Chris At The Pictures: adaptation

Showing posts with label adaptation. Show all posts

Thursday, 5 July 2018

'Adrift' - Review

true story 7/05/2018 09:46:00 pm 1

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

Two great performances keep Baltasar Kormákur’s latest disaster drama resolutely afloat: Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin star as real-life couple Tami Oldham and Richard Sharp, whose voyage from Tahiti to San Diego in 1983 took them directly into the path of Hurricane Raymond. The film plays out in a split time-frame, beginning with Tami waking aboard the wrecked vessel, before flashing back to detail their romance, and leading towards a dual finale.

This narrative structure - in sharp opposition to the linear unravelling of Kormákur’s previous film, Everest - contrasts the sun-kissed days of Tami and Richard’s growing connection against the survival thriller of Raymond’s aftermath. Turning up the cheese to reinforce the grit, it results in an incredibly effective sense of gnawing inevitability, always keeping us one match cut away from tragedy.

Woodley has grown a lot as a performer since the Divergent series that made her the household name of teenage audiences (even in rocky fare like Oliver Stone’s Snowden, she acquits herself well), and here she’s as steadfast as we’ve ever seen her. Her performance walks an impressive line between Sandra Bullock in Gravity and - strangely - Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games series: there’s that same grounded aura of rags-to-resolve as Tami deals with the devastation.

Claflin, too, is excellent. His endless charisma is a valuable asset during the scenes of seaborne young love (i.e. he looks good sailing into port with his shirt hanging open), and his ability to switch from wry humour to wan acceptance sees us through the darker moments. Richard was originally to be played by Miles Teller, and (no offence to Teller) I think the film owes a debt of thanks to those “scheduling conflicts”.

What small amount of artistic liberty the film takes is all to do with pathos, as opposed to narrative neatness. As the remainder pays attention rather than lip service to reality (its approach to the logistics of finding oneself shipwrecked would make for a fine double bill with All Is Lost), small fictional reveries can be forgiven. Adrift may not be a note-perfect depiction of a true event, but as a showcase for two stars at the top of their game; it hits all the right ones.

Saturday, 14 April 2018

'Rampage' - Review

video game 4/14/2018 10:30:00 pm 0

★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

Within the first ten minutes of Rampage, a giant mutant rat has downed the space station and a gorilla has given Dwayne Johnson the middle finger. What’s disappointing is that the remaining 100 minutes of this loose video game adaptation never quite live up to the ridiculousness of the opening. Johnson plays Davis Okoye, the world’s hunkiest primate specialist, who cares for the captive albino silverback, George. When aforementioned satellite comes crashing down to Earth, containers of a super-pathogen find themselves spread across America: in an alligator swamp, amongst a pack of wolves, and in George’s enclosure. Once exposed, George, a ‘gator and the alpha wolf begin an inexorable growth to giant size, possessed of remarkable genetic traits such as advanced regeneration or - in the case of the wolf - the ability to fly.

With all three headed on a collision course (George escapes captivity and becomes a target, much to Davis’ horror), it’s not hard to see where this will all end up. The Rock re-teams with San Andreas director Brad Peyton here, and the general attitude of their previous work has transferred well. Peyton wields Johnson’s uncrackable charisma like a sword of pure charm, and helps sell our musclebound hero’s interaction with the unfortunate George (portrayed in the early stages of the film through motion capture). Naomie Harris costars as Kate Caldwell, a discredited geneticist who tags along to unload handy exposition. To the films credit, she’s not a love interest and is clearly much smarter than Davis, but is sidelined by Peyton’s alternating devotion to Johnson in a tight t-shirt and the sight of George punching a giant wolf in the face. A sight which, if we’re all being honest, is what we’ve paid for.

The argument always levelled at the critics when movies like this inevitably fail to draw great write-ups is “you’re just supposed to turn your brain off and enjoy it”. For once, I agree with them...to a certain extent. Though the onanism of this genre’s usual suspects (Bay, McG, Snyder) is absent, Rampage still retains a total disregard for civilian casualties (the stunningly realistic toppling of a massive Chicago skyscraper is very disquieting), plus that very odd Transformers loophole where the military’s combined attempts to fell a giant monster consistently fail, yet Davis and his gorilla buddy alone are enough to trump them.

Which brings us to Malin Akerman’s villain and her pet brother (Jake Lacey). They’re multimillionaires who plan to reap huge amounts of money at the expense of the civilian population, also falling prey to an investigation by the authorities(!). Their introduction does bring everything to a screeching halt, but it says a lot that we’ve now reached the point where villains who - barely five years ago - would have been dismissed as caricatures now appear real enough that we delight in their downfall. That we’ve no sympathy for them at all is unsurprising, but how much we feel for the unfortunate George is a welcome shock, at least until he becomes responsible for most of the debris.

This final section of the movie (during which everything and everyone falls down or blows up at least three times) is undeniably entertaining, even if it doesn’t quite give into its premise with total abandon: introducing a growth- enhancing MacGuffin and The Rock in the same movie yet never uniting the two feels like a missed opportunity. Nevertheless, for a film where someone literally says “Thanks for saving the world”, it’s never two minutes shy of a good guffaw, cheap thrills or, at the very least, an expensive demolition display.

Thursday, 29 March 2018

'Ready Player One' - Review

tye sheridan 3/29/2018 08:34:00 pm 0

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

In Ready Player One - Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s bestselling novel - the Halo assault rifle makes the wrong sound effect. Now, I get it: that seems a ridiculously pedantic nitpick to lose sleep over, but I did. For a film built and marketed almost solely on an ability to draw characters, vehicles, weapons and more from every facet of popular culture, it’s an important and revealing lapse in detail. In one tiny error, it betrays this cavalcade of intellectual properties vaguely arranged into a narrative as the shallow, slogan t-shirt-level text it really is.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised. Cline’s book (which first went to print in 2011) is - to put it lightly - a problematic text that’s quite happy to wallow in its own nerdbro ‘nice guy’ shtick while a plot loosely forms around it like mould on a discarded pizza box. The plot is nominally the same: in Ohio, 2045, young dweeb Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) spends most of his days escaping the grimy boredom of the real world into a virtual reality landscape known as The Oasis. Taking the pseudonym Parzival and hiding his schlubby form behind a Final Fantasy-style avatar, Wade engages in races, battles and more in a world where users can adopt the form of any character, pilot any vehicle or wield any weapon from the entire history of popular culture. The Oasis’ creator, James Halliday (Mark Rylance), has left three keys scattered across the vast imagined universe that will unlock enormous fortune, and Wade’s chance encounter with longtime rival Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) leads him on a quest for the first key. The Slugworth to Rylance’s Wonka-like Halliday, and armed with his own plans for the reward, is industrial megalomaniac Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn, proving that even the most engaging faces in Hollywood can’t escape looking like idiots once the VR goggles go on).

