Dumbo (2D)
Cert: PG / 112 mins / Dir. Tim Burton / Trailer
On the seafront in Margate, Kent, stands a pub. It is a Wetherspoon's pub. It is not one of Wetherspoon's better pubs. Whereas the company is known for renovating locally notable buildings while retaining a unique sense of character (alongside the corporate conformity, of course), this pub was originally a Victorian building which then served as a large amusement arcade until the late 1990s. As a result, there was comparatively little to 'restore' in 2001, and so it's a modern establishment with little-to-no period detailing, complete with the ambience which is to be found in many (although not all) of the chain's hostelries. The pub is called The Mechanical Elephant.
The Mechanical Elephant is named after an oddity from the mid 20th century on Margate seafront. Serving as a ride-on attraction for holidaymakers and daytrippers, an engineered exo-frame housed an engine/pulley system at the the 1:1 scale of a full-sized elephant. This modern marvel was a great novelty, a fun way to spend disposable income providing the customers didn't think about its macabre origins. An automated facsimile of life, lumbering, repetitive and incapable of genuine emotion. Although it strikes a discordant note, in many ways The Mechanical Elephant is an ideal name for the pub.
And in many of those same ways, The Mechanical Elephant is an ideal tagline for Disney's live-action remake of their animated classic, Dumbo.
WRANGLER Expanding on the original tale, our film opens in the aftermath of the First World War, with horse wrangler Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) returning to his travelling home to greet his young daughter Milly (Niko Parker) and son Joe (Finley Hobbins) having lost an arm in the conflict and missing the death of his wife while away. The circus, meanwhile, is in steady decline under the auspices of Max Medici (Danny DeVito), a questionable businessman failing to adjust to changing times. When Max buys a pregnant elephant to inject a bit of tropical variety into the performances, everyone is stunned to discover the baby can actually fly using its outsized ears. Success seems assured.
Word of the novelty quickly spreads, notably to disreputable entrepreneur and next-level showman V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton). He's determined to make his own money off the back of the pachyderm in his 'Dreamland' theme park*1, along with his leading acrobat and confidant, Colette Marchant (Eva Green). Short version: Circus down on luck, elephant flies, bad man thinks 'I'll have a bit of that', drama, salvation, end. All of that isn't new. However, you will believe an elephant can fly. And still somehow find it quite boring.
LEVI It's difficult to know what's gone wrong other than a general lack of effort all round. Danny DeVito is playing this like it's a script read-through, while Colin Farrell is as lost as that wandering accent of his. Michael Keaton and Eva Green are seasoned scenery-chewers of course, but even they've lost their appetite for deconstruction. And it's a dark day in any casting office when Alan Arkin is hired to play Bellowing Alan Arkin™*2.
The story drags its feet considering what a straightforward pantomime the whole thing is, and pretty much all characterisation is telegraphed to the point where there are no twists, corners or even curves down the line. But crucially, there should be an absolute joy in watching an infantilised, anthropomorphic elephant taking to the air in a moment of theatrical danger; instead the spectacle is oddly perfunctory. There's no sense of achievement when Dumbo flies, and the framing feels wrong throughout. We're not in the audience taking in the wonder, but we're not in the air sharing his joy, either*3, we're just 'there' - zipping around from cut to cut without a proper chance to see what's happening. And the sporadic 'Dumbo-cam' which gives us a fleeting phant's-eye view of the aerial world is weird, distracting and completely unnecessary, probably the reason it disappears by the third act.
GEORDIE And it all comes down to TIm Burton. He could ride out that level of gee-whizzery back in the day when he was selling pencil cases to emo kids, but this mainstream shtick plays like a cheap parody of jaded Americana. It's not even like this is textbook-Burton where we can shrug at having seen big eyes, stripy fabric and soaring crane-shots done before. All of those are present, but it really feels like Tim's just not interested here.
But Dumbo himself is great. There's just not enough Dumbo for a film which is called Dumbo. And ultimately, why make a 'live-action' film when the only endearingly human aspects come from the CGI elephant? The film is difficult to actively dislike, but it shouldn't feel like an effort to enjoy a Disney adventure.
If anything, I'm just disappointed that Dumbo wasn't set twenty years later and had the Michael Keaton character and his wondrous cultural extravaganza turned into Howard Stark's Expo. At least that way Disney could have brought the whole thing under one umbrella…
It's closer to Tomorrowland than Batman Returns, but has heavy-handed elements of both.
