Review: Their Finest

Their Finest
Cert: 12A / 117 mins / Dir. Lone Scherfig / Trailer

THE END IS NIGHY?
BRIT BILL LOCKED ON COMIC COLLISION COURSE!

A TOP TEAM OF Tinsel-Town technicians has been furiously working against the clock to bring Bill Nighy safely out of auto-pilot, it has been revealed. The alarm was raised during the British charmer's latest gentle-drama, Their Finest, in which onlookers had noticed his trademark head-flick was more pronounced than usual, and his deadpan wryness had been recycled from almost every other performance he's given over the last twenty years.

PROTÉGÉ
Hollywood boffins were hoping to avert disaster by relying on the film's co-pilot, Gemma Arterton, to steer the film to safety until they noticed that the Tamara Drewe protégé was also coasting unblinkingly along, and at an alarmingly earlier point in her career. Further inspection revealed that the Nighy model actually has no other setting, an issue which has been raised with its manufacturer.

FABERGÉ
The Surrey-born thespian's love of low-maintenance comedy roles has been common knowledge to industry insiders since his breakthrough appearance in Love Actually, in which his quasi-absent minded persona was juxtaposed into a faded rock star for comic effect. But since Richard Curtis was ostensibly left in charge of the star's appearances, critics and audiences alike are worried that comedy/drama dual-carriageway of Bill's acting career will soon merge into a single-lane ring-road. But with no exits.

Concerns about Nighy's ability to appropriately choose roles were voiced during the star's previous comedic outing, Dad's Army, in which the veteran actor completed a 100 minute character cover-version without once performing as anyone other than Bill Nighy™. When asked if he could justify making these choices in the 21st century, the 67yr old reportedly replied "Yeah, but the money..?".

DENIM
Meanwhile, BBC Films has claimed they have no choice but to let the 117-minute litany of earnest tweeness and irony-free faux spiritual propaganda run its course, hoping for as few casualties as possible in the process. The corporation's legal team has since admitted that Their Finest's theatrical May release-date will will ensure that the subsequent DVD has dropped to around £3 in time for next year's Mother's Day in-store displays, a position it will then inhabit permanently.

One studio insider told us "I don't know what we'll do if Bill Nighy actually crashes this time. Well, other than offer his planned future roles to Jim Broadbent. Obviously."

My Week With Marilyn, Singin' In The Rain, Inglourious Basterds, Atonement.



Not unless you need to see the film immediately.
It's sort of a Sunday-afternoon-DVD, to be fair.



Just about, although I suspect it's taking massive liberties with the actual events which inspired it to create a neat story (not completely un-ironic considering the story is about a film company taking massive liberties with actual events to create a neat story).



No, but this is a strong cast, to be fair.
Despite my sarcasm.



Nah.



There is.
It's slowed (and therefore pitched) down a little, but it's there.



Level 2: In case you hadn't picked it up, Bill Nighy is in this film. No, really.
He was also in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest alongside Keira 'Sabé' Knightley.



It's actually not a bad film, but it's slightly forgettable, completely twee and infuriatingly self-satisfied. And I just couldn't give Nighy a free ride on this one.


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 Girl With All The Gifts

The Girl With All The Gifts
Cert: 15 / 111 mins / Dir. Colm McCarthy / Trailer



Oh, it's that kind of Zombie-flick, I see. When it's not poking adoring-fun at the genre*¹, British cinema has a tendency not only to slightly over-egg the claustrophobia in a living-dead scenario, but also to avoid using the Z-word altogether (which can easily come off as a sort of snobbishness). Y'see, for all the BFI funding, arty posters, delicate cinematography and complete lack of the aforementioned word in the script, The Girl With All The Gifts*² is a zombie movie. And is all the better for that.