It’s not as if Spielberg is new to wrangling difficult source material (no-one takes on The War of the Worlds lightly), but the original product is so inherently vacuous that even with the guiding hand of a master, the adaptation falls into all the same shortcomings. Besides the mistrust of corporate oversight and Sheridan’s wide-eyed optimist in a flannel shirt (calling to mind Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind), there’s very little in the overall composition to reveal Spielberg behind the curtain. Or perhaps that’s because (like the scatterbrained narrative and boring, unmemorable characters), he’s obscured - nay, suffocated - by digital recreations of the characters, locales and general paraphernalia of the 70s and 80s.

I’m not going to pretend I’m totally impervious to Cline’s party tricks: having been raised on the films my Dad loved as a teenager (and as a loud-and-proud member of the ‘The Iron Giant is a masterpiece’ club), I couldn't conceal a small smile seeing the DeLorean from Back to the Future sweep across a snowy plateau in pursuit of Mechagodzilla. I even found myself doubled over laughing during a lengthy sequence set in a particularly divisive Stanley Kubrick film, but more at the sheer audacity than any of the quip-centric dialogue.

But it’s in those small moments of true homage that the sentimental streak that has never bothered me in Spielberg’s work finally drew blood. The glorification of Gen-X escapism here goes beyond self-aware cynicism and into blind, lovesick devotion, which somehow makes the cost even more painful. While Cline is enjoying himself reliving a childhood spent in awe of his director, what of the actual children and teenagers in the audience? Ready Player One is not interested in entertaining them beyond meaningless CGI reference vomit, nor teaching them anything new, just revelling in their parents’ nostalgia and relaying the “It’s not about winning” diatribe they’ve already suffered a thousand times in their real life Easter egg hunts.

I digress: expecting a commentary on the true potential of virtual worlds, or the ways men and women present and interact in digital spaces might be too much to ask from what is essentially a wall of Funko Pop figures masquerading as a movie. For some, the sight of The Iron Giant stomping on robotic spider tanks or the bike from Akira racing a Tyrannosaurus Rex through New York City will be a high worth seeking. If that’s all you need to have fun at the movies, Ready Player One will provide. The ambition to be a universe-spanning adventure with plot taking a backseat would be no problem at all, but only if the film had any imagination on behalf of its own world (there’s a notable lack of any culture, popular or not, from the nearly 50 years separating the turn of the millennium from the film’s 2045 setting). For all the slick visual effects and sheer volume of entities vying for screen time, it feels like well-trod ground. The enormous battle scenes are already the stuff of a million children’s bedrooms, collector’s exhibits and internet fan art.

It’s the polar opposite of Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi; a monastery of pop culture’s biggest parish - notable only by its almost utter absence here - that preaches a different kind of reverence, one that takes something powered by nostalgic affection and launches it in subversive new directions. To see the largest franchise in film history shake up the formula while a movie with one thousands times the fanboy firepower can muster little more than “Hey, recognise that?”, it cuts to the real philosophy at the heart of Ready Player One: when you can bring back anything from the past, why make anything new at all?

Tuesday, 20 March 2018

'Tomb Raider' - Review

walton goggins 3/20/2018 10:26:00 pm 0

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Declaring Roar Uthaug’s Tomb Raider “the best video game movie yet” sounds like damning with faint praise, but there’s nothing half-hearted about this genuinely exciting action adventure starring Alicia Vikander. We begin with some less-than-promising expository narration from Lara’s presumed-dead father, Richard, played by Dominic West (a lucky escape considering that back in the days of the Angelina Jolie movies, he would have likely been the villain-of-the-week). Our titular heroine, refusing to accept her father’s death and take command of the vast inheritance awaiting her at Croft Manor, is living as a bicycle courier with a reckless streak and no direction. When her advisor, Ana, (Kristin Scott Thomas) finally persuades Lara to open her father’s will, she finds a Japanese puzzle box containing a clue to Richard’s whereabouts, and sets off to find him.

This and a contractual obligation of a coda are the only scenes that drag, but once Lara arrives in Japan, the film and its heroine hit the ground running and barely give up the pace from there. Soon she and her guide, Lu (Daniel Wu, armed with a roguish grin), are cast adrift on the shores of the mysterious island detailed in her father’s diary. They’re in a deadly race with Walton Goggins’ deliciously named corporate operative, Mathias Vogel, to find the tomb of a legendary genocidal queen.

Despite the fact we all know the studios involved will try their darnedest to wring a franchise out of this, there’s never a moment where Lara doesn’t feel an inch from death. Vikander brings a vulnerability to the eyes of the icon without diminishing her character’s agency or competence. It’s a performance that would be astounding for any mainstream action film, let alone this particularly cursed genre. Working in tandem with Vikander’s squared shoulders is a reliance on tactile sets and bone-crunching sound design really sells the grit and grime: what a thrill it is to see a blockbuster where the star appears to be in real danger!

While Vikander and her stunt work have the physical side more than covered, the emotional ground is less confidently broadcast. The screenplay takes little time to explore Lara’s feelings of abandonment but at least attempts to resolve them towards the climax. Most of the passion comes from Tom Holkenborg’s thrilling score, which truly comes into its own during a final temple run that attempts (and largely succeeds!) to ape an Indiana Jones set piece for the digital generation. For what is Indy solving “Jehovah begins with an ‘i’”, if not the kind of puzzle a player would be confronted with in a Tomb Raider game? Spielberg’s adventures were a clear influence on the original games, and those reference points have bled through to the rebooted series from 2013 (the story of which informs Uthaug’s film).

As those games were made with a concentrated effort to be more cinematic and narrative-driven, Tomb Raider’s transition from console to cinema feels less forced than previous video game adaptations, which often fall apart due to a lack of narrative (Street Fighter) or too much (the increasingly convoluted Resident Evil series). Like Duncan Jones’ Warcraft made use of the contemporary digital moviemaking landscape to bring its fantastical world to life, Tomb Raider plays to the strengths of the updated source material by balancing Lara’s personal struggle with the exhilarating derring-do we’ve come to expect. If all involved play their cards right with the inevitable sequel, adventure may soon have a new name.

Friday, 16 March 2018

'Annihilation' - Review

tessa thompson 3/16/2018 09:04:00 pm 1

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

Alex Garland’s sophomore film as writer-director, based on the book by Jeff VanderMeer, is a sci-fi oddity packed with questions and imagery which overwhelm and outshine its strong cast. Natalie Portman is Lena, a biologist sent to investigate a strange occurrence known as the Shimmer when her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) returns after going missing on his own expedition, wracked with strange symptoms. Lena is joined by four other scientists (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez and Tuva Novotny) to venture past the Shimmer’s dripping rainbow barrier and into the unknown.

