Bombshell Cert: 15 / 109 mins / Dir. Jay Roach / Trailer
Oh, is it awards-season already? No sooner have the Golden Globes taken over Twitter discourse*1 than we begin with the raft of Worthy™ films, released in January because voting committees have notoriously short memories when it comes to listing the favourite things they've watched.
And opening this year's lectures is Jay Roach with Bombshell, the Charles Randolph-penned screen rendering of 2016's media-scandal where everybody suddenly realised that Fox News was being run by some right old wrong'uns. Charlize Theron leads as presenter Megyn Kelly, with Nicole Kidman as outgoing host Gretchen Carlson and Margot Robbie as incoming harassment-target Kayla Pospisil. John Lithgow stars Roger Ailes, the touchy-feely Darth Vader to Malcolm McDowell's Emperor Rupert Murdoch.
CAST And it's good in a sort of solidly linear fashion. The story is compelling (although this has more to do with the real-life actual events) and the cast are fantastic (although it's a fantastic cast, so we'd expect nothing less). Roach brings the social urgency of The Post and the wry outlook of The Big Short, always taking the subject seriously but with some of its aspects requiring a full fourth-wall-break to convey the required incredulity*2.
But the film spends quite a lot of its runtime winking at the audience (whether that's the glaring "STAY IN LANE" road signs during Kelly's deliberations over how to react to the developing situation, or Ailes' withering line of "me too..." during his firing, followed by five seconds of pointed silence in the room). Bombshell often feels like the dramatised-reconstruction sequences of a documentary without the documentary and made for an audience who already know the story.
THE LA'S Which brings us to Bombshell's biggest problem, a searing dose of Daniel Blake Syndrome. It's never entirely clear what point the film is trying to make which wasn't made by the 2016 news reports or the subsequent flow of reactions and think-pieces. And it's even less certain whose mind film is going to change.
There'll be no sexists watching this thinking "Hey, I've asked attractive young women to undress (and more) in my office before, but y'know that seems more than a bit creepy now I've watched Big Roger doing it!". Similarly, the liberal (and let's be fair, 'target') audience are already sympathetic to the cause. While there's plenty of justifiable outrage, there are few revelations here. With the very best will in the world, Bombshell is two hours of confirmation-bias*3.
Yet at the same time the central message of the movie is still very much relevant. The issues the movie addresses are still ongoing and show no real sign of being resolved*4. Bombshell exists in 2020 because it needs to exist.
Stream it. There's not really a lot of re-watch value here.
Not with a cast as solid as this one.
That's likely.
There isn't.
Level 1: NPR Radio Drama Yoda is in this. And he makes a Jabba The Hutt reference.
*1 Okay, that's probably more the thrust of my social media feeds than your own. Yours probably have far more serious (ie depressing) subject matter to infuriate your lunch hour, but there's only one of us who can change that... [ BACK ]
*2 I must admit that during Theron's opening whistle-stop 'to-audience' introduction of the Fox News building, the style and pacing had me believing we'd cut to a shot of Ron Burgundy any moment and it wouldn't be played for laughs. [ BACK ]
*3 Although to be fair, Bombshell does at least challenge the cosseted liberal audience in one regard, with its idea that Fox News apparently employs people who a) aren't absolute arseholes to begin with, b) somehow aren't aware of the absolute arsehole problem at Fox News, and c) are fine with putting a roof over their heads by actively contributing to the continued success of some absolute arseholes. Of course I know it's not that simple. But of course I'd still walk away from someone in a pub if they told me they worked for one of "those" outlets. In a movie about every single voice having an essential and cumulative effect, it seems odd to be forgiving people who go with the fetid flow for an easy life. Even the guy just mopping up the blood is still keeping the abattoir in business.
Although bear in mind that next week I'll be watching the new socio-political drama from Mr Clint Eastwood, so my leftie-righteousness will be stretched the other way as I'll doubtlessly sit going 'DO YOU THINK THIS POMPOUS CONSERVATIVE HOGWASH IS GOING TO CHANGE MY MIND?' for two hours. [ BACK ]
*4 Because even in 2020 people are still awful, in case you hadn't noticed. [ 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.
