Disclaimer: I made the rookie error of assuming a film titled "The Children Act" would actually be about The Children Act. That it isn't, has caused me no small level of consternation and probably goes some way to accounting for my mood as the runtime increased. Anyway, here are my opinions on what the film isn't…
I'd thought that August was a bit early in the season for awards-bait, then as The Children Act - a film where a judge has to rule over a case where Jehovah's Witness parents are fighting for their right to withhold a hospital's recommendation of a blood transfusion for their son with leukaemia (who, incidentally, is also refusing treatment) - went on without managing to ask any difficult questions, I realised it's probably out now because it's not really a contender for any gongs.
Emma Thompson stars as the Fiona Maye, the put-upon judge, with Stanley Tucci as her dissatisfied husband Jack. Fionn Whitehead plays Adam Henry, the 17yr old to which the titular legislation applies, with Ben Chaplin and Eileen Walsh as his devout parents. The film also features appearances from pretty much everyone you'd expect from a production with Nina Gold in the casting-director's chair (although no Bill Nighy, this time).
But it's Emma Thompson everyone's come to see, and Judge Maye is the dramatic pivot around which everything revolves.
This is, let us not drive this one around the houses, a story more concerning the judge than the judgement. The court case itself is just one building block in the screenplay, that's not what the film is actually about. Which is fine I guess, but not being familiar with Ian McEwan's source novel (which he's also adapted for the screen), I have to say I found the title a little disingenuous. The film is called 'The Children Act', not 'The Turbulent And Tiresome Domestic Life Of A Judge Who Once Invoked The Children Act, A Law Which Was Already Established Before This Story Begins'.
When Maye begins singing in the hospital to the boy with leukaemia playing his grandfather's acoustic guitar*1, you know this film's far too pleased with itself*2.
Thompson's great of course, but then she could be reading the phonebook and still be magnificent. The problem is more than she starts the film in full 'Love Actually' mode, and has nowhere to take things after that. If the message of The Children Act is that the events of a case don't end once the court is dismissed, that's fair enough. If the message is that the background of a court case is more complicated or interesting than what's presented to the judge, then that's demonstrably untrue.
At one point in the third act, the treated and recuperating Adam confronts Fiona and fumes that her judgement was always going to be to save his life since that's the law, and that the case was a foregone conclusion. The problem is that the character here is also describing the story itself.
Perhaps the only interesting aspect is that the script doesn't present a coherent, measured argument from the Jehovah's Witness side in opposing the blood transfusion, only the re-stating of doctrine*3. I don't know if that's because as an audience member, my mind was already made up, or if it's because there just isn't a convincing argument. The filmmakers doesn't bash the religious organisation unduly, but in barely addressing the already-legally-decided debate, there's little left for the story to be interested in.
I'm not entirely sure who this film is for. I mean, it's clearly not aimed at me*4, but given the Grey-Pound™ trailers beforehand - and the number of seniors in attendance*5 - I suspect I may be somehow too young to get the most out of this. There's little about the film which screams 'pensioner audience', that's just who it appears to have been marketed at.
And then there's a bit at the end where Emma gets to sit on the edge of her bed delivering a monologue which is a recounting of the exact sequence of events that the audience has spend the previous 95 minutes watching. There's no new nuance or insight made clear by the sequence, it's just a recap. How marvellous.
Make no mistake, the moral-core of The Children Act has its mind made up well before the BBFC card appears. The only surprise is that it managed to annoy me, and not for the reasons I'd feared it would. Because, as if you hadn't already gathered, I'm not a person of faith. Liberal, humanist and logical in nature, I didn't expect The Children Act to change my mind, but I expected it to at least try...
I haven't seen it myself, but I'm told Collateral Beauty?
*1 A guitar they bury with the boy in the end. Oh spoilers, sorry. But yeah. That's a nice acoustic he's got there, and it's an antique as well. As a cherished family heirloom with its sentimental value far above the monetary, obviously the first thing you'd do would be to stick it underground at the first opportunity, right? [ BACK ]
*2 Oh, and that bit in the finale where the gruff security guard is standing outside the concert venue with four sets of doors between him and our heroine gently playing the piano and singing with no amplification, when he cocks an ear, throws down his fag then comes inside to watch reverently and coo compliments afterward? Fuck. Right. Off. [ BACK ]
*3 Right then, actual dialogue exchange from the film:
Fiona: I want to hear it in your own words. Why won't you have a blood transfusion?
