The Big Short (2015) 66/100

Posted on April 8, 2020 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 66/100 130 Min

This is an important film detailing, or attempting to, what led up to and caused the financial crash in America and most of Europe in 2007/08. Focusing on the corruption in the banking sector wherein people had financial incentive, in terms of bonuses, for bankrolling increasingly dubious clients for mortgages, the film delivers a narrative charting events from the point of view of several characters trying to profit from the collapse by spotting what was going to happen and betting against the system – that system being the, until then, rock solid sub-prime mortgage stability.

Curiously, then, we have protagonists that we ought to despise and yet the movie is partly successful in having us want them to succeed, or it is up to a point – Christian Bale’s Michael Burry, and to a lesser extent Steve Carell’s Mark Baum, have us root for them, but the others fall rather flat.

Indeed, I can’t think of another film off the top of my head that is so constantly dragged down by the support work, and a large portion of the blame lies with director Adam McKay, who not only has random camera movements all over the place in an attempt to make it look like he knows what he’s doing, but he also has support characters eat, and chew gum in a really audible way all through the movie.

From a performance point of view, it can be one of the most disgusting things asked of an actor – those who are driven mad by the sound of people eating in the cinema (a sizeable percentage of the population) already have to contend with people treating the place like their own living room, with a never-ending selection of the most irritating and noisy confectionery there is, but now McKay thinks it would be a good idea to put it on the screen in front of them too, where we can not only see and hear it at a high decibel level, but it will actually interfere with the dialogue as well. It’s unbearable, and if you are put off by this notion in any way, then, simply put, I’d advise avoiding this film entirely.

Perhaps this is connected to Brad Pitt? He stars and produces here and is known for his trademark of eating onscreen, but he always manages it in a way that isn’t annoying. His role is reminiscent of his brief and messianic appearance in ‘12 Years a Slave‘, also produced by his company Plan B, as here, after aiding two undesirables to become rich via other people’s gross misfortune, he turns around to berate them for celebrating, telling them that it’s going to mean bitter hardship, homelessness and death for huge swathes of the population, and the others are all ‘hmm, I never thought of it that way ..’.

The dialogue is also problematic – we have several interjections from famous faces such as Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez (and some chef most people have never heard of before and who is really hard to make out), explaining in supposed layman’s terms what all the financial jargon actually means. Initially, this does help, but as the film continues it delves back into a mire of confusion – grasping the initial introductory section is critical to understanding the rest of the film, so try to pay special attention to the first ten minutes or so explaining the history of banking as a business.

Undeservedly nominated for lots of Oscars, including for director McKay which must surely be an aberration, although support nominee Bale is one of the few people that save the film from becoming an acting monstrosity. The film is both poorly crafted and written (despite winning the best adapted screenplay Oscar for McKay and Charles Randolph: their script is based on the 2010 book ‘The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine’ by Michael Lewis), but as a movie attempting to chronicle one of the biggest financial stories of our time it is still one worth paying attention to, maybe just bring earplugs for some of the scenes …

The Revenant (2015) 54/100

Posted on April 6, 2020 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 54/100 156 Min

A fairly horrid disappointment, as director Alejandro G. Iñarritu follows up his Oscar win for ‘Birdman‘ the year previous, which I was rooting for, with this, a period piece set in the wilderness of America’s Dakotas in 1823, replete with as many arty shots as you can shake your fist at, but no amount of landscapes and visceral clenches of the environment can mask that at its core ‘The Revenant’ is just an extremely poorly written action film that makes no sense at any point, and whose bloody excess is endorsed by a director playing around with cameras so much that he operates as a character himself, which is exactly what a director shouldn’t be doing, to the extent that the only thing of any merit is the technical quality of the equipment and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s use of it, delivering crisp and lucid images throughout, but even they are interjected far too often, and with a run time of 156 mins this is one film where you’ll be glad to see the credits role and signal the experience is finally over.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars, and indeed finally won his first Oscar for the role (Iñarritu and Lubezki were the other winners from a total of twelve nominations; including best film and a best supporting nod for Tom Hardy), playing one of a group of fur trappers (Hugh Glass) dealing with Indian attacks and basic survival against the elements. At its heart, the film is as predictable as could be, with an essential plot element revealed in the trailer (aiding its predictability), a continuously unbelievable central arc and a litany of character decisions that make no sense at all – whilst trying to be vague, a non-exhaustive list of these include:

