The Rhythm Section Cert: 15 / 109 mins / Dir. Reed Morano / Trailer
From time to time, dear reader, even I of all people look at the headlining cast of an otherwise nondescript movie and think 'well this must have something going for it if [INSERT NAME OF PROMINENT PERFORMER]is in it'. And from time to time, I shuffle out of the cinema shortly afterward thinking '...yeah that was just to keep the mortgage ticking over between bigger films, wasn't it?
And so to London (and New York, Madrid, Marseilles and a whole host of easily captionable locations) as Blake Lively plays Stephanie, a woman embroiled in addiction and squalor, struggling to come to terms with her family being killed in a plane crash three years earlier. When she's visited by journalist Proctor (Raza Jaffrey) revealing that the crash was actually a terrorist bombing that was subsequently covered up by the authorities, the chain of intrigue leads to the glens of Inverness where Stephanie finds herself training to be an assassin under the enigmatic but harsh 'B' (Jude Law). The hopes are that revenge and closure will be in the same package, as Stephanie embarks on a world tour of 'cleaning house'...
MUTED John Wick, it is not. Adapted for the screen by Mark Burnell from his novel of the same name, The Rhythm Section is a muted take on the contemporary spy-thriller. At first the setup and exposition feels efficient if unambitious, but the visual and scripted shorthand continues into the main narrative and comes off as a bit overcooked. On one hand, there's the feeling that this story might have just worked better on the page. But on the other, there are even more interchangably-glum novels like this than there are movies, so who knows where the quality-bar really falls?
Blake Lively does quite well from it all*1, although with a storyline as procedural as this it often feels like she's over-acting. Speaking of such matters, I dread to think how much weight Jude Law gained over the shoot, what with the amount of scenery he chews through. Everyone else turns up and says their lines on time, including a criminally under-used Sterling K. Brown. This isn't particularly inspired casting, but then it's not a particularly inspired story.
SUBTITLED The film always feels like it's about to get started. There are a few long-take action sequences which are interesting from a film-making point of view, but Atomic Blonde had those and was also fun. This isn't bad, it just isn't memorable. With Bond-meisters Eon Productions' name attached, you may well expect better, but ultimately, putting The Rhythm Section out two months before their own No Time To Die seems like a colossal waste of resources.
Best line comes from Jude Law's 'B' during the training section:
"It's not a tragedy, it's a cliché. You're a cliché, you haven't got what it takes."
*1 Although on a minor note, Lively's accent can never quite decide if if wants to hail from South London or the Home Counties. I mean I've certainly heard a lot worse from other performers (not least Law himself), but you know that I wouldn't be able to not bring this up. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Bad Boys For Life Cert: 15 / 124 mins / Dir. Bilall Fallah & Adil El Arbi / Trailer Mea culpa. When I intimated that Michael Winterbottom's Greed was the most self-indulgent mess to land in cinemas for some time, I hadn't considered Bad Boys For Life playing in the screen next door. Coming slightly late to this party, I find myself relieved that at least I didn't rush.
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence bellow their way through a script comprising almost entirely of short words and written by an excitable fifteen yr-old, where exposition and lensflare play such prominent roles that their names should really be on the poster. This tale of retirement, revenge and relentless slow-motion would be incoherent if it wasn't so painfully linear. It plays like a contractual obligation sequel, except that wouldn't explain the seventeen year gap between installments.
But this isn't your standard 'grumpy old men wink into the camera while making jokes about having a bad hip' jaunt (although it is that, too). Oh no my friend, this film's got a USB drive in it while Uber and 4Chan get verbally name-checked, so you know this is for The Kids. It's not so much a callback to the glory days of the action genre, more a cobbled together greatest hits reel of explosions, gunfire and everyone in the cast getting a turn to go wide-eyed and shout "Oh hell no!".
The film settles down a bit after an hour or so, but only in the way that you know by then it's going to be around half an hour too long. Bad Boys For Lite feels like getting the band back together purely to jam old songs in the garage. Great if you're in the band, not so much for everyone expecting to see a show. And I must confess that I'm not a connoisseur of Mr Martin Lawrence's screen work, but his underperforming here makes Will Smith seem sincere. Lawrence looks like he's having a stroke for a lot of the movie, is that normal?
