Unbroken Cert: 15 / 137 mins / Dir. Angelina Jolie
It's comforting, at least, to know that there was once a generation (ie pre-1975) which wasn't inherently terrified of sharks. Stranded across two inflatable life-rafts in the Pacific ocean, the three servicemen in Angelina Jolie's new film Unbroken react to the sight of fins protruding above the surface in the way that you or I would to a wasp buzzing at the window. The audience winces at this new layer of imminent danger, whilst two of the stranded airmen try to repair punctures in the raft whilst the third one smacks a shark over the head with an aluminium paddle as if it had tried to steal a biscuit. Bravo.
It's this combination of stark danger and reserved practicality that best sums up the film, following 1936 Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini as he enlists to serve the allied forces during the second world war and ends up, as I've intimated, adrift in the ocean with two loyal comrades, three hungry sharks, and a dwindling chance of survival. Although rescue finally arrives, it's in the shape of a Japanese battle-cruiser, and Zamperini finds himself captured as a prisoner-of-war. And I don't know whether you've heard this or not, but the Japanese forces didn't have a particularly shining reputation in their duty of care towards their prisoners.
Unbroken's main strength lies in the performances of Jack O'Connell and Takamasa Ishihara, with fine support from Domnhnall Gleeson, Finn Wittrock and Luke Treadaway. Jolie's tight direction gets the best out of her cast without turning it into a pantomime (with the exception I'll mention in a minute), although the film does a better job of capturing the unending misery of the war, rather than the outright horror. From the blistering airborne dogfight with sepia-toned childhood flashbacks, to the quiet tension of the life-raft sequence, to the bloody-eyed despair of the Japanese POW-camp (the make-up and effects teams on top form here), each section is magnificent in its own way although I did often feel as if it was three films stitched hurriedly together. Whether this intentionally represents the fact that the war becomes everything in the lives of its combatants, or whether it's just a choppily assembled adaptation of the original book, I can't say. I'd hope for the former.
[ As a side-note, I have to say how impressed I was at the film's opening dogfight as we seem to have come full circle in terms of direction and editing. For the Death Star assault in Star Wars, George Lucas famously cut together a test-run from old war movie footage; the opening twenty minutes of Unbroken, in which a squadron of US bombers are attacked by ground and air forces against a sharp blue sky, looks for all the world like it could be from The Clone Wars. Bravo. Again. ]
So while the film certainly makes no bones about illustrating what Zamperini went through, I didn't get the impression that he was being singled out for much more 'punishment' than his fellow prisoners especially (I only mention this because that's how the film had been described to me). The treatment he receives is beyond harsh, certainly, but so was everyone's, and we obviously spend more time with Zamperini as it's his story. While it's clear that his Japanese officer nemesis Watanabe, 'The Bird', put Louis through the ringer, you still get the impression that he was an absolute arsehole to all and sundry, as and when he felt like it. In this respect, Unbroken almost becomes more about the POWs as a group, and that almost works in its favour…
…because it had all been going so well until the final twenty minutes, when the climactic stare-down between Zamperini and Watanabe is accompanied by silent, slack-jawed onlookers, a Spielberg-esque 'Music Score Telling You What To Feel', and is only one step away from a slow-hand-clap ending. The film layers on so much unnecessary, synthetic Cheese™, that I thought the US bomber which cruises victoriously overhead was going to be trailing a Dairylea banner behind it. It's not a deal-breaker, but it's so out of kilter with what's gone before it that it feels like last-minute interference from exec producers.
But as a whole, Unbroken is a far better film than its final reel, and the craft of the storytelling overcomes the hurdles of the Hollywood tick-boxes. I'm not even entirely sure the story needed to be told, but I'm still very glad it was. It's also head and shoulders above others in its class, and the only real issues I had with the film were just that: mine.
If you don't mind dampening your festive spirit with a gruelling, if uneven, true story, Unbroken might just be the film for you…
For the most part, although the childhood flashbacks don't make up the same percentage of the film as they do the trailer.
For the most part.
It tells Zamperini's story expertly; so in that respect, yes.
Other than the opening dogfight, you won't lose too much by watching this at home.
I won't.
I will, but probably not for a while.
There isn't. FOR SHAME.
Will I get away with white-washing a milk bottle to surreptitiously drink gin out of while I'm at work?
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.
Big Eyes (SPOILERS*1)
Cert: 12A / 106 mins / Dir. Tim Burton
About twenty minutes into Tim Burton's Big Eyes, you have to wonder if the awkwardly accelerated, whirlwind romance between Margaret (Amy Adams) and Walter (Christoph Waltz) is a deliberate discomfiture to set the audience on an uneasy edge for the rest of the film, or just slapdash screenwriting. As the story powers through its checkpoints toward what should be a massively satisfying ending, you rather suspect it's the latter of the two.
