Onward Cert: U / 107 mins / Dir. Dan Scanlon / Trailer
Odd times, we live in. The new Pixar movie opens with a 5-minutes Simpsons short, an acknowledgement that the former 20th Century Fox is now part of the Disney brand. Essentially a silent film, Playdate With Destiny centres on Maggie as she falls in love with a toddler at the local park. It's a fairly sweet affair but far from the humour and even acerbic warmth that the show is capable of at its best.
Which, it turns out, is a fitting overture.
Set in the present-day of a parallel world inhabited by mythical creatures but which has forgotten magic, Onward follows adolescent elves Ian and Barley Lightfoot (voiced by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt) as they embark on a quest to be reunited for a day with their father who died fifteen years earlier. The spell which can enable this has already been partly cast, meaning the pair are accompanied by the sentient legs and feet of their dear papa, which they bulk out to approximate humanoid form using a stuffed sweatshirt, cap and sunglasses, bumbling around for comic effect. So think of Lord Of The Rings by way of Weekend At Bernie's.
DIRECTION It's may also be worth noting that this classically structured adventure makes distinct nods in the direction of Indiana Jones, Gremlins, Ghostbusters and even Back To The Future along the way. And while all this is fun, it's also the heart of the film's problem: Onward feels like an affectionate series of homages rather than its own unique story. The vocal performers are well cast*1, the story is consistently funny and charming, and the animation and music are as perfect as you'd hope, but there are only occasional flashes of the cinematic magic upon which Pixar basically wrote the spell-book.
The film opens efficiently, and sets all its story-markers and callbacks in plain sight. It's more than a little 'Hero's Journey 101', yet in a U-rated adventure that's no bad thing. But while this movie regularly ticks the right boxes, they feel like boxes in someone else's list. From an emotional point of view, this is Pixar's b-game, even though that's still more than many animation studios manage with their best efforts.
FLEWOVERTHECUCKOO'SNEST All told, the fantasy setting perhaps feels a little too on-the-nose (although I love the idea that Warhammer-type games exist in a world already populated by elves, centaurs and dragons), so the high-concept magical elements of the story feel more expected than exceptional. And when you factor in the weird release strategy in the UK, a Disney animation with an A-list voice cast which lands for previews in the week after half-term (ensuring that the general release will miss that window completely), it suggests a worrying lack of enthusiasm on Disney's part.
If it sounds like I'm being unduly harsh on what is a more-than-decent adventure movie, it's only because the creators have set their own bar higher than this. Then, like all the best quests, the treasure wasn't the macguffin after all. That's not to say the rewards mean any less, but the feeling persists that maybe you've travelled way further than you needed to.
Because now that animation has advanced to the point where Pixar can make anything, why isn't Anything as exciting as we'd hoped*2?
I think we've covered that...
Just about, as it'll probably lose no small amount of its magic on the small screen.
This will be a good rainy-afternoon DVD.
Let's not go mad.
Unlikely as I have no really strong feelings on the film either way.
*1 You've got to hand it to Chris Pratt though, he effortlessly manages to play his one recurring character again even when we can't see his actual face. [ BACK ]
*2 Although I'm just going to come out and say it: Ian Lightfoot with his coiffured hair, sticky-out ears and plaid shirt, unsure who he's supposed to be and learning how to create magic while fighting through the emotional conflict of daddy-issues? That's young George Lucas.
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.
Ma Cert: 15 / 99 mins / Dir. Tate Taylor / Trailer
So apparently John Hughes movies are something that middle-aged people do now while the kids are out having fun. I knew that. Of course I knew that, I'm down with the kids. More importantly, I know that holding on to obsessions from your school-days at the expense of broader cultural perspectives leads only to bad places. Tate Taylor told me that. And how.
STALKER Yes his new movie, Ma, wears its love for dark nostalgia and high-school stalker movies on its sleeve as Octavia Spencer's Sue Ann (aka the eponymous antagonist) is the simmering pot which finally boils over in smalltown Ohio. It begins like a fairly run-of-the-mill teen horror as Erica (Juliette Lewis) moves back to her old hometown with teenage daughter Maggie (Diana Silvers) in tow after a separation. There's a distinctly indie edge to the opening and some very economical backstory exposition. Maggie quickly makes friends with her schoolmates, and an under-age booze run puts them in touch with Sue Ann, who offers the gang full use of her basement as a party-den, seemingly out of the goodness of her heart.
