A lovely grimy, grungy, stop-motion Grimms' Fairy Tale sort of a movie, with a surprising amount to say about greed, class, privilege and corruption, and clueless toffee-noised oiks at the top of the chain munching on brie and fucking the poor (not literally). In a kids movie. Had this been released a week or two earlier in the UK, the Scottish independence vote might have gone quite differently.
Rating: 4/5
Showing posts with label 4-Stars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4-Stars. Show all posts
Tuesday, 23 September 2014
Friday, 14 February 2014
The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)
Well that was three hours in the company of a hideous, debauched, vile, selfish, abusive, self-destructive, fucked-up individual... and I loved it. Am I a bad man?
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Friday, 27 December 2013
All Is Lost (2013)
A lot like Gravity, but wetter, cheaper, and pretty much dialogue free. Robert Redford battles the ocean and delivers one of the great performances of his long and fascinating career. Simple and stunning.
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Wednesday, 11 December 2013
Blue Is The Warmest Colour (La Vie d'Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2) (2013)
Young love, lust, passion, insecurity, loss, regret. Three hours of it. In French.
Abdellatif Kechiche adapts from a graphic novel, telling of the passionate first love affair of young teenage student Adèle for another woman. While this film has generated much interest for being a lesbian drama with some extremely frank and sustained sex scenes, it is rather, a supremely universal tale of that intense, uncontrollable first true love that will be achingly familiar to many.
When critics talk about a "brave" performance in relation to a female role, what they usually really mean is that the actress spends a lot of time naked. Yet, in a film featuring some of the most honest sex scenes in mainstream cinema (by which I mean, sweaty, grindy, lengthy, noisy sex that doesn't come with an orchestral soundtrack and a degree in Eisenstein montage theory), relative newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulos really delivers on the meaning of the word. For almost the entire (substantial) running time, Adèle has the camera thrust about three inches from her face, searching her for every slightest flinch, every furtive glance, every strained muscle, as the young actress has to conjure a lifetime of an emotional journey. It's a stunning and utterly compelling performance that forms the true narrative heart of the movie, and that powers forward this otherwise occasionally meandering tale.
What I can't let pass without comment though is the absolutely gratuitous, endless and utterly explicit scenes of... smoking. Whether eating, drinking, laughing, crying, fighting, fucking, or reclining on a chaise longue whilst being sketched by Jack, sorry, Emma; Adèle is seemingly never without a fag hanging out of the corner of her mouth. I enjoyed this movie in the company of two good friends who also happen to be a lesbian couple. When the credits began to roll I glanced over to find, not that they were making all gooey-eyed at each other, but that they were both frantically constructing roll-ups for the dash outside to light up. Ah... Vive l'Amour.
Rating: 4/5
Abdellatif Kechiche adapts from a graphic novel, telling of the passionate first love affair of young teenage student Adèle for another woman. While this film has generated much interest for being a lesbian drama with some extremely frank and sustained sex scenes, it is rather, a supremely universal tale of that intense, uncontrollable first true love that will be achingly familiar to many.
When critics talk about a "brave" performance in relation to a female role, what they usually really mean is that the actress spends a lot of time naked. Yet, in a film featuring some of the most honest sex scenes in mainstream cinema (by which I mean, sweaty, grindy, lengthy, noisy sex that doesn't come with an orchestral soundtrack and a degree in Eisenstein montage theory), relative newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulos really delivers on the meaning of the word. For almost the entire (substantial) running time, Adèle has the camera thrust about three inches from her face, searching her for every slightest flinch, every furtive glance, every strained muscle, as the young actress has to conjure a lifetime of an emotional journey. It's a stunning and utterly compelling performance that forms the true narrative heart of the movie, and that powers forward this otherwise occasionally meandering tale.
What I can't let pass without comment though is the absolutely gratuitous, endless and utterly explicit scenes of... smoking. Whether eating, drinking, laughing, crying, fighting, fucking, or reclining on a chaise longue whilst being sketched by Jack, sorry, Emma; Adèle is seemingly never without a fag hanging out of the corner of her mouth. I enjoyed this movie in the company of two good friends who also happen to be a lesbian couple. When the credits began to roll I glanced over to find, not that they were making all gooey-eyed at each other, but that they were both frantically constructing roll-ups for the dash outside to light up. Ah... Vive l'Amour.
Rating: 4/5
Saturday, 7 December 2013
A Field In England (2013)
Having just watched the rather excellent A Field In England. I was going to attempt to muster some sort of review, until I realised that it would not be possible to better the description offered by the first five "plot keywords" of its IMDB entry: "Deafened By Explosion; Hairless Scrotum; Hit With A Spade; Tug Of War; Vomiting Stones". Yes, I think that will do nicely.
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Monday, 18 November 2013
Chronicle (2012)
A smart, indie-spirited superhero movie that asks the question (admittedly not for the first time), what would really happen if ordinary people developed superpowers, but handles the result with more wit and emotional punch than the premise might suggest.
Three teenagers, after an unexplained encounter with something...well, something, find themselves in possession of some form of telekinetic ability which manifests mildly at first, and is the cause of much entertaining japery, but soon develops into something with far more alarming strength.
The three leads all perform extremely well with what are largely archetypes; the bullied loner and the popular cool kid for example, and build an engaging relatable friendship that goes beyond high school movie cliché, even while the movie indulges in some of that genres most well-worn tropes (school hall bullies, problem fathers, trying to get laid at parties). What feels at first to be rather over-familiar works as an effective piece of audience wrong-footing, as the movie then makes a lurch into darker, more dramatic, and genuinely original territory.
The conceit of all this playing out through selfie home video footage is a somewhat peculiar choice, becoming an unnecessary millstone to the production as the third act requires every police officer and bystander alike to be blessed with Roger Deakins levels of camera control. But this oddity aside, Chronicle is a breeze. Moving from charming hijinx to an efficiently devastating finale in less running time than it takes for Bilbo to get all those dwarfs out of the kitchen.
Rating: 4/5
Three teenagers, after an unexplained encounter with something...well, something, find themselves in possession of some form of telekinetic ability which manifests mildly at first, and is the cause of much entertaining japery, but soon develops into something with far more alarming strength.
The three leads all perform extremely well with what are largely archetypes; the bullied loner and the popular cool kid for example, and build an engaging relatable friendship that goes beyond high school movie cliché, even while the movie indulges in some of that genres most well-worn tropes (school hall bullies, problem fathers, trying to get laid at parties). What feels at first to be rather over-familiar works as an effective piece of audience wrong-footing, as the movie then makes a lurch into darker, more dramatic, and genuinely original territory.