To have a major science fiction film headed up by five women is a wonderful prospect, but in the end their characters are secondary to the visuals and ideas. Portman, Thompson, Isaac and Jason Leigh have the most fleshed-out roles of the bunch, but the nature of their occupations and the unravelling plot means they have little room to display more than quiet disconnect and pure fear. Anyone who’s accused Christopher Nolan of being clinical will soon be admiring his more sentimental qualities after spending two hours in the company of biologists, psychologists and hazmat-suited observers armed with clipboards.

Now for the sadly unavoidable digression, given that yours truly is reviewing this film from the UK: Annihilation doesn’t belong on the straight-to-streaming pile. Its grandiose imagery and even larger ideas belong in a cinema, where an audience is paying directly (thereby showing more tangible support for cerebral sci-fi than a lone viewing statistic), breathing in the visuals from a pristine projection source and, most importantly, not tabbing out every five minutes to check Facebook. Whatever the objective flaws and merits of Netflix’ current sci-fi releases like Annihilation, The Cloverfield Paradox and Mute (the less said about Bright, the better), they’re shot with the big screen in mind. I can’t for one minute imagine Alex Garland or Duncan Jones conversing on-set with their director of photography about how best to shoot a sequence for optimal impact on a cropped desktop window.

The best I could do to replicate a theatrical experience for Annihilation was a 23-inch monitor, turning all the lights off, putting on a decent pair of headphones with the volume up and praying my internet connection held long enough to retain maximum resolution. The latter proved the most unreliable element, meaning Rob Hardy’s eerie cinematography resembled something closer to Annihilation: The ZX Spectrum Experience. Drops in bitrate still failed to break the spell of a frightening, spine-chilling score from genius composers Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, returning from Ex Machina.

A few other elements from Garland’s previous directorial outing cling to the surface of Annihilation as it leaps from straight science fiction to bizarre, exploratory philosophy: there’s a lot of photography through glass (cell windows, the warped reflections of a glass of water), large gaps of ambiguous silence between dialogue and a frugal use of CGI. What digital imagery there is flits from astonishing to awkward. Where the VFX budget has been spent really shows, and the more questionable effects weirdly make the film feel more suited to its home platform doom.

As with Ex Machina’s tests, this film is fragmented into stages, each infused with a recurring close-up of dividing cells, an image echoed in the scientists’ continuing discoveries. Much as one cell becomes another, brief physical evidence (plants that have formed themselves into the shape of human bodies, skeletons arranged in the sand) spawns more mental imagery that is harder to shake, itself upstaged by succeeding sequences that teeter on the edge between dream and nightmare. A vignette in an abandoned swimming pool refused to leave the inside of my eyelids for several days.

Garland keeps this adherence to ‘less is more’ to a fault. So much of the screenplay revels in withholding information from the audience, and it’s difficult to decipher whether he’s leaving these questions unanswered or merely open to interpretations. This means Annihilation could be read as any number of things: for yours truly, it’s a fable about leaving the unknown alone, but you can also see commentaries on gender, mankind’s destruction of the environment, and what it means to be human. It’s a film of big ideas, and that’s something no amount of relegation to small screens can diminish.

Monday, 16 October 2017

'The Snowman' - Review

tomas alfredson 10/16/2017 08:25:00 pm 0

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Why does this film exist? Why did Michael Fassbender waste his talents on this sodden snowdrift of a script? Didn't they draft in the editor of Goodfellas to try and salvage it? Did they hand the Avid to a blind chimpanzee halfway through? Why is Val Kilmer, a real human being, less convincing than the CGI Peter Cushing in Rogue One? What’s with the giant clumsy iPad thingies the police are carrying around? What were those glowing pin badges? Do they exist in real life? Where can I get one? What’s the subplot concering Oslo’s bid for the Winter Olympics all about? Why does Charlotte Gainsbourg dry-humping Michael Fassbender have all the erotic frisson of two stacked chairs? Who was that random woman who got snapped topless by JK Simmons? Where did she go? Is she okay? Did the Snowman killer get her? Why do the snowmen left at crime scenes look so glum? Are they okay? Why is Hot Butter’s ‘Popcorn’ played twice and then never heard again? Why is Toby Jones in this? Is he okay? Surely the director of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is better than this? Am I actually supposed to take ‘Harry Hole’ seriously as a character name? Why is his hair several inches longer in one scene? Why does his apartment have dry rot? Is that a cheap bottom gag? Did they ever get rid of the mould? Why did Hole’s cleaner bring his puppy to such a grimy job? IS THE DOG OKAY?!

Wednesday, 23 August 2017

'The Dark Tower' - Review

tom taylor 8/23/2017 12:21:00 pm 0

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Look, I get it: a one-star rating always looks very harsh. This one isn’t chiefly directed towards The Dark Tower for its technical faults (though they’re certainly plentiful), but at its total failure to bring anything new to the table whatsoever, or drum up the slightest inkling of interest in its soon-to-follow franchise. Apparently optioned by studio heads who thought cinema needed another book adaptation that turns potentially interesting source material into listless young adult fare, this hopeful sequel to an as-yet unmade TV series wastes its ammunition early.

Based very loosely on Stephen King’s eponymous series, the film follows young New Yorker Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), a mop-haired ‘Chosen One’ plagued by nightmares of a giant tower, the evil sorcerer bent on its destruction (Matthew McConaughey) and a gunslinger sworn to protect it (Idris Elba). Jake carries within him a mysterious power known as ‘The Shine’, which McConaughey’s Man in Black (or Walter, to use his hilariously underwhelming real name) wishes to harness against the tower at the centre of the universe. Upon its collapse, untold horrors from outside the realms of our reality will spring forth.

It seems irrefutable now that Interstellar marked the end of the so-called ‘McConaissance’: the Texan actor’s recent strain of underwhelming performances come to a head here with Walter, a drawling bore who, for all his (exceptionally badly-dubbed) expository dialogue, never actually explains what he stands to gain from letting all the nasties into our universe.

Elba doesn’t fare much better, mind. His natural charisma prevents Roland the gunslinger from becoming a total non-entity, though his backstory and relationship with Jake can essentially be summed up by the bit in Hot Fuzz when Danny asks Nicholas “Ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?”

Taylor is fine, but the screenplay never gives him an opportunity to express any awe at all the extraordinary sights revealed to him. When Jake first enters the gunslinger’s world through a portal (guarded by a floorboard monster, no less), there’s a brief pause for breath before he encounters Roland and then we’re off on a plodding expedition to the next plot point. The journey across alien landscapes and through the bowels of New York is notable only for a smug littering of references to other King works and – even in the constraints of a 90-minute movie – feels a slog.

There’s also some seriously misjudged darkness thrown in for good measure, too, for what 12a-certificate film wouldn’t be complete without child slavery, torture, skin-harvesting monsters and several-hundred gory gunshot wounds? This tonal patchwork – see-sawing between Walter burning innocent people to death and Roland discovering the delights of a certain branded cola – does nothing to stave off images of Akiva Goldsmith (Transformers: The Last Knight) and Jeff Pinkner (The Amazing Spider-Man 2) drafting their screenplay by squashing all seven volumes of King’s original story into a blender. Pity they didn’t do the same with their keyboards.

