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Wednesday, 3 October 2018

'Venom' - Review

venom 10/03/2018 02:24:00 pm 13

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Here is Sony Pictures' second attempt to build a Marvel universe to rival Disney's (stop laughing, they're deadly serious). Venom - seemingly dumped on our world from a rip in the space-time continuum splicing the year 2005 with the present day - sits comfortably alongside the likes of Elektra, Ghost Rider and Daredevil. Grimdark pretentions? Check. Positioning of protagonist as edgy antihero? Check. Ludicrous rubber costumes? I wish.

Star of the show here is the eponymous blob, a parasitical alien which attaches to a living host and imbues them with superhuman abilities. Venom finds a vehicle in smug, down-on-his-luck journalist, Eddie Brock (a spectacularly miscast Tom Hardy). "You look like shit!" exclaims the owner of Brock's local corner shop, as he swaggers cooly past with hair perfectly styled, sporting just the right kind of stubble and trendier clothes than anyone else within fifty miles.

He's on the trail of billionaire Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), a cardboard cutout superviallain obsessed with human-symbiote experimentation. Brock's investigation (assisted by an upsettingly underused Jenny Slate) exposes him to one of the parasites. Hence, Venom - a giant, foul-mouthed monster with a penchant for biting people's heads off - is born.

But before the beast is unleashed, we must suffer an hour of 'Superhero Origin Stories for Dummies', replete with a plodding romance subplot (Hardy and a bored, bewigged Michelle Williams conjure no chemistry), unintelligible action sequences and broiling inner turmoil. At least, that's what one assumes Hardy is going for with his Jim Carrey-esque line in spittle and shrieking.

When the latter half finally sees Venom emerge, things fail to improve. An age rating promising gory ultra-violence is all bark and no bite, with most antagonists dispatched in a blur of swinging tentacles and nondescript crunching sounds. The genuinely enticing body-horror aspects of the comic book source are buried, and the Bronson star's clear commitment to depraved lunacy proves all for naught.

It's difficult to see loyal fans of the Venom character - still searching for salvation after Spider-Man 3 - getting back on board (incidentally, the producer who insisted upon Venom's involvement in said misfire, Avi Arad, returns to supervise this outing). As a disposable piece of popcorn fodder, it's merely hopeless. As the basis of a major cinematic enterprise, it's poison.

Friday, 21 July 2017

'Dunkirk' - Review

world war 2 7/21/2017 11:06:00 pm

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Christopher Nolan completes his ticking clock trilogy with this unutterably gripping World War 2 thriller. As with the dilated dream-spaces of Inception and the ruthless relativity of Interstellar, time is the enemy in Dunkirk; for the 400,000 allied soldiers trapped on the beach, the fleet of civilian ships headed to the rescue and the Spitfires low on fuel. Fionn Whitehead (a soldier), Mark Rylance (a sailor) and Tom Hardy (a Spitfire pilot) take centre stage of each setting, their fight to survive tracked across a week, a day and an hour, respectively.

There’s an age-old anecdote from those who’ve worked with George Lucas that his repeated command during the re-shooting of a scene is “faster, more intense”. Capturing that perfect rush as an object hurtles past the camera, that jolt in the throat when a detonation rocks the screen and the soaring of the soul as a duel to the death reaches climax is a jewel often mined but rarely refined in current action fare. Dunkirk, however, shines effervescent. We are dropped, thrown and shoved into each situation in the blink of an eye, and every time the brief expulsion of breath that comes with the release of tension is cut off by the next gasp. Visceral doesn’t begin to cover it.

Explosions are something of a rarity in Nolan’s back catalogue, but always a striking incident. Think of Gotham hospital in The Dark Knight, the crippling of the Endurance in Interstellar: jaw-dropping moments that project pure awe and horror because they’re such an anomaly. With hell raining down from all sides in all three separate narratives here, a slowly encroaching numbness might well be expected. Expected, yes. Delivered, no. The fifteenth divebombing by a Messerschmitt is as terrifying as the first.

One thinks of virtual reality as a medium now diminishing in size (from streamlined headsets to phone screens), but not for Nolan. An experience that places you on the ground, in the air and in the water feels instantly at home on the big screen, and unimaginable anywhere else. It’s as if – in his quest to preserve the sanctity of theatrical presentation – Nolan has deliberately ensured that Dunkirk can only work on a canvas larger than your house.

The director’s paintbrush is Hoyte Van Hoytema, whose cinematography (particularly the aerial work) is truly spellbinding. As the Dutch-Swedish maverick switches effortlessly from handheld staggering to cockpit-cam delirium, you find yourself subconsciously panting as Whitehead and Harry Styles (who proves his acting mettle, and then some) scramble across the deck of a sinking ship, or tipping your head as Hardy’s plane turns into a deft spin.

Which, if you’ll forgive me, brings matters to a personal note: towards the end of the film comes a pure, unfiltered ode to the Spitfire. More specifically, an homage to a craft that served at Dunkirk and flew from Duxford airfield, where my grandfather served as a flight rigger. To see such an icon of our family history projected onto an IMAX screen, freed from behind the ropes and bollards of a museum, is a moment I will never forget. In a film composed purely of indelible images, that’s no mean feat.

