Monthly Archives: May 2014

Divergent  (2014)    67/100

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Rating :   67/100                                                                     139 Min        12A

Teenage fiction that is very obviously hoping to ape the success of ‘The Hunger Games’ (12), which is no bad thing, and it largely does a good job with only the cheesier elements of the writing letting it down. The film is based on Veronica Roth’s debut novel of the same name, part one of a trilogy, whilst Neil Burger (‘The Illusionist’ 06, ‘Limitless’ 11) directs. The immediate difference between this and The Hunger Games is that whilst both have a preposterous central storyline the other franchise makes it work on film in a very believable way, whereas here it takes a while to settle and doesn’t work to the same degree.

The world of Divergent is a dystopian future where mankind has struggled to survive after global war ruined everything. We are specifically taken to Chicago which is surrounded by enormous defences (beyond which no one is quite sure what exists anymore) and where the people are divided into factions when they are young, denominations they will belong to for the rest of their lives. These factions are : Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), Erudite (the intelligent), Abnegation (the selfless), and Candor (the honest), with each supposed to represent your nature and where you’ll be happy and productive and essentially ‘belong’. If you exhibit personality that fits in to more than one then you are a freak, divergent, and are to be killed instantly before you mess everything up. Getting this notion across to the audience in a way that doesn’t sound ludicrous is the first major challenge of the film and it remains one of its biggest pitfalls.

It does, however, immediately remind The Red Dragon of playing countless role playing games and trying to get ranks in as many different classes or disciplines as possible, one just never seemed enough. Guess I’m divergent, or schizophrenic, or GREEDY mwahaha! Our protagonist ‘Tris’ (Shailene Woodley) finds herself in a similar spot when her time to choose her faction arrives. Inevitably, her split personality disorder and strength of character will see her life put in danger, but also allow her to resist and fight against the sinister plot at work within faction management and inevitably attract the amorous attention of the male lead ‘Four’, Theo James. Kate Winslet appears as one of the faction chiefs but even though she was used heavily in the marketing it’s little more than a cameo role for her.

The style has been chosen to make it look as realistic as possible, and they’ve made it quite a lengthy piece, again much like The Hunger Games, and this all works in its favour, but it’s really the strength and charisma of the two leads that sell it overall. Decent, and good enough to merit a sequel.

The Quiet Ones  (2014)    ?/100

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Rating :   ?/100                                                                         98 Min        15

I had an unusual experience watching this one – I actually felt it was so completely without worth that, upon seeing the gentleman in front of me get up and leave half way through, I thought actually that’s a pretty good idea.

This is the latest example of what I term the ‘Battery’ genre, see Devil’s Due, and here the story is completely pathetic, a young girl is effectively kept as a prisoner in a house in Cambridge/Oxford (I don’t remember which, it’s quite irrelevant) whilst a group of scientists attempt to ‘cure’ her psychosis and film the procedure even though it is completely obvious to us that there is a ghost haunting/possessing her, one of the quiet ones presumably. So we have lots of blah blah blah not at all interesting plot with zero acting BANG blah blah blah BANG blah blah blah BANG! And so this pattern repeats itself constantly. The thing is, these jump moments are not suspenseful or a shock, or a surprise – we know where they are coming with certainty, and yet we still jump at them, not because they are scary but because the decibel level is so high that it’s a physical thing, bordering on the painful.

I don’t see why anyone would want to pay money to be subjected to visual and sensorial abuse, and circa forty five to fifty minutes worth was all I was willing to put up with.

The Double  (2013)    65/100

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Rating :   65/100                                                                       93 Min        15

The second film written and directed by Richard Ayoade (probably best known for playing Moss in ‘The IT Crowd’) and starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska in the central roles with many of the cast from his previous film, the wonderful ‘Submarine’ (10), appearing in support. The story is an adaptation of the novella of the same name by Dostoyevsky, first published in 1846, concerning the appearance one day of a man’s exact physical double, here at his place of work, who embodies everything he isn’t – the double is confident, the double is admired, the double is brassy to the point of being criminally indulgent and offensive but people love him for it, and so on.