Aquaman (2D / SPOILERS)
Cert: 12A / 143 mins / Dir. James Wan / Trailer
As a reviewer (and as you can see dear reader, the cutting-down of these extravagantly lengthy articles is proving only partially successful), a clean-slate is pretty much the ideal scenario for any movie. Read no reviews or opinions beforehand, and let hopefully the flick speak for itself. Mission accomplished, I went into Aquaman with no expectations. Although I confess I went in with no particular excitement, either...
ARTHUR Jason Momoa is Arthur/Aquaman (hereafter referred to as Arthurman), a sort of amphibian hybrid superhero whose father is a creepy CGI lighthouse keeper*1 in Maine, and whose mother is Queen Atlanna (hereafter referred to as Aquamum) of Atlantis, sort of like Daryl Hannah in Splash only with legs. When she's in the water as well, I mean. Anyway. Arthurman is doing fine rescuing various submarines from pirates until merlady Mera (Amber Heard) rocks up one day to tell him that his half brother King Orm (Patrick Wilson) is threatening to kick off and lead the seven armies of the sea to take over the land, in conjunction with King Nereus (Dolph Lundgren) and aquatic admin assistant Vulko (Willem Dafoe). Meanwhile, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays a 'dry-land' pirate with archetypal daddy-issues and so wants to kill Arthurman, and sporadically returns throughout the film in an attempt to do so.
And I suppose that once you accept that the characters can talk and be heard underwater, it makes absolute sense that there'd be daylight at the Earth's core, as well.
But the film's alright. By no means great, but Aquaman is far from the most troubled entry in DC's cinematic canon. But that said, it's also pretty far from the most interesting one, too. Momoa continues to be a natural fit for the role in a film which is pretty much built around his presence. Although while the action sequences are pretty much a given, the trademark deadpan humour Jason displayed in Justice League falters, as the script just isn't there to support his natural comic timing*2.
HARVEY As Arthurman's dialogue is relatively minimal, the burden of the script is foisted onto everybody else. This could be Amber Heard's toughest gig to date, as she struggles admirably to deliver her lines without bursting into laughter. There are vast swathes of the film devoted to her and Willem Dafoe standing around explaining backstory which doesn't matter. Considering the amount of alternate bickering and flirting they have to do, Heard and Momoa have precisely no chemistry together, to the point where I suspect they might have green-screened all of their shared scenes on separate days.
The movie features a series of progressive flashbacks to Arthurman's youth, where he's played by a succession of actors who look nothing alike. And I can't believe The Punisher and the Green Goblin have jumped ship to DC (actually with those two, I can).
Aquaman is over-scripted, over-acted, over-directed and way over-long. Here more than ever, DC's live-action output is clunky and old-fashioned, ingrained with a campiness that borders on Gods Of Egypt levels. When pirate-dude comes back as Black Manta, he's pretty much the only one in the movie not wearing a partially CGI costume costume, and as a result looks like something out of Power Rangers*3.
And I didn't think it would be possible to find a more miscast villain than David Thewlis pompously snarling through his ill-fitting armour in a part he's clearly not right for. Then Patrick Wilson was all 'mate hold my Kryptonite'. King Orm is flat-out ridiculous, even for a movie like this*4.
SUSIE The plot as detailed above is a bare-bones affair, and the production is forced to rely on spectacle as a result. In the end, Aquaman borrows so heavily from Thor and Black Panther that it's had to take out a loan from The Phantom Menace just to keep up the repayments*5.
Rupert Gregson-Williams' score is nicely rousing for the most part, but its claustrophobic submarine fight-scene features more-than-a-touch-of Henry Jackman's 'Lemurian Star' cue from the Winter Soldier soundtrack. Y'know, the bit where there's a claustrophobic fight-scene on a maritime vessel…
FIXO It wouldn't be a DC movie without a murky CGI 30-minute explosion to round things out. And if Pirates Of The Caribbean and The Meg have taught us nothing else, it's that these look so much better when they're happening underwater. Yay.
