And so, the second of Saturday's schoolings in cinematic prejudice arrived directly after the first, in the shape of writer/director Dan Cadan's Walk Like A Panther. The feelgood tale of a village in Yorkshire which is home to a troupe of retired show-wrestlers, who decide to regroup to raise funds to save their beloved pub from closure*1, it does exactly (exactly) what it says on the tin.
I won't lie, this was another schedule-booster. I wasn't looking forward to it. The trailer makes it look dreadful. But utilising an ensemble-cast of British character actors, Cadan manages to craft a tale which is as gleefully entertaining as it is reassuringly conventional. Walk Like A Panther may look like The Full Monty in leotards*2, but it's closer in spirit to The Last Of The Summer Wine if that was rebooted by Guy Ritchie.
The film requires the audience to be forgiving of its worst excesses before they even sit down, telegraphed not just through the trailer but also the first act itself. And with two music-set training montages and dramatic hurdles arriving like clockwork, if this was any more mechanical it would be a Pacific Rim cosplay party. But the characters develop on-cue and it's got genuine humour and undeniable heart, saved by a cast who go all-in.
Front and centre are Dave Johns and Stephen Graham as the father/son cornerstone of a story about changing times, nostalgia and legacy. Concentrating more on its character-turns than plot, the 'save the pub' structure almost takes a back seat at several points, but the lurking presence of Stephen Tomkinson's resident corporate-bogeyman pulls the story back on-track when it's needed. Tomkinson goes Full Panto™ and manages to chew his way through the scenery, the actor's thespic gnashers posing a bigger threat to the sets than the third-act bulldozers. It's also maybe worth noting that Johns has his apparently usual struggle of maintaining his own Geordie accent in the unnamed Yorkshire village in which the action takes place, although I love that there's not a mention of how his screen-son Graham's accent is his own ingrained Scouse twang.
But for a film I had huge reservations about watching, I'm pleased to say I found it inordinately entertaining. Bear in mind that even though I lived through its 1970s televisual heydey, I care as much about wrestling as I do about football. After months of cold gloom and trudging to the cinema through snow at the beginning of March, Walk Like A Panther could well be the spring breeze which melted my winter coat of cynicism*3. Considering its conception and execution, this movie is far better than it has any plausible right to be*4.
Sometimes as the credits roll, a film leaves you with nothing but the memory of having broadly smiled for two hours. But sometimes, that's more than enough...
The Full Monty, Brassed Off, Up 'n' Under.
Yes, those ones from two decades ago.
*3 I mean we'll see, obviously. At the time of writing I've still got Tomb Raider, A Wrinkle In Time and Ready Player One to go, yet... [ BACK ]
*4 Although one patron in their late-40s /early-50s walked out after 25 minutes. That's basically the target audience. [ 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.
The A-word.
It's the bane of cinephiles, everywhere.
That book you love; the comic you remember; the show you used to watch; the game you lost an entire summer playing? Oh, someone's adapted it and it's getting made into a movie! Whether a cause for pre-emptive celebration or foreboding caution, it leads to only one thing: expectation. And expectation is the death of the 'clean' movie-viewing experience; no matter how closely the film sticks to its source material, or how much it tries to distance itself, it will be faced with the hurdle of comparison.
And while the movie industry loves the pre-built marketing buzz of 'now a major motion picture!', they loathe the comparative references which will be made from the first review onwards. Because many punters will expect to get exactly the same reaction from a completely different medium, to a story they already know. And therein lies the problem.
In this monthly series, we'll look back at some of the most respected and best-loved properties which have made the perilous journey to the big screen; often with some controversy, and almost always with far too much hype. This isn't so much a review of the films themselves, more an appraisal of their suitability as an adaptation.
The final comic-adaptation of this run makes makes an interesting counterpart to the last two works of Moore's I've read. Whereas Watchmen took place in an alternate-present USA and V for Vendetta showed an alternate-future England, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen inhabits an alternate past.
