An odd film in that it’s set during the height of the Troubles in Belfast in Northern Ireland, but it’s actually a completely fictional story. I’m not sure how wise it is to take artistic license with something so important and divisive in not too distant Northern Irish history. On the one hand it demonstrates the kind of scenarios and conflicts that would have been experienced at the time, and with a bit of distance so they don’t have to worry about historical accuracy with the characters and so on – on the other it could be seen as not treating events seriously enough, using it as an excuse to create a tense drama that, in the absence of a properly delivered political backdrop, could have been set in any conflict. Director Yann Demange and writer Gregory Burke have more or less walked their fine line successfully here, showing a sense of the conflict’s reality and the brutal horror of the violence but together with a framework for its existence, and without simply getting lost in their own dramatic attempt to keep the audience engaged.
Jack O’Connell plays the protagonist Gary – a British soldier deployed in Belfast for the first time, who ends up isolated from the rest of his unit and on the run as all hell breaks loose in the city around him and he desperately tries to reach the relative safety of his barracks. It’s well shot, there’s some real tension in there, and O’Connell passes mustard in the role although really he’s not asked to do much except run around looking scared and he has yet to impress in any role that doesn’t involve him portraying a violent psychopath, the next few leading roles he has lined up should put his acting chops to the test. The film’s major problem lies in its believability, as the story becomes increasingly difficult to buy into – in particular the moment when one of the characters, who has himself and his daughter to protect, thinks to himself ‘hmm something is happening here which we absolutely must keep a complete secret from everyone, I mean like everyone, even the people I trust most in the world, and then in a matter of hours it’ll all be over anyway. “OK love, I’m just popping out to tell the local head of the IRA about our situation. Yeah, it seems like the logical thing to do. Bye!”’ It’s pretty much downhill from there.
Kevin Costner stars as a CIA operative diagnosed with terminal brain and lung cancer and given three months to live, inducing him to visit his estranged wife and daughter in Paris to make amends before he kicks the bucket – enter sex on legs Amber Heard to throw a spanner in the works and offer him an experimental life extending drug, if he does just one more job for the agency that is …
It’s a lot more light hearted and fun than it sounds with numerous comedic moments, decent action and several beautifully iconic shots of Paris. In fact, it is exactly what you might expect from mixing writer Luc Besson (‘Leon’ 94, ‘The Fifth Element’ 97) with director McG (‘Charlie’s Angels’ 2000, ‘Terminator Salvation’ 09). It doesn’t start off too well, with the intro intelligence brief telling us about primary terrifying villains ‘The Wolf’, and, ‘The Albino’, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously, nor does it take long to settle either.
Costner brings his wealth of experience to ground the central role and he plays it in the same subtle and subdued way that he did in ‘Jack Ryan : Shadow Recruit‘, again playing a CIA operative there, and the support from the likes of Hailee Steinfeld as his daughter is equally good. A return to form for many involved and a suitably likeable and entertaining weekend action film.
The sequel to 2012’s action comedy ’21 Jump Street’ (itself based on the late 80’s/early 90’s TV show, which helped launch the career of a certain Mr. Johnny Depp), again starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill and with plenty of in-jokes alluding to their increased budget this time around and the similar story – with the two cops returning undercover but graduating, figuratively, from impersonating high school students to becoming roommates in college. The returning central plot element is a new drug craze which has claimed at least one life on campus, and which of course allows the protagonists to accidentally try some for themselves.
Hill actually came up with the story, together with Michael Bacall (who has reportedly finished his script for the spin-off ‘Tropic Thunder’ film that is to centre on Tom Cruise’s scene stealing cameo character Les Grossman) and it is entertaining enough, with similar gags and action to the first one, though what it somehow manages to do quite well is play on the bromance between the leads, as one gets jealous of the other’s new college friends/social status and must deal with a resurgence of his feelings of isolation, and an ongoing lover’s quarrel ensues. Altogether, a slight improvement on its predecessor.