Of course it's easy to be cynical about all this, but it's also nigh-on impossible to find some sort of depth or subtext in the screenplay. It's just a very linear franchise-filler, and that's okay. But every time the script threw in some heavy-handed line about pollution and the environment, I couldn't help but think of the number of non-recyclable drinks cups in the auditorium around me. Can that really be the message?
But if you're after an uncomplicated, undemanding*6 superhero flick over the holidays that's sincere in its silliness, you could do far worse. Aquaman is basically fine*7.
Maybe that's what he looked like after Geonosian scientists grafted his head back on after Geonosis…
*1 Seriously, the CGI de-aged Temuera Morrison used for the first sequence is just embarrassing, even worse than Rogue One Princess Leia. He looks like an pre-vis animatic rendering of a burns-victim. [ BACK ]
*2 The most pertinent example being that bit from the trailer where Arthurman punches in the top of a submarine and lands in the corridor. Two armed henchmen look at each other nervously while Arthurman looks coyly over his shoulder and quips "Permission to come aboard?". He is already aboard. That is the joke. That is the level of wit reached in the first ten minutes of the film and maintained throughout. [ BACK ]
*3"Call me..." *postures* "...Black Manta!" he said as I sniggered slightly too loudly in the cinema. [ BACK ]
*4"Call me..." *grimaces* "...Ocean Master!" he said as I actually guffawed in the cinema. [ BACK ]
*5 Yeah, that's about the ninth time I've used that joke on this blog, and I'm not even sick of it yet. I'd apologise here, but I'm just not sorry. Hey, if DC can recycle threadbare ideas then I sure as hell can, too. They're the ones profiteering from their laziness, I do this shit for free. [ BACK ]
*6 Genuine conversation overheard after the film:
-Have you just been to see Aquaman?
~Yeah, loved it mate, best one yet. So much better than Justice League.
-Yeah man, that was fucking shit.
~Yeah, right!
…and I thought 'but why are you here watching this then, if its predecessors offended you so?'. Then I remembered that I was due to see the new Transformers flick three days later, even though I tore the last one a new arsehole. Although I'll be honest, these didn't seem like two reviewers spitballing ideas for an imminent deconstruction. But you never know. [ BACK ]
*7 Seriously though, Arthurman has got long hair and a beard. How is this efficient for someone who spends half their time underwater and the other half trying to dry out (and presumably stinking in the process)? [ 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.
Lion Cert: PG / 118 mins / Dir. Garth Davis / Trailer
Talk about an achilles-heel. In order to sell the cinematic adaptation of Saroo Brierley's remarkable life (in which he's separated as a five-year old from his family in poverty-stricken Khandwa, India, lives for several months 1600km away on the streets of Kolkata before being taken in by an orphanage then moved to Austrialia for adoption, then over twenty years later manages to track down his birth-mother by means of persistence, luck and Google Earth), the trailer has to focus on the English-language part of the film starring Dev Patel. In doing so, the trailer communicates absolutely nothing of what makes the story special.
The first half (roughly) of Garth Davis' film is set in India and follows Saroo as a young boy, showing how he came to be lost and the path of utter uncertainty which led to him being chosen for a new life in Tasmania. The first half of the film features a young actor named Sunny Pawar as Saroo. The first half of the film is compelling, enthralling and utterly heartbreaking. To say that Pawar is good would be an understatement. Even as child-actors go, I haven't seen a performance this strong since Jacob Tremblay in Room. When you also factor in that the majority of Sunny's scenes are either with one other actor or on his own, plus the subtitled nature of this half of the film meaning that his acting is almost entirely physical (from an English-speaking audience's point-of-view), I'd go as far as saying his is the best performance I've seen this year, hands-down. He strikes the perfect chord as being a child who's clearly highly intelligent, but almost completely uneducated (formally). He has the wits to survive as a stranger on the other side of an unbelievably harsh country, but doesn't know where he's from in order to try and get back there (although to be fair, how many five-year olds would?).
