Much like the preview screening I attended last week, I'm not entirely convinced I'm on the same page as this film*1. All that follows is highly subjective and based on the track record that any Matt Damon movie being released in the early months of the year will likely be found wanting…
And so, Downsizing is the new feature project from writer/director Alexander Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor, the team behind Sideways. It follows the aforementioned Damon as Paul Safranek, a low-level occupational therapist*2 looking for a fresh start in life and opting for a revolutionary miniaturisation technique, whereby the newly-small subjects live in closed communities at a similarly reduced financial burden, with the added benefit of having a much smaller eco-footprint. When his wife backs out of the procedure at the last minute (that's not a spoiler, it's in the trailer), Paul has to adjust to his new life alone, hoping to fit into the new society with the ease with which it was all advertised. Small chance.
Credit where it's due, this is certainly an interesting premise for a movie. But Downsizing’s natural home is the 85-minute wry, quirky, introspective comedy with a yellow poster, mainly playing in the smaller, indie cinemas and finding its real audience on DVD/Streaming. So, not a 135 minute multiplex navel-gazeathon starring Matt Damon; a film that does have funny jokes, but which arrive so sporadically that they feel like less of a feature and more callbacks to previous revisions of the screenplay.
By the time that Paul works out that the the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side (a promise literally spelled out by the set of the film at one point), the audience has realised that about 45 minutes earlier, on account of having thought the concept through for more than 30 seconds. It's entirely possible that the central character’s folly is intentional of course, but if that's the case then there’s no real moment of realisation to act as his redemption or turning-point - Paul just rolls with his de-escalating flow of poor choices until around two minutes from the end of the movie, by which point he’s really just resigned to not having a choice, anyway.
I know this seems like I’m being unduly harsh on what is essentially a social parable in a fantasy setting, but that metaphor is so heavy-handed that it becomes worn-out in the first act, and the fantasy-aspect is presented as (albeit inconsistent and hazily explained) science, throughout. Downsizing is occasionally intriguing from a cinematography point of view, managing to represent environments as miniature with very few visual reference points to the things which aren't. Although there are an equal number of scenes where everything in-shot is small, so just looks normal as a result*3.
Christoph Waltz and Udo Kier put in good turns at a 'character' level, but many of the film’s smaller, more incidental parts appear to be filled by people who have never acted before. That said, it’s a point of more genuine concern that Kristen Wiig gets her name on at least one version the poster when Hong Chau doesn’t*4. The former’s role is effectively a cameo, while the latter’s is positively scene-stealing, as Chau out-acts the rest of the cast combined. My main gripe on the performance front has to be Matt Damon, though. He's not outright awful, but as the audience's surrogate in this crazy world, all the wonder, excitement, fear, disappointment, discovery and transformation is supposed to be relayed through the central performer. Instead we get Matt Damon, the expressive equivalent of a Bunraku performance being led by wooden spoon a with face drawn on it in marker. Damon brings nothing to this screenplay. Nothing. And the completed film returns the favour, accordingly.
In terms of a surreal morality tale with a premise so brittle it falls apart the moment it's examined, Being John Malkovich already has this covered. And as a saccharine infused midlife crisis for the over-privileged 21st century white male, Ben Stiller was skateboarding past volcanos in 2013 (also with Kristen Wiig). But if all you're after is a deconstruction of the American dream, Damon himself is better in the still-troublesome Suburbicon.
A neat idea, Downsizing gets worse the more the runtime grows.
Which is either faintly ironic or perfectly apt, I'm not sure which.
*2 Not the low-level, unhappy call centre worker we see in the trailer. That's the shit job he gets after being made small. Now I'm aware that this revelation is technically a spoiler, but I think it's important to note that the trailer is selling a markedly different film to the one which actually plays out. [ BACK ]
*3 And let's not get into how some materials just wouldn't scale down to make their functionally-identical small-world versions. As I said, it’s inconsistent at best. [ BACK ]
*4 But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that on the main-version of the poster, neither Kristen Wiig nor Hong Chau's names appear, but Alexander Payne's does. Three times... [ 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.
