The Raid 2 (2014)

The Raid 2: A Review:

10: PRINT "pain"
20: GOTO 10
RUN

Rating: 3/5

How to fail an Audition.

Sigh. Another week, another terrible money-grabbing pointless remake idea, signalling another impending case of forever more having to say, in place of "Have you seen Audition? It's really smart / interesting / moving / terrifying (delete as applicable)" saying instead "Have you seen Audition? No not that steaming pile of inept, derivative flatulence directed by Brett Ratner / Eli Roth / Rob Zombie (delete as... on second thoughts, just delete all)".

Audition Remake Planned (Empire Online).

I've ranted written at some length previously about my issues regarding remakes, especially of non-English language movies. You can find that article here.

Apocalypse Now... and Again.

Great news. Pacific Rim 2 is confirmed. Reports of it being made according to Dogme 95 rules still TBC.

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

Not One For All After All

Three episodes in, and I'm calling it quits with the BBC's new Musketeers adaptation. It's not without some redeeming charms, but overall, such a mess. Uneven performances, anachronistic script, toe-curlingly melodramatic and stylistically all over the place with so many jarring tonal shifts that it feels like the assembled work of six different student directors who weren't allowed to speak to each other. After careful consideration I think I will return to an adaptation featuring far more engaging and relatable characters, and a clear, well-structured through-line of narrative purpose that best honours the source material. Namely this one:

Oh Captain My Captain

Proving why Captain Phillips, ahem, ruled the waves in 2013.
(click for a more detailed view)

My Top Five Feature Documentaries Of 2013

There were a lot of great feature-length documentary releases this year, so much so, that I've decided to indulge them their own top five.


5: Side By Side: Basically a series of one-on-one interviews in which host Keanu Reeves, yes, KEANU REEVES, discusses with a range of directors, cinematographers, editors and archivists, the digital revolution sweeping cinema, and its effect on the past, present, and future of film-making. Genuinely engrossing stuff if you are interested in cinema, probably not otherwise, but then, why are you reading this again?

4: How To Survive A Plague: Charting, mostly through archive amateur footage, the fight undertaken by the gay community in America through the 1980s and 1990s to have AIDS research, funding and medicine approval taken more seriously and more swiftly, in the face of apathy, confusion and downright hate from the establishment. It should be (and at times is) heartbreaking, but more often, it is utterly uplifting and transcendent. A paean to human dignity and solidarity.

3: Blackfish: Starting out from one particular case but soon unfolding into a litany of poor practice, dreadful incidents and shady cover-ups, this is a shocking exploration of the appalling conditions suffered by, and danger from, killer whales kept in captivity for our amusement. If you see one documentary about our hideous mistreatment of marine Cetaceans, well to be honest, see The Cove. Whereas if you see one documentary about deluded humans thinking they have some sort of intellectual-spiritual bond with deadly predators then, well ok, see Grizzly Man. But if you can stretch to two of either category, and you should, then Blackfish is a worthy companion piece to either. I guarantee you will never set foot inside a SeaWorld again.

2: Fire In The Night: The story, or rather the experience, of the Piper Alpha oil platform disaster of 1988. An unfussy documentary told  from the personal recollections of the survivors. Mostly talking heads intercut with the terrifying real footage captured of the event. Simply devastating.

1: The Act Of Killing: A documentary maker travels to Indonesia to meet a group of elderly gangsters who tortured and murdered hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent people during the death-squad anti-communist purges in the 1960s. He then invites them to go beyond telling the stories of their atrocities, but to actually re-enact them for the cameras as movies in the style of their choosing. Grim, dumbfounding, and at times surreal almost beyond comprehension.

My Top Ten Feature Films Of 2013

At first glance, 2013 didn't seem like much of a vintage year of quality cinema for me, with quite a few disappointments in the event movie calendar. But on reflection there have been some hidden gems and a couple of guilty pleasures along with the few really high achievers. So, never one to knowingly leave a bunch of random thoughts unlisted, here's my personal top ten movies of 2013.*


10: Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa: Excruciating, absurd and eye-wateringly hysterical. The Roachford mime-along is a thing of sublime beauty.

9: Pacific Rim: Is this the dumbest awesome movie ever made, or the awesomest dumb movie ever made? And if a hundred meter tall robot beats the shit out of a three-thousand ton monster using a ship as a club and there is no-one there to hear it, does it make a sound? YES. A FUCKING LOUD ONE!

