Thursday 13 December 2018

Japanese Top Ten

It's been a while since I've had a stab at gathering some films together based on nation of origin. This time, it's Japan. Enjoy (if you like anime and samurai).

10. Unagi [The Eel] (Shohei Imamura - 1997)

One of the first non-Kurosawa, Japanese films I'd seen, this perturbed me a bit but gave me a real insight into films from outside the English zone or Europe. Kouji Yakusho in the lead is a top craftsman too.





9. Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano - 2003)

A first look at Takeshi Kitano, a stalwart of the industry in Japan. He plays the blind swordsman with understated relish and this would have been higher in the list were it not for a Bollywood-style dance number at the end. What the...






8. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa - 1950)

Ah, Kurosawa-san, so glad you could make it. This is my third favourite of his but is still a stone-cold classic, with dozens of imitators and respect-payers since its release. Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura are mint as the bandit and wood-cutter respectively.






7. Honogurai Mizu no Soko Kara [Dark Water] (Hideo Nakata - 2002)

Look, I'll be honest. This film shit me scaredless. The creeps like never before. And sad! Flippin Nora this takes the biscuit. Watch it at your pre-warned peril.









6. Hana-bi [Fireworks] (Takeshi Kitano - 1997)

Another Kitano cracker. Cool and brutal tale of a cop at odds with the Yakuza. Bloody and bittersweet, like a good cocktail.








5. Kokaku Kidotai [Ghost in the Shell] (Mamoru Oshii - 1995)

Mind-bending, trend-setting anime that tweaks your nihilism just right. Inventive and dark. Brills.








4. Kozure Okami: Sanzu no Kawa no Ubaguruma [Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx] (Kenji Misumi - 1972)

Yes. Fantastic nonsense that seems to take itself quite seriously. I reckon this is the best of the series. And yes, that's a toddler 'cub' getting by with his old man 'Lone Wolf' in a fucked up, violent, manga-based Tokugawa era Japan.




3. Shichinin no Samurai [Seven Samurai] (Akira Kurosawa - 1954)


Kurosawa's oft-imitated masterpiece, though still pipped by another for me (see number 1). The climactic rain battle is superb, as is Mifune's dark comic relief.










2. Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi [Spirited Away] (Hayao Miyazaki - 2001)

All the weird you could ever hope for. Utterly brilliant story-telling with some of the oddest characters in film history - step forward, Kaonashi (No Face) and Kamaji (Boiler Geezer!). Magic stuff from Miyazaki.






1. Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa - 1961)

Mifune again, as the Ronin samurai, drifting into a town where the warlords haggle for his services and soon wish they hadn't. Sublime, witty and beautifully shot, this is a must-see. Kurosawa at his peak.

Sunday 25 November 2018

Bohemian Rhapsody


I'll admit to a sense of trepidation going into Bohemian Rhapsody. Queen have been my favourite band since the mid-80s, I guess, and I really didn't want the film makers to fuck this up. So, after a couple of hours of spine shivers and leg jiggles, I can confirm that any impending fuck-up was averted. Much of the thanks for this has to go to the casting director, Susie Figgis. The actors playing the four band members were as close to the actual lads as no mind (Freddie was a tad taller than Rami Malek but that's a small quibble). I actually forgot I wasn't watching Mercury, May, Taylor and Deacon, especially in the concert scenes. Special mention must go to Joseph Mazzello for getting John Deacon's unfussy feet movement down pat. The voice amalgamation was a nice trick too - Malek has said in interviews that it's probably about 90% Freddie that we hear on screen.

There's a messy history to Bohemian Rhapsody. It's been knocking around for a decade, at one stage Sacha Baron Cohen was down to play Freddie but pulled out due to 'artistic' differences. Later, Ben Whishaw got the nod, with Dexter Fletcher as director but this never got off the ground. Finally, the current iteration was green-lit and moved along bumpily until director Bryan Singer was fired for absence and cast/crew clashes, with Fletcher coming in to complete. Very rock and roll.

The film itself, as a film, is nothing ground-breaking. It follows Freddie from the start of the 1970s, meeting Brian and Roger and joining their band, Smile; the family's disapproval of his lifestyle; Freddie's friendship with Mary Austin and his recognition of his homosexuality; and so on. All this seems to be a reasonably accurate account of Freddie's life but there have been some digs at the film for supposedly sanitising things. Maybe I'm blinkered, but I don't see what else they needed to do in that respect. Play up the lifestyle angle? Homosexual promiscuity? Drug and alcohol binges? More flamboyance? To my mind, this would have been to the detriment of the musical side of the story. That's where it's at, the rest was covered.