It’s great to see a new filmmaker experimenting with their own ideas, as is the case here, with plenty of room for personal interpretation opening open as we see the double zero in on the original character’s love interest. Is this imposter what he would become if he were to drastically change his personality to become more of a traditional alpha male? Would such an attempted change result in an almost schizophrenic interim period, or perhaps even a corruptive downward spiral?

Shot within a fairly constrictive local environment of workplace/tower block/diner and with consistent dark hues of yellow and green, the piece has the vibrant ambivalence of feeling both clinical and accessible – largely sold to us by terrific acting from Eisenberg himself, no mean feat when we consider to pull it off he had to do each take twice and continually match the timing with his invisible counterpart to perfection.

Unfortunately, experimenting too wildly can easily go awry, and here Ayoade has admitted that he struggled the most with the ending, which alas comes across onscreen as something which had up until then been interesting and thought provoking descends into a series of fairly nonsensical events and it ends up just being too whimsical and loose. Asides from the final furlong, it shows a lot of promise for the fledgling writer/director though, and it should still prove fairly interesting if you’re looking for something a little bit different.

Muppets Most Wanted  (2014)    66/100

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Rating :   66/100                                                                     107 Min        U

The sequel to 2011’s ‘The Muppets’ and the 8th theatrical release to feature Jim Henson’s hand puppet creations (the other six for the trivia minded among you are ‘The Muppet Movie’ 79, ‘The Great Muppet Caper’ 81, ‘The Muppets Take Manhattan’ 84, ‘The Muppet Christmas Carol’ 92, ‘Muppet Treasure Island’ 96 and ‘Muppets From Space’ 99, as well as a number of TV and direct to DVD releases) follows directly on from the previous story, here with the Muppets touring show being used as a vehicle for several high profile robberies after Kermit the frog is replaced by CONSTANTINE, a Russian criminal master mind who happens to look almost identical to poor Kermit, who is ousted from his position at Muppet mission control and forced into the Gulag under the supervision of Tina Fey, who is admittedly sporting quite a sexy Russian accent.

As before, the film is directed by James Bobin and jointly penned by him and Nicholas Stoller, and it once again features a raft of cameo roles from well known actors – some of which are amusing, Ray Liotta and Danny Trejo as singing prisoners in the Gulag for example, and some of which are so brief there was precious little point to them (though this is in keeping with the show). Overall, there is a little less singing and dancing than last time around, but the same feeling of a show on display and its family friendly orientation is very much at the forefront here again, it’s just a little too safe and a little too bland, with large sections that don’t deliver much, such as the two detectives, one Muppet and one human, following the trail of thefts which just drags on. Constantine is probably the film’s strongest element, an amusing character with an accent that is a lot of fun to try and mimic, but he’s not used to full potential and he’s paired up with Ricky Gervais who seems to almost be trying to atone for previous sins, as if he’s been cuckolded by Tina Fey’s superior run at the Golden Globes and feels the need to be the but of a few sparse jokes rather than attempt to really make any.

Essentially the film is pleasant, but completely lacking any sting. ‘Muppets Tonight’ had the capacity to absolutely hit the nail on the head from time to time – I remember sitting in a friend’s living room with his entire family, none of whom I had ever met before, whilst he finished off masturbating or whatever he was doing, and everyone was watching the show in silence when the Baywatch sketch came on, featuring two fairly hopeless pigs as lifeguards who discover a mysterious object lying on the beach and decide to play volleyball with it, thoroughly enjoying themselves, unfortunately this object is very obviously shown to be a land mine which promptly blows up and kills everyone on the beach. This had me in stitches laughing. None of the others in the room, however, found it amusing which, heightened by the awkwardness of meeting someone’s family for the first time, made it EVEN FUNNIER. Shortly after I calmed down and they started desperately talking about something that was so completely unrelated that I couldn’t help but burst out laughing again, in fact, I think I was actually crying it was so funny whilst they all ignored me as the growing gibbering elephant in the corner of the room until my friend arrived to rescue me. I mean, that’s funny right?   {This also reminds me of the time another friend told me he was so obsessed with a mortal female that he’d started to see her everywhere, including presenting the weather on TV and reading the news. I laughed at him FOR FOUR HOURS}

