Review: Star Wars - The Rise Of Skywalker (ninth-pass)

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker
(ninth-pass)
Cert: 12A / 142 mins / Dir. J.J. Abrams / Trailer

Previous reviews: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Okay, just a quick jaunt this late in The Rise Of Skywalker's cinematic run to lay some appreciation out for the magnificent Anthony Daniels, the man behind (inside) the golden droid that is See-Threepio.

The character (indeed, the actor) had little more than an incidental role in The Force Awakens and The Rise Of Skywalker, lighting up each of his scenes but coming off as feeling a little shortchanged given the character's previous importance. Daniels has been in this from the very start, of course, braving the heat of the Tunisian sun for Tatooine back in '75. The movies may be labelled The Skywalker Saga, but C-3PO essentially is Star Wars. Certainly a core part of what makes it special.


His was the first line of dialogue in the (release order) story, and Threepio reprises those four words as his last in Episode IX. Okay, this isn't as cool as the circularity of Revenge Of The Sith's Tantive IV callback, but given that LFL later decided the Episode III blockade runner was in fact The Sundered Heart instead, that particular Easter egg has already been retconned into insignificance*¹.

But C-3PO turns out to be the most pivotal droid in The Rise Of Skywalker, even upstaging BB-8 in his usefulness (quite the achievement in this trilogy). What's more, he gets many of the film's funniest lines and corny as they may be, the droid's humour is always on-brand*². He has an endearing lack of self-awareness for one with so much external knowledge, which speaks to anyone who's ever tried to fit in despite being a smartarse.

Threepio's screen-time is still relatively short in Episode IX of course, but the droid that shines twice as bright translates half as long. There'll be more adventures with goldenrod in one form or another, as hinted at by Daniels himself recently. Part of Star Wars' specific charm is its non-linear approach to storytelling across different media, and there's only one guy who can do the voice, the movement, the essence.

So.
Where the hell is my 3¾" red-eyed C-3PO, Hasbro?

The Star Wars.



Obvs.



Obvs.



That one's up for debate, but probably not.



Try me.



Not that I can tell.



Level 0: It is Star Wars.

...but if you wanted to go around the houses with it, The Rise Of Skywalker stars Anthony Daniels, who was in the 'Best Years Of Your Death' episode of Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) with Tom Baker, one of the many Doctors in 2013's 'Day Of The Doctor' special of Doctor Who next to David Tennant, who appears in Good Omens alongside Daniel Mays, who was in The Infiltrator which also featured Jason Isaacs from A Cure For Wellness, a film that had Celia Imrie in it from out of 1990's The World Of Eddie Weary which also starred... Anthony Daniels.





*¹ Aside: it hasn't. #TANTIVE4EVA ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Hey, I'm a massive fan of Attack Of The Clones and even I can't forgive the "this is such a drag" line. Not least because the "I'm quite beside myself" is superb. ^{[ 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.

Review: Greed

Greed
Cert: 15 / 104 mins / Dir. Michael Winterbottom / Trailer

Five days before his 60th birthday, boorish retail magnate Sir Richard McCreadie (Steve Coogan) is overseeing preparations for a lavish party on Mykonos. A coterie of minions and hangers-on surrounds him including his mother (Shirley Henderson*¹), current partner (Shanina Shaik), ex-wife Samantha (Isla Fisher), son Finn (Asa Butterfield), PR Manager*² (Sarah Solemani) and personal assistant Amanda (Dinita Gohil).

Also lurking in the background is Richard's hired biographer Nick (David Mitchell), tasked with chronicling the great man's success story. The problem is that the more people Nick meets, the harder it becomes to write anything nice about his subject...

MISH

And what an almighty mess this film is. No, seriously. Greed should, by all accounts, be a story uncovered for the audience by the on-screen author. Instead we just get a mish-mash of everything. He's a writer, so somehow we get talking-head cutaways from a completed mocumentary as well as his own amateurish cam-footage. The film opens on the day of the party before flashing back to five days earlier, then we get more flashbacks and flashbacks-within-flashbacks until it becomes unclear who's telling each segment and what the point of it is. The fast cuts are migraine-inducing, even outside of the stylised montage sequences.

As well as the incoherent editing, we get a number of sketched-in subplots. An Oedipus thread with Finn and the building of a plywood amphitheatre are at least fitting for the storyline, as are the Syrian refugees living on the beach next to Richard's party venue. But the constructed-reality show being filmed on the island featuring McCreadie's daughter Lily (Sophie Cookson), other than bumping into the refugee story, feels like it's been dropped in from another movie. When there's A Message to convey, Greed is very on the nose. It also keeps forgetting there's a message.

The film either employs improvised dialogue shot on a first take to increase spontaneity, or Michael Winterbottom is actively directing his cast to talk over each other with no natural end-point to each scene. It is intolerable that this left the editing room.

