Author Archives: The Red Dragon

Jumanji  (1995)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                     104 Min        PG

Perfectly enjoyable family fare. Robin Williams stars, in one of his most iconic mid-nineties roles, alongside a young Kirsten Dunst as the mutual players of a board game that comes to life and must be completed in order to end the havoc it has unleashed into the real world. Some of the effects look a little dated now, but it doesn’t detract from its watchability. Indeed, the once common family friendly adventure film isn’t quite as prevalent in today’s cinema as two decades before, so many might find it refreshing to revisit classics like ‘Jumanji’, especially if you missed it the first time around. Makes you want to play a board game – did they capitalise on that marketing opportunity? In the film the characters are terrified of the game, but come on, who wouldn’t want to summon an army of preternatural monkeys to terrorise their hometown? The Red Dragon would role those dice.

On the Road  (2012)    17/100

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Rating :   17/100                                                                     124 Min        15

I’m not sure, but maybe, just maybe, this is one of the worst films ever made. Walter Salles’ interpretation of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ is much more like a porno with various scenes of drug taking thrown in than anything close to good storytelling. It begins by trying to be way, way too cool, with both Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund’s accents (who play Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty respectively, and along with Kristen Stewart form the story’s main menage a trois) being heavily affected and theatrical, as if they’ve been instructed to make love to themselves while they talk, and several examples of shaky cam overuse. The characters all seem to be lacking any of the innate backstage fear of humanity, they all love one another immediately and with large degrees of pretentious self gratuity.

The story meanders aimlessly, as do the characters – screwing one another vicariously and partaking in all sorts of drug aided threesome activities. To the point where there is no real story, where the audience may find themselves so disaffected by the silhouettes of characters as to lose any real interest in what happens to them, and perhaps wonder why anyone would want anything to do with them in the first place. Then, it simply becomes a parade of pointlessness interspersed with erotica in order to keep the audience’s attention, which is the lowest form of filmmaking. It was the wrong director for this film. The Brazilian director’s most famous film prior to this was ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ (04), telling the story of a young Che Guevara as he travelled around South America on a beat up old motorcycle with his friend, trying to eventually reach a leper colony to gain medical experience. Here, he is interpreting the most defining work of the ‘beat generation’ of the post war period, a work that is autobiographical (Sal Paradise is Jack Kerouac) and focused on one man and his friend’s search for meaning and definition, travelling across America and flying in the face of conventional culture as they did so. As a culture of fear spread across America in the wake of the cold war, this search for freedom and identity versus traditional American family values resonated and the work became a landmark identifier for a generation, eventually transmogrifying into the anti-military counter culture of the hippie revolution in the 1960s.

One can imagine Walter Salles growing up as a student, a ubiquitous poster of Che Guevara on his wall, experimenting with pot and romanticising about the 50s. However, he has pretty much nothing in common with the characters he loves so much. He comes from money, lots of money, in fact his father was the head of one of the most powerful banks in the whole of South America. He has stated he spent five years researching this film. He really has to elaborate on that. It sounds like nonsense, but he did actually travel the same route as Paradise does in the novel, and made a documentary about it along the way. However, Kerouac and his pals were completely flat out broke, living on the edge, clueless about how their lives would find meaning and value, and indeed how they would even like them to turn out. Salles had no financial worries, had a very clear idea of what he was trying to achieve, and was already a success in his field. His trip becomes then a nice holiday, a completely, fundamentally different experience from Kerouac and co. This difference transfers directly into the film and its contrast with the novel.

They also cast the wrong men for the lead roles. Kristen Stewart fits her role perfectly (no comment on why that might be) and the film is successful in delivering a sense of sexual frisson throughout, together with scenes that the film will be remembered for, and that are guaranteed to induce some involuntary displays of discomfort/awkwardness in cinema audiences. Do not go and see this with family. Though, if you’re female, watching it with two males for company might be interesting…

It’s also painfully long, 124 mins, but it feels more like four hours.