Not wanting to jump right onto the pre-established bandwagon, the infection-vehicle in this movie is a fungus which infects the brain leading to an almost complete shut-down other than ravenous hunger for anything which is alive and uninfected. But it's still spread by bites, blood and bogeys though, and the end result is the same: shambling in stand-by mode, feral and desperate when they get a whiff of fresh meat, and anything other than a heat-shot will only slow them down. The film takes place after the initial plague of society-rending infection has occurred, with the remains of humanity hiding in bunkers frantically searching for a cure. A potential avenue seems to be a generation of children born after the outbreak, who exhibit the uncontrollable craving for human flesh when they're within nose-shot of it, but appear normal in all other situations. By applying blocker gel to mask their scent, a research team tests and educates one particular group in a fortified military base outside of London, keeping them in borderline barbaric conditions (it's not the fact that they're secured in wheelchairs during lessons which evokes notes of Guantanamo, but that they're forced to wear Crocs). When the undead hordes breach the base's defences, a small group of survivors treks toward the capital in search of civilisation, reinforcement and hope…

From the outset, the film waves its symbolism-flag proudly (if slightly heavy-handedly). Mike Carey has adapted his own novel for the screen, which is always preferable, but some of the story's more delicate points feel hammered home a little, especially in the third act. Sennia Nanua is great as Melanie, the eponymous Girl, while Paddy Considine and Gemma Arterton walk a delicate line between dour-drama and camp-action-movie. But it's Glenn Close who gets to do most of the heavy-lifting in delivering exposition to the audience (her role as the chief scientist researching a vaccine makes this natural at first, but by act-three you know that every time she opens her mouth it's so that the film doesn't have to show something).

In fact, from the cast to the cinematography, to the percussive score and to Colm McCarthy's tense direction, everyone seems very committed to the project. You just get the feeling they were shooting a slightly better film than the one that came out of the editing suite, somehow. I can't work out if the story runs out of steam or just paints itself into a corner. More details are crammed into the life-cycle of the virus, but at a time when we're more concerned with the characters. By the time we reach the crescendo, all the foreshadowed circles are closed neatly enough, but the film is running rigidly on its rails. Never clichéd exactly, but there are fewer surprises in the screenplay the further along it goes, and the conclusion feels far less convincing than the premise*³.

If The Girl With All The Gifts film had kept to the symbolic and philosophical path, I think I'd have enjoyed it more. The film is a valiant effort as it stands, but seems to be happy being a a slightly run-of-the-mill apocalyptic thriller when it could be so much more…

The film's closest spiritual relative is probably 28 Days Later, although there are splashes of Dog Soldiers and even Never Let Me Go in there, too.



For the immersiveness of the cinematography, maybe, but you won't lose too much by watching this at home.



I think it probably does; but the question is, is that enough?.



Probably not best but solid, certainly.



Nope.



Nope.



Level 1: Daniel Eghan. He plays a soldier in this movie, and he's due to appear in Rogue One this December as a militiaman. Me neither, I'm afraid. Sorry Daniel.

Obviously I only know this from IMDB. That's how I research most of these, but when you get an extra and/or bit-part actor, it really underlines it, I know. Anyway, it's still more satisfying than the Level 2 connection of Glenn Close appearing in Guardians Of The Galaxy alongside Peter 'voice-of-Maul' Serafinowicz. Level 1s are just better, trust me.





*¹ Or even just the times when British cinema thinks it's poking adoring-fun, but is actually just failing spectacularly on every level.

² And can I be among the first to say how nice it is to see that The Girl has ended her dangerous pursuits of Playing With Fire and Kicking Hornets Nests, and is now doing nothing more dangerous than coming home after a long afternoon's Christmas shopping…

…and while you may well groan and place bets on that joke being recycled from Twitter, it was nevertheless recycled from my own Twitter-feed, at least.
I thank you.

*³ SPOILERY questions for those of you who've seen the film (highlight-to-read):
1) While it's a ghoulish picture that Caldwell paints about the second-gen zombies 'eating their way out' of their mothers, how would foetuses be able to do that when babies don't start teething until about three months after they're born? Plus it'd take them ages to get out of there, how would they breathe once the host is dead and all circulation of blood and amniotic fluid has stopped? Hey, don't look at me, I'm not the one who decided to throw biology into the screenplay...
2)Not withstanding that the pack of feral children seem to have learned to feed, walk and generally support themselves with precisely no outside guidance (a newborn cub will die on its own, instincts or not), surely by the time they're herded together to start learning as the credits roll, all the behavioural bad-habits are burned-in? The kids in the research centre had been 'rescued' at a younger age and raised more like regular humans; this lot are rolling around the floor in their own shit…


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: Runner Runner

Runner Runner
Cert: 15 / 91 mins / Dir. Brad Furman



I wanted to like this. Really, I did. Timberlake and Arterton aren't going to change the world, but they're usually a good bet to turn up and read their lines, and I enjoy watching Affleck, even if I don't like some of the movies he's been in. But Runner Runner is like a celluloid anaesthetic, and they only make it worse, somehow. In different hands (and with a different cast), this could have bee a slick, tense thriller, yet Brad Furman's made a plodding, clockwork also-ran, filled with characters you don't care about, either way.