Friday, 18 August 2017

'Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets' - Review

valerian et laureline 8/18/2017 10:51:00 pm

★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

Luc Besson barely avoids going full Wachowski in this overstuffed sci-fi adventure. Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne star as special operatives Valerian and Laureline, a bickering will-they-won’t-they duo charged with uncovering a massive disturbance at the heart of a vast space metropolis, home to countless sentient species.

The production design of Valerian is almost worth the ticket price by itself: seemingly limitless aliens, spaceships, locations and future tech are immaculately rendered and displayed with absolutely eye-popping abandon…but boy, is it tiring. This overload has been praised by some as ‘ambitious’, but I don't see the ambition in simply throwing everything at the screen. Besson’s crowded frame occasionally resembles a lumpen mixture of John Carter (can’t help feeling like a rip-off despite existing decades prior to the properties it calls to mind) and Jupiter Ascending (a ‘visionary’ director equipped with more money than sense). Nowhere is this better demonstrated in a chase sequence which kickstarts the second act: if Valerian’s ship didn’t look like a Poundland Millennium Falcon, it’d be impossible to pick out from the surrounding visual soup.

For all the ocular wonder and visible diversity, the political attitude of progression and multiculturalism (a beam-worthy montage of humans greeting a myriad of alien representatives to the tune of Bowie’s Space Oddity opens the film) is upset by a disappointing tang of misogyny in the aftertaste. Delevingne is very poorly served by a script that requires Laureline to be rescued a lot and complain about Valerian’s inability to commit, all the while her suitor cracks jokes about her inability to drive. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that her name has been dropped (the original comic series was titled Valerian et Laureline) by a director who says women “look so fragile”, and by a film that’s more devoted to its hero than his supposed equal, never mind the audience.

DeHaan remains a bit of a charisma vacuum for me, and watching Rihanna as an alien stripper (don’t ask) running rings around him before being swiftly booted from the plot only served to exacerbate the disconnect. Once the crooning popstar and Ethan Hawke as her pimp, Jolly, have left the picture, Clive ‘Hand me another slice of ham’ Owen is the only one apparently having any fun beyond the halfway mark. We certainly aren’t.

Friday, 20 January 2017

'Silence' - Review

yosuke kubozuka 1/20/2017 12:43:00 pm

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Ambivalence from on high is keenly and coldly felt in this, the new film from Martin Scorsese. In 17th century Japan, a Portuguese priest named Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson, in the second film this week that steals him away from the Taken template) renounces his faith before the Buddhist inquisitors. Refusing to believe the report, Fathers Rodriguez (Andrew Garfield) and Garrupe (Adam Driver) leave immediately for Japan to seek Ferreira and discover the truth, hoping to preach Catholicism as they travel (now is a good time to make your own Apostatise Now joke).

A reference to Coppola’s adaptation of Heart of Darkness sounds flippant, but it’s not entirely wasteful: based on a novel by Shūsaku Endō, Silence is a film concerned primarily with a crisis of faith, with the deconstruction of one’s most closely-held values by a maddening, tortuous odyssey across unyielding pastures in search of a once revered elder. Maddening is the key adjective here, because, for all the striking imagery and heightened sense of desolation, Silence is inherently frustrating in many areas.

It's a very philosophical film in the sense that it provokes an awful lot of deep and searching questions, but never seems particularly interested in finding or offering any answers. As Rodriguez and Garrupe delve further into an increasingly hostile land, all sorts of issues are raised: the morality of imperialism, if the existence of God can ever really be divined, and whether there's any need to spread Christianity when the native population are so entrenched in their Buddhist values (what's the worship of one suffering idol to another?).

Perhaps this stems from the fact I'm not a believer, but the personal religious plights left me oddly unmoved. Certainly the images of the two Padres cowering in firelit caverns are very evocative and the landscapes are astonishingly captured, but from the first frame I felt distanced from any sense of torment or emotional agony. This problem emerges from the film's distinct lack of stylistic verve in other aspects: cinematography asides, the personal drama and even moments of horror are played as implacably as the stone replication of Christ on the cross. Garfield, Driver and Yôsuke Kubozuka (who plays Kichijiro, an eternal sinner who pleads confession to Rodriguez many times) are all exceptional, but there's nothing showy or visceral about their performances. For my money, there's not enough of Driver - who I would have loved to take the central role - but I understand that Garfield has the more marketable credentials (and face).

A traditional score is replaced with ambient birdsong or the creaking of trees, and it's this particular departure from emotional (one might even say manipulative) filmmaking that only served to distance me further. It's a supremely unsettling absence that makes every scene bleed into the next with a lessened sense of dramatic heft. Perhaps I'm too used to having symphonic signposts? The realism of only using diegetic sound is admirable for this kind of story, but, at the end of the day, Scorsese isn't making The Hurt Locker.

With engagement lessened still, my ability to identify with Rodriguez' plight dipped. The absence of God is felt from the very start, as his messengers are killed and his worshippers are tortured, strung up, and left to the mercy of nature. There's no descent for us as there is for Rodriguez, no matter how well Garfield might sell it, and boy does he make a good attempt. As I said, it's not a grandstanding turn, but one of small gestures. When Rodriguez is first confronted by cold, hunger or danger of death, he sits open-limbed, in total faith that whatever his fate, God will provide. When his belief begins to unwind, he starts to retract, to curl up, clutching his arms around his chest because he fears that his own Earthly body is all that's left to protect him.

It's a very earnest display, smattered occasionally with hard cuts to a famous painting of Jesus on the cross, a comparison (or juxtaposition, depending on your own interpretation) that elicited some laughter in the screening, shortly followed by two patrons leaving altogether. While I didn't laugh, I can understand the reaction: moments such as Garrupe diving into the sea to save persecuted believers or a beheading performed by the Japanese grand inquisitor are played with such a straight face that you search for any kind of emotional reaction.

Any catharsis achieved along the way is all to do with anguish, there’s no celebration or even release. Everything slowly grinds to a halt with what must be twenty minutes left to go (or perhaps it felt that long because very little happens, a new narrator is introduced and the once free-flowing story devolves into a sliced-and-diced mess), and I almost found myself getting bored, which is not something you ever expect from a Scorsese film. For all the self-indulgence of The Wolf of Wall Street, I was never fidgeting to keep myself awake.

But all those issues considered, I can't honestly call Silence a bad film. It's beautifully mounted and intelligently conversational, with phenomenal acting... I only hope others found more engagement with its thematic struggle. For those not of a religious persuasion, I fear it's destined to linger long in the mind, but short in the heart.