Indians attacking a group because they believe the chief’s daughter might be held captive by them, they don’t think to check first of course and the ensuing slaughter could easily have killed her had she been there in the first place, the Indians then decide to doggedly harass the remainder of the group, still with no actual evidence the girl is with them, whilst at the same time completely ignoring the possibility that the other groups of whites around may be the culprits; a bear attack that presumably has some relationship with something the scriptwriter seen on the discovery channel at some point but still looks completely ridiculous and should have by rights killed the recipient right off but instead mangles him for the sake of rubbish plot lines; a character that has the use of lots of men at his disposal but instead heads off without them to deal with a lone gunman; a shootout with someone firing at range when they know the other person cannot possibly reload in time so they could have leisurely walked up to them and fired with no chance to miss; someone committing murder and not killing the only witness – even though they were about to originally murder said witness so they obviously have no qualms about it; someone deciding revenge is bad but giving a person over to other people knowing they will immediately kill them; someone stealing a horse from a large armed group in broad daylight when they could have at least waited until dark …

… and these are just the ones off the top of my head, I have no doubt there are many others. It starts off really promisingly (incidentally, opening scenes are sure to remind anyone who has ever played ‘Myst’ of one of the lands in the game, and curiously the symbol drawn on a canteen at one point is the same used throughout Myst online, maybe they are fans …) but it isn’t long before it becomes tedious and ridiculous, and it’s all downhill from there as we watch the inevitable play out in the most indulgent and drawn-out fashion imaginable. Iñarritu takes to several moments of providing 360 degree spins with the camera, presumably trying to put the audience into the scene but in reality removing us from it and instead creating a somewhat dizzying effect.

It’s a very physical role for DiCaprio, and as is ever the case with this kind of part, if you’re actually there freezing your bollocks off and getting wrecked by the environment, are you really acting? Although not really his finest hour, and he deserved a much better screenplay, few could begrudge him his long overdue Oscar win. For anyone who has seen ‘The Big Sky’ (52) starring the late, great Kirk Douglas (it’s a much better film incidentally), then you will undoubtedly notice some large-scale and not-so-subtle parallels with ‘The Revenant’, and indeed here the scene where someone guts an animal and climbs inside its carcass has almost certainly been taken directly from ‘Headhunters’ (2011). Massive disappointment from the director and writers – Iñarritu and Mark L. Smith, who based their work partly on Michael Punke’s 2002 novel of the same name detailing the adventures of the real-life Glass. I remember a surge of gratefulness when this finally finished that definitely made it a memorable entry in my log of long and painful cinematic experiences.

I almost forgot – show of hands, who actually knows what ‘revenant’ means? Hmm, I don’t see many hands going up out there – apart from you, but you are lying to yourself. Here is the definition I’ve swiped from Dictionary.com:

Revenant – noun 1) a person who returns
2) a person who returns as a spirit after death; ghost

Brit. dic. noun 1) something, esp a ghost, that returns

ORIGIN: C19: from French: ghost, from revenir to come back, from Latin
revenīre, from re- + venīre to come

The Graduate (1967) 80/100

Posted on April 6, 2020 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 80/100 106 Min

A film primarily famous for its music (scored by Simon & Garfunkel – including their famous ‘Mrs. Robinson’ – who became household names after the success of the movie) and for the central concept of an older woman, Mrs Robinson (played by Anne Bancroft), seducing a younger man, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman). This is quite unfair on the film though, as we soon realise we are actually watching Mrs Robinson living in her own personal version of hell, while the young Ben, a creature of great impulse but no real design, processes his angst and feelings of isolation and ennui into an all consuming and obsessive ‘true love’, one befitting the film’s iconic status.

Hoffman shows why he is one of the finest actors of any generation not just his own, and director Mike Nichols won the best director Oscar for his avant-garde and experimental work here – which features a lot of individual expression helping shape the audience’s connection with Ben and his disconnection with the adults around him, even if sometimes if feels like they just thought – ‘Ok let’s put the camera up here and see what happens’. A story with a lot of depth, great performances (also from Katharine Ross in support – all three would garner Oscar nominations), and some wonderful comedy perfectly sewn into the darkness and urgency of the drama. One not to miss.

