I had an unusual experience watching this one – I actually felt it was so completely without worth that, upon seeing the gentleman in front of me get up and leave half way through, I thought actually that’s a pretty good idea.
This is the latest example of what I term the ‘Battery’ genre, see Devil’s Due, and here the story is completely pathetic, a young girl is effectively kept as a prisoner in a house in Cambridge/Oxford (I don’t remember which, it’s quite irrelevant) whilst a group of scientists attempt to ‘cure’ her psychosis and film the procedure even though it is completely obvious to us that there is a ghost haunting/possessing her, one of the quiet ones presumably. So we have lots of blah blah blah not at all interesting plot with zero acting BANG blah blah blah BANG blah blah blah BANG! And so this pattern repeats itself constantly. The thing is, these jump moments are not suspenseful or a shock, or a surprise – we know where they are coming with certainty, and yet we still jump at them, not because they are scary but because the decibel level is so high that it’s a physical thing, bordering on the painful.
I don’t see why anyone would want to pay money to be subjected to visual and sensorial abuse, and circa forty five to fifty minutes worth was all I was willing to put up with.
The second film written and directed by Richard Ayoade (probably best known for playing Moss in ‘The IT Crowd’) and starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska in the central roles with many of the cast from his previous film, the wonderful ‘Submarine’ (10), appearing in support. The story is an adaptation of the novella of the same name by Dostoyevsky, first published in 1846, concerning the appearance one day of a man’s exact physical double, here at his place of work, who embodies everything he isn’t – the double is confident, the double is admired, the double is brassy to the point of being criminally indulgent and offensive but people love him for it, and so on.
It’s great to see a new filmmaker experimenting with their own ideas, as is the case here, with plenty of room for personal interpretation opening open as we see the double zero in on the original character’s love interest. Is this imposter what he would become if he were to drastically change his personality to become more of a traditional alpha male? Would such an attempted change result in an almost schizophrenic interim period, or perhaps even a corruptive downward spiral?
Shot within a fairly constrictive local environment of workplace/tower block/diner and with consistent dark hues of yellow and green, the piece has the vibrant ambivalence of feeling both clinical and accessible – largely sold to us by terrific acting from Eisenberg himself, no mean feat when we consider to pull it off he had to do each take twice and continually match the timing with his invisible counterpart to perfection.
Unfortunately, experimenting too wildly can easily go awry, and here Ayoade has admitted that he struggled the most with the ending, which alas comes across onscreen as something which had up until then been interesting and thought provoking descends into a series of fairly nonsensical events and it ends up just being too whimsical and loose. Asides from the final furlong, it shows a lot of promise for the fledgling writer/director though, and it should still prove fairly interesting if you’re looking for something a little bit different.
The latest film from Terry Gilliam is entirely autorepresentative even if one was initially unaware he was at the helm, set as it is in a dystopian Blade Runner-esque future on Earth and replete with the sort of cynical corporate outlook and the many imaginative, varied and urban physical props that consistently appear in his work, ‘Brazil’ (85) and ’12 Monkeys’ (95) in particular, and also his sense of humour (we see posters reading ‘The church of Batman the Redeemer needs You!’). Here, the story focuses on a social outsider, Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz), who lives alone in an abandoned church in the heart of town, and the film opens with him begging the management at his work (some kind of mass processing plant of intellectual/virtual goods) to allow him to work from home which, he argues, would be much more productive for the company as there would be no time lost in transit etc. and he would prefer it as he wouldn’t have to be surrounded by people he doesn’t want anything to do with. At least, that is the assumption as we see him suffer great difficulty under normal social conditions and continually use ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ in conversation. The head of the company (Matt Damon, who last worked with Gilliam on ‘The Brothers Grimm’ 05) comes to the conclusion that he is borderline insane and so consents to his wish, so long as he works on ‘The Zero Theorem’, a project which is notorious for driving people bonkers and so he figures Qohen has nothing to lose anyway.
The opening third of the film is a little too ungrounded to work properly – we see Qohen at a party, for example, where the socialites there are dressed in what passes for fashionable garb, each holding modern tablets while they dance as if they’re sending out some social signal trending in the future, whether it be simply an alternative statement or some kind of status symbol, relationship or otherwise, we don’t know, and that’s the problem – it’s too loose, an attempted commentary on the dominance of technology and perhaps social media in our lives at the expense of human interaction, but it’s too vague to have any real meaning.
Eventually though, the film settles and finds more resonance with modernity and physics, in particular the ‘big crunch’ theory which would see the universe eventually contract and end with the opposite of a big bang (the universe is currently expanding, but different, conflicting ideas about its future abound). Qohen, we learn, has been waiting all his life for the one call that will explain the meaning of his life to him, but is ironically forced to work obsessively on the imposed Zero Theorem, which attempts to prove that the sum total of everything, all knowledge, matter and experience, amounts to absolutely and figuratively nothing, and thus everything is pointless.
