Review: Star Wars - The Mandalorian And Grogu (spoilers)

Star Wars:
The Mandalorian And Grogu
Cert: 12A / 132 mins / Dir. Jon Favreau / Trailer

There's a very telling line right at the very top of 2015's The Force Awakens. After seven years away from cinema screens*¹, Star Wars returned with the great Max Von Sydow's reassurance that "This will begin to make things right". It was not just in reference to the galactic map-fragment he was holding, but a (slightly ham-fisted) message to the audience that the Disney Corporation viewed the Prequel Trilogy-era as marketing anathema, and that everyone was now firmly back in safe hands. We were home! Han, Luke and Leia were back! Albeit never in the same room. Episode VII can be considered a commercial and critical success, although it's not inaccurate to say that the reception and performance of the numbered-chapters which followed and their two standalone cinematic interludes was more, well, variable. After a somewhat muddled Rise Of Skywalker closed-out a trilogy that left next to no cultural footprint, the new Lucasfilm's on-the-fly approach to filmmaking bled over into television output for Disney+, and proved just as tonally erratic. Of course the poster-boy for the small screen-era of the Galaxy Far, Far Away has been The Mandalorian, and despite that the show has its own problems, he is the hero who's been chosen for the 2026 return of Star Wars to the big screen.

So it feels notable that the first words spoken on-screen after another seven years away from the cinema come from Hemky Madera's Imperial Warlord Commander Barro, proclaiming to his subordinates and the viewership alike "I think we can all agree that things were better under the Empire". Again, it's no coincidence that this line is subtextually loaded. Even accounting for 2015-19 being ostensibly under the auspices of JJ Abrams while this phase is in the hands of Dave Filoni, the jibe is still effectively Disney-era Lucasfilm dunking on its own movies. The First-Order stuff you're nudging us to disregard was still made by you, lads. The opening line of dialogue also sets up the expectation, not unfairly, that what's about to follow is going to be pretty special...

SEASON

Timelines are deliberately sketchy under LFL's new management, but The Mandalorian And Grogu takes place after the show's third season, so probably around eleven years after the events of Return Of The Jedi. Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his little green Force-wielding sidekick (himself) are still in the bounty hunting game, but have found a more stable paycheck in taking jobs from the fledgling New Republic (the authoritative face of which is presented here by Sigourney Weaver's Colonel Ward). This rolling contract involves the capture (or, if push comes to shove, elimination) of various mid-ranking Imperial Remnant warlords, before they can amass enough power to bring back the Empire. The movie opens James Bond / Indiana Jones style with Mando in the middle of snagging the aforementioned Barro, prior to being assigned the job of tracking the mysterious General Coin on a trail which will take him deep into Hutt space...

So it's been long established that Disney wanted to move away from the 'Episode' numbering system of cinematic installments (and with fair reason given their hopping around the timeline in each 'non-Skywalker-saga' project), but as well as the omissions of regular features we'd expect here (no lightsabers, no Artoo and Threepio*² , no Wilhelm Scream), this is also the first branded Star Wars movie to open without the 'A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away...' title card, the first to feature cast and production names in the opening credits, and the first to end without sweeping into John Williams' closing score. It's perhaps also worth noting that the aqua-green 'swoosh' branding used across the film's marketing material is nowhere to be seen in the film itself, opting instead for a flat, two-colour title card of the established Mandalorian-logo/font. Progress is one thing, but it's unclear whether moving forward by becoming more 'ordinary' will prove to be a winning strategy for the franchise.

And that question of identity extends well past the title sequence.

The final screenplay here is very clearly several episodic storylines taped together, and the flow of the movie suffers as a result. 2008's The Clone Wars cinematic outing was also plagued by this of course, but at least in the days of network TV those episodes were all the same length. True to Mandalorian TV-form, each of these strands is 'as long as it needs to be', which means the overall pacing is at best baffling and at worst incoherent.

EVIL

As much as tMAG doesn't rely too heavily on the TV show's own established continuity (the price of entry is surprisingly low, you can watch this having only seen the first season), it was never going to be truly Standalone™, coming as it does after 15½ hours of its televisual predecessor's run-time. The fact that the film doesn't even try to expand on those previous events or leave the timeline any real consequence*³ other than finally giving Mando another ship he can use to do his actual job in*⁴ is - admittedly - a weightier burden. Outside of the eponymous pairing very few faces from the small-screen return here, whereas new faces pop up intermittently throughout the run-time thanks to the sequential format. Worse, Star Wars' tradition for clearly and verbally naming its major players in the first act is a coin-toss affair. Zeb Orellios from the Rebels animated series had a background cameo in the TV show but shows up here as a fairly major supporting character, yet his name is only muttered twice in the script where it's lost in the wall of noise. Likewise, iconic Clone Wars bounty hunter Embo features heavily in the movie's mid-section (I can't say 'second act', that's not how this is made) and is effectively nameless on-screen (again, it's said once among longer dialogue, and I only know that because I went out of my way to attend a subtitled screening).

The screenplay does occasionally try to lean into genuine emotion between the two lead characters, but usually undercuts itself with whimsy, stoicism or the fact that one of them is wearing a helmet over his facial expression (and let's face it Pascal is no expressive mime-artist) and the other is a puppet; a nicely expressive puppet for the story's broader strokes, but without Yoda's wrinkles (and size), Grogu's range is, shall we say, limited.

Pascal puts in a reasonable enough turn as Djarin overall, of course. By this point he knows how to play the part, and in the majority of his scenes here he's interacting with effects-work, so the character's trademark stand-offishness works perfectly well. On first viewing though, I found Sigourney Weaver's Colonel Ward to be equally stilted, even more than the character's rank and position suggesting she might be. The next time round, however, I noticed that Weaver's delivery is actually channelling Carrie Fisher's Leia in the Sequel Trilogy films, and the thought occurred that had things panned out differently in our own timeline, it might have been General Organa we saw handing out the 'Gulf War' cards.

DENVER

In fairness, while the film doesn't do much to develop its own cast, it is considerably more interested in playing with the wider toybox.

Despite that opening line as above, there is a reasonable smattering of Sequel Trilogy referencing here (the Anzellans in particular, as well as droid archetypes from across the 2015-19 films), an Original Trilogy-heavy opening sequence (with bonus INT-4 Mini-Rig for those of a certain age) and Prequel Trilogy vibes coming from adapted antique battle droids and their STAP-riders. With Clone Wars supervising-director Dave Filoni now in the big chair at Lucasfilm it's perhaps no surprise that the animated series perhaps has the biggest external influence, with that bounty hunter and his amazing hat doing his best to steal any remaining scenes not nabbed by Jabba's boy Rotta The Hutt (who is, of course, His Own Man™), both characters originally created on his watch. It can't be escaped, however, that Mr Filoni seems to think his cameo appearances are comparable to those of Alfred Hitchcock, when they are instead absolutely of the same calibre as M. Knight Shyamalan's...

Visually, the movie lands in a similarly mixed place.