The conceit of all this playing out through selfie home video footage is a somewhat peculiar choice, becoming an unnecessary millstone to the production as the third act requires every police officer and bystander alike to be blessed with Roger Deakins levels of camera control. But this oddity aside, Chronicle is a breeze. Moving from charming hijinx to an efficiently devastating finale in less running time than it takes for Bilbo to get all those dwarfs out of the kitchen.
Rating: 4/5
Sunday, 3 November 2013
Hijacking Double-Bill: A Hijacking (Kapringen) (2012) and Captain Phillips (2013)
Pirates. Everyone loves a pirate, and 2013 has given us a generous double helping of the romantic swashbuckling... oh wait.
The first out of the gates (technically a 2012 film but making its UK debut in early 2013) was Kapringen. I missed this Danish drama on its limited theatrical release, but with Captain Phillips now in the cinemas this seemed an opportune moment to catch up and see how the two compare.
A Hijacking presents an entirely fictional, but highly convincing siege scenario, and concentrates heavily on the emotional stresses for those involved. Eschewing any temptations to sensationalism we aren't even shown the moments of the hijackers getting on board; learning of it instead, as one of the central characters in the movie does, by a hurriedly whispered message in a prosaic office setting thousands of miles away from the action. This character, Peter Ludvigsen, an executive on the board of the company that owns the hijacked vessel, is introduced to us in a scene that sets him up as a shrewd and hard-nosed businessman and tough negotiator. We believe we can see how this is going to pan out, but writer / director Tobias Lindholm is playing a canny game here, and rather than a cliché who will drive the plot along, we soon become deeply invested in this man's struggle to control and cope with the terrible responsibility he takes on as he chooses, against advice, to handle the negotiations himself.
Peter is one part of a superb three-hander. The other two are the ships' cook, Mikkel, who, as the film's principle lead at sea, becomes our entry point to the drama taking place there, and the mysterious Omar, who claims to be simply a translator and under as much threat as anyone else, but may perhaps be a whole lot more.
The occupation and negotiations drag on, weeks turn into months. The mental and physical state of those involved deteriorate, while an occasional sense of edgy truce possibly allows some tentative alliances to form or perhaps merely some more complex manipulation to take place.
Meanwhile, Tobais cuts back and forth between the wretched conditions in the bowels of the ship, and the stuffy, claustrophobic atmosphere of secretive meetings in closed rooms in the company HQ. Scenes are performed and shot with docu-drama verisimilitude, and the tension is effectively sustained throughout. A smart, believable and quietly powerful tale.
Captain Phillips arrived some months later, with all the fanfare one would expect of a Tom Hanks starring movie, based on a recent and remarkable true story that was major news in the USA. It soon becomes apparent that this movie will be a much more visceral affair, with a thrilling sequence of the hijackers boarding the gigantic container ship under Phillips' command, and later seat-gripping standoffs with the US military just two of the stand-out sequences. However, this is a Paul Greengrass joint, and by stating the above I do not mean to suggest by any means that this is an attempt to sensationalise or trivialise the truth of the events that took place off the coast of Somalia in 2009.
In the opening scenes, Greengrass takes much the same approach as he did with the stunning United 93, introducing us at the outset to two entirely alien groups of people who are preparing for journeys which will soon see their lives and fates thrown together. We are shown just enough background of the antagonists to draw us into their harsh lives without seeking to either excuse or condemn. Meanwhile we get a brief home-life snapshot of the insular, somewhat dour Phillips, a capable captain maybe, but not an easy man to get to know or like.
From the ramshackle group of hijackers soon emerges a de-facto leader, Muse, a tragically young skeleton of a man, played with stunning authority by total newcomer Barkhad Abdi. Once he bursts into the bridge and announces with focussed intent "I'm the captain now" to a stunned Hanks (who he has literally just met, Greengrass intentionally keeping the actors apart during the production till the day of filming this pivotal scene) the movie plays out largely as a two-hander between this young first-timer and the highly seasoned star. To say that Abdi easily holds his own in such illustrious company is even more of a compliment than it would already sound because this may well also be the finest performance Tom Hanks has ever delivered.
By now we are perhaps all too familiar with the easy, natural charm that Hanks exudes on and off screen, and it can perhaps be tempting to underestimate the skill of his craft. He is a past master of essaying likeable, capable, motivational leaders of men at all levels: From commanding Apollo 13, to leading a small company of soldiers in Saving Private Ryan, to simply getting the packages moved on time in Castaway. But, presumably on the basis of true accounts of the man himself and those around him. Phillips is not that sort of charismatic leader, and Hanks dials it right back. Distant, insular, sometimes a touch aggressive. Effective yes, but hardly engaging or inspiring. He does the right thing when he can, but this is no heroic portrait. Phillips is a man under phenomenal stress, terrified and just trying to cling on to self-control long enough to make it out alive. Hanks keeps an iron grip on his performance, and when, finally, the moment comes for the emotions to show, it's a desperate, almost wordless, and absolutely heartrending scene, somewhat reminiscent of the masterful sustained final shot on Bob Hoskins at the end of The Long Good Friday. Yes: That good.
So, two excellent dramas that complement each other very well without treading on each other's toes. Both are serious, believable, and very tense. But, rather like Jeff Goldblum explaining chaos theory to Laura Dern by running drops of water off the back of her hand, they take initially near identical starting points, and then follow very different paths.
A Hijacking: Rating: 4/5
Captain Phillips: Rating 4/5
The first out of the gates (technically a 2012 film but making its UK debut in early 2013) was Kapringen. I missed this Danish drama on its limited theatrical release, but with Captain Phillips now in the cinemas this seemed an opportune moment to catch up and see how the two compare.
A Hijacking presents an entirely fictional, but highly convincing siege scenario, and concentrates heavily on the emotional stresses for those involved. Eschewing any temptations to sensationalism we aren't even shown the moments of the hijackers getting on board; learning of it instead, as one of the central characters in the movie does, by a hurriedly whispered message in a prosaic office setting thousands of miles away from the action. This character, Peter Ludvigsen, an executive on the board of the company that owns the hijacked vessel, is introduced to us in a scene that sets him up as a shrewd and hard-nosed businessman and tough negotiator. We believe we can see how this is going to pan out, but writer / director Tobias Lindholm is playing a canny game here, and rather than a cliché who will drive the plot along, we soon become deeply invested in this man's struggle to control and cope with the terrible responsibility he takes on as he chooses, against advice, to handle the negotiations himself.
Peter is one part of a superb three-hander. The other two are the ships' cook, Mikkel, who, as the film's principle lead at sea, becomes our entry point to the drama taking place there, and the mysterious Omar, who claims to be simply a translator and under as much threat as anyone else, but may perhaps be a whole lot more.
The occupation and negotiations drag on, weeks turn into months. The mental and physical state of those involved deteriorate, while an occasional sense of edgy truce possibly allows some tentative alliances to form or perhaps merely some more complex manipulation to take place.
