IT: Chapter Two (SPOILERS. NO REALLY, DESCRIPTIVE SPOILERS.)
Cert: 15 / 169 mins / Dir. Andy Muschietti / Trailer
And so, two years on from the beginning of Andy Muschietti's re-adaptation of Stephen King's clownathon, we skip forward 27 years from the original 1989 setting*1. While most of the Losers' Club members moved away from Derry long ago, Mike remains in the town. Over the intervening years, he's become obsessed with the legend of Pennywise the clown and the raft of child murders associated with his appearances. Now that strange occurrences are beginning again as predicted, Mike gets in touch with his old comrades. They made an oath to destroy the creature should it return, and their time is approaching...
THINGS And it works. Largely. Despite the things I'm about to go on and list. It's not always a smooth ride and certainly not a short one, but despite my misgivings this is certainly a counterpart to Chapter One and a proud sibling to that film. While there are pacing issues in the second act, the movie never drags and never feels too long. The casting is strong*2 and it's paid off as the generational links between protagonists is near seamless, with all of the players taking things seriously enough to paper over any small cracks. Bearing in mind that I'm probably not the target audience for this, It: Chapter Two has many things working in its favour.
But rarely before have two halves of the same story felt so strongly interactive, yet like completely separate entities. It's all sourced from Stephen King's original work*3 obviously and Andy Muschietti returns to direct, but whereas Gary Dauberman was one of three credited screenplay writers for Chapter One, here he shoulders that burden alone. And it is something of a burden. While the sequel is definitely a worthy continuation of the Losers' Club story, this feels like it's abandoned a lot of what made the first entry solid, rather than building upon it. We're in more contemporary 'jump-scare and nightmare-logic' territory this time, at the cost of Chapter One's charm and focus.
TIDES By its very definition this isn't a tween adventure. The film, like its central characters, is now more jaded - more cynical. Also like the characters, it seems to have forgotten what held the first movie together. Namely, the clown. Pennywise is almost relegated to a footnote in his own story while we spend time with the grown-up-gang. And that would be fine if the screenplay explored their re-bonding after so many years apart, but what we get instead is a reunion meal, then them literally being sent off on their own for a series of micro-adventures, which by necessity do not involve the fellow club-members.
It's at this point where the movie really begins to sag with the heavy use of interwoven flashbacks*4. These utilise the cast from the first movie (which is great, obviously), and while some have been filmed at the time of Chapter One's production, others have clearly been shot late in the production cycle of the sequel, since the kids have really, noticeably aged. As Muschietti has no doubt learned, you get a narrow production-window with a cast that young so use it wisely (it's all very well going 'yeah, this bit is like a hallucination not a memory', but young Ben there looks like he needs to leave the set and have a shave).
THIEVES As much as IT buzzes along at a gamely rate, the movie is plagued with inconsistencies. The line between reality and illusion isn't just blurred, it's actively ignored. Young Henry Bowers was incarcerated in a psychiatric institution after the events of the first movie, and is now being haunted by his deceased teenage cohort Patrick. Zombie Patrick appears like a figment of the imagination, yet has physical agency in the real world. Then we see Zombie Patrick literally driving a car to break Henry out of jail. Henry continues his reign of psychotic terror, unsure in his own mind exactly what's real anyway. This in itself is arguably a more interesting story than the return of the clown. And then we don't see Zombie Patrick again, as if he'd always just been a manifestation of Henry's mind. But can a manifestation cut a five-foot slit up a chain-link fence? Don't worry about that, it won't be explained*5.
What's more worrying is a running joke established in the first act, that Georgie's older brother Bill has now become a writer of horror fiction and the endings of his books and screenplays are consistently bad. At first this seems like a self-effacing gag on the part of Gary Dauberman or Stephen King. Then around the third or fourth time they make this crack, the feeling arises it this may in fact be a pre-emptive apology for the film the audience is watching. A sort of 'guys, don't say we didn't warn you'. The finale, when it arrives, is more a series of interlinking callbacks designed to produce short-term nostalgia, but that actually make little sense within the context of the story*6.
