Into the Woods (2014) 54/100

Posted on February 21, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 54/100 125 Min

A musical that is so forced it’s painful. This is the Disney film interpretation of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway show, adapted for the screen by Lapine and directed by Rob Marshall (‘Chicago’ 02, ‘Nine’ 09), which sees several of the Grimms’ fairy tales (specifically Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel; with a random witch, two prince charmings, and the baker and his wife thrown in for structural cement) woven together in the most pointless and dull way imaginable – the baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) have to go ‘into the woods’ to fetch various items for the witch to lift a curse, which is where they will meet everyone else – all of whom are busying themselves with their normal respective stories.

Not much time ever passes between each song and not much variation exists between them either – each registers no differently than someone banging, strumming or blowing repetitively and inarticulately on the instrument of choice for the number whilst someone sings over it in a similarly predictable, and achingly dull, crescendo of ever higher but constantly monotone pitches. In fact, the musicality of the film has as much originality and merit as the script does. Eventually things stop going according to plan and the film becomes a little darker, at the time I was thinking ‘noooooooo! I thought this was about to finish!’, but actually this section (about the last half an hour or so) is way more interesting than the rest of the film, but even this part is a watered down and much weaker version of what happens in the stage show.

Also starring Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Johnny Depp, Lilla Crawford and Daniel Huttlestone – who played Gavroche in ‘Les Mis‘, a film which this is clearly trying to ape with its similar production design and cinematography but which in this context doesn’t do the film any favours as it’s way too devoid of light, leaving large sections feeling overly drab and reflective of the somewhat pointless story. Streep is up for a supporting Oscar for this but it’s really not deserved – she has her moments but there are precious few of them and even her main song has a hiccup or two with the recording (for the vast majority of the film the cast were not recorded live, unlike Les Mis). Emily Blunt is significantly better, and at least deservedly got a Golden Globe nomination for her performance, finally losing out to Amy Adams for ‘Big Eyes‘.

Mortdecai (2015) 70/100

Posted on February 10, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 70/100 107 Min

A strange film – it’s not really about anything, it’s just a frivolous romp that follows gentrified art dealer and sometimes spy Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) as he tries to solve a mysterious theft for Her Majesty’s Government, much as he would prefer not to, whilst also attempting to convince his more capable wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) that making love to him with his new moustache won’t make her hurl as she strongly suspects it will, all whilst Ewan McGregor’s MI5 inspector Martland attempts to make his own moves on Paltrow. As far as I can tell, all of this amounts for several good excuses to showcase Paltrow’s ass and deliver what is a very reasonable frothy, albeit pointless, film with Depp revelling in another slightly off the wall character with his own unique posh English accent – and it’s really Depp himself that miraculously prevents the film from not only bombing completely, but actually working on several levels. Don’t expect anything other than nonsense, but it’s fine innocent fun if you are in the mood for that sort of thing – with Paul Bettany and Olivia Munn in support and based on the Mortdecai series of books by Kyril Bonfiglioli, all published in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Birdman (2014) 90/100

Posted on February 1, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 90/100 119 Min

Hot favourite to take home the Oscar for best picture and best actor this year, ‘Birdman’ tells the story of Michael Keaton’s Riggan Thomson who is attempting to put on his first Broadway play: an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ starring, and written by, himself. There is a knowing element of self reference – Riggan is most famous for a series of big-screen hits surrounding the fictional superhero ‘Birdman’, but when he refused to do the fourth instalment his career went on the back burner and then dropped off the radar completely, we are told Birdman 3 came out in 92 which is of course when ‘Batman Returns’ was released and it is fair to say Keaton never really hit the spotlight again afterward until now, although he has had some really good supporting roles recently, in ‘RoboCop‘ and ‘Need for Speed‘ for example.