It's really all about what it should be - the music. The band jamming, recording and especially, playing at the pinnacle of the film, Live Aid in 1985, are incredible sequences. That Wembley gig is the film's secret weapon of sorts. All the tribulations and betrayals lead up to this cathartic rock-god affirmation. On a slightly more critical note, the soundtrack of the film is as expected, like a greatest hits album, with most of the stadium anthems but, sadly not many of the more intricate gems (see below).

There's some great dialogue here too (thanks to Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan), notably in the recording sessions for A Night at the Opera and the displaying on screen of the critical notices about the song Bohemian Rhapsody (mostly shit to average ones) might possibly mirror the reviews for the film itself. Not from me, though. I had a great time watching this and it's even encouraged me to crack open Queen, Queen 2 and Sheer Heart Attack once more. Glorious.

Hear also:

My Fairy King and The Night Comes Down (from Queen - 1973), Ogre Battle and The March of the Black Queen (from Queen 2 - 1974), Brighton Rock and In the Lap of the Gods...Revisited (from Sheer Heart Attack - 1974), The Hero (from Flash Gordon - 1980), Machines (Back to Humans) (from The Works - 1984).

SPOILERS IN POD!!

Listen to "Bohemian Rhapsody" on Spreaker.

Saturday 17 November 2018

King of Thieves


Back to the Windsor Cinema in Nedlands and not much has changed since catching The King's Speech in 2010 or 2011. I reckon Merv and I were among the youngest punters there, and we're not exactly gambolling lambs anymore. But this demographic was pretty apt for King of Thieves, the latest film to explore old spivs getting older and trying to stay relevant. This iteration is based on the true story of the Hatton Garden safe deposit robbery in London in 2015. It stars Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone and Paul Whitehouse ('I was very, very drunk') as the geriatric villains who come together at Caine's wife's funeral. A positively pubescent Charlie Cox instigates the gig. 

The heist premise of King of Thieves has been done before, even factoring in the 'grey pound' aspect. It's not the most original film but it's worth the ticket price just to hear Caine and gang effing and jeffing all over the place. It's actually quite close to a geezah version of Caine's other recent musings on ageing, the Paolo Sorrentino directed, Youth. Close but so, so far away.

The director is James Marsh, who has some solid pedigree with films such as Shadow DancerThe Theory of Everything and Project Nim to his credit. There's some nice dialogue that sometimes, just occasionally, tips over into unlikely adjective territory. The actors iron out any rough edges though. Just great to watch these old pros work with halfway decent material. Oddly, Charlie Cox's character's final act seems out of place, though I'm guessing at this point the director wanted to focus on the golden oldies. Incidentally, this character isn't mentioned in official dispatches of the actual crime.

Some other points to note - The drilling through the wall is similar (though more watery) to the heist in Sexy Beast, another Ray Winstone film. I also quite liked the flashback scenes, especially the ones with the actors in films from their younger days. The highlight for me, though, is all the Cockney wide boy phrases, such as, "We gave him a drink", "That's put the kibosh on it" and my personal favourite, "He's lost his arsehole". Can't really argue with a film littered with this type of poetry.

See also:

Certainly, Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast (2000), one of the best British crime films of all time. And have a crack at another James Marsh film, Man on Wire (2008), if your knees don't go wobbly.

Monday 5 November 2018

First Man


After initially being a bit ambivalent about seeing First Man, I decided to give it a chance, mainly due to the goodwill held over from Damien Chazelle's first directorial effort, the excellent Whiplash. Apparently, Chazelle had been sitting on this Neil Armstrong story since before La La Land and got started after Josh Singer (Spotlight) handed over a script. And a pretty prosaic script it is. Thankfully avoiding the trap that many other biopics have fallen into, this shies away from the cradle to grave narrative and focuses on about 8 years of Armstrong's life, from 1961 to 1969. Trim the fat, this is the meat.

The main theme of First Man is obsessive drive and this is a watering hole Chazelle likes to return to, as there are obvious similarities to his previous two films. Armstrong's determination to get to the moon is, to an extent, explained by a tragedy that I won't go into here. Accurate or not, it adds a filmic poignancy that works depending on your level of acceptance. Perspective is another focal point. Armstrong, played slightly soporifically by Ryan Gosling, spends a lot of time peering at the moon through an old home film camera and the best looking shot in the film is a simple suburban street bathed in moonlight. This perspective is finally mirrored by Gozzle looking at Earth from the moon (spoiler!).

A couple of sequences in the rocket's cockpit get the old blood pumping and these are probably the best things about the film. Chazelle has a knack for raising tension. This side of the film is handled in an almost documentary style and it's left to the family and friends section to provide the heart, the grounding. Claire Foy, as Armstrong's wife, Janet, is as tense as Gozzle is laid-back and they actually work quite well together. Her ultimate emo-ruption is worth waiting for - "You're a bunch of boys making models out of balsa wood! You don't have anything under control!"

