Tag Archives: Thrillers

Interstellar  (2014)    59/100

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Rating :   59/100                                                                     169 Min        12A

You would be hard pressed to find a more contrived film than this, given that it deals with the concepts of space and time as variables and yet everything seems to happen dramatically at the same moment. Sadly, this is just the beginning of the screenplay problems which burden the whole movie and, notwithstanding the often intriguing and satisfying visual space opera we are treated to, all but destroy it. This is Christopher Nolan’s latest film since releasing ‘The Dark Knight Rises‘ and he is joined by his brother Jonathan on writing credits, together delivering not only clichés of science fiction but of their own work as well.

Set in a troubled future where crop blights have made survival on planet Earth very difficult, the story focuses on Coop (Matthew McConaughey), a former astronaut who now runs a farm with his father (John Lithgow) and two young kids, Murph (Mackenzie Foy) and Tom (Timothée Chalamet). Mysterious anomalies in the area lead the inquisitive Coop and Murph to a secret governmental institution which will eventually be responsible for the former adventurer once again taking to the skies – this time in an attempt to find a new habitable planet for the future of the human race to colonise (it’s also the second major science fiction epic for McConaughey after ‘Contact’ in 97). The core of the film focuses on family, humanity and adventure whilst making several attempts to treat us to a healthy dosage of real physics – in fact, the filmmakers combined forces with theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, whose work initially inspired the film, and used real maths and data (many hundreds of terabytes worth of it) to produce the visualisation of a supermassive rotating black hole that they are fairly certain is what the thing will actually look like out there in space (it’s pictured above), and scientific papers based on their efforts have gone into publication, unusually uniting film with rigorous academia.

True to Nolan’s style, however, he takes a really interesting premise that he’s gone to great efforts to ground in reality and feasibility, and then he just rips everything up and writes a load of absolute gibberish, abruptly halting the journey he’d been taking us on. Think back to ‘The Dark Knight’ (08) when you had this wonderfully atmospheric and tense delivery, full of real stunts and real machines that actually operated as shown – and then right in the middle of the film he has his main character, Batman, jump off a skyscraper and land on a car below, damsel in distress in tow, completely unharmed despite having absolutely nothing to break or slow their fall (other than the aforementioned car). It’s completely ridiculous – why go to all that effort to make it realistic if you’re then going to blow it for no reason, and I love the Batman films so I still enjoyed them but I really wish he’d stop destroying the worlds and universes that he is so adept at creating.

Interstellar suffers from three major problems – one, the trailer completely spoils the central part of the film, and this is where the tension is really supposed to bite. Two, the writing of Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) is diabolically poor, in fact she is easily the worst character they have ever created (they probably would have been well served enlisting the help of a female touch with the screenplay here) and unfortunately this combines perfectly with fault number one. Thirdly, alas in no small measure also combining with fault two, the plot asks us to make enormous galactic leaps with our suspension of disbelief which are comically too big. There is an attempt to bring a spiritual, emotional, human element into play which is often done in science fiction (1968’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ for example, achieved it sensorially via artful direction and classical music) but it has to be done in such a way that the audience are going to be willing to take the leap because, well, why not? By simply going to the cinema there is an inherent willingness to invest in the movie and good art should expand our horizons anyway – it is not supposed to, as in this example, have the audience guffawing and sighing in irritation.

The visuals are a very curious mix of impressive (the black hole is terrific, especially when we realise it’s the most realistic depiction science is currently capable of), mainly average (background stars in our Solar System are conspicuously lacking, and generally the views of space aren’t as inspiring as they should be) and downright terrible (for some unknown reason there is a docking sequence where the models used look like they came straight out of the cupboards for ‘Space: 1999’, best case scenario is they were deliberately going for 70’s nostalgia), the score from Hans Zimmer is simple, atmospheric and very memorable although it does drag on throughout most of the film without changing all that much (I’ve seen the film twice now – the effects of this stack), a number of famous faces appear which continues to dilute the believability, and all in all I did still enjoy a lot of what is on display, but there is just no getting around the level of ridiculousness involved and the directly proportional disappointment, and I am often all for getting behind science fiction that wants to take artistic vaults into the unknown. The heart of this is uplifting, but the delivery is catastrophic.

Through the Eyes of The Red Dragon

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

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Rating :   9/100                                                                       103 Min        15

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.