Saturday, 14 January 2017

'A Monster Calls' - Review

sigourney weaver 1/14/2017 12:57:00 am

★ ★ ★ ★ ½

If you’ve ever been a fan of Doctor Who, you may vaguely remember a David Tennant episode called ‘Fear Her’. It revolved around a young girl struggling with loneliness and familial disruption, channelled through drawings which came to life via an alien host. From the barest glance, A Monster Calls resembles an extrapolated parallel to this story: Lewis MacDougall plays Conor O’Malley, a shy and bullied preteen whose mother (Felicity Jones) is suffering from terminal cancer, whose father (Toby Kebbell) is distanced by continent and circumstance, and whose grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) is uptight and uncaring. Conor is met not by an alien, but a fantastical tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson), who springs from the boy’s drawings. The Monster promises to visit Conor three times, each encounter packed with a myth or legend. Upon the fourth visit, it will demand a story from the boy, a tale that will prove to be his ‘truth’.

For those who require more persuasion than references to a mediocre episode of British television, allow me another analogy: picture The Iron Giant filtered through the operatic spectacles of Guillermo Del Toro. Getting the picture yet? This is a boy and beast tale at its most thoroughly cinematic, where the power comes from a seamless combination of beautiful performances and truly fantastical film-making. Whilst MacDougall carries himself with the tenacity of the young Harry Potter leads from all those years ago, eagerly pulling at our heartstrings, Oscar Faura’s cinematography soars wondrously. As Felicity Jones brings me to tears for the second time this month simply by hugging someone, Fernando Velázquez’ score delivers the second blow. And, as the Monster brings rooftops tumbling down upon the landscape, so to do Liam Neeson’s words send tears cascading down our faces.

Yeah, it’s a tough one, this: if you’ve glanced at reviews, poster quotes or reactionary tweets, you may pick up your tickets confidently, sure you won't cry. Speaking from extremely personal experience, you’re very much mistaken. I detected a similar outpouring from my fellow cinema-goers; we’re talking everything from squelchy sniffing to full-on flannel face. This isn’t emotional manipulation on the film’s part, God no: it’s an impossibly well-crafted piece of catharsis, earned through the simplest admission. Endless empty thrillers still can’t mar the gravelly power of Neeson’s delivery, not least during the sublimely-crafted animated sequences, where fairy tales are restored to their cinematic glory and their interpretations left entirely to the imagination. Such a statement seems rather obvious, but after the trite and misjudged retellings of latter-day Disney, it’s a relief not to have ‘the other side’ of these recitals spelled out so blindingly.

If there are any weak links to be found in this glowing chain of interlocking visceral-technical achievements, they’re to be found on the side-lines: the boys that bully Conor deliver some very stilted and swappable dialogue (like many others, the film remains blind to the true complexities of playground trauma), while Sigourney Weaver – surely blessed with one of the most recognisable voices in film – has her weapon of choice scuttled by a flimsy accent. Perversely, it’s a scene in which she barely utters a single sound that redeems inflectional faults with immeasurable, lacerating power.

When moments of near-silence hammer our hearts as brutally as MacDougall's loudest cry of anguish, the film’s greatest success is revealed. At its heart, this is an uncomplicated, uncontaminated fable that insists on the emotion of escapism over any pseudo-psychological explanations, reducing the hideous messiness of pain into a pure and profound search for truth. The Monster’s emphasis on hearing Conor’s story is not a demand, but an act of empowerment; the permission given to every scared, lonely child to scream and rage and sob, to admit their quietest truth at thunderous volume.

Tuesday, 10 January 2017

'Assassin's Creed' - Review

video game 1/10/2017 04:29:00 pm

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

After the moderate success of Duncan Jones’ Warcraft (yes, I’m one of those people), the future for cinematic video game adaptions seemed hopeful. Looking at the roll call for Assassin’ Creed, the light shone brighter still: director Justin Kurzel, his brother and composer Jed, cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, and the two powerhouse leads of their Macbeth retelling; Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard…what could possibly go wrong?

The moment I gave up on Assassin's Creed as a video game was when I failed an early tutorial mission. I was unsuccessful in my attempts to push through a crowd of peasants without smashing any of their pottery, and consequently spent a lot of time watching others play the game instead. I know little else beyond the essential setup, the increasingly tangled plotlines and the bugbears that plagued Unity: upon first release, human faces were missing a lot of their features, leading to quest conversations between two characters composed only of disembodied eyeballs and teeth floating above their clothes. With the benefit of hindsight, those ludicrous interactions proved far more entertaining than any dialogue in Kurzel's film.

Fassy stars as Callum Lynch; a convict smuggled out of death row by Jeremy Irons’ sinister Abstergo Industries and informed by Sofia (Cotillard) that he’s the last remaining descendant of an ancient order, the Assassins. During the Spanish inquisition, Cal’s ancestor, Aguilar, hid away the fabled Apple of Eden, a biblical McGuffin with the power to control the free will of man. Using the Animus (a big robot arm with lots of needles, explained in gloriously straight-faced techno-babble by Cotillard), Cal is able to experience the memories of his ancestor, Aguilar (Fassbender, only slathered in dirt and beard), in a search for the Apple’s location.

From pretty much the first shot, I knew I wasn’t going to get along with this film. The camera makes an incredibly awkward, ungainly digital movement across a mountain, drops about 50 feet for no reason, then lumbers upwards to establish a castle location: the cinematic equivalent of an OAP attempting to clamber out of their recliner, realising they left their chocolate digestive behind halfway through, sitting back down, then trying to get up again as if nothing’s happened. The film, too, is in a constant state of wondering whether to stay or go. It’s pulled in half by wanting to faithfully honour the source material (without Fassbender’s early discussions with game studio Ubisoft, it’s doubtful this would have seen the light of day), but also wanting to forge its own story.

What makes this problematic is that the new story is total an(im)us. It spends an unholy amount of time on exposition yet we’re still searching for answers: is Callum only seeing the events or does he enact them? If it’s merely some kind of brain cinema, what’s the point of all the leaping about? What's the significance of Denis Ménochet as a security chief who always looks on the verge of corpsing? And, most importantly; why should I care about Aguilar? Entire action set pieces are wasted on a character I know is going to survive up to a certain point, as well as attempting to muster up emotional support for a sidekick who I had to look up on IMDb because, in all 140 minutes of the film, she’s never named (for the record, it’s Maria).

Sure, the runny-jumpy-stabby fun occasionally recreates the balletic abandon of the classic games, but isn't quite enough to make up for lack of engagement, throwing some passable parkour and Jed Kurzel’s gloriously thudding score into the mix with all the artistic splendour of banging a pair of muddy football boots together in a renaissance art exhibition. I’m usually tripping over myself to applaud a film for technical merit over any other faults, but it’s hard to wax lyrical about an individual aesthetic when it’s presented so poorly.