The 1950s/60s story of acclaimed artist Margaret Keane (nee Hawkins) and her husband Walter, who for years passed off her work as his own, coercing her into producing hundreds of original pieces for millions of subsequent posters and prints, is told for the most part through Adams and Waltz's performances. And while I very much like Christoph, he's now at the point where he seems to end up just playing Christoph Waltz*2. Amy Adams fares slightly better, but neither headliner gets the opportunity to spread their wings and deliver the performance you know they're capable of, mired by the speeding-bullet screenplay and a heavy-handed script. Worse still, while Waltz gets to be the moustache-twirling villain, his scene-grabbing charisma a necessity, Adams' Margaret is under-represented to the point where her character drops through sympathetic until the viewer actually begins to resent her timidity (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is the precise opposite of the point of the film).
The tale of the swindle is told in a nuts-and-bolts way, but a story about Art (capital A) needs a far more delicate touch, and Big Eyes could have been more sincere and surreal, candid and confessional. That it's not lies more at the feet of writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karazewski than director Tim Burton, I think. Speaking of Burton, other than the kitsch 1960s setting and the subject matter of Margaret's paintings, there's little of the Kookiness™ you'd expect from him, here. In fact, the brief segments where Margaret has semi-hallucinogenic visions of real-world people with huge eyes would have done the film huge favours by being expanded, to help the audience experience the paranoia and guilt as she does. Alas, they only serve as an all-too-brief reminder of who's directing.
Other hiccups come in the form of a narration from Danny Huston's San Francisco gossip columnist, Dick Nolan, which is so sporadic that when it re-appears every half hour or so, it feels unnecessary and even intrusive. The best eyebrow-raiser is reserved for Madeleine Arthur as Margaret's 16yr old daughter in the final act of the film, when she announces "I'm not a little girl any more!", underlining the fact that she looks nothing like Delaney Raye, who was playing her younger character half an hour earlier.
The most crucial part of Big Eyes, the courtroom showdown where Margaret challenges Walter legally over the creation of the artworks, seems to spend more energy on Mr Keane's comical attempts at legal self-representation than it does on the argument-settler of actually paining a picture. When the final victory arrives for Margaret, rather than bringing euphoria, it feels expected and oddly understated. Even the pre-credits slides, showing photographs and updates of the actual Keanes, don't carry as much weight or closure as they should.
Despite all my moaning (and how), Big Eyes is still in itself a good film, but I think the awe-inspiring story and Bruno Delbonnel's gorgeous cinematography are far more interesting than the screenplay.
I was ready to be swept away by Margaret Keane's story, but instead I was only carried along.
The trailer suggests slightly more than the film has to deliver.
Kinda, but not as much as I'd hoped I would.
From a story-telling perspective, absolutely. From an emotional one, not so much.
Cinema if you're a Burton/Adams/Waltz fan; for everyone else, this is a Sunday night DVD.
Nope.
At some point.
There isn't.
When Margaret is nervously going through her portfolio at the furniture company, was I the only one thinking of Old Gregg?
"I call this one Baileys… I call this one Baileys…"
*1 Yes, I'm very aware that this is a 'true story' from the early 1960s and as such is pretty hard to call 'spoilers' on, but much of my review centres around the actual events of the plot. Look, don't complain because I've given the end away, alright?
*2 And not to sound too catty about it, but I can see why that would appeal to serial Depp-enabler, Tim Burton.
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.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Cert: 15 / 119 mins / Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu
I don't particularly enjoy using phrases like 'superlative performance' or 'plays with the form', largely because they make me sound like I'm trying to be a film-critic rather than a movie-reviewer, and especially in this case as director Alejandro Iñárritu has plenty to say about critics (although he also has plenty to say about audiences, for that matter).
Nonetheless, this two-hour joyride of surreal adrenaline stretches 'the form' to breaking point, being a film, play, dream-sequence and monologue all-in-one. Presented as a single, unbroken hand-held camera-shot*1, Birdman is relentless, picking up the viewer like the levitating Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) in its opening scene and refusing to put them down as they laugh, cry, rage and fly with Keaton for the duration of the film. With two notable exceptions, the film is soundtracked purely by jazz drummer Antonio Sanchez (and while a drummer often appears in-shot, that's not actually him), with the tempo always syncopated, but growing more erratic as Riggan's breakdown looms.