We move into more traditional psychological thriller fare with Ma's gradual flashbacks accompanying the unwinding of painful threads, but these still serve the purpose of the film well. Spencer is on absolute panto-form here, and it suits her. And although the movie centers around Maggie and her teenage cohorts, it's great to see a solidly capable supporting cast of 'the adults', and even better that they have constructive parts to play within the story*1.
THEODOSIA 99 minutes is a solid runtime for a movie of this nature. The whole thing moves along at such a pace that it's difficult for Taylor to really build up the foreboding atmosphere you'd expect, meaning Spencer has to work harder to sell Ma's full unhingedness by the final act. But sell it she does, with some classic batshit-crazy escalation.
The climactic sequence has quite a bitter edge to it, after writer Scotty Landes has been careful to build up enough sympathy for Sue Ann that her nastiness is justified, but not so much that it's excused.
There's not as much biting satire or behavioural-sermonising as you'd perhaps expect, but Ma is still a fun social-horror flick which demonstrates that the real monsters don't live in dusty basements.
Although they're happy to lend theirs out for parties if you promise not to misbehave…
There are notes of Carrie, Unfriended 2 and Get Out here, as well as a cracking nod-and-a-wink in the direction of Misery.
This film works well with a crowd, if that's your bag (a gentleman in the row behind me became Vocally Concerned at one point which I won't delve into here).
It is.
Probably not, but still something to be proud of on the CV.
That's unlikely.
There isn't.
Level 1: The voice of Aly San San in the rebooted Star Tours is in this.
Yes it counts.
*1 Although there's an awful lot of "OMG hey! I haven't seen you since, like high-school!!" going on here, considering the town's entire population seems to only be in double figures… [ 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.
Luckily, I didn’t need to study my calendar to know it was still January as The Rule-of-4*1 held strong throughout my viewing of Guillermo del Toro’s surreal, fantasy-romance, The Shape of Water. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Working as a cleaner for (ostensibly) an aeronautics company in 1950s America, the quirky Elisa (Sally Hawkins) becomes aware of a subject in their subterranean research-laboratories - a humanoid sea-creature, supposedly of Mexican origin. Our heroine develops a relationship with the mysterious mute stranger and finds herself falling in love, and as her employers’ methods and motives become clearer, she hatches a plot to liberate him with her friend and neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins). But the path of true love never did run smooth, and more than one agency is interested in this aquatic asset…
Now, if you’ve read the word “quirky” in that first paragraph and thought ’oh right, I see...’, then you’ll have some understanding of my reaction watching the film. If the Q-word is going to be a problem for you, good luck with The Shape of Water. As the central character, there’s scant escape from Elisa's enforced oddness, and even less relief from del Toro’s apparent self-indulgence in bringing his and Vanessa Taylor’s screenplay to life..
Don't get me wrong, there is much (much) to admire in here. A solid story, great performances and fantastic visuals and creature-effects. But on a character-level, the film feels shamelessly overwritten, like there’s been no editorial process, or anyone leaning in with ’should we maybe tone that down a bit?’*2. For the most part, the personalities of the characters we meet stay fixed throughout, with little in the way of development*3. Ultimately I couldn’t overcome the neatness of the story*4, even if it is framed as a fairy-tale*5.
I imagine you'll love it.
The Shape Of Water is basically a greatest-hits medley of Amelie, E.T. and Nightbreed.
*1 Whereby every movie I've seen in this first month of the year (which hasn't had a Disney stamp on it), whether that be an allegorical tale of miniaturisation, the study of a nation uniting against fascism or just Liam Neeson punching people on a train, has been met with a resounding shrug of my shoulders and a final awarded score of 4/7. Only Coco (which is technically a movie from 2017) and Star Wars (which is definitely a movie from 2017) have punctured my bubble of misanthropic apathy in January.