Just before the dawn of the twentieth century on Blighty's shores, the literary heroes (and villains) of the era share a borderline steampunk world. Campion Bond, a government agent supervised by the mysterious M, draws together a strike-team to defend the interests of the British Empire, knowing a fantastic threat calls for an extraordinary solution. Calling upon Wilhelmina Murray, Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Henry Jeckyll/Edward Hyde and one Hawley Griffin, the table is set for a rollocking adventure. A Victorian Avengers, if you will.
On the surface at least, League is an interesting combination of those previous works I've covered, in that it's a tale of bickering costumed adventurers pulled together to face a greater foe in the name of national security (Watchmen), and has a borderline fixation with an unattainable (or certainly unsustainable) Glorious Britannia™ which only existed in the minds of those who were benefitting from its excesses (Vendetta). But whereas Moore's earlier pieces had heavyweight social themes running through meticulous plotting, this story is more of a rip-roaring homage to Boys' Own adventure journals (although it is not a child-friendly tome), tongue-in-cheek and aimed at an audience for whom mockery is one of the sincerest forms of flattery. While the coarser humour never reaches levels of outright discomfort, Moore's comedic digs at colonialist attitudes of the past are, at times, barely distinguishable from the real thing. But he's always had a dark-streak when it comes to laughs.
The first book is steadily paced but it struggles to fit the main story-thread alongside all the character introduction (comprising six collected issues of the comic-run), although there's also a wealth of background in-universe material presented as an appendix. The second volume feels more problematic, beginning on Mars and working in characters from John Carter*1 and War of the Worlds. It's a strong start, but again the six-issue structure hampers the amount of storytelling which can reasonably occur with the now considerable cast. In the middle of the run you can feel Moore's attention wandering away, and the focus of the writing dips markedly, as a lengthy detour works Dr. Moreau and his menagerie of visual gags into the proceedings and any previous character-building is pretty much thrown in the bin.
The actual conclusion to the main narrative of Vol.II takes place over six panels, two pages from the end, and pretty unconvincingly to boot. It's as if Moore and O'Neill had suddenly realised that this was the arse-end of the last issue. This could, to be fair, have been a nod to my existing bugbear with some of the inspirational source-material, but it feels like a tacked-on ending to a gradually unravelling story.
Also, it would have been nice to see Mina actually using her 'super-power'. One proper female character in the whole thing and she gets pretty much nothing to do. I imagine that could be addressed in Volume III, but Vol.II's shenanigans*2 have put that well on the back burner to be honest…
Not as culturally insightful or impactful as the author's earlier works, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is nonetheless to be commended for its its scope, methodology and (for the most part) its execution. It's not that the books have nothing to say, just that they have enough trouble telling their own central story without throwing subtext into the mix.
But can I see why it'd be optioned for a film-release? Absolutely…
Wow, this film's taken some flak over the years. Some of it well-deserved admittedly, but in terms of an ensemble-cast Victorian superhero movie, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen delivers just fine. And it's not like the source-material is quite as iconic as others on the same shelf...
Landing in the same year as X-Men 2 and from the same studio, the film's very much of a similar style and tone, but that was largely 20th Century Fox's modus operandi circa 2003. Pretty much all of Alan Moore's arch humour has been replaced with an altogether more pedestrian action-movie-slapstick. Some of the visuals haven't aged particularly well in the intervening years, but it more or less holds up for a fourteen-year old movie crowbarred into the marketplace by a studio not content with having All The Mutants. And when you look at what Universal were putting out the year before with The Scorpion King, it ain't so bad.
Updates for the screen-version include the addition of Special Agent Tom Sawyer, the near-invincible Dorian Gray and the book's original villain (half) appearing under the pseudonym of The Fantom (spelling deliberate).