As we watch him work at his computer we see him trying to fit endless arrays of boxes with formulae written on them into structures comprised of many such boxes – when he puts the right one into the right place he ‘solves’ that part, bringing order to chaos, but when he makes a mistake entropy ensues and that structure collapses, causing much mental anguish to the would be mathematician, compounded by his exponentially increasing workload, all of which threatens his already dubious mental stability.
Interestingly, this could be read in a number of ways. It will certainly seem familiar to the many programmers out there who work under such infuriating circumstance all the time, but there is also a connection to the modern rise of ultra cynical computer games, usually found online or available as apps, that are designed with the sole purpose of tying people into them, forcing them to invest more and more of, not just their time, but also their money into the game and for no real gain in terms of enjoyment or any satisfaction to be gleamed from the gameplay, simply to keep consumers using their product as much as possible. The ‘grind’ as gamers will often refer to some instances of this phenomenon. All of these games are a complete waste of time, and the creator’s main job is to dress it up as something rewarding so that you don’t realise just how bad it is until you’ve already been playing for a while, and they quite often target a younger market that are easier to hook. At the same time, it also has echoes of the drive in modern physics to search for a ‘unified theory’ of everything, as currently two of our major understandings of the universe, namely relativity and quantum theory, do not match up with one another, meaning something is wrong with at least one of them somewhere.
Thus, the film becomes more relevant and more interesting as it progresses. Matt Damon hires a digital prostitute Bainsley (Mélanie Thierry) to keep Qohen interested in the project, presumably also to relieve some of his pent up rage, but the two develop real feelings for one another, throwing the unstable variables of love and desire into the equation. Here too the science fiction aspect really works, as Bainsley explains she doesn’t actually engage in any physical intercourse because it isn’t safe but focuses instead on the cerebral, and eventually we see the pair of them connect themselves to the internet where they can experience the real thing in virtual reality – something which could become available in the not too distant future with current technology able to ‘read thoughts’ (electrical impulses, see below) and deliver an element of tactile sensation, and with experiments to link this to cybersex and the adult entertainment industry being conducted by various interested parties.
A delightfully dark and yet hopeful film in some ways, as we at least see Qohen’s passion for something compel him to strive ever forward, all counterbalanced by the warmth Bainsley provides, and so long as you can live with its flirtation with whimsy, there are a lot of nice touches to appreciate too. Well acted throughout, also with David Thewlis, Tilda Swinton and Lucas Hedges in support.
Wes Anderson’s (‘The Darjeeling Limited’ 07, ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ 09, ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ 12) latest sees the return of the auteur’s signature style both behind the camera and within the screenplay, with another ensemble piece featuring Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revolori in the central roles and a raft of familiar faces in support – Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan, Harvey Keitel, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, to name but a few.
Fiennes plays Monsieur Gustave, the concierge at the Grand Budapest Hotel, which is a lavishly decorated and suitably grandiose primary set, looking like a camp version of the hotel in ‘The Shining’ (80), where he develops a close friendship with his young lobby boy, played by Revolori. The fictional region of Zubrowka they are in descends into civil unrest just as Gustave is set to inherit a priceless painting from one of the old birds he had been shagging in the hotel, who has just been murdered, which the rest of the lady in question’s extended family are violently unhappy about.
I’m a fan of Anderson’s work in general, but here the story tails away once the main characters are separated for an extended period of time, sucking the heart out of it. ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ had at its centre a wonderful story of two youngsters falling in love with each other, with all of Anderson’s usual inanity frolicking around them courtesy of the adults – here the inanity is much more centre stage with a weaker core dynamic, the comedy aspect of Gustave’s posh vulgarity works initially but then becomes a little too obvious (Fiennes did something similar but to much greater effect in ‘In Bruges’ 08) and what begins as something quite interesting, soon ends up as incredibly boring to sit through.
Director Brian Percival’s dramatisation of Markus Zusak’s best selling 2006 novel of the same name is a remarkable example of how one or two critical errors at the end of a movie can do irreparable damage to any and all good work prior to it. The plot centres around a young ten year old girl, Liesel Meminger, given away by her mother to foster parents, the Hubermanns, living in Nazi controlled Germany. As war approaches and then begins, a young Jewish man in desperate need of shelter arrives and the family agrees to hide him in the basement, where he forms a close friendship with Liesel who shares with him her new found love of reading, fuelled by her regular theft of novels from the Mayor’s house and all instigated when she took, despite being illiterate, a book accidentally dropped by the grave of her brother, who passed away along the journey to the Hubermann’s town, perhaps in a desperate attempt to have something to remember him by.
