Ah, a 'late-morning' screening. While the attending crowd was slightly more varied than the ones for Under The Skin and Knock Knock, there was still a strong contingent of Unaccompanied Middle Aged Man™ present. And during the lengthy, slow-motion opening sequence of Nocturnal Animals, I could sense many brows furrowing around the room and mouths falling agape, silently forming the look of "hang on, this is not the film that the trailer sold me…". There is a context for what happens at the beginning, but only in that the context is itself out of context. I won't spoil it, you'll see for yourself when you watch the film.
Confused? Welcome to Nocturnal Animals.
Tom Ford's adaptation of Austin Wright's novel, Tony and Susan, follows Amy Adams (Susan no less), as a fundamentally unhappy contemporary artist who receives a pre-publication manuscript from her ex-husband, Edward, after several years of non-contact. When it turns out that Edward's book is a violently clear allegory for his feelings about their failed marriage, Susan is appalled and enthralled in equal measure. The film splits into a visual adaptation of the work, Susan's reactions to it and a series of progressive flashbacks which reveal the ways their relationship broke down.
Nowhere near as challenging as it'd like to think it is, Nocturnal Animals is, nonetheless, very good at being difficult to like. Probably a little too good, actually. It's well acted and solidly directed, but I couldn't work out if the film has a terrible, clunky script, or a brilliant script of terrible, clunky characters. Maybe they're the same thing, even though they shouldn't be.
With Adams' as the emotionally reinforced artist, Armie Hammer as her second (and externally lecherous) husband, Jake Gyllenhaal as her flawed husband in the flashbacks and the flawed central character in Susan's interpretation of the book, and obstructive or negative supporting characters in all three timelines, I don't think it's unfair to say that there's not a single redeeming character in the whole film. That's not to say if has no redeeming features, but they're scattered loosely down a long, dark road.
The novel Susan receives depicts a man (Tony, from the title or the original book, above) driving through the southern states of America with his wife and daughter when they become ambushed by a gang of rednecks. One thing leads to another and the man is separated from his family while they're raped and murdered. The rest of the story follows Tony as he teams up with a borderline corrupt cop to bring the gang to violent justice. It's basically a 1970s exploitation flick with a framing device.
The bottom line is, for all the stark visuals, subtext and narrative layering, Nocturnal Animals slowly descends to a sort of art-student torture-porn, raising one eyebrow as it plays ironically in a sandpit it thinks it's too good for, all the while throwing in flashbacks and real-world segments which make decreasing amounts of sense*1. True to its title, the film embraces that sense of heightened-yet-detached unreality which is both the confidant and tormentor of the 3am insomniac. But that's no consolation.
With plenty of frowning and yelling but little genuine emotion on display, Tom Ford's film is a compelling artifice of drama. Which might actually be the point, admittedly…
It'll be more atmospheric on a big screen than a small one, yes.
Oh, I have no idea.
No.
No, but I will ask you to explain yourself in great detail.
There isn't.
Level 2: Nocturnal Animals features Isla Fisher, who starred in 2010's Burke and Hare alongside Simon 'Plutt' Pegg, Andy 'Snoke' Serkis, Tim 'Palpatine' Curry and Christopher 'Dooku' Lee...
*1 Okay, this section is in highlight-to-read spoilers for people who've seen the film and hopefully understood it more than I have:
1) The scene with Susan's colleague and the mobile phone which shows a monitor-video of a baby in a crib before a screaming demon leaps into frame, causing Susan to scream herself and drop the phone: I was under the impression that it was one of those prank videos that occasionally does the rounds. Except that her colleague's reaction displays no recognition at all, never mind amusement, once the punchline has been delivered. Okay, her phone screen is now smashed, but you'd at least get a "well, that joke backfired" line in response. So the other alternative is that the video is a nightvision baby-monitor app, as described, and Susan is in such a bad place psychologically that she's hallucinated the demon's appearance causing her to drop the phone. Except that we get no further hallucinations of this nature to suggest a descent into madness. So what gives with that scene?
Oh, and 2, who's the late-teen girl that Susan phones on the Sunday morning, who calls her 'mom'? The story leads us to assume that she doesn't have any children, indeed the 'bad thing' Susan did was aborting Edward's child (the vengeful reason for the couple's daughter's death in the book) at the start of her relationship with Hutton. But in one scene, Susan tells her assistant that her ex-husband is from 'a couple of years ago', which would be nowhere near enough time for Susan and Hutton to have a daughter of this age (and would also explain why neither Adams or Gyllenhaal look that much younger in the flashbacks - certainly not twenty years younger). And apart from anything else, Hutton's presented as such a prize tool that there's no way their relationship could have limped along for eighteen years, child or otherwise. Was Susan impacted so much by the discovery of the bodies in the book that she hallucinated her own aborted daughter back to life? I only ask because the poor girl isn't mentioned before or after that. Bizarre.
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.
Godzilla (3D)
Cert: 12A / 123 mins / Dir. Gareth Edwards
In a way, I was a cinematically spoilt kid. The first film I remember seeing at the cinema was Star Wars, and while I went on to have a very sci-fi-centric childhood, A New Hope set a bar that many franchises (especially TV-based ones) couldn't really compete with. Blake's 7, Space 1999, The Black Hole; they look naff and shonky to us now, but they looked pretty much like that to me then. Call me snobbish, but I don't have the time to waste on media in the "so bad, it's good" bracket. To me, there's no such thing. And I think it was this infant elitism that meant I never connected with the Godzilla franchise (cartoon excluded, obvs). The very hallmarks that to millions were (are) its charm; corny dialogue, bad acting, rooting for the 'good' monster and booing at the 'bad' one, disregarding basic rules of biology and evolution… I file them all under "not good enough".