8: All Is Lost: Absolutely the year's best lone-survivor-marooned-thousands-of-miles-from-help-with-ship-disintegrating-around-them drama.... that didn't star Sandra Bullock.

7: Zero Dark Thirty: NOT a defence of torture or America's foreign policy, but simply a rigorous, nail-biting and thrilling retelling of the shit that went down in the USA's hunt for its most-wanted, and a portrait of the tough and resourceful woman at the eye of that particular storm.

6: The Kings Of Summer: 2013's breakout hit that never was. Great early whispers and then... nothing. Three boys take off and build a home in the woods to live as they please... for a while. An inspired mix of Lord Of The Flies, Stand By Me and even Son Of Rambow, this is a breezy, raw and refreshing tale of friendship and all that growing-up stuff. Seek it out.

5: A Hijacking (Kapringen): The year's OTHER hijacking movie, and a fictional tale that plays even more documentary-like than the true-story of Captain Phillips. Alternating between a long drawn-out siege on board ship, and the strained, claustrophobic negotiations on land. This Danish drama takes its time, and carefully underplays the melodrama, to eventually devastating effect.

4: Blue Is The Warmest Colour (La vie d'Adèle): Yes, it's that briefly notorious Cannes winner. You know, the three-hour French drama with all the explicit lesbian nookie? Well, it's beautiful, heartfelt, totally consuming and propelled by a staggeringly open and mature emotional performance from its young, brilliant lead actress. Spellbinding.

3: Captain Phillips: Back to sea for the third time in this top ten. A massive ship, some pirates, immense tension, brilliantly orchestrated action, and two leads, one a total newcomer, one absolute Hollywood royalty, who push each other to remarkable performances. The final scene from Hanks might be the best acting moment of the year (apart from the whole of Lincoln, which I'm discounting as it was clearly, actually Lincoln).

2: The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug: Bigger, Faster, Funnier, Scarier. It may still be a bloated behemoth, groaning under the weight of all the myriad ideas that Jackson and his team can throw at it. But this time, directed, or perhaps more confidently edited, with a bravura, joyous, kinetic abandon.  Almost as good as Lord Of The Rings, more fun than almost anything else all year.

1: Gravity: A simple, lone-survival adventure, pared to the barest bones for maximum edge-of-the-seat thrills, and then wrapped up in a quantum-leap of visual FX, sound-design and 3D perfection for ninety minutes of jaw-on-the-floor astoundment.


(*NB: based on 2013 UK general releases as best as I can ascertain, and not including feature documentaries, which I suspect I may tackle separately, in fact, I just have done)


Special Achievement (or Underachievement) Awards:


1: Funniest Scene Of The Year: Iron Man Three - Questioning The Mandarin: This movie was pushed a little outside my top ten as I found the final act rather uninspired. But for all the time that Tony Stark was kept out of the suit, Shane Black's wisecracking script, married to RDJ's hyperactive motor-mouth was a joy to behold, and nowhere more so than in this scene where Sir Ben's agenda is revealed.

2: Worst Geography: Thor: The Dark World: Yes, fine, I can buy a couple of jet fighters over London being sucked through a wormhole into Svartálfaheimr, the underworld realm of the dark elves, that's just dandy. But you CAN NOT get from Charing Cross to Greenwich in three stops on the underground, NO NO NO. back to school the lot of you.

3: Most Honourable Failure: Cloud Atlas: (sigh) Multi-stranded, epoch straddling metaphysical ambition. A magnificent, touching performance from Ben Wishaw, beguiling otherworldly sweetness from Doona Bae, stunning future-Seoul visuals and the best orchestral score of the year by a mile. But then there's Tom Hanks geezering up a role that Danny Dyer could actually have played better! Tons of absurd makeup, Hugo Weaving cross-dressing (and not in a Priscilla Queen Of The Desert good way), the least convincing Scottish bar in film history, and The Mighty Boosh seemingly called in to act out all the post apocalyptic stuff. Honestly, I suspect I will go to my grave TRYING to love this film.