Meanwhile, Tobais cuts back and forth between the wretched conditions in the bowels of the ship, and the stuffy, claustrophobic atmosphere of secretive meetings in closed rooms in the company HQ. Scenes are performed and shot with docu-drama verisimilitude, and the tension is effectively sustained throughout. A smart, believable and quietly powerful tale.
Captain Phillips arrived some months later, with all the fanfare one would expect of a Tom Hanks starring movie, based on a recent and remarkable true story that was major news in the USA. It soon becomes apparent that this movie will be a much more visceral affair, with a thrilling sequence of the hijackers boarding the gigantic container ship under Phillips' command, and later seat-gripping standoffs with the US military just two of the stand-out sequences. However, this is a Paul Greengrass joint, and by stating the above I do not mean to suggest by any means that this is an attempt to sensationalise or trivialise the truth of the events that took place off the coast of Somalia in 2009.
In the opening scenes, Greengrass takes much the same approach as he did with the stunning United 93, introducing us at the outset to two entirely alien groups of people who are preparing for journeys which will soon see their lives and fates thrown together. We are shown just enough background of the antagonists to draw us into their harsh lives without seeking to either excuse or condemn. Meanwhile we get a brief home-life snapshot of the insular, somewhat dour Phillips, a capable captain maybe, but not an easy man to get to know or like.
From the ramshackle group of hijackers soon emerges a de-facto leader, Muse, a tragically young skeleton of a man, played with stunning authority by total newcomer Barkhad Abdi. Once he bursts into the bridge and announces with focussed intent "I'm the captain now" to a stunned Hanks (who he has literally just met, Greengrass intentionally keeping the actors apart during the production till the day of filming this pivotal scene) the movie plays out largely as a two-hander between this young first-timer and the highly seasoned star. To say that Abdi easily holds his own in such illustrious company is even more of a compliment than it would already sound because this may well also be the finest performance Tom Hanks has ever delivered.
By now we are perhaps all too familiar with the easy, natural charm that Hanks exudes on and off screen, and it can perhaps be tempting to underestimate the skill of his craft. He is a past master of essaying likeable, capable, motivational leaders of men at all levels: From commanding Apollo 13, to leading a small company of soldiers in Saving Private Ryan, to simply getting the packages moved on time in Castaway. But, presumably on the basis of true accounts of the man himself and those around him. Phillips is not that sort of charismatic leader, and Hanks dials it right back. Distant, insular, sometimes a touch aggressive. Effective yes, but hardly engaging or inspiring. He does the right thing when he can, but this is no heroic portrait. Phillips is a man under phenomenal stress, terrified and just trying to cling on to self-control long enough to make it out alive. Hanks keeps an iron grip on his performance, and when, finally, the moment comes for the emotions to show, it's a desperate, almost wordless, and absolutely heartrending scene, somewhat reminiscent of the masterful sustained final shot on Bob Hoskins at the end of The Long Good Friday. Yes: That good.
So, two excellent dramas that complement each other very well without treading on each other's toes. Both are serious, believable, and very tense. But, rather like Jeff Goldblum explaining chaos theory to Laura Dern by running drops of water off the back of her hand, they take initially near identical starting points, and then follow very different paths.
A Hijacking: Rating: 4/5
Captain Phillips: Rating 4/5
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Rush (2013)
Ron Howard delivers another broad slice of muscular, high-tension biographical melodrama (see previous CV entries: Apollo 13, and Frost/Nixon, both of which are touchstones for some of the thematic elements here), with the retelling of the professional rivalry between 1970s Formula One racing legends, Niki Lauda and James Hunt.
Chris Hemsworth tackles the more showy, but actually rather tricky task of essaying Hunt: A cocky, risk-taking, rock-star playboy, who could have been frankly repugnant in less skilled hands, but is handsomely (in every sense of the word) fleshed out by the God of Thunder. Meanwhile Daniel Brühl quietly stamps his authority over the drama with a disciplined take on Lauda's acerbic, neurotic Austrian. The script trowels on the stereotypes a tad thick at times, but both leads deliver, pulling off the not inconsiderable feat of making the audience root for both sides in during their battles.
Meanwhile Howard, and his DOP, the brilliant Anthony Dod Mantle, find all manner of extraordinary places to stick their cameras, wedging us into the cockpit in ways that give each race a distinct personality, as well as a tremendous vitality and urgency, and then matching this with a glorious, cacophonous sound design that places one deep inside the action.
It ain't subtle. True or not, Hunt's team of amateur Hooray-Henrys appear to have been culled from the Four Weddings understudies list, and the leads' almost comically contrary character traits are perhaps spelled out rather too frequently. But nonetheless, this tale grips like a Brabham, convincingly delivering the thrills and excitement of an era when Formula One was a perilous and free-spirited enterprise.
Rating: 4/5
Chris Hemsworth tackles the more showy, but actually rather tricky task of essaying Hunt: A cocky, risk-taking, rock-star playboy, who could have been frankly repugnant in less skilled hands, but is handsomely (in every sense of the word) fleshed out by the God of Thunder. Meanwhile Daniel Brühl quietly stamps his authority over the drama with a disciplined take on Lauda's acerbic, neurotic Austrian. The script trowels on the stereotypes a tad thick at times, but both leads deliver, pulling off the not inconsiderable feat of making the audience root for both sides in during their battles.
Meanwhile Howard, and his DOP, the brilliant Anthony Dod Mantle, find all manner of extraordinary places to stick their cameras, wedging us into the cockpit in ways that give each race a distinct personality, as well as a tremendous vitality and urgency, and then matching this with a glorious, cacophonous sound design that places one deep inside the action.
It ain't subtle. True or not, Hunt's team of amateur Hooray-Henrys appear to have been culled from the Four Weddings understudies list, and the leads' almost comically contrary character traits are perhaps spelled out rather too frequently. But nonetheless, this tale grips like a Brabham, convincingly delivering the thrills and excitement of an era when Formula One was a perilous and free-spirited enterprise.
Rating: 4/5
Thursday, 18 July 2013
Pacific Rim (2013)
Pacific Rim: a review: GIANT MONSTERS FIGHTING GIANT ROBOTS! MORE GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING MORE GIANT MONSTERS!!!!! EVEN MORE GIANT MONSTERS, EVEN MORE GIANT ROBOTS, EVEN MORE FIGHTING!!!!!!! (something something rubbish dialogue and cheesy characters) SORRY I DIDN'T CATCH THAT, IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE FUCK-OFF GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING THE FUCK-OFF GIANT MONSTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and that concludes my detailed academic analysis of Pacific Rim.