Fassbender is clearly trying (it’s more his pet project than Kurzel’s), and Michael Kenneth Williams as a snarky fellow prisoner appears to be only one who knows what film he’s in or having any fun with it. Cotillard – having used all her power to keep Brad Pitt adrift in Allied – barely moves a facial muscle, and Irons stops every now and again to have a Vietnam-style flashback to his time served in 2000’s hideous Dungeons and Dragons. Unlike D&D, however, this isn’t a total failure: I know from close experience that fans of the game have found much more to enjoy, and I’ll admit there’s some cheap thrills that escape the sticky clamour of the messy CGI and dustcloud visuals. Nevertheless, it’s films like this that ensure my gut remains filled with apprehension for something like Blade Runner 2049: all the talent in the universe can’t save an inherently unnecessary story.

Monday, 28 November 2016

'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' - Review

spin-off 11/28/2016 11:38:00 pm

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

This new yarn from J.K. Rowling is akin to retreating from 2016’s horrid winter into an old blanket. It’s warm and cosy with familiarity, but the loose threads are becoming more obvious, and the cold still seeps in through little holes. Eddie Redmayne stars as magizoologist Newt Scamander. Magizoologist Newt Scamander stars as the Eleventh incarnation of Doctor Who. He’s got the floppy hair, tweed suit, ungainly limbs, whimsical shyness, and even a sonic screwdriver (well, it’s technically a wand, but it’s still essentially a glowing stick he uses to open locked doors).

He also has his own TARDIS, albeit in the form of a magically enhanced suitcase, home to a menagerie of magical beasts. The contents of the case are let loose on 1920s New York, where Scamander is befriended by wide-eyed ‘nomaj’ Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) and hounded by plucky ex-Auror Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterstone). As the trio scurry around in an attempt to return the creatures safely to the suitcase, another kind of sorcery stalks the streets. A dark force is causing calamity, and the Magical Congress of the United States sends the mysterious Percival Graves (Colin Farrell) to investigate. A second Salem movement is also on the rise, and, within its ranks, a reclusive teenager (Ezra Miller) secretly rebels against his oppressive mother (a ferociously intense Samantha Morton).

I’ve made it sound like you need a whole book to even understand the setup, but the film eases you into the flow with a good helping of earnest adventure before the underlying plot strands begin to convalesce. Much like the later Potter films, Beasts strikes a good balance between child-like immersion in the sparkling spectacle of a magical world, whilst still drawing out the darkness inherent in that universe. The production design alternates between gloomy, effervescent and gothic, and it’s very hard not to be won over by James Newton Howard’s soaring score.

When any franchise enters a new era, there’s always a great deal made of ‘bridging the gap’. With Newton Howard providing the musical connection, the character who guides us through is not Redmayne, but Miller, playing the sunken-faced and scary-haired Credence Barebone. Carrying more than a little Draco Malfoy in his glare and posture, he works wonders with a subplot that is occasionally misjudged in its intensity. The Potter universe is no stranger to darker themes (each film after Prisoner of Azkaban thrived increasingly on this), but the shadows here exist outside the wizarding world, in a place that feels all too real. It’s especially jarring when bookended with scenes of Newt, Tina and Jacob capering about. Still, the dénouement of Miller, Morton and Farrell’s relationship allows the movie to become Return of the Jedi for about two minutes (you’ll know once you’ve seen it), which is rarely a bad thing.

The entire arc of Farrell’s character is revealed the instant we see his haircut, but he’s clearly having good fun. He certainly draws a far more rounded character than his nemesis, Newt; a Tumblr fanfic creation brought to life. Any investment we have in our heroes is channelled through Dan Fogler, who has come a heck of a long way since I first saw him in Fanboys. His performance carries nuance, genuine emotion, and charm that doesn’t require a single wand wave.

Sadly, subtleties in acting and well-crafted details in the film’s milieu are betrayed by broader strokes. Small, delicately handled moments between Jacob and Tina’s sister, Queenie, are a treat, at odds with the reductive thumbnails of their overarching development (or lack thereof). Likewise, any display by the titular beasts is at its most endearing when focusing on Scamander’s tiny, pocket-borne Bowtruckle or the gold-loving, platypus-like Niffler. By the time massive monsters like the Erumpent begin crashing through Central Park with no real consequence, any charm is wearing off.

Even the city itself has this problem: the tiny shop windows and foggy back alleys are unique and intriguing, but the skyscrapers and lines of traffic feel copy-pasted (probably because they are). By the time we get to the effects-heavy finale, it’s only the emotional nature of the climax that redeems its use of 2016’s default antagonist; a CGI cloud. If I may be allowed to return to the Doctor Who analogy, Beasts’ final act is very much in the same vein as a ‘monster of the week’ episode: a fair bit of crying, some very iffy special effects, and, most importantly, an emphasis on empathy over any kind of confused pseudo-logic. Thankfully, its spirit is less Stephen Moffat and more Russell T. Davies. If there really are four more of these to be conjured, let’s hope it stays that way.

Tuesday, 22 November 2016

'Arrival' - Review

thriller 11/22/2016 10:38:00 am

★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Someone a few rows below me clears their throat, and suddenly I realise that for the past 40 minutes, no-one in the cinema has made a sound. This moment came as Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker slowly advance into the belly of an alien spaceship; the culmination of Arrival’s first act. In Denis Villeneuve’s most adventurous film yet, twelve spaceships hover metres above the ground in countries across the world. Army Colonel Weber (Whitaker) enlists linguistics expert Louise Banks (Adams) and theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Renner) to attempt rudimentary communication with their visitors, to discover their ultimate intention.

Quite possibly my favourite thing about Arrival is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. Oh, elements of the plot are comparable to sci-fi thinkers like Interstellar and alien invasion fare such as Independence Day and The Day the Earth Stood Still, but the experience of seeing this for the first time was utterly unique. For one thing, it’s the first time I’ve ever physically sensed a movie dividing the audience. While that innocent cough I mentioned previously seemed to shake many from some kind of trance, it seemed a rallying call for an equal number of others to fidget or rummage around for another piece of popcorn. This divide was clear as the credits rolled, and personified by my party of three in particular: I loved it, another found it gripping up to a point, and the other found it interminably dull.

Its filmic construction is also a change from the norm: that looming spaceship isn’t necessarily there to frighten or devastate, but to enthral, its featureless black shell an empty space in the skyline onto which we project our fears and questions. To relay these anxieties is Banks, giving us a similar bugs-eye view as Cooper from Interstellar, packed with an emotionally-charged parent-child dynamic to boot. However, whilst McConaughey’s character was constantly awash with philosophical wonderings and scientific know-how, Adams’ is the closest we’ve come to seeing a believably ‘normal’ person being sucked into the maelstrom of military action, political uncertainty and media hysteria that constitutes first contact.