RIVILLIGE GOLFAREN And so we arrive back at the sewer for the climactic showdown. How is the Losers' Club going to defeat this malevolent force*7 which has been terrifying the town for centuries? That's right, they bully it to death! YAY! With a steadfast 'you're not going to push us around any more', a gang of kids who first met through being picked on by their peers, families and townsfolk - the gang of kids whose collective power should by all rights be unity and compassion - decide to back the creature into a corner and literally shout belittling abuse at it until the thing withers to almost nothing. At this point they step up to physical harm by removing its heart and crushing it to a pulp. The underdogs become the oppressors in a tale as old as time, having finally tasted for themselves the intoxicating liquor of power.
I'm not sure if that's supposed to be the moral of more than five hours of cinematic run-time, but fair play to Dauberman/King for the unflinching realism...
Either that or we'll enthusiastically agree at-length.
There isn't.
Level 1: The voice of BB-8 is in this, and he makes a Jabba The Hutt reference.
Because with the best will in the world, I don't think this is as strong as Chapter One. And while I know every movie has to stand on its own merits, it'd be a bit odd if a viewer didn't compare this to its immediate predecessor...
*1 No, really though. If the child disappearances of IT move forward in 27-year cycles and if Chapter One takes place in 1989, why are we getting this movie in 2019 and not 2016? We didn't even get the opening-half in 2016. How is this brand-synergy? Who's in charge over there? [ BACK ]
*2 Now my first reaction on seeing the full trailer for Chapter Two was 'Wow, James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain? That is some fucking casting!' Then I remembered that both of those were happy to turn up in the execrable Dark Phoenix earlier this year, and that was that little flame of excitement firmly quenched... [ BACK ]
*3 And I know that King has a longstanding tradition of making cameo appearances in screen adaptations of his work, but the five-minute turn he puts in here is bordering on M. Knight Shyamalan levels of 'okay please stop talking now and cut to the next scene thank you very much'. Christ on a bike... [ BACK ]
*4 Wait, when the fuck did this 'underground clubhouse' thing happen?? The gang got together when the clown-shit was beginning to escalate in 1989, and Beverly left town the day after it was over. When did they all have the time to hang around in Ben's woodland bunker (y'know, like a secret, isolated underground location is a sensible place to go when you're being group-stalked by a magical force who can appear fucking anywhere)? You were doing this for weeks during the Summer of 1989 and didn't think to even mention that during the story which took place in the Summer of 1989? Okay mate, okay... [ BACK ]
*5 Typical exchange:
"Right, you can't bail because we need all of us to perform the ritual to destroy the clown."
"But... Terry isn't here because he killed himself rather than star in this film, so what does it matter if I just-"
"THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT AND YOU KNOW IT, BRIAN. I SAW ALL THIS IN A DREAM WHILE I WAS OUT OF MY BOX ON MUSHROOMS, JUST BRING THE DAMN SHOWER CAP."
And yes, of all the 'tokens' used to represent heroes, I notice they use a quick aside about spiders to give the Jewish kid a shower cap. A fucking lot to unpack there, and this isn't really the place so...
[ BACK ]
*6 Okay look Gary/Stephen, I'll give you the fairground/hall-of-mirrors setpiece. We've already had a brilliant one of those this year, but you started this with the clown-motif so fair enough. But the talking severed head is just an Evil Dead nod isn't it? And you've recreated the Dianoga sequence in the water from Star Wars? And you've thrown in a 'don't look into the Ark' reference from Raiders? Oh, mate.
(like I've said previously, I have not read IT and I don't really remember the 1990 TV version in any detail. If all of these things are in the originals then fair play, but three of the above references still pre-date the 1986 book so my point still stands.
Do not @ me. [ BACK ]
*7 Which is shown earlier to be an alien, by the way. Pennywise may be the current physical projection of the creature's manifestation in the world, but we see through Mike's mushroom-induced vision that 'IT' came to earth and has nested in its own crash-site, hibernating for 27-year stretches between feeding. What ever righteous method the gang use to defeat this threat, it's not a supernatural or metaphorical adversary, but an actual, telepathic, shape-shifting, literal alien. Just keep that in mind...
[ 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.
IT (2017 / second-pass)
Cert: 15 / 135 mins / Dir. Andres Muschietti / Trailer
So a quick second-pass of IT was scheduled in at the local before their first screening of Chapter Two. Lovely stuff. There's not actually too much to add to my original review as most of those points still stand.