If you're going to watch it at all, watch it big I guess.
*3 Credit where it's due, the final shot of the film is great. But in a movie about a flying elephant, having to wait two hours to really enjoy the flying elephant is taking the piss, frankly. [ 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.
Well, pre-judge not lest ye be pre-judged. As much as the trailers*1 had led me to believe that Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (look, MPHFPC, yeah>) was going to be 'Tim Burton's X-Men Juniors'*2 with a light dusting of Hogwarts, it turned out to be more a mashup of Goodnight Sweetheart and Nightbreed. Which is far cooler, when you think about it…
When placid outsider Jake receives an ominous message from his grandfather Abe, he arrives at his house to find him murdered. Against the full support of his parents, this leads to an emotionally charged journey to an orphanage in Wales, and the unravelling of a secret Abe had been hiding in plain sight for years…
Even under its 12A safety-blanket, the film is surprisingly dark given that it will be put on the same shelf as its more mainstream contemporaries. In thematic terms this is attributable to the source-novel's author, Ransom Riggs of course, but an equal hat-tip has to go to screenwriter Jane Goldman for translating it so intensely (it was she who adapted the inexplicably-12A Woman In Black, if you remember). But Goldman's natural darkness is tempered by Tim Burton's propensity for kookiness, although this never quite reaches its regular default level because of Goldman's focus.
At just over two hours, MPHFPC is by no means a short film, but I'd have been happy to have an extra half-hour or so scattered throughout, if only to connect me more with Jake. After the cursory Hero's Journey setup in act one, the film spends a lot of time introducing a lot of fantastical elements, and any awe, wonder or fear we feel is most probably our own, not the protagonist's. I was engaged and intrigued throughout, but I wasn't really moved by anything I saw; the pace of the story and rapid world-building not allowing the relationship between Jake and his grandfather Abe to have any real weight*3. Another part of the disconnect was that I could feel Burton struggling to fully direct a screenplay that wasn't his own based on a story he hadn't written. It's not that he hasn't left a stamp on MPHFPC, but Tim's definitely playing in someone else's sandbox, here.
And on the subject of wants-lists*4, I'd have liked the mechanics/limitations of the time-travel and causality looped explained more thoroughly (why/how can Abe make phone calls and send letters to the past, given that he's a spotter, not a time-controlling Ymbryne? Do all loops have to be limited to 24 hours?) Then again, if they'd gone into all of that, I'd probably only have written another couple of thousand words picking it all apart.
Still, the costs of on-set catering were presumably minimised by the scenery-chewing competition going on between Eva Green and Sam Jackson. They're both great (thanks in no small part to Burton's direction, of course), but their constant mugging is definitely A Thing™.
All in all though, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children is better than I expected, and a solid effort given its internal struggles.
As above; Harry Potter, X-Men, Nightbreed.
For the visuals, sure.
The story itself will work on any size screen, though.
I think it probably does, just about.
Probably not.
Probably not.
Definitely not.
Level 1: Chancellor Valorum and Mace Windu are in this.
*1 Speaking of trailers, I'm relieved to note that the fucking trailer song (which only has one fucking line, apparently) isn't used in the film. Well, not in the main body, at least, I left before the first song of the credits had ended in case it was going to be in there. I should also point out that I don't dislike the song itself, nor Disa Jakobs' voice. Just the way she keeps truncating the word "coming" as if she's a fucking blues singer or something, her delicate delivery tripping over the word every single time like a member of the aristocracy trying to eat a kebab with a knife and fork. Yeah, it fucking bothers me.
*2 …because a group of gifted youngsters being looked after by an older teacher/guardian and using time-travel to repeatedly evade their predators is the basic setup for X-Men: Days Of Future Past. A film which Jane Goldman also screen-wrote. I'm not dumping the similarity at her door, by the way. Much as MPHFPC is based on the 2011 novel, the X-Men movie sprang out of the 1981 comic series. I'm sure the whole thing is a massive, chronological coincidence.
*3 Also cobbling the emotional-stride of the film is Terence Stamp taking "crazy old man" to previously undiscovered levels. I love the guy to bits, but there are few other performers who can manage to overact whilst being dead on-screen. Oh, spoilers.