The story thus allows for a lot of commentary regarding the movie industry as a whole, blockbuster success vs real art, movie stars vs stage and ‘serious’ actors etc. and both particular to the performing arts and also transcending them is the central concept of the need to feel valued, and what damage a fruitless search for validation can do as well as the precipitous dangers of ego. It’s directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (‘Biutiful’ 10, ‘Babel’ 06, ’21 Grams’ 03, ‘Amores Perros’ 2000) and what makes the film primarily stand out is his decision to film the vast majority of the movie in what is displayed as one continuous take – all bookended by a sort of prologue and epilogue, with the take itself interjected by two time-lapses and one fade to and from white (with the occasional bit of digital manipulation to merge locations and so on).

It’s not the first time this has been attempted in a feature film – Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’ (48) is the most famous example, and the scene with Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham in ‘Hunger’ (08) also springs to mind, but there Hitchcock was hindered by technology: using actual film limited the length of his takes, in the digital era a film in one shot is entirely possible. You do think to yourself ‘well, so what?’ after all, stage performers do continuous takes sometimes twice a day every day for months. As if sensing the obvious attack on his otherwise superlative work, Iñárritu flits continuously and seamlessly between backstage, outdoor and rooftop scenes and those taking place onstage in front of a live audience, beginning with the previews and then the opening night performance. Together with the logistics of filming the thing it is all very impressive – in fact the camera operators in particular deserve a lot of credit. There’s a knowing nod to another classic of cinema as well – ‘The Passenger‘ (as if to lovingly stamp his knowledge of film into the work), where at the end the camera famously travels from an interior shot seemingly straight through a barred window to the outside. To film it a rig was built so that the bars slid apart as the camera moved forwards, and here after one of the time-lapses the camera similarly passes with ease through a barred window – at first I thought perhaps that it was just a zoom and a change, or that there are no bars and it’s simply digital, but I think maybe you can actually hear the sliding of metal if you listen carefully …

On first viewing it was all a little distracting (I had no idea long takes were involved), rather like watching a friend perform you are slightly nervous for everyone and it is relentless, leaving The Red Dragon with a question as to, despite its technical wizardry and craftsmanship, does it really work as a piece of entertainment? On second viewing though, it was a lot easier to relax and appreciate what is on display, and it is pretty marvellous – but it wouldn’t mean half as much without a tremendous and almost faultless central performance from Keaton, whose perhaps biggest achievement is that he always seems utterly in control of what’s he’s doing, despite the onerous weight placed on his shoulders. We watch Riggan run through the gamut of human emotion as he contends with the stress of the venture, the egos of his troupe, his own feelings of low self worth, the distance he’s created between him and his family, and the constant pecking of his alter ego ‘Birdman’ who has been chipping away dangerously at his psyche for decades and whom we see depicted onscreen as well, sometimes literally hovering over his shoulder.

It’s not completely perfect, there are some hiccups like when Naomi Watts and Andrea Riseborough move in for a lesbian kiss (the lead up to this is probably the weakest part of the film) and where there had been silence, drumbeats kick in – but too early, all but ruining the palpable tension the moment had created, and whilst there appear to be some fluffed lines there equally seems to be great improvisation – in particular from Riseborough who is about to walk in front of the audience when one of the stage hands gets in the way, and she immediately turns back to Keaton to deliver a line instead of just freezing awkwardly, before heading back to the stage. Also in support are Zach Galifianakis, Emma Stone (as Riggan’s daughter), Lindsay Duncan, Amy Ryan and Ed Norton, who is nothing short of brilliant and who may or may not be sporting a real boner at one point (he is pretending to have sex with Naomi Watts and, well, he’s going to get one anyway so, as his character concludes, he might as well use it).

The ending is left open to interpretation and initially it did jar a little. In fact, since I really enjoyed everything else this is what prompted me to watch it again and my own personal take is that the central ‘one shot’ epsiode of the film is all real, but both the very beginning and end segments aren’t, they have more to do with a little playfullness on Iñárritu’s part, but also the dreams and desires of Riggan. For me it works well that way at any rate.

