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Tom of Finland (2017)
A Worthy Biopic
"Tom of Finland" is the at times a disturbing and hilarious biopic of extraordinary, bold, brave era defining gay artist Touko Laaksonen. A sort of scatter-gun cover-all script does not detract from the essence of life that superficially and externally was seen as being something akin to "high illustration pornographer" but at its core was more about an uncompromising right to self-determination. Chapeau to the Finns who as part of their 2017 celebrations of independence, put this man's extraordinary life and this film up there with the likes of Sibelius in the country's centenary cultural repertoire. There is no denying Laaksonen's (and arguably the) talent for art and in life. Despite a sense that the writers have tried to cover too much touching on everything from Post war PTSD, AIDS, and the post war oppression of homosexuals, the director (Dome Karukoski ) has done a good job in turning a subject matter of potential distraction (the art itself) into the vehicle of a craftsmanship that deserves respect and as tool (if you'll forgive the pun) of an era impacting human rights advocacy.
Dunkirk (2017)
Dunkirk - Nolan's Memento to Cherish
Christopher Nolan is the blockbuster director with the Midas touch – but it is not all about the money. Behind a powerhouse visual style, lies a writer of substance, a skilled craftsman who knows how to build a film from its beginning, middle and end and stuff it with tortured souls, each on his or her hero's journey, with labyrinthine twists and decoys enough to put an audience of Black Watch renegades through their paces.
He has managed to take dollar-raking staples like Batman, and convince change averse nervous twitching studio heads that the Dark Knight needs to be dark and the fumbling penguin needs to be the tortured soul the subject of all our affections even if he is a mass murdering git. He did it and the coffers inflated like popcorn – who knew that inverting the norm could be attractive? But doing all that with the futuristic effects bloated blockbusters like Man of Steel or Interstellar is one thing - taking on the gritty and emotionally delicate subject of a war event that is as critical to British history and identity as the tower of London is another.
Yet, once again Nolan has proved that no holy grail is holy enough to remain immune from his dismemberment. But, if something has to be torn asunder and reconstructed – then Nolan has quite firmly established himself as the man of the moment and with the visually stunning and narrative hall-marked DUNKIRK, we have another Nolan game changer.
Jettisoning standard linear narrative ritual in favor of the iconic leaping and rebounding story line of his classic Memento, Nolan goes even one further abandoning the venerated three act play. In a most astounding narrative leap Nolan's Dunkirk casts off the 'WHY?'. It is an act of pure cinematic genius whose absence plays startlingly into his denouement of the infamous British forces rescue from the beaches of Northern France in the last week of May 1940. Many recent reviewers and critics have lamented the absence of a historical explanation as to why the events that were taking place were not fully extrapolated. But they have missed the point entirely. Nolan's approach was clearly to use his visual genius to saturate the viewer in the experience – the central character of the film is in fact the event – viscerally portrayed in vibrant immersive 70mm. The why of the event is not developed because the purpose of the exposition is to leave the viewer with a much bigger why they themselves most formulate having being fed into the action – it is not why Dunkirk – but why war?
Nolan has managed to do what few great war films - despite their aspirations - have failed to do – he has succeed in documenting an event that crushes the viewer with the irrationality, the savagery and inhumanity of it all and yet plants the seed of a hope that humanity is moving in the right direction – all without any character for the viewer to cling to. Even "Tommy", a representative "Tommy" played by Fionn Whitehead – is underdeveloped so as to avoid the audience pinning its affections too tightly on any one role – that was never the intention. Where Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, the Thin Red Line, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July all railed against the savagery of war, the hook for the viewer was being dragged into a deep personal emotional attachment to a character whose fate punched the audience. Not so DUNKIRK. It is incidents within the event which hurt and the cumulative emotional response is much broader and much more impactful. For this reason alone it is hard not to begin to consider DUNKIRK as one of the very all-time war films. But there are other reasons.