In the film's favour, I can at least say that:
✔ It's brightly coloured
✔ It's energetic
✔ Somebody gets killed with a forklift
I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy Bad Boys For Life, and good for them. In my defence I missed about a third of the movie because I was rolling my eyes so hard all I could see was the inside of my head.
Judging by the way the film fetishises it own franchise, I imagine it's very similar to the first two Bad Boys outings*1.
For a lot of people, apparently so.
Nope.
Nope.
Yep.
I have no idea.
The last forty minutes of the movie is basically a blanket of white noise.
Level 2: Will Smith is in this, and he was in that Collateral Beauty with Keira 'Sabé' Knightley.
*1 For clarity, I have actually seen the first two movies in this series around their time of original release, and I remember literally nothing about them. Under the normal run of things I'd have had a refresher evening before going to see this third installment, but in all honesty I suspect that would have just put me off the prospect altogether. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (tenth-pass)
Cert: 12A / 142 mins / Dir. J.J. Abrams / Trailer Previous reviews:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
So Finn is a Jedi, now. Okay that's not strictly true, Finn is Force-sensitive, now. Or rather he always was, a bit. It's the thing he was trying to tell Rey for the whole of The Rise Of Skywalker. And that's fine. It's great, even. We've known since 1977 that this mysterious essence exists in all living things, indeed it's created by them. And Finn is a living thing. We just know that some beings are more adept at tuning into it. And those beings are typically Jedi, whereas Finn was a conscripted Stormtrooper.
But there's nothing precluding him from having a high midichlorian-count, of course*1. With the best will in the world, Palpatine and Vader wiping out the Jedi over fifty years earlier was never going to prevent new ones from being born. Force powers are inheritable, but mini-Jedi are born to non-Force-sensitive parents all the time. It's why the Jedi Order had a reputation for being child-snatchers, that wouldn't have spread if the only new Jedi were born in the temple, somehow to a largely celibate order.
FLAG
But speaking of abduction, why didn't the First Order flag Finn as one to watch? You'd expect them to have some screening equipment in place for the kids they recruit, at least. Based on the Empire-model, the organisation would either quietly dispose of potential Force-wielders or move them across to the Inquisitor-corps and make use of the bonus abilities. Who needs a bunch of fire-starting five yr-olds running around the place?
Let's not forget that Finn wielded a lightsaber on his character-poster for The Force Awakens, something we assumed at the time was related to him holding his own against Kylo Ren on Ilum (well, for longer than most would be expected to anyway). But Finn's power is demonstrably much lower on the scale than Rey's, and without any formal training. TRoS is the movie, after all, where he sees his friend using the Force for healing and suggestion, not just combat and telekinesis. While he's in awe of Rey's abilities, it's more a quiet reverence and a niggle of familiarity. Now that Finn's aware of the Force tingling within himself, it's growing every day.
BETTY So it's not beyond the realms of plausibility for one of the Sequel Trilogy's new heroes to find himself coming to the Jedi party a little later. But then, the film seems to suggest that newcomer Janna might be Force-sensitive, too. And the entire squadron she deserted with on Kef Bir. Although in my own personal head-canon, I think that where Finn describes the Force to her as "a feeling", Janna's agreement may be closer to "a conscience". Because unless they were a special project put together by the First Order and hadn't begun their Sith-intern training, the implication there is that anyone can be a Jedi.
And while that's charming in the same way as everyone running a race getting their own medal, the knock-on effect of that optimism is that Anakin, Luke and Rey Skywalker aren't particularly special by virtue of their bloodlines or abilities, only their choices (there is a separate post to be written about the importance of choice, though). The whole narrative of The Chosen One is pretty much diluted when anyone could have trained and become powerful enough to take down Vader and the Emperor, they just didn't, or didn't want to.
We can all be heroes without the Force, that's what Han Solo is there to show.
But I'm very cool with Finn being a Jedi-in-training. Much like Rey building her own orange-bladed lightsaber, it's another foundation laid for future adventures, be they on the screen or the page.
And apart from anything else, Broom Boy is going to need a sparring-partner...