Neither of these two recent films feature any kind of real hilarity, and the Muppets need that, they need the sort of devilish risqué humour that works so well because they are puppets and are ostensibly aimed at a younger audience. Hopefully the next one will focus more on comedy than fluff and padding – we want brazenly impish revelry, not plodding run of the mill storytelling.

20 Feet From Stardom  (2013)    66/100

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Rating :   66/100                                                                       91 Min        12A

I find it difficult to believe this was the best documentary of 2013, winning as it did the Oscar for that year. This delivers very little in the way of emotional connection or any especially revelatory or indeed relevant discussion of the material, and it couldn’t be more consciously biased when it comes to the ethnicity of the people involved. It deals with the story of back up singers trying to make it big by themselves as solo artists, but we only really hear from black singers, in fact despite comparing them to white girls at the beginning of their career near the start of the film one could certainly be forgiven for thinking there weren’t any white back up singers for decades, and indeed this is the only time the film touches on the issue of race within the industry – it seems to be suggesting its importance and then ignoring it, whilst underpinning it with its limited spread of interviewees, and since it’s purportedly about the facet of the business in general it feels slightly off. We hear from one white girl who mostly talks about how great the others are and toward the end we finally see her singing and the camera keeps jerking back to her as it inevitably pans to the black women beside her, as if someone was saying to the cameraman ‘whoops, no, better get some more shots of the token white girl in there!’. I can only suppose that white guilt after watching ’12 Years a Slave’ played a part in guiding this to success. There is also a suggestion of inherent differences in talent – are black women universally more powerful than white women? I shall have to investigate …

This race issue is kind of a sidenote though – the real problem is that it feels like we’re watching a bunch of people bemoan their ill fortunes (some of them are quite content with their lives and the successes they had though) because it was tough for them and they didn’t make it to the top despite being really talented (they are all amazing singers), but you find yourself thinking ‘what did you expect’? They were going into the music industry for goodness sake, and in no way does their experiences make them unique or indeed differentiate their path from anyone else going into any creative profession, success is never guaranteed for anyone going down that road, often regardless of talent, one absolutely needs a strategy and the music industry perhaps more than any other is full of talentless success stories that just played the game well. The women who are interviewed seem united by an inherent lack of any kind of stratagem, they either relied solely on their vocal skill or on labels, and one of them seems particularly aggressive in her approach to dealing with other people in the industry, it would be surprising if that wasn’t a contributory factor to not hitting the big time.

The central aspect of the film doesn’t work and it’s impossible to feel much for the women who’s stories we hear, or perhaps even really believe them – they start moaning about their bodies being objectified (once again, music industry, hello), which is very much jumping on a modern day band wagon, when one of the interviewers, the only time they interject to pick them up on something, says ‘But didn’t you do Playboy?’, to which the answer is ‘Oh yeah, there was that.’ Ha! In the background though, we do find more interesting material, smaller discoveries about the world of backup singing lying by the wayside of the main narrative, and there is a lot of good music in there too, but it’s so limited – I don’t recall there being any mention of Tina Turner, for example, who famously started out singing backup for her husband to be Ike Turner, and then who did make it big as a solo artist, which is a fairly unforgivable omission.

