Well. When a movie gets three separate walkouts in the first twenty minutes, you know it's doing something right. John Michael McDonagh's War On Everyone isn't so much boldly provocative as lazily insolent, a trait which proves, over the course of an hour and a half, to be both its best and worst points.
The setup goes: something something, dysfunctional cop-duo; something something, crime-lord; something something, do whatever it takes to get the job done including swearing a lot and shooting everybody. With the best will in the world, there's little that's new about this film other than the head-scratching excess of it all. While the more controversial moments in the film still aren't as hateful as many mainstream movies offer, War On Everyone does seem to reinforce the belief that if you make your characters deplorable enough you can get away with having them be as openly misogynistic and xenophobic as you like, with no comeback. And making the film's villain a sociopathic paedophile hardly balances the scales; pointing and going "yeah, but this one's worse, look!"
War On Everyone is a film that's barely even aware that the line of good-taste exists, never mind if it's being crossed. And it's not facile, adolescent posturing, more that the film comes off as The Nice Guys but with far fewer fucks given; a buddy-cop duo where both partners are the world-weary, grumpy arsehole. Alexander Skarsgård's Terry displays a disdain for the world that's only matched by the treatment Michael Peña's Bob reserves for his own family. And yeah, Bob & Terry. How many Likely Lads references have you enjoyed at the cinema recently?
Which leads me to wonder, did this film get made as a result of someone winning a bet? Or was making this film how the bet was won? Because I can't imagine War On Everyone being formulated through anything other than cocky, wilful, nihilistic cynicism, and that's not typically how the studio system tends to operate.
The 1970s aesthetic sits at direct odds with a story which is demonstrably set in the present-day, many of the characterisations in the film are illogical at best and the story goes to Iceland (the country, not the supermarket) and back for no discernible reason. The soundtrack contains what can only be described as a dangerous amount of Glen Campbell, and even then the Rhinestone Cowboy dance sequence seems like it's been dropped in from another film…
And speaking of other films, I think the gruff-voiced, hunch-shouldered fight scenes may be used as the backbone of Skarsgård's Batman audition-tape. Michael Peña is great fun (although he always is), Theo James overacts delightfully as the criminal mastermind, Tessa Thompson tries her damnedest to treat the script like a regular film and Caleb Landry Jones steals the show as the campest (yet still utterly despicable) henchman you've ever seen.
What can I say? It's patchy as hell but quite a lot of fun at times. The film's not setting out to shock you; it genuinely doesn't care what you think, and I suspect you'll only really get out of this what you take in.
I enjoyed War On Everyone, I'm just not sure who really benefits from its existence…
Well, a bit of The Nice Guys, but also a bit of Scarface.
You won't get much more from a big screen than you will from a smaller one.
Especially if your friends/family start walking out.
Well, if that's 'being a petulant v-sign to the mainstream buddy-cop movie' then yes.
Not really.
Not at all.
There isn't.
Level 2: Co-lead Alexander Skarsgård underwhelmed me earlier this year in The Legend of Tarzan alongside Sam 'Windu' Jackson.
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.
Because we all love a two-and-a-half hour historical epic where the guy sitting in the back corner of the auditorium wants to get up and go to the loo four times meaning the entire row has to stand to let him out. No, that wasn't me. I was just one of the punters distracted from valuable dialogue because the chap chose the 'quiet' scenes to make his visits…
Set during the American Civil War, Free State Of Jones follows battlefield-medic turned conscientious objector, Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), as he struggles to build a safe place for those who want nothing to do with the conflict or the slavery which typifies it. Naturally, he's not only fighting against a legalised social injustice, but one which has become the moral-standard. Peppered over this are dramatised scenes from a 1950s Mississippi court-house, where Knight's great-great grandson was determined to be one-eighth black and therefore unable to marry his sweetheart, a caucasian.
These trial-scenes unravel revelations of Knight's past which were undiscovered (or had been long forgotten) until the case was brought, and serve to tie the broad historical narrative together. At least, they're supposed to. Unfortunately, since the film begins in 1862 rather than 1950 like it should have, the latter segment of the story is treated like an afterthought which was added in during post-production and after the budget had been spent so they couldn't shoot enough to really make it worthwhile. It's particularly jarring since the first appearance of the trial occurs about twenty minutes into the movie without adequate introduction nor explanation.
