Review: No Hard Feelings

No Hard Feelings
Cert: 15 / 103 mins / Dir. Gene Stupnitsky / Trailer

Gene Stupnitsky directs and co-writes this bawdy tale of Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence), a single woman in her early thirties living in Long Island NY, massively in debt because of rising property taxes due to tourist-gentrification. When she answers a classified advert from shipped-in helicopter parents Laird (Matthew Broderick) and Allison (Laura Benanti) wanting to hire someone to 'date' their timid son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) over the summer before he goes to Princeton University, she jumps at the chance. But it turns out, they might both just learn a little more about themselves as etc etc finish setup paragraph here.

Playing out like a substandard mashup of the worst American Pie instalments and the lamentable Bad Teacher, this sort of film certainly has its cinematic place. That place is twenty years ago. It's aware of this displacement. Stupnitsky takes random potshots at the apparent over-protectiveness of parents in 2023, and at the changing attitudes of youth as a whole. But he does this in a glibly observational way, without understanding how that's happened and what these changes have been a reaction to.

As predictable in its mawkish moments as its Outrageous™ ones, No Hard Feelings is sketchily written, timidly directed and performed like a dress rehearsal. The piano rendition of Maneater in the restaurant scene is the only good thing the film has to offer, and even that occurs too early in the script to fulfil its emotional potential. Give it a few weeks, look that up on YouTube.

Managing to feel at least half an hour longer than it is, No Hard Feelings is a straight-to-Netflix anachronism that's somehow landed a coveted theatrical window between superhero movies. And short of crippling mortgage repayments or former colleagues desperately calling in a favour, the acclaimed and provably capable Jennifer Lawrence certainly doesn't need to tarnish her own CV with this. But it's done now, so well done everybody.

And yeah, I'm taking a point off for that gratuitously cack-handed Ferris Bueller reference.

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: X-Men - Dark Phoenix

X-Men Dark Phoenix (3D)
Cert: 12A / 114 mins / Dir. Simon Kinberg / Trailer



Well, you have to admire Simon Kinberg's optimism, if you can tear yourself away from pitying him for it. With the Disney / 20th Century Fox takeover-deal now a paperwork exercise and its far-reaching effect on superhero franchises a headache in the making, the twelfth film in Fox's X-Men roster closes with a crane-shot of the School For Gifted Youngsters, accompanied by a stirring narration, boldly leaving an 'open road' approach for future stories to be told.

That this arrives after two of the absolute dullest hours audiences will see this year is glossed over with equal wistfulness.

PHOENIX

Let us not chase this one around the houses for too long, X-Men: Dark Phoenix is not good. It's not awful, but that's only because the movie's not interesting enough to be awful. The cinematic equivalent of a contractual obligation album, it's two hours of watching people you know can do better*¹ making it resolutely clear that they have no intention of doing so. What's the point? They're staring into the DVD bargain bin on a hiding to nothing. When Marvel Studios finally get round to bringing mutants into the MCU, they'll be rebooted and recast at absolute best. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After a 1975 flashback to Jean Grey's traumatic childhood, we open properly in 1992 with Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) dispatching his best and brightest into the Earth's orbit to assist stricken United States space shuttle. What appears to be a solar storm is in fact something more malign, and in the kerfuffle Grey (Sophie Turner) absorbs a hitherto unimaginable amount of raw power, almost dying as a result.

Back on terra firma, Jean struggles to come to terms with her experience and terrifying new strengths, while a task force of shape-shifting aliens led by Jessica Chastain in an atrocious wig arrives to claim what they were after in space, the gift that Jean Grey - the dark phoenix - unsteadily holds…

ROACH

Now that we're past the watershed of Future Past, the series*² has been using its clout to re-craft the origins and fates of characters we've known for almost two decades. But Fox's longstanding cavalier approach to continuity means that this just comes over as 'yeah, thanks for the time and money you spent taking in those earlier flicks; they don't matter now by the way'. And this more than takes the edge off the new stories, too. The problem is that there's no jeopardy when the audience sees narrative consequence as a moot point, and even less when the cast are acting like that too.

Jean's struggle with newly heightened powers, repressed (and/or censored) memories of her past and fear for the future is nowhere near as emotionally complex as it should be (and Turner does not play this role well). Almost a side character in her own movie, cinematographer Mauro Fiore seems more interested in Jean's cleavage than her character. No, really.