Justin Hurwitz's fine score helps to accompany the astronauts on their flight attempts and the recreations of the era are great, as you'd expect, but I just couldn't get fully on board the First Man rocket

See also:

Chazelle's debut, Whiplash (2014) is fantastic, exhausting, sweaty film making and, for a touch of NASA conspiracy, Peter Hyams' Capricorn One (1977). Mars, not the moon, but it's all space.

SPOILERS IN POD!

Listen to "First Man" on Spreaker.

Tuesday 16 October 2018

The Worst Film I've Ever Seen (featuring The Room)

So this whole business started with one of Roly's friends saying he thought You Were Never Really Here was the worst film he'd ever seen. I was baffled. The WORST?? It got me thinking - what do people rate as the worst film they've ever seen?

I conducted a short, mostly net-based, survey and the results were intriguing. Putting aside the person who went for a TV show and the one who chose The 1989 Melbourne Cup, they broadly fell into two categories - actually terrible films (i.e. low tech, shit writing & acting, etc) OR average to good films that people had a personal aversion to.

Some I'd never heard of - I've only seen 15 from a total of 40, though I may have blanked on one or two due to the abysmal nature of them. There were some odd choices for me - The Wrestler and Rain Man are not bad and Fight Club is great but, again, it's all subjective. If I had to watch one of these films that I hadn't yet seen, I'd probably go for The Dungeonmaster or Snakes on a Plane, mainly to get a bead on their awfulness.

It's also a little strange that there were so many sequels -  seven of them, and a couple of remakes. Did some people actually like the first one or two but got really pissed off with the follow-ups? (Disclaimer - I know one of these was an unavoidable family situation where the person actually left halfway through).

Most of the films were discrete, bar two - Sharknado (which two people hated) and The Room (which got four 'votes'). So I watched The Room. And soon after wished I hadn't. So bad it's good? Don't even fucking try me. It's not really even a film. It's like the most driven but least talented of my film school colleagues wrote a script and then gave it to a misogynistic truckie to direct. Oh, and then asked their mates if they knew any women who didn't pass the entry audition at 'generic acting school' but would like to do some soft-core grummer with a couple of weirdos. I wonder how long that short list was.

The lighting made it look like it was shot on a VHS-camcorder (even though it was apparently 35mm!) and the writing reeks of mundanity, with exchanges like this - "Did you like last night?" "Yes, I did." "Ha ha ha." "Can I get you anything?" "Mm-mm, I have to go now." "OK, bye." "Bye." And that's one of the better ones. The acting is roundly terrible, with special mention to the main man, Tommy Wiseau. It's almost as if he's playing a guy acting badly. The others are just bog-standard shit but Wiseau takes it to another level. He's fucking Novichok. The story, if we can call it a story, is amazing in that it's confusing and simple at the same time. Stripped down, it's a tale of trust and betrayal. Stripped up, it's losers in tuxedos tossing grid-iron balls around. Plot strands start and then vanish. And the 'sex' scenes. Three of them in the first 20 minutes or so by my count, and personally, Ricky Gervais's bath pics do more for me.

What a crime against film The Room is. That said, I'd still take it over Grease any day.


Oh, and here's the full list:


The Love Guru 
The Incredible Melting Man
A.I.
Suicide Squad
The Village
I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House
The Room
Snakes on a Plane
Rain Man
Crazy Hong Kong
The Bachelor (TV show??)
Eyes Wide Shut
On Deadly Ground
Mannequin
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Funny People
Fight Club
Pineapple Express
The Mummy
Funny Games (2007)
The Melbourne Cup 1989 !?!?
Shanghai Knights
The Wrestler
Left Behind
Lust in the Dust
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-li
Commandments
Grown-ups 2
Twister
The Air Up There
The Dungeonmaster
Sharknado
Jackass 2
Child’s Play
Human Centipede 3
Final Destination
Cube 2: Hypercube
Escape Plan 2: Hades
Eat, Pray, Love
The Tree of Life 
Listen to "The Worst Film I've Ever Seen (featuring The Room)" on Spreaker.

Friday 5 October 2018

The Girl in the Fog


I went to the Paradiso in Northbridge with Merv to see La Ragazza nella Nebbia (or The Girl in the Fog), which is part of the Italian Film Festival. This was the first time I'd been to the Paradiso in about 12 years and I reckon it's still the best looking cinema in Perth. It appears to have been taken over by the Palace Cinema chain (as opposed to its old umbrella, Luna Palace cinemas) and joins the new Raine Square complex as the two Perth branches. One possibly ominous note - lots of wine glasses, not so many choc bombs. Mmmm, I'll have a glass of gentrification, thanks.

