtly signpost its allegiances: it posits that Cobain’s death was a murder plot orchestrated by Love, who arranged it to look like suicide. The couple were on the brink of divorce and Cobain was rewriting his will, driving his wife to homicide. This take makes it an easy film to dismiss as yet another ‘did she or didn’t she?’, featuring rabid conspiracy theorists and outlandish accusations which pander to Nirvana fans and those who love a good cloak and dagger story. However, Statler does present a very compelling case for reopening the investigation and competently shows that something was indeed rotten in the state of Seattle. His film would make an interesting double bill with Kurt & Courtney but undeniably pales compared to its older brother. Broomfield’s gonzo documentary was stylistically raw, borderline anarchic, but was oddly cinematic. Soaked in Bleach is not. It is dutifully assembled by the first-time director but lacks inspiration; the re-enactments verge on overkill and the mishmash of evidence plays out like a low budget NCIS re-run. In fact, the film’s main draw, aside from the aforementioned never-before-heard recordings, are the events surrounding the release of the film. Indeed, Courtney Love has threatened legal action to any cinema planning on showing the film, a scare tactic that has not intimidated many. Instead, it will insight more to seek out the film and unwittingly adds another layer of doubt regarding her person when watching the film.
Maybe Soaked in Bleach is worth seeing just for the sake of adopting a grunge-like demeanour and flipping the bird in Love’s direction. Whether that’s enough to merit your time is another matter.
- D - 01/09/15