As screen-time gives more leeway than comic-pages, the actual character interaction is far better in the film (and many of the less savoury aspects of the book have been eliminated altogether), although the dialogue itself is perfunctory to the point of patronising. Sean Connery's Quatermain isn't just there for random bouts of exposition, he basically just describes things as they happen, like an in-universe Audio Description channel.
Is it a faithful adaptation of the book? Not particularly. Would it have been afforded the same cast, budget and distribution if it were? Absolutely not. But the book was an uneven pastiche mash-up at best, frequently getting sidetracked by its own gimmicks. The film may be imperfect, but it's consistently that way. It's not that the original work is 'unfilmable', just that Fox don't make movies like that (although we'll see what they do with the rumoured reboot, now that Deadpool and Logan have widened the scope a little).
Okay, it's not the best film of its genre (it's not even the best film of 2003), but LXG is a perfectly acceptable, if disposable, action/adventure movie.
...It starts better than it ends.
I'd read the graphic novel back in around 2004 and didn't really 'get' it, as I'd seen the film first (indeed that's why I bought it). Having revisited it and its companion volume in relative 'isolation', I get it more now but think I somehow like it less.
If you're intrigued by the idea and its possibilities, both.
I didn't hear one.
Level 2: That Sean Connery's in this (he's in next month's Adaptation, too), and he was in that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade alongside Harrison 'Solo' Ford, Julian 'Veers' Glover, Michael 'Ozzel' Sheard, Nick 'Drallig' Gillard and Derek 'Yavin IV Guard' Lyons.
*1 At the risk of getting ahead of myself, I think we're all aware that the movie-version of League currently enjoys a less-than stellar reputation, with a critic-score of 17% on Rotten Tomatoes, whilst 2012's John Carter adaptation languishes at 51% (even though it's near-universally derided) and 2009's Dorian Gray sits at 43%. What is it about Victorian sci-fi that doesn't translate to the modern screen for audiences and critics? For the record and in the interests of full-disclosure, I'm one of about twelve people on Earth who enjoyed John Carter. I think the other eleven work at Disney, and even one of those sat in a Monday meeting after release and asked "…why can't we just buy Star Wars, though?". [ BACK ]
*2 And not to put-off anyone who hasn't read the books, but while Moore's fascination with erotica is well documented, League is a bit 'rapey' in more than one sequence. By which I mean four. It's not a defining trait of the book, but it doesn't have to be to leave a bad taste. [ 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.
And so on a mild Saturday evening in the heart of London's glittering West End, high on the adrenaline of three back-to-back movies and executing what I can only describe as An Uncharacteristically High Level Of Consumer Persistence, your humble correspondent managed to snag a last minute seat in the sold-out screening of the final film in the British Independent Film Festival programme. The feature was Eat Local, written by Danny King and directed by Tom from off of Lock, Stock.
In a remote farmhouse in one of England's southern counties, eight ancient vampire lords meet to discuss the borders between their territories and ensure their general survival. But all is not well inside the house, as the powerful traditionally do not like to share power. And all is worse outside the house as a military strike-team assembles with a view to bagging some prey of their own…
Now my initial thought, before the lights were properly dimmed, was 'aren't festival audiences badly behaved?'. Phones out, shouting across the room, laughing, and one particular patron located a couple of rows behind me who, through the combination of body odour and a more herbal essence, smelled like he'd been smoking weed whilst zorbing for ten hours straight. After a brief introductory speech, the film began and pretty much every name appearing on-screen through the titles elicited a whoop, holler or cheer. It was at that point of course that I realised - festival or otherwise - I was effectively watching the film with the cast and crew*1. Whether this communally heightened sense of engagement let to me enjoying Eat Local more than I would have under civilian conditions, is hard to say. But I enjoyed it, nonetheless.