Nightcrawler  (2014)    74/100

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Rating :   74/100                                                                     117 Min        15

This is a great film driven home relentlessly by a powerful and quite thought provoking central performance from Jake Gyllenhaal. It’s the directorial debut of screenwriter Dan Gilroy (‘The Bourne Legacy‘, ‘Real Steel’ 11), who interestingly enough is the brother of screenwriter Tony Gilroy – most famous for penning the original Bourne films and who also created a very well received thriller with ‘Michael Clayton’ (07) in his own first attempt behind the camera. Gyllenhaal evokes perfectly his utterly determined to be successful ‘nightcrawler’ who starts his own business enterprise filming late night news events worthy of the big networks’ interest, the bloodier the better, and selling the footage to the ever eager outlets. All the while it’s obvious the wheels of his mind are turning as fast as they can, but in their frenetic activity he is completely unaware there is a large central cog entirely missing. A psychopath certainly, and yet a lot of what he does and says has a cold logic to it – there are many morally reprehensible moments but there exists not only an inevitability to them, given the scenarios he creates and which others force him into, but their combination with the sinister and corporate bottom-line world of mass media is completely perfect, opening our eyes just a little more to what we already witness, and are aware of, every day. Arguably good enough to see nominations coming Gyllenhaal’s way and perhaps for Gilroy too. The other main support comes from Rene Russo who is more than up to the challenge, although some of the smaller roles aren’t quite so well executed. For more along a similar vein watch ‘Network’ (76) and ‘Wag the Dog’ (97).

The Babadook  (2014)    71/100

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Rating :   71/100                                                                       93 Min        15

A film to help keep the horror genre alive and buck the modern trend of either rehashing old pained stories and techniques or using handheld cameras. Independent and original, from writer and director Jennifer Kent (this is inspired by her previous short film ‘Monster’ 05 that she created after an apprenticeship under Lars Von Trier, working on ‘Dogville’ in 03), the film revolves around single mother Amelia (Essie Davis) and her young boy Sam (Noah Wiseman), a ‘special’ kid whose unique take on social interaction and his obsession with weaponry forces the mother to take him out of school. Trying to send him off to sleep one night, Amelia takes a mysterious book that she has no memory of, ‘Mister Babadook’, down off the shelf and begins reading to Sam, only to quickly stop when she realises it describes the creepy creepy Babadook whom, once acknowledged in the reader’s mind, comes into existence to torment and pervert the family.

Allowing us to feel sympathetic toward both main characters, the film plays with the scenario that the Babadook may be real, but also that actually Amelia may just be going completely mental under the stress of dealing with Sam and indeed life in general, with more than a couple of golden comedic moments in this vein along the way. Curiously, the Babadook concept and book are very likeable, threatening too, but the illustrations have a certain darkly humorous charm to them. Indeed, the book used in the film is set to be published in print form next year due to popular demand – can there be a better present for someone you don’t like? Although really you should just stick it into their kid’s bookcase when they’re not looking ….

’71  (2014)    62/100

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Rating :   62/100                                                                       99 Min        15

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.

The Maze Runner  (2014)    65/100

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Rating :   65/100                                                                     113 Min        15

Ah mazes! Who doesn’t like a good Labyrinth to get stuck into every now and then – speaking of which, why aren’t there more of them around? The Red Dragon has planned for the future his wedding celebration wherein the unsuspecting and specially chosen guests will find themselves propelled from their seats into a maze from which there is no escape unless they can solve the various riddles and defeat the multitudinous oozing monsters they will encounter, whilst I and my pristine yet equally black hearted bride will watch from a hilltop and record events for posterity. Something which isn’t all that different from the premise of this film, which sees a host of youngsters shoved into the heart of an enormous maze over the period of some years, each with no memory of their lives before this ingress and equally with no apparent way to get out. Their section is fairly large with fertile land to farm, but it is surrounded by enormous walls and outwith the sanctuary they find themselves in the maze harbours dangers which routinely claim the lives of the brave and intrepid amongst them who attempt to find an exit.

It’s based on the 2009 young adult novel by James Dashner, and there is an interesting difference between this and the likes of ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘Divergent‘ in that with those two franchises, at least early on, the larger universe is glossed over – The Hunger Games the novel is very weak on explaining in a believable way how North America is now reduced to thirteen disparate districts controlled by a remote hub, for example, and so the film more or less just dispenses with addressing the issue, much as how in Divergent we know nothing about what lies beyond the city borders and yet it seems all but impossible that the residents wouldn’t know themselves. Here there is an attempt to explain the scenario within a larger context, and it’s this revelation that undermines much of the rest of the film as it just seems daft to say the least.