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Friday, 5 July 2013
XXY (2007)
Alex is a fifteen-year old intersex teenager, living with "her" family on the remote coast of Uruguay, and dealing with the tribulations of growing up living on medication to control her sexual development, and the difficulties of forming relationships with her peers. Now, her mother has invited a friend's family to visit with an agenda involving possible sex reassignment surgery, but the surgeon friend also brings his introverted teenage son, who strikes up a bond of sorts with Alex.
Lucía Puenzo's sensitive and intelligent drama successfully holds a steady line between what could have tipped into lurid sensationalism or mawkish melodrama with understated grace. She elicits a clutch of fine and naturalistic performances from her largely inexperienced cast, most impressively from young Inés Efron in the central role of Alex, who convinces in an obviously tricky role with a totally believable and rounded character who contains elements of sullen teenager and aggressive tomboy without allowing either to define her.
From a seemingly rather esoteric set-up, Lucia's tale engages instead with the universal experiences of coming-of-age: Bullying, rejection, first love (of a sort), and the pain of feeling like an outsider, of being different... and that this is OK.
Rating: 4/5
Lucía Puenzo's sensitive and intelligent drama successfully holds a steady line between what could have tipped into lurid sensationalism or mawkish melodrama with understated grace. She elicits a clutch of fine and naturalistic performances from her largely inexperienced cast, most impressively from young Inés Efron in the central role of Alex, who convinces in an obviously tricky role with a totally believable and rounded character who contains elements of sullen teenager and aggressive tomboy without allowing either to define her.
From a seemingly rather esoteric set-up, Lucia's tale engages instead with the universal experiences of coming-of-age: Bullying, rejection, first love (of a sort), and the pain of feeling like an outsider, of being different... and that this is OK.
Rating: 4/5
Sunday, 30 December 2012
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Baggy, never-ending goings on, going on in Bag End, give way finally to a surprisingly spritely adventure for such a behemoth of a movie. The tone (teetering between light kiddlesome adventure and LOTR darkness) takes a while to find its feet; the excellent cast however, hit the ground running. It's pleasing to see just how much care Jackson and team have put into giving the dwarves a rounded and meaty set of personalities, there's nary a hint of Time Bandits silliness that could have derailed a less respectful adaptation (something that Gimli's overtly comedic turn in Return Of The King pointed worryingly to).
The Hobbit doesn't yet engage with the same depth of emotion that made the Fellowship such an astounding achievement from the off. With the shoehorning in of much peripheral material from the Tolkien archives there may be issues with getting the right balance of looming threat and moral imperative that LOTR had running through its heart; yet these are but early days, and it will undoubtedly take the telling of the entire saga to conclude if this trilogy can measure up to the extraordinary achievements of its predecessor.
I was deeply sceptical of the move to three lengthy films being wrought from such a slim source, and while I remain to be wholly convinced, this first episode has much to enjoy; and once the languorous opening act was dispensed with, felt far tighter and more event-filled than the running time would suggest.
A gentle tale, lovingly told, and with the grimmer and bad-assier stuff still to come, there is hope of greatness yet.
Rating: 4/5
The Hobbit doesn't yet engage with the same depth of emotion that made the Fellowship such an astounding achievement from the off. With the shoehorning in of much peripheral material from the Tolkien archives there may be issues with getting the right balance of looming threat and moral imperative that LOTR had running through its heart; yet these are but early days, and it will undoubtedly take the telling of the entire saga to conclude if this trilogy can measure up to the extraordinary achievements of its predecessor.
I was deeply sceptical of the move to three lengthy films being wrought from such a slim source, and while I remain to be wholly convinced, this first episode has much to enjoy; and once the languorous opening act was dispensed with, felt far tighter and more event-filled than the running time would suggest.
A gentle tale, lovingly told, and with the grimmer and bad-assier stuff still to come, there is hope of greatness yet.
Rating: 4/5
Monday, 26 November 2012
Argo (2012)
The Ben Affleck career renaissance continues apace with this masterfully measured and understated piece of directing, which adapts the so-bizarre-it-can-only-be-true story of a fake movie used as cover for a CIA rescue operation, into an old-school '70s-style political thriller laced with shades of self-reflexive Hollywood satire. Argo successfully balances scenes of seat-gripping tension and joyously grouchy humour that feels effortless but takes a sure hand to pull off. Minor historical inaccuracies have to be swallowed along the way for the benefit of snappier pacing. But overall this remains a fascinating true story, delivered with great performances, pin-sharp dialogue and award-winning facial hair, and would make a fine double-bill with the underrated Charlie Wilson's War. The new Eastwood? ...maybe.
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Sunday, 4 November 2012
Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren ) (2010)
Post-Blair Witch found footage faux-doc shenanigans meets old-Norse fairytale mythology in this delightfully fun romp of a movie which attempts to address that age-old philosophical dilemma, "if a Troll can smell the blood of a Christian, can it detect a Muslim?".
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Thursday, 1 November 2012
Skyfall (2012)
When, just a few years ago, Bond was stunningly re-invented with Casino Royale (new Bond, new grittier, leaner style, and starting over with his career chronology from year dot), there was but one element carried over from the bloated tail-end of the Brosnan era: Dame Judi Dench's powerful, acerbic, matriarchal "M". How Sam Mendes and his team behind this latest adventure must be thanking their lucky stars for that decision, for without her there could be no Skyfall. This is a story, more than any other Bond before in all its 50 years, that doesn't revolve around 007. He is the hurricane of action that revolves around her, the eye at the centre of the storm.
After the unmemorable and confusing mess that was Quantum Of Solace, it takes about two seconds to establish that we are back in safe, familiar Bond territory, with a blistering opening chase, leavened by touches of sly wit. What then follows is a confident, pacey, well handled thriller, that front-loads most of the big set-pieces and espionage shenanigans in the first hour, before stripping down in a surprising but effective change of mood to something simpler, starker and emotionally more engaged.
Worthy of high praise indeed is Roger Deakins' beautiful cinematography. This is almost certainly the most stunningly photographed of any Bond movie. Segments set in Shanghai (or soundstages purporting to be Shanghai) are bathed in a rich, noirish black and orange glow and framed with gobsmacking detail and poise. One particular standout fight, brief and brutal, is viewed entirely in silhouette against a languorously drifting illuminated backdrop from a single near-motionless viewpoint. His camera moves with such effortless elegance it's almost mocking the post-Bourne shaky-cam intensity that all other action movies now feel they somehow have to ape.
Daniel Craig seems less of a revelation this time round, but this is no bad thing. He's utterly comfortable in the role now, and we are comfortable with him. It's astounding to remember now the controversy and vitriol that accompanied his casting in the role not so long ago. The supporting cast is about the strongest a Bond movie has ever been blessed with, so much so that it's occasionally a tad disappointing that some of these characters don't get more time to shine (The wonderful Naomie Harris in particular gets relegated to the background far too soon), but hopefully this sets up one or two for good use another day.