When the action is taking place outdoors (thankfully often) cinematographer David Klein's visuals are dense and richly detailed (even if they do have that slightly muted, artificial hum brought about by filming on a soundstage), but a lot of the interior scenes are ludicrously dark. And as you'd expect, this problem is only exacerbated through a pair of 3D glasses*⁵. 2018's Solo had the excuse of removing detail to try and preserve budget on a production which required 80% reshoots, but tMAG should be under no such restrictions. In more than a few of the melee-fight scenes it's difficult to tell what's actually happening (made worse in the life-sized Dejarik battle, where watching CGI berserker-creatures clobbering other CGI berserker-creatures is, I'm afraid, terminally uninteresting*⁶). And if the clarity can't be picked out on a cinema-sized screen in blackout-conditions, good luck watching this on Disney+ in your living room.

And while I'm here and complaining about things on a slightly unfair technical level, the Imperial Officers of the Original Trilogy had those Hugo-Boss-inspired*⁷, razor-sharp uniforms and received-pronunciation accents (that's Radio 4 Continuity Announcer to you), largely as a result of trained Shakespearean actors from RADA and the Royal Central School of Speech and Acting. While Commander Barro's informal fur-collar can be explained by his snowy surroundings and his diction at least retains force and authority, the Empire now seems whittled down to the point where we get General Coin, a bald bloke in a grey tweed sports-jacket who looks and speaks like a mid-tier gang boss from Bermondsey. I am still genuinely tickled at how some Americans (which in this case appears to be the entire production and editing staff at Lucasfilm) have an absolute tin-ear for the British accent and its myriad regional implications. No wonder we didn't see Coin during the Original Trilogy; Ozzel, Jerjerrod and Veers would have had him emptying the bins...

TERRITORY

Fortunately, where the film really wants to succeed, it generally does. Ludwig Göransson's score romps the whole thing along nicely (with the slightest dusting of John Williams), even if the soundtrack never feels like it does more than it needs to. The scope and effects work is over-and-above what you'd expect of a TV show (Season Two's krayt dragon notwithstanding), but the overall structure and lasting effect is not. This wasn't made to be 'more than' its small screen sibling, just as an extra story in another medium. Which feels weird given that we've had The Mandalorian for well over half a decade, and the traditional expanded-universe storytelling of comics, novels and video games surrounding it is nowhere to be seen.

In its top-down form, The Mandalorian And Grogu is essentially a series of precariously threaded fight-sequences. Luckily, these fight sequences are where the film positively shines, with Djarin despatching droids and Stormtroopers alike with the adrenaline-glee of an eight year old wired on Haribo and flipping over their Kenner action figures. This really is Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni playing with their toys (and I do not mean this as a criticism).

So does the film show any development of Mandalorian-lore and Din Djarin's evolving place in both honouring his past and forging his people's future, while caring for a youngling who's finding his way between two traditionally-opposing ancient cultures? Nope. Does the film expand upon the mechanisms of the New Republic in its work to rebuild trust and hope in the aftermath of the Galactic Empire? Nope. But is this at least a rounded, satisfying adventure movie designed to appeal to a mainstream cinema audience? Well what do you think? Of course it's not.

Okay, is The Mandalorian And Grogu a fairly undemanding and uncontroversial fandom tickbox exercise which bolts-on perfectly to a TV series which has been - to be fair - absolutely all over the place? Yes, yes it is. Star Wars is well past the era of 'event-cinema' whether we like that or not (to be fair, event-cinema might be well past the era of event-cinema), and in 2026 we have to take the fun where we can find it.

I had enormous fun with this movie.
This is the way.

Okay, it's "a" way...

(Y'see, I'm not even sure if The Mandalorian And Grogu should get any star-rating at all. I automatically assign 7 because it's Star Wars and that's my thing, but this is not a full-marks Star Wars movie. It's arguably not a movie at all. But it's still more way satisfying to watch and ponder-over than The Rise Of Skywalker, and that got full marks from me, so what can you do?)


*¹ Don't @ me. Yes 2005's Revenge Of The Sith was a decade before 2015's The Force Awakens, but The Clone Wars movie landed at cinemas in 2008, seven years before TFA. Yes, of course that counts. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² There is a moment in the opening titles at the New Republic base on Adelphi (which I swear to god looks like it's two doors down from Tony Stark's mansion) where an R2-unit is being loaded into an X-Wing fighter, and the way it's presented - with the droid right in the middle of the frame, visually uninterupted over a lingering shot - seems to suggest that perhaps this is a cameo from our favourite Astromech. But then, Artoo will be with Luke at this point in the timeline, and he's nowhere to be seen here. This would also be a level of subtlety completely not in keeping with the movie's other cameo appearances, so forget I said anything. But if Dave Filoni turns up on the commentary track saying that's R-D2, you read it here first. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Okay, two members of Moff Gideon's Shadow Council are removed from the frame here, but after a blink-and-you'll-miss-it introduction one episode before the end of Mandalorian Season Three they were hardly holding the plot together. Potentially more galactic fallout comes from the deaths of the Hutt-twins, but they weren't strictly characters from the Mandalorian series anyway, so it's debatable when their loss will be revisited. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ Yeah I'm going to say it again, they had to give Mando another Razor Crest because he can't be a bounty hunter in an N1 Starfighter with no storage facilities. Why do you think the first mission we see him completing with that ship involves him decapitating someone and bringing just their head back? Because the guy can't bring back any target which doesn't fit into a small duffel-bag. The N1 was a ridiculous idea and he should have never picked up the keys for it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁵ Because of course I also went to see this in 3D. More out of novelty than anything else, admittedly. Way back in the dim and distant past of 2019, I recall actually having to travel to another town to watch The Rise Of Skywalker in three dimensions, because my local multiplex was only screening it in two. Even back then it appeared the entire industry and audiences alike had given up on the fad, so I have no idea why stereoscopy is rearing its head again now. For what it's worth, the 3D conversion of Mandalorian is 'basically fine'. It doesn't need the 3D (live-action flicks rarely do), and for the most part it's a forgettable add-on which also makes the film's darker scenes even more problematic. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁶ No, seriously. Dejarik is presented in A New Hope (and again in The Force Awakens) as the Star Wars version of chess on a round board. The holographic monsters represent pieces which have their own limited and unique movements and powers, resulting in a strategic game that requires both intelligence and experience to play - hence it being so difficult to win against a droid. The "Dejarik match" in The Mandalorian And Grogu seems to involve releasing the real-world counterparts into a circular arena which is at least painted like a Dejarik board, whereby they all just randomly attack each other on account of being wild animals. THAT'S NOT WHAT CHESS IS, IS IT? IF YOU DID LIFE-SIZE GIANT CHESS WITH PEOPLE IN COSTUMES, THERE'D STILL BE RULES. THEY WOULDN'T ALL JUST START STABBING EACH OTHER AND SHOUTING "YES, THIS IS THE CHESS". ffs... ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁷ You know what I mean by that. ^{[ 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: Dark Harvest - A Night of Short Folk Horror Films

Dark Harvest:
A Night Of Short Folk Horror Films
Cert: 15 / 120 mins / Event Trailer

This special evening of independent shorts in Reading’s Biscuit Factory cinema was a sold-out screening, which is always a delight in this day and age. Although it soon became apparent this was may have been because the cast/crew from a number of the films were present (fair play though, who doesn’t want to see their work on the big screen?). Not only did this mean Polite Applause™ after every short (fair play, still), it also meant pre-screening speeches from the front of the auditorium from people who - quite ironically - seemed not to realise that they were speaking at a normal conversational volume in a room scientifically designed to deaden all sound that’s not coming out of the auditorium speakers*¹. In short, I have no idea what you lovely people were saying, but you looked delighted to be there and that’s what’s important...