Nor does it seem likely that one of the sprightly young things couldn’t find a way to climb the maze walls, especially since some of them are draped in foliage, and to make matters worse the moment when the hero (played by Dylan O’Brien) really establishes himself is just really flimsy – in terms of the story it works, the sequence of action shots showing it doesn’t though. Despite these faults it’s still reasonably entertaining and has some good visual work to enjoy, as well as some ‘Lord of the Flies’ moments that you’ll never see coming (sarcasm). With Will Poulter and Kaya Scoledario in support along with Particia Clarkson in an identical role to Kate Winslet in Divergent and Meryl Streep in ‘The Giver‘. Look out for legendary effects creator Stan Winston’s name etched into one of the walls too (noted for his work on the Terminator, Jurassic Park and Predator franchises as well as ‘The Thing’ 82, ‘Aliens’ 86, … ).

Gone Girl  (2014)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                     149 Min        18

David Fincher teams up with screenwriter and author Gillian Flynn as she adapts her own smash hit novel of 2012 for the big-screen, with Ben Affleck in the main role of a husband who’s wife has disappeared, the titular gone girl, but we don’t know if she has been abducted, murdered by intruders, or if her husband cut her into bits with a potato peeler for turning off his Playstation and then fed her to the squirrels in the back garden. We do know there was a violent scene with some blood for the detectives to find in the couple’s home …

As we might expect from Fincher, this is a long and drawn out mystery which serves it well – and it is equally well suited to Affleck’s acting style as you genuinely can’t tell if he’s lying or not (make of that what you will) as we are pulled this way and that along with the other spectators in the escalating media frenzy surrounding the case. It holds attention from start to finish and develops at a rewarding pace, but Fincher has missed a bit of a golden opportunity – he is so used to the sort of narrative maze that he has been crafting in films for years that he over indulges in it to an extent, so when some very, very interesting human relations are brought to the fore they aren’t given the time and treatment they are deserving of. Shame it didn’t dare to tread a lot more heavily on the dark earth it treads, but well crafted and executed all the same.

The Equalizer  (2014)    74/100

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Rating :   74/100                                                                     132 Min        15

The classic tale of super cool actor playing a lowly shop assistant in a department store and just minding his own business, but who has to deal with random scumbags and then turns out to be in possession of DEADLY COMBAT SKILLS and can’t help but, ahem, equalise things – done many times before but always satisfying and this has a nice balance to it alongside measurably slick execution. The actor in question here is Denzel Washington and this is the first big screen adaptation of the long running TV show of the same name, which aired from 85 to 89 and starred Edward Woodward. The premise really is very simple, with central character Robert McCall seemingly unable to sleep and going to a café late at night to read Moby Dick instead, a café where he meets lady of the night Alina/Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz) whom he befriends and must then naturally step in to defend. Washington invariably makes it easy for us to sympathise with and root for his characters and this is no exception, with some crisp direction from Antoine Fuqua (‘Training Day’ 01, ‘King Arthur’ 04 ‘Olympus Has Fallen‘) and good choices of music too (see below for one of the songs, see above and below for great moments of ‘you have just messed with the wrong person’). The question is – when are we going to see Denzel Washington team up with Liam Neeson to take on all the bad guys, everywhere, at the same time?

The Equalizer Coffee

A Walk Among the Tombstones  (2014)    66/100

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Rating :   66/100                                                                     114 Min        15

Gestating for many years, Lawrence Block’s 1992 novel finally reaches the big screen with Liam Neeson as central character Matthew Scudder, a recovering alcoholic operating as a private detective some years after deciding to leave the NYPD. Neeson was apparently Block’s top choice for the role (Harrison Ford was reportedly attached to the project at one point) and it’s easy to see why, with a string of very successful ‘Liam Neeson versus’ films in his recent back catalogue, Non-Stop being the most recent example, and this time he’s up against COMPLETE SCUMBAGS in the guise of crooks that abduct girls and collect the ransom money but then butcher their captives anyway, so there is a somewhat gleeful element of – ‘Liam Neeson is on your case, you are totally fucked’.

