The Red Dragon feels a little cheated by this film. The ending delivers a strong emotional punch, one that was felt throughout the audience and had a few in tears. The rest of the film, however, does not do a good job, especially when it tries to be humorous as it does too often and with too little effect. It tells the true story of poet Mark O’Brien, played by John Hawkes, who can move only his head and must spend most of each day in an ‘iron lung’ in order to stay alive, though he can still feel sensation throughout his entire body. He begins ‘sessions’ with a sex therapist, played by Helen Hunt, to explore that which has always been denied to him, and the film follows his sexual awakening and the emotional consequences that follow.
The performances are good, but perhaps the film’s biggest problem is a lack of connection with the main character. Sarcastic humour has too much of an emphasis from the start and it never really comes off well, creating the lack of a feeling of reality and seriousness from the onset, although for the character being upbeat is certainly to be applauded. Similarly, the transition from what is supposed to be a lot of comedy into more serious characterisation and emotional connection also seems loose and ungrounded. A shame because it is a good story. Hunt is up for an academy award for her performance and although it is perhaps merited, The Red Dragon has on occasion mooted a possible correlation between the bravery of actresses baring all onscreen and Oscar nominations.
Interestingly, if the connection between the characters seems a little unlikely, have a look at this recent scientific article on the possible side effects of male sperm on the female reproductive system.
This is a must see for anyone interested in science and technology. A three part series of one hour long episodes, its premise is to explore how scientists around the world today are using technology to try and mimic many of the amazing things that nature has perfected over millennia. As one example, they focus on the ability of the morpho butterfly (see above pic) to protect itself from having any droplets of water touch its delicate wings, by examining said wings at a molecular level. Learning from this, they create a man made atomic layer to apply to any surface that acts as a series of ridges preventing water droplets from touching the surface of application. Using this creation, all of the circuitry in a mobile phone is coated to make it 100% water proof, and it’s unceremoniously dunked into a toilet bowl on camera to prove it. Similarly, fabrics are coated with it and then liquids which would normally stain them, are shown to run straight off.
The only detraction from the quality of the show is actually the presenter Richard Hammond, who is a little annoying at times, and indeed some of the presentation which has a good deal of unnecessary padding. Nevertheless, lots of interesting things in there and indeed it’s an area of science The Red Dragon has on occasion looked into himself. Well worth absorbing for any budding inventors out there.
A tremendous rendition of the stage musical that achieved that rarest of things in the cinema – a rapturous round of applause, a perhaps even more impressive feat given the viewing in question was a matinée. A lot of the music has been echoing with increasing vigour around the scaly skull of The Red Dragon since that viewing and, with no sign of this abating any time soon, I feel somewhat mysteriously compelled to go and invest further in the onscreen majesty of the ensemble cast.
It opens boldly, in France 1815 with the imprisoned Jean ValJean (Hugh Jackman) and his fellow members of a chain gang hauling a huge ship in to dock, all under the watchful eye of Javert (Russel Crowe). These two begin as the protagonists: one a desperate and unjustly punished man looking to begin again, the other a relentless hunter serving a law that is above questioning. They mirror divides in French society at the time, and the story fleshes out around the conflict between the two of them and, eventually, the other characters that come into their lives – leading ultimately to a youthful band of would-be revolutionaries and the fates that befall them in their struggle to uphold the ideals of liberty.
It is, of course, the film adaptation of the enormously popular and successful stage show first shown in Paris in 1980, with music from Claude-Michel Schönberg, itself based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel of the same name. Schonberg composed an entirely new song for the film, ‘Suddenly’, and the whole shoot was done with live performances from the cast rather than lip synching to a pre-recording, which no doubt adds to the fresh and emotional feel of the film and is extremely rare in a made for cinema musical, a decision which has been unanimously praised by the cast.
The quality of the singing is high generally, with Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway (who plays Fantine, a young mother out of luck, rather like all of the characters which can be somewhat inferred from the title) both garnering themselves Oscar nods for their performances. Just as she did with ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, Hathaway proves her detractors wrong by becoming one of the best things about the film, indeed the movie is now a hot contender to take the best film Oscar in February just as she is to take best supporting actress. The role sees her real hair cut off during one scene, and scenes with actresses having their hair removed are generally pretty memorable for the raw emotion they evoke (Natalie Portman in ‘V for Vendetta’ 05, as another example).
Russel Crowe might surprise a few given the overwhelmingly negative reception of his singing, as although he doesn’t have the range of some of the others, and I think at least twice in the film doesn’t reach, nor carry very well, the note he’s going for, and it is noticeable, he uses the range he does have to good effect, and it matches his character perfectly. After all, most of the cast, including Jackman, have their comically off moments, but the whole film gels together nicely, and is it really necessary to have your rugged, bloodhound lawman singing perfectly like an angelic canary? Before appearing in TV and film, he began his performing career on the stage in musicals such as ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and ‘Blood Brothers’, even fronting his own band ‘Russ Le Roq’, and here he gives a solid, commanding performance, so good on director Tom Hooper and co. for not casting someone who may have demoted Javert to the detestable, and yet popular, realms of a dilettante boy band/X factor contestant, although casting someone who had played the role successfully onstage would probably have been a better idea.