I can’t really see anything beating this for best film, actor and director – especially as it’s about the industry and is in itself redemptive, acknowledging its worth, and especially Keaton’s, gives all performers hope, validity and reassurance whether they are currently successful or not. Indeed, I think the best way to approach any artistic or creative endeavour is to simply put yourself into the work, and by that very process you become the thing – if you have sung onstage or recorded music then you are a singer, if you have acted on screen or stage then you are an actor, volume and monetary or critical success aren’t really relevant in terms of validation, if you beat yourself up chasing the latter then what’s the point in doing it in the first place? Enjoy the art of creating, and if fortune smiles your way so much the better, but the pride in actually doing something and having the balls to do it should always be placed paramount above all else. If you love film and/or have spent any time around the vibrant internal organs of a theatre, then you will love Birdman.

Annie (2014) 65/100

Posted on January 22, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 65/100 118 Min

Having being tortured by the borderline pathological repeat of the original ‘Annie’ (82) by a particularly over zealous family member, and given the overwhelmingly negative reception of the new version, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this (both are loosely based on the 1977 Broadway musical), but figured why not give it a go – it is always good to remain open minded when it comes to film generally. Surprisingly, it is actually a lot of fun – due in no small measure to the adult parts being well written and delivered by the likes of Jamie Foxx, Rose Byrne, Cameron Diaz, Bobby Cannavale and Stephanie Kurtzuba. Annie herself is played by Quvenzhané Wallis and she appears to be significantly better off than her 80’s counterpart, living in what seems to be a fairly warm and safe foster home rather than an orphanage for example.

She does have to put up with Diaz stropping around and being a general bitch to the girls, but it’s not like she’s renting them to the local Catholic priest for smack or anything, and it isn’t long before Foxx’s Will Stacks, who is running for New York City Mayor, has a fateful encounter with the young lass and invites her to come and live with him to increase his rating in the polls, quickly bonding with her and realising what has been missing from his work centric bachelor lifestyle – a young vulnerable homeless girl in his bed. His spare bed that is, though his serpentine public affairs manager (Cannavale) does complicate matters by trying to use her status for his own profit. There are songs aplenty and at least half of them are quite good – a couple from the original musical survive but the rest are newly penned with principal cast members all performing in the recording studio.

Unfortunately, the songs have been produced via heavy use of Auto-Tune, which is effectively cheating and explains why there is an eerie similarity between them all – and it further sheds light on why when we’re given clear indication Cameron Diaz is about to skydive off tune she doesn’t, in reality she probably did exactly that. Diaz is up for a Razzie for this which is a little unfair – she is ironically completely in character here as the sort of pantomime bad guy who’s ultimately not that bad.

In tandem with post production vocal manipulation is the similar falsification of Annie herself – gone is the struggling orphan with the strong sense of what is right and an earnest belief in hope, whose character was formed by, and endured, adversity. This Annie seems all too comfortable with the cushy environment she is thrust into – Wallis received much critical acclaim and a Golden Globe nomination for this but if anything when she’s around her chums at the foster home they all appear to be better performers than she is. I think perhaps being a young girl of eleven and being told how wonderful you are all the time (being the youngest person ever nominated for the best actress Oscar for ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ in 2013 etc.) is not the greatest environment in which to get into the character of supposedly poor and hard up against it Annie, and whilst she has lots of shouty energy this does not in itself make her an acting prodigy, it simply makes her an irate little girl. Could it be Hollywood is busy creating a MONSTER? Time will surely tell, although her singing certainly appears to be very impressive – but with the technique they used it’s very difficult to tell how much is her and how much is being churned out by a machine.