One of the best moments is Merry Clayton talking about her role singing for ‘Gimme Shelter’, one of the Stones’ most iconic tracks …

…

Captain America : The Winter Soldier  (2014)    67/100

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Rating :   67/100                                                                     136 Min        12A

I’m torn on this one, I was never completely sold on the original ‘Captain America : The First Avenger’ back in 2011, and I would say this one is better, but it kind of smacks of contractual agreements for some of the cast and a very determined view towards Marvel’s spin-off TV series ‘Marvel : Agents of Shield’, featuring story elements aligned with both these agendas and which very much flit around the borderline between interesting and idiotic. First and foremost it is enjoyable though. We begin with Captain A (Chris Evans) and Black Widow (the enigmatic Scarlett Johansson) sent to deal with pirates that have taken the crew of a large military vessel hostage, and the info they retrieve there will lead them and Shield onto a much larger and far reaching plot.

The action sequences throughout the film have clearly had a lot of thought and effort put into them, but some are marred by a jerky aspect to the motion of the camera which is a shame, though a number of them are definitely heading in the right direction in terms of creating real tension, just as some of the aerial shots are obviously still playing it a little safe but do create a bit of vertigo in the audience. The superhero genre still has the fundamental problem of avoiding the trope of good guy and bad guy duel it out in the end and good guy wins because either he has the moral high ground or he is smarter than the bad guy, with the occasional flourish of bad buy squishes someone the good guy cares about in the process, and here there are still too many moments of the hero achieving something at the last possible second etc.etc. and of all the Marvel superheroes Captain America probably has the least appeal outside of the States, partly because of the inherent jingoism, which to be fair they have done a good job of keeping to a minimum, but also in a general sense as his powers are in many ways comparatively less interesting, so his personality really has to shine through and the story really has to bite.

It is in this sense that the film doesn’t work so well, even for a souped-up soldier some of what he achieves is too over the top and the most off-putting aspect is when Fury (Samuel L Jackson) shows him early on the new airborne defences that Shield have been constructing and we hear C.A. moan about how unethical it all is, much like he’s done in the past, but it just doesn’t work. Earth has just been invaded by aliens who were narrowly prevented from annihilating everything (see ‘Avengers Assemble’ 2012), it would be ludicrous for every government in the world not to be working on new defence measures, but he could quite easily have approached the same moral perspective from a more believable angle, perhaps worrying about safeguards and things like that. As a supposed strategic genius he himself should really have been coming up with plans for national and international security, rather than just still being on the frontline for the military.

The camaraderie between Black Widow and C.A. is a bit stilted, and despite the wonderful character and the actress playing her, I wonder if she isn’t a bit too cutesy for a deadly assassin, but then Marvel are owned by Disney. As a curious aside, the take down she performs in ‘Iron Man 2’ (2010) where she wraps her legs around her opponent’s neck and then uses her body weight to bring him to the ground has been aped by films countless times since then, but I believe that was where the trend began.

Ultimately worth going to see but with a few provisos regarding believability, and as usual there are two end credit sequences to wait for, and if my suspicions are correct it looks like one of these scenes introduces two characters (Stephen Strange is also mentioned during the film, incidentally) who are the offspring of another Marvel character currently owned by a different studio …

Interestingly, here is the symbol of the bad guys in the first film, Hydra, compared to a coin originating in Eretria (the ancient Greek city, not modern day Eritrea in Africa) circa 500 BC

Rio 2  (2014)    65/100

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Rating :   65/100                                                                     101 Min        U

Colourful and bright animation that is actually a slight improvement on its predecessor, although as with that film there is nothing worth watching here for adults other than a light and frothy story with good graphics. Having said that, some of the songs featured are pretty good, and Will I Am (who plays Pedro) has expressed interest in the idea of working with Anne Hathaway (who plays Jewel) on a project outwith the movie industry. The story follows up on the love affair of Blu and Jewel, two rare blue macaws that now have a family of three young chicks to bring up but who are thrown into an adventure in the Amazon jungle when their human buddies get lost there, only to discover Jewel’s family that she had been separated from for many years, and they will have to work together against the evil loggers that threaten their natural habitat. Should be fine for families with young children.