Black Samphire
14 mins, 2023, Dir. Alexander Vanegas.

Set in the present day as two young women check into an Airbnb in the fenlands, this is a fairly minimalist take on forgotten folklore reaching across the centuries through a forbidden herb, mixed with an environmental awareness mesage. Enthusiastically produced and solidly performed, it’s nevertheless a little too abstract to get the most out of its short runtime.


The Corpse Road
12 mins, 2023, Dir. Joseph Daly.

A 16th century story of a peasant dragging the body of his mother-in-law across hills and fells so that she can be buried in consecrated ground, this is a truncated study of obligation, guilt and madness which suffers from barely-intelligible, shouted dialogue (and in middle-english with heavy northern accents, to boot) and black humour being trowelled on before the audience has had any chance to warm to the main character. Oh, and watching this on a cinema-sized screen, you can clearly see the ‘corpse’ breathing. The rest of the audience appreciated it more than I did, to be fair.


Silvanus Park
1 min, 2021, Dir. Laura E. Hall.

A very compact retooling of the found-footage genre, presented as a 60-second Instagram story complete with flash-cuts, on-screen captions and the portrait-mode aspect ratio. Zippy and to-the-point, what the film lacks in suspense if more than makes up for in style.


The Estrogen Gospel
16 mins, 2024, Dir. Robyn Adams.

Ah. It gives me absolutely no pleasure to say this was Dark Harvest’s very own horrific elephant in the room. Looking like it’s been filmed on smartphones from a decade ago, The Estrogen Gospel features no non-ambient lighting, a script which feels like it was written by one person in a 2am insomnia haze then not re-read in daylight, delivered by non-actors apparently seeing the lines for the first time, that audio recorded on the phones’ in-built microphones, and so many shots out-of-focus to varying degrees that it cannot possibly be deliberate. Considering this is actually the title which had me attending the event to begin with and how much I wanted to be on-side with it, it’s evidently unwatchable to the point where it was hands-down the entry of the night where the most people decided to have a toilet-break within its duration. While the aforementioned applause did still occur over the credits, the previously enthusiastic patron to my right just sat and firmly shook her head.*².


My Dreams Have Been Dark Of Late
3 mins, 2023, Dir. Joshua Warren.

A short and faintly comedic story of guilt and regret, this is nonetheless a fascinating effects-piece as a medieval knight is slowly crushed by his own imploding armour. Interesting to watch play out, but ultimately its brief runtime means the film doesn’t leave the viewer with much to dwell upon…


Blackthorn
18 mins, 2023, Dir. Chris Ratcliff.

A present-day study of the anxieties of moving into an already close-knit neighbourhood and the paranoia behind drawn curtains, Blackthorn skips along well enough, but mumbled dialogue with a single-mic setup often works against its effectiveness. The film wants to feel like an episode of Inside No. 9, but ultimately comes off more like the ‘new neighbours’ sketch from Fist Of Fun. That said, it’s well paced, entertaining and builds its atmosphere deftly.


The Blighted Crown
2 mins, 2023, Dir. Bianca Diana Ines Olingheru.

This blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fairytale parody is an object lesson in rescuing a faintly drab set with superb post-production design. However, this is a wry effects-reel and little else.


The Sin-Eater
17 mins, 2023, Dir. Kelly Holmes.

Essentially the headline feature of the evening, this tale of a young 19th century mother in rural Wales trying to absolve the soul of her baby who’s died before he could be baptised has immaculate performance and production, as well as flawless dual-lingual scripting, with fully measured commitment from its very first frame. When the effects-work finally comes into play, it’s complex but comparatively unobtrusive. Everyone involved in The Sin-Eater should be incredibly proud.


Blight
24 mins, 2022, Dir. Craig Sinclair.

And to finish, the overtly comic story of a Middle Ages subsistence farmer who’s cursed with hiccups by a witch in the woods. Every bit as silly as that sounds, the careful pacing and deadpan delivery make for a darkly intriguing watch. Blight is effectively a drawn-out sketch, the likes of which would have peppered one episode of a half-hour sketch show on BBC2 or Channel 4 in the early 2000s. Presented as this one-piece it’s slightly too long, although once suspects that’s also part of the joke.

And there we have it. A thoroughly enjoyable evening, and it's great to see short independent films accessible to people not attending a dedicated festival, in the environment which they were meant to be viewed: the cinema. Thanks and congratulations to all who organised Dark Harvest and to all whose work was exhibited (yes, even if that work Wasn't For Me). See you for the next showcase!

*¹ Hand on heart, the sound setup at the Reading Biscuit Factory is not ideal, with speakers situated solely behind the screen and apparently no complementary surrounds. This means for the whole room to hear, the volume has to be cranked up to the point where individual dialogue becomes almost unintelligible (and as much as I complain about clarity for at least one of the films here, the Biscuit Factory's arrangement is really not anything that the production's sound designer or mixer can take into advance account). And while I’d normally think this might be a by-product of the independent nature of the evening’s programming, the bottom line is that Timestalker suffered from exactly the same problem earlier that day, and in a different screen. I dread to think what a noisy blockbuster would sound like in there… ^{[ BACK ]}

*² You’re absolutely right of course, The Estrogen Gospel is still quantifiably better than the *zero* films I’ve made. ^{[ 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: Timestalker

TIMESTALKER
Cert: 15 / 90 mins / Dir. Alice Lowe / Trailer

Nigh-on impossible to track down on the multiplex circuit comes Alice Lowe's Timestalker, a surreal anti-romcom where the central character of Agnes (Lowe)*¹ is a hapless romantic who falls head over heels for precisely the wrong man (Alex, Aneurin Barnard), while being unhappily married to definitely the wrong man (Nick Frost), to the exasperated support of her best friend Meg (Tanya Reynolds). The problem is that she does this in the Scottish highlands in the 1680s, the English home counties in the 1790s and New York in the 1980s (plus more, besides). The pair are destined to never be together, and reincarnation it seems is just a chance to make the same mistakes, only better.

A British, independent film about memory, fatalism and crushing ennui is either the last thing we need in 2024, or the only thing. And since Alice Lowe’s lightness of touch means that Timestalker never wallows - even in its most introspective moments - I’ll go for the latter...