Anyway, the film. This is an adaptation of the novel of the same name, written by Donato Carrisi. This geezer also went and wrote the screenplay AND directed the film. While this might work on the odd occasion - e.g. Tom Stoppard adapting and directing Rosencrantz and Guildenstren are Dead - it's usually a sleeveless errand. Carrisi may be a good thriller author but he needs to polish his directorial skills a tad. There were pacing issues and some odd decisions regarding mood and tension-building ('fog' is in the title but he makes precious little out of the actual stuff, save for a nice shot of the detective entering an old hotel). To give him his dues, it is only his first crack at directing. He'll likely improve.

More surprisingly though, considering Carrisi wrote the source text, he seems to have some narrative errors on his hands. The teacher (Alessio Boni) shows up at class not long after his wife mentions him losing his job. A quiet street issue turns out to be irrelevant when a flashback contradicts the point detective Vogel (Tony Servillo) tries to make. And are we to believe a police officer caught with dodgy evidence proves the same officer planted other evidence, thus totally exonerating the prime suspect? Long bows are drawn in this film. And we haven't even got to the face-slapping final 'reveal', which isn't only nailed on from the start but also as unsatisfying as the film overall.

While I thought the angle of using the media as a way to manipulate the public and the police hierarchy was neat, this wasn't enough to save the film. One of the major flaws is the lack of a sympathetic character to identify with. Everyone is some sort of twat, whether they're pro- or an-tagonists. The women are written as religious nutters, useless cops or victims; and the flashbacks of the crime are on the leering side of tastelessness.

All in all, a vanity project that didn't work. Fancy that, eh.

See also:

David Fincher's Gone Girl (2014) for a much better expose of the rubber-necking of the great unwashed and Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (2008), a top-notch Italian film adaptation of a novel NOT directed by its author (but starring Toni Servillo).

Tuesday 25 September 2018

You Were Never Really Here


Saw this as a birthday treat at the Luna (free double pass with the Privilege Card) followed by a sub-par ramen. That's if you're in the camp that thinks 'sub-par' is a bad thing. To be fair, it may be only golfers that see 'sub-par' as a positive. But I digress. You Were Never Really Here (no shit, I just mis-typed Gere as the last word in the title and there's a whole new film!). More digression. I'll count to 39 or something.

So, Lynne Ramsey's fourth film after Ratcatcher, Morven Callar and We Need to Talk About Kevin certainly continues the trend of gritty realism but with a neat dichotomy. See, I reckon Joaquin Phoenix's character, Joe, would fit uncomfortably into a Marvel or DC film. He's a kind of chav Avenger, with none of the grandeur or witticisms but all of the emotion. Hawkeye with a hammer instead of a bow. And the film rides on Phoenix's bulky, bruised back. He's outstanding in this. The scene of him cracking a smile to himself in a mirror of a public sauna gave me the proper willies. A Cannes Film Festival prize for best actor was well deserved (Ramsey also landed one for adapting the screenplay).

The story is simple enough - troubled hard-man gets on the wrong side of some powerful establishment evil-doers and blood happens. The themes are equally prosaic - trauma (Joe had an abusive past), love (parental), brutality (hammer, above), revenge (you'll see) and maybe even hope (if I read it right...). But these seemingly straightforward aspects shouldn't detract from the big picture. You Were Never Really Here is more than the sum of its parts (those parts include Johhny Greenwood's ace score and Tom Townend's cracking cinematography). It moves along at a slow-burning pace until the conflict occurs and then it arcs up, only to slow down again until the next slice of viscera. It's sort of like the film version of a Pixies song.

One final note - I've been wracking my feeble mind for the relevance of the title and I'm still not happy with what it's come up with. The best it got was something to do with Joe's image of himself as a member of society. Not satisfied brain, lift your game!

See also:

Abel Ferrara's The Funeral (1996) and David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005) for other examinations of violent revenge.

SPOILERS IN POD!!!

Listen to "You Were Never Really Here" on Spreaker.

Saturday 8 September 2018

The Insult


After a few blockbusters and the like, I decided it was time to go off-road a bit so Roly and I hit a cheap Wednesday showing of The Insult at the Luna Leederville. This is only the fourth film to be directed by Ziad Doueiri (he also co-wrote) but he cut his teeth working as a camo with Tarantino. The film takes place in Beirut. It starts with a molehill and ends with mountain. Local Christian mechanic, Tony Hanna, played by Adel Karam, is miffed when a Palestinian Muslim construction foreman, Yasser Salameh, played by Kamel El Basha, fixes his outdoor water pipe without his permission. Tony breaks it, Yasser calls him a "fucking prick" and thus commences an escalating shitestorm of stubborn men, weary women, exploitative lawyers and opportunistic politicians, all waiting for the scab of religion and geopolitics to be ripped off.