Hoytema’s visuals and Zimmer’s nail-biter of a score speak louder than any screenplay, and Nolan knows this, appropriately offering the slimmest script of his oeuvre. His cast aren’t performers, they’re people, free of grandstanding or clunky exposition. Kenneth Branagh’s blindsided Commander Bolton has the most coherent dialogue to deliver, laced with just enough stiff-upper-lip authenticity to remind us of Dunkirk as a uniquely British story.

I’m not normally one for patriotism, but that we can claim a World War 2 disaster film as the most terrifyingly thrilling spectacle in years is a source of enormous pride, especially given the scarcity of cinema designed to make you gasp, cry and pray all at the same time. Like Nolan's best work, his new masterpiece ends on a sense of oncoming awe, the expectation of greatness still to come. Who are we to doubt him now?

Tuesday, 19 January 2016

'The Revenant' - Review

will poulter 1/19/2016 06:33:00 pm

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

Our constant companion throughout The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñàrritu’s tale of a left-for-dead frontiersman) is the harsh, wounded breathing of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass. Mutilated in a savage bear attack and abandoned by rival and fellow pelt-hauler John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), Glass begins an odyssey across the frozen wastes of the West, seeking vengeance.

The recurring motif of Glass rising after yet another rough night under the stars perfectly encapsulates the strengths and weaknesses of the film. Despite the baggage of gobsmacking on-set reports and Oscar fever, DiCaprio’s performance is startlingly captivating, often rendering one of Hollywood’s most famous faces unrecognisable behind a beard matted with blood, mud and snot. As reluctant as I am to cave to award voters’ fawning for transformative performances, there’s no denial that this portrayal is anything less than sublime. For what must constitute 80% of the run-time, Leo crawls, chokes and chews his way across stunning landscapes, at once distracting from and contributing to the savage backdrop.

And what extraordinary savagery it is, too: not since Gareth Evan’s follow-up to The Raid has cinematic pain been so viscerally convincing. A heart-thumping battle sequence followed closely by the bear brawl set us off at a sprint before grinding to a gritty, grimy crawl. This is where the problem with our constant focus on Glass comes into play: a very grumpy man waking up in the woods can only be entertaining so many times, and the endless repetition of grumbling into scummy beard, crawling a few paces, sleeping in a horse carcass etc. drags the centre section of the film into a dangerous gutter. As with Iñàrritu’s Birdman, the twenty minutes that inspire much watch-checking and fidgeting is the clumsy ink smudge on an otherwise unsullied work.

Reference to the cinematic frame as a painting is also applicable to Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography. His usual penchant for long, winding takes is dotted about the piece, but far more impressive are the moments when the camera is allowed a moment of stillness, to take in exquisite vistas of looming mountain ranges and biting, jet-black rivers. Some compositions are so ingeniously striking that I’m certain no-one has ever imagined anything like them: take, for example, a shot that places us within wisps of cloud, reminded of our lofty position above and beyond Glass’s plight as he drifts between the rage of his waking hours or the calm lucidness of his recurring daydreams.

I’m not entirely convinced that any of these surreal outcroppings actually have anything important to say about human nature and how far we are willing to go for the sake of survival, vengeance, or both, but as long as they’re so wondrously mounted, I’m quite happy to go the distance.

With DiCaprio’s much pined-for Oscar pretty much a dead cert at this point, recognition of other great turns in the film is massively lacking to the point of negligence. Hardy has sported roles like this before, and his overwrought southern accent distracts from the great supporting work being done by Domhnall Gleeson as Glass’s sympathetic superior officer. Will Poulter also does well in a role which finally allowed me to see more of his talent and less of his eyebrows. In the midst of a film so often obsessed with unwashed hair, soggy fur and torn fabrics, this is not something to be undervalued. For all the muscular violence, ice-cold tone and stark imagery, the character-driven elements of The Revenant are what push it above a mere endurance test and into the realm of warm-blooded, human storytelling.

Thursday, 10 September 2015

'Legend' - Review

true story 9/10/2015 01:51:00 pm

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

Tom Hardy commands the screen as twin gangsters Ronald and Reginald Kray in this engrossing crime biopic. Through the eyes of Reggie’s wife Frances, we follow the Kray’s conquest of London through the 1960’s and the scuffles between the two brothers as their empire expands.

It’s almost as if Hardy didn’t quite believe the praise laid upon him for a plethora of recent roles and felt a burning desire to prove to everybody that he absolutely positively can be a serious actor outside of adaptations and franchise films. Prove himself he does, in a dual-performance bursting with enough ferocity to fuel the entire cast of any other film. As Reggie he is an almost James Dean-like presence, a cigarette hanging in a picturesque manner from his lower lip with a leaning swagger to match. Ronnie is the polar opposite; a straight-backed, loud-mouthed brute with ever-puckered lips and bulbous eyes played somewhere between hilarious and terrifying. In essence, Hardy displays Ronnie as the show and Reggie as the tell.