CHARMING

Laugh-out-loud funny, charming and never less than completely watchable, it’s a shame then that the final product feels so uneven. Mainstream sensibility would dictate that each of the film’s timeframes be given roughly equal, episodic, screen time, and from there the rhythm of Agnes’ inbuilt neuroses and repeated follies would be methodically built-up, like a meeting point somewhere between Blackadder and Groundhog Day if you will. Timestalker is far from mainstream, however, and takes no small amount of pleasure foxing audience expectations in having some era-segments play for over half an hour, while others last for less than five minutes. In fairness, this is narratively due to the fact that in some lives Agnes fixates over Alex for months/years, while in others she sees him mere moments before her own death, but the arrhythmic presentation can feel off-putting when all the viewer wants to do is root for our heroine.

It also gives way to the repeated suspicion that outside of the 90-minute runtime there’s about another hour which was filmed and never made the edit, and that there’s at least another two hours which were written but never filmed. On a structural level, the story seems more suited to six half-hour sitcom episodes, each fully presenting their own era with flashbacks (/forwards) to the others. Because ultimately, Agnes’ story is certainly something I want to see more of.

AND THE NEW POWER GENERATION

The scripted gags and cast interplay are superb and Lowe doesn't under-write any of the parts, but the slightly ponderous nature of the film’s pacing means these are more like interludes than the driving force of the plot. That said, Ryan Eddleston’s cinematography means the piece works perfectly as visual storytelling anyway, supported as he is by a wonderfully expressive cast. Especially notable is the 1980s ephemera which envelops the longest segment of Timestalker and almost acts as a companion piece to Lowe’s short story Carnival. This is certainly the timeframe which feels the most fully realised here, and bodes well for future projects from the creator.

But ultimately the film ends up feeling faintly unsatisfying, although I readily admit this is more down to my own hopes, expectations and presumptuous baggage than anything lacking in what was (beautifully) presented.

Not as compact as Lowe’s Sightseers, not as intense as her Prevenge, but also not as freewheelingly silly as her classmates’ Mindhorn, there’s much to be said for Timestalker, even if the final product never quite achieves its potential. But when everything else at the cinema is a sequel, remake or franchise entry, this is still a perfect example of actually getting something new onto the screen. Which is also a never-ending quest which can seem to take lifetimes…

*¹ A quick note here to say that under normal circumstances, the same person writing, directing and starring in a movie would raise more red flags than a parade in Tiananmen Square (proof, if it were needed). As a genre, comedy seems more open to this however, and Alice Lowe has previously shown her credentials to be utterly sound. While I'll go on to list some of the issues I had with Timestalker, none of them feel like the result of one person hogging control of a project; if anything, the film feels impacted by the compromise that directors have to deal with on a daily basis. ^{[ 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: Hocus Pocus (30th Anniversary)

Hocus Pocus
Cert: PG / 96 mins / Dir. Kenny Ortega / Trailer

Taking as its starting point the classic Macbethian trio of witch sisters, Kenny Ortega's much underrated and overlooked seminal feminist 1993 horror treatise Hocus Pocus may seem like a playful romp, but is actually a tale crafted from a draft manuscript by none other than Howard Phillips Lovecraft, discovered in 1974 among the belongings of his deceased ex-wife Sonia Greene, snapped up by Buena Vista and duly transcribed to Disney's development-hell for almost two decades*¹.

All of the literary touchstones are duly homaged. The antiquated prologue is based around the New England witch trials (which which HPL was distractingly fascinated), and both it and its contemporary main-narrative occur on Samhain. Obsessed with the hidden knowledge of cats, the story is one of an ancient evil lying dormant until it's finally revived, so that the past can posses the present. This is orchestrated by a trio of brash if well-meaning innocents, unspeakably drawn to a forbidden sacred tome bound in human flesh. And just as the heroes believe they are making headway with magic for good purposes - unaware that they themselves have been drawn into a life of supernatural servitude - the three resurrected witches are unaware that the insanity of aeons has clouded their resolve, and they themselves are likewise slaves to greater forces - every bit at the mercy of the Elder Ones as the town they claim to haunt. Mass hysteria ensues while the dead rise from their graves, in a land where the sun never seems to rise and torment is eternal. Hocus Pocus is a tale of madness, witchcraft and helpless nihilism in the true Lovecraftian fashion.

And best of all, leading man Omri Katz looks like the reincarnated ancestor of Mr Spooner from Are You Being Served?. What's not to love?

*¹ You think I'm joking at this point, much like the write-up I did for The Spaceman and King Arthur, but have you stopped to ask yourself why Hocus Pocus has the same initials as Howard Phillips? Aahhh... ^{[ 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 Creator

The Creator
Cert: 12A / 133 mins / Dir. Gareth Edwards / Trailer

As much as Gareth Edwards' new film is trumpeted as being from the director*¹ of Rogue One and tackling the bête du jour of AI, The Creator is at its heart a callback to the 1970s era of thought-provoking science fiction, which didn't get bogged down in being the start of A Universe™*².

Excellent lead performances from John David Washington, Madeleine Yuna Voyles and Gemma Chan blend seamlessly with strong supporting roles from Allison Janney and Ralph Ineson, as the film leans back from 'the robots are going to kill us' and asks instead what qualifies as Artificial when the Intelligence becomes truly self-aware. Much like Alex Garland's superb Ex Machina, the real enemy here isn't the behaviour of the machines but that of the humans they're reacting against. Director and co-writer Gilroy evokes sympathy without being mawkish, and showcases a beautifully gritty world and jaw-dropping effects work without getting lost in the detail. While the film has a serious point to make yet never lectures its audience, this open-ended approach to morality may seem non-committal to some, and there's certainly the feeling that The Creator is merely extremely impressive, rather than surprisingly profound.

But above all else, it's just great to see a fiction-movie in this day and age which is familiar without seeming derivative and interesting for its entire run-time. Bravo.

*¹ It's a topic for a different post admittedly, but Tony 'Andor' Gilroy deserves at least an equal amount of credit for the direction (and indeed the direction) of Rogue One. It's not that Gareth Edwards didn't put in a hell of a lot of vital work, but ultimately Gilroy is responsible for the movie we saw. But much like the Solo debacle, we'll likely never hear the full, true story behind all that. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² And let's be entirely fair, Star Wars caused that. ^{[ 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: A Haunting In Venice

A Haunting In Venice
Cert: 12A / 103 mins / Dir. Kenneth Branagh / Trailer

There are few images which evoke a perfect combination of civilisation and tranquility like the waterways of Venice, so it's not altogether inapt that we drop in on that city in a post-war setting as the celebrated detective Hercule Poirot is trying his best to adapt to a life of gentle retirement.

As for the haunting? Well, he's trying, that is, against the wishes of a subconscious still struggling to deal with psychoses from the world war before the recent one, followed by a civvy-street occupation that's involved being perpetually surrounded by All Of The Killing. It's no surprise that our hero's sense of reason is on the verge of collapsing. When Poirot attends a Halloween party in a palazzo reputed to be home to dozens of vengeful spirits, it makes for an uneasy evening. And when a visiting medium is murdered following an after-hours seance, well - that makes for a typical one...