In its quieter scenes, Dark Phoenix isn't particularly interesting, but when the action really ramps up it's positively boring. The bigger and louder the CGI mayhem becomes, the less it all means. That's a hurdle of which many modern movies fall afoul, granted, but with little actual story to act as a foundation in the first place, there's nothing for these sequences to even distract from. The driving force of the alien antagonists trying to steal back Jean's power is treated like a subplot, left over from an earlier draft of the screenplay and which can't be dropped completely because of a clause Chastain's contract. And It may seem a little late in the game for Fox to be introducing new, specially written characters, but lo and behold the debut of Captain Exposition™, a shapeshifter who mimics the appearance of central characters to read out a CliffsNotes summary of key scenes in the movie.

JOHNS

But it's not just big, tonal, structural problems. On an entirely civilian nitpicking level - how come the team are teleporting from the X-Jet into a space shuttle which has a massively ruptured hull, yet they don't need to wear space suits? Nightcrawler pops one on towards the end of the mission, seemingly for no reason since he's been in and out of open space three times by then, as have Jean and Quicksilver. And speaking of such matters, how come the X-gang spend so much time fighting the alien enemies during the final train-heist battle, when Nightcrawler could just bamf each one away from the train and then return for the next, like Azazel in First Class? And speaking of those such matters, wasn't the heavy, heavy implication at the end of First Class that Azazel and Mystique were Nightcrawler's parents? Because the latter two are on missions together here and there's not so much as a sniff of that idea.

And it's amazing that a movie which is so visually meticulous in its effects can be so slapdash when it comes to the basics of serial storytelling. From First Class's 1962 onward, we've leapfrogged around ten years in each installment. So here we are thirty years later and the central characters seem to have only aged around a decade (in line with the real-world production schedules, of course). This can easily be explained for Jennifer Lawrence's chameleon Raven/Mystique, but just shaving James McAvoy's head as Xavier isn't going to cut it, lads (Michael Fassbender and Nicholas Hoult aren't even awarded that concession - and let's leave aside that they're theoretically only a few years away from looking like Ian McKellen and Kelsey Grammer by this point).

Speaking of Mystique, how come she changes into her 'human' form here while knocking around in the mansion and there's no need for that subterfuge? We know Charles disapproves of this form as 'hiding her true self', yet in Dark Phoenix he doesn't bat an eyelid. Are we in a strand of continuity where they didn't have that previous conversation? On a similar note, we see Hank 'Beast' McCoy in his human-guise while in the depths of despair and grief, also within the walls of the school. Wouldn't this be a time when Hank would drop that pretence? He then turns 'human' when he's stunned by attackers in a later scene. But isn't the blue beast his natural resting form now? Isn't that his true self? Isn't the facade of duality the whole point of the X-Men movies?

AVON

But in all honesty I probably can't score this one too lowly, if only because I went easy on Aquaman and this movie has nowhere near as many problems as DC's last offering. At least that was knowingly silly. But given the absolute heights of what the X-Men movies are capable of, Dark Phoenix is unforgivably weak.

I'm not even saddened to say that I look forward to no more of these films being made. 20th Century Fox have, over the years, told stories where outsiders band together to fight oppression and prejudice, where they learn the value of working as a team without losing sight of the individual, where they rise above those who hate and fear them to save everyone, including their persecutors. 20th century Fox have taken the quintessential essence of what superhero stories are supposed to be about, and watered it down to the point where I - a fan of superheroes - no longer care what happens to the X-Men. Well done guys, now give it back to Marvel.

The business-end:

• Is there a Wilhelm Scream? There is.
• Is there a Stan Lee cameo? There isn't.
• Is there a mid-credits scene? There isn't.
• Is there a post-credits scene? There isn't.

X-Men: Apocalypse. Make of that what you will.



If you're going to watch it at all, you may as well. This will be dire when witnessed through your TV, no matter how big that is. I saw Dark Phoenix in 3D, which was basically fine considering live-action rarely translates well into stereoscopy.

It's perhaps also worth noting that I saw it on opening day and in 'the big screen' with only ten other people, but that perhaps says more about the popularity of 3D than of the franchise itself (this was the only 3D screening of the day, the format really is on its absolute arse unless you're going for IMAX).



Completists may want to wait until the Blu-ray price drops significantly before adding it to their collection. Personally I'm not sure if I'll even bother doing that, and I say this as someone who eventually bought Apocalypse as a shelf-warmer.



Hahahahahahaha
James McAvoy's good, but he's been this good and better elsewhere.



Y'know what, that's entirely possible.



Yes. There's a low-level Wilhelm scream during the train brawl. Fucking FINALLY. I've watched 59 movies at the cinema in 2019 so far, and Dark Phoenix has been the first one with a clear, unambiguous (albeit quiet) Wilhelm. I'm thankful for that, if nothing else.



Level 1: This movie is written and directed by Rogue One and Rebels producer, Simon Kinberg.