Adam: Because it's wrong.
Fiona: Go on...
Adam: God has told us it's wrong.
Fiona: Why is it wrong?
Adam: Why is anything wrong, My Lady? We just know it. Murder, torture, lying, being unfaithful in your marriage... and how do we just know it? It's in our hearts. God has put it there.
Fiona: Is transfusion like torture?
Adam: They're both wrong. I wish I could make you see this. Blood isn't just a biological thing and it isn't just a symbol. It's life itself. It's what we are.
And that's it. That's pretty much the argument, from the proverbial horse's mouth, other than a court scene with Adam's father repeating the same ideology about blood. No-one points out that murder, torture, lying and infidelity are all inherently destructive actions arising from selfish behaviour and resulting in a victim. No-one asks how saving the life of a terminally-ill person is a similarly malicious act. No-one asks if, by extension, all surgery, medical treatments and medications are therefore equally sinful as they're interfering with God's pre-laid lifespan. No-one asks if God might actually want His subjects to be around for a little longer, so that they can do more of His good work than they would otherwise be able. No-one points out that if blood is so sacrosanct and what makes us special, why aren't Jehovah's Witnesses all strict vegans (or at least strict vegetarians), since animals have been given blood, too. Do animals not count? Is that it? Was Noah wasting his time, then? Yeah?
None of this is addressed because the film called 'The Children Act' is about a middle-aged person elsewhere having a domestic breakdown. Which is fine, but don't frame the whole movie like it's got some greater meaning... [ BACK ]
*4 At one point, Maye talks about Newcastle being the only place where she was "wild and free". And yet upon arriving in the jewel of the North East, our favourite judge doesn't immediately head down to the Bigg Market and glass someone in a way she knows will be legally watertight. Another opportunity wasted. [ BACK ]
*5 Today's audience-participation consisted of two walkouts during Slender Man and four walkouts during BlacKkKlansman. Meanwhile, The Children Act made up the numbers somewhat by having four late arrivals - all 'seniors'. The latter pair of these arrived twenty minutes into the film. Twenty minutes. That's 47 minutes after the time on the website, the foyer-screen and indeed the ticket itself. Who in the name of actual fuck looks at their ticket, their watch, notices the disparity of just under an hour and then thinks 'yeah it's okay, we probably haven't missed anything important'? [ 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.
Name: Transformers: The Last Knight (2D) / Student Responsible: Michael Bay / Age: 12 (advisory) /Studied: 10 years / Projects Completed: 5 / Latest Project Length: 149 minutes
This has been a difficult year for Michael as he struggles to find coherence in his creative activities. Never the highest achiever in his peer-group, he has nonetheless been a conscientious student in the past, delivering projects to the best of his ability. Recent years have seen him coast into unfocused laziness however, an attitude resurgent in his end-of-year project, The Last Knight. While we wouldn't expect the fifth part of his ongoing series to be a vie for critical acclaim alone, after watching the performance we weren't sure who it was actually aimed at. If Michael is to succeed in his chosen field, he needs to spend more time thinking about why his projects exist, rather than just how to complete them.
Performance in specific areas:
Whilst Michael has succeeded in the relative non-achievement of engaging the theatre department's Mark McMark for a second consecutive production, it has been noted that the performer only initially became involved because of the director's falling out with prior collaborators Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox from years 3 and 2, respectively. In his latest presentation, Michael seems incredibly self-satisfied to have secured returning supporting cast-members from earlier productions, namely Josh Duhamel, John Turturro and Glenn Morshower. This charitable act of continuity on Michael's part is undercut slightly given that LaBeouf and Fox either haven't been asked to reprise or just aren't interested, although the former's image is presented as a photograph at one point, presumably as a move in some manner of theatrical tit-for-tat. In addition to all this, the film sees the return of the Megatron character, but voiced by the music department's Mr. Frank Welker, as it apears Hugo Weaving has changed his phone number.