There are reasons why Tarzan movies keep getting pitched, keep getting made and keep disappearing without trace. David Yates' The Legend of Tarzan is both an addition to that list of films, and embodiment of the reasons they flounder. At its core, this iteration of the king-of-the-swingers is an old-fashioned adventure, trying to force the square-pegs of modern sensibility into the round-holes of colonial swashbuckling. And all the Sam Jackson in the world isn't going to make it feel relevant to an audience who can't leave their phones alone for the run-time.
The film begins with John Tarzan having acclimated to London as Lord Greystoke with his wife Jane, when he receives a diplomatic invitation to return to the Congo-basin from the Belgian royal family. Then it turns out it wasn't the royal family after all but Captain Rom, played by a Christoph Waltz who seems to have forgotten that now he's been Blofeld, he's already reached 'peak villain-who-explains-his-diabolical-plot-at-every-turn'. So then John Tarzan has to take his shirt off and run around in the jungle to put things right. Standard.
Alexander Skarsgård is relatively passable as the titular hero, but only due to the amount of screen-time he gets as a result of his billing. Both Margot Robbie and Christolph Waltz look faintly embarassed (and well they should) as they try to inject some character into script-tropes who are anything but. Jackson, on the other hand, is having the most amount of fun earning his beer-money, even if his swaggering American Civil War veteran feels unbelievably anachronistic, reminding the audience with every witticism that they could be at home watching a Tarantino flick instead. By the time you incorporate a couple of Congolese tribes with varying degrees of Noble Savagery™ and the Belgian army consisting of largely inept cowards, the whole thing just feels like an awkward liberal-guilt trip.
But it's not just the storytelling, characterisations and conflicting values which let the film down. We also get some CGI gorillas which won't convince the crowd who watched Planet of the Apes or The Jungle Book, as well as a swinging-through-the-treetops sequence (as the gang attempt to board a moving train) with some of the worst greenscreen work in recent memory. And just for good measure there's a stilted "love scene" and a laboured "lick his nuts" joke which, while they may well have cleared the BBFC hurdles, feel woefully out of place for the tone of a 12A movie.
In summary, I'm not entirely sure who The Legend of Tarzan is aimed at; too 'modern' for the purists, too 'old' for the kids, too messy for fans of coherent screenwriting. I didn't actively dislike the film, but that's mainly because it's not really worthy of the effort.
Just because your source-material is 'classic', that doesn't mean it's timeless…
You might as well, since it'll lose even more impact by the time it hits your home-screen.
Nope.
Nope.
Not too much.
But a bit, yeah.
There is.
Level 1: Mace Windu's in it.
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.
Spectre (NO PLOT-SPOILERS)
Cert: 12A / 148 mins / Dir. Sam Mendes / Trailer
Right, I'll keep this short. Just got in from seeing Bond 24*1 and wanted to review it while it's fresh. Unfortunately, I can't talk about any of what's on my mind without wading into spoiler-territory. Hit me up in this thread on the Facebook page if you want to paddle in those waters. In the meanwhile…
Yes, the much-anticipated Spectre finally hits our screens three years after Skyfall, headed once again by director Sam Mendes and starring Daniel Craig as everyone's favourite craggy-faced governmental hit-man. As Mendes' second Bond-outing and Craig's fourth, expectations are running understandably high, especially as the story follows the ongoing thread surrounding MI5 and its place in the global security chain. But chess-metaphors abound as shadowy forces move behind the scenes, and James Bond discovers his nemesis.
To be honest, it's an odd fish of a movie which has been undermined by its own hype. Thoroughly acceptable (indeed fantastic in many places), but capable of much more depth which it squanders lieu of car/boat/plane chases and a largely unconvincing central relationship between Bond and Dr Madeleine Swann (and that's largely down to her under-developed character). Monica Bellucci is underused, Dave Bautista is underused, and although Christoph Waltz gets his moment in the spotlight, he's seriously underused. All of this wouldn't be a problem if there was more going on at the Bond-end of things, but compared to his shellshocked, self-doubting character in Skyfall, James is running on autopilot a little here.