*¹ With the honourable exception of Tye Sheridan of course, who is just Dreadful As Usual. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Although I really shouldn't use that word. As a wise person recently noted, "There is no X-Men movie series. There are X-Men movies." ^{[ 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: Red Sparrow

Red Sparrow
Cert: 15 / 140 mins / Dir. Francis Lawrence / Trailer



And like that March is upon us, which can mean only one thing: The year's first Graveyard Slot™. The home of all the movies which aren't worthy enough to go up against the Awards-nudgers of Jan/Feb, and not loud or jazzy enough to be scheduled alongside the superhero flicks that populate the rest of the year. It's a sad state of affairs, but there we are. The release-window yields some fascinating oddities, of course, as distributors take a gamble on their less-categorisable fare and some unexpected gems come our way.

This isn't one of them, though.

Modern-day Russia*¹. When promising Bolshoi ballerina Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is badly injured during a performance*², the loss of her dancing career threatens to tear her fragile family apart. But Dominika's uncle Dimitrevich in the Russian government (Matthias Schoenaerts) offers an alternative way to make use of her talents, by becoming a ruthless spy and extracting information from American agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton). Obviously in this game, truth is a commodity as flexible as currency, and trust is even harder to come by…

While it's certainly a solid enough premise for a story, Red Sparrow is best at being a very ordinary, throwback thriller, boasting a strong primary cast and an impressive supporting-array of British acting talent (Charlotte Rampling, Joely Richardson, Jeremy Irons, Ciarán Hinds), none of whom can carry their intended accents from scene to scene. And while she's basically fine in the central role, you never forget you're watching 'Jennifer Lawrence In A Film'. For a secret agent, she sure stands out. The screenplay delights in being grotesquely provocative, albeit a way as thoroughly hackneyed as the steamy thrillers it thinks it's better than.

More quiet brooding than calculating action, this isn't as tense or dynamic as its trailer might suggest, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, there just isn't enough intrigue to fill the vacuum which is left behind. Unfortunately, Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton receive neither the plot nor direction to be able to lose themselves convincingly in their performances. While I'm all for complex characters, the script has our main players be so wilfully convoluted that their actual motivations cease to matter after around 90 minutes. After that I just waiting for it to either kick off, or end.

It occasionally kicks off, and it takes its sweet time to end. While the film certainly has its moments, there's just too much padding between them to make a satisfying movie. At least Charlize Theron didn't need a sit down and a little cry every time she had to get her hands dirty.

A calculating cultural juxtaposition, Jason Matthews' 2013 source-novel has been heralded by those in the know for its detail and authenticity. If Francis Lawrence's film follows suit and realism is this disbelievable, then maybe in the 21st century war of misinformation, the Kremlin has already won…

Think of the plot-layering and overall lack of emotional resonance in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, mixed with the self-satisfaction of Bridge of Spies.



If it's raining and you've got two and a half hours to kill.



Stream it.



It isn't.



Not for long, the film isn't worth arguing over.



There isn't.



Level 1: Uncle Owen and Captain Panaka are in this.





*¹ There's a line dropped into the script early on referencing social media, a nod to the audience to let them know that the film is either set 'now' or in the very recent past. So imagine my subsequent amusement when some International Secrets™ are sold, bought and delivered on five 3.5" floppy disks, the slow, bulky and pitifully small data-storage format that the '90s couldn't get rid of quickly enough. I suppose this is fantastic security for each agency as nobody else would be able to conveniently read what's on them. "I just have to verify the data" says Comrade J-Law, firing up a conspicuously modern laptop which presumably has a USB floppy drive attached that the cinematographer goes out of their way not to show us. Then again, Joel Edgerton is still using a pen-and-paper encryption method here. I expect the eventual arrival of a fax machine is going to blow his mind… ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Her leg snaps. Across the shin. Just like that. I think the skinny male-dancer she's prancing around with accidentally somehow puts five times his own body-weight on it or something. It looks painful enough and then you think - wait, what? Dancer, trained, athletic. Leg, snapped. "Sorry, I can't come into work today Terry, my leg's snapped". Not to get too spoilerific, but she's interrogated at one point later by a bloke hitting her with a cosh and nothing snaps then. I'm definitely banking 'snapped leg' for the next time I want to sneak in a mid-week #FilmDay… ^{[ 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: mother!

mother!
Cert: 18 / 121 mins / Dir. Darren Aronofsky / Trailer



Before what could be politely described as 'a challenging piece of work', and after the usual run of ads for products that no-one is actively bothered about, sat a selection trailers. This was the distributor's demographically-charged opportunity to showcase upcoming content to an audience already somewhat on-side, by means of them being perched in front of a tonally-related film. And so, on Friday afternoon, we had the promo reels for The Ritual, Jigsaw, Flatliners and… A Bad Moms Christmas. It appears that Paramount aren't entirely sure who Darren Aronofsky's mother! is for. And having since watched it through, I know the feeling…

We centre around a couple played by Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem, building an idyllic life for themselves in a recently restored house in the countryside. But when a stranger arrives unexpectedly and is offered hospitality, it begins an irreversible chain of events that will change their lives forever. It's nowhere near as linear or formulaic as that setup makes it sound, I assure you.