*4 And on the subject of non-wants lists, point-deducted for Tim Burton's blink-of-an-eye cameo appearance which still managed to be wall-shatteringly obvious. I wasn't even waiting for it, and he still may as well have been carrying a neon sign...
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.
Everybody dies.*1 This harsh but universal truth has rarely been exemplified quite as forcefully than in Kristian Levring's good old-fashioned (albeit with a startlingly contemporary attitude toward screen-violence) revenge-Western, The Salvation. Out to avenge the murder of his wife and son in a remote US settlement, war veteran Jon (Mads Mikkelsen) is forced to take on a gang of outlaws led by the brutish Delarue (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his unwilling bride-to-be, the devious Madelaine (Eva Green).
Well, there's an alarmingly high quantity of missing-eyes in this film, isn't there? Was cyclopean-vision really that much of a problem back in the Wild West, or is it being used to illustrate why 'Optometrist' rarely features in the wooden store-signage on display in Westerns?
Flippancy aside, The Salvation is pretty grim stuff, and director Kristian Levring lingers on the scowling faces of his cast as much as he does the ochre backdrop of the South African desert which stands in for frontier-America. Speaking of which, there's some stunning camerawork and lighting on display here (although please remember, DoPs, vignetted shots look great until the camera starts to move, then the film looks like you're trying out the filters on your first holiday movie). That said, at a tight 92 minutes, the screenplay has no time to mess about. That scenery may be beautiful, but the audience aren't left standing around to take it all in.
A tight script is minimal on exposition, setting the scene then focusing on the characters themselves and their actions. Although the film is predominantly English-Language, the stretches of subtitled Danish are more than welcome, adding an extra layer of realism to an already grim tale. Although for a film intent on showing the harsh reality of human nature, it seems odd that not a single firearm (and there are many) shows any sign of recoil, at all. Mikkelsen, Morgan and Green all give solid performances and are backed up ably by Jonathan Pryce as the township's cowardly mayor/undertaker, and wee Dougie Henshall as his corrupt Sheriff. I'm not entirely sure why Eric Cantona is onboard as a fat, bearded but ultimately one-dimensional outlaw, but he doesn't derail things too much, so I'll give him points for trying.
My only real complaint about the film is a grammatical error in one of the subtitles. Early in the first act, Jon says to his wife and child, "I've build an extension so there's room for all of us". 'I've build'? 'I've build'? First we have Tom Hardy making up his own words in Child 44, then the subtitles in an actual released film have infant-school level grammar? Who's in charge of Hollywood, these days?
But if you like your Westerns full of barely restrained threat and one-hit-kills, The Salvation may just be right up your alley.
To be fair, this is a one for cheap-Tuesdays or Meerkat Wednesdays.
It'll be a decent rental. Unless you're into relentlessly grim tales of lawless outback towns, in which case it's £12 well spent.
I don't have a lot of history with Mads Mikkelsen, but he seems ideal for the role, yes.
I think it does, but I'd have liked the film to achieve it over and extra half-hour or so.
Not really.
There bloody isn't. For shame.
Mads Mikkelsen appeared in 2010's Clash Of The Titans remake, as did Liam 'Qui-Gon' Neeson.
*1 Okay, not 'everyone' in here dies, but trust me - you can't expect a happy ending for a story which was never really happy in the first place.
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.
Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (3D / SLIGHT SPOILERS. ish.)
Cert: 18 / 102 mins / Dir. Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller
The opening roll-call of Miller and Rodriguez's seamless follow-up to 2005's Sin City warns once again that this will be a film with too many characters. Episodic in nature as its predecessor, the stories A Dame To Kill For are set after the Hartigan thread from last time, but before the Marv one. Although both characters still feature in this film, and the comic-book roots of the stories mean they exist in their own heavily-inked isolation, anyway.
We're back once more in Basin City for another trio of tales of nocturnal sleaze, debauchery and vengeance. Mickey Rourke returns as the bullet-headed trouble-magnet Marv, this time siding with Josh Brolin's not-so-private eye Dwight in a story which pits them against Eva Green's calculatingly unhinged Ava. Elsewhere we get Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the brash gambler Johnny out to teach Senator Roark a lesson he won't forget, and the return of Jessica Alba's Nancy, with her own score to settle from the first film. As mentioned above, Bruce Willis reprises his role, as do Rosario Dawson, Power Boothe, and Jaime King.