If you aren’t too concerned about the lack of any real emotional depth or anything but the barest scent of a moral lesson to learn then the film is quite fun, and I see no reason that youngsters wouldn’t enjoy it. Rose Byrne in particular delivers exactly the right warm touch, and at one point she sarcastically refers to Foxx as Batman : Jamie Foxx would be a completely awesome Batman, an at least ten times more respectable choice than Batpuss Ben Affleck. Affleck is apparently going to channel his rage into the character, the rage he no doubt feels at the internet calling him a gigantic pussy that will have criminals rolling around laughing in puddles of their own wee – I mean seriously, if you were a hoodlum would you be scared of Ben Affleck growling in a costume? You might surrender out of pity.

Night at the Museum : Secret of the Tomb (2014) 62/100

Posted on January 15, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 62/100 98 Min

This is essentially completely identical to parts one and two of the ‘Night at the Museum’ franchise, which began way back in 2006 although it seems like just yesterday. The majority of the characters return for this instalment, including the protagonist Larry Daley (Ben Stiller), Sacajawea (Mizuo Peck), Jed (Owen Wilson), Octavius (Steve Coogan), Attila the Hun (Patrick Gallagher), Ahkmenrah (Rami Malek) and the late Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt, together with new faces Sir Lancelot (Dan Stevens), La (also Stiller) and security guard Tilly (Rebel Wilson) as well as some great cameos. A very loose thread throughout explores Larry’s relationship with his son Nick (Skyler Gisondo) who is determined to take a year out before college to basically chill out in Ibiza, much to the chagrin of his concerned father, but can Nick convince Larry that he’s mature enough to make his own decisions?

The main story arc follows the somewhat mouldy decline of the golden tablet that brings all the exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan to life at night, and just as the previous film took everyone on a trip to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., this time the British Museum in London is where they hope to find answers to the imminent cessation of all their nocturnal activities. The film works as a really great advert for the museum and the not too distant Trafalgar Square area – indeed, these are two of The Red Dragon’s favourite places to visit in London (although usually I am paying more attention to potential new slaves than exhibits, I once met a rather charming girl called Mona Lisa in the National Gallery (no joke) and indeed was similarly distracted in the British Museum and thoroughly enjoyed the visit along with the hieroglyphics merchandise from the shop, until I remembered the Rosetta stone is there and I had neglected to see it. Pesky human females). The film is perfectly in keeping with Stiller’s usual zany, light and family friendly comedy adventures and for precisely that reason this delivers exactly what you would expect – a film that’s easy to watch with colourful performances and the occasional laugh but nothing to make it stand out and overall somewhat banal, with an ending designed to finish the series rather than really make much sense.

Dumb and Dumber To (2014) 44/100

Posted on January 14, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 44/100 109 Min

Arguably difficult to pull this one off, given its release twenty years after the original ‘Dumb and Dumber’ and that principal actors Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels had to considerably regress into playing the goofy ‘one card shy of a full deck’ Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne respectively. My goodness do the writers make a mess of it though. One imagines them, the Farrelly brothers (also the directors), guffawing earnestly at their own jokes as they churn out toilet gags that a five year old would find off-putting, whilst they simultaneously commit the cardinal sin of thinking anyone in the audience is actually going to care about the particularly lame story that’s been sticky taped around their all but ineffective slapstick routines.

Said story focuses on Harry’s discovery that he has a long lost child combined with Lloyd’s discovery that he wants to bone her (curiously Rachel Melvin, who plays the daughter, looks rather similar to Emma Stone, whom Carrey rather publicly declared his undying affection for a couple of years back), all leading them on a road trip to a scientific conference where she is due to give a speech on behalf of her highly regarded academic foster father, whose wife is plotting to kill him and take his money. To be fair I did laugh a few times, and loyal affection for the original characters carried me through to the end but an air of desperation never quite leaves the film and it’s full of unfortunate moments, like watching Carrey swallow a hot dog whole and then visibly suffer for it a moment later. They needed a genuine spark to make this work, maybe even putting Lloyd and Harry into the background more often possibly with leading straight characters for contrast, but it never really gets off the ground and is dramatically weighed down by simple crassness throughout.

