It's difficult, even after all these years of picking films apart, to know how to begin deconstructing a work as bitingly relevant as Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman. It's the mostly-true 1970s story of the first Afro-American Colorado Springs detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), who infiltrates both the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan as a member of an organisation which has wildly fluctuating opinions on both.
This movie has plenty to say and it dares you to disagree.
The KKK-aspect is where the majority of the screentime lies of course, not only since it's the more challenging area*1, but also what the core of the movie is about. Naturally it's an absurd premise in itself, and that's certainly not played down in the script, but it's never loses its edge in either tone or execution.
The problem screenwriters always have in adapting true stories for the screen is, of course, can real events have the satisfying conclusion that a film is willing its audience toward? The answer here is yes.
Fuck yes, it can.
Washington rides front and centre with a turn that's simultaneously deserving of every possible award, yet not overtly angling for a single one. Supported by a magnificent cast, there are no weak performances in BlacKkKlansman; the director wouldn't allow it and neither would the screenplay. And all credit goes to Topher Grace, Alec Baldwin, Jasper Pääkkönen and a host of others for grabbing the bull by the horns in portraying some pretty rank individuals with no less gusto than they'd apply to the most desirable of screen roles.
The KKK aren't represented here as comically stupid (well, not wholly), but the kind of insidious intelligence that 'the organisation' needs to stay in existence, yet still lacking basic common sense. The audience are allowed to laugh at them, but never to underestimate their threat.
Spike Lee's lightness of touch keeps things rolling along. Despite its subject matter the movie isn't inflammatory, it isn't even particularly cynical - just mad as hell from the first scene, and rightfully so. Although there are intentionally amusing moments, BlacKkKlansman is an acerbic drama which Lee directs like a comedy. This duality is both the film's greatest strength, and also what holds it back from finding a comfortable groove. Then again, this piece of work is pretty far from about being comfortable. While there will no doubt be those who think that the last five minutes are 'a bit much', that's the point of the entire film.
Will BlacKkKlansman change minds, politically? Unlikely, but then that's the nature of the problem itself. Spike Lee's film is a line in the sand, a reminder that some things will not go unchallenged, the movie which looks at the tone of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, then says 'hold my Kool-Aid'...
*1 After the two walkouts in Enfield during Slender Man, we got a quartet of people who decided they weren't digging this Spike Lee joint. Which feels disappointing, but ultimately fair enough. The film's certainly unapologetic in its tone. [ 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.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to assess whether Henry Cavill's non-plot-specific facial hair as a new supporting character in the sixth film of an ongoing franchise was really worth making a laughing-stock of history's most iconic superhero*1. Oh, you didn't think I'd forget, did you Paramount? Hahaha mate, nobody's forgotten…
Anyway, that's all water under the Parisian catacombs now as Tom Cruise's more 'sensible' action-vehicle, Mission: Impossible, roars back into our cinemas for another globe-trotting installment. Old faces return and new ones are thrown into the mix as the stakes are raised and Ethan Hunt has to save the world from twin-nuclear armageddon*2 at the hands of a crazed messianic terrorist.
And as jaded/cynical as I've become with the M:I franchise, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a good time with Fallout. On both writing and directing duties, Christopher McQuarrie wears his cinematic heart on his sleeve with nods to other classic movies*3, as well as tying in details from the previous Missions: Impossibles. Despite a massive reference to the first*4 movie in the series (presumably a character-downpayment on future episodes), this is a recipe for an action-cake with espionage-icing, rather than the other way around. Although to be fair, that's been the case since John Woo's sequel in 2000, anyway.
Mission Impossible: Fallout is the kind of film where every twist, turn and sleight-of-hand are telegraphed at least five minutes in advance. The kind of film where spies who furtively meet in Paris are required to do so at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. The kind of film where firearms (small and massive alike) have absolutely no recoil, and high speed vehicle crashes are walked away from with a limp which disappears by the next scene. The kind of film where not only is there a ticking-countdown timer ending, but Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames literally mansplain this to their fellow secret-agent, Rebecca Ferguson. The kind of film where, five minutes later, Pegg explains it again. The kind of film where, two minutes later, Rhames feels the need to vocalise to everyone around him that the countdown has now begun (while we're looking at the timer every third shot). The kind of film where the timer becomes a heavy handed metaphor for the entire screenplay.
But it's still fun. Great fun.
Although they're bringing little new to either the series or their own CVs, the cast are on reliably solid form here. They're who you expect them to be, and they're good at that, at least. Cinematographer Rob Hardy ensures Fallout is beautifully shot, although it's arguably far too glossy for its own good. The recurring lensflare and absolute lack of grit serves to remind the audience that they're on a very expensive and ultimately safe ride. Elsewhere, Lorne Balfe's powerful score drops in just the right amount of the classic signature tune, and keeps the action rolling forward.