Michael's main mechanical-cast look visually impressive as always, and the director has managed to abstain from following the film's female characters around at bottom-height, this time. However, sunsets and lensflare continue to be a problem, and the filmmaker's boastful use of Imax cameras throughout means that the 99.9% of cinema audiences who won't be watching on the proprietary format will still be subjected to an aspect ratio which isn't even as wide as 16:9, never mind the generally expected 2.35:1. Because the school auditorium's side-curtains were not operational at the time of our performance, the examination panel could actually see two sets of black bars at the picture's sides as a result.
The Last Knight establishes in its first act a ticking countdown-timer of three days. The story's principal characters manage to stay alert, active and energetic for that entire duration despite apparently going nowhere near a wink of sleep. Extra points are awarded in this category for the same characters' resourceful good hygiene in having frequent changes of clothes, despite both having been effectively kidnapped on the fly in the first twenty minutes.
With the exception of Anthony Hopkins who overacts gleefully in every single scene of his, the vast majority of exchanges here consist of cast members awaiting their delivery cues, be that the director shouting 'action', someone else's line of script or just a prop thrown into shot by a runner to simulate some robots fighting off-camera. While there is little-to-no meaningful interaction between the human characters, this doesn't actually matter in The Last Knight.
Whilst Michael has a broad grasp of gravity, he continues to be unsure of basic time/distance travel calculations, the resulting actions of a 20+ tonne machine walking upright over a muddy field, and the impactful introduction of a moon-sized object within the Earth's atmosphere and onto the planet's surface. Mr Spielberg has offered Michael extra tuition on these and further items on several occasions, to no avail.
See Physics.
For a film with a concept of robot-smacks-robot, the population is far too high. Outside of the core cast of Mark McMark, Laura Haddock and Anthony Hopkins, the story introduces significant numbers of tertiary (human) characters who are apparently forgotten about until they're wheeled in to deliver exposition at some later point.
Michael has been assisted by four writers here, all apparently obsessed with sassy, comedic bickering but encumbered with a cast unable to deliver it. People in closed rooms shout at each other as general conversation. The narrative makes no sense, the script is awful, the characters are flimsy, the cast lack direction and the direction lacks coherence. The Last Knight ends up like a two-and-a-half-hour cutscene from a video game nobody needs to play.
"The judgement… is death!" cries one executioner-robot during the film's finale. No, the sentence would be death. The 'judgement' would be guilty. And this is a character with a computer for a brain, remember…
This is where we have serious concerns with Michael's performance at our school. Although operating in a fictional, non-documentary capacity, The Last Knight has such a basic disregard for its locations that we have refused to award a mark for this module. Bay may believe his core audience is too young to think about the internal logic of the film, but to even hold children in educational contempt is nothing short of shameful.
The problems which were noted included (but were not limited to):
• Mark McMark's chauffeured aeroplane arrives at the United Kingdom and actually touches its wheels down on the While Cliffs of Dover, the implication being that his host Anthony Hopkins lives in his castle in Dover. Otherwise, why would the vehicle have landed in Dover? After several scenes of messy exposition, it's revealed that this castle is actually about three minutes drive away from Westminster in London (which is in actual fact 85 miles away from Dover), and also about five minutes drive from the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford (which is 59 miles from Westminster, and 144 miles away from Dover). Audiences in England (especially the Southern counties) will be acutely aware of this disparity.
• In fact, if the aeroplane is flying in from America (which is to the west of Britain, if we remember correctly), why would it be seen approaching the White Cliffs of Dover (which are located on the south-east coast)? The plane would be skirting over Cornwall at an absolute push, which is still hundreds of miles away from London. The only time you see those cliffs is if you're coming in from Calais, France.
• Additionally, Hopkins' jaunt into the capital takes him within walking distance of "Trinity Library", as it's named in the script. While this is is not geographically described in the film, it is nonetheless revealed to be the very famous library of Trinity College in Dublin, which is 369 miles from London.
• The exterior of Oxfordshire's Blenheim Palace has been filmed as a Nazi stronghold in a Second World War flashback-sequence, and while the building is not intended to be its actual self, Michael has nonetheless chosen a veryvisually distinctive landmark already associated with that war (being the birthplace of one Winston Churchill) to pretend is somewhere else completely. Presumably he could not find any other old buildings in England to film outside of.