This is not her first time making a close encounter (see Man of Steel), but without the shackles of a franchise, her character is allowed a level of depth more deserving of Adams’ talent. Here, she employs what I call the Saoirse Ronan effect of looking ‘eyesore’; conveying great pain, awe and misplacement through her gaze alone. It takes an awful lot to make varying levels of confusion and fear interesting for two hours, but Adams makes it unbelievably gripping. Renner is playing the comic relief to a certain extent, but it’s more Hurt Locker than Hawkeye (smart without falling into snarky). Plus, both leads actually look like they could do Banks and Donnelly’s jobs for real. Despite the slight, unavoidable shimmer of Hollywood make-up, they’re not glamourized, particularly as they spend a great deal of time enveloped in clumsy, eye-wateringly orange hazmat suits.

Visually, it’s a different tale. Bradford Young’s photography is polished to a mirror shine, doing more with blacks and whites than most cinematographers do with an entire rainbow, and Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score doesn’t come packed with the overwrought aggressiveness that’s so vehemently put me off his previous soundtracks. In fact, his work for here is quite the opposite: it slinks elegantly across the background before suddenly catching you out. At the apex of a simply flawless panning shot – in which Villeneuve and Young finally reveal the ominous black shell hanging over the Montana plains – Jóhannsson kicks the strings into motion, and an eerie wail sends a visible shiver through the audience.

Some dodgy CG hair aside, the visual wizardry is minimalist and beautiful, employed only when necessary and to incredible effect. Perhaps betraying that the film isn’t really about them, the aliens are nothing radical to look at. Their method of communication is remarkable, for sure, but it’s a cerebral wonder as much as a physical one, and the only special effect in attendance at the extraordinary finale is reserved purely for your brain.

As well as securing Villeneuve, Young and Adams as magisterial talents once and for all, Arrival is a critical, timely parable about communication and empathy. It’s the natural progression of sci-fi cinema, where contemporary and timeless themes collide with state-of-the-art filmmaking technology, like a classic Star Trek episode projected through the frame of Nolan or Garland. As Mr Spock would say; “Fascinating”.

Thursday, 27 October 2016

'Inferno' - Review

tom hanks 10/27/2016 11:50:00 am

★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

Tom Hanks returns as Professor Robert Langdon for another round of basilicas and balderdash in this hokey theological thriller adapted from Dan Brown’s novel. When Langdon awakens with a suspicious case of memory loss in Florence, Italy (around 5:42 AM, as the first in a series of pointless time checks informs us), doctor Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) whisks him away before a series of pursuers attempt to nab him for possible involvement in a deadly plague engineered by a TED Talking religious fanatic (Ben Foster). There’s an increasingly irritated Omar Sy as a W.H.O. operative, a lock-jawed assassin played by Ana Ularu, and Sidse Babett Knudsen doing her very best not to be dragged down by the cacophony of exposition and nonsense surrounding her.

“I need better from all of you!” she demands of her cohorts, although the same exasperated call could equally be levelled towards the cast and crew of this mess. One might argue attempting to transfigure a Brown novel into anything watchable is a terrible waste of time, but you’d think the combined efforts of director Ron Howard, lead actor Tom Hanks and composer Hans Zimmer might be able to salvage something. Alas, with The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons already testing that hypothesis to breaking point, Inferno secures the hat-trick.

After an unwatchable opening – in which Hanks burbles a lot about Langdon’s freaky visions and the camera shakes all over the place like the D.O.P. is on a Haribo-only diet – we’re back to the running and explaining that is the series’ predominant mode of address. There’s some pretention towards a complex web of conspiracy this time (complete with a plot twist that couldn’t be more obvious if an usher entered the cinema and announced it via megaphone), but David Koepp’s screenplay is more face-palming than head-scrambling. It’s not so much an intricately woven web of intrigue and deception as it is someone shouting excerpts from the Wikipedia entry on Dante while tumbling down a helter-skelter.

This half-completed join-the-dots puzzle is mirrored in the knotted frown lines consistently borne upon Hanks’ forehead and his total, bizarre lack of chemistry with Jones. Both more-or-less sleepwalk through their respective roles: he’s been here before, and Jones’ character is particularly undemanding. Omar Sy’s main job is to run around looking a bit miffed, whilst Irrfan Khan makes the most of any screen time to chew, savour, and swallow up the scenery.

However, the moment the film’s cast finally lost me (as I’m sure will be the case for a vast swathe of the UK audience) came when Paul Ritter – you know; the foul-mouthed dad, Martin, from Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinner – appeared as a shady agency overseer. As Langdon and Brooks make another escape, he pulls off his headset in frustration, and you half expect him to burst out with a hearty refrain of “Shit on it!”

If you thought some refuge from this execrable ensemble could be taken in the film’s technical achievements, you’d be wrong, because there really aren’t any. The framing and composition is all over the place, with everything ramped up to eleven to give the illusion of excitement. A lofty spinning shot – the sort that Michael Bay might use to frame a sunset-backed rocket launch or Ridley Scott to establish the surface of an alien world – is used here to encompass two people in an empty church reading something scrawled on a lump of plaster. Zimmer’s score is similarly disastrous, as if a classical orchestra and a Sega Genesis soundtrack were recorded in the same concert hall.

This is a bittersweet symphony for what could be the final cinematic outing for the Dan Brown/Ron Howard partnership, now they’ve finally (read: barely) conducted an entire trilogy. Any small sense of mystery or thrills has long since been neutered, and even the unintentional comedy wellspring has definitely dried up. The unspeakable box office takings may prove me wrong, but I think it’s time to give the bookshelves a good going over with a charity shop bag (or perhaps a flamethrower) to spare us further theological tosh.

Saturday, 22 October 2016

'The Girl on the Train ' - Review

the girl on the train 10/22/2016 10:09:00 pm

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

Emily Blunt rescues this pulpy whodunit from its more clunky moments with a remarkable central performance. She stars as Rachel; an unemployed, alcoholic divorcee who – on her daily train journey to nowhere – catches a glimpse of a woman she’s watched from the tracks many times before. Only this time, she’s kissing a man who isn’t her husband. When the woman, Megan, goes missing, Rachel becomes entangled in the investigation, much to the concern and suspicion of her ex-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux), and his new wife, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson).

For the first time in an age, I came to this adaptation having actually read the source novel. Paula Hawkins’ potboiler – relying so much on the written thoughts of its three central characters – does not immediately scream ‘movie magic’, but the way in which the main narrative hangs on a single image (Megan and her mysterious lover seen through the window of a speeding train) is decidedly cinematic.

When attempting to picture the morose, eternally-intoxicated and allegedly unalluring Rachel, the visage of Emily Blunt does not immediately spring to mind. However, there is so much conviction in her voice and a real effort to tone down the Hollywood glamour that the whole façade is surprisingly effective, thanks not least to some subtle but effective make-up and prosthetics.