Trading heavily and only semi-ironically on Keaton's IRL role as Batman, we spend the vast majority of the running time seeing things through his eyes as the washed-up actor creates, directs and stars in an ambitious Broadway play, adapting the work of one of his favourite writers, Raymond Carver, in a bid to prove that he's more than just a has-been celeb in a bird-costume.
The screenplay is brutally self-aware, with the Birdman character and in-movie actor names seeming to be the only fictionalised aspects, as pop-culture references and icons of the 20th and 21st centuries are ruthlessly deconstructed. Birdman is Keaton's show of course, in a career-defining role played as only he could, but it couldn't be done without the stunning supporting performances from Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Amy Ryan and Zach Galifianakis. While their characters often seem underdeveloped, it's mainly because that's how Riggan sees them. My only niggle is that the final act of the film all but abandons the secondary characters as Riggan's psychoses close in, also leaving behind much of the dry humour that preceded it. I also have to admire that Birdman chooses not to close on the two natural end-points which occur, but on the third and actual one (which is admittedly better). I may not like that necessarily, but I admire it.
By no means a throwaway film, Birdman will command your attention from start to finish, but that's not to say it won't be enjoyed by fans of indie-film and superhero-movies alike.
Never has the phrase 'the lie that tells the truth' seemed more appropriate…
It begins to be, but nothing can come as close as the film itself.
I did.
Absolutely.
If the trailer appeals, go and find this movie at the nearest cinema to you, forthwith.
I will a bit, yeah.
I will.
There isn't.
Does anyone else want a Birdman animated mini-series anyway?
Just because?
*1 And it's not, but it's presented very effectively as one, and I confess that I spent more time than was strictly necessary ticking off the edit-points.
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, there's two ways we can do this. Either you can go on and read the 511 words after this paragraph, or you can stop after the final word of this one: shite.
Still here? Oh, fair play. The thing that strikes you about Ridley Scott's Exodus (and fairly early on) is how bollocks it is. That's not to say it's complete bollocks, of course, since that would be implying that the film succeeds at something. No, it's just bollocks in that 'all-over-the-place like Joel Edgerton's accent' sort of a way. It's clear what the story's meant to be, and in all fairness you have to be pretty much on-board with that before the BBFC card appears, because the film's going to do little to change your mind. I wasn't on-board. By the time the credits rolled, I'd have happily thrown myself overboard just to end the white-noise of Uncle Owen chasing Batman and The Mandarin around the desert for two hours while the audience look on, thoroughly bemused.
Here's an actual, genuine excerpt of the screenplay:
* * * * * Exterior: Day. Moses and the 400,000 Israelites trudge across the desert. A MESSENGER gallops to the head of the line.
MESSENGER: Ramses rides after us, Moses, with four thousand men and a thousand horses!
MOSES: How far behind..?
MESSENGER: Four days; less, if they don't rest the horses!
CUT TO ~
Exterior: Night. RAMSES and his horde ride over the desert.
GENERAL: Sire, we must rest the horses! RAMSES: NO!!!
* * * * *
…even the frequently-ghosting addition of a third dimension can't add an extra layer of depth to this screenplay, and in socio-political terms, it's the Phantom Menace of Biblical epics*1, with pseudo-political gossip, tittle-tattle and backstabbing interspersing the scenes of outlandish action like a kind of Old Testament soap-opera. On a logistical level, the key story-points of the film make Darren Aronofsky's Noah look like a wildlife documentary, although I'll admit that it's to the film's credit that it doesn't try to rationalise them. In fact, the 'parting of the sea' finale was looking quite understated until Scott turned it into an eye-popping 3D Guinness advert (ironically, for a film which might have worked better if I'd had a drink in my hand).
If there's one thing Prometheus taught us, it's that Ridley Scott directs symbolism and suggestion as if they're fact. By the time Grumpy Moses sees God as a petulant 8yr old, and begins to bicker with Him as such, your backside will be getting as numb as your brain. Two and a half hours is long for a fantasy film, and it's long for a mythical/political statement. When the film can't work out which it wants to be, it's even longer. Choose one, Ridley, choose one.
A grand vision which seems to have been lost half-way back down the mountain, Exodus: Gods And Kings is an unholy mess of a sermon...
Oh, more or less.
Not at all.
I have no idea.
*shrugs*.
Not really, but you'll have one hell of a job convincing me why it's great.
Nope.
There is, indeed. This is no consolation.
Why do they keep calling Moses 'Mosher'?
His hair isn't that long…*2
*1 And I say that as someone who loves The Phantom Menace, as well you know.
*2 No, that's a joke. Let me get some kind of enjoyment out of the film.
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.