The Breakfast Club (1985) 63/100

Posted on April 5, 2020 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 63/100 97 Min

One of the most famous films of the eighties from writer/director John Hughes, ‘The Breakfast Club’ is so named for the five central characters (played by Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall) who are all called into high school detention on a Saturday, for the entire day, and all for a variety of reasons which are revealed as the story progresses. Each character represents a stereotype – respectively; the Jock, the aggressive outsider, the emo/’alternative’ chick, the beauty and the studious nerd. Each proceeds to both antagonise the others and also demonstrate values and thoughts identifying them with their stereotypes, before bonds are formed, barriers broken, and the suggestion that they have more in common than they would otherwise have believed is made. Largely, this is courtesy of the teacher assigned to watch over them from his nearby office (played by Paul Gleason, who may be equally familiar as the hopeless police sergeant in another eighties’ powerhouse, ‘Die Hard’ 88) who operates as the cement that will unite them all together.

Although the cast are good and have a combined strong screen presence, one can’t help but feel a certain conceited smugness to the whole thing – as if everyone in American high schools must somehow conform to one of these primordial divisions. And whilst the film tries for the most part to break down the preconceptions and animosities, arising from insecurity, that each of them have, it ultimately ends with a very, very traditional pairing-off of certain characters whilst the geek is hoodwinked into writing everyone else’s report, and this is sold to us as a victory for everyone in the group, as if he gets the same level of satisfaction from writing extra essays as the others do from sexual gratification. It’s borderline bullying from the others, and the effective subjugation of the fifth person – something which nowadays would probably be reversed, since the concept of the geek scoring with the hot girl is very much in vogue.

Also famous for immortalising Scottish band Simple Mind’s classic ‘Forget About Me’, which you can listen to below:

The Danish Girl (2015) 49/100

Posted on January 4, 2016 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 49/100 119 Min

What a horrific mess. A film fundamentally flawed by its not knowing, to put it mildly, what it wants to be or what it is trying to say. Based on David Ebershoff’s 2000 novel of the same name and adapted for the screen by Lucinda Coxon (‘Wild Target’ 2010), this loosely tells the true story of Danish painter Einar Wegener, who goes through a, long buried, crises of identity – suddenly now convinced he is a woman trapped in a man’s body. One would naturally assume this is really a mainstream attempt to portray a strong and explorative transgender theme on the big-screen, and that we would identify with Wegener’s plight and confusion on a human level, but we really, really don’t – in fact he just comes across as clinically insane, which he is diagnosed as at one point by ‘evil’ practitioners of medicine but actually they seem to be quite correct; he has been, for example, banging away quite happily at his young nubile wife Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) for six or seven years and now suddenly he refuses to even acknowledge this happened and recoils from her, as if every aspect of his previous existence that he can’t be bothered with is now taboo.

If he isn’t psychotic then he’s the most vain, self-absorbed obnoxious little shit one could have the misfortune to marry, as his ‘crisis’ justifies him doing whatever he wants – including cheating on his wife with various men. Eddie Redmayne plays Einar and by God is he terrible here – you would be hard pressed to find a worse example of overacting anywhere, as he cries and cries and whimpers and pretends to be injured (he gets beat up for no apparent reason, oh, and he decides he’s having his period as well at one point) something which he has effectively made a career out of doing. If we look at the header picture above I think even I would make a more convincing human female – although the film at least partially acknowledges this failure, or seems to at any rate, until near the end where people seem to genuinely believe he passes for a woman. The film in general smacks of this kind of insincerity throughout – Oscar bait with a modern-day politically charged topic, and I imagine any endorsement from the transgender community is purely down to lack of many other options.

Tom Hooper directs and to be fair he almost completely avoids having the camera too close to his performers’ faces after ‘Les Miserables‘, and a lot of his shots of countryside and the framing of scenic cityscapes are great; it’s really the story and acting that destroy the film, as melodrama takes an enormous bite out of history in their misguided creepy crawl in the direction of awards season glory. It’s a shame, there was a lot of potential to explore the subject – and indeed in the film’s frank portrayal of nudity there begins to form the semblance of something greater, before it all disintegrates in the second act. Also with Amber Heard, who’s dancing scenes were reportedly cut from the film. Fuck’s sake.