[ BACK ]
*2 Because it's not enough for the young guy in the café to be revealed as a homophobe, he also has to be shown as a massive racist IN THE SAME SCENE. This guy is all the wrong, DO YOU SEE? That section in particular feels like sketching a nicely rounded character-subplot, then throwing it in the bin because you're worried it's taking too much away from the rest of the picture. [ BACK ]
*3 With the slight exception of Michael Stuhlbarg's research scientist. Although what we learn about him still doesn't really change the character's behaviour or the audience's perception of it. [ BACK ]
*4 The early stages of the relationship between Elisa and the creature seem almost skipped over, whereas other movies would have gone on a detour of cross-species exploration. Here it's just 'would you like a hard-boiled egg?', 'oh, yes please.'. We have to assume the beautifully utilised sign-language has been picked up rapidly as we go from a one-word basic to pretty much full communication with next to no on-screen progress. And this is also apparently taking place in a top-secret laboratory which is not under CCTV surveillance (otherwise Elisa would have been removed instantly, lunch-break or not), while the loading dock in the back yard gets its own constantly monitored camera-feed. And don't even get me started on how smoothly Dimitri's own plans for the creature are altered to seamlessly fit in with Elisa's, apparently with little or no actual discussion. I have no problem believing a sea-monster exists, but do not mess around on the admin, Guillermo. [ BACK ]
*5SPOILERS: Highlight-to-readAnd the guy next to me (an adult human old enough to have seen other films) did a little gasp of realisation at 'that reveal moment' with the scars on Elisa's neck. It was all I could do to not take him to one side during the closing credits and be like "Seriously, though? Mate, that's been relentlessly telegraphed since the beginning of the film. It's an early-tell which explains the rest of the film before it's happened. The film's about water. You don't need a masters-degree in H.P. Lovecraft to see where that was going…"[ 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.
Gifted Cert: 12A / 101 mins / Dir. Marc Webb / Trailer
My local cinema hosted an advance screening of Marc Webb's new movie last week. I was due to go, but plans shifted so that I delayed watching a heartwarming, uplifting tale of sacrifice, perseverance and belief in favour of seeing an old friend and getting blind drunk instead. This decision-making process should indicate that I'm not really the target audience for Gifted, and the rest of this review should be translated accordingly.
In the blue-collar coastal suburbs of Florida, Frank Adler (Chris Evans) is the adoptive uncle of orphaned mathematical prodigy Mary (Mckenna Grace), struggling with moving her from homeschooling to mainstream education in a bid to build her social skills and let her enjoy her childhood. But a regular school offers no intellectual challenges, only behavioural ones, and the child's grandmother has other plans for Mary's development...
What begins as an ochre-washed, ukulele driven twee-fest to rival the best of Nicholas Sparks*1, goes through the motions of sighs, tears, revelations, pacing of the courtroom floor, the swelling of the strings-section and hugs before bedtime. The film is efficiently executed, but lacks inspiration all round. Credit where it's due, the central performances by Mckenna Grace and Chris Evans are very strong. They're excellent individually, and the pair have a chemistry in their scenes together which defines the heart of the film. And Gifteddoes have a heart, it just expresses that through the medium of Hallmark Channel Autopilot™.
As Octavia Spencer's over-protective neighbour, Jenny Slate's wet-blanket of a teacher and Linsday Duncan's meddling grandmother-character dutifully tick off the boxes on their Plot Device Checklist, the problem soon arises that the more secondary/ancillary characters are introduced, the more irreversibly clichéd the while thing becomes. The film sags terribly at around the half-way mark and never manages to regain its composure. Even a shoehorned sequence of 'will Frank make the drive across town before they put the cat to sleep?'*2, is so phoned-in that by the time our hero breathlessly arrives in the vet's backroom murder-chamber, Ginger Fred's basically sitting filing his claws murmuring "Oh, you're here, then?". It's a safe play in a script that was never going to take any risks in the first place.
Also, this loses a point for Frank using 'Legos' as a collective term for pieces of the popular branded construction-set. And if the kid had been as bright as the screenplay makes out, she'd have thoroughly schooled him over that one. Legos. I ask you.
I understand why Evans wanted to do Gifted, of course, and as he's one of the two great things about the movie it's another string to his bow. But as not-inconsiderable as that bow is, the string itself is thoroughly unremarkable…
*1 Full disclosure, I'm generalising there. I've never watched any Nicholas Sparks output. Seen plenty of trailers, haven't had the strength to attempt the films themselves though. I seem to recall seeing the promo-reel for The Longest Ride and thinking 'but this looks exactly the same as every other story he's written?'. Then it occurred to me that the target demographic for these movies probably has that precise reaction while I'm two rows away squealing over the latest Marvel trailer, so fair play I suppose... [ BACK ]
*2 Spoiler: of course he does. Although I'd be interested to see one of these flicks where he doesn't. Where the wheels basically fall off everything at the end of Act III, and the final scene features the mentor character talking to their young charge, saying "Yeah, that's life I'm afraid. An unending torrent of inconvenience, loss and pain where everything drifts toward entropy until you're too tired to fight and too numb to care. But hey, there's always bourbon. Whiskey for me, biscuits for you; you're only eight.", then the beaten-car drives off into a sunset while the camera tracks over to a dude wearing a 'the end is nigh' sandwich board and the gun poorly concealed in the pocket of his dirty coat...