STRING

And so to the third in this (frankly) troubled string of Kenneth Branagh's interpretations of Agatha Christie's Belgian sleuth. I won't waste space here listing their particular failings, only to say that I approached this film with slightly more dread than was probably intended by 20th Century Studios. I don't necessarily consider myself as a Christie Purist™, but I also don't enjoy watching demonstrably inferior versions of the stories I love.

So I was more surprised than anyone when I found myself rather enjoying A Haunting In Venice. The story is a (very) loose retooling of 1969's Hallowe'en Party, but uses this more as a broad inspiration rather than source-text. And because of that distance between the novel and the screenplay, this has far more of an identity than the previous entries. There are far fewer 'small' inconsistencies to get caught up in when you're watching events unfold essentially for the first time.

EVERYTHING

Hildur Guðnadóttir's score, Haris Zambarloukos' cinematography and overall production design are firmly on the film's side, all managing to make an isolated, decaying multi-storey mansion still feel atmospherically sumptuous. And speaking of atmos, the sound editing appears to have been taking lessons from the school of Blumhouse for its deathly silences and subsequent jump-scares. That said, in terms of actual chills this is still more effective than most of the straight-up horror flicks of recent times.

Performances of the comparatively (and thankfully) pared-down ensemble cast are solid all round, even if they feel a little televisual in their melodramatic angst. Although with the very best will in the world Branagh's central turn is the weakest aspect of the whole thing (it's like he's hoping the audience will just accept him as Poirot through repeated exposure, rather than any persuasive craft on his part). We're three movies in and the man still sounds like he's auditioning for 'Allo 'Allo.

And if that's not enough to raise a smirk, there are enough high ceilings and falling chandeliers here to suggest that the palazzo isn't actually haunted, it's just got the Trotter family running about in the attic...

ONCE

Ken's Poirot movies have always worked best for audiences who are able to 'un-remember' previous versions of the story that's being told. A Haunting In Venice is no exception, and wisely assists the viewer by largely being its own - very respectable - thing. If this series is to continue (and it will, whether we like it or not), the way forward will be writing wholly original stories using familiar characters. Absolutely no shame in that, and far more scope for creativity.

Apart from anything else, you really have to admire the chutzpah of budgeting for a Venice location shoot and basing your PR around that, then having 95% of the movie take place indoors, at night, while it's raining too hard to see the scenery in the occasional cutaway exteriors.

Ken got his holiday, I see...

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: Dumb Money

Dumb Money
Cert: 15 / 104 mins / Dir. Craig Gillespie / Trailer

Well, it's nice to see that the department at Sony in charge of greenlighting True-Story™, fast-cut, mumbled-dialogue, quirky, yellow-poster, current affairs, underdog dramatisations is largely weathering the storm currently affecting the rest of the movie industry.

This is one of those pieces that's usually dropped in January as quasi awards-bait (but that aforementioned storm means it's hitting screens now to make up for nothing else being ready), usually based on a New York Times article or a factual book (or a New York Times article which led to a factual book), in which mainstream entertainment actors get to play in the frowny grown-ups sandpit, and convince us all that they're worth the sensible plaudits by doing so. Dumb Money centres around the Gamestop stock-debacle of 2021, and is populated by players who are either perpetually furious, gormless or both at the same time. And because these characters are based to varying levels on Real People™, director Craig Gillespie gets carte blanche in portraying them as either too dull for dramatisation or too pantomime for documentary. So this is very much like real life in that we can't have nice things. Is it dumb? No. But is it an interesting cinematic distillation of a superficially complex subject, boiled down to its base elements to shine insight onto the fallibility of human behaviour which caused the furore and the plucky spirit of those who rode out the storm and stuck it to The Man? Also no.

Dumb Money is for people who didn't manage to take in what was on the news 18 months earlier, and use their escapist downtime to watch movies about it all instead*¹. If that's you, enjoy.

*¹ Seriously, there were 2 (two) separate ads for vitamin supplements before the trailers, so at least the distributors know that the only people watching this movie are firmly middle-aged... ^{[ 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: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
Cert: 12A / 92 mins / Dir. Nia Vardalos / Trailer

There's a moment in Kevin Smith's second 'Evening With' video which addresses the fiscal reality of working in the entertainment industry. When asked if he - as a successful movie director, writer and actor - magically has cash lying around, Kevin replies "Sir, I have a family. I'm married and I have a kid. Honestly, I kind of live very hand-to-mouth where it's like I get paid, and then I go back to work, and I get paid and basically we just spend that money until there's no money left. And then I'm like '...well, what did Jay and Silent Bob do this week?'" Cue the mock-knowing laughter of a sycophantic audience acknowledging the artist's easy go-to of reliving former glories.

In unrelated news, successful movie director, writer and actor Nia Vardalos has a new My Big Fat Greek Wedding film out this week.

HOLIDAY

Reuniting the (surviving*¹) cast from previous excursions, Toula (Nia Vardalos) and Ian (John Corbett) finally book themselves a first-time holiday to Greece with assorted family members to visit her late father's childhood village and hold a party in his memory. Brother Nick (Louis Mandylor) accompanies them with a secret plan for the homecoming-dispersal of the ashes, with Aunts Voula (Andrea Martin) and Frieda (Maria Vacratsis) thrown in for tag-along comedy value.

They're joined by Toula and Ian's daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris) who's on the verge of failing college, and her sort-of-ex/half boyfriend Aristotle (Elias Kacavas) to add some teenage angst. Once back in the home-country, new characters arrive in the form of fearsome Alexandra (Anthi Andreopoulou), mysterious stranger Peter (Alexis Georgoulis), sparky town mayor Victory (Melina Kotselou), and Syrian refugee Qamar (Stephanie Nur) struggling to find acceptance in the traditional village. Old favourites Nikki (Gia Carides) and Angelo (Joe Fatone) arrive later in a further bid to reunite all of their father's childhood friends, and in the end the party is arranged for the same date as an impromptu wedding which is quickly pencilled in during the second act. It's all going on.

MUTINY

This is, with the very best will in the world, a complete shambles. Far too televisual in its scope*², far too many plot threads, few of which are properly developed (again), too many cast members, too many recurring-catchphrases in lieu of jokes, and a marked impatience in reaching its own natural conclusion.

Vardalos manages to under-write her own screenplay and then over-direct it, but the worst offender by far is the number of glaring 'laugh-gaps' - the leaden silences left in the script and sound-mix after a throwaway punchline is ham-fistedly delivered. The idea of these is that a theatre full of patrons will be so busy hooting with hilarity, some breathing-room should be left so that they don't miss the next crucial line in the script. This probably works well in a test-screening full of cast and crew, although in a provincial cinema with five other patrons (and worse still, in your own living room) the movie will play like it's been edited by someone suffering a blunt-force head trauma.

MARATHON

That said, the film's heart is in the right place on an emotional level. There are chuckles and smiles to be had, there are few sharp edges and there's a concerted effort to sneak in various social issues without lecturing the audience (even if those issues are treated so non-confrontationally that they amount to box-ticking). The scenery is gorgeous, the cast are bringing their best energy and other than the struggling mechanics of making a coherent movie there's little to find objectionable*³.