The Good Dinosaur (2015) 56/100

Posted on December 8, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 56/100 93 Min

Not exactly living up to its family friendly moniker, Disney Pixar’s latest after the equally unbalanced ‘Inside Out‘ focuses on a young Apatosaurus, Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), separated from his family and forced to survive with his unlikely primitive companion, Spot (Jack Bright), a young boy of around seven who still squirrels around on all fours for the most part. The two become erstwhile friends and begin the arduous task of finding their way back to Arlo’s homestead (the film is to my knowledge the very first animated dinosaur western, with the Apatosaurus as ranchers struggling to eke out a living from the land, and the T’Rexs as cowboys, or drovers – all after the asteroid that may or may not have originally wiped out the dinosaurs sails harmlessly past Earth for the purposes of the movie), during which time Arlo must find his courage, which is a nice theme for a film very much aimed at a younger, family audience, albeit one common to children’s fiction, see ‘Blade of the Poisoner‘ for another example.

Given its target demographic, however, there are at least three particularly dubious scenes (not to mention a ‘Lion King’ (94) moment that you will see coming a mile off): we see an enormous insect presented as food to Arlo, who is of course a vegetarian so he is confused by it, before its head is quickly wheeched off by Spot to demonstrate its purpose. Now, it wasn’t the cutest creature to ever be presented in a Disney film, but still such an abrupt execution begs the question of ‘was that really necessary to show?’. As too does a pterodactyl eating whole a, this time very cute, little wolf thingy, leaving a distinct queasy aftertaste to the moment, but chief sin of the three has to go to the two protagonists getting high on wild berries and then starting to hallucinate and trip out, seeing each other with multiple heads and so on.

I mean seriously, what on earth were they thinking. I don’t think even in the early days of Disney where now you can pick holes in the content to a degree, such as Tinker Bell and all the mermaids in ‘Peter Pan’ (53) trying to murder Wendy in rather ungrounded fits of jealousy for example, do they reach the depths of kids taking hard drugs, although actually John does smoke Wampum in ‘Peter Pan’ come to think. The scenery and landscapes are incredibly well rendered and brought to life, the dinosaurs look a little weak in that respect, but the story proves continually misguided with all of the above and multiple character decisions that don’t really make any sense, as well as numerous survivals from altogether too extreme scenarios. Another disappointment from Pixar, which suggests releasing two feature films in the same year, the first time for the company, may have perhaps stretched creative resources a little too far.

The Dressmaker (2015) 73/100

Posted on December 5, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 73/100 118 Min

‘The Dressmaker’ stars Kate Winslet as Tilly Dunnage, returning to her small hometown in rural Australia in 1950 to greet the hics that forced her to leave in the first place, after she was accused of murdering a young boy when she herself was a child: only now she possesses god-like haute couture abilities that will see them falling over themselves for the use of her craft, whilst she determines to try and piece together what actually happened all those years ago and make amends with her slightly dotty mother in the process, played quite wonderfully by Judy Davis.

It’s a black comedy with moments of drama (sixty/forty in favour of the former) based on Rosalie Ham’s 2000 debut novel of the same name and adapted by Australian director and screenwriter Jocelyn Moorhouse, who has managed to bring to life the characters as skilfully and colourfully as she’s displayed the resplendent and juxtaposed myriad dresses that Tilly churns out from her austere shack overlooking the corrugated roofs of her outback town, and although the two genre strands are similarly clashed at times, the movie still works really well overall.

Equally vibrant support work all round from the likes of Liam Hemsworth and Sarah Snook but especially so from Hugo Weaving (interestingly, whilst filming it was Snook who actually informed Winslet of the auditioning for ‘Steve Jobs‘), with Winslet not only as great in the role of the protagonist as we’ve come to expect her to regularly be, but she’s also rarely sizzled more seductively on the big-screen as she does here.

The Hunger Games : Mockingjay Part Two (2015) 73/100

Posted on December 5, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 73/100 137 Min

I’m more than a little surprised by how good this is. It begins having to deal with the remnants of the especially deplorable melodrama left over from part one, but when it eventually gets going it begins to fire off with some really terrific special effects and production design, coupled with suspenseful direction that begins to introduce cross-genre elements, with scenes that feel very much like a part of the ‘Alien’ franchise, and, most importantly, really good writing that delivers an extremely fitting and poignant end to the series, one that at times had been dipping into repetition and seeming to rather meander along to a foregone conclusion.

Jennifer Lawrence is once again the central focus with her choice weapon of bow and arrow, equipped here with pyrotechnic arrowheads, as she leads her own personal thrust against the considerable military prowess of The Capitol, whilst the troops of the rebellion amass for the final push against their oppressors and their devilishly silken ways. Speaking of which, the images of Lawrence draped in fiery red combat gear plastered all over the advertising posters in fact depict something which is never shown in the film, a shame but since it would effectively be painting a large target all over her you can see why it wasn’t featured.