The film opens very strongly, with a visceral scene of violence that fits completely the rather macabre title and sets up what is to follow very promisingly indeed. As the mystery unfolds it’s easy to get caught up in it, although unfortunately it never again reaches the intensity of the opening ten minutes. Come the end, it feels like the story is clutching at straws – trying to remain interesting whilst delivering something original, but only really succeeding at very average padding to round the film off with. Part of the problem is it begins with a very Dirty Harry esque character who then goes on a redemptive arc, which may be realistic, considerate and even gritty in its own right, but it’s also a little tedious when the narrative is trying to create scenarios to then justify the retribution or violence that the character is trying to avoid. Good enough to merit future adaptations of Block’s work though (Jeff Bridges previously played Scudder in ‘8 Million Ways to Die’, back in 1986), and a decent directorial effort from Scott Frank, better known for his work on screenplays, such as ‘Malice’ 93, ‘Out of Sight’ 98, ‘Minority Report’ 02 and The Wolverine. Also with Dan Stevens and David Harbour.

Fury  (2014)    54/100

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Rating :   54/100                                                                     134 Min        15

When a film purports itself to be ‘The most realistic war film ever’ it had better be able to put its money where its mouth is, and alas this could quite easily qualify as the one of the most UNREALISTIC war films of all time. Screenwriter and director David Ayer is one of the most childish writers working in Hollywood today, and his obsession with nonsensical violence evinced by his previous films ‘Sabotage‘ and ‘End of Watch‘ continues – in a normal film a character might open a box and find a new clue, or something that sparks an emotional trigger for them and a moment of reflection, in a David Ayer film that box is guaranteed to contain not only pictures of a family member skull fucking genetically modified babies but also pieces of remaining flesh tanned for personal use. He can get away with this to an extent with a war film and the associated potential for real and visceral horror, but when we see the inside of a tank at the beginning of the film and the remains of someone’s face on the metal, looking like a fried egg, we realise he just can’t help himself.

Not to say that’s necessarily unrealistic, rather unlikely granted, but it is the following which render the film silly – 1) The soldiers do not fire weapons, they fire lasers. I kid you not, green laser fire (red for the Allies) issues forth from the German troops looking for all the world like a scene from Star Wars (ironically, this is to show the use of tracer fire which helped gunners and infantry adjust their aim and was certainly used extensively by both sides in the war, it’s just been taken to a daft extreme here). 2) The tactics are at best dubious. We see three tanks versus one and the three of them just bunch together instead of trying to use both flanks. 3) Reason number 2 is taken to the point of lunacy as (this is a spoiler so you might want to jump to the next paragraph, but it was also used as the main selling point in the trailer if you’ve seen it – another thing they shouldn’t have done) we watch Brad Pitt opt for a stand-off between his immobilised single tank versus several hundred SS troops. During this event daytime becomes night in less than about forty seconds and Pitt and his four strong crew have ample time to leave and fight another day, or indeed come up with a better plan, but they all decide to stay largely because it is Brad Pitt saying they should and they are all afraid of him. It’s not heroic, or exciting – IT’S JUST FUCKING STUPID. I also have a large doubt over whether or not that tank has a 360 degree firing arc with its machine guns when the hatch is down, I rather suspect it doesn’t making the decision even worse.

The fictional story takes place in Germany toward the end of the Second World War with the very beleaguered and war weary crew of the tank ‘Fury’ receiving a new greenhorn gunner (Logan Lerman) who has never even been inside a tank before which enrages them all, and they proceed to slap him around the head at every opportunity. Lerman actually does the best out of everyone in this film for managing to react/act to the treatment he gets appropriately for his character – as a performer it can’t have been easy to temper his responses to the right level, and he consistently delivers on what is the core character arc of the story as he bonds with Pitt’s veteran whose soul has been ravaged by violence, death and stress to the dangerous brink of perhaps losing sight of himself completely. Pitt does a reasonable job of anchoring the piece but his performance is hampered by ridiculous hero worship from Ayer as well as having more than a few ropey lines of dialogue to try and do something meaningful with.

It is within the work of the wardrobe and art direction departments that a very high level of authenticity has been achieved – it looks fantastic (laser shows aside) and the tanks used were real ones from museums and collectors which are more or less the correct models for the time. The rest of the crew are played by Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña and Jon Bernthal and they had to live in the tank for a week together before shooting began (LaBeouf reportedly refused to wash himself to help achieve a new level of ‘realism’. I’m surprised nobody fired real bullets at him too). Despite the egregious setbacks there is still a definite satisfaction to be gained from some of the action scenes, and here Ayer the director definitely outstrips Ayer the writer – it’s really the ludicrous and utterly forced central decision by the characters and the ensuing battle that destroys the credibility of the entire film.