Quotes

‘Can I watch you guys screw?’   Kristen Stewart/MaryLou

Ruby Sparks  (2012)    79/100

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Rating :   79/100                                                                     104 Min        15

Wonderful. As conceptually brilliant as it is surprising and multi-faceted. Paul Dano plays Calvin Weir-Fields, a talented writer who begins to write a story about a girl who then comes to life (Ruby Sparks, played by Zoe Kazan who not only makes her debut at screenwriting here, but is also the granddaughter of legendary Oscar winning director Elia Kazan – ‘On the Waterfront’ 54, ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ 47) straight from the pages of his unpublished manuscript. It manages to avoid both painting its message in bold ink and straying too much into making obvious farce, instead offering a joyous expression of romanticism and selling it to us through the looking glass. Not to be missed.

Pusher  (2012)    7/100

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Rating :   31….22….7/100                                                       89 Min        18

No that’s not a misprint. The value of ‘Pusher’ continues to deteriorate in my mind as I struggle to think of any redeeming features. It follows the story of several drug dealing Londoners, mostly with phoney, skin crawling accents, and that of one small fish in particular who takes a little more than he should have done from one of the bigger fish. The rest of the film dances around his mental torment as he attempts to balance the equation of what he owes versus what he has, and continually fails. The inevitable ensues. Awful. A five year old could have written a more interesting screenplay about their trip to the supermarket and the invisible dandelion people who live in their back garden.

Resident Evil : Retribution  (2012)    55/100

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Rating :   55/100                                                                       96 Min        15

If you are like The Red Dragon, you probably have intense difficulty in remembering what happened in Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4, and your memory of the first one is reduced to the outbreak of the T-virus in the beginning, people getting diced in the corridor in the middle, and then some fairly ropey computer graphics at the end. Happily, ‘Resident Evil 5:  Retribution’ begins with not only a recap, but with the end of the last film replaying in slow-mo reverse. With some apt music playing it’s a nice intro. The rest of the film follows very much in the vein of its predecessors, which is precisely its problem. The reason distinguishing the previous incarnations from one another is so difficult, is that they all had precious little point to them.

Here, true to form, interest dwindles as the unrealistic plot is matched by an endless series of unrealistic fight/gunfight sequences. Parts look slick enough, and the characters and actors invest just enough to merit another possible sequel, but the next one must surely have more going for it for the franchise to continue in film.

The Beatles Magical Mystery tour  (1967)    58/100

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Rating :   58/100                                                                       55 Min        PG

The Beatles psychedelic patchwork of seemingly incongruent ideas and visual oddities was released nationally on the BBC on boxing day of 1967 and it caused an immediate small furore, departing radically as it did from many people’s image of the Beatles as clean cut nice young boys as well as straying from any familiar sort of storytelling. It follows the loose story arc of a group of people, including the Beatles themselves, albeit in character, boarding a bus for a mystery tour that takes them around the English countryside and eventually to Cornwall.

It’s quite fun, and the suffusion with their music of the period and the wonderful colours throughout (it’s recently been restored and digitally remastered, which doubtless ‘helps’) makes it very easy to watch and to allow one’s mind to meander as the experimental film unabashedly progresses. The Red Dragon’s main complaint with the film is that it’s way too short!

In preparation for the film, the whole of the storyboarding procedure comprised of a single pie chart, with each part of the film occupying one wedge (some parts were idea-less and simply filled in with a smiley face). It’s impossible not to see the imprint of drugs throughout everything, which doubtless had many concerned parents outraged, but there are bad trips in there as well as good ones. Parents had good cause for concern, the Beatles were leaders in the counter revolution not just in the UK but in America too and, by osmosis, many other parts of the world (the spelling of their name is a reference to the ‘beat generation’). This film is a fascinating footnote, not just of the story of the Beatles, but perhaps the story of drugs in rock and roll in general.

At the planning stage their producer Brian Epstein, sometimes referred to as the fifth Beatle, showed a lot of interest and eagerness at getting the project off the ground, perhaps desperate to get his teeth stuck into a new project since the Beatles were on a small hiatus at the time. Whilst the Beatles have maintained their image of experimenting with drugs and coming out afterwards unharmed (though that is debatable), producing some great music and having a pretty good time doing it, Brian Epstein died of a drug overdose before the film was begun. It’s a dark shadow that contrasts vividly with the luminous greens and purples of their Magical Mystery Tour, and one that is often eclipsed by their successful and iconic status, intermingled with acid trips and narcotic inspirations – but there it remains, the other side of the same coin.