Recounted through three perspectives, air, land and sea, unfolding across different time perspectives, with each one ultimately narrowing down to a single colliding event, Nolan ties the viewer into an authentic confusion of time, space , event and order – hallmarks of a conflict experience in which the semblance of command structures is subverted by the urgency of the predicament. It is only the representatives of the homeland – personified by the brilliant Mark Rylance in the company of Barry Keoghan and Tom Glynn-Carney – sailing with clear instructions and purpose, who represent the calm of normality – even when hit by tragedy. Outside that small oasis of hope, the desperation and claustrophobia of conflict is most brilliantly exposed through the cockpit firefights between the Spitfire squadrons and the Henkel escorted Luftwaffe attacks – making for some of the best aerial war sequences in decades. And although at times, the visuals are the stuff of small boys war stories – there is nothing trivial or scout in Nolan's treatment. In two very particular sequences he exposes us to the delicacy of heroism and the sometimes heroism in ordinariness. The aerial combat scenes stake on a particular significance when one realises the intensity and precarious nature of those sorties – a microcosm of the tremendous hazards of conflict, where the enemy is not just the enemy but the way circumstance leans.
DUNKIRK inspires a reflection on the immense courage that all those men and women showed, not just in that event – but in the wider war which raged on for years after - at incredible human cost but, in the end, for a prize that many of us have, all too sadly, forgotten. We need to be grateful to great artists like Christopher Nolan for treating this subject with the respect and brilliance it merited. We need to be reminded of the huge victory that was ultimately the prize of Dunkirk and what that means today. We need to be mindful of the men and women who fought that war, those who have passed on - but also those who are with us yet.
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Alien Covenant - a severe case of astro enteritis
They say money and power corrupts. Whatever about the former, the latter certainly did the job for Michael Fassbender's David in Alien: Covenant. All well and good you might say and expect from a foot soldier of the notoriously clingy Weyland Corporation who will stop at nothing to cross space and time and star systems and generations to try and get the ugly Xeno-morphs to rule the universe. If only the determination to unleash unholy crap was confined to the star-ship Covenant.
Alas, as we have seen a dozen star-ships succumb to the busty-forth thingy since Nostromo, we should have come to expect that the bloody mayhem would soon find its way onto the spec-script and into the production office, where some quasi-Weylandian financier has decided to lay waste to all sorts of talent in order to get the franchise and its money making potential as ubiquitous as the black goo.
I am delighted to say I did not pay a dime to see this latest outing (which I admit I waited with baited breath to see, hoping that Ridley Scott, in the twilight of his career, might want to do something special. Wasted hope.). The evident trashy ambition for money evidently won the day.
Aside - It is possible the matte artists and effects people come out shining for their ominous and enticingly foreboding landscape set pieces. The rainy, alien landscape of the planet onto which the crew of Covenant are unfortunately hailed is wonderfully reminiscent of the Mission, Apocalypse Now - even Southern Comfort. But, that is the end of the comfort.
Katherine Waterson's miss-cast miserable sour-pus is an unbelievably dull and dreary hero, who has the audience wailing for a therapist and a panda for her care, not a confrontation with a beast - least of all one that might kill everything in sight except her. Michael Fassbender's dual role as David and Walter is an intriguing element which belongs in another movie, along with the tin whistle. From the whir of the talent-less lament onward it is an entirely downhill dis-symphony. In fairness, the poverty of this outing was flagged with the death of James Franco's character - we should have known something awful was wrong.
A thirty second promise of edgy, atmospheric and concealed fear - the era defining markers of the excellent 1st Alien movie, all evaporate into studio predictability, gratuitous soft violence porn, daft blood splattering and, frankly, a chaos of over exposure, limp scripted repetitions, hammy cowboy-in-space characters, too many lost spouses (yes!), badly and delicately hung hyper-sleep pods and I just can't go on. Did I mention the John Denver reference?
The denouement, with gormless weepy Katherine climbing into her cot is only appalling because the audience are by now baying for her to be made climb into an oven, such is her stupidity.
Ridley Scott has made some great films (OK 2) and some dreadful pieces of poop too (Black Hawk Down?) but with Covenant he has just gone and left probably one of the worst skid marks on the underpants of science fiction cinema as he allows himself to be dragged by the 9 digit dollar film making collar into the pit of ab-creativity. If you didn't by now get how crap this film is - how unforgivably dreadful - here is my final appraisal - As predictable, fluid, painful and unwelcome as Diarrhoea.