As a seasoned actor with a solid reputation and wide professional circle, Jason Flemyng has assembled an impressive array of performers*2 to appear in his directorial debut. Eve Myles, Annette Crosbie, Freema Agyeman, Charlie Cox, Vincent Regan, Tony Curran, Jordan Long and relative newcomer Billy Cook lead the charge, with Ruth Jones, Dexter Fletcher*3, McKenzie Crook and Robert Portal (among many others) supporting in smaller roles. For a film which takes place almost entirely at night and in basically two locations, it's heavily populated, but the script is light enough to keep things moving briskly.
So as you might expect, there's an above-average amount of humour in the film, with deadpan, sarcasm and blood-dripping farce all intertwining throughout. And while things stay 'playful' without straying into silly territory, it maybe feels a little too arch for its own good. We never delve too deeply into the particular vampire-mechanics of this outing, although there's enough backstory provided to bring the audience up to speed with the weapons which can and can't be used against them. Because the weapons are the other focus here, when the characters aren't bickering with each other. I mentioned Lock, Stock at the beginning because there's a clear tonal homage here to Guy Richie's classic (and a visual one in the scene where Annette Crosbie lets loose with some heavy weaponry - obviously a comic moment, but nowhere near as overplayed as it would be in many another film). And it works well, but the whole film has that overtly Indie™ quality which might cause it to age poorly. Time will tell.
The best line comes courtesy of Tony Curran's Caledonian vampire, Peter:
"Ah'm no a racist. I'll kill anybody, no matter where they're from. Doesnae bother me…"
Not necessarily a smart film but well-constructed and consistently funny and engaging, my only real issue with Eat Local is that if features Freema Agyeman with fangs, a plaid shirt and an assault rifle: and no-one thought to tell me about this sooner…
Dog Soldiers.
And I must confess that I say that as someone who watched Dog Soldiers at the cinema and loved it and bought it on DVD the day it came out then didn't watch it for a long time then revisited the film a couple of years ago and was horrified with how clunky and amateurish the whole thing is despite being a solid concept at its core and still containing many things I love. I'm not saying Eat Local will be awful in ten years' time. Although by then I can't imagine many people will care. This is rather good, and I think conceptually it's on the same page as Dog Soldiers.
As much as I enjoyed it in the cinema, the natural home for Eat Local is on DVD at around midnight with friends and booze.
With relatively low aims other than being a coherent and fun vampire caper, yes.
Not particularly, then again it's not really meant to change the world. This is Jason Flemyng trying his hand at directing a genre piece and largely succeeding. I look forward to his next project very much.
Nope.
Oh, yes.
Sticks out like a sore thumb, but it's proudly in there so I approve.
Level 2: So many to choose from here, but let's go with this film starring Annette Crosbie, who appeared in 1968's Mrs Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter as did Drewe 'Red Leader From The Battle Of Yavin' Henley.
*1 This was confirmed during the after-film speech by the director himself, in which he asked any audience members with no connection to the film to raise their hands, and me and about nine other people in the sold-out auditorium duly identified ourselves. I hasten to add that I never felt unwelcome or like an imposter in the room, but there was the definite air of arriving late to a party and being three drinks behind everyone else. [ BACK ]
*2 More accurately of course, casting director Lucinda Syson has assembled the performers. Although given how many of Flemyng's former co-stars from across the years appear, I'm fairly certain that he was instrumental to some extent ;)[ BACK ]
*3 That's right, Spike From Off Of Press Gang. I met him on Saturday as well. Not even at this screening, I'd just harassed him earlier in Fopp Records, off Cambridge Circus. He was doing that thing of wearing earphones despite not listening to anything in a bid to stop people talking to you. Even though that clearly didn't work in my case. He's lovely. [ 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.
Tuesday night, is not cinema night, apparently. It looks like the movie-marathon/midnight-showing fad is dying off (at least temporarily) here in the urbanised Cotswolds, as the much-awaited and arse-numbing*1X-Men event had a somewhat less-than-stellar turnout. I won't embarrass my favourite cinema by specifying numbers, suffice to say that it was a talking point between movies. With me and the staff themselves, I mean. And the manager, who was also there, amused and despondent in equal measure. That said, this is the fourth comic-book flick in as many months, the third midnight-screening in as many months, and the secondthree-movie marathon. While I don't personally believe that superhero-fatigue is taking hold just yet, it certainly appeared that your average punter had decided to catch up with the first two 'new' X-Men movies at home and see Apocalypse in a more sensible timeslot.