And Paramount have done that thing where they make a sixth Mission: Impossible movie, and in this one they even have Ethan Hunt mention the UK's foreign intelligence service MI-6, and yet they don't just call it 'MI:6 Fallout'. I'm old enough to remember the Mission: Impossible II cinema foyer-stands which branded it 'MI-2000' (although I never saw this on anything else*5). Perhaps Ian Paramount thinks he had his fingers burnt with that one..?
Let's be honest here, the last three Mission: Impossible films.
For sheer, bloody-minded entertainment value alone, yes it is.
As much as I enjoyed Fallout, I think it'll lose a lot on the journey to the small screen.
*1 And feel free to discuss among yourselves of course, but the answer is no. No, it wasn't worth that. In fact, while the style itself is the bane of makeup technicians and continuity advisers the world over, Cavill's facial-stubble changes length and density throughout Fallout anyway, often during single scenes. So now two characters look inherently ridiculous because of one moustache. Well played, Paramount… [ BACK ]
*2 "Hey Chris, that idea you had about the nuclear bomb at the end of the film? I watched that American Assassin at the weekend and they had one of them in that."
"…well Terry, we'll fucking well have TWO nuclear bombs then, won't we? Haha! TWO! HAHAHAHA!" "But you've written in two timed-bombs within about 100 feet of each other. Surely the first one will just set of the second anyway? And why not just make one big one which would have the same effect?
"…fuck off, Terry."[ BACK ]
*3 Although I'm fully aware that this could just be how my brain works, Fallout opens with a dream-sequence which dares the audience not to think of Sarah Connor's nightmare in Terminator 2. We then move onto what is basically Ozymandias' scheme from the movie-version of Watchmen, facilitated by the stolen plutonium cat-and-mouse from Back To The Future. And if not for the short release-date differential, I'd swear that Ethan grinding the truck to a halt between two walls was a quick nod to the Corellia-chase in Solo. Hell, at one point Ethan's lying in a bed at a medical centre as he looks weakly up at Ilsa and pleads "No, I'm sorry…", and I thought Chris McQuarrie was going to bring us a tension-breaking homage to Shaun of the Dead… [ BACK ]
*5 Seriously though, do I have False Memory Syndrome on this one? I swear to god that the promo-displays in Dreamland Cinema in Margate said "MI-2000", because the Millennium was still a bandwagon thing even six months into the year. And now I can't seem to find any online record of this happening. Did I make this up because I have some sort of pathological need for tacky marketing campaigns which date incredibly badly? [ 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.
Okay, I'll cut straight to the chase. DreamWorks' latest animated offering The Boss Baby is either one of the blandest films I've ever seen, or one of the absolute darkest.
But let's deal with the first one first…
Ostensibly, the film is a comedy about sibling rivalry, particularly the one-sided variety which occurs when a new baby arrives in an already established family unit. The film's narrator and protagonist, Tim, is the only one not taken in by his new little brother's abundant cuteness, suspecting something's afoot with his odd 'when people aren't looking' behaviour. When Tim discovers that the infant works for the BabyCorp organisation and does indeed have a secret agenda, they begrudgingly reach an agreement to work together, in an animated re-imagining of the mismatched buddy-cop framework.
The problem is that other than slapstick and sight-gags, the film is inherently boring. The young protagonists start out as being equally irritating, and while their gradual character development eases this, it's executed in a way which is clichéd and perfunctory. The entire film works to a formula established by far more incisive and solid entries to cinematic canon, namely Toy Story and Despicable Me. And the goodwill of the former seems to be plundered by proxy as the set-props include digitally rendered versions of Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots, the Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone and bizarrely, a Skeletor action-figure (albeit one which doesn't feature the character's face, but is still definitely Skeletor). At a script-level, there are copyright-skirting references to Lord of the Rings and Mary Poppins, hoping to raise a smile with the older members of the audience.
But the mechanical and derivative nature of the storytelling is nothing compared to the presentation. The film has a sort of kitsch, Americana 1960s-sitcom aesthetic which is never fully realised thanks to the lacklustre Big Studio Animation™ production design. Truth be told, the all-too-brief Samurai Jack and popup-book vignettes are more interesting than anything else we see here. The generic pastel textures and oversize heads are the staples of background characters in other movies, but are applied across the board for this outing. We get an unremarkable animated baby in a business-suit and that's it. That's the joke. None of the characters have any... well, character, other than that one central conceit being stretched to within an inch of its life.