But ultimately, as the credits roll you're left with the feeling that Nia Vardalos has sat looking at a bank statement and wondered '...well, what did Toula and Ian do this week?'. And then she watched a couple of Mamma Mia flicks and realised the answer might involve HBO paying for a jolly over to Europe...

*¹ Look I know this feels like a low blow, but with the first movie landing in 2002, a follow-up fourteen years later and then waiting another seven for the threequel, Greek Wedding is a series so infrequent that its supporting cast are literally dying of old-age between instalments. And while that's certainly not shied-away from in this movie, Vardalos still didn't have the cojones to call it My Big Fat Greek Funeral. Maybe next time... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² The weirdest offset might be the combination of the film's full 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with opening titles that look like a mid-budget 1990s TV sitcom. Who signed this off? ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ I know it seems like I'm being overly harsh to a perfectly harmless little comfort-food movie which was never intended for me in the first place, but for what it's worth Mrs Blackout enjoyed this even less than I did, and I only went to see it because she wanted to... ^{[ 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: Jurassic Park (30th Anniversary)

Jurassic Park
Cert: 12A / 126 mins / Dir. Steven Spielberg / Trailer

There's something about the nonchalantly galling nostalgia of anniversary screenings for movies you saw in the first time around and technically weren't even a child then that nobody warns you about. The last time I watched Jurassic Park in a cinema (which I swear blind wasn't that long ago) it was old enough to buy a pint, yet now the fossilised mosquitos and interactive CD-ROMs weren't the only thing in that room feeling ancient...

And truth be told, there's not much to say all these years down the line about a movie that's still perfect. John Williams' score is still majestic, Bob Peck's focused intensity is still magnetic, the jokes still get audible laughs and Gary Rydstrom's sound-design for the Tyrannosaur is still one of the most hair-raising things I've ever heard. The digital and practical effects work is astounding of course, but above all else it's the human reactions to the dinosaurs that really sell this. And not just Ariana Richards' and Joseph Mazzello's terrified scrambling as Lex and Tim, but the sense of awe and jaw-dropped wonder from Laura Dern, Sam Neill*¹ and Jeff Goldblum. Meeting the Brachiosaur herds was magical in 1993 and it's magical now. I genuinely still wipe away a tear in that moment. Like I said, perfect.

It's also still horribly relevant. This romp of dinosaurs gone rogue (or more properly, dinosaurs behaving completely naturally) is in its essence a timeless cautionary tale, glossed over with unapologetically self-aware marketing. It's no accident that a parable about the dangers of unfettered capitalism has its own logo'd merchandise literally appearing within the film as part of the problem. The story is blunt in its message (classic Michael Crichton), but hugely accessible in its scope (classic Steven Spielberg). One of the most interesting aspects is how the director actually leaves the audience feeling slightly sorry for park-visionary John Hammond, the gently-spoken entrepreneur whose myopic hubris causes widespread destruction, mutilation and death, while at the same time we're invited laugh at the demise of lawyer Donald Gennaro as he cowers on a suddenly exposed toilet. Remember, he's one of the few professionals who hadn't been bribed or cajoled onto the island to sign-off the project, and was merely working to represent the interests of investors who had well-founded concerns about the park's demonstrably appalling safety procedures. In the first act of Jurassic Park, Gennaro is actually the good guy. This flips of course once he gets dollar-signs in his eyes and is subsequently punished by the narrative as a result. Like I said, blunt.

But perhaps most pleasingly, in the end there's no deus ex machina which gets our protagonists out of trouble. They just have to pick their battles, make it through the night and survive the ordeal*². Jurassic Park is about teamwork and tenacity in the face of adversity. About weathering the storm and about leaving no one behind. Yeah, even if they caused all this shit in the first place. Like I said, horribly relevant.

*¹ And for the record, Dr Alan Grant is never more than three lines of dialogue away from Sam Neill's native Kiki accent kicking back into gear, and I don't even mind. That's how much I love Jurassic Park. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² I do hope the poorly Triceratops was okay in the end. The plot-thread of the illness doesn't get resolved in the film (it's explained more in the novel but sill not 'fixed' iirc), and I'm not cool with the thought of her lying there incapacitated while the T-rex goes rampaging about the island willy-nilly... ^{[ 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: Back To The Future - The Musical

Back To The Future:
The Musical
London Adelphi Theatre / Saturday, 05 August 2023
Stage Manager Gaz Wall / Director John Rando / Musical Director Jim Henson (not that one)
140 mins (exc. interval) / Trailer

I am not, as regular readers will be more than aware, A Theatre Reviewer*¹, hence the immediate shift here from detached critical oversight to first-person blog. However, beloved cinematic connections endured with today's subject, combined with a day out in London*² and the 2023 ethos of forcing myself to write about Stuff*³, resulting in a showery afternoon Down The Strand*⁴ and a journey Back... To The Future.

When restless 80s suburban teenager Marty Mcfly (Ben Joyce) gets a call to assist his friend the eccentric professor Doc Brown (Gary Trainor) one night, he's astounded to find him in possession of a working time-machine. But Marty is even more alarmed when he finds himself thirty years in the past, and has endangered his own existence by disrupting the first meeting of his parents Lorraine (Amber Davies) and George (Cameron McAllister). With the time-machine out of power, how can our hero get back to 1985 and his girlfriend Jennifer (Sophie Naglik)? Will it be possible to not only restore the future, but to make it better? And how can town-bully Biff (Harry Jobson) and school principal Mr Strickland (Adam Margilewski) both be such a pain in two time-zones?

PACED

So here's the thing. Robert Zemeckis's 1985 film Back To The Future is 1h56m of perfectly paced storytelling. It's immaculately structured with not a frame to spare. Everything we see and hear is building - linearly or otherwise - into an exemplary whole that rewards first and repeated viewings alike. It is a masterpiece. John Rando's 2020 stage adaptation of Back To The Future is 2h20m of structurally the same story, which also has characters frequently bursting into a three-verse song to describe a moment's inner monologue (that's fine, it is a musical). The time spent in verse accounts for significantly more than the extra 24 minutes between the two versions. The upshot of this is that whenever a secondary character has their go in the literal limelight, that's happening at the expense of the quieter story beats - the ones which elevated the movie to more than a standard adventure flick. As a result, some of these smaller points are rushed, some are glossed over and some are jettisoned completely. And while this never derails the core narrative, it's unclear whether an audience watching BTTF for the first time on the stage would actually be able to clearly follow what's going on, amid the noise and cut-corners.