Arrival (2016)
Almost Pitch Perfect sci-fi, despite a doubty sub-plot on women's choices
THE ARRIVAL from Quebecer, Denis Villeneuve, (Oh the Gods! How we have waited for this day from the director of the stunning INCENDIES), tells a tale of seemingly environmentally attentive aliens arriving by the dozen-load on Earth. However, the arrival occurs against the backdrop of a significant communications problem - language. (What about the Star Trekking universal translator? I hear you moan. Yes. Well. Whatever.). The clear and present comprehension gap needs rapid resolution. Luckily, the brilliant (and she is here) Amy Adams is on hand as a student-less polyglot linguistic expert - Louise Banks. So, what could go wrong in any encounter between the enchanting Adams and a pair of representative seven legged beings from another planet charmingly nicknamed Abbott & Costello? Well, as someone who saw every single Abbott and Costello movie, (three times), (before the age of eight) (possibly seven), I had my early suspicions something could go awry. And it did. Only, I was expecting it to be the aliens fault (OK, I did think the good folk of Kenema, Sierra Leone, were not mentioned for nothing). As it happens, it turns the upheaval comes via the subplot and not the startlingly huge heptapods. Darn. I almost loved The Arrival. Almost. As a thinking person's sci-fi film goes, this was headed right for cerebral cortex coinage.
A gritty pacing spins the treadmill beneath the feat (feet) of this Ted Chiang ("Story of Your Life") inspired invasion, pounding along to a heart arresting soundtrack laced with stalking references to primitive rhythms, Aramaic chants and gong and grumble rumbles worthy of the resurrection of Stanley Kubrick. The science too, the basis of linguistics alone, not to mention the clever nod to Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's floating multipods in Alien design, is utterly captivating without flinging all the complexities that say Noma Chomsky could throw at you. Who knew that the roots of Portugese could be so nail- bitingly gripping? (Ok, I did! Anyhoo...). And we should offer a medal of honour to the folks in lighting and matte. It rarely looks so convincing. K-Ching!
Villeneuve has a brilliant cast on hand to draw us slavishly right into the belly of this epic encounters tale. Jeremy Renner (Hurt Locker), the brilliant Forest Whitaker (Last King of Scotland, Crying Game) and of course the (could-one- possibly-be-more- thesbianistically- dextrous) Amy Adams (tearing Hollywood careers apart with her performances) all join in to stamp the slightest whiff of absurdity into the muddy Montana highlands. Adams's quivering ordinariness pouts and pours tension out in such chilling spades as to harden the butter on one's popcorn. Her character (Banks) is burdened with the unenviable task of going into the alien ship to try and develop a line of communication with, possibly, the ugliest things that have never walked the face of Earth. But, if she was in any way indifferent to the simmering interplanetary Bay of Pigs looming on the horizon, then her own subplot gives her a good excuse to get aboard. As a mother who has lost her only child to an incurable disease, what has she got to lose?
Though the emotive propeller of Bank's past is an important character piece in itself, underpinning the essence of her inner feminine strengths, there comes a point at which the viewer learns that those particular strengths are conveyed as distinguishing her from other women because of the choices she has made. Ouch! Right here The Arrival lands a value judgment that is, at least, open to question. Without giving away the story-line it is important to point out that though this is a subplot, it emerges at the end of the film in a prominently delivered verdict on the choices one makes in life. Hardly an accident in a film with a 50 million dollar budget one guesstimates. Hollywood of is often accused of playing the Democrat game in US politics, but the truth is that was never the case. Actors yes, maybe, but studios - never. Here is a solid example of conservative studio bosses playing to the new audiences they must have sensed were coming over the horizon, unlike the heptapods who arrived unannounced. And it seems with one of these two sets of interlocutors the message is on target. And it is a pity that a sci-fi film should end up being a vehicle for this kind of moralising. Because, this is exactly what does not make a great sci- fi movie, despite all the other ingredients being (dare I say it?) pitch perfect.
