Insert the obligatory ramble here about me not knowing how to adequately review documentaries, even though I mention that every time before I review a documentary and have now done so enough that it's no longer true. Steve Read and Rob Alexander began shooting a film in 2012 about the iconic musician Gary Numan, as he relocated to Los Angeles and around the production and release of the album Splinter. There was a special screening of it at my nearest independent cinema*1. And it is good.
I say this not as a particular fan of Numan's*2, it's more that Android In La La Land is a nicely-structured documentary. Although it's not a beginner's guide to his work, there's no price-of-entry when it comes to prior knowledge of Gary's work. Although because the events in the film are from four years ago, I don't think there'll be too much here that the hardcore fanbase aren't already aware of anyway. Still, horse's mouth, and that.
The most notable thing about the film is how relaxed and open Numan and his family are with the camera. There's an instant level of trust as Gary talks candidly about his Aspergers and the depression which resulted from years of bad-press. But the film observes these without playing them up or down. This is about Gary the person, not Gary the case-study, and director/producers Read and Alexander have a knack for bringing truth and warmth out of an industry where they're in short supply.
The screening was followed by a live Q&A by one of the film's directors, Steve Read. A very nice touch with a very focused and eloquent man, but the problem arises that if your documentary has done its job (and this one has) then there are relatively few questions to be asked (other than the technical ones which were on the tip of my tongue, but were raised by other members of the audience: around 500 hours of footage and one camera with two lenses). Under the normal run of things, this wouldn't be ideal for engaging the rest of the attendees. But as even Steve noted, the audience was made up of people who were either a) Gary Numan geeks, b) film-making geeks, or c) a&b, so it panned out largely satisfactorily, I think.
A well-made film about a fascinating and funny man, Android In La La Land is currently on a tour of the UK with Q&A sessions, with limited regular screenings elsewhere.
Hardcore fans of Gary Numan will either be more gushing or more critical, I'm not sure which.
Well, music documentaries. To be fair.
If you get the chance, yes.
The film is an independent production which can use all the support you can give it.
It does.
I haven't seen the directors' other features, so can't really say.
It's a great piece of film-making though.
Nope.
Nope.
Level 3: Mr Gary Numan featured in an episode of The Mighty Boosh alongside series regular Rich Fulcher, who's due to appear in the upcoming movie Abruptio starring James 'Captain Argyus' Marsters.
*1 Which started late. Yeah, again. Seriously, I love that this independent cinema exists and I support them where I can (given that it's actually easier and cheaper for me to use their counterpart in the capital), but you've got one job, mate: Show the film at the time it says on the ticket. It's not like the buses where you're being held up by previous over-running screenings.
*2 I respect the fuck out of what Numan does, how he does it and how long he's been doing it for. I just don't particularly enjoy it, somehow. And don't give me "that would change if you saw him live", because I did and it didn't. Still enjoyed this film, though.
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.
Julieta Cert: 15 / 99 mins / Dir. Pedro Almodóvar / Trailer
Every so often, a movie comes along which doesn't exactly bowl you over, but intrigues the fuck out of you. Pedro Almodóvar's Spanish-language film Julieta fits seamlessly among those.
A study of loss, regret, jealousy and emotional faith, the film sees the eponymous character telling (ostensibly by writing a letter, but more realistically by narrating that to the audience and a series of extensive flashbacks) the story of her estrangement from her daughter, Antía, including events which she's tried to suppress in her own memory over the years.
Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte are both fantastic as the older and younger iterations of Julieta, respectively (and bonus props for the transition between the two, when it occurs). Even though the film was subtitled, both are utterly expressive in a way that transcends language altogether. It's not as outright Dramatic™ as I was expecting from the director of The Skin I Live In (it's not as Weird™, either), but the film has an immersiveness which held me captive from the first scene. It's that rare example of a piece which balances its performances perfectly with narrative structuring.
As delicate as it is quietly powerful, I know that Julieta is far better than I can appreciate in one viewing. But I'll have to let this one settle before re-visiting, I think.
How come the Spanish film industry produces features like this and gets them screened in mainstream UK cinemas, when the British film industry apparently can't (or won't)?
I'm actually not sure, but you've probably seen far more of Almodóvar's work than I have, so I'm preaching to the choir, here.
Only if you know it'll be your thing.
If you're going to take a chance on Julieta, it'll work just as well in your living room.
It does.
My frame of reference is severely limited here, but everyone involved has been a part of something very good, yes.
Not at all.
Not at all.
Level 3: Okay, this movie is directed by Pedro Almodóvar of course, who also made I'm So Excited which featured Antonio Banderas, who rocked up in Expendables 3 alongside Harrison 'Solo' Ford.
All roads lead to Han, today.
(It was better than Quite Good, but I haven't absorbed enough to confidently score it higher, yet)
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'm not going to lie, I usually avoid movies about sharks. Not least because most of them are deliberately crap these days, but also because after the first Jaws movie, I fail to see what can really be brought to a genre which doesn't appeal to me in the first place (and naturally, I include all the Jaws sequels in that). Anyhow, I went to see The Shallows. Not least because it slotted in nicely with a day's cinema-viewing in the capital. And absolutely not at all for The Other Reason.