Despite the grim setting, there is a kind of light and slightly airy feel to the film, but rather than paint too rosy a picture it should make it more palatable for younger viewers, which is good since it’s kind of aimed at them thematically with the focus on Liesel growing up against the backdrop of the war, and there’s still enough dark elements present to assuage the demands of history. The film is narrated intermittently by Death, voiced by Roger Allam, but unfortunately this kind of sees the Grim Reaper come over as a little too posh and sanctimonious, a tad incongruent with what one might imagine Death personified would sound like, meanwhile Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson give sterling performances as the Hubermanns, but the lion’s share of credit has to go to young Canadian actress Sophie Nélisse who embodies Liesel perfectly.
One or two decisions toward the end, and a scene that really should have been reshot, sadly destroys much of the impact of the film. It isn’t really fair that this should be the case, but it is the feeling you walk out of the cinema with that mostly shapes your view of a film. It’s still quite good, but it was close to being something more.
There were a good many sheepish adults trying to melt into the shadows of the auditorium at the screening for this, and although their uneasiness is merited since this is aimed primarily at eleven year old girls, so too is their bravery to watch it as it’s actually a lot of fun. This is the continuation of the Disney fairy line with Tinker Bell (curiously, her name is often misspelled as Tinkerbell, the ‘Tinker’ part denotes her skills and place within fairy society, as a tinker, as well as the way her voice, and that of all the fairies, is heard as the tinkling sound of a bell to those not fluent in their language) as the central anchor, with ‘The Secret of the Wings’ being the last instalment.
This is actually an improvement on the last film, which was also pretty good, as here the focus is on a group of friends on a traditional adventure with themes of inclusion and the freedom to be creative, all beginning when Zarina (Christina Hendricks), operating as the fairy equivalent of Antoine Lavoisier, does the unthinkable and EXPERIMENTS WITH FAIRY DUST (actual fairy dust that is, not meth), resulting in her being ostracised by her peers when one of her experiments goes awry and she creates a FUSION BOMB (no, not really). Her response to this? She goes off and becomes a pirate, which, admittedly, is an impressive response.
The animation as you would expect from Disney is very good (although, oddly, Tinker Bell’s face doesn’t look quite right), there are a few songs in there, one of which is very catchy, the spirit of the film is completely perfect for the target audience (despite the lack of male characters to relate to even boys should enjoy it {the fairies are quite fit} unlikely they would admit to it though), the timeline within this particular universe is set, and there are some good laughs with a lot of nice touches to appreciate, such as when Zarina orders “Earl Grey. Hot” à la Captain Picard from Star Trek and when, despite the size of the fairies, a bee tries to buzz into the ear of one of them. I HATE THAT. Despite the secondary nature of the Tinker Bell line of films compared to Disney’s official feature animations, this holds its own very well. Also with Tom Hiddleston, Lucy Liu and Angelica Huston as some of the more recognisable voices in the ensemble cast.
George Clooney not only directed this, but also co-write the screenplay with Grant Heslov not long after the pair of them co-produced ‘Argo’, and frankly listening to Clooney’s character here talking about the importance of history after he and his buddy completely raped a well documented event in their last collaborative effort, is a sick joke. No doubt they were hoping to replicate their charm offensive that somehow seen Argo take home the best film Oscar, but happily this film, even without the various cries of historical inaccuracy and complaints that the lives of people who actually died as part of the team (the monuments, fine arts and archives {MFAA} unit) have been ignored, is complete rubbish in almost every respect.
The unit’s task was to enter war torn mainland Europe just after D-Day and try to ensure wherever possible the safety or repossession of the most valued works of art and monuments that may otherwise be in harms way from bombing campaigns and the retreating German army as well as Hitler’s known fondness for nicking national and private treasures. It should be a fascinating and exciting tale, and indeed its only success is the relation of some events which were not really common knowledge and highlight the importance of these men’s work, and yet – can we believe these events? Sadly, because Clooney is involved no we can’t, not without embarking on a truth finding exercise of our own.
From a screenwriting point of view there is no real film here – it’s just a series of disjointed scenes stuck together with absolutely no characterisation, horrible, horrible jokes and no real concept of what they were trying to achieve. It amounts to little more than ‘let’s get lots of big name actors (Clooney, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett) and send them off on a jaunt through the Second World War, and then we’ll stick in some bits of drama and emotion and then people will love it and we’ll get another Oscar like last time’, and it is simply terrible. Rather than wasting any time on this, better to get hold of a copy of ‘The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History’ by Robert Edsel, the book upon which the film is loosely based.