So anyway, First Class, the first of what is widely regarded as the 'new' X-Men which, for all of its fresh-start ethos, isn't afraid to acknowledge the massive supporting legacy behind it (and that's only in cinematic terms). For some reason, I always forget that Oxford features in this film (y'know, since I live in Oxford), and that Charles Xavier was basically Austin Powers when he was at uni there. And I only mention that because it's a first-act nod towards having some fun with the X-verse; a facet which visibly fades as we progress through the McAvoy/Fassbender movies. The 1962 setting of the main story almost brings a sort of levity to proceedings, with the honourable exception of the Holocaust-survivor seeking revenge on his former captors. This, incidentally, is one of the strongest points in the film's favour, with Fassbender's proto-Magneto demonstrating that it really is what's on the inside that counts, but that also feels like it should be a standalone film in its own right.
Oh yeah, Fassbender. I know this has become something of a running joke at Blackout Towers, but what in the hell's going on with that man's accent in First Class? Matthew Vaughn may be a competent storyteller, but letting your Polish/Jewish character deliver his beach-soliloquy in an Irish brogue is atrocious direction, no matter how well-travelled he's become by that point. And not least because he can do a British™ accent when he damned well tries. The foremost issue here is that as much as I enjoy his performance itself, I never buy this as being a younger version of the Ian McKellen character, and even with the timeline-bending that's to come, this is meant to be a constant.
On a far less annoying but equally disconcerting note, this movie is only five years old and it's beginning to date already. While it was (and still is) stylistically poles apart from 2000's X-Men, there's still a certain naivety about the film which means its been overtaken in recent years by its genre-mates. Of course in 2014, The Winter Soldier upped the ante for superhero/political crossover flicks, and anything presented by First Class seems quite quaint in comparison, even accounting for the 1960s setting (although co-incidentally, this movie shares with Winter Soldier, the composer Henry Jackman and was also first to do the 'sprinting a lap really quickly whilst wearing grey sweats' joke).
And besides, the timeline-reboot in the next movie doesn't change the fact that Xavier uses Cerebro for the first time in 1962 to help locate all the mutants currently around the world. Doing this he sees a young Cyclops and Storm (one of the movies more prominent easter-eggs), even though they're due to be teenagers twenty years later in Apocalypse. While we didn't know what Days of Future Past would bring when First Class was released, the continuity here is 'fluid' at best. Although the cinematic X-verse has never had continuity as one of its super-powers…
There was a time (ie 2011) when the X-verse was suddenly regaining its confidence and was on equal footing with the MCU. But this movie hasn't aged as well as The First Avenger. Then again, after 70 years on ice, it's evident that no-one ages as well as the first Avenger.
And y'know, First Classis still awesome...
The previous X-Men movies, to be fair…
If you get the chance, yes.
It does.
No, but that's not a strike against the film (more that the cast and director have been more fantastic elsewhere).
Nope.
Didn't hear one.
Level 1: Dormé's in this.
*1 I went into the cinema at 6:30pm, I left at just after 2:30am. This is not something that normal people do, then again a) it pales to insignificance against my 12-hour, 5-movie marathon only days earlier in Wandsworth, and b) I'm not normal.
*2 And while DoFP effectively removes Origins: Wolverine from the canon, this movie still doesn't explain how Emma Frost was - to all intents and purposes - a completely different character in 1962 from her 1979 appearance. No you're right, I'm never going to let go of that 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.
Hey, I enjoy a musical from time to time. I can't claim I like all musicals, in much the same way as I can't claim to like all sci-fi or all horror. And that, my friends, is the crux of my problem with Sunshine on Leith. I just don't think it's that good at what it's doing.