While Blunt’s casting may have raised objections and quizzical responses, the secondary characters are an array of undoubtedly excellent casting choices. The master stroke is Luke Evans as Scott, Megan’s skittish husband. Evans’ earnest vocal inflections speak to Scott’s sincerity, but his bulky, somewhat thuggish physicality ensures he remains a prime suspect. Edgar Ramírez carries a similar disposition as Megan’s therapist, Kamal Abdic, while Ferguson acts everyone else off the screen with eyes that are simultaneously burning but restrained.

It’s amazing how little is lost in the commute from page to screen. The largest alteration is the move from Britain to the US, but Blunt retains her accent (a conscious effort, one imagines, to make the transition smoother). The lack of an internal monologue (save for small spats of necessary narration) is hardly felt, and the slightly episodic feel slowly oozes away as the flashbacks become less frequent. There are also some neat visual elements introduced, too: Rachel draws what she sees, rather than keeping a written diary, and a statue in the park towards the end reveals the tale’s true form. Not a crime thriller, not a mystery, but a story about the struggles of three women.

The cinematography itself is – there’s really no other word for it – cool. It’s an enticing, blue-grey affair that occasionally brings to mind Jeff Cronenweth’s work on Gone Girl, but remains grounded in Rachel’s story by employing ‘the drunk aesthetic’. Objects a certain distance from our heroine’s viewpoint become fuzzy, and jumpy editing emphasises the small moments lost in the process as she is buffeted about by onlookers and events alike.

Besides the many twists and turns of the story, perhaps the biggest surprise is a completely counterintuitive score from Danny Elfman, completely free of his idiosyncrasies but still supremely effective. Perhaps the fact that it’s so different from his usual style (a style that I readily admit became stale for me some time ago) makes me more inclined to praise it, but having listened to it separately since seeing the film, I strongly disagree.

While it’s not without some languor and a fair share of flimsy dialogue, The Girl on the Train is constructed with more than a little panache and keeps its focus securely locked onto the three women at the centre of the story. With a keen and unique technical approach, this is certainly a more praiseworthy and gripping experience than the extended Eastenders episode referred to by others.

Monday, 30 May 2016

'Warcraft: The Beginning' - Review

warcraft the beginning 5/30/2016 08:13:00 pm 0

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

Director Duncan Jones’ obvious love for the source material makes Warcraft (an adaptation of Blizzard Entertainment’s seminal real-time strategy game) a visually sumptuous and surprisingly engaging fantasy adventure. The peaceful realm of Azeroth is threatened when warlock Gul’dan (Daniel Wu) opens a portal from the dying orc world of Draenor with dark magic known as ‘The Fel’. Chieftain Durotan (Toby Kebbell) becomes disenchanted with Gul’dan’s leadership and hopes to forge an alliance with humanity to save what remains of the world. On the human side is warrior Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel), joining forces with mage apprentice Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) and half-breed orc Garona (Paula Patton).

You’ll notice already there’s a lot of backstory to keep up with before we even dive into the meat of the matter, but what I really appreciated about Warcraft’s storytelling is that it trusts you’ll keep up, rather than dumping exposition into the silence. I’ve found it disappointingly hypocritical of reviewers who’ve thrown around the “newcomers will be lost” criticism with regards to both Warcraft and Captain America: Civil War, before awarding two stars to the former and a full five to the latter.

Many have also dismissed the film out of hand as ‘dumb blockbuster film-making’, but the very opposite is true. Much like Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, this film proves that big-budget behemoths can be intelligent. Both the orcs and humans have an equal dramatic presence: far from the generic hordes of lumbering beasts one might expect of similar fare, Durotan and fellow clansman Orgrim (Robert Kazinsky) are as well-drawn as their human counterparts, if not better. There is also a consideration of the human-orc language barrier and a refreshing lack of the ignorant side-character who seeks only war with the orc ‘savages’.

While the wealth of characters dropped into the mix lends the film an overstuffed feeling, there’s enough invigoration in the visuals and semblance of depth in the dialogue to win the day: I cannot overstate how much joy it brought me to see a fantasy film sporting such vibrant colours and occasional springs of humour. At one point, a magical McGuffin does something unexpected in the presence of Khadgar and a high mage and, rather than explaining its origin and backstory, the elder shakily remarks “…it’s never done that before!” Jones and co. also manage to balance the fun with the ferocious: the orc combat in particular has a blood-spattered grit and heft to it, little seen in the genre since pre-Hobbit Peter Jackson.

The orcs themselves are an incredible creation from Industrial Light and Magic, reminding us yet again why the company still stands as the rightful kings of CGI. The face of Durotan (filling the films opening shot) is aged, weathered and scarred as well as any physical make-up could contend with, but it is the tangible regret in actor Toby Kebbell’s voice for years of bloodshed that sells the character. He is but a single element of the gorgeous production design, brought to life with passion by those who have examined every detail of the game. Spells cast by guardian Medivh (an appreciatively creepy Ben Foster) are not just a flare of blue light, but form in intriguing patterns and symbols. The books in his library all have individually crafted spines and the trophies borne upon the backs of Durotan and his clan could tell a hundred stories more.

Simply as a result of how much lore is packed into such an abrupt running time (the film clocks in at less than two hours), some resolutions are rushed and a wedge of the supporting cast are left behind for great swathes of the story. But what’s noticeable is that you do miss them. Jones’ film-making has always been about putting the characters first, and that is what makes the finale (though undoubtedly arresting in its exuberant battle scenes) an inherently emotional event. There is a genuine sense of gain and loss on both sides of the confrontation, reminding us why the game bore the title Orcs and Humans, not Orcs versus Humans. As someone who knows nothing of the original RTS, the million user-strong MMORPG or it’s universe (save for what characters appear in the spin-off card game), and as someone who worried that Jones’ signature could be erased by the demands of fulfilling a franchise quota, colour me impressed.

Chris At The Pictures

Thursday, 5 July 2018

'Adrift' - Review

Saturday, 14 April 2018

'Rampage' - Review

Thursday, 29 March 2018

'Ready Player One' - Review

Tuesday, 20 March 2018

'Tomb Raider' - Review

Friday, 16 March 2018

'Annihilation' - Review

Monday, 16 October 2017

'The Snowman' - Review

Wednesday, 23 August 2017

'The Dark Tower' - Review

Friday, 18 August 2017

'Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets' - Review

Friday, 20 January 2017

'Silence' - Review

Saturday, 14 January 2017

'A Monster Calls' - Review

Tuesday, 10 January 2017

'Assassin's Creed' - Review

Monday, 28 November 2016

'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' - Review

Tuesday, 22 November 2016

'Arrival' - Review

Thursday, 27 October 2016

'Inferno' - Review

Saturday, 22 October 2016

'The Girl on the Train ' - Review

Monday, 30 May 2016

'Warcraft: The Beginning' - Review

Chris Rogers

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