But performance wise, it is Dench's "M" that anchors Skyfall. She's central to the most significant scenes and gets the meatiest and most touching dialogue. Hard-edged, bold and feisty, but with subtly evinced layers of regret and vulnerability, she gives this movie its beating heart.
Less successful perhaps are the machinations of Javier Bardem's full-tilt baddie. He can of course play unhinged, disturbing full-on wrongness better than just about anyone alive, as No Country For Old Men easily attests, and is great fun in the role. But the motivations and logic behind the events leading to the third act feel unfocussed and ill-conceived, making the stakes seem perhaps a touch less perilous than in the best Bonds of yore.
Overall though, none of these minor misgivings really surfaced until sometime after leaving the cinema. For a near two-and-a-half hour movie, Skyfall barrels along just fine, delivering thrills and cool in equal, well-balanced measure, and booting you out at the end with a big smile on your face. Job done.
Rating: 4/5
After the unmemorable and confusing mess that was Quantum Of Solace, it takes about two seconds to establish that we are back in safe, familiar Bond territory, with a blistering opening chase, leavened by touches of sly wit. What then follows is a confident, pacey, well handled thriller, that front-loads most of the big set-pieces and espionage shenanigans in the first hour, before stripping down in a surprising but effective change of mood to something simpler, starker and emotionally more engaged.
Worthy of high praise indeed is Roger Deakins' beautiful cinematography. This is almost certainly the most stunningly photographed of any Bond movie. Segments set in Shanghai (or soundstages purporting to be Shanghai) are bathed in a rich, noirish black and orange glow and framed with gobsmacking detail and poise. One particular standout fight, brief and brutal, is viewed entirely in silhouette against a languorously drifting illuminated backdrop from a single near-motionless viewpoint. His camera moves with such effortless elegance it's almost mocking the post-Bourne shaky-cam intensity that all other action movies now feel they somehow have to ape.
Daniel Craig seems less of a revelation this time round, but this is no bad thing. He's utterly comfortable in the role now, and we are comfortable with him. It's astounding to remember now the controversy and vitriol that accompanied his casting in the role not so long ago. The supporting cast is about the strongest a Bond movie has ever been blessed with, so much so that it's occasionally a tad disappointing that some of these characters don't get more time to shine (The wonderful Naomie Harris in particular gets relegated to the background far too soon), but hopefully this sets up one or two for good use another day.
But performance wise, it is Dench's "M" that anchors Skyfall. She's central to the most significant scenes and gets the meatiest and most touching dialogue. Hard-edged, bold and feisty, but with subtly evinced layers of regret and vulnerability, she gives this movie its beating heart.
Less successful perhaps are the machinations of Javier Bardem's full-tilt baddie. He can of course play unhinged, disturbing full-on wrongness better than just about anyone alive, as No Country For Old Men easily attests, and is great fun in the role. But the motivations and logic behind the events leading to the third act feel unfocussed and ill-conceived, making the stakes seem perhaps a touch less perilous than in the best Bonds of yore.
Overall though, none of these minor misgivings really surfaced until sometime after leaving the cinema. For a near two-and-a-half hour movie, Skyfall barrels along just fine, delivering thrills and cool in equal, well-balanced measure, and booting you out at the end with a big smile on your face. Job done.
Rating: 4/5
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Looper (2012)
In the near future, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, suspiciously made
up to resemble a young Bruce Willis, is living a grimy, hollow life as a
low-grade hit man, offing mob targets pushed under his trigger from a further,
time-travel enabled future, when who should show up at the wrong end of his
cannon than... bugger me, it's Bruce Willis!
Take one dollop of Source Code, mix in some 12 Monkeys,
add a dash of Terminator, and then serve with a somewhat unexpected side order
of Stephen King-style paranormal chills, and you're some way towards concocting
Rian Johnson's pacy and highly entertaining science-fiction adventure. JG-L is
pretty impressive in the lead role, channelling a young John McClane in a
leather jacket and ending up more than half-way James Dean, which is just about
right for the noirish '50s undertones of the heavily narrated first act. What
follows doesn't stand up to too much close analysis, but this really doesn't
matter once the chase kicks off. Looper delivers solid thrills, without going
overblown and losing focus on its engaging central characters. Not the smartest
temporal tale out there, but terrific fun while it lasts. Note: Also features
Jeff Daniels in beard.
Rating: 4/5
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
Dredd (2012)
Karl Urban gives good chin in a pleasingly grimy, ballsy, UK independent production that obliterates the rotten memories of Stallone's badly misjudged '90s take on this cult comic favourite. Dredd the movie, like Dredd the character, is not particularly smart, and somewhat heavy-footed, but gets by with an effective mixture of substantial brutality, wry, underplayed humour, and a healthy dose of scathing totalitarian dystopia. It may not live up to the very best of its kind, but when, at around the half-way mark, the writers steal an iconic line from Robocop, I had to admit, "yep, fair play, it's earned the right to do that". And that's pretty high praise in my view.
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Monday, 18 June 2012
Get Well Soon (2011)
A fifteen minute short from UK production company "Brag Productions", this creepy little vignette made on, presumably, almost no budget and perhaps intended as something of a calling card for the talents involved, is nonetheless a highly effective psychological horror with impressively polished production values.
Wisely restricting proceedings to one act and one location, we are introduced to a married couple; the husband apparently recovering from a recent brush with cancer. But between his fragile post-treatment mental state and his wife's seemingly conflicted feelings, things start unravelling fast.
Get Well Soon makes very effective use of its claustrophobic domestic setting, with liberal use of abstract close-up framing and extreme shallow focus, giving a discombobulating sense of events slipping in and out of reality. Moreover it effortlessly conjures a creeping sense of unease with minimal dialogue and a brooding melancholic score. Particularly impressive is the restrained, but genuinely grotesque FX work, which has all the gloopy, sticky physicality of the best pre CGI horror movies, but with none of the fake rubberiness that usually accompanied them.
Straddling a line somewhere between psychological trauma and visceral horror, this is genuinely impressive work that recalls most strongly the look and feel (and preoccupations) of early David Cronenberg. Which is very good, bad company to be in.
Rating: 4/5
View the complete movie here: http://vimeo.com/43898835
Wisely restricting proceedings to one act and one location, we are introduced to a married couple; the husband apparently recovering from a recent brush with cancer. But between his fragile post-treatment mental state and his wife's seemingly conflicted feelings, things start unravelling fast.