But it's still one hell of an autopilot, of course. Ben Whishaw's Q is a welcome low-key touch to the film, as it Ralph Fiennes' M (as he deftly steals some of the best lines). The film's about half an hour too long, the script is occasionally over-written, as is the action, yet all of this isn't a drawback. In fact, it's not really until you get outside of the cinema that you start thinking about all the things you didn't get.
But enough of my moaning. Spectre is very, very good at being a James Bond film, and that's what's important. Of course it could be more, and many might feel it should be more. But let's not over-analyse what is a proudly mainstream action-thriller and a British institution in its own right.
…right?
It is, but probably just the once.
Well obviously you're going to buy it; it has to go with the others, doesn't it?
Sadly not.
I think Spectre achieves what Spectre sets out to do, but that's not what Skyfall had lined up for it.
Not particularly.
There isn't.
The latest Bond installment features Mr Mark Preston as an un-named Spectre-agent, who also appears as an un-named Stormtrooper in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and as an un-named stormtrooper (presumably a different one) in Star Wars: Rogue One.
It may be an 'extra' role, but fair fucking play to the guy :)
*1 Sounds like the world's most exciting news-channel; it's actually just real-time footage of glue drying. Sorry.
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.
Big Eyes (SPOILERS*1)
Cert: 12A / 106 mins / Dir. Tim Burton
About twenty minutes into Tim Burton's Big Eyes, you have to wonder if the awkwardly accelerated, whirlwind romance between Margaret (Amy Adams) and Walter (Christoph Waltz) is a deliberate discomfiture to set the audience on an uneasy edge for the rest of the film, or just slapdash screenwriting. As the story powers through its checkpoints toward what should be a massively satisfying ending, you rather suspect it's the latter of the two.
The 1950s/60s story of acclaimed artist Margaret Keane (nee Hawkins) and her husband Walter, who for years passed off her work as his own, coercing her into producing hundreds of original pieces for millions of subsequent posters and prints, is told for the most part through Adams and Waltz's performances. And while I very much like Christoph, he's now at the point where he seems to end up just playing Christoph Waltz*2. Amy Adams fares slightly better, but neither headliner gets the opportunity to spread their wings and deliver the performance you know they're capable of, mired by the speeding-bullet screenplay and a heavy-handed script. Worse still, while Waltz gets to be the moustache-twirling villain, his scene-grabbing charisma a necessity, Adams' Margaret is under-represented to the point where her character drops through sympathetic until the viewer actually begins to resent her timidity (which, correct me if I'm wrong, is the precise opposite of the point of the film).
The tale of the swindle is told in a nuts-and-bolts way, but a story about Art (capital A) needs a far more delicate touch, and Big Eyes could have been more sincere and surreal, candid and confessional. That it's not lies more at the feet of writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karazewski than director Tim Burton, I think. Speaking of Burton, other than the kitsch 1960s setting and the subject matter of Margaret's paintings, there's little of the Kookiness™ you'd expect from him, here. In fact, the brief segments where Margaret has semi-hallucinogenic visions of real-world people with huge eyes would have done the film huge favours by being expanded, to help the audience experience the paranoia and guilt as she does. Alas, they only serve as an all-too-brief reminder of who's directing.
Other hiccups come in the form of a narration from Danny Huston's San Francisco gossip columnist, Dick Nolan, which is so sporadic that when it re-appears every half hour or so, it feels unnecessary and even intrusive. The best eyebrow-raiser is reserved for Madeleine Arthur as Margaret's 16yr old daughter in the final act of the film, when she announces "I'm not a little girl any more!", underlining the fact that she looks nothing like Delaney Raye, who was playing her younger character half an hour earlier.