Back in the main (and perfectly self-contained) body of the film though, we get a strong cast giving delicate performances in a story which rambles a little, but generally in the right direction. Mumblin' Matthew McConaughey is reliably solid, but Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mahershala Ali don't get anywhere near enough screentime, given how important their characters are and how well they're portrayed. As the story moves on to Newton's time living in the Mississippi swampland, as the new group grows in size and falters in certainty, the second act feels a little baggy and almost without firm direction, much like the protagonists. While things are always moving forward, they do so at a slow pace for a film of this type. The pacing also suffers with the overall duration, and the order of the real-events it's based on (ie. you wouldn't normally structure a screenplay this haphazardly).
But if you're here for the war, you won't be too disappointed either. The first casualty of the film is a full-on headshot*1, followed within 60 seconds by a lingering glimpse of three actual pigs grazing on the intestines of a battlefield corpse. It's not that the depiction of war here is gleefully brutal in any way, but it's dirty, slow and devoid of any glamour. The ongoing escalation of tit-for-tat between Knight's collective and the Confederate forces against them reminded me of Twin Town; that feeling where you think 'oh, this can't end well.' Although at its heart, this isn't a story about physical battle but an ideological war, and in that respect it may be more relevant than ever.
The film's probably not as morally challenging as it should be, given that it follows 12 Years A Slave and Lincoln, yet it also stands on the shoulders of those a little, comfortable that the audience needs little explanation of the surrounding events. Free State of Jones is a reminder that liberal voices existed in the bleakest of times, and that history is made by not just accepting injustice.
Although during his climactic and rights-setting speech, while Newton boldly states "every man, this" and "every man, that", I'm pretty sure I can't have been the only one sitting there thinking '…you know there are women there too, right? I can see them. One's stood right next to you. Oh hang on, is gender equality the setup for the sequel..?'
Not really, but it achieves enough to make it worthwhile.
Not really, but everyone here has very strong previous.
Nope.
Nope.
Level 2: Free State of Jones shares an unwieldy number of cast and crew members with 12 Years A Slave, a film that starred Lupita 'Maz Kanata' Nyong'o.
*1 And to this day I'm still disappointed that the bayonet blades on rifles don't go shooting out when the trigger is pulled. Someone really missed a trick, there. Sure, they'd be slow inaccurate and wasteful, but think of the satisfaction when you score a hit with 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.
Now you could go to see The Girl On The Train and compare it, perhaps unfavourably, to last year's Gone Girl. Alternatively, you could make the same comparison after watching the trailer and save yourself two hours*1...
Troubled commuter Rachel gazes out of the train window every day, imagining the details of the perfect lives of strangers. But when one such subject, Megan Hepwell*2, goes missing, a police investigation turns up unexpected connections between the two and unearths more uncertainty than it resolves...
Tate Taylor's adaptation of the best-selling novel runs in dual timelines, each slowly filling in the past and the present, intertwining to paint a full picture (yeah, like Gone Girl). And that's fine, but the drawback is that the past of the core players becomes much more important (and more interesting) than their present/future. Despite a sizeable secondary and tertiary cast-list, there are really only five characters in the story (and one of them's dead for most of it. Spoilers), so when the curtain is lifted on the final reveal it works, but you could imagine three other versions of the film showing different outcomes and being just as convincing. With this in mind, it's probably not unfair to say that the performances in The Girl On The Train are far better than the film itself.
Speaking of which, Emily Blunt's performance in particular is far better than everyone else's. I was initially concerned that she opens the film basically 'turned up to 10' as neurotic alcoholic Rachel, because where do you take things from there? But to her eternal credit, as the film slowly digs deeper and piles up tension around the character, Blunt sustains her unhinged intensity perfectly. Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson both put in strong turns, albeit with slightly flimsier characters; Justin Theroux and Edgar Ramírez chew the scenery slightly as one-note placeholders (in a nice reversal of typical Hollywood gender-typecasting); and Luke Evans seems to have peaked for the year, so is back to comedy-scowling and failing to control an accent in a built-up screenplay. Bless him.
All in all, The Girl On The Train is a pretty good thriller. It's just nowhere near as groundbreaking or insightful as it seems to hope it is*3.
It's not essential to your enjoyment of the film, no.
I think so, but it's not trying to reinvent the genre or anything.
Blunt is on top form here, with reliably solid support.
Nah.
Nah.
Level 2: You remember when that Emily Blunt was in Wild Target with that Ewan 'Kenobi' McGregor? Well, she was…
*1 That joke stolen wholesale and unashamedly from Mr Stewart Lee.