Some of the actors from the West End production, though, have happily made it into the film, one of the most impressive of whom is Samantha Barks, who plays Eponine the daughter of local crooks, and not only has a wonderful singing voice, and is drop-dead gorgeous, but appears to be able to act too. Also worthy of note is Aaron Tveit playing Enjolras, friend and comrade in arms to love interest Marius, played by Eddie Redmayne. Tveit seems to be a very natural singer, and would have been much better cast as Marius as, although Redmayne’s singing is pretty skilful, he at times looks like he’s going to explode with the effort it exacts from him, compared to the completely relaxed Tveit beside him.
This leads to the film’s biggest downfall, Redmayne himself, who was entirely the wrong person for the role athough he definitely puts his whole heart into it, and the introduction of the love story arc between Marius and Cosette. There is a large presumption on the part of the narrative, in that Marius and Cosette glimpse one another briefly on the street and instantly fall head over heels for each other, and we are expected to invest in this relationship as the light of hope in an otherwise bleak and ‘miserable’ landscape. We don’t, of course, as it’s nonsense. It needed one, or a few more scenes outwith the normal musical to make it more believable onscreen and perhaps to dramatise a little more of the politics going on; eg. Marius is brought to his lowest point, whether through despair or violence in his fight against the oppressive state, whereupon, as if heaven sent, Cosette appears to help him out, and she should physically do something not just bat her eyelashes at him, and thus, spirit rekindled and perhaps life saved, when he now fights he fights for her. Something along those lines.
The set design suffers slightly here too, as the film leads towards a fight on the streets of Paris the stage is set for a bloody climax and yet it looks just like that – a stage. From the grandeur and vision shown so far, we suddenly feel like we are in a theatre watching the stage production. Although they use the set well for what it is, I wonder if a further injection of artistic largesse would not have gone amiss, though the street set with the purpose built elephant that opens and closes the final act is perfect.
The young rebels do a very good job, especially so for young Daniel Huttlestone playing Gavroche, but when it comes to Redmaynne, well, the camera doesn’t exactly love him in this, but my goodness does it try to. I’ve seen the movie three times now, and each time I am determined to try and change my mind about his performance, and each time I get a little further in before I finally can’t take anymore. It is perhaps the occasion or inexperience showing, but he is massively not helped here by Hooper, who favours having the camera close to his cast throughout but with Redmayne he practically has the lens strapped to his face throughout several scenes. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and unless you have a particular hankering for Redmayne flesh you may find yourself being forced to avert your eyes, especially if you are sitting near the front of the auditorium.
This could, and should, have been an absolute powerhouse of a movie. As it is, it’s still very good. Make sure you sit in the sweet spot in the cinema for the best of the sound system (especially important for this film, as is the quality of the system the cinema screen is using {it sometimes varies between screens}) and be aware it’s one of those films where everyone will have a different opinion about performances and casting choices, especially so with Tom Hooper’s style of fairly up-close and personal filming, whereby if you’re not taken with one of the cast you’re about to get a fairly severe eyeful of them for the better part of three hours. It will be a major upset if Anne Hathaway doesn’t win for best supporting actress at the Oscars – victory isn’t quite so assured for Jackman. With powerful music that will bury itself deep into your grey matter, this is, in general, a superbly stylish and heartfelt interpretation that will rekindle fond memories for fans, and deservedly make some new ones along the way.
“I’d never been on a film like this where we were doing something that had never been done before, there’s so much expectation, and a hell of a lot of fear, that really bonds people. We had nine weeks of rehearsals so by the first day of shooting we all knew each other really well, and it was the closest I’ve ever had to the feeling of the theatre, and the ensemble you get with the theatre, in a film experience. We were very together.” Hugh Jackman on shooting ‘Les Misrables’ taken from an interview with ‘Facebook Chat’
The clip below shows how some of the cast warmed up before shooting – look out for the rather unique (and cute) technique from Samantha Barks…
A fairly OK gangster film, but one with nothing to really make it stand out and too little in the way of invention when it comes to shootouts and characters. Based very loosely on real life LAPD cop John O’Mara, the gangster squad themselves consist of an off-the-books undercover police operation to harass and attack the illegal shenanigans of one Mickey Cohen (who had a different fate in real life to that in the film) in late 1940’s Los Angeles. The squad are brought to life by Josh Brolin as O’Mara, Ryan Gosling playing Jerry Wooters (the other real character of the group) with a somewhat effeminate voice that takes a bit of getting used too, Robert Patrick, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, and Micheal Peña. Sean Penn plays Cohen, with Emma Stone as the bit of skirt who sleeps around and generally acts as a 2D plot device, albeit one in the occasional sexy dress. It starts off promisingly, but it’s just not very involving or particularly convincing. There is enough of the traditional gangster film in there to hold interest to the end though.