To be fair, I only had two real gripes with the film, but as those were a) the story and b) the music, that was enough to de-rail the entire thing for me. I don't think the plot itself is stong enough to warrant building an entire 100 minutes around, or that it's particularly well told for what it is. When we're introduced to Ally and Davy at the start, it's in that way which suggests we'll be spending the entire film with these characters, not that one of them (the one who's slightly more interesting) will be essentially written off before the third act. Not killed off; nothing that interesting, he just says in one scene that he's going to re-join the army, and then he does. No inner turmoil, no insight; just a scared young man with PTSD deciding to go back to a life-threatening situation, mistaking familiarity for safety. But let's not spend time exploring that, there's A Scottish Man here who's been told he might have to go into England one day, and
now he's throwing his toys out of the pram over it (and it is a shame, because there's a great chemistry between George MacKay and Antonia Thomas, and between George and Kevin Guthrie, which is wasted in this).
A similar situation exists with Freya Mavor's character Liz, whose ultimate purpose in the script seems to be moving to America, facilitating the sending of letters, and a song based solely around that act. There's no tearful airport scene, by the way. One moment she's humming and haahing about emigrating to Florida, and 15 minutes later she's there (albeit for one solitary shot). We know she's in America because it's sunny and there are fat people in the background. I love visual storytelling, me.
By the time you've tacked on Jean (Jane Horrocks) and Rab (Peter Mullan) having an extended domestic over what is suggested for the first half of the film to be Mullan's previous relationship, and in the second half as a one-night-stand (and the addition of Jason Flemyng's half-written character apparently stepping in from some other musical entirely), the whole thing's a bit of a mess, frankly. There's a faint whiff of the anti-English rhetoric which seems to have found its way in by default rather than design; but as the resolution of the plotlines between Davy/Yvonne and Rab/Jean is essentially a patronising 'I'm glad you've come round to seeing things my way, woman', I think the film has larger issues than defiant Saltire-waving.
But hey, Sunshine On Leith is a musical, and it'd be remiss of me to treat it like the socially conscious drama it isn't. I like The Proclaimers. I can't go so far as calling myself 'a fan', but I do enjoy them on an unironic level. Great song structure, great harmonies, what's not to love? Well, the problem is that a large number of their songs only work when they're performed by The Proclaimers, which they're not in this. Some of the arrangements work well (despite the clunkiness of its presence, Letter From America sounds great), but for the most part it feels like karaoke. It's also worth pointing out that while getting English actors to speak in a consistently convincing Scottish accent is no doubt a challenge, getting them to sing in one seems almost impossible. That said, Peter Mullan's droning singing manages to distract from the worst offenders, here.
So obviously there are The Hits in here, as well as songs which the average punter will be less familiar, which is all fair enough. But in addition to the patchy arrangements, the songs don't tell the story as such, they only seem to be there because the script has cued them up ('Hey, The Proclaimers have a song called 'Oh Jean'. If we call one of our characters Jean we can put that in there and it'll be seamless, I tell you. Seamless.'). I'm aware that this is generally how jukebox-musicals work, but in all honesty Mamma Mia! has a more effective song/story symbiosis than Sunshine on Leith. Yeah, I went there.
You sort of get the feeling that this was either a cheap cash-in, or the outcome of a bet that Stephen Greenhorn couldn't write a musical around The Proclaimers' songs. Either way, the end result seems to have been more important than the craft. I didn't expect to like Sunshine on Leith, but I was hoping I'd at least be able to respect it more.
It kind of is.
Rarely.
I genuinely have no idea.
Give it a year and it'll be on rotation on ITV2.
Erm, yeah.
Not likely.
There is not.
When Craig Proclaimer and Charlie Proclaimer did their walk-on cameo three minutes into the film, did anyone else's toes curl so hard that they tore their shoes? That shit would make Stan Lee blush...
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.