4: Biggest Disappointment Of The Year: Man Of Steel: Let me be clear, I am not saying that this is the worst film of the year. Far from it. But when it comes to hope vs. reality, nothing let me down this year more than Man Of Steel. It breaks down like this. Act One: Magnificent. All the stuff on Krypton is beautiful, mythic, and set up Superman's origin and back-story better than any previous iteration. So far, very impressive. Act Two: Perfectly solid. The young Clark Kent growing up and learning life-lessons in his blue-jean middle-America adoptive life is gently paced and decently acted. However it just isn't as rich and heartfelt as the exact same take on the story delivered in 1978. Act Three: Awful. An endless, repetitive destructathon that sorely undermines Superman's essential charm and character by having him utterly ignore the thousands that must be dying as half a city is flattened, and it just keeps pummelling away till numbness takes over. This might have been mitigated if the movie had any sense of fun about it, but, save for one solitary visual gag, Man Of Steel is quite the most dour Superhero movie I have ever seen. The Dark Knight is a natural fit for conflicted sour-faced moodiness, Kal-El however is not, and I just needed him, and the writers to lighten up once in a while. Pacific Rim is probably a dumber movie, but it's ten times more fun.

5: The What-The-Hell-Did-I-Just-Watch? Mindfuck Of The Year Award: A Field In England: A film I actually really liked, but I will never, ever, be able to explain why.

47 Ronin (2013)

A dopey but passably diverting fantasy take on a genuine event in Japanese feudal history. The story of the 47 Ronin who avenge the honour-induced suicide of their former lord is widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent examples of Bushido (the samurai code of chivalric values) in Japanese history and has passed, somewhat embellished, into a wide range of literature and arts, having been filmed at least six times before. But I'll wager none of those versions included a shape-shifting witch-dragon lady.

In this first (and probably last) Hollywood stab at the tale, Keanu Reeves comes billed as the star of the piece playing an outcast half-breed which is one of the many inventions added to this version of the tale and most likely intended as a familiarisation waypoint for western audiences. Stoic and ultra-serious he's not actually too bad, but neither the role as written, nor the screen time really allow him to make much of an impact. Thank goodness then for Hiroyuki Sanada as the ronin leader Oishi. One of the just about every well-known English-speaking Japanese actors that have been harvested for this production, he shoulders the bulk of the drama with capable authority, and along with Rinko Kikuchi's deliriously absurd wicked witch, ensures that at least a few engaging characters emerge from the CGI hailstorm.

Relatively unknown director Carl Rinsch struggles to marry the serious tone of the human drama to the Tolkien-esque fantasy romping, and as such the film lurches around, uncertain of what it wants to be. That said, some individual scenes are impressive, he and his DP have clearly spent a productive afternoon watching late-period Kurosawa and the courtly and battlefield scenes have a beautiful, symmetrical formality to them.

Not the disaster that the initial critical drubbing might suggest, this is no worse than most of the Narnia movies, or second-tier Wuxia fantasy such as Reign of Assassins, but then outside of Japan it doesn't have the franchise brand selling power of the former, and the latter sure didn't cost 175 million dollars to make. Ouch.

Rating: 3/5

The Act Of Killing (2013)

A documentary maker travels to Indonesia to meet a group of elderly men who led some of the notorious death-squad anti-communist purges in the 1960s. They were once small-time gangsters, who took advantage of the corrupt regime following a failed coup and became terrifying warlords; extorting from, raping or brutally murdering thousands. They have never been held accountable, and what is more, as the documentary progresses it becomes clear that they are minor celebrities still, admired seemingly by some, evidently feared by many others, and utterly brazen in their boasting of what they did.

Co-director Joshua Oppenheimer invites them to go beyond telling the stories of their atrocities, but to actually re-enact them for the cameras as mini-movies in the style of their choosing. An idea to which these elderly monsters, deluded by their own distorted egos and immunity from prosecution for their crimes, eagerly take. What then follows is simultaneously terrifying and absurd beyond belief as they rally locals as extras, and get into the mechanics of script meetings, location scouting, and marshaling the required production forces, while practicing their best strangulation and torture techniques on each other. One later proudly shows off the raw footage to his young grandchildren. Another, perhaps gradually and dimly comprehending the horrors he perpetrated for the first time, cuts a pathetic, tragic figure, literally chocking on the evil that is consuming him from within. I doubt there was a more astonishing image in cinema all year than that of a vile, bloated, real-life mass-murderer, cross-dressed in a gaudy pink ball-gown, swaying in front of a waterfall as he serenades a chorus-line of his departed victims spirits into the afterlife.