The Star Wars.
Obvs.
Obvs.
That one's up for debate, but probably not.
Try me.
Not that I can tell.
Level 0: It is Star Wars.
...but if you wanted to go around the houses with it, The Rise Of Skywalker features Lupita Nyong'o, who starred in Black Panther alongside Forest Whitaker from Taken 3 which had Liam Neeson in it. Neeson was also in The Commuter with Andy Nyman, who starred in 2000's Dead Babies next to Paul Bettany, who was of course in Wimbledon with Jon Favreau, the director and voice-artist behind 2016's The Jungle Book which starred... Lupita Nyong'o.
*1 Hahahaah, oh yes I went there. FIGHT ME. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (ninth-pass)
Cert: 12A / 142 mins / Dir. J.J. Abrams / Trailer Previous reviews:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Okay, just a quick jaunt this late in The Rise Of Skywalker's cinematic run to lay some appreciation out for the magnificent Anthony Daniels, the man behind (inside) the golden droid that is See-Threepio.
The character (indeed, the actor) had little more than an incidental role in The Force Awakens and The Rise Of Skywalker, lighting up each of his scenes but coming off as feeling a little shortchanged given the character's previous importance. Daniels has been in this from the very start, of course, braving the heat of the Tunisian sun for Tatooine back in '75. The movies may be labelled The Skywalker Saga, but C-3PO essentially is Star Wars. Certainly a core part of what makes it special.
His was the first line of dialogue in the (release order) story, and Threepio reprises those four words as his last in Episode IX. Okay, this isn't as cool as the circularity of Revenge Of The Sith's Tantive IV callback, but given that LFL later decided the Episode III blockade runner was in fact The Sundered Heart instead, that particular Easter egg has already been retconned into insignificance*1.
But C-3PO turns out to be the most pivotal droid in The Rise Of Skywalker, even upstaging BB-8 in his usefulness (quite the achievement in this trilogy). What's more, he gets many of the film's funniest lines and corny as they may be, the droid's humour is always on-brand*2. He has an endearing lack of self-awareness for one with so much external knowledge, which speaks to anyone who's ever tried to fit in despite being a smartarse.
Threepio's screen-time is still relatively short in Episode IX of course, but the droid that shines twice as bright translates half as long. There'll be more adventures with goldenrod in one form or another, as hinted at by Daniels himself recently. Part of Star Wars' specific charm is its non-linear approach to storytelling across different media, and there's only one guy who can do the voice, the movement, the essence.
So.
Where the hell is my 3¾" red-eyed C-3PO, Hasbro?
The Star Wars.
Obvs.
Obvs.
That one's up for debate, but probably not.
Try me.
Not that I can tell.
Level 0: It is Star Wars.
...but if you wanted to go around the houses with it, The Rise Of Skywalker stars Anthony Daniels, who was in the 'Best Years Of Your Death' episode of Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) with Tom Baker, one of the many Doctors in 2013's 'Day Of The Doctor' special of Doctor Who next to David Tennant, who appears in Good Omens alongside Daniel Mays, who was in The Infiltrator which also featured Jason Isaacs from A Cure For Wellness, a film that had Celia Imrie in it from out of 1990's The World Of Eddie Weary which also starred... Anthony Daniels.
*2 Hey, I'm a massive fan of Attack Of The Clones and even I can't forgive the "this is such a drag" line. Not least because the "I'm quite beside myself" is superb. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
From time to time, dear reader, even I of all people look at the headlining cast of an otherwise nondescript movie and think 'well this must have something going for it if [INSERT NAME OF PROMINENT PERFORMER] is in it'. And from time to time, I shuffle out of the cinema shortly afterward thinking '...yeah that was just to keep the mortgage ticking over between bigger films, wasn't it?
Mea culpa. When I intimated that Michael Winterbottom's Greed was 
So Finn is a Jedi, now. Okay that's not strictly true, Finn is Force-sensitive, now. Or rather he always was, a bit. It's the thing he was t
Okay, just a quick jaunt this late in The Rise Of Skywalker's cinematic run to lay some appreciation out for the magnificent Anthony Daniels, the man behind (inside) the golden droid that is See-Threepio.