San Andreas (2015)
all teeth and no bite
all those manicured teeth going into a huge hole in the earth along with so much lack of acting talent.....frankly this was a joy to watch from that perspective...the fx were passable .. just.. otherwise utter drivel,, how many of this types of movies does Hollywood insist in turning out.. honestly this is a plant of 6 billion souls and 50 times that in original stories and yet it seems the white teeth and perfect smiles (not) brigade of movie boardroom goons seem incapable of thinking outside the box... sorry about that pun... ye know what funk it.. its ail just rubbish like the scipt - endless blaa blaablaa blaa blaa blaa blaa blaa blaa blaa blaa
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Star Cheque: Into Blackness
Into Darkness has probably bagged more cash than a small European economy in the last few weeks - for that reason alone it deserves a mention. Forget the positive reviews here. If you know or care anything about Star Trek, then this movie is simply so disconnected from its roots that, it frankly beggars belief. Yes, JJ Abrahms has unleashed another Hollywood behemoth to follow up his triumphant 2009 outing sure to please the investors, but Trekkie's will, no doubt, be in mourning. The latest outing for the crew of the USS Enterprise is a grinding disappointment - all crash and bang - amounting to little more than "Tranformers" with . . er. . . klingons in the form of the odd the snippy script line, occasionally decent dialogue, less than usual levels of predictability (only just) and a Leonard Nimoy cameo akin to a Vincent Price come back. Jr Spock gets into a mind altering and character obliterating fisty cuffs with bad-ass Khan (decently played by Benedict Cumberbatch) before shedding buckets of unVulcan tears over his Captain's dying body (the side effect of kicking a nuclear core back into action - don't you know). But, by the time Kirk is (inevitably) revived from his deathly irradiation (sorry did I just give away the screamingly obvious?) by Karl Urban's unacceptably cheesy McCoy - Trekkies everywhere will be wailing too, not least at things like Chris Pine's appallingly pink lipstick and Uhuru's (Zoe Saldana) cringeworthy bust up with "Pointy" (Zachary Quinto!). To be fair though, as action movies go - this is Abrahms at his dollar raking best smashing and crashing and exploding. It is just that as Star Trek movies go - well - this is a travesty. I'm writing the next installment myself. Needs must . . . Bad Robot - take note
Life of Pi (2012)
Life of Pity
Life of Pi (PIE not PEE) directed by Ang Lee and starring Suraj Sharma is based on the novel of the same name by Yann Martel, who joins Lees as co- writer on the film's screenplay, in what is probably one of the most surprising features of the film version of a truly great novel. Lee, a master of cinema on the theme of fractured relationships, who also brought to us unforgettable screen versions of the likes of Annie Proulx's classic short story "Brokeback Mountain" and Rick Moody's "The Ice Storm", here takes on what to most readers of Martel's gripping debut must have seemed like a virtually impossible task, filming the unfilmable. At the heart of Martel's tale is the story of a young Indian boy, Pi, and a Bengal Tiger adrift in the middle of the Pacific ocean after Pi's family are lost in a shipwreck on route from India to a new life in Canada, leaving only Pi and one of the family circus animals to fight the odds and each other as they cling to the hope of reaching dry lands across thousands of miles of open ocean. Yet in what might have initially been tenuously achievable in the form of a Pixar or Walt Disney animation, Lee, in characteristic ground breaking style, opts to tackle in a live action version. Perhaps, Lee felt emboldened in his mission by having the original novel writer on hand to adapt the novel for the screen. In this regard there are both winners and losers - most of all the story itself and in particular its denouement. It has to be said, however, that Lee excels in turning the imagery of Martel's novel into a visual feast. There is no doubt in High Definition 2D, Lee has created a magnificent palette for the eyes (I have heard the 3D version is breathtaking (I cannot believe I would agree, I find 3D visually distracting). Not alone that, but with his usual flair, Lee somehow manages to makes a seemingly restricted scenario unfold with a tension worthy of Hitchcock. This is one of the aspects that, in addition to the imagery, Lee has translated faithfully to the screen since, for much of the novel itself, the reader is kept adrift with the protagonist in gripping prose on the open sea, suffering the mindless boredom, the cracked lips, stinging with salt, the chapped fingers, the scorching sun and the ever present danger of fading hope. The cinematography is seamlessly intertwined with the fate of the boy the and the tiger so that the viewer is not left in the virtual doldrums, but pulled along on a tide of rising anxiety for the fate of the rafts occupants. Then something goes uncharacteristically wrong. The closing acts of the film suddenly seem like the work of an altogether different director. The final ten minutes are stuffed with explanation after explanation. The script itself becomes noticeably lazy and flat, the characters utterly functional in a way which hits the viewer like a stupid stick and drains away the essential novelty and searing brilliance which made the novel a rightfully acclaimed work. It is almost as though, the film-makers of indeed editors had decided the visual spectacle of the film was sufficient for the audience and the story itself, even the horrifying truth at its core, was somehow dispensable as a narrative. Martel's novel is a profound multi-layered polemic on hope, belief, imagination, survival and trial. In his book the strands of several stories are intricately interwoven and so brilliantly so that the explosive finish unfolds in a matter of sentences casting the reader back through the entire experience of the novel. All this of course is lost in the film. What does this say about Lee or Martel? Lee was awarded with best director for his efforts and clearly due to the visual translation of the novel which is simply stunning. But, it is hard to imagine anyone being inspired to read Martel's novel on the basis of this version of his story. It falls apart quite possibly because, after all, it just might be an unfilmable novel - even by Ang Lee and even with the novelist at his side.