Merging two roles by the same actor is now commonplace in mainstream film, but the effects and logistics are so seamless here that a slight percentage of the wow-factor is lost because the audience is constantly wondering how the Donald Duck they did it! Hardy’s total control of the viewer’s attention also reduces the screen time dedicated to learned British talent such as Christopher Ecclestone as stone-faced Superintendent Read and David Thewlis as ill-tempered Kray subordinate Leslie Payne; more’s the pity.

There is, however, one performance that stands apart, to give us a way into the story through fresh eyes: Emily Browning as Frances is the secret weapon, a guide for the innocent and uneducated audience through the story as her rose-tinted lenses of love and respect for the Krays are slowly but surely worn away by unfolding tragedy. I very much appreciated that Browning’s occasional narration doesn’t chime in every few minutes to remind us of the date or throw important news stories of the day into the mix as many others would. London’s East End is brought to life via the lavish opulence and cold smoky streets of the interior and exterior world respectively.

Frances’ developing relationship with the twins could easily feed a problem that director Brian Helgeland would always have to conquer (and has indeed acknowledged consistently in the press): treading the thin line between portrait and worship, study and shrine. While most biopics would allow the best and the worst of their subjects to intertwine, Legend takes a far more simplistic and stylish approach: the first half of the film sees Frances fall in love with Reggie as the twins move on up into the echelons of high society amidst a wave of ‘swinging sixties’ pop tunes, before the second half sees their world begin to unravel as their contrasting natures deal deadly damage.

Whilst the latter part is a cacophony of brutality, excess and emotional trauma, the ‘let the good times roll’ nature of the former leads the glitz and glamour to remain lodged in the mind once the film has ended, leaving us with the thought that, perhaps, crimes does occasionally pay.

Thursday, 14 May 2015

'Mad Max: Fury Road' - Review

zoe kravitz 5/14/2015 10:45:00 pm

Since the original, relatively low-budget Mad Max blasted onto cinema screens in 1979, George Miller’s dirt-smeared and petrol-injected vision of the future has inspired much; it’s influenced film-makers James Cameron and Guillermo Del Toro, given birth to the Borderlands video game series, and set a standard for how the future looked in the following decades. Even in 2015 references still leak into popular culture, even in unlikely places such as The Spongebob Movie, when a disaster heralds the end of the world and jovial Mr. Krabs exclaims ‘Welcome to the apocalypse…I hope you like leather!’ So with superstar Tom Hardy replacing the once unknown Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky and a far larger budget in tow, has Miller managed to make his influential universe fresh again?

Thankfully, the answer is a heartily bellowed ‘Yes’. Miller has revitalised the formula by throwing the old one under a spike-covered truck before digging it out of the dirt, dusting it down, giving it a fresh coat of paint and revving up the engine once again. Max, given new life by a coarse and world-weary Hardy is still the beacon of calm amongst the crushing insanity of the post-apocalyptic world, whilst the struggle he faces is to help those in need to amend for his past mistakes. Charlize Theron is also magnetic as Furiosa, a shaven-headed badass sporting a monstrous metallic limb that would give even Darth Vader pause for thought.

Furiosa comes head-to-head with Max as she attempts to escort a group of women freed from a life of slavery and forced breeding across the dusty wastes to the fabled ‘green places’. Hot on their trail is a veritable army of psychotic drivers featuring manic ruler Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and war-boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult). Nux’s wide-eyed ferocity versus Max’s gravel-toned serenity makes for some enjoyable viewing, but Furiosa and her troupe take centre stage, featuring a surprisingly capable Rosie Huntington-Whitely and an unrecognisable Zoë Kravitz.

But the humans aren’t the real stars of Fury Road, those would be the action sequences. There’s no other way to say it: they’re perfect. Every single movement of the monumental vehicular warfare is a piece of expertly controlled chaos. Miller’s approach to action is the anti-Michael Bay: every explosion means something, every character has a discernible motivation, and we root for the right people. Even as jagged wrecks rock the scenery and screaming goons leap from hideously cannibalised cars, you know exactly what’s going on and who’s fighting who. I remember first watching The Raid 2 and wondering how the car chase was achieved without actual loss of life, but Fury Road makes it look like child’s play.

Composer Junkie XL – whose music for 300: Rise of an Empire and Divergent was overly-bombastic and bland as anything – finally comes into his own here, the crashing drums and rumbling bass sounding home sweet home amongst the madness of Miller’s torn landscapes. The cinematography, a frenetic handheld affair punctuated by breath-taking wide shots reaches out and yanks the viewer through the frame in an experience more immersive than any 3D could possibly achieve.

Mad Max: Fury Road shows Fast & Furious how the laws of physics should be broken, explains to Borderlands what crazy really means, and demonstrates that the fourth film in a franchise needn’t run out of steam. Watching it is akin to having your face thrust into a blender while heavy metal screeches in your ears, in the best possible way. Just one question: when do we get a Flaming Guitarist action figure?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Chris At The Pictures