Short plot synopsis: The film preys on man's innate and primal fear of anything bad happening happening to Blake Lively. When troubled dropout medical student Nancy*1 travels to a remote Mexican surfing-beach as an homage to a holiday her late mother took, she finds herself injured and stranded on a rocky outcropping as an angry shark circles around like a drunk at the door of a kebab-shop.
With its human v nature, survival-thriller aesthetic, The Shallows is quite Hitchcockian at its core, with the shark being a metaphor for Nancy's fear, the danger of reliance on nostalgia but also her own determination. Given that the vast majority of her performance is essentially monologuing, Lively is pretty great here. She and director Jaume Collet-Serra hold the film together well, and I'd like to see them work together in the future.
Oh and yeah, The Other Reason. Initially all this does seem a bit like a cheap excuse to get Blake Lively in a bikini and wetsuit-top for an hour and a half. The first twenty minutes in particular feel like a big-screen adaptation of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. And that might be par for the course with crap like Piranha 3D, but The Shallows is actually a much smarter film.
Of course, I'm hardly a marine-life expert but even I noticed inconsistencies you could use to bludgeon a whale to death*2. Although I was generally going along with it until the point where the screenwriter's clearly decided "and then the shark goes on fire a bit!". But as a story of an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation, it just about works. As much as it still isn't really my thing, I have to admit I'm impressed by the film-making.
A more-than-reasonable stab at a genre which didn't need any more additions, The Shallows might not put you off going for a paddle, but it should make you look a bit more closely at that person further out who seems to know you because they're waving…
Well, it's a bit 127 Hours, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not…
The big screen is good at heightening the tension, but you won't lose too much by watching this at home.
Level 2: Blake Lively's in this, and she was in that film last year with Harrison 'Solo' Ford.
All roads lead to Han, today.
I mean, she was in the same film with Anthony Ingruber who was very nearly 'Solo' too, but as with Miles Teller the other day, Anthony didn't get the young-Han gig either.
Alden Ehrenreich had better be good, mind…
*2 Come on, Screenwriters. It's 2016: we need more protagonists called Nancy. It's an awesome name and I spent the film imagining that Blake Lively's character was a friend of my Grandma who lives over the road from her.
*2 Okay, the main issues break down like this:
(highlight to read, although they'll make little/no sense if you haven't seen the film)
1)How come Nancy can get a reliable data-signal on her phone (strong enough for a video-call) on a secret, deserted beach in Mexico, yet I struggle to post to Facebook when I'm in fucking Wandsworth? Although I'm guessing Nancy's not with BT Mobile, to be fair. 2)Speaking of data-connections, why does Nancy make a big deal about asking the few people she meets what the name of the beach is? Just GPS yourself on Google Maps and go from there, surely? There aren't any secrets on the internet… 3)Why would an experienced surfer wear those flimsy necklaces out in the water, especially if they've got sentimental value? 4)There's Nancy timing the shark swimming around the rock. "32 seconds" she says, to give herself time to brave the water and back without being attacked. That's the shark cruising, though. As soon as your bleeding leg gets back into the water, Sharky Bappa will accelerate to attack-speed, at which point: lunch. 5)And there's Nancy looking at a buoy and gauging the distance. "That's about a minute's swim" she says. Except that by that point, she's down to three usable limbs and hasn't eaten for over 24 hours. Hardly olympic-material. Again, lunch. 6)How come when the fat man from the beach has been Darth-Mauled by the shark and he's dragging his top-half ashore, the severed spinal column (or just rapid blood/organ loss) didn't paralyse or kill him instantly? His abdomen and legs are actually and completely off. You see them, remember. 7)And how come when the surfer dudes show up the next morning, they don't notice the top-half of a fat man on the beach? He crawled up at high-tide so there'd be nothing to pull him back into the water. Apart from that, I imagine it's almost documentary-like in its attention to detail.
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.
In the opening montage of Dennis Gansel's action-sequel, the barometer on The Stath™'s house/boat reads 'fair'. Many other directors would have had it set at 'stormy' and lingered on the shot a microsecond longer. As it turns out though, the prediction is cinematically accurate, as everything which follows is moderately enjoyable and without a single hint of actual drama.
Don't worry if you haven't caught up with the first movie, it isn't even referenced other than a clip played on a character's mobile phone (not even kidding). Reassuringly stupid, Mechanic: Resurrection plays out like an action-movie parody advert for a deodorant or a premium lager. Anything outside of the action sequences and fight-scenes veers between distinctly-substandard and spectacularly bad, but at least the film doesn't rely on the cheap xenophobia that so many of its genre-buddies use in lieu of villain-building.