The story is ostensibly played out as a courtroom drama but there are lots of other things going on here, including misplaced revenge, tired machismo, memory and loss. The film begins with Tony at a Christian Party rally and moves on to a sequence with him at home talking with his pregnant wife, Shirine, played by Rita Hayek. It sets Tony up as a loving family man, politically active and a 'good egg' of his local community. Unfortunately, he doesn't dig the Palestinian refugees too much and the insult is later returned ten-fold, amplifying the tension and bubbling hostilities. It's a rather cracking scenario, well played by all and with no little style by Doueiri. On the performance front, standouts for me were Salameh, who's a bit reminiscent of a slightly more gaunt Tom Wilkinson, and Hayek, who admittedly isn't given much to do, but canes it when required. The courtroom scenes are pretty bloody good, though I'm not sure the lawyers sub-plot was necessary. Most of the drama and pathos comes when the whirlwind is pared back down to the two antagonists (can't really call either a protagonist) encountering each other in alternatively prosaic and surreal situations.

I must come clean: I had to do some research after watching this to clarify who was where and when...and why. What a fucking rabbit hole! Some nasty stuff occurred and to this film's great credit, it doesn't really take sides. A hard job to attempt to balance this recent historical mess but Doueiri pulls it off. There was just one sour note - hypothetical situations proposed by two of the male characters consisted of threats of violence towards women. Maybe this was designed to get a rise from the audience or it was just very misjudged but either way, it didn't sit well with the rest of the film.

After watching The Insult I remembered something one of my old students in Japan once said to me. I had recommended a film called Carancho from Argentina for a 'Movie English' lesson I used to do and Kubo-san said she although she didn't think the film was great, she really appreciated watching it. I was a bit confused so I asked why. She said that if she hadn't seen the movie, she wouldn't know what a Buenos Aires street looked like. There's a reason to love films right there.

See also:

Asghar Farhadi's brilliant A Separation (2011) covers similar ground, and for a film about the creeping dread of past cataclysms, you can't go past Michael Haneke's Cache (2005).

SPOILERS IN POD!!

Listen to "Film Shapes : The Podcast" on Spreaker.

Sunday 12 August 2018

Mission: Impossible - Fallout


This is the sixth Mission: Impossible film with Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt and only the second to have a previous director at the helm in Chris McQuarrie (the others, in order, being Brian De Palma, John Woo, J.J. Abrams and Brad Bird). I enjoyed Fallout, and that's pretty much the same sentiment for all the films in this series. Each one has something better and worse than the others, whether that's an actor, an action set-piece or a shot. My point is that they tend to blend into one another, not necessarily in a bad way. Admittedly, the bonkers-ness of the practical (as opposed to CGI) stunts has seemed to grow exponentially. But that Cruise bastard appears to have aged about 6 years in 22.

Plot-wise, it's fairly convoluted. According to McQuarrie, lots of the film was made on the fly. "I'm working on it" (or words to that effect) are uttered throughout the film, reflecting the actual goings-on behind the cameras. Presumably not unusual in films of this scale but interesting to hear nonetheless. In line with the complex nature of the story, there are some confusing character issues - White Widow? Was she a goodun or a badun? Her brother also? And were the dudes Hunt shot to death in the Paris street during the policewoman scene MI6? Hmmm. Speaking of this odd scene, there were lots of moments massaging the pureness element of Hunt (even a ridiculous "I'm truly, truly sorry" in a soldier's funeral!). OK, no need to play that scene flip, but then no need to play it at all. This film could really have been subtitled Hunt's Hagiography.

It's also a bit Bond-ish in its structure of meeting femme fatales or old flames, encountering classy bad guys in classy surrounds and having a Machiavellian protagonist pulling the strings of an Alpha hench. Not to say this doesn't work, it's what it is and the cast are all pretty good. I even liked Henry Cavill in this, which surprised me. And Cruise himself is slowly winning me around, at least to his acting prowess. I remember watching the first Mission: Impossible and noticing in one key scene that he manifestly couldn't 'sell' the emotion that he needed the audience to get. He's improved on that scale, maybe it's an age thing.

Apparently, you can't talk about this film without mentioning the action, and I admit, there were one or two moments where I felt a clenching of the sphincter. It's almost a 'greatest hits' of action set-pieces - sky-diving, car/motorbike chase, (fantastic) fist fight, shootout, Cruise running, helicopter chase, and something for the vertiginous as well. These are all done with aplomb.

McQuarrie speaking to Chris Hewitt on the Empire Podcast is fascinating. The bloke really lays it all out there, refreshingly open about his past films, 'fan service', how he functions on set and loads more. The pod for the last Mission film and the two for this one clock in at around 8 and a half hours in total but are great to listen to, even if you're not a huge fan of the films.