Lawrence has been captivating from the onset and she continues in the same vein for the finale here, although her character Katniss does seem to have a few iffy moments which somewhat go against the grain – such as blaming herself for her entourage’s current predicament when it’s blatantly not her fault, probably not putting her unit at great ease there, and not anticipating fairly obvious things, like being searched at checkpoints and so forth. All performers return from the previous instalments, including Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Julianne Moore, Natalie Dormer and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in his last ever film role, and for anyone put off by the last film, as I was, don’t let it prevent you from seeing Suzanne Collins’s trilogy finish on considerably more memorable form.

The Lady in the Van (2015) 66/100

Posted on November 28, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 66/100 104 Min

Alan Bennett adapts his stage play of the same name for the big-screen, and for the third time he enlists the help of director Nicholas Hytner to helm the project, after two previous successful adaptations of his work in the past – ‘The Madness of King George’ (94) and ‘The History Boys’ (06) with the cast of the latter all finding cameos here, bar Richard Griffiths who has sadly passed away since. Taking centre stage as the eponymous anti-hero is Maggie Smith, for whom this marks the third time she has embodied ‘lady in the van’ Mary Shepherd (having appeared as her onstage and in a radio adaptation), a homeless woman who parked her van on Bennett’s London street in the 1970s and then eventually ended up living in his driveway for the next fifteen years, after he befriended his unlikely neighbour.

The dichotomy of Bennett’s thoughts on the matter are represented to us onscreen by two versions of himself (each played by Alex Jennings) talking to each other and mulling over the rights and wrongs of the situation, whether or not he’s simply being used as a mug, and indeed whether or not he will eventually feel compelled to pen her life story or that of the curious happenstance of their friendship. However, it may well be a little darker than that – Bennett is clearly not exactly hard up at this time in his life, he was already a successful playwright and writer, and it’s impossible not to think he must have been able to do more to help, rather than sit back and complain about the growing public health concern on his doorstep. It’s perfectly possible he allowed the situation to develop precisely because it was an opportunity to garner new and original material, or observe the human condition from a unique vantage point but without getting too close, without giving her the spare room and a new set of clothes, for example, or helping her to find a home through the council.

Instead, the film charts what actually happened as Mary continues to live in her van almost like a human limpet attached to the side of Bennett’s drive, eternally surrounded by the stench of damp paper and faeces whilst being closely watched by those who want for nothing in a rich area of the capital, and as we learn more about her life prior to becoming homeless things don’t get any less dark, featuring betrayal by both nuns and family members who should have know better, all leading to a lifetime of nothing but Catholic guilt for a bedfellow and her prayers for sanctuary.

The acting from Smith is great as always and the tone is kept fairly light throughout to match the somewhat comic situation, but even this well intentioned artifice cannot cover up the depressive reality that permeates the entire film, leaving it as a fascinating but deeply sombre snapshot of modern day life that has us ask numerous questions of ourselves, as we wonder how secure our lives are and what we would do if confronted by a similar social problem.

The Last Witch Hunter (2015) 68/100

Posted on November 23, 2015 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 68/100 106 Min

The premise of this film: Vin Diesel is a warrior in the Middle Ages battling an especially powerful witch who curses him with immortality, then he lives through the centuries fighting witches and evil with sword and flame, with Michael Caine as his priestly mentor and guide. The Red Dragon: Sold. Immediately. It’s as fun and carefree as it sounds with some glorious special effects and a well paced storyline containing easy to like characters – shades of Batman with Caine’s role and some of the music used, but it works well. Afore long the plot takes us to the modern age and we learn witches are still amongst us, both good and evil, and that Diesel as the hunter Kaulder is a vital cog in the peace keeping machine operating between the covens and humanity.

Directed by Breck Eisner (‘Sahara’ 05, ‘The Crazzies’ 10) and written by Cory Goodman (‘Priest’ 11), Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (‘Dracula Untold‘), the story actually apparently came about after discussions with Diesel regarding one of his Dungeons and Dragons characters, a concept which I think is fantastic (have a read here for more on his gaming hobby). With Elijah Wood, Rose Leslie, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson and Julie Engelbrecht in support – should certainly prove fun for fans of fantasy action.

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