MONSTER

The real shame is that there's a fantastic cast here, all of whom have been much better elsewhere. Even Coogan struggles in a role which feels like it was written for Sacha Baron Cohen. His central figure should be an absolute monster of a man. Clearly - CLEARLY - a composite of around 15% Alan Sugar, 85% Philip Green, McCreadie is a character we already know on an instinctive level before the opening titles have even finished. But for all the bull-headed excess and yelling at subordinates, Coogan plays him pretty much as his own Gareth Cheeseman character from the mid-90s, with a little bit of Del Boy swagger and a few cracks of awkwardness mined from Alan Partridge. IE three comedy characters. Two of whom are his own. No drama.

Coogan forgets to be unlikeable or Winterbottom forgets to direct him as such. Quite possibly both. So when the film's climax comes lumbering into view, what should be a shocking, even sobering, moment instead means... *checks notes* NOTHING. I spent more time wondering where they found the CGI budget than I did empathising with Amanda*³.

PIEAND

Because in its final moments, the film suddenly grows a conscience, lecturing its audience with captioned statistics on global inequality and the fashion industry, as if it's taken anything else seriously in the preceding 100 minutes. While there is certainly a point (indeed A Better Film) to be made, this is cack-handed frowning like that time Russell Brand pretended to be outraged that a cleaner doesn't earn the same money as a CEO, despite the two having completely different jobs and responsibilities*⁴. The whole thing is painfully wearing.

Is Greed a raucously sharp comedy? Is it a thought-provoking satire? Or is is it just an ADHD mood-board, a prolonged elevator pitch thrown together by a sleep-deprived first year film student, the cinematic equivalent of being yelled at for 100 minutes?

Michael Winterbottom doesn't know, so why the hell should we?

Nothing good.



Nope.



Nope.



Absolutely not.



Yep.



There isn't.



Level 1: Babu Frik is in this and so is Sabé.



I was going to throw on an extra point for the bit with James Blunt because that was good, and then I decided not to because the rest of the movie isn't good enough to have earned that one, brief high-point.


*¹ What the fuck accent is Shirley Henderson meant to be doing in this film, though? Anyone? She's normally great. The characters here say she's Irish, but it sounds like the Belfast suburb of Cardiff. Much like Jude Law's verbal wrangling in that submarine movie, I suspect the accent is either a very specific regional twang that she knows intimately from relatives across the water, or she can't do it at all and has opted for Shop Demonstration Mode. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² This isn't me being rude by the way, if I haven't named a character above it's because those aren't recorded on the film's IMDB or Wiki pages. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Because with the best will in the world, it's not McCreadie's fault that Amanda's aunt died in a fire at another factory because she was sacked from McCreadie's supplier weeks earlier. A fire in the original factory, if they'd had to cut safety measures because McCreadie was driving down costs elsewhere? McCreadie's fault. Malnutrition or illness from working long underpaid hours at the original factory? McCreadie's fault. The original factory being struck by a meteorite while her aunt was working a shift? Not McCreadie's fault, mate. The fire could have happened anywhere. Remember this is fiction, Winterborrom. You have the absolute power to make these things link up into a coherent narrative. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ Y'know, as if when Russell did his Arthur remake, he got the same salary as a 17yr old who spends the day bringing everyone coffee on-set. ^{[ 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.

Review: The Gentlemen (third-pass)

The Gentlemen
(third-pass / spoilers)
Cert: 18 / 113 mins / Dir. Guy Ritchie / Trailer

It's an odd thing how over the years our favourite films - or at least those we choose to watch the most - aren't always the ones we initially thought the most highly of. I originally scored Rian Johnson's Looper 6/7, despite being a logistical and philosophical masterpiece. The Coen Bros' Inside Llewyn Davis came in one point lower. Yet both have stayed with me ever since, and even made it into by best-of-decade list.

So watching Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen for a third time within a month, I still stand by the reservations from my first and second passes. I still think it lacks the urgency of Lock, Stock, the playfulness of Snatch and the swagger of RocknRolla. I still think Matthew McConnaughey, while he throws in his all, isn't quite right for the role of Mickey Pearson.

CONTACTS

Apart from anything else, although Pearson has been in the UK since his university days, he's still very outwardly American - using that to his advantage with underworld and aristocratic contacts alike. But because his rival of Jeremy Strong's Matthew Berger is also from the US, what we end up with is two outsiders arguing over the turf of a third party (ie the UK). To have Pearson be a British kingpin bristlingly defending his spot (eg Lenny in RocknRolla) would have made for a more dynamic film. If anything, the 'natural' protagonist with this cast should be Henry Golding's Dry Eye, having been brought up on London's streets. Alas, his character is firmly second-tier (albeit as part of an incredibly strong second-tier).

