Film Shapes

An outdoor screening at the Luna in Leederville was the perfect venue for a right oddity, Color Out of Space . This is a blackly comic, horror sci-fi from the near-forgotten director, Richard Stanley. He made a couple of 'small' films back in the early 90s ( Hardware , Dust Devil ) and was then fired from his highest-profile film to date, The Island of Dr. Moreau in 1995. So, this would be Stanley's feature return. And who better to take the lead in your comeback film than Nicolas Cage? Color Out of Space is based on a 1927 short story by long-dead dickhead, H.P. Lovecraft. It deals with the aftermath of a meteorite landing near a remote farmhouse and how it affects the people, and life in general, surrounding it. The story has been adapted several times and has influenced many other productions, notably Alex Garland's Annihilation (a film I didn't love, but have had cause to reference a few times since seeing it.) Color begins with a voice over by narra...

So, Dolittle has taken a bit of a kicking. It's not doing so well at the box office and the majority of critics are mauling it like Downey Jr with a Welsh accent. Is it as bad as all that, though? Yes and no. While watching it, I found it mildly distracting and the kids seemed to be going along with it. It's pretty harmless with some nice CGI animals and quirky, often slapstick situations. That said, it doesn't do anything different to any other film of this ilk. The jokes don't land (the only time I giggled was when Ralph Fiennes - as a fearsome tiger called Barry - chased a patch of reflected light.) There are probably too many animals, a giraffe and fox turn up for no other reason than to (under)use Selena Gomez and Marion Cotillard. There's a squirrel, voiced so annoyingly by someone called Craig Robinson, that I wished Finchy from The Office had cut its throat as originally planned. This little shit gives an occasional spoken Capatin's Log, which ser...

I only saw this in January but there'd need to be some proper ball-tearers on the horizon to outstrip 1917 for film of the year. I really should go to the adjective farm to sufficiently describe this belter from Sam Mendes. Ostensibly, it's a 'journey' story, wherein two young soldiers are given orders to take a message to the new Allied front line in France. This message will likely save 1600 or so lives. High stakes - quite similar to the final third of Gallipoli . But the plot is kind of secondary in 1917 . It's all about the spectacle and the delivery (of the film and the message, I guess). There's been a fair bit of chatter about the way it was filmed to look like one complete take, from opening scene to closing. The filmmakers themselves talk about making it in 'one shot' and 'real time' . This is handled supremely by cinematographer, Roger Deakins (below), but trying to watch it with the aim of working out how they did it is a fruit...