Lego, one of the most enduring and popular toys of the last century (the name comes from the Danish ‘leg godt’ meaning ‘play well’) took a surprisingly long time to bring itself onto the big-screen given the success of the Transformers franchise and the completely unmerited monetary haul of the G.I. Joe films. Here everything, not surprisingly, is made from Lego and all digitally mastered together into a traditional tale of the underdog, Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt) – an unexceptional everyday Lego worker with no friends to speak of but who never has a bad word to say about anybody, who must realise his own potential and learn how to help others do the same (with the help of the Master Builders, who can creatively construct things from Lego without using a rulebook, don’t you know) all to undermine the dastardly plans of PRESIDENT BUSINESS (Will Ferrell) who can’t stand all those pesky Master Builders ruining his otherwise regimented and ordered Lego universe. But does Emmet have what it takes?
Initially the story and comedy value are a little flat, and a little predictable, and songs like ‘Everything is Awesome’ (the only song in this incidentally, it’s not a musical) are a little grating, but then … it becomes catchy! And the bland component parts eventually become endearing, partly due to an array of likeable characters, such as Batman (Will Arnett), Bad Cop/Good Cop (Liam Neeson) and Unikitty (Alison Brie), the leader of Cloud Cuckoo Land, domain of rainbows and puppies, who variously becomes Biznesskitty and Iwillripyourfuckingfaceoffifyoudothatagainkitty. Along with everything, she too, is awesome. Overall, it’s a fun trip guaranteed to spike sales of Lego and with a good message at it’s heart of creative self expression and the importance of appreciating this as a universal concept.
If you want to see a film where none of the characters feel like real people then watch this, which is essentially the epitome of woeful modern day romcoms. It’s a very, very familiar set up of three guys who, for the most part, praise the virtues of singledom and sleeping around, but whom we just know will be convinced of the error of their ways by the female characters we are about to be introduced to. The three guys (played by Miles Teller, Zac Efron and Michael B. Jordan) couldn’t be any less charismatic and nothing they do or say makes any sense. One of them is annoying to the point where I cannot seriously believe any person would want to be near him without striking him in the face, never mind be friends or otherwise with him. Another thinks the girl he’s just hooked up with might actually be a hooker and so he bolts first thing the morning after, except of course it’s painfully obvious she isn’t, then despite falling for her and dating/sleeping with her he elects not to turn up for her father’s funeral, her father that he met and got along with, as he figures if he goes that means they are officially an ‘item’. This forms the ‘moment guy will fuck up and realise he really was in love as now he is lonely and everyone else hates him’, but seriously, not going to her father’s funeral? That’s a new improbable romcom low, but not apparently so low that she can’t forgive him after he eats a mediocre amount of public humble pie. Imogen Poots plays the not prostitute, but even her natural beauty and charm are not enough to redeem this at all, it’s so far removed from the sphere of likeability and reality as to be just vile.
Martin Scorsese’s latest film once again features Leonardo DiCaprio (after very successful collaborations on ‘Gangs of New York’ 02, ‘The Aviator’ 04, The Departed’ 06 and ‘Shutter Island’ 10) and, as with The Aviator, it has garnered DiCaprio a very well deserved Academy Award nomination. He plays Jordan Belfort, who would later be heralded by the titular moniker after taking Wall Street by storm, starting out with vicious, remorseless and extremely successful penny stock profiteering. The film follows his exploits from his days as a mild mannered and slightly idealistic greenhorn in the industry under the tutelage of a, once more, very on form Matthew McConaughey, through starting a family and his ever surging success along with its associated excess, and I do mean excess.
The film has a very similar to feel to Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street’ (87), reason being that in real life Belfort was inspired by that very film, which probably makes DiCaprio the only person to be Oscar nominated for a role based on someone who was inspired by another Oscar winning role – namely Michael Douglas in Wall Street. It has caused lots of controversy by showing just how careless and ready to completely rip people off Belfort and his employees were – the argument being it sets a bad precedent when they seem to be having such a good time doing it, and given another high profile movie effectively inspired the whole thing it is a fair point. However, the film is simply retelling a true story and really all this venom should be directed at the failings in the justice system and the finance sector that it accurately highlights, and in terms of the filmmaking it is a sterling, engrossing, reflective and highly entertaining piece of work. It would not have been amiss to see more of the effects for the people losing all their savings, but the film is still a lot of fun and features good turns from all the cast, including Jonah Hill and a career launching performance from Margot Robbie (pictured above).
This is the first major feature film to be released to cinemas only in digital form, and currently it also holds the record for the most uses of the word ‘fuck’ in any non-documentary film, although the exact number used varies, perhaps due to the news that the DVD will include a longer and more explicit cut of the film. Unusually for Scorsese, The Rolling Stones cannot be heard playing at any point, though this does not detract from a very good and fitting soundtrack.