Dark Skies (2013)
Good Acting doesn't save a script about as original as a Big Mac
You know, I just wish for once, someone would stop funding films about aliens or ghosts or whatever unless they demonstrate at least one novel attribute - just one - is that asking too much? Dark Skies is the latest addition to a library of plainly scripted uninspiring (alleged) "frighteners" that is about as original now as a Big Mac. More the shame because it has a decent cast and the acting is way too good for the material.
Keri Russell shines as realtor Lacy Barrett, an average American middle class mom, with bags under her eyes, struggling to keep the home finances above water as husband Daniel (a little over-played by Josh Hamilton) battles with unemployment and mortgage arrears. All is not going to swimmingly and then it starts to get worse as, wait for it, things start to go obvious in the night. Where have you seen kids with torch lights in bed tents before? Kitchen furniture piling up (or in this case food)? Does a trashed fridge with its contents and beer all over the floor ring a bell? Lights under doors? Crackling security cameras? I bet you never heard of a house being rained on by dead birds? Flickering street lamps, maybe? What about boarding up the interior of the house? - against forces that clearly don't and never used the door, although somehow now need to unscrew the hoardings that were patently NAILED in, as everyone in the audience will tell you. Even at a modest budget of $3,500,000.00, this is a truly unimaginative effort. And that's another shame, because there is a story waiting to be told about the "Greys", those bug eyed alien visitors, which previously came to public prominence in Whitley Strieber's "Communion". At the risk of sounding like a total nut, I have a special interest in this, because I have seen a "Grey". I used to think I dreamt it until one night, when I was about 17, I saw Whitley Strieber being interviewed on TV while I was ironing a shirt for school. The image of a gey was shown during the interview. Honestly, I nearly had a stroke. Because, I had seen them before . . . Maybe, I should tell it myself. In the meantime, read Communion and avoid Dark Skies (although, I hope Keri Russell gets more work though - she deserves it.)
Predators (2010)
Few times in movie history have the audience wanted shoreline sex with the swamp thing . . .
The biggest predators in this movie are clearly the producers, but one of the good things about reviewing a movie about ridiculously ruthless, well armed, decently ugly beasts on foreign planets hunting down a bunch of all-too-lovable murderers, revolutionaries and psychopaths is that you get to hang up your brain for 90 minutes. Everybody who likes a bit of sci-fi loved the original Predator, especially that iconic scene where, in pursuit of Arnold Schwarzenegger, it comes strutting out of a moonlit lake, dripping wet and bristling with blue static. Few times in movie history have the audience wanted shoreline sex with the swamp thing, but this was probably one of them. Ever since then the audience have been clamouring for another Alien Ursula Undress moment. Well you'll have to wait a bit longer. In the meantime the producers of this outing, the third in the Predator series, have mauled Adrian Cody's career (ok he did it for the money). Here he heads up a bunch of bady earthlings, ostensibly selected for their capacity to be ruthless, who are dropped on an alien planet where the Predators come to play hunt'n kill. Cody spends much of the movie with a voice in dropped D, as those trying to Arnie-fy himself against his weedy nerdy body. It doesn't work. Not even the airbrushing of his pecs will convince the audience that this scrawny face tops anything other than a scrawny body. So the movie is off to a woeful start, its premise that the earthlings are all nasty boys woefully undermine by an incredible leader. The producers, one suspects, thought a little about this, and so had the "script writers" (possibly recruited from the set canteen) identify to the audience the nasty background of the gang which include a drug smuggling Mexican from Tijuana, a Guatemalean female rebel, a prison convict who ( in a rather tasteless sequence) apparently only "rapes bitches" at 5pm, and a member of the(laugh out loud) Sierra Leonean RUF. We are now just five minutes into the movie and you can almost hear the audience screaming for blood. The sooner this cast is filleted the better. 1/5 (I give it one mainly for Laurence Fisbourne's very watchable Heart of Darkness cameo and the set pieces and the cinematography, which are occasionally decent enough).