Things start getting a little more heavy-handed once Saroo is settled in Oz and we get a '20 years later' card, and by the time the story's skipped forward another twelve months, the Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara & David Wenham family drama has turned into a mawkish, over-acted soap-opera where the only performer who can do the story justice is Patel himself. And he's good, but he has so much to carry that I quickly lost interest and empathy with the story. However, when Saroo finally tracks down his old hometown on Google Earth, I did get a tingle (this is a true story, these aren't spoilers). And when he's finally reunited with his birth-mother, I did get a warm glow. And when the denouement of the film shows the real-life-actual Saroo with his real-life-actual mother Kamla, I did have something in my eye, a bit. And this is the only film in living memory where I can say that the transition to the story's real-life counterparts is welcome. Sully, take note.
Lion is good.
Dev Patel is very good.
Sunny Pawar is outstanding.
And with this exception of Dev, do your best to ignore the English-speaking cast…
Well, it's a bit Hundred-Foot Journey in places.
For the right and wrong reasons.
Not especially.
That said (and this isn't just because of the answer to question 7), some of the photography in the film is absolutely outstanding.
It does, but in spite of its best efforts not to.
It's Sunny Pawar's first movie, but he's set his own bar high.
For everyone else? No.
Nah.
There isn't.
Level 1: The director of photography for Lion is a Mr Grieg Fraser, who coincidentally performs the same role for Rogue One.
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.
I won't lie to you, when I first heard that a live-action Paddington film was being made, my heart sank a little, and seeing the prospective cast list did nothing to change my mind. Thankfully, the first full trailer gave me a little reassurance that things were on the right track, and I'm happy to report that it's an excellent snapshot of the film itself.
After a localised earthquake forces young Paddington from his home in darkest Peru, the young bear finds himself stowing away on a ship, hoping to meet with the kindly explorer who befriended his guardians forty years previously. Bound for London armed only with the knowledge that his aunt and uncle have given him of the world's most polite and courteous city, Paddington finds that the years have not been kind to that reputation...
Paddington may well be the most charming film I've seen this year. Beautifully animated, genuinely funny and heartwarmingly silly. A family adventure film in the truest sense, Michael Bond and director Paul King have written a thing of great beauty, and it's brought to life by a cast who (largely) play the screenplay straight rather than patronise the younger audience (naturally Nicole Kidman's Millicent is more the cartoon villain, but that's what the part calls for). Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins pretty much steal the show as Mr & Mrs Brown, with Ben Whishaw's Paddington being just on the right side of sweetly loveable.
But as I said it's not all saccharine, and the film's trump card is its inherent playfulness (and Hugh Bonneville dressed as a cleaning lady like a latter-day Ronnie Barker, flirting with Simon Farnaby*1). The greatest example of this being that no-one really questions a talking bear. It's commented upon, certainly, but at no point does anyone freak the hell out over it. And when the characters buy it, so do the audience.
On the downside, the film's relatively delicate allegory for immigration and integration is pretty much undermined in one scene between Nicole Kidman's evil taxidermist and Peter Capaldi's nasty-neighbour, Mr Curry. It's no biggie, but feels like the one part of the script which wasn't proofread, somehow. There's also a nice bit of product placement for First Great Western in the film too, although I suspect that the scene set last thing at night in Paddington Station was meant to be in the early evening, but they ended up having to wait for the train to come in ;)
You'd have to be some kind of heartless monster to get nothing out of this film; go and see it.
It pretty much is.
I did indeed.
I think it certainly does.
A family outing to the cinema is certainly called for, but you won't lose much if you decide to watch it at home in four months' time.
Maybe a little.
I will, but probably not at the cinema.
There isn't, although there *is* a brief Die-Hard reference. And an Indiana Jones reference. Well, two actually, if you include the fridge. Which I do.