I suspect there's more than a bit of post-Trump satire*1 going on with The Baby's*2 high-powered business mannerisms and soundbites. Although since we're not yet in a post-Trump era, it feels worryingly out of place in a movie that plays things safe in almost every other area (or does it? see below). I'm not a parent and I'm not a child*3, so maybe that's the source of my disconnect. But I'm the older brother of a younger sister and I don't remember feeling any of the jealous anxiety that the film plays on (and it certainly didn't unearth any suppressed tensions). Maybe there's more to the emotional root of this film than the final presentation is letting on (again, see below).
The narrative juxtaposition between storytelling, memory, fantasy and reality is interesting, but never becomes more than a wry aside in the vein of 'don't kids do the funniest things?'. At one point in its development, I think The Boss Baby was probably quite a smart movie. I can only imagine that over-development resulted in the final product which underwhelmed me so. By the time you attach a main voice-cast who are now firmly in the B-List stage of their careers, it makes you wonder how much gas DreamWorks have left in the animation-tank…
The Boss Baby is a little bit funny and a little bit charming, but due to it having absolutely no personality, the film will disappear without trace. And thankfully so.
+ + + + +
…and then towards the end of the film, it began occurring to me how thematically distressing this all is. Narrated by the adult-Tim, the story exaggerates and undercuts the 'real' world frequently, showing the audience that the adventure playing out before the their eyes is a representation, rather than a documentary (obviously, but still). The white, tranquil pseudo-Heaven that we see at the beginning of the film, the literal in-story factory where children are manufactured and assigned to families if they're smiley (or behind-the-scenes 'management' if they're serious), is an established cinematic shorthand for the infamous "where do babies come from?" question.
So the Boss Baby comes into Tim's suburban life from this environment, and the boys' parents try continually to help them both get along, despite being initially and mutually distrustful. Over the course of the film, the brothers then begin to bond, working toward a common goal until they appreciate each other not in spite of their differences, but because of them. Then, with their mission accomplished, it's time for Boss Baby to return to headquarters. The farewell between the boys is bittersweet and sincere, but the same heartache isn't put upon their parents, as the Baby's minions are called upon to magically wipe their memories and remove all evidence of Boss Baby's presence in the house. Photographs are altered, toys cleared away, and life goes back to normal. The only person left in the house with knowledge of the story's events by this point is Tim. Looking down from his office, Boss Baby reflects on the lessons he's learned and decides he's ready to try the 'giggle test' again. This time he passes and is assigned to Tim's parents, being brought home as a new baby. The film ends with the three-part family being expanded to four, and Tim having the knowledge and experience to accept his new sibling from the off.
So towards the end of the film, it began occurring to me that this entire story which Tim has constructed is a coping-strategy for his first little-brother dying as an infant (probably from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, but perhaps even some awful accident when the children were beating the crap out of each other), and the associated feelings of guilt and self-loathing brought on by not being welcoming to him in the first place. Tim has convinced himself that he eventually got on with the baby and engineered absolution in that he 'had to go back to Heaven'. His parents never spoke about the baby after the fact, which is why they removed all of the photographs and playthings from the house, leaving Tim's young brain to wonder over time how much of it he'd imagined, in a state of untreated, borderline-hallucinatory PTSD. When the parents conceive and produce a third child, they effectively treat it as their lost second one. And while it's certainly true that the story has a happy ending, it's not without an undertow of denial and absolute anguish.
None of this appears to be mentioned in the original book's Wiki entry or subsequent glowing reviews of course, but that's what I took away from the story. Although it's true my glass is often Half-Empty™.
So like I said, either the film is offensively bland, or horrifically dark. And given the U-rating and medium in which it's all delivered, I didn't particularly enjoy it either way…
Level 2: This film features the voice of Alec Baldwin of course and he was in 1990's The Hunt For Red October, alongside James Earl 'Vader' Jones and Tim 'Palpatine' Curry.
*1 Albeit the kind of broad-strokes satire you get on Saturday Night Live... #ComedySnob [BACK]
*2 Seriously though, the IMDB (and Google at large) just lists him as "Boss Baby". Has the actual, central character of this film not even got a name? Worse still, was the rest of the movie so overpoweringly bland that I didn't notice this at the time? I mean, it's quite often than I don't remember names of film characters once I'm out in the cinema foyer; I see it as a screenplay's commitment to making an audience actually care about what they're watching. But if the name of The Boss Baby is so unimportant (or worse still, if he deliberately hasn't got one), that makes the second-half of this review even more worrying... [BACK]
*3 Although Toys R Us and The Entertainer appear often enough on my card statements that you'd be forgiven for wondering. [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.
It's an odd thing, flipping back to the review of the previous M:I movie and realising that I evidently enjoyed it far more than my memory suggests. It was this perceived lukewarm reaction which had led to me being resolutely not-fussed about its successor.