Likewise, Charlie Hunnam's Raymond isn't quite as roguish as the screenplay needs him to be, despite a choice scene with a machine gun (which he very obviously did not have under his coat when sprinting thirty seconds earlier, especially given that it hangs below the coat-line when he re-conceals it) and some beautifully eyebrow-raising language. And had The Toddlers appeared in an earlier Ritchie flick, they'd have fit right in with the grime, desperation and ineptitude; here they're oddly out of place.

ARRIVALS

But I digress. Truth be told, this third-pass was engineered in the capital to fit in with a jaunt down to Shepherd's Bush to visit The Princess Victoria pub from the film's opening moments. We jaunted, we visited, we saw the sights. Marvellous stuff.

The Gentlemen is cracking fun and has already earned a pre-booked place on my shelf for slick, easygoing, loudmouthed carnage. It's not the best student in its class, but is already a favourite. Apart from anything else, how many other 5/7s have had three turns in a cinema round these parts?

Guy Ritchie's good films.



See above.



See above.



Not really, but that doesn't hold it back.



We might.



There isn't.



Level 1: Rogue One's Red Eleven is in this.







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.

Review: Parasite

Parasite
(aka Gisaengchung)
Cert: 15 / 132 mins / Dir. Bong Joon-ho / Trailer

If the years of writing on this blog have taught me anything it's that opportunities to view one-off screenings of films like Bong Joon-ho's Parasite are to be seized, not least because a) it's the movie everybody is talking about now that the 1917 buzz has died down, and b) it's exactly the sort of niche fare I spend a lot of time complaining about not getting at our lowly five-screener*¹ out in the shires. Usually I'm wary of a Friday night cinema audience. But this, I felt sure, would be more refined company.

And so it was, dear reader, that I made the pilgrimage*² and strapped in for a journey to the unknown, having heard only praise for the film along with assurances that the best way to view it was with as little prior knowledge as possible. In that regard at least, I was prepared...

BASEMENT

Teenager Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo Shik) and his family eke out an existence in crumbling slums, undertaking low-paid menial work (and usually badly) to even eat in their basement apartment. But when Ki-woo's friend Min-hyuk (Park Seo-joon) announces he'll be studying abroad, this opens an opportunity for Ki-woo to step in as the English tutor of an affluent family's teenage daughter Park Da-hye (Jeong Ji-so). Ki-woo isn't remotely qualified for this of course, but that's nothing that forged certificates can't remedy, courtesy of his Photoshop-wiz sister Ki-jeong (Park So-dam). Within a couple of sessions teaching (during which he begins an affair with his student), Ki-woo convinces the family matriarch Yeon-gyo (Cho Yeo-jeong) that his 'friend' (ie sister) would be the ideal art tutor for their highly-strung five yr old son Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun). Yeon-gyo accepts delightedly, and within the week Ki-jeong has secured a job for their father Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) as the family's limo driver, and he in turn inveigles his wife Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin) as their new housekeeper, all pretending they don't (or barely) know one another.

This web of lies is already at breaking point when the previously dismissed housekeeper Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun) arrives at the opulent abode one stormy night with secrets of her own. Then the wildcards really begin to fly...

BRIAN

Director/co-writer Bong Joon-ho sets up his pitch with intricate efficiency, introducing characters with enough pacing that the storyline is never cluttered but that the whole thing also moves at a brisk pace. The film is by no means minimalist but it is lean, with no extraneous content in the first act. The script, erratic and bickering by its nature, is never less than crystal clear, although there's sometimes the feeling that far from being lost in translation, Darcy Paquet's English-language subtitles come out as a little too literal for a film which aims for nuance elsewhere. Although this is probably unavoidable given the subtitles' necessary brevity*³.

The visual disparity between the squalor of the downtrodden basement flat and the upper-class aerie, despite them being only streets apart, is outstanding. Cinematographer Hong Gyeong-Pyo has an innate understanding of the story's spaces and how to convey them to an audience.

Bong Joon-ho immediately finds the natural balancing point between the comedy of the family's intricate pretence and the certain peril of their ruse being discovered. And that point is a needle-stab of gnawing, escalating, unspoken panic. The tension throughout is palpable, and yet the film's brooding undercurrent never quite pays off, even in its enthusiastic finale. Either that or his restraint and refusal to pander to an audience's animalistic appetites is to be applauded. One of those, for sure.

HATTIE

Because as much as I admire the technical aspects of Parasite and forgive the screenplay's contrivances, I never found myself getting swept up in events. Never found myself actually caring. None of the characters are especially likeable to begin with and none are fleshed out enough to change this. And while a viewer doesn't have to like the characters they're watching in any film, it becomes hard to emotionally invest in their progress (or even safety) without it. Meanwhile, plot points like Yeo-jeong's neurotic nature and Ki-woo's growing guilt at having started the whole social-avalanche are little more than footnotes in the grand scheme of things, as the director sets too many plates spinning to be adequately showcased within the run-time.