Get Well Soon makes very effective use of its claustrophobic domestic setting, with liberal use of abstract close-up framing and extreme shallow focus, giving a discombobulating sense of events slipping in and out of reality. Moreover it effortlessly conjures a creeping sense of unease with minimal dialogue and a brooding melancholic score. Particularly impressive is the restrained, but genuinely grotesque FX work, which has all the gloopy, sticky physicality of the best pre CGI horror movies, but with none of the fake rubberiness that usually accompanied them.
Straddling a line somewhere between psychological trauma and visceral horror, this is genuinely impressive work that recalls most strongly the look and feel (and preoccupations) of early David Cronenberg. Which is very good, bad company to be in.
Rating: 4/5
View the complete movie here: http://vimeo.com/43898835
Monday, 21 May 2012
The Raid (Serbuan maut) (2011)
Indonesian martial-arts action thriller th... HWAA! YAAHA! BOOF, HWANG! YEEAAAAAAA! AAIIEEE! THWAK, THWAK, CRACKKK! GGGURR! AARGGH, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, HHEEYAIII! HYUH! OOOF! CRUNCH! UUURRG! CHOKE, GURGLE! SNAP! AAAIIGGHH, THUD!! ...ly directed by a Welshman.
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Saturday, 28 April 2012
The Andromeda Strain or: How I Learned To Start Worrying and Love Dystopian Science-Fiction of the 1970s
What is science-fiction? What constitutes a good definition of the genre? Ask any random selection of people off the street, and you'll get wildly differing responses and examples. This is rarely the case with the thriller, romance or western, for example. The setting may change (although naturally rarely in the case of the western) and the style may evolve over the years, but we all have a pretty solid idea of the core themes of each of these genres, and apart from the odd left-field experiment, we'd rarely be wrong in our assumptions.
For many people science-fiction is practically synonymous with fantasy, tales of romantic adventures in far off made-up places with silly sounding names. For some the genre is, uniquely, tied up with the hardware on-screen, requiring the presence of spaceships, robots or lasers to qualify for the breed at all. Go back to the 1950s and many people would be unable to distinguish it from horror. As the b-movie monster genre, which mashed up the pulpiest elements of both, was the dominant form.
All this changed in 1968, when the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey utterly rewrote the rules and presented, almost for the first time to a mainstream cinema audience, what was already well established in literature, that science-fiction is a genre of ideas. One of the cornerstones of proper science-fiction is simply to look at the world we inhabit from a new angle, and ask ourselves "what if?"
For a few brief years in the wake of that 1968 watershed, science-fiction (at its best) strove to match its literary counterparts, and asked big questions about the nature of existence, the future of humanity, and ruminated, usually pretty negatively, upon the big concerns of the day, of nuclear annihilation, of world overpopulation or the end of scant resources. Granted, not all of these were entirely successful, and many of the movies from that era are as bound to the post-Watergate and Vietnam sense of disillusionment and late-hippy, early-ecological social background of the day as those '50s monster pics were to the all-American apple pie family and red menace politics of their time.
But while the quality may have varied, what they usually shared in common was a gritty, downbeat style, mature writing with a believable and un-romanticised treatment of their subject, and a harsh, sometimes nihilistic world view. For the uninitiated, some better examples of the era, beyond that Kubrick masterpiece, include eco-parable Silent Running, THX-1138 (a kind of rewrite of 1984, and an astonishingly bleak work from one young George Lucas), Soylent Green, Solaris (the hard-work but rewarding Russian answer to 2001), a couple of classics in the form of A Clockwork Orange and Planet Of The Apes and, less well remembered now, but still very strong after all these years, The Andromeda Strain.
In a nutshell: A returning space probe crashes to Earth in modern-day America, leaving the population of a small town mysteriously wiped out. As the military prevaricate around how to act, it's up to a group of scientists, sequestered covertly to an underground bunker, to figure out the cause and avert a potential disaster.
The Andromeda Strain was the first filmed adaptation of a work by author Michael Crichton, later the creator of ER and author and/or screenwriter behind mainstream mega-hits of variable quality from Jurassic Park and Westworld to Congo and, ahem, Twister, and while he may have sullied his name somewhat with his more ludicrous later stories, this early work from his hit 1969 novel benefits enormously from his years as a medical student, and the believable, procedural detail that he brings to bear.
This is not to say that we don't get a fair helping of the "stuff" of science-fiction. There's plenty of futuristic (for 1971) hardware, a form of alien life (although unlike any seen in cinema before) and even a few lasers near the climax. But the meat of movie lies elsewhere, principally with the drama going on between our band of lab-coat technicians who are, uniquely for that most short-changed breed, real people. Complex, difficult, tired, argumentative, largely unattractive, and totally believable as they struggle to deal with the situation they have found themselves dumped in. Particularly wonderful is the sharp-tongued, dour-faced, chain-smoking researcher essayed by Kate Reid, who brings a much needed but entirely natural sardonic wit to the otherwise dry proceedings.
Also effective, and again reflecting the changing attitudes of its time, is the largely negative impression the movie gives of the politicians and military commanders on its periphery, who are either incompetent or untrustworthy to some degree. It's a common stance to a modern audience, but must have been pretty coruscating at the time and reflects a sense of malaise that feels very much appropriate to its era and yet still rings true today.
Marshalling the project is director Robert Wise, who has often been looked down upon somewhat as something of a journeyman, a studio man... or to put it harshly, as some would, a hack. Generally a director for hire, who rarely, if ever, autered personal projects, I suspect he'd have no problem with that description of him, but that should not lead us to underestimate his rare skill as a filmmaker. In a remarkably varied career that began in the 1930s as film editor on, amongst others, Citizen Cane no less, he has directed several stone cold classics, from The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951, and the only science-fiction to rise above the pulp b-movie nonsense of its day), West Side Story, The Haunting (1963, and still one of the most effectively chilling ghost stories ever filmed), and The Sound Of Music. Yes! Hate it all you like, the third most successful movie of all time. He was quite some hack then.
Nearly forty years into his career by this point, Wise brings a freshness and daring to the project. The visual look is bleak, almost documentary like. The research centre that the film spends most of its running time inside looks and feels wholly believable in spite of a fairly modest budget. He recruited FX guru Douglas Trumball, who had worked not long before on 2001, and together they ensured a rigorous authenticity in the design of the technology involved, such as the communication screens, which actually worked for real, rather than being post-production optical effects as would have been the norm for the day.
There are some remarkable visual flourishes. In particular the use of split screens (back in vogue recently with its (over)use in the series "24"), which, as well as adding to the documentary look, are deployed, quite unexpectedly, in dream sequences which are at once both stark and abstract and infinitely more authentic feeling than a thousand misty dissolves that had previously been the visual shorthand for almost as long as cinema itself. In a few seemingly effortless, but intellectually rigorous moves, Robert Wise showed just how effectively he could make a film absolutely modern in look and feel (at a time when a young, hungry breed of independent spirited filmmakers were turning the old Hollywood studio system on its head) , yet completely without drawing attention to itself.