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 …
The sequel to 2006’s phenomenally successful ‘300’, this time with director Noam Murro replacing Zack Snyder (who acts as producer and writer here) and focusing on the Athenian’s story, in particular their leader Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), during the Greco-Persian wars in ancient Greece, with events primarily unfolding both during those of ‘300’ as well as immediately afterward. The story is burdened somewhat by an untruth told in the first instalment where Leonidas is shown to be more or less acting of his own accord when he marches 300 Spartan hoplites (soldiers) to the ‘hot gates’ of Thermopylae. In reality, a confederation of Greek city states had selected Leonidas to lead the ground forces in defence against Xerxes’ invasion, and in unison with the army a Greek fleet (of which Athenian ships were to form the bulk of) would engage the vast Persian navy at the pass around the cape of Artemisium, preventing Leonidas’ troops from being flanked.
After the infamous deeds at Thermopylae and the battle of Artemisium, there was to be a third conflict around the isle of Salamis near the Isthmus of Corinth, which forms the climax of the movie and was to prove one of the most important battles in the history of western civilisation. Technically, Themistocles wasn’t actually in charge of the Greek navy – for diplomatic reasons a Spartan, Eurybiades, had been elected overall commander as Sparta had but a handful of ships and Corinth, another seafaring city, did not want to see her Athenian rivals in charge, but in reality Themistocles seems to have called all the shots.
The film misses the chance to put all of these events into the proper context, and instead we end up with a much more contemporary action orientated, attempted spectacle. Although a lot of the details do fit into the real story somewhere, just not necessarily in the order or way that they are presented to us. One of the most egregious inventions is when we are shown the battle of Marathon, 490BC (Thermopylae, Artemisium & Salamis took place in 480BC), which is where the Athenians triumphed against the odds to defeat the first attempted Persian incursion into Attica (and of course where our modern day Marathon run originates as Pheidippides supposedly ran from Marathon to Athens to tell the people of the victory {having just ran to Sparta and back}. Admittedly, he collapsed dead from exhaustion immediately afterwards) and we see Themistocles kill the Persian king Darius I, who was in fact not even present for the battle. It is, however, true that after this Darius planned a full scale invasion before an Egyptian revolt prevented it, and that his son Xerxes would fulfil his plans after his death due to ill health, whilst Themistocles would climb ever higher within the political structure of Athen’s greatest gift to the world, its democracy, to convince the people that the city needed a navy to better protect itself from the Persians he was sure would return. Interestingly, their democracy was a direct one, wherein the people did not elect representatives to vote on their behalf, but rather voted on each issue themselves – sadly the renaissance does not seem to have reinstated this virtue in the west.
A fascinating and exciting backdrop for the film then, but unfortunately its biggest problem is the fairly childish overuse of blood effects which splatter over the screen in ever increasing amounts, which is bad enough, but what they have used looks absolutely nothing like blood and more like some sort of purple, thick, goo that splurges out of bodies over the screen constantly, more akin to raspberry jam than someone’s insides. An element of this would be ok, and fitting with ‘300’, but its obvious some scenes have been orchestrated purely with this effect in mind, rather than any focus on tension or the audience’s suspension of disbelief.
The same cinematography and stylisation from its predecessor is used once again, and it mostly looks as good as before, although there are a number of scenes with ropey CGI soldiers milling about – some of the action is reasonably satisfying, but then other elements are far too over the top. ‘300’ was the perfect blend of stylised filmmaking with a story based on truth, but here there are a lot of moments where you can say with certainty that never in a million years would what we’re watching be feasible. Stapleton has a difficult job to do, following in the footsteps of Gerard Butler’s iconic turn as Leonidas, but he does quite well overall, though it is difficult to fully get behind him, partly due to the obvious character conflict with his Australian accent (much like Sam Worthington’s as Perseus in ‘Clash of the Titans’ 2010 and its sequel) and partly because unlike in 300, we never really see the protagonist not in ‘battle mode’ as he is effectively waging war from start to finish and, ultimately, it is a bit tiring to watch someone constantly trying to look stressed, shouting and giving rousing battle speeches. In terms of Greek history he is one of the most important characters, and more of a back story and characterisation would have been much better, perhaps focusing on his rise from the poor quarter to the heights of Athenian society.