Two questions come to mind as the viewer ploughs through Mechanic: Resurrection. 1) Jason, is this because they rebooted The Transporter without you? and 2) Jason, did you write this? This troubled yet sensitive yet lethal character who succeeds at everything and doesn't have to change a single iota throughout the film's running-time? As with all the best reluctant heroes, this film sees The Stath™ go into self-imposed hiding before getting back into trouble around four minutes later when he interferes in somebody else's business. Next thing you know, he's blackmailed into doing a series of jobs and all's right with the world. A sort of GTA inspired mission-pickup plot device showcases The Stath's™ assassination techniques as being far more entertaining and inventive*1 than the script could ever hope to be.
The thing which probably bothered me most is that throughout the film, The Stath's™ face-fuzz routinely alternates between 'heavy stubble' and 'short beard'. Back and forth, for the whole damned thing. Although I imagine short facial hair over the course of a feature-length shoot is the bane of film editors everywhere. And to a lesser extent, it didn't go un-noticed that the cut/scabbed lip Jessica Alba arrives with, heals completely and without trace after she goes swimming in the sea ten minutes later. The health benefits of salt-water clearly lost since Victorian times, it appears. Neither of those are deal-breakers, of course, but if I pick up on things like the make-up department's continuity gaffes, it means that the film is singularly failing to hold my attention.
And as the film enters its third act, a third question coincidentally occurs: Has Academy Award winning actor Tommy Lee Jones' dramatic-currency devalued so much that he's prepared to don rose-tinted Lennons and a soul-patch as a second-tier bad guy in what is essentially a straight-to-video action sequel?
Evidently so…
Often terrible, often hilarious, but Mechanic: Resurrectionis genuinely more fun than the last Bourne outing…
Jason Statham in that film he did after the Guy Ritchie ones..
Well as big and loud as the film is, it was clearly designed for the small screen...
Just about, but its intentions were hardly ground-breaking...
No.
No.
Inexplicably, no.
Perhaps the sound editor wanted to preserve the documentary-level realism of the piece, instead?
Level 2: The Stath™ was, of course, in Expendables 3, as was Harrison 'Solo' Ford.
All roads lead to Han, today.
*1 Oh, and if there's news report footage from a bystander filming the skyskraper-swimming-pool spiralling water out before it breaks, then there's got to be footage of The Stath™ swinging around underneath it at the same time, as he didn't make his escape until the whole thing shattered. So much for his 'making it look like an accident', which was the very reason he was hired. You had one job, The Stath™. 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.
Nine Lives (SPOILERS)
Cert: PG / 87 mins / Dir. Barry Sonnenfield / Trailer
Despite being a great devotee of all things cinematic, I don't really keep up with the 'showbiz news' side of the media. Tales of woe come and go, and unless they make it onto the 'actual' news or are scandalous enough to turn up in my Twitter feed, I don't really hear of them. As a result, I cannot imagine what financial apocalypse has occurred around the Academy Award winning actor Kevin Spacey that he'd sign up for this. Christoper Walken and Jennifer Garner's names on the cast list surprise me not one jot (they'd go to the opening of a fridge), but Spacey? That poor, poor man.
And so, the aforementioned trio autopilot their way through a Frankenstein body-swap morality tale, assembled from the disembodied tropes of every other one before it. Kevin Spacey is a slightly mean businessman (not like Ebeneezer Scrooge mean, just a bit grumpy like most middle-aged men tend to be) who is zapped into the body of a cat during a lightning storm after his daughter's wished for a cat, to teach him the error of his ways! And to get him to bring dead mice and birds in from the garden for his family more often. Or something. Naturally, hilarity ensues because cats are inherently comical creatures. Garner plays his unlikely borderline-trophy wife, Walken plays the wise old man in the pet shop (not at all like the old man off of Gremlins), and Malina Weissman plays his daughter: the kid-character in a kids' film who is largely ignored by the screenplay.
The film actually begins passably enough, Spacey playing his role with some amount of pantomime gusto, at least. But once he inhabits the cat's body (the point of the film, remember), the whole thing seems to grind to an embarrassing crawl. Without the facial reactions or physical acting to back it up, Spacey's laconic inner monologue comes off as abject boredom, as even the central premise of man-in-cat isn't mined for any sense of uniqueness or novelty.
One can only assume that the budget for this movie went on the cast and the (relatively well-rendered) CGI cat, because the rest of the film looks like a cheap TV-movie. Which is fine if it happens to be on your TV and you haven't actively paid to watch it. Because that's really all it's good for. Although even kids*1 are more discerning than this.
The most insulting aspect of the whole film is how unconvincing the 'be a better person' schtick is handled. It's not like there isn't a new interpretation of A Christmas Carol every other year; there are plenty of examples out there. If you need (or indeed, get) any kind of guidance from Nine Lives, you're already in a position where no film can save you.
…and the cat dies in the end.
They try and act like it doesn't, but we all know it does.
13 Going On 30 and YouTube cat-videos.
No.
No.
No.
…no.
No.
Level 2: This film stars Kevin Spacey, who also appeared in 1988's Working Girl alongside Harrison 'Solo' Ford.
All roads lead to Han, today.
*1 And even as I type that I know I mean "especially kids". You might not like much of what they enjoy, but they're far more choosy consumers of entertainment than adults.
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.