*2 Although Megan's life isn't that perfect, is it? Water-view from her balcony or not, she's still got a commuter-level train track running past the bottom of the garden. Good luck trying to get a lie-in with that racket going on…
*3 Although it's nice that when you find out who-did-it, there's no deep psychological layering to explore. It's just "yeah, because [person] is an arsehole, mate". Which is probably far, far closer to most real-life cases of this type, I'm guessing. Fair play.
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.
Well, pre-judge not lest ye be pre-judged. As much as the trailers*1 had led me to believe that Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (look, MPHFPC, yeah>) was going to be 'Tim Burton's X-Men Juniors'*2 with a light dusting of Hogwarts, it turned out to be more a mashup of Goodnight Sweetheart and Nightbreed. Which is far cooler, when you think about it…
When placid outsider Jake receives an ominous message from his grandfather Abe, he arrives at his house to find him murdered. Against the full support of his parents, this leads to an emotionally charged journey to an orphanage in Wales, and the unravelling of a secret Abe had been hiding in plain sight for years…
Even under its 12A safety-blanket, the film is surprisingly dark given that it will be put on the same shelf as its more mainstream contemporaries. In thematic terms this is attributable to the source-novel's author, Ransom Riggs of course, but an equal hat-tip has to go to screenwriter Jane Goldman for translating it so intensely (it was she who adapted the inexplicably-12A Woman In Black, if you remember). But Goldman's natural darkness is tempered by Tim Burton's propensity for kookiness, although this never quite reaches its regular default level because of Goldman's focus.
At just over two hours, MPHFPC is by no means a short film, but I'd have been happy to have an extra half-hour or so scattered throughout, if only to connect me more with Jake. After the cursory Hero's Journey setup in act one, the film spends a lot of time introducing a lot of fantastical elements, and any awe, wonder or fear we feel is most probably our own, not the protagonist's. I was engaged and intrigued throughout, but I wasn't really moved by anything I saw; the pace of the story and rapid world-building not allowing the relationship between Jake and his grandfather Abe to have any real weight*3. Another part of the disconnect was that I could feel Burton struggling to fully direct a screenplay that wasn't his own based on a story he hadn't written. It's not that he hasn't left a stamp on MPHFPC, but Tim's definitely playing in someone else's sandbox, here.
And on the subject of wants-lists*4, I'd have liked the mechanics/limitations of the time-travel and causality looped explained more thoroughly (why/how can Abe make phone calls and send letters to the past, given that he's a spotter, not a time-controlling Ymbryne? Do all loops have to be limited to 24 hours?) Then again, if they'd gone into all of that, I'd probably only have written another couple of thousand words picking it all apart.
Still, the costs of on-set catering were presumably minimised by the scenery-chewing competition going on between Eva Green and Sam Jackson. They're both great (thanks in no small part to Burton's direction, of course), but their constant mugging is definitely A Thing™.
All in all though, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children is better than I expected, and a solid effort given its internal struggles.
As above; Harry Potter, X-Men, Nightbreed.
For the visuals, sure.
The story itself will work on any size screen, though.
I think it probably does, just about.
Probably not.
Probably not.
Definitely not.
Level 1: Chancellor Valorum and Mace Windu are in this.
*1 Speaking of trailers, I'm relieved to note that the fucking trailer song (which only has one fucking line, apparently) isn't used in the film. Well, not in the main body, at least, I left before the first song of the credits had ended in case it was going to be in there. I should also point out that I don't dislike the song itself, nor Disa Jakobs' voice. Just the way she keeps truncating the word "coming" as if she's a fucking blues singer or something, her delicate delivery tripping over the word every single time like a member of the aristocracy trying to eat a kebab with a knife and fork. Yeah, it fucking bothers me.
*2 …because a group of gifted youngsters being looked after by an older teacher/guardian and using time-travel to repeatedly evade their predators is the basic setup for X-Men: Days Of Future Past. A film which Jane Goldman also screen-wrote. I'm not dumping the similarity at her door, by the way. Much as MPHFPC is based on the 2011 novel, the X-Men movie sprang out of the 1981 comic series. I'm sure the whole thing is a massive, chronological coincidence.
*3 Also cobbling the emotional-stride of the film is Terence Stamp taking "crazy old man" to previously undiscovered levels. I love the guy to bits, but there are few other performers who can manage to overact whilst being dead on-screen. Oh, spoilers.
*4 And on the subject of non-wants lists, point-deducted for Tim Burton's blink-of-an-eye cameo appearance which still managed to be wall-shatteringly obvious. I wasn't even waiting for it, and he still may as well have been carrying a neon sign...
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.