That said, knowing the direction in advance this time I found it slightly more satisfying as a coming-of-age movie, better viewed as a macabre Spielbergian fever-dream than an outright horror flick. Director Muschietti does great work with the young cast. His camera never looks down on them, and the first act does a superb job of getting the whole audience on their side without it ever feeling like a kids' film. There is a lot to be said for this.
So with that in mind, I have only three more things to raise...
1) I know he's young, but in a town which has un-grilled storm drains why is Georgie shocked when his sailboat goes down one? The entire road-level architecture is designed to take excess water (ie rain) and channel it to these points. Given that the volume of rainfall and the operational drainage system was combining to create a current upon which the boat was able to move in the first place, Georgie is actually sending the boat toward the sewer, the dumb little shit. Well, lessons learned all round there. The family are probably better off without him clogging up the gene pool, that's all I'm saying.
2) I refuse to believe a pharmacy that small has such a wide selection of sanitary products. Particularly in the kind of backward, child-murdering town where they probably send the menstruating women to a shed on the outskirts or something. Mind you, the chemist running the place is clearly an absolute wrong'un, which might go some way to explaining this. It wouldn't surprise me if he's 'interfered' with the stock.
3) At the end where Bill cuts open the hands of the Losers' Club and they all make their oath, he only slices into the left hand of everyone. That means when they're standing in a circle, each kid is holding onto the un-cut right hand of the one next to them. So their blood isn't actually mixing to form a biological bond among the group, they're just bleeding onto each other's hands for no reason.
That's not inspiring mate, it's just unhygienic.
If you know you'll get the re-watches out of it, sure.
(I won't, that's why I've waited two years and watched it in the cinema again).
Let's not get carried away, although everyone involved should be proud to have this on their CV.
'Discuss in an animated fashion' is the phrase, I think.
There isn't.
Level 2: Bill Skarsgård is in this, and he was in that Deadpool 2 along with Alan 'K2-SO' Tudyk.
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.
Okay, join in if you know this one. Something-something Joel Kinnaman stars as Peter, a former gangster who’s now a Family Man™ and off-the-books double agent for the FBI. Something-something Polish mobsters doing a drug deal that goes wrong. Something-something Peter cast adrift by his corrupt handlers and facing a five-stretch to avoid blowing his cover. Something-something Peter has to work this whole damned thing through himself not knowing who he can trust, to find some version of justice, keep his family safe and spend more of the run-time giving glowering glances than reading his lines. Etcetera. Etcetera.
BOOK Apparently adapted from the sort of book which keeps the shelves warm in The Works, Andrea Di Stefano’s The Informer shows an equal paucity of ambition, all soundtracked by a shop-demonstration mode of Dark Ominous Tones™. Between the cardboard characters and clockwork plot mechanism, I’m surprised that the cast and crew managed to channel the concentration to finish making it.
It's like Russell Crowe handed down the mantle of po-faced, put-upon, anti-hero Family Man™ to Liam Neeson, he gave it to Matt Damon, and now Matt's passed it on to Joel Kinnaman and we all have to go through the cycle again, nodding politely and pretending to be impressed by the fight choreography when none of the shaky-cam shots therein last for more than a fifth of a second*1.
BOOGIE Kinnaman simmers throughout, precisely the performance needed for a role which could have been written by a computer. Meanwhile, Rosamund Pike and Clive Owen plough through the screenplay like they’re resigned to starring in TV procedural cop dramas now. Ana De Armas is in this as The Girl One, the big-eyed wife of the hero who spends the film flitting between simpering and screaming.
The villains of the piece are pretty clearly defined, and it was only ever going to end one way. Fair enough. And yet the movie could have cut to the Directed By credit at any moment and I’d have been absolutely fine with that. I had no emotional involvement with this film either way. Worse, I suspect that’s intentional.
TALLADEGA How, in a world where Sicario exists, does a thriller as clock-punchingly perfunctory as The Informer even get made? I mean, I know how movies get made, but why was this greenlit? Who read through this screenplay and decided it was bringing something new or worthwhile to 2019? Whose favourite film will this absolute, unremitting filler actually be?
Don’t get me wrong, The Informer is never bad*2.
But I think it might have been more interesting if it was...