The naval battles are once again a mixture of real tactics thought to have been used on both sides (not always the correct ones though) and pure invention. Estimates for the forces involved put the Persians setting sail with 1200 ships versus the Greek navy of about one third of that, and the scale in itself is fascinating, with the film exhibiting both great artistic detail and yet tactical execution that is at once enthralling but also dubious. One of the best aspects, which the film actually gets correct, is that the Persian fleet was commanded by a female, somewhat ironically named Artemisia, the Queen of Halicarnassus. Played onscreen by the wonderful Eva Green, she was held in high esteem by Xerxes and by generals on both sides, indeed the film sees her challenge the other commanders under her to impress her and in real life the legend is that during Salamis she was being chased down by a Greek vessel and so hoisted the Greek flag and rammed into one of her own general’s ships (one she had recently disagreed with) shaking off her pursuer having convinced him she was a defector, and apparently watching from above Xerxes and his generals were equally convinced that she had just sunk an enemy ship causing the ‘god king’ to infamously comment “My men have become women, and my women men”.
The movie plays with the rivalry between Themistocles and Artemisia turning it into sexual tension – perhaps not so unmerited given the Greeks had put a high price on her head for a live capture, ostensibly, history argues, because they were so offended at being outmatched by a female, but in reality what could possibly make a greater prize and conquest for a male general? Sadly, she is treated with perhaps the greatest historical disdain with what occurs at the climatic battle.
Returning to reprise her role as Gorgo, queen of Sparta, is Lena Headey, who incredibly looks EVEN BETTER than she did in the first one, and she sizzles onscreen with a reinforced confidence that success with ‘Game of Thrones’ has no doubt brought her. Another strong and wonderful character from antiquity, she delivers lines like the one below with such relish that it is impossible not to love her.
Overall, it is a little disappointing but still reasonably fun, and it does inspire interest in the subject matter, perhaps even more so than the already well known story displayed in ‘300’. If you don’t mind much of it being ruined to some extent by self indulgent and silly effects then it might still be worth a look in, and the story is yet to be completed with the events of the following year, 479 BC, required to conclude everything. They will need a better team to helm the project if they take it that far though.
“Themistocles. You’ve come a long way to stroke your cock whilst watching real men train.” Lena Headey/Queen Gorgo
“Artemisia whispered the seed of madness that would consume him … He surrendered himself completely, to power so evil and perverse, that as he emerged no part of a human man survived… Artemisia watched her flawless manipulation take shape.” Lena Headey/Queen Gorgo
“Only the gods can defeat the Greeks. You will be a god king.” Eva Green/Artemisia
“Today we will dance across the backs of dead Greeks.” Eva Green/Artemisia
“SEIZE YOUR GLORY!” Sullivan Stapleton/Themistocles
“Let it be shown, that we chose to die on our feet rather than live on our knees!” Sullivan Stapleton/Themistocles
Everyone knew about this film long before it ever went on general release. Partly due to its true story – that of Solomon Northup, a free man and a family man living in relative prosperity in New York state in 1841 who was betrayed and sold into slavery in Louisiana, and party due to the acclaim attached to its director Steve McQueen (whose two feature films to date so far, Hunger (08) and Shame (11), were both snubbed at the Oscars and yet commonly appear in ‘best films of the year’ lists) as well as the star studded cast including Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup himself, Lupita Nyong’o as the female slave he tries to help, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Fassbender, Paul Dano and Paul Giamatti as southern plantation owners, and Brad Pitt as the travelling voice of reason.
For me, the first forty or so minutes of the film don’t really work, they don’t feel genuine, more like a sort of enforced darkness as Northup is sent southward and first experiences the brutality of his situation, like the heavy handed deliberate stamp of the director even though it is indeed a very dark tale he is portraying. Then, after this period, as Paul Dano vents his hatred on the protagonist we see him fight back and release some of the tension that’s been built up, in him and the audience, and this feels very real indeed. It’s a powerful scene, and from that point onward the film becomes increasingly enthralling.
McQueen has given himself a difficult job – telling this story over the period of more than a decade and yet attempting to make it quite intimate, and he has largely succeeded even if we are missing a lot of the political backdrop with the differing laws of North and South responsible for much of what we see happening, as well as little mention of the repercussions of Northup’s particular experiences as this was once upon a time a very well known story, as it is about to become again. Really throwing fuel on the fire is the director’s weapon of choice, Michael Fassbender, who absolutely revels in playing a composite villain that brutally tortures and sexually abuses his slaves. He really ignites the film, and introduces one of the most tricky aspects – sexual fetishism. A palpable sense of this is created for a small section of the film, with the air of perpetual fear and the excitement and adrenaline that that must bring, as well as the infusion of power within the abuser, an abuser that comes to love his slaves – but love them as mere toys to be played with for entertainment and the associated thrill of control.