And that's why they keep returning my screenplays. [ 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.
Oh, it may be February but we're not done with the historical socio-political drama just yet, thanks. Squeezing in before the awards-crush comes Hidden Figures, the largely true story of NASA's boundary-defying resource pooling, in an attempt to get a man into space before Russia. Even though they didn't. That's not a spoiler. But that's not what the film's about, anyway.
Short version: It's a good film.
That said… what you see in the trailer*1is pretty much exactly what you get. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the film holds no real surprises.
On the plus-side, the film's subject matter (both thematic and practical) is accessible enough for all audiences, although I often felt it was being a little too simplistic. The film has a borderline kitsch quality that regularly sits at odds with the drama. Not for the first time recently, I found myself squirming slightly, not with liberal-guilt but thinking "why aren't you more angry about this?". Even with the film's PG rating, Hidden Figures can't (indeed doesn't) ignore the racial tensions that make up the central dramatic thread. But they're treated in a way which almost becomes secondary to the story, somehow. The film often feels like it can't choose between being about the civil rights movement, the space-race or plain old-fashioned misogyny. And it shouldn't have to choose, because the story itself is about all three. Sadly, Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi's screenplay spins these plates unevenly, and not without condescension at times. The main problem is that the deeper the screenplay digs with the 'boo-hiss' pantomime theatrics surrounding racial politics of the early 1960s, the harder it's going to be to convincingly climb out of that hole in Act Three*2.
But despite my furrowed brow the film pulls the whole thing off rather well, although that's thanks to the cast, more than anything. Taraji Henson, Janelle Monáe and Octavia Spencer outshine everyone else (rightfully so) as the trio of mathematical genii, even though their screen-time is split somewhat unevenly. Kevin Costner just about earns a pass as one of the most inefficient, if well-meaning, middle-managers you've ever seen, and everyone else is slightly too one-dimensional to be of any use.
Hidden Figures didn't blow me away, but it's a good film. Then again, I'm left thinking that it'd be pretty difficult to make a bad one out of a story this great.
That said... In the 'it looks like you're losing your job to a computer' scene near the end of the movie, both Katherine and Al are wearing glasses which have an anti-glare coating, catching the light in the room with a green and purple reflective sheen. Even assuming that such coatings were commonplace in prescription glasses in 1962, neither of them were working with VDU screens. That's very much the point of the entire dialogue, here. So they wouldn't be wearing those, now would they?
I hope the film's engineering and mathematics advisors put in more effort than the wardrobe department…
The film's got a similar sort of vibe to The Help.
Although even that feelgood tale got angry when it needed to.
It won't spoil your enjoyment of the film if you only manage to catch it on DVD.
It does.
In the nicest possible way, no.
It'll depend very much on why we're disagreeing.
There isn't.
Level 2: This film's got Octavia Spencer in it, and she performed voice-work in Zootropolis/Zootopia, alongside Alan 'K-2SO' Tudyk.
*1 Although while I'm on, I have to say that Costner's line in the trailer, "math that doesn't exist yet" has annoyed the living fuck out of me for weeks, now. Leaving aside his use of a singular when it's clearly a plural, the mathematics Kevin - much like physics - exists whether you know about it or not. It's how things work, everywhere. What you mean is "I need maths that hasn't yet been discovered / refined / adapted". Are you really in charge here, Kevin? No wonder the Russians are waltzing into first place. Thankfully, there is a scene in the film where Taraji Henson's Katherine bitch-slaps the chewing gum out of Kevin's hand and points out that the formulae they need is in fact "really old" (Jim Parsons' character actually says this). But at no point does Kevin hand in his security pass with a thousand lines saying "I will not try and invent mathematics". Stick to being Robin Hood, pal. [ BACK ]
*2 The best line in this category comes late on, when Octavia Spencer's Dorothy passes a hand-towel to Kirsten Dunst's Vivian in the newly anointed mixed-race bathroom. In doing so, they briefly brush hands, causing them both to pause. Vivian looks up ruefully and says "Y'know Dorothy… despite what you may think, I have nothing against y'all. It's just the simplistic and heavy-handed way my composite character's been written in the screenplay for the last 80 pages." Although half of that quote may be subtext, admittedly. [ 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.
Odd times, we live in. The new Pixar movie opens with a 5-minutes Simpsons short, an acknowledgement that the former 20th Century Fox is now part of the Disney brand. Essentially a silent film, Playdate With Destiny centres on Maggie as she falls in love with a toddler at the local park. It's a fairly sweet affair but far from the humour and even acerbic warmth that the show is capable of at its best.