*1 The honourable exception being the 1-on-1 scrap in the prison dorm, which goes to the ground almost instantly and is just grappling and grunting until it's over within 90 seconds. That part is a far more realistic depiction of how most fights work. Unfortunately it's also boring as hell to watch, and is the reason than movie-fighting was developed for movies.
That's right, The Informer really can't win either way... [ BACK ]
*2 Clive Owen, though. Clive Owen is bad.
Christ, his accent here sounds like he comes from the New York suburb of Walford... [ BACK ]
*3 Statham, Butler & Wahlberg sounds like the absolute worst solicitors' firm in the world.
Someone should make a sitcom out of that. [ BACK ]
*4 Seriously, Rosamund Pike was in Gone Girl and was fucking magnificent. What the hell are her mortgage repayments like that she's signed up for this absolute autopilot of a movie? All it's doing is using up toner by making the CV longer and dragging her Rotten Tomatoes average into the middle. Who benefits from that? [ 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.
Ah, okay. I get it now. All it took was a second viewing of Quentin Tarantino’s ninth movie, and the knowledge that this really is about enjoying the ride because while there is a destination it’s one that’s brought about by external forces and the calendar, rather than any internal plot devices. Fair warning, the review which follows is rambly, unfocused and full of sidelines. But if that’s good enough for Quentin…
After taking in the movie when it opened, writing a slightly disgruntled review and letting that sit for a few days, I began to read other articles on Hollywood. More than I normally would for flicks I hadn’t enjoyed, because I wanted to know what I’d missed that everyone else seemed to love so much. And for the very most part, the pieces I read didn’t fill in any particular gaps for me. They just reiterated the list of reasons I’d been dissatisfied, albeit in glowing terms.
COMMUNITY Because even among the critics’ community, the most perfunctory points here are open to interpretation. One take notes that while Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate introduces herself at the cinema box office, she watches The Wrecking Crew incognito to soak up the audience reaction. No mate, she puts on those massive glasses to emulate her character on-screen, looking around at the audience every time ‘Miss Carlson’ gets a laugh from them. She’s trying to be recognised, that’s why she went out of her way to be noticed at the box office - no one in Hollywood knows who the hell Sharon Tate is yet. Her actual claim-to-fame came at the hands of the Manson family - something Tarantino throws in the bin as he gives the actress the Happy Ever After she was denied in our reality. A gift from a film-maker who bleeds celluloid and lives for the micro-detail of every performance he sees in every in every B-movie and supporting feature. I got that the second time. The first, I was just wondering where all this was leading.
Elsewhere, some are saying that the brutal fight finale is "classic Tarantino". It’s not. It’s far closer to something that his buddy Robert Rodriguez would do. While it’s true that Death Proof has some nasty moments, it’s Rodriguez’s flip-side movie Planet Terror that’s the really gory flick - and so is the scrap at the end of Hollywood. Truth be told, it can barely even be called a fight in the interactive sense, more the tonally justified slaughter of three absolute wrong’uns.
DEVELOPMENT And those are two tiny details to pick up on, but that’s what Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is; a lengthy string of tiny details, the minutiae of mundane lives being lived in an unorthodox business in a town famous for creating non-reality. The phrase ‘love letter’ has been flogged to death in reviews for this movie (yeah, even by me), but it’s as much a series of winks to QT’s own career as anyone else’s*1.
And yet he eschews the traditional format of cinematic storytelling. The first 25 minutes of a movie are usually used to establish characters and motivations. Here that lasts for two hours. The second act will be the part where those characters run up against an obstacle which will need to be resolved before the story can end. In Hollywood we get a caption-card that reads "6 months later". Tarantino is openly telling us that the events of 8 August 1969 have precisely nothing to do with anything that happened in the previous half year. It’s just that here they involve characters who’d been moving in and out of each other’s circles back in February. And as for the third act resolution? Well here it’s more Clint Booth meeting some barely-remembered faces from the past and everyone else meeting for the first time.
That disregarding of structure bothered the hell out of me the first time I watched this. And to a certain degree it still does and probably always will.
MY NAME IS EARL While the ‘Once Upon A Time’ in the title implies that a tale is about to unfold which isn’t beholden to historical reality, it also creates the expectation that the audience is about to be told a story - ie something with a firm structure and a roadmap - rather than just trailing along behind characters for a few days. And while there are things to look at along the way, that’s not the same as telling a story. This movie is acted, shot and cut beautifully*2. My initial problem was that nothing is happening. A second viewing excuses yet underlines this in equal measure.