Notwithstanding my snarkiness at the choice of pre-film trailers above, the other thing which caught my attention was the BBC-card's brief cautionary summary: "Strong violence", it said*¹. Just that. Strong violence. Which, with a work like this, translates roughly as "The two lines afforded to a description on this screen are nowhere near enough to even begin listing all the things which an audience could find problematic. Seriously, mate. I mean, you've seen the trailer, right? However, there are moments of violence in there which, while they aren't intended for shock-value alone, are nonetheless over-and-above what we could normally squeeze into the 15 bracket. So let's just say 'strong violence' and leave it at that. In all honesty, the violence depicted will be the least of your worries if you start actually thinking about what you've sat through, but hey. Strong violence."

Right, four paragraphs in. Better start critiquing the film, really. And that's very much the thing; the more you think about this, the more you'll back away from examining too closely. mother! is frankly insane*³, albeit in a marvellous way; a two-hour fever dream, grinding together domestic farce and escalating psychological horror, like Terry and June on an absinthe and mescaline-fuelled bender. Aronofsky's screenplay is an allegorical symphony of religious*⁴, social and ecological notes, where not a single frame, line of dialogue nor pause between them is wasted. Less of an enigmatic scalpel, more an intricate sledgehammer.

Lawrence and Bardem are on excellent form, absorbed completely into their characters. Ed Harris with Brian and Domhnall Gleeson are strong (if fleeting) support, and Michelle Pfeiffer is utterly terrifying. As the story unfolds and the cast grows larger, Aronofsky never loses the focus on his leading pair. All in all, this is great direction of a great cast.

And how it makes the audience work, like only art can, and is all the better because it's not trying to appeal to the widest possible audience. None of the characters are specifically named, so the spoken references to him, her, he, she, they and you gets irritating around ten minutes after the house-guests arrive. The hand-held camerawork spends a fair chunk of time in close-up / extreme close-up position and is constantly moving, lending the atmostphere an air of genuine claustrophobia unlike anything else I've seen this year. This is a horror movie in the truest sense, showing what can me achieved when a writer/director has the courage to let madness expand organically.

The only real issue I have with mother! is that I'm not sure if I want to see it again (just yet, at least), in case I find it less enjoyable the second time round. Ironically, watching with the knowledge of what's to come feels like it will rob the screenplay of its power, despite bringing the opportunity to pore over its foreshadowing in greater detail.

It's rare that films come so close to being classified as an art installation, and rarer still that the multiplexes screen them, but Aronofsky's work really is the jewel in the ashes.

Go and watch mother!

Requiem For A Dream, A Ghost Story.



The close-quarters shaky cam is arguably better suited to a small screen. This film looks gorgeous but I wouldn't be surprised if it gives some viewers headaches/nausea.



I think so?



It could well be.



Absolutely not.
There is a fair chance you'll despise this, and I delight in you telling me why…



Not that I heard, although there's a lot of hullabaloo in the third act and it would be easy to lose one in there.



Level 1: General Hux is in this.


(I can't give the film a 7 without watching it again; I can't watch it again without letting my brain process it; I can't let my brain process it without speaking to other people who've also seen it. So go and watch this then report back, yeah?)


*¹ Speaking of which, this was the second 18-rated movie of the week, and the second to feature very specific capitalisation in its title. And while I know it's a thing I can't seem to let go of, that exclamation mark at the end of mother! isn't going to hashtag well. And it'll look even worse without the capitalisation normally given to a film title. Any online buzz will be lost in people talking about their mums*². It's almost like Aronofsky just wants to bring life to his artistic vision and doesn't give two fucks about social media marketing. I know, right? ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Maybe that's why we got the trailer for Bad Moms Christmas? Very meta. Speaking of which, yeah - a footnote within a footnote. That's quite meta, too. Although a film like this fully deserves it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Now it's one thing to have the title stylised as mother! with the lower-case 'm' and exclamation mark permanently attached making spell-checkers think the sentence has just finished. As it's a conceit of an already unique film, I'm fine with that. But it feels very, very wrong to be starting a sentence with the title and keeping the small-m. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ If even I can see the biblical references scattered throughout this film (but still know that's not what it's specifically about), there are probably way, way more that I'm not picking up. ^{[ 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: Passengers

Passengers
Cert: 12A / 116 mins / Dir. Morten Tyldum / Trailer



Well, fair play to Columbia Pictures. No, really. I can't quite envision the table of reactions at the Friday afternoon meeting when one voice piped up "Passengers a sci-fi movie… why don't we just release it six days after Star Wars?", nor the ensuing discussion which saw that idea get signed off. But it clearly happened. Fair play.