This is the latest offering in ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ franchise. In fact, it’s the seventh film of the lot after the original from 1974, then ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’ (86), ‘Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3’ (90), ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation’ (94), ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ a 2003 remake of the original starring Jessica Biel, and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning’ (06) a prequel to that remake. This version goes all the way back to the original film and follows on with the immediate aftermath to the events that unfolded in the town of Newt, Texas. There’s been a little more of an effort made with the story here, certainly compared to the other two modern instalments, and a degree of sympathy has been put into the narrative which is new. You can be sure though, that the owners of the franchise were not going to miss out on the money making machine 3D has gifted producers with, and they are far from the first horror filmmakers to be milking the new tech with its higher cinema ticket prices.
With that in mind a lot of what follows in the film is true to previous form, with a group of ridiculously good looking teens throwing themselves into every obstacle in their path in order to satisfy the audience’s gore fetish, including the rather phallic weapon of choice of everyone’s favourite country bumpkin: ‘Leatherface’. Lead actress Alexandra Daddario (‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ 10) certainly has a body to die for, and the camera has no qualms about showing it off as much as possible. Scott Eastwood, Clint Eastwood’s son, also stars as the local town sheriff. Very much an example of horror porn rather than torture porn (the likes of ‘Hostel’ 05 and so on where the emphasis is on the intricacies of the actual mutilation) and not too bad for what it is, decent enough if you’re just in the mood for a late night slasher.
A romantic comedy that sees over-the-hill Scottish professional football player George Dryer (Gerard Butler) move to Virginia to spend time with his son and hopefully rekindle something with the kid’s mother, played by Jessica Biel. The film’s biggest problem is it seems entirely confused as to what it is trying to say, and ends up as both completely formulaic and hackneyed, but also spurious and unbelievable in its delivery of the wayward-man-come-good-guy and responsible father routine. Dryer takes on a role as the football coach for his son’s team, and becomes a hit with the desperate housewives and single moms that watch the game. It would have been far better to have simply made this a comedy and had Dryer remain a complete louse shagging his way through the best the town has to offer and still winning the girl in the end somehow. It would have worked well with the pretty impressive cast they have – including Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Judy Greer, and Dennis Quaid. As it is, they toyed with something interesting but then played it safe and ended up with nothing of much value at all. Not as completely dire as its critical drubbing would suggest though, and it also suffered from opening in the holiday season with all the big Oscar contenders going head to head around it.
“This is me with Celtic, 2003, played against Porto in the final of the UEFA Cup. Liverpool, AC Milan, 2005. I mean, what do you think? Pretty good stuff when you put it all together, four medals as well. And then these were the boots I wore when I scored against England when I played with Scotland. Best moment of my life.” Gerard Butler/George Dryer
Juan Antonio Bayona’s second film after the hugely successful ‘The Orphanage’ (07) focuses on the true story of one family facing the full brunt of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The real hotel and pool that the family were playing around when the waves hit were used for filming, with the ground floor residences rebuilt just for the shoot. It gives a very memorable impression of the terror and brutality of the event – not just of the initial impact and the subsequent powerful waves but also of the underwater, deadly collisions with all sorts of debris. In conveying this, and the general scope of the disaster within the confines of their geographical area, the film is very successful, just as it is in displaying a troubling sense of realism in the injuries incurred and the sicknesses that followed them.
However, rather than telling a gritty and accurate tale, ‘The Impossible’ has gone for a slightly more Hollywood style of story, despite the fact it’s a Spanish film. It is very much a case of ‘if this were in the movies, this would happen’, and even though we’re witnessing an interpretation of real events it’s filmed in such a way that it seems a little contrived and thus a little off given the tremendous death toll the tsunami took. Nor is there any mention of the geopolitical real life issues surrounding the catastrophe, such as the universal lack of any kind of warning for the poor souls that died during the event.
The older child in the family, played by Tom Holland, simply does not convince as someone experiencing the events as reality, rather he comes across as someone enjoying all the action and occasionally in need of a good slap. He is a central character and that together with the general feel of the whole, and the poor choice of title, hollows out the film. The two younger brothers are much more convincing, and both Ewan Mcgregor and Naomi Watts are very good as the parents. Watts is up for an Oscar for her role, perhaps aided by the fact she is terrified of water and yet was plucky enough to take on the challenges of being smashed around by torrents of the stuff. Not, I imagine, the most pleasant shoot she’s ever had.