• Back in London, the film implies that one can just walk up to the front door of 10 Downing Street (one cannot), and then that there's a 'secret back door' entrance in the Strand, which is about half a mile away and in the opposite direction to the one in which Anthony Hopkins walks off.
• And our most contested moment might have been where Hopkins instructs McMark to liberate a submarine from "the Naval Museum", which in London can only realistically mean Greenwich. This action is duly performed and the craft is seen cruising under London's Tower Bridgehaving travelled eight and a half miles up-river for no reason whatsoever, before next emerging at the foot of Dover's White Cliffs in what can only have been a coastal-skirting waste of time. Here is that every-second-counts journey on a map:
There IS a (slim) chance that the Naval Museum which Hopkins refers to is the one in Portsmouth (where the scene was actually filmed), but given that's 73 miles south-west of London, this wouldn't explain why the submarine is then spotted at Tower Bridge before arriving back at Dover...
For audiences with even a basic grasp of UK landmarks or geography, this film is going to be unwatchable.
We appear to have reached Peak Bay; The Last Knight is absolute cinematic gibberish. It is the school's recommendation that Michael should leave to pursue more varied projects in the wider world, allowing other students to experiment, flourish and learn from his follies.
If you must.
Although I'll warn you now: I had a headache by the time we get to Mark McMark's junkyard twenty minutes in, and it did not shift until I was back out in the street after the film. Never before have I welcomed the tranquility of rush-hour traffic.
In Michael Bay's head, it probably does.
By no means, although it's oddly harmless considering everything that's wrong with it.
Oh, probably not. For everything I've written*1, I didn't actively hate The Last Knight. Apart from anything else I didn't have a chance to, I spent too much time trying to work out what the actual fuck was going on.
I may be mistaken, but I believe the film actually opens with one, melded into some other sound-effects. Not that I'm going to watch it again to make certain, of course.
*1 I hope you're impressed, by the way, that I've gone this far through the review without needing a single footnote.
I know I am. [ 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, a chance to separate the hardcore filmgoers from the opportunists, a test of theatrical endurance, that rarest of treats in this modern age: the triple-bill. To usher in 2016's blockbuster season*1 and Marvel's Captain America: Civil War, a back-to-back screening of Super-Soldier adrenaline kicked off tonight at 18:30. The First Avenger, followed by The Winter Soldier, leading into a midnight screening of the newest installment. For a viewer who's resolutely Team Iron Man*2, I'm unaccountably happy with this ;)
Now I've written about Steve Rogers' first outing on several occasions in the past. It's a film I absolutely adore, therefore it's one that I have no problem watching again. One of those movies I'm always in the mood for, in fact. A lot has changed since I started reviewing here, and I find I watch films differently now. In fact, that was very much the point. I didn't want to be using my Unlimited card several times a month and just letting each screening wash over me, leaving no impression as I sat glazed in the cinema*3. Writing about each film I see, including repeat viewings, helps me build a framework by which I can appreciate and enjoy them more. And generally speaking, by the time I've picked apart what I did and didn't like about the thing I've just watched, I arrive at a conclusion I'm happy to commit to the blog.
Now people's tastes change over the years, which is entirely as it should be. Watching a bunch of old movies for the first time, I know that I wouldn't have enjoyed many of them had I seen them when I was younger (and likewise there are a few entries which young-me might have enthused about, but which I now realise are dreadful). But I do find that my opinion on a specific movie doesn't really change once I've watched it. I'll find new details to love (or new bugbears to hate), but the work as a whole will sit in pretty much the same slot.
And it's with that in mind that I'm going to do something I wouldn't normally do. Because I read back my previous mutterings on The First Avenger and I appear to have repeatedly scored it six out of sevenwhen it's clearly a bloody seven. So I'm changing that from this point onward. I also make a point (okay, occasionally) of saying that the number attached to a film doesn't necessarily make it comparable to another one with the same score. My final ratings are more a measure of the film's potential versus its actuality. But y'know what? The First Avenger actually can be compared directly with The Winter Soldier, even though the former is a far more enjoyable movie (although more on the second shortly). In short, Cap gets ramped up to full-marks, this outing.