Melinda and Melinda  (2004)    59/100

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Rating :   59/100                                                                       99 Min        12A

Woody Allen begins his picture with a discussion of whether or not life is essentially comedic or tragic. This occurs as a conversation between friends having drinks, and the point is made that it perhaps simply depends on one’s point of view. The director then illustrates this through the rest of the film by telling one story in two different ways, each with the central character of Melinda (played by Radha Mitchell).

It’s an interesting point. How often do we see in romantic comedies fairly tragic events being glossed over – perhaps using comedy to alleviate circumstance is a wonderful thing, thus the phrase ‘you have to laugh don’t you?’. Unfortunately for the sake of the film, the two stories have parallels but are actually quite different from each other, somewhat defeating the purpose of the exercise. The tragic storyline is most definitely more tragic than the comedic one. Some of the technical ploys stay true to the purpose, the use of music telling us to be in a good mood, the different cinematography to put a slightly glossier sheen on the comedic story etc. But the main flaw is too large, though the individual stories do hold the viewer’s attention for the most part.

Hope Springs  (2012)    75/100

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Rating :   75/100                                                                     100 Min        12A

A well put together and nuanced comedy with a great performance from Tommy Lee Jones, proving an equal and apt match for the talents of Meryl Streep who plays his loving wife of 31 years as they enter counselling for their stalled marriage. Just the right amount of seriousness and comedy, or comedic seriousness, for the very real and often intolerably difficult subject matter, it paints in many ways a palatable veneer on the inevitability of death as we watch the two central characters wrench their souls to debate whether a dwindling depreciation is the only thing they can realistically expect from their long extant marriage, or whether the final change of divorce or the equally tough facing up to reality might allow for a reversal of the trend.

Given that the timescale is just over one week in their lives, as the wife strong-arms her husband into a couple’s therapy vacation in Maine, the film deals with the issues at hand ably and you will probably recognise at least one person you know in each of the pair, but the inherent constraints do leave us wondering a little what the post-film prognosis might be. With Steve Carell and, briefly, Elisabeth Shue in support.

Interestingly, a recent scientific study looking at the longterm lifespan of couples found that the ones destined for success and stability were those who worked together constantly to solve the little day to day sundries which are precisely the sort of things that often get put to one side, the humdrum such as fixing a leaky tap or getting the shopping right, whereas those who regarded these constant pop-ups in a relationship as merely trivial were the ones who perished in the fires of deceased relationship hell.

Presumably this is all to do with basic communication, but also the constantly reinforced idea of working together as a well functioning unit and being listened to and taken seriously by your other half and indeed that boost of satisfaction from having solved a problem, even a small one, although I think I’m right in remembering that the study also concluded allowing the male partner to indulge in sexual consort with many libidinous women at the same time was also a normal and healthy way to speed the wheels to everlasting marital bliss. Yup, pretty sure …

That’s my Boy  (2012)    59/100

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Rating :   59/100                                                                     116 Min        15

Adam Sandler’s new film has all the hallmarks of most of his work. That feeling of ‘argh, how many times do we have to see the same thing over and over again, the same hammy characters, the same torrid toilet humour, the same douche bag protagonist that somehow wins everyone over by the end?’, and also ‘hmm, that bit was actually quite funny’. It’s a shame he can’t team up with someone who could shake out the detritus and just leave the good comedy. Which, incidentally, would have completely obliterated ‘Jack and Jill’ (11) from existence (his last effort, which won Razzies in every category). The film certainly deserves kudos for playing Meatloaf’s ‘Everything Louder than Everything Else’ at one point, its use of Vanilla Ice, and the casting of ever beautiful Leighton Meester along with Eva Amurri Martino. It does have some genuine good laughs in there, you just have to survive the eye gauging rest of the film to get to them.