Finally, spare a thought for poor old Jeremith Renny. Booted by Bourne, overlooked for the Infinity War (the first one, at least) and now jettisoned by the IMF. Regarding this recent schedule clash, it would appear that he was unable to do both but ended up doing neither. At least he's not Dougray Scott, who didn't have time for the first X-Men so passed on the role of Wolverine to a relatively unknown Hugh Jackman. Thanks Dougie, mate. Oh, and the reason Scott was unavailable for X-Men - he was playing the villain in Mission: Impossible 2 when that film ran into some delays. Funny old world, eh?

See also:

The first Cruise Mission: Impossible (1996), directed with a traditional thriller feel by Brian De Palma and also starring Jon Voight, Jean Reno, Kristin Scott Thomas and Emmanuelle Beart. And Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects (1995), which was written by Christopher McQuarrie. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled.....

SPOILERS IN POD!!

Listen to "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" on Spreaker.

Sunday 5 August 2018

Ant-Man and the Wasp


It's been nearly two weeks since I've seen this film and I'm as ambivalent towards it as I was right after seeing it. It's not terrible, just mostly inconsequential. I say mostly because there's an angle that slots into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe that'll become integral to the resolution of the whole Thanos business. No more to be said on that.

Anyway, Ant-Man and the Wasp brings Paul Rudd's ant back to the margins of the MCU. This time he's joined by Evangeline Lilly's wasp in a story that focuses on personal themes of closure and never losing hope (or Janet, in this case). The 'ant'agonist (eh, eh?) is a multi-phasic herring really, probably one of the most innocuous baddies in these films. Ghost, played by Hanna John-Kamen, is basically just an obstacle to the mission of retrieiving Michelle Pfieffer's (original) Wasp, Janet van Dyne, from the quantum realm.

Well, it all sounds like a lot of old rope, doesn't it? It's not that bad. There are some odd little asides; 'Everyday is Like Sunday' by Morrissey as a ringtone ('First of the Gang to Die' is also in there), Ant-man watching Donald Sutherland in Animal House on TV, and the introduction of Laurence Fishburne as Goliath, another famously big Marvel hero. Actually, for a film called Ant-Man, I preferred the scenes where he went GI-ant, but this could be a comparative thing. The San Francisco car chase is probably the best action sequence in the film, helped no end by the options of shrinkage and enlargement for the main characters.

So to sum up; distracting fun but when the best thing in the film is the mid-credit sting, you may be better served elsewhere.

See also:

I've got nothing on the ant theme so have a crack at Robert Zemeckis's Romancing the Stone (1984) with a young-ish Michael Douglas ('actual' young not 'fake' young like in the above film) and Richard Donner's Ladyhawke (1985), which places Michelle Pfeiffer alongside Matthew Broderick and Rutger Hauer! How many films can boast Ferris Bueller AND Roy Batty? Not bloody many, I'd wager.

SPOILERS IN POD!!

Listen to "Ant-Man and the Wasp" on Spreaker.

Thursday 14 June 2018

Solo: A Star Wars Story

A little trepidation escorted us into screen 6 at Morley's Event cinemas for a morning showing of Solo: A Star Wars Story. This was mainly down to the grizzles I'd been hearing about on-set troubles and mis-casting and stuff like that. Also Ron Howard had been hired to 'fire-fight' the film into shape and finish on time. Safe pair of hands is old Ronnie but not the edgiest. To possibly perpetuate a rumour, it appears the previous directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller (of Lego Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs fame), couldn't quite handle such a behemoth as Solo. No matter, as this turned out to be perhaps my third favourite Ron Howard film (not counting the ones he's acted in, like The Music Man), after Frost/Nixon and Willow.

A specific concern of the grizzlers seemed to be the casting of Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han Solo, first seen getting in and out of trouble on the industrial planet of Corellia. Rest easy, he's fine in this. Of course, he's no Ford but he handles his tasks with charm and vulnerability. He even pulls off a Ford-ish wink as he tries to mollify Emilia Clarke's Qi'ra.

The main theme of Solo is trust and its counterpoint, betrayal. These aren't played as heavy-handedly as they might have been under the tutelage of, say, Denis Villeneuve or early Scorsese. Woody Harrelson's smuggler mentor Beckett tells Han to "trust no-one" but most of us will be safe in the knowledge that the future will be fine for Han until....well, let's leave it at that. An enduring trust that's shown here in its embryonic form is the meeting of Han and Chewie. Let's face it, this is what most people came to see and it doesn't disappoint. Considered a deserter, Han is thrown into a muddy pit with 'the beast', conjuring up memories of the trapdoor to the Rancor in Jabba's palace. Luckily, Han can speak a bit of Wookiee and so it begins.

Regarding the timeline - this seems to take place 10-12 years before A New Hope and a few years after the end of Revenge of the Sith so presumably Vader is knocking around somewhere. Though that would make Vader roughly the same age as Solo in A New Hope. Hmmm. This all feeds in to another issue. Oddly, (Darth) Maul is head of crime syndicate, Crimson Dawn but he got split asunder in The Phantom Menace by Renton. Survived he seems to have.