Thus this film, whilst it focuses on the story of Northup and does not delve into the wider issues, is of a standard high enough to ask the audience to probe deeper into the mindset at work and the historical context, and yet also be careful not to simply label it a relic of the past. It does make sacrifices which take it away from a deeper examination of the human condition in order to tell its story, but it is successful in its exploration of darkness, albeit a slightly self-aware darkness, nonetheless.
McQueen has said he considers slavery in the American south to be somewhat missing from cinema in general, like a dirty secret no one is willing to talk about. I don’t think that’s really fair, but he has certainly brought it to the forefront of everyone’s attention in a way that is not going to be forgotten in a hurry, and it deservedly sits as one of the leading contenders in this year’s Oscars race.
Based on Japan’s epic legend and visually very nice, but at the same time somehow completely flat throughout. The true story this is based on is a fascinating tale of honour, feudal Japan, and the way of the samurai, or Bushido, as the forty seven warriors are forced to become ronin (the Japanese term for a samurai without master) when their lord is ordered to end his life, and they spend the next couple of years planning a reckoning. Here, however, the filmmakers have opted to mix the story in with fantasy elements from mythology, which may have worked but there’s no real skill in the delivery, no real scope or tension to bait the audience with.
Keanu Reeves is the token famous western actor to sell the film with and who had his part deliberately augmented with that in mind, although he is actually pretty good in it – the rest of the cast is comprised of well know actors in Japan, but with that in mind it would have been a much better idea to film the dialogue in Japanese and then subtitle it as their delivery of the English lines leaves a lot to be desired and arrives, at times, painfully slowly. Where the film is successful, is in painting a wonderfully rich image of eighteenth century Japan with fairly grandiose sets and the costume department in particular outdoing themselves (although they too have not always pinioned themselves with historical accuracy). The fighting though, is nowhere near as good as in the likes of ‘13 Assassins’ (10) and there is a very average feel to what had the potential to be very spectacular indeed. It may still satisfy though, if you just happen to be in the mood for a bit of light fantasy action.
Mark Wahlberg teams up again with his Icelandic ‘Contraband’ (10) director Baltasar Kormákur, starring opposite Denzel Washington in a film adaptation of Steven Grant’s comic book series, that also hails back to Hollywood’s perhaps excessive history of crime/cop ‘buddy’ films. Here, Wahlberg’s Stig is the undercover Naval intelligence officer foil to Washington’s Bobby, an undercover DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent, and only after they rob a bank together at the beginning does each begin to realise who the other really is, but by this point one particularly interested and rather pissed off bank customer (Bill Paxton) would really like his money back.
Some of the editing is a little ropey, and likewise some of the action explodes perfunctorily, but it is reasonably good fun, largely thanks to the charisma of the two leading men and their obvious ease with, and enjoyment of, each others company. James Marsden, Edward James Olmos and Paula Patton (‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ 2011) appear in support, and the whole is a decent if perhaps unmemorable addition to the back catalogue of like examples, except for one scene that stands out featuring a bunch of Mexicans shooting at some chickens they’ve buried in the sand so that only their heads are sticking up. Stig’s dialogue briefly becomes the voice of the audience in outrage, and it’s not especially pleasant to watch. Poor things. Not sure if psychologically damaged chickens would, ahem, fall foul of the standard “No Animals Were Harmed” in the making of this motion picture, a phrase that American films using animals have run at the end of the credits (courtesy of American Humane Association legislation).
From the writers of ‘The Hangover’ (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, this time directing too) and essentially with the same storyline but different characters, focusing on a trio of college students in order to apply their tried and tested routine on a younger market. The three friends are played by Miles Teller, Justin Chon and Skylar Astin and we follow their exploits as two of them determine to celebrate the third’s twenty first birthday with a raucous night on the lash, whilst promising to get him back home in time for a good night’s preparatory sleep, an important medical school interview looming the next morning.
The comedy is forced from the onset through necessity, and it’s entirely formulaic, which sometimes grates, but it does have its moments and it is given a dash of sincerity and respect by fully committed performances from the central cast. Fans of the Hangover series can expect to like this too.