It's not a perfect movie to be sure. The obsessive procedures used during the "descent" into the complex drag on rather too long, and the finale indulges itself the venerable cliché of a countdown race that was rather clearly signposted from the off. But despite these minor flaws, The Andromeda Strain delivers in bleak, taught tension with a satisfyingly paranoid atmosphere and effectively essays a disturbing vision of an all too plausible disaster scenario.
And so it was, that for a few brief years science-fiction cinema seemed to have grown up and come of age, matching the new grimy realism that pervaded so much American cinema of the time. That is until May 25th 1977 in a galaxy far, far away....
Rating: 4/5
For many people science-fiction is practically synonymous with fantasy, tales of romantic adventures in far off made-up places with silly sounding names. For some the genre is, uniquely, tied up with the hardware on-screen, requiring the presence of spaceships, robots or lasers to qualify for the breed at all. Go back to the 1950s and many people would be unable to distinguish it from horror. As the b-movie monster genre, which mashed up the pulpiest elements of both, was the dominant form.
All this changed in 1968, when the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey utterly rewrote the rules and presented, almost for the first time to a mainstream cinema audience, what was already well established in literature, that science-fiction is a genre of ideas. One of the cornerstones of proper science-fiction is simply to look at the world we inhabit from a new angle, and ask ourselves "what if?"
For a few brief years in the wake of that 1968 watershed, science-fiction (at its best) strove to match its literary counterparts, and asked big questions about the nature of existence, the future of humanity, and ruminated, usually pretty negatively, upon the big concerns of the day, of nuclear annihilation, of world overpopulation or the end of scant resources. Granted, not all of these were entirely successful, and many of the movies from that era are as bound to the post-Watergate and Vietnam sense of disillusionment and late-hippy, early-ecological social background of the day as those '50s monster pics were to the all-American apple pie family and red menace politics of their time.
But while the quality may have varied, what they usually shared in common was a gritty, downbeat style, mature writing with a believable and un-romanticised treatment of their subject, and a harsh, sometimes nihilistic world view. For the uninitiated, some better examples of the era, beyond that Kubrick masterpiece, include eco-parable Silent Running, THX-1138 (a kind of rewrite of 1984, and an astonishingly bleak work from one young George Lucas), Soylent Green, Solaris (the hard-work but rewarding Russian answer to 2001), a couple of classics in the form of A Clockwork Orange and Planet Of The Apes and, less well remembered now, but still very strong after all these years, The Andromeda Strain.
In a nutshell: A returning space probe crashes to Earth in modern-day America, leaving the population of a small town mysteriously wiped out. As the military prevaricate around how to act, it's up to a group of scientists, sequestered covertly to an underground bunker, to figure out the cause and avert a potential disaster.
The Andromeda Strain was the first filmed adaptation of a work by author Michael Crichton, later the creator of ER and author and/or screenwriter behind mainstream mega-hits of variable quality from Jurassic Park and Westworld to Congo and, ahem, Twister, and while he may have sullied his name somewhat with his more ludicrous later stories, this early work from his hit 1969 novel benefits enormously from his years as a medical student, and the believable, procedural detail that he brings to bear.
This is not to say that we don't get a fair helping of the "stuff" of science-fiction. There's plenty of futuristic (for 1971) hardware, a form of alien life (although unlike any seen in cinema before) and even a few lasers near the climax. But the meat of movie lies elsewhere, principally with the drama going on between our band of lab-coat technicians who are, uniquely for that most short-changed breed, real people. Complex, difficult, tired, argumentative, largely unattractive, and totally believable as they struggle to deal with the situation they have found themselves dumped in. Particularly wonderful is the sharp-tongued, dour-faced, chain-smoking researcher essayed by Kate Reid, who brings a much needed but entirely natural sardonic wit to the otherwise dry proceedings.
Also effective, and again reflecting the changing attitudes of its time, is the largely negative impression the movie gives of the politicians and military commanders on its periphery, who are either incompetent or untrustworthy to some degree. It's a common stance to a modern audience, but must have been pretty coruscating at the time and reflects a sense of malaise that feels very much appropriate to its era and yet still rings true today.
Marshalling the project is director Robert Wise, who has often been looked down upon somewhat as something of a journeyman, a studio man... or to put it harshly, as some would, a hack. Generally a director for hire, who rarely, if ever, autered personal projects, I suspect he'd have no problem with that description of him, but that should not lead us to underestimate his rare skill as a filmmaker. In a remarkably varied career that began in the 1930s as film editor on, amongst others, Citizen Cane no less, he has directed several stone cold classics, from The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951, and the only science-fiction to rise above the pulp b-movie nonsense of its day), West Side Story, The Haunting (1963, and still one of the most effectively chilling ghost stories ever filmed), and The Sound Of Music. Yes! Hate it all you like, the third most successful movie of all time. He was quite some hack then.
Nearly forty years into his career by this point, Wise brings a freshness and daring to the project. The visual look is bleak, almost documentary like. The research centre that the film spends most of its running time inside looks and feels wholly believable in spite of a fairly modest budget. He recruited FX guru Douglas Trumball, who had worked not long before on 2001, and together they ensured a rigorous authenticity in the design of the technology involved, such as the communication screens, which actually worked for real, rather than being post-production optical effects as would have been the norm for the day.
There are some remarkable visual flourishes. In particular the use of split screens (back in vogue recently with its (over)use in the series "24"), which, as well as adding to the documentary look, are deployed, quite unexpectedly, in dream sequences which are at once both stark and abstract and infinitely more authentic feeling than a thousand misty dissolves that had previously been the visual shorthand for almost as long as cinema itself. In a few seemingly effortless, but intellectually rigorous moves, Robert Wise showed just how effectively he could make a film absolutely modern in look and feel (at a time when a young, hungry breed of independent spirited filmmakers were turning the old Hollywood studio system on its head) , yet completely without drawing attention to itself.
It's not a perfect movie to be sure. The obsessive procedures used during the "descent" into the complex drag on rather too long, and the finale indulges itself the venerable cliché of a countdown race that was rather clearly signposted from the off. But despite these minor flaws, The Andromeda Strain delivers in bleak, taught tension with a satisfyingly paranoid atmosphere and effectively essays a disturbing vision of an all too plausible disaster scenario.
And so it was, that for a few brief years science-fiction cinema seemed to have grown up and come of age, matching the new grimy realism that pervaded so much American cinema of the time. That is until May 25th 1977 in a galaxy far, far away....