As you'd hope/expect, the film's diegetic songs The Power Of Love, Earth Angel, Johnny B. Goode and Back In Time are all present and correct*⁵, and all performed immaculately under Jim Henson's auspices in the understage orchestra pit. While the production features more than an admirable amount of Alan Silvestri's iconic original score, for the very most part that soundtrack is entirely separate from the new musical-numbers. With the exception of the key musical motif which sneaks its lyric-ed way into Only A Matter Of Time and its reprises (and a separate refrain from the same theme which sneaks in once), the new songs - musically - feel like they could have been written for any stage-show, and were crowbarred to fit this one by virtue of their lyrics. Although at the same time, it's the dialogue between which tackles the actual narrative (again, if a newcomer were to try and glean the plot from the cast recording, they'd come unstuck pretty quickly). The songs themselves are great, I hasten to add. Only A Matter Of Time counterpoints with Got No Future, while Teach Him A Lesson dovetails boldly back into Something About That Boy. But the newly-penned soundtrack overall doesn't have its own stylistic through-thread, which you'd be forgiven for considering quite an important part of A Stage Musical. Collectively, this is a mish-mash of rock'n'roll, synth pop and full-on show tunes. Silvestri's score doesn't quite manage to thread these together, but it does act as a musical anchor, the base point which can be returned to at plot-specific moments of critical importance.

And of course when you go to see a West End stage show, you expect to see performances worthy of A West End Stage Show™. That's certainly what Back To The Future delivers, with wide eyes, gleaming teeth and belting vocals that could shatter a flux capacitor. This works best in conjunction with the deliberately '50s-esque sequences, but often feels more Rydell High than Hill Valley. Never more than two steps from going full jazz-hands (and occasionally doing that anyway), the enthusiasm certainly can't be faulted, even if some members of the cast seem more to determined to segue between overly earnest middle-distance yodelling and intricately parodic impersonations of their big-screen counterparts. The end result always works well on the boards, but can remind the audience more of the screen-characters they're not watching treading them.

So the storytelling here is erratic, the musical style is haphazard and the performances border on distracting. Naturally, there's only one conclusion I can come to.
Back To The Future The Musical is nothing short of brilliant. Absolutely. Brilliant.

LARGED

Put simply, there has never been a more flawless collaboration of performance, musicianship, physical sets, digital projection, razor-sharp lighting, and surgically precise off-stage co-ordination*⁶. When all of these come together in Back To The Future The Musical the effect is jaw-dropping, way more than the sum of its parts. This is the kind of magic that only theatre can bring to life, because it's happening in real-time and real-space as the audience watches agog. When the DeLorean first appears, it gets a huge round of applause. And do bear in mind that almost everybody in the theatre is watching this for the first time, it's not Rocky Horror where their interactivity is cued up - this is just the energy that washes out into the audience. We applauded a prop. By the time of the final curtain, we were giving that prop a standing ovation.

The device at the core of the live presentation (other than the DeLorean) is the huge central section of the stage that rotates to reveal new props and scenery. Not only is this a quick and effective means of carrying out the many scene changes (with technicians backstage constantly cueing up the next location), it's used to maximum effect in conjunction with the dual projection in simulating the high-speed action scenes. You will believe you're watching a car approach 88mph on a theatre stage, and you will believe you're seeing that from switching camera angles. It is awe-inspiring and perfectly executed. But on a more subconscious level, this central area echoes the movement of a traditional clock-face, and its rotation is representative of Marty having a time-machine at his disposal while suddenly finding that the clock is against him. This is a decision that's been made for maximum thematic enjoyment, an indication that every aspect of the physical production has been meticulously plotted out for aesthetics as well as practicality. While some scene changes take place under cover of darkness, more occur in front of the audience's eyes. The show doesn't slow down for these and it's all part of the experience - a feature, not a bug. The continuous efficiency with which this happens is nothing short of amazing; Back To The Future The Musical uses three-dimensional space to its fullest extent*⁷.

Although I've griped above about some of the performances, they do come together perfectly, and credit is fully due to Ben Joyce as Marty McFly, who keeps Michael J. Fox's exasperated soul of the character intact while still managing to add his own idiosyncrasies as an actor, without the two sides ever clashing. And extra, extra points must be awarded to Gary Trainor as Doctor Emmet Brown, who immerses himself in the role so perfectly that whether he's delivering dialogue from the film script or the sections written for this adaptation, with each shrug and shriek you don't just feel Christopher Lloyd, but Actual Doc Actual Brown. Everything about Trainor's turn is beautifully on-point and makes for an electrifying experience. The pair proudly, and rightfully, take centre-stage here.

WISED

This is certainly not a cheap night out*⁸, and for the majority of readers London isn't readily accessible, but I seriously recommend anyone wanting to see the show to do so at the Adelphi Theatre. Commercial logic suggests there'll be a touring version at some point, but sheer practical viability dictates that a 'mobile' presentation will necessarily lose its greatest aspects. Back To The Future isn't just presented at The Adelphi, it inhabits the auditorium on a more fundamental level, surrounding the audience in the stalls and filling the field of vision for everyone else. The theatre is more than just a stage. This intricate physical and mechanical setup is the show in its fullest form, and can't be re-assembled in the local Theatre Royal for a three-night run.

Overall, there are structural hurdles to be cleared and while that's managed, those obstacles are still visible*⁹. It's not that Back To The Future The Musical shouldn't work, more that it was always going to be a monumentally tall order to do the film justice. John Rando's stage adaptation takes this tall order and surpasses it, with force of will and the infectious commitment of its cast and crew. Like any adventure, there are perils and there are pitfalls, but the greatest trick the show pulls is having its audience walk out onto the Strand with a spring in their step and the feeling that it all looked so easy.

As with any artistic endeavour, precision, dedication and belief all play their part, but sometimes even the sheer joy of the thing is enough...

*¹ Indeed, on the most recent occasion I attempted a theatrical deconstruction, the resulting piece spent almost more time complaining about the bricks-and-mortar venue than it did the actual production. Although the two were intertwined so I feel justified. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Apart from anything else, the only three entertainment properties to have tempted me back to the capital this year have been Star Wars, Indiana Jones and now Back To The Future; given that these are my all-time favourites, it feels appropriate that the stage production should be analysed here to some extent... ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ And yet I'm very aware that it's been over three months since my check-in at the Minack Theatre for a concert by The Fisherman's Friends and no review has surfaced. But how to I collate words for a perfect combination of venue and performance which left me speechless? I still don't know. Hence. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ Have one banana. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁵ Mister Sandman seems notable by its absence, even if Marty's arrival in 1955 no longer features that same town square sequence of events when transferred to the stage. Although the song does make an appearance in the 'Radio Hill Valley' soundtrack which is played in the auditorium during the interval. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁶ When I say 'there's never been', I mean 'I have never seen one'. Like I said, I'm not 'theatre-people', but I did dally briefly with crew-work in my much-younger days, and I know how much precision and graft goes on backstage with even the most vanilla of productions. Back To The Future The Musical is next, next level. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁷ I also love that this telling of a story from 1985 about a kid travelling back to the '50s could not have been told on stage in this form until well in to the 21st century. The technology - practical as well as digital - didn't exist at this level of quality and accessibility to produce this show earlier; as if the past, and the past-past had been waiting for the future to catch up to timeless imagination. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁸ Tickets for Back To The Future The Musical are - to be blunt - prohibitively expensive, but the consolation is that you do see where that money is going, no doubt at all. And for the absolute avoidance of doubt, I'm not writing glowing words because I saw this with freebies or comps, I paid cold hard cash and will gladly do so again. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁹ It's not that I was sceptical about watching this adaptation, but I was certainly wary and the price-tag doesn't exactly encouraging a gamble. You can't take a single escalator on the tube without seeing posters for a dozen West End shows, half of which seem to be stage port-overs of well-received movies from the 80s and 90s (The Bodyguard, Dirty Dancing, Mrs Doubtfire). But Back To The Future isn't just an 80s movie, it's a cultural touchstone. I'd struggled with how the producers were going to bring the story to life in a way which would add more to something that was already perfect. And on August 05, I found out. ^{[ 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 Equalizer 3

The Equalizer 3
Cert: 15 / 109 mins / Dir. Antoine Fuqua / Trailer

I can't believe they haven't called this The 3qualizer. Never thought I'd see the day when Lionsgate's Expendfourbles have got more cojones than Sony Columbia but here we are.