Against the collective stories which have followed it (and that I still love, remember), I genuinely believe that this might be the perfect Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Bolstered by Alan Silvestri's score, director Joe Johnston captures the uncynical spirit of adventure which made the Indiana Jones movies so much fun. This is a science-fiction tale which is relatively light on the unexplainable 'magic' it needs to fuel the plot. A classic underdog origins story, Steve Rogers is the archetypal hero, empowered by science and morality, but completely unbound by ego and with an innate understanding of everything he's fighting to protect, pitted against a supernatural villain who feels like a genuine threat because he's a complete psychopath and a macguffin which could destroy everything. And from the sure-footed roller-coaster of a movie comes a victorious ending laced with an agoraphobic melancholy which hasn't been matched before or since. The 1940s setting separates the film both chronologically and tonally, and sets up (and ret-cons) events to come, while owing nothing to them. With the exception of the final five minutes, this is a true standalone feature and it still encapsulates the essence of Marvel.
So yeah, I've changed my mind. The First Avenger isn't a great film, after all.
It's a brilliant one.
Indiana Jones, The Rocketeer.
If you can.
Absolutely.
It may well be.
I very well might.
There absolutely is.
Level 1: Mace Windu's in it. And Richard Armitage from off of The Phantom Menace.
*1 Sorry Clark and Bruce, you don't count. I wish you did, but there we go.
*2 Yup. Style over righteousness, I'm afraid. Every time.
*3 Although some movies just have that effect anyway, to be fair. But I try.
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.
Sure, a true-story drama about the institutionalised cover-up of repeated and sustained child abuse was never going to be an easy watch, but having already sat through Ride Along 2 this week, I already knew which of the two was likely to be the more harrowing*1.
Spotlight is the story of a quartet of journalists at the Boston Globe newspaper in 2001, who uncovered systematic historical abuse complicity in the Catholic church. The subject is something that the cynical may almost take for granted now, but this is the point where it went from being rumour and conjecture to verifiable criminal activity. And yet curiously, the film is nowhere near as bleak as that sounds.
For such a sensitive subject, Spotlight is a surprisingly measured take, perhaps too much at times. The film is never mawkish or hand-wringing, but at the same time it also foregoes the righteous outrage you'd expect to fill the narrative gaps. In fact, it's not unfair to say (even if it sounds like an insult) that it's basically a made-for-TV afternoon drama movie which happens to have an A-list cast.
The extended timespan which the film covers also means there's a fair bit of skipping-over going on here, and as a result the team's painstaking investigation often appears to rely more on luck and assumption than on judgement and consideration. Although to be fair, the 'gut instinct' is probably just the difference between investigative journalism and a criminal investigation, and the film is certainly more about bureaucracy than it is conspiracy-theories; a slant which works both for and against it. But at its heart, Spotlight is a well-constructed film full of fantastic performances at every level. And the title-cards which close out the movie will chill you more than anything you've just watched.
And let's just take a moment to recognise that this collection of real-life superheroes fought crime and injustice with the aid of spreadsheets. Okay, I didn't see much in the way of rigorous data-analysis going on, never mind VBA routines or even conditional formatting, but they're on the right page. Or worksheet, if you prefer.
Although I still think that my version of the poster would have attracted a larger audience…
There isn't. It's really not that sort of film, y'know?
Level 2: That Michael Keaton starred in 1989's Batman as did Billy Dee 'Calrissian' Williams, William 'Porkins' Hootkins and Mac 'Rebel Pilot' McDonald.
Honestly, though. Who plays an un-named pilot in a Star Wars film? Everyone in those movies has a name, even if a lot of them are now 'Legends'.
How come Mac doesn't (seem to) have one, hmm?
*1 Yeah, I opened with a joke. Let me have that, at least. Although I'll be closing with one, too…
*2 And yeah, before you mention it, I did take Rachel McAdams out of the poster and replace her with Billy Crudup, yes. And I assure you it's purely because she hasn't been in any superhero flicks I could use the character from, but Crudup has. She's appearing in Marvel's Doctor Strange later this year, but there are no pics of her in that yet. So, to be clear, it wasn't sexism, it was practicality. That's all. Wow, you lot are sensitive…
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.
Name: Transformers: The Last Knight (2D) / Student Responsible: Michael Bay / Age: 12 (advisory) /Studied: 10 years / Projects Completed: 5 / Latest Project Length: 149 minutes
*2