Can we somehow stop Michael Gambon from doing voice-roles, though please? It's one thing when he's on-screen refusing to be anything other than Michael Gambon™, but his 'no job is beneath me' attitude to voiceovers has cheapened his own brand to the point where his Uncle Pastuzo character just sounds like an overly-smug TV advert for HSBC. Or that Sky ad which ran directly before the film.
*1 Yet despite having one of the film's most tear-inducing comedy sequences, Farnaby isn't credited on the film's IMDB page. What gives there?
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's a tricky business making a decent thriller these days. The temptation is there to put in too many twists in the mistaken belief that confusing the audience is the same as enthralling them, and if your original source-text is a novel (and a best-selling one at that), there's a strong chance that a lot of your viwers know how the story is going to weave, anyway. So what to do? Well, I'd suggest taking a leaf out of Rowan Joffe's book and concentrate on good storytelling and good film-making.
Making sure the audience never gets more bewildered than the story's amnesiac protagonist, Joffe crafts an intricate tale of trust, instinct and catastrophic memory-loss as Nicole Kidman's Christine awakes every day thinking she's twenty years younger after suffering a blunt-force trauma to the head ten years earlier. Of course, the bathroom mirror is her first wake-up call, followed by a daily recap from her husband, Ben (Colin Firth), as he tries to bring her up to speed without re-traumatising her on a daily basis. Christine makes contact with a neuroscientist (Mark Strong's Dr Nash) who tries to coax her damaged brain back into shape by suggesting she keeps a video diary to help her recall more of her missing past. But as fragments of her memory return, the ghosts of Christine's past threaten to tear apart the fragile present…
Now, it sounds so-so (and from the trailer, it sort of looks it too), but this is a very solidly put-together film. Especially given that Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth probably aren't the best choices for their roles. They do bloody well, certainly, but neither seems particularly at ease (which is also the point, admittedly), and you get the feeling that Joffe's restrained direction is stopping them over-egging the pudding*1. Mark Strong is good value for money as always, and other than a supporting role from Anne-Marie Duff as Christine's college-friend Claire, the three leads pretty much juggle the film between them. And despite my misgivings, they do it well.
My only serious grumble is that the final section feels like the end of a different film completely, and without having read S.J. Watson's novel, I can't be certain, but I'd say it's a studio-addition. It doesn't spoil the film at all, but it seems far 'neater' than the 85 minutes which preceded it (85 minutes which feel like a couple of hours, for the record, and I mean that in a good way). If you're going to see this soon, try and avoid spoilers to get the full effect of the story; unless you're a devotee of Kidman, Firth or Strong, there probably won't be too much in repeat-viewings, so make the first one count.
Hitchcockian in style and execution (and even musically, at one point), Before I Go To Sleep is a good film that almost becomes fantastic.
That said, if you're one of those people who likes to second-guess thrillers all the way through, you fully deserve the sense of mild disappointment you'll get when you realise it's not quite as twisty as you'd thought. Just enjoy the ride, eh?
Fairly, although the film is better than the trailer lets on.
Mostly, yes.
Mostly, yes.
You won't lose too much by watching it at home, but the cinema's good for keeping up the tension.
Nah.
At some point.
Didn't hear one, nope.
Twice in the film, we see Christine watching the video of herself saying "My name is Christine… Christine Lucas", but when we see her actually recording that scene, she says My name… my name is Christine Lucas". There's also another instance of the recorded and played-back video having slightly different scripting/performance.
Is this deliberate? And if so, why?
*1 Although I have to admit there were a couple of moments where Kidman's perpetually confused, blank-faced, amnesiac caused me to wonder if she was acting-stunned, or just homaging her performance from Grace of Monaco…
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.
Oh, is it awards-season already? No sooner have the Golden Globes taken over Twitter discourse*1 than we begin with the raft of Worthy™ films, released in January because voting committees have notoriously short memories when it comes to listing the favourite things they've watched.