The most crucial part of Big Eyes, the courtroom showdown where Margaret challenges Walter legally over the creation of the artworks, seems to spend more energy on Mr Keane's comical attempts at legal self-representation than it does on the argument-settler of actually paining a picture. When the final victory arrives for Margaret, rather than bringing euphoria, it feels expected and oddly understated. Even the pre-credits slides, showing photographs and updates of the actual Keanes, don't carry as much weight or closure as they should.
Despite all my moaning (and how), Big Eyes is still in itself a good film, but I think the awe-inspiring story and Bruno Delbonnel's gorgeous cinematography are far more interesting than the screenplay.
I was ready to be swept away by Margaret Keane's story, but instead I was only carried along.
The trailer suggests slightly more than the film has to deliver.
Kinda, but not as much as I'd hoped I would.
From a story-telling perspective, absolutely. From an emotional one, not so much.
Cinema if you're a Burton/Adams/Waltz fan; for everyone else, this is a Sunday night DVD.
Nope.
At some point.
There isn't.
When Margaret is nervously going through her portfolio at the furniture company, was I the only one thinking of Old Gregg?
"I call this one Baileys… I call this one Baileys…"
*1 Yes, I'm very aware that this is a 'true story' from the early 1960s and as such is pretty hard to call 'spoilers' on, but much of my review centres around the actual events of the plot. Look, don't complain because I've given the end away, alright?
*2 And not to sound too catty about it, but I can see why that would appeal to serial Depp-enabler, Tim Burton.
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 difficult to imagine the situation which prompted a sequel to 2011's Horrible Bosses being commissioned, although it's probably a safe bet to guess that the meeting didn't include the phrases "surprise hit" or "runaway success". The original did, by all accounts, provide a reasonable return both financially and critically, but was never going to set the entertainment industry on fire. So why not do it again, right? That's how the business works?
Well, whether it's the change of director or the non-change of direction, Sean Anders' 2014 sequel has come in for something of a kicking (from critics, at least) in its opening weekend, which seems a little unfair. Sure, the plot is more like a series of weakly connected sketches, some of which work better than others; sure, that plot explains itself so heavy-handedly in the first twenty minutes that it doesn't have to do any more expository work until the final reel; sure, a lot of the (clearly) improvised dialogue leaves you thinking '…this is the take they went with?'; sure, there's a clear line of good-taste which Jennifer Aniston's sex-addicted dentist Julia frequently crosses, as if daring herself to be as gross as possible rather than as funny as possible; but in all honesty, there are few insults you can fling at this film which wouldn't be equally deserving of its predecessor.
The day is saved by Jason Bateman, not doing anything new, but certainly doing what he does best. His resigned exasperation at the moronity of those around him being his calling card as a comedic actor. Similarly on good form are Jason Sudekis, Charlie Day, Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx and Kevin Spacey. Special props have to go to Chris Pine, demonstrating once again that his talent for comedy far outweighs those of action or drama. And if that list seems a little light on the ladies' names, that's because the film is too; Aniston is pretty much it. Although I doubt whether the film would have been any better for more female characters, it might have been nice to have given it the chance, at least.
But y'know what? I probably laughed far more than I should have throughout the film. I can't gauge audience reaction since I was at a private screening*1, but Horrible Bosses 2 never tries to be anything more than a largely unnecessary, morally-questionable farce-comedy. And in that at least, it succeeds.
That's where we're at, yeah…
Mostly, although many of the scenes end up driving into an improvisational cul-de-sac.
Oh, probably.
DVD tops, if I'm being honest.
Not at all.
I can't envision me seeking it out, but I know it'll be good for a chuckle in the right company.
Erm, there's a boot-shot? Actually, there are two boot-shots. Which is over-egging the pudding somewhat
…see you for HB3?
*1 By which I mean that I was the only person who wanted to see Horrible Bosses 2 at 3:30 on a Friday afternoon. By the time you factor in my Unlimited card, my local Cineworld were basically setting aside Screen 5 (the big screen) for 2+ hours whilst looking at the profit on an already-discounted coffee. Ouch.
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.