The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman (2014) 9/100

Posted on December 28, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 9/100 103 Min

The death of Charlie Countryman is indeed necessary as, frankly, he’s too stupid to stay alive for very long, given he appears to have trouble even getting properly dressed in the morning without aid never mind dealing with murderous criminals in a foreign land. Shia LaBeouf plays the eponymous central character whose mother dies at the opening of the film but her ghost stops on her way to paradise in order to suggest travelling to Bucharest, probably to ‘find himself’, where he goes and essentially gets the shit kicked out of him repeatedly – although since he uncovers some concrete incriminating evidence about someone and then goes right up to them and reveals this information, he was literally asking for it. Wouldn’t you know it, there’s a hot girl involved in the guise of Evan Rachel Wood sporting an accent that may belong somewhere on the Eurasian plate but it’s certainly not Bucharest (accompaniment with her ‘yawning cat’ love making technique ensures this is also a film she’ll want to leave behind pretty fast) and of course Charlie falls instantly in love with her because chances are women back home tend to avoid him. Mads Mikkelsen plays the main baddie and watching him kick Countryman off the chair he’s sitting on and send him flying is the only satisfying moment in the film. Bizarrely with Rupert Grint and James Buckley in support as a couple of travelling plonkers, and with constant jibes that maybe he meant to go to Budapest and not Bucharest, sure to insult all Romanians.

This is Where I Leave You (2014) 43/100

Posted on December 27, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 43/100 103 Min

The most notable disaster per capita of famous actor since ‘The Big Wedding‘, this close up look at a large family, brought together by the passing of the father, each of whom all have their problems and secrets suffers primarily from the fact it is enormously difficult to like any of them, this, coupled with their individual and co-operative inability to generate any comedy at all, renders the film all but pointless. Jonathan Tropper wrote the screenplay based on his own novel of the same name and Shawn Levy directs – who has a very varied back catalogue, including the likes of ‘The Internship‘, ‘Real Steel’ (11), ‘Night at the Museum’ (06) and ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ (03), but this most certainly falls into his duds category, bruising by way of collateral damage Jason Bateman, Adam Driver, Jane Fonda, Tina Fey, Rose Byrne and Timothy Olyphant. The title comes from the reasonably central event that sees Bateman’s character at the beginning of the film walk in on his wife cheating on him with his boss, and he then tries to process this fairly major setback to happily ever after – but the problem is he reacts in such a non-emotional way, with a sort of cold inevitability, and his character is the same one he always plays now, the ‘calm and sensible one’ surrounded by more headstrong or carefree family members/friends, and of course the young local hottie (Byrne) will naturally take sympathy on him, groan. It’s all as unrealistic and stoic as his character is.

Say When / Laggies (2014) 70/100

Posted on December 25, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 70/100 99 Min

An endearingly sweet film that sees central character Megan (Keira Knightley) realise that a decade after the end of high school her life hasn’t really changed all that much compared to her peers and when her boyfriend, the same one from high school, proposes to her she panics and bunks off for a week to live with sixteen year old Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz), whom she befriended after being successfully entreated by the latter to purchase alcohol for her and her mates. Initially, it’s like a breath of fresh air compared to the stuffy seriousness of her more grown up friends but Annika’s father (Sam Rockwell) isn’t exactly impressed when he finds a strange woman sleeping over with his daughter, but since the woman in question is Keira Knightley he quickly decides to get over it and tries to bang her anyway, complicating matters further.

Megan is shown to be carefree but still grounded enough to like – in fact, she has a playfulness about her that is absolutely necessary for adult life and which her friends seem to have forgotten, and this in no small way comes from Knightley herself, shining through into her character quite naturally. Set in America, Megan sports an accent that is at times applied a little too thickly but when a bit more subdued is perfect, and the film is directed by Lynn Shelton who enjoyed success with another comic drama centred around three main characters in 2012’s ‘Your Sister’s Sister’. Some of the comedy here could have done with a few hammer blows to make it stand out a bit more, but it’s quite impressive for a debut screenplay, from writer Andrea Seigel, and the movie is amiable, fun and has a great starring turn from the leading lady herself. Look out for the bit where she flips a sign for her father’s company, all dressed in white – almost like the universal obverse of her Coco Mademoiselle adverts (the ones with the bike and the jumpsuit), and also where she convinces one of the young girls to step up to the plate and tell the boy she likes how she feels, a refreshing and sensible change from the norm.