Anyway, Antoine Fuqua has teamed up once again with the only actor in his contacts list still picking up the phone for another hour and three quarters of dad-vigilantism*¹. Pathologically unable to keep his neb out of other folks' business, Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) has put his past killing Russian gansters and Turkish gangsters behind him, and has moved for a quiet life in... *checks notes* ...southern Italy. Well, quite. Also stars Dakota Fanning as a CIA operative literally phoning in a performance for half the runtime.

An absolute pantomime of a film with much of the exposition thankfully lost in mumbled dialogue, what Fuqua sees as a 'steady pace' is more like dragging out a tight 85 minute thriller. Things could be worse but this sags frequently, eventually limping to a muted finale probably intended as 'nuanced', but looking like the budget was about to run out. Cinematographer Robert Richardson really earns that "injury detail" warning on the BBFC card, in fact the only thing shown with more glee than the violence is a gang of seven Italian mobsters standing around a spotlit table plotting murder while literally eating spaghetti bolognese. On a similar note, Marcelo Zarvos's score nodding merrily to The Godfather feels every bit as cheap as one would expect.

Like many of the movies this Summer, Equalizer 3 wouldn't have been out of place 15 years ago but feels slightly too grubby in 2023. It's technically competent, but plies its trade without verve or self-awareness. There's evidently still a market for this sort of thing otherwise Sony's badge wouldn't be on the front, but everyone here is going through the motions while they can still get away with it*²

Still, it's not the most egregious Italian bloodbath I've seen this year, and at least this one was actually filmed there.

*¹ I know I call these movies dad-bait, but there was an advert for Lynx Africa before tonight's screening. I rest my case. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Why does it feel like I'll be typing this again for Expendfourbles? ^{[ 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: Cobweb

Cobweb
Cert: 15 / 88 mins / Dir. Samuel Bodin / Trailer

A by-the-numbers haunted house creeper which channels The Conjuring flicks by way of The People Under The Stairs, this Lionsgate feature borrows liberally from the genre while remaining largely (and thankfully) free of cheap jump-scares. The movie rattles along its short runtime building a reasonable amount of uneasy tension - even if that’s offset by being over-directed in every single scene. This last lends Cobweb an unintentional silliness (together with hazy plot details) that may be the film’s saving grace, preventing it from getting swept up in themes of dark family secrets and lies.

God alone knows why this is being released in early September. Its Hallow’een setting makes the film suitable for the last week in October, and even then only the once (unless you’re a fan of Lizzy Caplan going psycho, in which case knock yourself 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.

Review: Past Lives

Past Lives
(Spoilers)
Cert: 12A / 106 mins / Dir. Celine Song / Trailer

And so August finally threatens to bear some sensible cinematic fruit, as writer/director Celine Song's debut feature focuses on a young Korean woman who - having moved and settled in the USA - encounters a face from her past which stirs uneasy feelings of loss and regret. Greta Lee stars as aspiring playwright Na Young / Nora, with John Magaro as her American now-husband Arthur, and Teo Yoo as Jung Hae Sung, the childhood friend who threatens to upset the applecart.

Actually it's not entirely fair to blame Hae Sung. As pre-teens, he and Na Young are shown to have a competitive, belligerent relationship until their parents agree to escort them on one playdate after which Na Young moves with her parents to Canada (and chooses her Western-name of Nora). Twelve years later, after learning toxic-masculinity traits in the army, Hae Sung starts Facebook-stalking her. Rather than shutting this down, Nora strings out the long-distance nothing in an awkward, dangling way for months before ghosting him for another twelve years because she can't face the responsibility of her own personality. Shortly after this, Nora has married author Arthur (do you see what they did there) on the rebound purely to get a green-card while both share a cramped NYC apartment full of repressed guilt and existential ennui. When Hae Sung decides he's finally going to visit the USA and asks to meet Nora again naturally she agrees, because the best possible thing for everybody here is a gamophobic woman introducing her emotionally anaesthetised ex to her brittlely insecure husband so that they can all be the same level of unhappy.

TEST

All art is subjective of course and every film is its own Rorschach test. Despite clear moments of intended poignancy Past Lives compares well with Brian De Palma's Scarface, in that it's proof that you don't need to base your screenplay around likeable characters; engaging ones sliding into the morass of their own appalling decisions (and/or lack thereof) can be enough. The players in this game have their foibles and flaws shown, explained, highlighted and underlined at every single turn. It's not that Nora, Hae Sung or Arthur have no redeeming features, just that the film wallows in their repeated failure to learn from past mistakes. As lessons go it's pretty blunt and Celine Song proves herself to be the master of 'the awkward moment'. In fact this one lasts for an hour and three quarters.

On the plus-side, Shabier Kirchner's cinematography is gorgeous; colour palettes have rarely looked so expressive and the use of light and shadow is sublime. Keith Fraase's diting is delicate and the overall pacing is deliberately languid, reflective of the protagonists' reluctance to grow. We spend a massive amount of time watching the non-relationship between Na Young and Hae Sung, and then comparatively none with her actual husband Arthur, so that when the marriage begins to show serious cracks there's little at stake for the audience other than imagining Arthur as the This Is Fine dog.

SAVER

That said, the premise and performances here are strong enough that the Past Lives could easily have been 20 minutes shorter with no detrimental effect to the story. And fair play to Song, it could easily have been a more mawkish, uplifting and chocolate-box take, but she's chosen to show life at its needlessly complicated worst. Thanks, mate. The fact that I didn't particularly enjoy myself doesn't mean the film doesn't work, of course; it's supposed to be imperfect. Arguably, me disliking just about every speaking character onscreen means that it's doing precisely what it's supposed to. Well done, I guess*¹.

Oh, and repeatedly throwing in ancient folklore about the titular 'past lives' doesn't mean anything if your main character debunks that the very first time it's mentioned. Also by her. Then again Nora's wrong about literally everything else here, so...

*¹ For clarity, me disliking Past Lives was not a foregone conclusion. The trailer looks great and I was genuinely worried it was going to leave me sobbing in the auditorium. So perhaps the subsequent relief and surprise of me loving the performances and just despising the characters themselves was a good thing? Yeah, I don't think so either. ^{[ BACK ]}

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• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
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