Some other lovely touches include Han telling Chewie, "I've got a really good feeling about this" while attempting the Kessel run. Chewie ripping off a guard's arms on the mining planet of Kessel (starting point of said famous run). The slow, steady birth of the rebellion in the form of Enfys Nest and her raiders. And most interestingly (and subtly) Han shooting Beckett - FIRST!

Ultimately, I can't really understand why some people have taken against this film. It's harmless fun, exciting and occasionally endearing. MWRGHMRRAAWW. That's yes.

See also:

The Coen Brothers' Hail Caeser (2016), mainly for a scene between Alden Ehrenreich and Ralph Fiennes. And the aforementioned Ron Howard films, Willow (1988) and Frost/Nixon (2008).

SPOILERS WITHIN PODCAST!!

Listen to "Solo: A Star Wars Story" on Spreaker.

Sunday 10 June 2018

Deadpool 2


After Deadpool had raked in just under $800 million worldwide two years ago, it made perfect sense to have a crack at a sequel. And I think Deadpool 2 is slightly better than the original. Maybe this is because there's less of the TJ Miller riffing, which was intermittently solid but overcooked. In this one, they dialled it back quite a bit, as they did the old blind lady and the taxi driver. All fine characters, and this time, used sparingly.

Another reason is the identity of the antagonist. At first, it seems to be Josh Brolin's Cable but then, for story reasons, it kind of morphs into circumstance, I guess. There are several moments when our potty-mouthed hero struggles to keep all the pieces together (metaphorically and literally). In fact, Pool begins to fight more against himself and his 'unkillability', which prevents him from [SPOILER - REDACTED], so you might say Ryan Reynolds' Wade Wilson is the pro/an-tagonist. The direction also seems more assured in this second outing, with David Leitch taking over from Tim Miller, and maybe all relevant parties were more comfortable, knowing this film would probably 'wash its face' (its takings are running just shy of $620 million worldwide as I write).

Now this was a chuckle-fuck all the way through but specific mention must go to the introduction of the X-force. Reynolds said on the Empire podcast that the whole section was really just a way of linking the scene where Cable beats DP to a pulp to the one where he goes after the convoy. So the best sequence in the film was intended as a narrative bridge and Reynolds is right when he says nothing would be lost story-wise if you removed the whole chunk. A nice bit of fortuitousness there.


Some of the supporting cast are worth mentioning. Brolin as Cable is suitably austere and hardened and he's made a bit of a thing out of playing psychotic killers - Thanos, Bush, now Cable. The 'not very cinematic' Domino sequence, which showcases her luck superpower, is another treat. Zazie Beetz plays this just right. She's a step up from NegaSonic Teenage Hedgehog. Ricky Baker Julian Dennison's Firefist has some nice moments, especially his prison wallet. There are also a few neat cameos, which are handily spoiled in the podcast below.

[THE FOLLOWING PARAGARPH HAS ONE WHOPPING SPOILER IN IT - STOP HERE IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM]

One of the lesser points of Deadpool 2 is that even though they step outside the box in many ways - fourth wall breaking, meta gags about other films (Wolverine has some legs), great swearing and unusual deaths - they also stick to some of the tropes of your run-of-the-mill Hollywood fare. 'Fridging' being a prime example. This is, roughly speaking, killing a female character to enable the male hero to become motivated enough to drive the plot forward. Though this was probably unaviodable here, as it served to drive DP's suicidal mania, it's still an unfortunate cliche.

See also:

Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003) for a similar scene to one at the start of Deadpool 2 and maybe even Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) for bags of slow-motion bloodshed.

SPOILERS WITHIN PODCAST!!

Listen to "Deadpool 2" on Spreaker.

Thursday 24 May 2018

Avengers: Infinity War


So this, the penultimate episode of the Marvel Avengers series (the third phase at least), is pretty ballsy work. Discretion precludes me from spewing forth on all the stuff that goes on here, but if you don't mind the cat escaping the bag, the podcast below is full of spoilers. I reckon it's safe to say that the ballsiness of the story may well be softened by the end of the 4th film (whatever that may be called). But here, at the midpoint of the two films, misery and desolation rule the roost. Enough said for now. Onto the star of the film - Thanos.


This is the guy that has been hanging around in the background for most of the previous MCU films, at least while the Infinity Stones have been in play. He's been referred to, glimpsed, even had a line or two in post-credit stings. But in Infinity War he really gets his supernatural funky out down there (apologies to Cinema Prague). Thanos as a universal Malthusian Check is one of the neater conceits in the MCU. In fact, he's not merely an agent, the whole film is his. He gets some back-story, lots of lines, a couple of weighty emotional scenes and shed-loads of trickery and violence. The other 'heroes' are virtually bystanders, clearly this is their 'worst point' and as John Yorke says about that in his screenwriting book, Into the Woods,
It's not uncommon for the stench of literal or metaphorical death to cloud the air.
Well quite, Mr. Yorke. But again, this is really just the halfway point of a pair of cash cows for the studio. Let's wait and see what transpires next year.