Starred Up  (2013)    66/100

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Rating :   66/100                                                                     106 Min        18

From director David Mackenzie (‘Young Adam’ 03, ‘Perfect Sense’ 11) and very sensibly filmed in chronological order, this at least attempts to show the progression within prison of an extremely violent character, from the young, hyper aggressive newcomer on the wing with experience of prison tactics, to the member of an inmate ‘anger management’ group, something that makes him feel part of something and we can see the inklings of potential reform appear.

There is the distinct feel of something made for the movies here, with the violence and goings on accentuated for that purpose, and it is debatable how much of a character progression we actually see, indeed it is very difficult to get behind the protagonist at all in the beginning and unusually for a prison film we actually want to see the guards take him round the back and give him a good kicking. We eventually learn that our main character, Eric (Jack O’connell), has a dark past of abuse and that his own father, played by Ben Mendelsohn, is imprisoned on the same wing with him, and utlimately although it is well put together and acted, it never really completely escapes from that feeling of ‘is this just a little too much to get behind or really believe’.

The term ‘starred up’, we are told, refers to someone who has been marked as an up and coming leader, and in terms of a remorseless pathological killer it certainly fits Eric, though not exactly new territory for O’connell if you have seen the very memorable films ‘Eden Lake’ (08) and ‘Tower Block’ (12). Arguably a better and just as gritty, but not as well publicised, recent prison film is ‘Offender’ (12).

A Long Way Down  (2014)    30/100

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Rating :   30/100                                                                       96 Min        15

The title of this film relates directly to its central premise of four people who happen to try and commit suicide by launching themselves off of the same building roof at the same time but, upon finding they actually have an extreme commonality with a few other human beings, they decide not to, at least for a while, and we follow the growing relationship between the four as we also come to learn what drove them up there in the first place. It’s so bad though, it could easily be interpreted in a number of other ways.

The central cast comprise Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Imogen Poots and Aaron Paul, and almost all of the attempted moments of pathos or comedy completely fail, but this is all hindered by the fact that none of the main characters really seem to like each other much, and indeed it is difficult for the audience to like any of them either. Their reasons for ending it all run the gamut, with various degrees of plausibility – in fact one of them isn’t even sure he has a reason, which according to him makes his case the most ‘tragic’, and one of the others can’t handle looking after her severely handicapped child any more – it’s very difficult to find anything approaching sympathy for reasons like these.

It’s adapted from a Nick Hornby novel (who also wrote ‘High Fidelity’ and ‘About a Boy’) and asides from one amusing scene brought to life by a cameo performance from Rosamund Pike, there’s nothing really worth watching here. Brosnan and Collette do there best with what they’re given to work with, Aaron Paul continues on with his demented baby routine on the back of ‘Need for Speed’ and Imogen Poots comes the closest of the lot to bringing any meaning to the film, but alas in isolation it isn’t enough.

About Last Night  (2014)    13/100

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Rating :   13/100                                                                     100 Min        15

Four uninteresting and largely fake characters engage in relationships with one another and we are unfortunate enough to be taken along for the ride, with as many potential hooks for the filmmaker’s target demographic as possible and almost no real relevance featured at any point. We see, for example, one of the females enraged at her male partner for staying out all night drinking with his friends as she is now left by herself to prepare lunch for people coming over, except she could’ve woken him up at any point, and then during lunch she casually lights up a joint in the kitchen whilst still bitching about her man. The four poor actors who at least refuse to throw in the towel throughout are Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy, Regina Hall and Joy Bryant, and I think they may have managed at least one laugh in there at some point, but the sort of laugh that never really makes it to the surface you’re so completely bored by the rest of it. Based on the 1974 play ‘Sexual Perversity in Chicago’ by David Mamet, and previously directed on film by Edward Zwick back in 1986.