This was the main problem for me; I didn't hate Affleck's corrupt, double-crossing casino-lord, Ivan Block, and I didn't side with Timberlake's naive, greedy, smart-arsed maths genius, Richie Furst (and Arterton's one-note wonder, Rebecca, could have been played by anyone, she had so little to do). I didn't even form an opinion either way on Mackie's hard-nosed, rough-diamond, corner-cutting FBI agent, Shavers. I just spent an hour and a half not really giving a shit about them either way; I didn't have to as everything in the story is so linear that you don't need to wonder how it's going to end.

It never gets 'terrible', but Runner Runner is so dull it never even breaks into a jog. If you want to see a movie where a student gets into money problems with gambling to try and fund his tuition, 21 isn't too shabby (despite the RT score).

Not really; the trailer looks fairly interesting.



Not really.



Not really.



DVD, tops.



Not really.



Not really.



There isn't, no.






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: Hansel & Gretel - Witch Hunters (3D)

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (3D)
Cert: 15 / 88 mins / Dir. Tommy Wirkola



I'm not sure where this movie belongs, in the grand scheme of things. Considering its fairytale roots, it's ahead of Red Riding Hood and Snow White in terms of modern edginess, but there's still too much of the inherent tweeness preventing it from really re-inventing the genre the way the makers had obviously hoped.

Some nifty looking sets, costumes and props sit uncomfortably with a plot so linear and mechanical, you could set your watch by it. The small number of reveals that the screenplay holds are so clearly telegraphed that the real surprise, to me, was that they actually went ahead and had characters announcing them. I won't 'spoil' the movie here, but the first 15 minutes of the film will tell you everything that's going to happen. The actual script itself is largely workable, but the infrequent scattering of fuck-words sticks out like a studio hoping to earn a higher certificate and distance itself from the Twilight clones that are now haemorrhaging forth. There's not enough swearing for it to become a feature or feel like it's meant to be there*¹, and the two times where it really could have stood out and worked are muted by the others.

I get the feeling that Tommy Wirkola was aiming for a sort of Evil Dead vibe with the gore and humour, but has been hampered by having to stick to mainstream ideals. The fight-choreography is rather nice for a 'civilian' movie (when the editing allows you to see it properly), and there are some sweet looking effects, both practical and CGI… but apart from the odd decapitation, it all feels neutered, somehow. The potential is there for this to have been great at either end of the spectrum, but it's now too gory and sweary for young ones, and not enough for the grown-ups.

At a lean 88 minutes, you get the impression there's quite a lot of H&G:WH on the digital cutting-room floor. Although short, the running time is perfect for this story; it's just not so great for the supporting characters that feel like they've been forgotten about. The worst offender in this department is the amount of design and makeup time that obviously went into creating the cabal of witches at the climax of the film, only to have them all dispatched within a five minute slot*². The 3D is fairly well rendered for live-action (and is in frequent use), but it doesn't add anything to the film at all.

So, if you can leave aside the number of different accents that can accumulate within a five-square-mile patch of Scandinavian forest, and the technology on display in the weaponry department while everyone's using horses, carts and eating out of wooden bowls, then Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is quite good fun. But that's all. It's not as clever or knowing as it'd like to be, and it's played its best hand in this one film; any sequels would only be retreading the same already-muddy ground. As cinematic as it wants to be, it's more of a night in with friends and drinks kind of a thing.

Oh, and I can't believe they totally "homaged" the speeder-bike chase from Return of the Jedi, like that.

I was expecting a lot less from Hansel & Gretel, but I feel like it should have been so much more.

Pretty much, yeah.



Sometimes.



Probably not.



DVD.



No.



Probably.



No*³.





*¹ And I'm someone who likes a good fucking swear. There just isn't any heart in it, in this movie.
*² Come on, that's hardly a spoiler.
*³ I didn't hear one, and there were plenty of opportunities.

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.