So making Thanos the evil protagonist of their film gave the writers (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) and directors (The Russo brothers) less wriggle room for the panoply of heavyweights on the opposing side. For the most part, Stark/Iron Man and Thor share secondary billing here and most of the pressure sits on their shoulders. Rogers/Captain America gets just a few lines, Romanov/Black Widow and T'Challa/Black Panther, are saddled with even fewer. Ant-man and Hawkeye don't even get a rub-down in the change rooms. But I reckon the filmmakers did well just to find screen time for so many characters. It's a high stakes game - two characters are faced with the realisation that they must kill their partners and even Thanos is forced to make a surprising sacrifice. As Dimity mentioned in the pod below, almost everybody in this film fucks up in one way or another, with the possible exception of Nick Fury. This underlines how we should see Infinity War as the first two or three acts of a five act film with the next film wide open for them to make amends. It should be fun. Fire up the pod, rabbit.

See also:

Clearly, a whole bunch of MCU films, specifically those relating to the Infinity Stones if you're not up to speed. And David Fincher's Zodiac (2007) for Stark and Banner in other guises.

SPOILERS WITHIN PODCAST!!!

Listen to "Avengers: Infinity War" on Spreaker.

Wednesday 11 April 2018

Ready Player One


Monday morning. Kids at school. $10 tickets at the Galleria. All looking good. And then....Ready Player Wonka. This is Steven Spielberg's latest. It's about a boy, Charlie Bucket Wade Watts, played by Tye Sheridan, who lives in an impoverished rural urban setting and dreams of being elsewhere. Enter a mysterious, man-child savant with poor social skills and a hugely popular business enterprise. Said fella wants to give away 'the keys to the kingdom' for one reason or another. Loads of people scramble to find the golden ticket keys. Shit, there's even a scene of the protagonists floating in a cylindrical chamber that's very reminiscent of the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Like most Spielberg films, this is put together with the skills of a professional technician who knows what he's doing and can call upon the cream of the industry to help him. He has some pull, this guy. But also like most Spielberg films, it doesn't do anything creatively or dramatically innovative. I read someone once refer to him as a 'one-trick pony' and I'm inclined to agree. Sure, there's a market and a place for these kind of films and, if I'm honest, his films are generally not terrible. But there's no bite, no edge, no other angle aside from a child-like wish for a happy resolution. In Ready Player One, he manages to cram in loads of speccy stuff and 'easter eggs' but it still doesn't provoke anything more than a cursory head nod.

There's lots of exposition too - 'Oh, you're Parzival, the knight who found the holy grail. Oh, and you're Artemis, the Greek goddess of some bullshit....' I'd say this is another fault, treating the audience like children, but as most of them probably ARE children, perhaps I'm being overly harsh. Ultimately, we don't NEED to know who the avatars are named after if we don't know already. Another irritation is the overwhelming abundance of pop culture references, hidden and glaringly obvious. I'd usually rail against this obscene nodding and winking but that's kind of the point of the film, for what it's worth. The creator of the Oasis, James Halliday, is (was) a massive nerd genius and the story is really about him and his child-like innocence. The video games, music, films, etc, are all part of the virtual world he created and therefore, part of the film. Many of the usual 'Spielbergian' themes are here - friendship and belonging (clanning up, in the film's vernacular) and the struggle of the weak and oppressed against the powerful (not much hypocrisy there). No surprises who wins in this sugar-coated world. I quite liked the mirror work of the kids in the Oasis rectifying the past relationship between Halliday and Simon Pegg's Ogden Morrow (a bit of a Zuckerberg / Saverin reference?)

There are some nice things about Ready Player One. The visuals are well done in a video game sort of way, the performances run the gamut from heartfelt (Mark Rylance) to suitable (Olivia Cooke) to roast ham (Mendelsohn) and the juxtaposition of the Oasis and the real world is nicely designed. But the pongs outweigh the pings. It starts with Van Halen's 'Jump' and fuck off. The soundtrack is trite and uninventive all the way through. There's a troubling question at the end as to what/who Halliday is (a god, an angel, a spirit residing in his 'oasis'). Whatever the answer, it was unnecessary. And the moment when Parzival summoned the Saturday Night Fever dance floor, I knew it wasn't going to end well for me.


See also:

Obviously, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) with Gene Wilder as Wonka and also David Cronenberg's Existenz (1999) for a more dystopic taste of virtual reality.

SPOILERS WITHIN PODCAST!!

Listen to "Ready Player One" on Spreaker.