When the Impossible Mission Force is simultaneously shut down by the CIA and compromised by a shadowy collective known as The Syndicate, Ethan Hunt has to regroup his trusted friends to try and discover the truth - if the truth can even be said to exist. Boundaries will be broken, bonds will be tested, cars will be exploded and The Girl One™ will go diving in her vest and pants; yes, it can only be Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation*1!
First things first: the film is a lot of fun. Utterly preposterous fun, but you know that's intentional and it's better for not taking itself too seriously, no matter how many frowns the characters pull. Tom Cruise is on great form playing Tom Cruise™, and is ably assisted by Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg*2 doing likewise (playing themselves, not playing Tom Cruise. That would be weird). Rebecca Ferguson gets a relatively good spin of the wheel (for a film of this genre) as a double/triple agent, and Sean Harris is fantastic as ever but seems to have based his bad-guy persona almost entirely on Mr Lovebucket from Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door.
The film's editing (particularly in the action sequences) is marvellous, and director Christopher McQuarrie gets the cast to work together well. It also feels like Rogue Nation has the most coherent story in the series since John Woo's second installment; quite happy to be a self-contained espionage-thriller that hints obliquely at real-world politics, but is really just a delivery-method for bike chases and hanging off a plane. The film jets around the globe for its set-pieces spending, once again, a significant amount of time in London (although the plot dictates that, to be fair). Oh, and Piccadilly/Soho is never that quiet. Not ever.
Every bit as enjoyable as it is disposable, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation knows what it needs to deliver and has no difficulty in achieving it.
I've stepped in deeper puddles, but that's not the point here ;)
Oh, and I know that people variously refer to USB storage devices as 'memory sticks', 'thumb drives' and 'flash drives', but no-one calls them "disks" apart from old fogeys who don't know how their computers work.
Is that you, Ethan Hunt? Is it? Phoning your children on a Sunday afternoon because you went to 'clear out your cookies' and accidentally uninstalled Windows?
If you like 'em big and loud, it is.
It'll be one to buy, but once it's dropped in price a little.
With the best will in the world, there's really nothing new here on the performance-front.
It does.
I won't.
There isn't.
The film stars Simon 'Dengar in The Clone Wars' Pegg.
*1 Oh, and fair play Paramount. You've made a fifth Mission: Impossible movie whose plot involves the British Secret Service, yet completely resisted the temptation to name the film 'MI:5 - Rogue Nation'. Well done on your restraint, I suppose?
*2 Although as a later-addition to the franchise's ever-expanding cast, whose primary role is to 'bring the humour and bumbling' in a voice different to everyone else's, it's ironic that Simon Pegg is essentially the Jar Jar Binks of the Mission: Impossible movies. Delightful, but ironic. I still like him as a comedic-actor, but I feel that's worth pointing out.
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.
Still Alice Cert: 12A / 101 mins / Dir. Wash Westmoreland & Richard Glatzer / Trailer
I suspect I may have mentioned this previously, but it's worth reiterating that Julianne Moore really may be one of the finest actors of our era. A screenplay which has an expert on linguistics, and the formation of communication, slowly lose the very abilities she's written textbooks about can certainly be described as self-aware; but when Moore's character is lecturing her daughter on how acting isn't a sensible career, it's positively meta.
There's no doubt whatsoever that Still Alice is An Important Film (and no doubt that it's a fantastic one), but even with the rapid acceleration of Alice's Early-Onset Alzheimer's, there's a lot of ground to cover in a relatively short span, and this means the proceedings sometimes feel rushed and heavy-handed. In this respect, Moore's performance is actually better than the film itself. The editor's handling of the passage of time is often jarring, but this settles down after the first act, and the cast pretty much paper over any cracks. Which would be a good time to point out what an amazing job Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart*1, Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish all do as Alice's immediate family (although their roles are strictly limited to Supporting™).
The film's soundtrack is delicate and underplayed, the cinematography is quietly magnificent (the importance of focussing in particular, which I've undercut by even mentioning it, but fuck it, it needs complimenting), and if you don't have Something In Your Eye ™ at least once during the film, you're clearly some kind of monster.
Go and see Still Alice.
It is.
Well, I'm not sure how many times you'll want/need to rewatch it, so maybe a rental?
In Julianne Moore's case, this will be difficult to top.
It does, indeed.
Well not less, but I'll probably worry about you.
There isn't. Which is hardly surprising, to be fair.
Alec Baldwin starred in 1990's The Hunt For Red October, a film which featured everybody's favourite Vader-vocaliser, James Earl Jones (and also Tim Curry, who has lately voiced Palpatine/Sidious in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. And it has to be said that his Sidious is better than his Palpatine, but I digress).
*1 No, you shut up. Seriously, she's great 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.