Rating: 4/5
Friday, 23 March 2012
The Hunger Games (2012)
Occupying the familiar milieu of one of science-fictions' most well worn conceits, the dystopian future society, in this case an impoverished set of states ruled over by a decadent totalitarian elite, teenager Katniss Everdeen hunts and scrapes to keep her family alive until fate forces her to volunteer as "tribute" for the annual Hunger Games, a form of brutal gladiatorial combat designed to keep the masses in their place. Twenty-four youngsters will enter but only one can come out alive.
With Harry Potter now done and dusted, and the finish line of Twilight just around the corner it's no surprise that studios have been hunting for the next big teen-lit franchise to bring to the screen, or that Suzanne Collins' mega-selling sci-fi adventure would be one of those in the frame. But in spite of the driving linear narrative, featuring plenty of set-piece thrills and a love-triangle backdrop, adapting The Hunger Games, with its sullen heroin, extensive internal monologue, bleak atmosphere and brutal violence, may not have been the safe bet one might assume, and director Gary Ross and colleagues have trodden a tricky balancing act to a surprisingly effective outcome.
Crucial to their success is Jennifer Lawrence; already a rising star after her Oscar-nominated performance in "Winter's Bone" and who, as Katniss, delivers just the right combination of introspection, steely determination and just a touch of vulnerability. But much credit too must be given to the support of Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks as her drunken mentor and absurdly coiffured escort respectively, both of whom carry roles that could easily have tipped into parody with much restraint. Indeed restraint could be the watchword for the whole production. On the page, the description of Capitol City's preening, rococo fashionistas seemed worryingly likely to translate to the screen with Fifth Element style campery. But this is kept firmly in check by an atmosphere of quietly unsettling disconnect from reality, always underplayed, and always taken seriously, underscoring the juxtaposition of the hollow, vacuous lives led by these privileged bourgeoisie against the spartan hand-to-mouth existence that is the only way of life our protagonist has ever known. Indeed these act-one sequences contain some of the film's best moments, effectively pulling the audience into Katniss' isolation and dreadful predicament with minimal fuss.
Once the games themselves kick into action, the need to achieve a target-audience friendly 12A rating does start to assert itself somewhat. The Hunger Games does not need graphic violence to deliver the thrills, but it does need things to become truly desperate, and in this regard the film seems to pull a few too many punches, with some deaths passing perhaps a touch inconsequentially, and little visible signs of the physical stresses of exposure, hunger and injury showing on the always clean and presentable contestants (or even evidence of stubble on the male team members after several days in the game). It's here also that the film makes its greatest departure from the book. Rightly judging the difficulty of relating some events via the first-person internal narrative of our heroine, fresh scenes are introduced depicting the power-brokers and puppeteers behind the games. It's a logical departure from the source structure that just occasionally falters by delivering a few ham-fisted Basil Exposition moments, but, by way of compensation, adds to the implicit parallels with modern-day TV and the trend towards ever more ghastly and extreme "reality" entertainment.
Much has been made of the similarity of Hunger Games' concept to that of "Battle Royale", and clearly a debt is owed. But while that Japanese subversive cult favourite is very explicitly an adult piece of satire that happens to feature school-kids bludgeoning each other to death, this is by intent a much more straight-ahead adventure, and the setting owes at least as much to the classic dystopian visions of "1984", particularly the impressively monumental authoritarian architecture. But as the downtrodden citizens watch on helplessly and those in charge manipulate the results for their own ends, I began to recall another movie that is perhaps the most interesting and unexpected antecedent: "The Truman Show", and like that brilliant work, The Hunger Games ends a touch ambiguously, leaving you with a lingering and disturbing question "would you watch too?".
With Harry Potter now done and dusted, and the finish line of Twilight just around the corner it's no surprise that studios have been hunting for the next big teen-lit franchise to bring to the screen, or that Suzanne Collins' mega-selling sci-fi adventure would be one of those in the frame. But in spite of the driving linear narrative, featuring plenty of set-piece thrills and a love-triangle backdrop, adapting The Hunger Games, with its sullen heroin, extensive internal monologue, bleak atmosphere and brutal violence, may not have been the safe bet one might assume, and director Gary Ross and colleagues have trodden a tricky balancing act to a surprisingly effective outcome.
Crucial to their success is Jennifer Lawrence; already a rising star after her Oscar-nominated performance in "Winter's Bone" and who, as Katniss, delivers just the right combination of introspection, steely determination and just a touch of vulnerability. But much credit too must be given to the support of Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks as her drunken mentor and absurdly coiffured escort respectively, both of whom carry roles that could easily have tipped into parody with much restraint. Indeed restraint could be the watchword for the whole production. On the page, the description of Capitol City's preening, rococo fashionistas seemed worryingly likely to translate to the screen with Fifth Element style campery. But this is kept firmly in check by an atmosphere of quietly unsettling disconnect from reality, always underplayed, and always taken seriously, underscoring the juxtaposition of the hollow, vacuous lives led by these privileged bourgeoisie against the spartan hand-to-mouth existence that is the only way of life our protagonist has ever known. Indeed these act-one sequences contain some of the film's best moments, effectively pulling the audience into Katniss' isolation and dreadful predicament with minimal fuss.
Once the games themselves kick into action, the need to achieve a target-audience friendly 12A rating does start to assert itself somewhat. The Hunger Games does not need graphic violence to deliver the thrills, but it does need things to become truly desperate, and in this regard the film seems to pull a few too many punches, with some deaths passing perhaps a touch inconsequentially, and little visible signs of the physical stresses of exposure, hunger and injury showing on the always clean and presentable contestants (or even evidence of stubble on the male team members after several days in the game). It's here also that the film makes its greatest departure from the book. Rightly judging the difficulty of relating some events via the first-person internal narrative of our heroine, fresh scenes are introduced depicting the power-brokers and puppeteers behind the games. It's a logical departure from the source structure that just occasionally falters by delivering a few ham-fisted Basil Exposition moments, but, by way of compensation, adds to the implicit parallels with modern-day TV and the trend towards ever more ghastly and extreme "reality" entertainment.
Much has been made of the similarity of Hunger Games' concept to that of "Battle Royale", and clearly a debt is owed. But while that Japanese subversive cult favourite is very explicitly an adult piece of satire that happens to feature school-kids bludgeoning each other to death, this is by intent a much more straight-ahead adventure, and the setting owes at least as much to the classic dystopian visions of "1984", particularly the impressively monumental authoritarian architecture. But as the downtrodden citizens watch on helplessly and those in charge manipulate the results for their own ends, I began to recall another movie that is perhaps the most interesting and unexpected antecedent: "The Truman Show", and like that brilliant work, The Hunger Games ends a touch ambiguously, leaving you with a lingering and disturbing question "would you watch too?".
Rating: 4/5
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