Keira Knightley recently posed topless for Interview magazine (if you are ever thinking of doing it again Keira, I can offer you tea and biscuits …) to highlight the endemic and somewhat ridiculous use of the fake enhancement of women’s breasts in the media, as she herself has famously had this applied to her own image multiple times by the industry, on the likes of the advertising surrounding ‘King Arthur’ (04) for example, and indeed she wants the photoshoot to propagate for that reason. Ah, human female breasts, fascinating for all sorts of reasons – such as their unique existence within the animal kingdom, human females being the only primates that have protuberant breasts all year round and not just when they have milk in them, demonstrating their primary sexual role and the importance of sex for the human species – whether you argue for pleasure or pair bonding. Indeed, a strong theory is that when your ancestors first walked upright, the females had no breasts, as we would describe them now, and they simply evolved to mimic the buttocks as seen from behind – providing a sexual image from both directions.

The concept of one’s own body compared to another’s is so often manipulated to a sickening degree in the modern Western world, and The Red Dragon’s own personal view has always been to regard it as impossible to criticise one’s looks without also disrespecting your ancestors, and in particular your family. To them you are the most beautiful thing in the entire cosmos and you only hurt them unimaginably by putting yourself down, but not only that if you take a common complaint such as the shape of one’s nose – this evolved in order to adapt itself to the air your ancestors had to breathe, as when it reaches your lungs the air must be within a certain range of temperature and humidity and the nose is nature’s filter, thus not only does its shape point directly to where your antecedents lived but it was also a great aid in their comfortable survival and indeed your very existence, thus you should be proud and grateful – not wanting to change it just to look like someone else. Plus, it really doesn’t matter what you look like so long as you take care of what you’ve got and enjoy it – I mean Keira is quite obviously the best among you but then she has to suffer lots of unwanted attention and screeds of text about her look and people analysing every inch of her body, and ultimately even if one person thinks you are a one out of ten, someone else will think you are a ten – just don’t waste any time or thought on the ones, and as for female’s breasts your femininity is the entirety of your body, mind and soul combined and each elemental part is what makes you unique and special – embrace what you look like, enjoy the truly remarkable creature that you are and for both sexes remember – a genuine smile is always attractive. See below for a mathematical analysis of romance and dating, from another rather appetising human morsel …

The Book of Life (2014) 67/100

Posted on December 24, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 67/100 95 Min

From Dallas based Reel FX Creative Studios whose last output was the dire ‘Free Birds‘, the creative team behind this, led by director and co-writer Jorge R. Gutierrez, were determined to match the adroitness of their concept art with the visual splendour of the final film, and I think they can congratulate themselves on a job well done as I don’t believe I have ever seen an animated movie quite so colourfully rich and involved as this one, easily the film’s best selling point. Voiced comfortably by a cast including Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Channing Tatum, Kate del Castillo, Ron Perlman and Ice Cube, this tells a story from the Book of Life, a book which contains all stories, of a love triangle involving two young male friends and the local beauty, also the general’s daughter, naturally, in the Mexican village of San Angel – a recipe for disaster that the spirit rulers of the Land of the Remembered and the Land of the Forgotten place bets upon, but over the years which one will win the hand of the fair lady, and what will the consequences be? It’s good fun, with its own take on lots of modern songs (at least two of which appear in The Red Dragon’s first playlist, so they obviously have good taste …) but unfortunately it tries to take the main characters on too many journeys and the central concept ends up meandering as a result, leading to a very average finale. Overall a warm and heartfelt endeavour though.

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