Vaughanmister Reviews

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

Cate Blanchett reprises her breakthrough role as the virgin queen with somewhat less success.

[6/10 · 20 November 2007]

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a victim of its own epic reach. It reaches for poignant greatness but achieves only stilted hyperbole. Whereas with the first film, Shekhar Kapur created an intimate-feeling, small spectacle (if such a paradox can exist), this second outing for the virgin queen feels much bigger and brasher.

The film takes place as England, with an empty treasury, must defend its borders from Phillip II (Jordi Molla), King of Spain, and his Armada. As well as this threat, Elizabeth must also contend with various threats to her life, not least of which from her incarcerated cousin, Mary Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton) and deal with her attraction towards Walter Raleigh, played by Clive Owen with a rather unenthused Devonshire accent.

What Kapur did so well with the first film, and what he does here also to some extent, is to create splendour. The sumptuousness of Elizabeth's various garments almost detracts from anything anyone is saying on screen. Whereas in the first film this was consistent throughout the film, here there are only set pieces of vividity and poignancy. There is a wonderful moment when the Queen has gone to morning prayers and her life is put in danger by a concealed assassin. As he shouts, she turns slowly, nervously, bathed in an almost heavenly light. But these moments are not enough to serve the film in its entirety.

After building up the story through moments similar to the above, it seems Kapur realises he has spent nearly all the film dwelling on the relationship between Elizabeth and Raleigh and hurriedly chucks the kitchen sink in for the film's climax. Elizabeth riding on a white horse on the coast, the sun glinting off her superbly polished silver armour as the ominous armada approach in the background. Walter Raleigh swinging from galleon to galleon in the sea battle, diving underwater as his ship, aflame, crashes into a Spanish vessel. Kapur appears to have abandoned history for the sensational. Although ridiculous, the sheer vision and spectacle of the climax forces you to appreciate it.

There is no doubt Blanchett carries the film, her intensity and sincerity as the Queen is worthy of Oscar recognition come next year. The rest of the performances are passable. Geoffrey Rush returns as Walsingham, now a decaying relic compared to the first film. Samantha Morton is severely underused as Mary Stuart, forgiving her Scottish accent (Mary was known to have lived most of her life in northern France) she conveys her as tormented, and sufficiently eccentric. In fact her beheading is one of the best moments in the film.

Verdict: What is more a series of set pieces and showy cinematography, never really amounts to a whole, but should be commended for its historically inaccurate, wacky climax- who needs a history lesson when they go to the cinema anyway? *** out of *****

United 93 (2006)

Cinema at its most real and emotionally brutal

[10/10 · 4 October 2007]

"United 93" by Paul Greengrass("The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum") is an extraordinary and courageous piece of work. It tackles a subject matter that few would have dared to within 5 years of the tragic 9/11 attacks. From the get-go it is manic and fast-paced cinema. Greengrass has done something he achieved with similar success in the last two Bourne series. He engrosses the spectator into the plot of the film through his restless camera-work and realistic style of acting(in fact, many of the air traffic controllers played themselves).

The film deals with the fourth plane of the 9/11 attacks which never reached its target on that horrific day. The reason why being the passengers joining together as one to fight back against the terrorists after they have hijacked the plane. The second half of the film is riveting as the strength of the human spirit is tested to its max.

This is cinema at its most real and emotional brutal and devastating and the last 15 minutes is possibly the most powerful I have ever seen. I challenge anyone not to have tears streaming down their face at the end of the film. Just brilliant.

***** out of *****

Superbad (2007)

"I am...McLovin"

[6/10 · 27 September 2007]

"Superbad" is not a bad film, but there are just certain things in the film that stop it from becoming a "comedy classic" as it has been labelled by many people.

It is more of a gross-out than a comedy for one thing. Dancing with a girl at a party on her period, the evidence of which is left on your trouser leg, cannot be considered funny at any level. It's just wrong. The funniest set piece of the film comes when Fogle, a geeky kid, gets fake i.d to buy booze for the last party the three protagonists will spend together before going off to college. Instead of using a normal name like many people would, he changes his to "McLovin", neither first or last name, just "McLovin".

Continuing in the mould of "40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up", "Superbad" has an idiosyncratic humour, scripted by and starring Seth Rogen, who also starred in the aforementioned two films. His role as a daft cop, alongside fellow cop played by Bill Hader is a funny double act, but starts to where thin towards the end of the film's nearly 2 hour running time.

This film's i.q is the same as the average shoe size, which is not a bad thing(in small doses, I can't believe I've used the words protagonist and idiosyncratic in my comment on it!), but it jarrs when it begins to take the moral high-ground come the end. It desperately searches for a change from the slapstick, chaotic tone it successfully establishes in the first hour and a half. The final half hour is slow and quite honestly, not that funny.

All in all, "Superbad" is not a superbad film. It's a perfectly fine source of entertainment all be it slightly too self-indulgent and aware of its moral responsibility.

*** out of *****

Severance (2006)

"Shaun of the Dead" meets "Scream", but not in a good way

[3/10 · 24 September 2007]

It's difficult to find anything good to say about "Severance", a film about a group of work colleagues who go to Hungary as a form of team building. They choose a log cabin in the deepest forest, and are pursued by nasty beard-wielding men.

That is the entire plot of Christopher Smith's gore-fest, which is not necessarily a hindrance for a horror/comedy hybrid, but is for a film that cannot completely figure out which one it wants to be.

Unlike "Shaun of the Dead" or "Slither"(to a lesser extent), which both focus more on the comedic element, and merely use the horror genre as an outlet for this comedy, "Severence" seems at one moment to want to be taken seriously(particularly towards the last half) and the next to be considered hilarious. Don't get me wrong, there are moments of genuine "laugh-out-loudness", such as when Gordon's leg is ripped off and Steve(Danny Dyer) must refrigerate the limb in the coaches fridge only to later tell Gordon, "Oh, mate. I've left your leg on the bus." But these moments are so few and far between it seems clunky and forced when they happen.

There is a feeling throughout the film of been there, done that, got the T-shirt, outgrown the T-shirt. There is very little new going on, and the truth is that "Shaun of the Dead" and other films of the comedy/horror do it a lot better, and funnier.