It's all shot in uber-noir, and the presence of JGL reminded me how much I'd love to see a live-action Batman feature executed in this style. First-person voiceovers feature heavily again, as does the convoluted web that exists between the characters. But the moments of monochromatic bloodshed which drag the smoky 1930's screaming into the present-day seem to be spaced too far apart, even if when they do arrive, they do so with a glee which outshines Sin City's. In terms of general tone, Rodriguez seemed to be having far more fun in Machete Kills. And just because you can count the number of smiles in A Dame To Kill For on one hand, don't be fooled into thinking it has any deep message to impart. If anything, the film's treatment of its female characters leaves me feeling somewhat uncomfortable, but that's an area best covered by writers more qualified to wade into such waters.
You'd imagine the 3D would be a great addition to a film which is borderline animated, but if anything it just makes the juxtaposition between the photography and rendered backdrops more jarring. It's clear from the off that more money's been spent on the visuals this time around, but it doesn't make for a smoother ride. Not withstanding the fact that the screening I saw had 3D ghosting all over the shop, the lesson I gleaned from Sin City is that film noir needs restraint, not excess.
All in all, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For has been made with care and attention, but I'm not entirely sure there was any need for it to exist. It expands on the continuity of the first film with flair and conviction, but it never really adds anything to it. If that's good enough for you, then fair play; it's certainly more entertaining than a lot of films I've seen this year.
Fans of the first film will welcome it to their shadow-loving hearts and bookshelves, but it's not doing anything Sin City didn't.
And crucially, it's not doing anything better.
I'd say so.
Y'know what, I don't think I actually did.
Probably, although that's not really for me.
If you're going to see a film this dark, a massive dark room is the perfect place for it.
Nah.
Probably.
I didn't hear one. And this is Robert Rodriguez, here. Sort it out, man.
What the hell is Eva Green doing with her accent? British? American? Australian?
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.
Here's the deal, Warner Bros, perceived film-experiences degrade over time. A movie that has audiences skipping out of the auditorium may not hold that buzz, and the next day, the same people won't be telling people "OMG, you HAVE to see that!" but more of a "Yeah, it was really good". Three months later, when it hits DVD, the same loyal customers could well be thinking "Well, I've seen it, so I might wait until it drops to a fiver before I buy it". So when a group of men in their early twenties - your target demographic, remember - stand up during the closing credits loudly professing "Well, it was alright, wasn't it?, you've pretty much failed. That's the best thing those people are ever going to say about your film, right there. Think on that, WB, before commissioning another installment.
It's not too long into the Snyder-produced 300: Rise Of An Empire that you realise if all the slow-motion shots were just played in real-time, the film would be about 45 minutes long. This sequel runs pretty much parallel to the 2006 original (although also covers the before-and-after periods), and appears to be an excuse for stylised violence, plodding exposition, and a sex-scene in which we see Eva Green's boobies. All three of these are laboured way past the point of enjoyment.
Rise Of An Empire has a distinctly different visual feel to its predecessor. Painted in blues and greys rather than reds and ochres, darker and less reliant on the hyper-reality of CGI'd sets, it certainly feels like an advancement. But the effort of the production design seems to be wasted on stilted dialogue and stirring speeches that have all the passion of a pizza delivery order being read out over the phone. I haven't been this bored by a film that looked so good since Sucker Punch (which also had Snyder's stamp on it, co-incidentally*1). The film feels far longer than its 100 minutes to the point where, in preparation for the battle-finale, even the aforementioned group of young men behind me started groaning and audibly rolling their eyes. You can't tell someone to shush when you agree with them.
Never before have oiled chests, guyliner and countless plumes of lava-lamp blood contributed to a film so spectacularly dull. Then again, I wasn't a massive fan of the last one either, so that could go some way to explaining it.
The trailer isn't holding back any real surprises, put it that way.
Afraid not.
I wouldn't say so.
Cinema if you like underused 3D and watching uncomfortably long sex-scenes in a public space.
I will, a bit.
Highly unlikely.
Not that I heard, although there was ample opportunity, so I may well have missed one.
Tell me why I'm wrong. Please.
*1 And I say that as someone who, generally speaking enjoys Snyder's work.
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.