The fear and repression that infests the country still is no better illustrated than when the credits roll. The mostly Danish production team are naturally listed openly, while practically all the locally recruited crew simply scroll by as "anonymous", "anonymous", "anonymous"....

Rating: 5/5

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug (2013)

This year's biggest (literally) pleasant surprise. After the long, slow start to chapter one had dampened the ardour of many a Middle Earth fan, I had more modest hopes for what could be achieved eking out yet another three hour behemoth from the middle chapters of Tolkien's modest children's tale and Peter Jackson has exceeded every one magnificently. Bold, energetic, funny, frightening, tense, and immensely spectacular. The clear aim now is to take The Hobbit as a skeleton structure that will be fleshed with all the immense back-story, parallel tales and grim foreshadowing of what is to come that it can withstand. It's a brave, and somewhat indulgent move, but it's coming together here with a bravura confidence that was sometimes lacking from part one. This is now just a dwarf's whisker from Lord Of The Rings greatness.

Rating: 5/5

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

Missing a Mega-Trick.

Dear Asylum Studios: Where is your Christmas movie huh? I want Mega-Santa vs. Giant-Snowman and I want it now. Come on guys, it's 4 days till Christmas, that's at least a 200% increase over the production schedule lavished on any of your previous output so this should present no problems. Oh and Debbie Gibson can play the elves... All of them.

No (2012)

...maybe.

Rating: 3/5

On the matter of The Middle Earth Taxi Service

Time and again the main "plot hole" flaw that I have heard levelled against, first The Lord Of The Rings, and now also The Hobbit, is why the Eagles, those fierce and inscrutable creatures of Middle Earth, didn't conveniently take Gandalf and his Company to exactly where they wanted to go? Meanwhile in real life, thousands of people every day board Ryanair flights...

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

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

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

Picking up some months after the events of the first movie; Catching Fire finds our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, back in her home district and re-kindling, perhaps, her nascent romance with Gale (who was somewhat pushed to the sidelines of the first instalment) while struggling to walk a fine line of conformity and performance in her new, dangerously high-profile existence.

Incoming helmer Francis Lawrence, with relatively little big-budget movie experience, directs with a steady hand, keeping the look and tone consistent with the first movie. The opening act here is particularly strong, laced with political manoeuvring, surreptitiously tightening the screws and gently deepening even some of the more seemingly garish characters (the delirious Effie Trinket is particularly well-served this time round). This slow-burning first-half also allows Jennifer Lawrence, once again, to remind us all why she is one of the finest upcoming young actors of her generation, delivering duct-troubling eulogies from even the most threadbare material.

Things do however take a minor turn for the ho-hum once the new games get underway. Co-champion Peeta gets less to do this time and mostly just follows in Katniss's footsteps, which is a shame after his stronger showing the first time around and further undermines the love-triangle backdrop theoretically still being toyed with. More problematic though is the amount of repetition and familiarity, with many of the same beats being played as we experienced in the previous competition. For a near two-and-a-half hour movie, Catching Fire rather struggles to do what it says on the tin, taking rather too long to find its way out of the pitfalls of having to play out another set of games with a more-or-less matching dramatic arc to the first. Until, when finally the first really startling new development hits.... the credits role.

Reputation has it that the third and final book (being adapted, a-la Harry Potter, into two upcoming movies) is the weakest of the three, and so, while this central episode is a mostly solid outing that doesn't significantly squander the good work done by the first, it is nonetheless something of a concern then that it does have a touch of a holding pattern about it, teasing us that all the real fireworks are being held back till next year.

Rating: 3/5

The Crazies (2010)

Immediate full disclosure: I have not seen the 1973 version, considered, I understand, to be something of a cult classic. But this remake, co-written and exec. produced by the originals' director, and zombie supremo, George A. Romero, is a bland and lacklustre b-movie which is unlikely to be remembered by anyone for long.

In one of those friendly neighbourhood mid-west hicksville towns, locals start acting all strange and a bit zombie-like. Some people mutter something about mysterious military activity, good sheriff Timothy Olyphant does a fine Clint Eastwood pose on a deserted main street, and the local dodgy mayor gives a speech about water supplies that simply exchanges "Ogden Marsh" for "Amity" and "crops" for "summer dollars".

At best, a just barely competent, run-of-the-mill chiller, The Crazies is wholly underwhelming. Clichéd, derivative, dumb, and most damningly, NOT even slightly scary.

Rating: 2/5

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