In that respect, 2014's Godzilla is a wonderful homage to its forebears.
A brief opening scene, slightly reminiscent of Jurassic Park, filled me with some hope that this may be the movie to change my mind, but once Bryan Cranston arrives and begins delivering his part with more ham than Miss Piggy firing a sausage chaingun at the Three Little Pigs, it's all downhill (even his wigs look embarrassed to be there). Aaron Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen seem to have no fucking clue what they're doing, while Watanabe, Binoche, Strathairn and Hawkins almost stare directly into the camera and mouth the words "don't judge me".
Every page in the disaster-movie-rulebook has been copied into what's meant to be a screenplay, seemingly verbatim.
• Wow, that reactor-meltdown's expanding at the speed of roughly just-faster than a running human!
• He's not a crazy old man, he knows the truth!
• You can't kill the dog (but can apparently wipe out thousands of people at regular intervals).
• Will the kids be alright though? The ones on the schoolbus where the driver has decided that in the wake of a monster being in the river and the army being everywhere, he's still going to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge?
• Hey, it's a good job that this ace bomb-disposal expert happens to be passing through town just as the army are semi-ineptly loading a clockwork nuclear device onto a rickety cargo train!
• Hey, he helped that kid who got lost, he's such a nice guy! I wonder if he'll see his own wife and child again, though?
• If you can't have the monster trashing the Eiffel Tower, have it trash the small version in Vegas!
• Yeah, have the monster absolutely fuck Vegas!
• We caused this with evil mankindedness and horrible science!
• Should we explain how he breathes lightning-fire out of his mouth when we've attempted to shoehorn in every other bit of exposition? …no. No, we shouldn't.
• LET'S END THE MOVIE WITH A TICKING COUNTDOWN CLOCK, I DON"T THINK ANYONE'S THOUGHT OF DOING THAT BEFORE!
• Oh look, Gozdilla's just going back into the sea like the surprisingly anthropomorphic pseudo-ally he is instead of continuing to trash the fuck out of the city!
• THREE CHEERS!
I call bullshit.
Like some sort of bastard hybrid of Pacific Rim and Battleship, Godzilla can't even be a convincing version of the thing it clearly loves. The only (only) saving grace is that the lizard himself looks and sounds fantastic, but the titular beast has so little screen-time that even that's no comfort. As is becoming a trend, the film's remarkably boring considering how much stuff gets blown up. Oh, and it's in 3D. Whatever.
To quote the wonderful Michael Legge: "Well, I can tell you now that Godzilla isn't the worst Godzilla movie anymore. Godzilla is."
What he said.
I don't know how to answer that.
No.
If it does, I need a serious word with someone at Warner Bros.
Go away.
Yes. Yes I will.
No. No I won't.
I heard one early on, and it's no consolation.
How do we go about redacting all the good things which have been said about Bryan Cranston's carreer as penance for the face-palmingly shit performance he gives in this film? Is there a form I fill in?
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.
Kick-Ass 2(Spoiler-free) Cert: 15 / 103 mins / Dir. Jeff Wadlow
Expectation is the enemy, and the victor, of many a sequel. Some manage to equal their predecessor, a few even surpass it, but following up a breakout hit like Kick-Ass was never going to be easy, no matter how much it stood holding the door open for another movie. Not only is K-A2 contending with its elder sibling, it's also surrounded by many other page-to-screen adaptations, and being a bit indie is no longer a unique selling point. So, how does it fare?
Well, the first half never quite clears the hurdle of 'largely unnecessary sequel', with clunky dialogue, glaring flashbacks and a clockwork mechanism of setup / fight-scene / setup / fight-scene. The thread with Mindy/Hit-Girl trying to fit in at school was the worst offender, with a resolution so telegraphed as to almost be a waste of everyone's time. But thankfully the second half reaches down and gives the first a hand. Everything from the return of Hit-Girl onwards is quite marvellous, and the story suddenly starts to feel like it has some consequence. This really is Moretz's film (despite what I've just grumbled about), and she gets the best deal in terms of having material to work with. That said, Taylor-Johnson and Mintz-Plasse are on great form as the returning hero and villain respectively, and Jim Carrey gives a fantastic dialled-down performance as Colonel Stars and Stripes. Everyone else, unfortunately, is in one-trick-pony territory, and there just isn't the time or scope to give such a massive cast-list that much to do, no matter how entertaining they are. I also noticed a very strong Brit presence on-screen, which was nice. I suspect it's a combination of the Matthew Vaughn connection and the UK location filming, but I'm not complaining.
Ultimately, I enjoyed Kick-Ass 2 very much, but I'd be fibbing if I said it was anywhere near as iconic as its forebear. A third installment would benefit greatly from having Vaughn back at the helm. It spends a little too much time moralising, and not quite enough having fun. But when it is enjoying itself, you can't help but be swept along for the ride.
Oh, and stick around after the credits for a short, final scene.
Almost.
Mostly.
I'd say so, yes.
If you're already a fan, the cinema.
No.
I will.
I didn't hear one, but it could well have been buried. There was a lot of screaming..
Now that Geek has almost become the new mainstream, is the comic-book-movie well starting to run dry?
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.