Short version: I don't quite know why everyone loves Parasite so much. But that's par for the course in January. It's fine isn't it? If you want what is essentially a Korean-language West End farce which violently doubles as an introspective on the class system and surveillance culture, it's absolutely fine.

Next week I might get round to watching then complaining about the new Will Smith action movie. There is no pleasing me. Unless it's got lightsabers in it.

But I would still like to thank Cineworld for showing this ten minutes away from my house. You guys!

Think of a half-way house between Terry & June and Dogtooth.



If you're into something a bit different from multiplex-fare, sure.



Absolutely.



That's not my call to make, sadly.



That's possible.



There isn't.



Level 2: Woo-sik Choi is in this, and he's also in Okja with Shirley 'Babu Frik' Henderson.





*¹ Yeah, future-boy is complaining that his jet pack isn't fast enough again. Five screens, you whippersnapper? Back in my day we only had two if we were lucky and even then there was only one organist... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Okay, it's a ten minute walk from my house, not exactly a trek to Lourdes with a suitcase full of stones but it's cold out and quite damp at the moment. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ As if I of all people would recognise brevity if it came up and bit me on the arse... ^{[ 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.

Review: The Personal History Of David Copperfield

The Personal History Of David Copperfield
Cert: PG / 119 mins / Dir. Armando Iannucci / Trailer

A disclaimer. I haven't read Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Also, I haven't watched any television, film or stage adaptations of David Copperfield. There's no agenda behind that, it's just the way these things fall. I've heard of it obviously, but the only Dickens I'm reasonably familiar with is A Christmas Carol, and even then it's only because some new adaptation is filmed almost every year. And it's not like I employ the same level of reverse-snobbery for his work as I do with Shakespeare's material.

So when I went to see Armando Iannucci's The Personal History Of David Copperfield this evening, I did so because I like its cast, I like Armando Iannucci and I trust them all to make an entertaining retooling of a thing I'm not familiar with in the slightest. This review is of the thing I just watched, not the thing I was expecting or the thing I was necessarily wanting it to be. And with all that in mind, this will either be the exactly the viewpoint you're after or the last opinion you want to read. Either way, you're very welcome...

JOLLY

And what a delight it turns out to be. By definition of the material alone it's a far more jolly ride than Iannucci's previous cinematic outing, as he works Dickens' classic into a sprawling comedy of manners with tight scripting and sharp performances to match. Opening with a theatrical framing device, the whole thing has an air of knowing artifice, yet never waivers in its conviction. The film is energetic without tipping over into the chaotic, stagey without being forced. sumptuous without feeling stuffy.

Although Iannucci runs a wide social gamut of Victorian England, the grime of that era (in this story's settings) is barely present. Yet there's a detailed richness to the production design letting the audience know this is an aesthetic choice rather than a time or cost-saving measure. David Copperfield looks, and feels, gorgeous.

CHIPS

The cast are as superb as you'd hope. Dev Patel shines as always in the eponymous role, as does Jairaj Varsani as the younger Copperfield. At the film's height (and especially with Tilda Swinton involved), there's an almost Coen-esque farce going on, and it even begins to approach the claustrophobia and nightmare-logic of Aronofsky's mother! as reality becomes blurred and we're once again reminded of the narrated performance structure.

David Copperfield is a whistle-stop tour of a big-old book, and the two-hour runtime feels optimistically cramped in some places, while there are entire sections of the hero's life that would clearly benefit from a full, serialised adaptation for a more emotional connection. I'm reliably informed that some key story-elements have been altered here, although as this is the director's re-imagining of the saga, that's absolutely permissible*¹. That Iannucci keeps masterful control of the whole thing is a credit to his dedication and enthusiasm for the source-text.

YSCIENCETHEATER3000

This is a timely companion-piece with Greta Gerwig's Little Women, both stylised adaptations of stories from the mid 1800s which are just as engaging for audiences today. Gerwig's film has more to say of course, but both channel the stunning vision of their writer/directors.

David Copperfield is snappy, stylised and consistently funny. But it's also a bit of a confection, almost a curiosity, and despite its period-setting this version won't be for everybody. Which is probably a large part of why I enjoyed it so much.

.



If it's your bag, certainly.



It is.



This should certainly be near the top of everyone's CVs for the foreseeable future.



Quite possibly.



There isn't.



Level 1: Captain Phasma and Captain Madakor are in this.





*¹ More 'strict' adaptations of David Copperfield already exist and will no doubt be made in the future. Think of this as the Dickensian equivalent of Cumberbatch's 'accompaniment' Sherlock Holmes, rather than Jeremy Brett's more canonical interpretation (even though this version of Copperfield is still set in its original time period). ^{[ 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.