Bette Midler and Billy Crystal star as ‘the other’ grandparents in this comedy, where they finally get a shot at looking after their grandchildren, then proceed to effectively endanger and mistreat them to such a degree they would never in reality be trusted around the children ever again. A very typical American comedy that thinks applying gloss via cinematography and music makes everything hunky dory in the end. It doesn’t. Some of Billy Crystal’s jokes are funny, and the children give good and, at times, very emotional performances, but otherwise there is nothing to save this from its future retirement home in the cheap dvd stand in supermarkets.
Tom Cruise stars as the titular character in this detective style thriller: a highly decorated ex-military drifter mysteriously called in to help solve a high profile, brutal crime at the bequest of one of the suspects. The character is the central one in a whole line of novels by British writer Lee Child (real name, Jim Grant), and this is his first venture onto the big-screen, courtesy of screenwriter and director Christopher McQuarrie (winner of the best original screenplay Oscar for 1995’s ‘The Usual Suspects’), and, based on the success of this, it’s likely not to be his last. The film stays satisfyingly true to the genre whilst at the same time turning a number of clichés on their head, often to comical effect. All of the cast are good, from the very beautiful Rosamund Pike as the defence attorney working with Reacher, to renowned auteur Werner Herzog (‘Aguirre, Wrath of God’ 72, ‘Stroszek’ 77, ‘Rescue Dawn’ 06, ‘Bad Lieutenant : Port of Call New Orleans’ 09) as one of the bad guys, and a smaller role for Robert Duvall. It’s a little obvious what’s going on, but at the same time not everything is put on display and Reacher’s sarcastic wit is pleasant countermeasure to the ruthlessness of his enemies.
“You think I’m a hero? I am not a hero. I’m a drifter with nothing to lose. You killed that girl to put me in a frame. I mean to beat you to death, and drink your blood from a boot. Now this is how it’s going to work, you’re going to give me the address and I’ll be along when I am damn good and ready, if she doesn’t answer the phone when I call this number, if I even think you’ve hurt her, I disappear. And if you’re smart that scares you. Because I’m in your blind spot. And I have nothing better to do.” Tom Cruise/Jack Reacher
The long awaited prequel to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy from director Peter Jackson finally hits the big-screen and delivers a faithful adventure back into the lush meadows and goblin invested caverns of Middle-earth. The story follows the youthful adventures of Bilbo Baggins, as he embarks upon the titular unexpected journey with Gandalf the Grey and an entourage of dwarven companions. The scope of the film is wonderful, and fans of both Peter Jackson and J.R.R. Tolkien will be glad to see that there are quite a few extras in the film taken from outwith the relatively small confines of ‘The Hobbit’ the novel, but still from the pages of Tolkien’s world of Middle-earth from other sources.
It has been said that spinning a much smaller story out over three films again (‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’, and ‘The Hobbit: There and Back Again’ will be released in 2013 and 2014 respectively) is simply a cynical attempt to make as much money as possible from a venture which is guaranteed to do just that, given ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was one of the most successful film franchises of all time, and the third film ‘The Return of the King’ one of the most successful at the Oscars in their history too. However, the new trilogy is also an opportunity for the fans and filmmakers alike to once again invest in a world they love, and to bring as much of it to life as possible, and with that in mind using material other than just ‘The Hobbit’ is not only valid but to be actively encouraged.
A major let down and problem with the film is, unfortunately, Peter Jackson’s style of shooting action sequences. Here there are many, many, confrontations of sword and magic, and though the details differ, they are all essentially one and the same thing. Believability and tension are the casualties of bad guys that are too easy to kill, and good guys that should by rights all be dead a thousand times over. In fact, one sequence seems to be an exact replica of one the director has already used in his version of ‘King Kong’ (05), a film that was good visually but was all but destroyed by nonsensical action set pieces.
It would have been much better to keep the action gritty and tense, even at the expense of the grandeur that has been put into the final version. In a sense, the action does fit with what is supposed to be the translation of fiction aimed at younger readers (‘The Lord of the Rings’ was aimed at a more adult readership compared to ‘The Hobbit’), but adult audiences will almost certainly find it dull and a little disappointing. Nevertheless, it is wonderful to see Sir Ian McKellen back on the big-screen as Gandalf, though they seemed to have used prosthetics to make him look older than in ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’, and yet they’ve sensibly used computers to make a lot of the other characters look younger.
The young Bilbo is played by Martin Freeman, who was head hunted for the role, and the dwarves feature a range of accents and talents from across the British Isles – no doubt we will come to know, and probably love, them much better over the next few years. Female readers might want to debate this list trending on Facebook at the moment – the-13-dwarves-in-the-hobbit-ranked-by-hotness.
An enjoyable sorte back into Middle-earth. Hopefully the action will have a little more bite to it next time round. Also, note the somewhat frugal use of transportation at the end…