Throughout Tarantino’s career, there’s been a secondary level upon which his films can be enjoyed. Not always a subtext in the regular sense, but something which, upon second, third or hundredth viewing, a viewer can dig and try to figure out what Quentin was channeling when he put the scenes together. Wondering what was going on his his mind, in addition to the main plot structure (ie the heist, the con, surviving the night or maybe just trying to assassinate Hitler). The problem facing more casual audiences here (hell, me included) is that Hollywood exists almost entirely on this other level. The main ’what’s driving the story’ element doesn’t exist*3. Stuff just happens because it happens*4. And while that’s arguably true for the likes of Pulp Fiction, that movie at least had intersecting and cyclical motifs matched with a tight pacing. Hollywood doesn’t.
As much as I enjoyed this the second time round (and I did), I still stand by every one of my niggles from the first. I’ve long maintained that you should be able to get something new out of seeing a film again, that’s why I do second-pass reviews and beyond. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is a prime example of how and why that re-evaluation is possible.
Although by the same token, I don’t think you should have to watch any movie twice to enjoy it once. But here we are…
Well, that’s the question isn’t it?
What have you seen that’s like this?
It is, with a certain amount of caution.
It is.
Yeah let’s not go mad, okay?
Even though I’ve now changed my mind re-ordered my opinions on this, still yes.
I don’t normally change scores between viewings, but I’m happy to make an exception here. While this and my previous review are obviously subjective (as every review is), I obviously couldn’t go so far as to say the film is badly made. But there are aspects of it which I did not enjoy, and that is a fact. Appreciation is one thing, but it’s not everything. And that’s more what the number is in this case. Not how ‘good’ I think the movie is, more how it made me feel. Last time it was a frustrating 4, this time it was a 6.
My own change of heart certainly makes me wonder what the long-term response to this movie will be, and how much expectation will be placed upon QT’s tenth (and allegedly final) film…
*1 In no particular order: the aerial shot of the Pan-Am plane is a throwback to Kill Bill, Funky Fanfare from QT’s Grindhouse days plays at the drive-in next to Clint Booth’s caravan, the airport interior is a nod to Jackie Brown’s opening sequence, the saloon section is an obvious reference to Django Unchained and the ‘Die You Nazi Bastards’ scene likewise tips its hat to Inglourious Basterds. And unless I’m very much mistaken, the crossroads at which Clint Booth is waiting when he sees Pussycat for the first time is the one from Pulp Fiction where Butch runs into Marsellus Wallace. But I’m going to have to wait for the Blu-ray to confirm that one, because I’m not downloading a bootleg just to do a side-by-side, okay? [ BACK ]
*2 The sequence in the shack at the Spahn Movie Ranch is camp perfection in itself. The undeniable tension as the wildcard ’Squeaky’ sits slumped in front of the TV. Clint padding around the old dilapidated house holding unknown dangers, the feint of a false climax, the music from the suspense show becoming the scene’s diegetic soundtrack. Wall-to-wall gorgeous. It’s just a shame that it’s not actually needed because there’s no story for this to fit into. [ BACK ]
*3 Even though there’s a lot of literal driving around in this movie. And it’s not aimless, ‘take in the scenery’ driving, but it’s not plot specific A-B driving either. It’s mostly the characters on domestic journeys like going to work or running errands. And y’know that’s fine but Quentin, mate, I’m not going to let this one go: nothing happens in this movie until the end. [ BACK ]
*4 Or, to be more cynical about the whole thing, Rick Dalton needs to have a conversation about a flamethrower early on to explain away the fact that he’s got a working flamethrower in the house for the finale. Likewise, Clint Booth needs to be shown as a skilled stuntman to explain the fact that he’s instinctively competent at combat and self-preservation even when he’s off his face on acid, and he needs to be on acid to explain away the utter brutality with which he smashes his assailant’s face off every damned surface in the living room. It’s almost - almost - as if the movie’s climax was written first and the whole thing was ret-conned from there. That said, if QT has fully shot any of the TV episodes we see clips of or produced amended episodes of the ones he’s altered, and if any of those are squirrelled away on the Blu-ray extras for the movie, all will be forgiven… [ 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.