Set in a future time of commercialised off-world colonisation, Passengers is the story of two prospective settlers who wake from cryo-sleep 30 years into their 120-year journey on the starship Avalon, and have to figure out what's brought them round early, and how they can avoid dying of old age before the ship reaches its destination. All the best science fiction works on an allegorical level, and Morten Tyldum's film seems to be a metaphor for two people waking from cryo-sleep 30 years into a 120-year journey and having to figure out what's brought them round early and how they can avoid dying of old age before the ship reaches its destination.

Loneliness, destiny, purpose, the weight of responsibility and the isolating vastness of space. Precisely none of these themes are properly explored in a film which is the cinematic equivalent of candy floss; very pretty to look at, but almost entirely without substance or nutritional content of any kind.

I didn't hate Passengers, but the plot felt so staggeringly linear that I began to wonder if I was missing something huge. If that's the case then I continue to miss it.

The first act belongs to engineer and everyman-archetype, Chris Pratt (largely playing Chris Pratt™), on his own in the ship and slowly losing the plot as his 5,300 sleeping peers manage to doze through his escalating breakdown*¹. The whole thing plays out like a retelling of I Am Legend, overlaid with a child trying to explain the premise of Red Dwarf. Jennifer Lawrence arrives soon after as a borderline unlikeable writer*² who'd been on 'a journey' to 'find herself'. The thing which apparently upsets her most about living out the rest of her life in space is not being surrounded by people telling her how great she is (#23rdCenturyProblems). And then after a while, Laurence Fishburne arrives in an officer's uniform, being the only one trained or qualified to drive the story forward. Throughout all of this, Michael Sheen periodically supports as an android bartender, the one role where that weird grin of his actually feels appropriate.

With a couple of very minor exceptions, this is a cast of four people (with the addition of Andy Garcia laughing all the way to the bank). Which is fine. Pratt and Lawrence make the most of what they're given to work with, Sheen arguably has the most fun and Fishburne is chewing the scenery and thinking about the money. Which is fine.

The film as a whole? Not fine. And not fun, either. When did starting a new life on the other side of the galaxy, investigating a mystery on-board an ostensibly deserted spacecraft and fixing a reactor-core by opening an airlock using a door as a makeshift flame-shield become so boring?*³. The super-generic on screen displays and minimalist interior of The Avalon look like they're from a screenplay written in the 1970s which has been waiting for the effects-industry to catch up. And everything looks Nice™ here, but an incredibly bland way. Notwithstanding that the trailer actually mis-sells the premise of the movie*⁴, anyone hoping for a third-act reveal is going to be disappointed. Generally speaking, I enjoy the work of all the cast*⁵, but their performances just aren't enough to carry the weak screenplay.

Passengers at least does some of what it says on the tin.
I didn't go 'on a journey', but I do feel like I was taken for a ride…

Oh, After Earth, I imagine.



If you like your film things big and shiny, yes.



I genuinely have no idea.



It isn't.



I won't.



There isn't.



Level 2: Let's go for an easy one, Jennifer Lawrence was in X-Men: Apocalypse alongside Rose 'Dormé' Byrne and Oscar 'Dameron' Isaac.





*¹ They sleep throughout the whole thing. At one point I was worried I was going to join them.

*² And after the film features some of her 'desert island prose', this is a term I use very loosely.

*³ Doesn't it bother anyone else that when the gravity fails on the ship, previously static items in the various rooms begin to drift around - indicating that the film-makers are aware that the forward thrust and corkscrew motion of the ship would act upon these objects -, yet when our heroes step outside for a tethered spacewalk, they're not immediately yanked back into the craft's slipstream? We're told it's travelling at approximately half the speed of light, and while gravity won't apply to them outside the ship, momentum and inertia would. Maybe it's not a documentary...

*⁴ This is Mystique & Star-Lord: The Stalking Years. Every bit as creepy as that sounds and nowhere near as dramatic as it could (would) be.

*⁵ Although if I recall correctly, it was around this time last year when one of them made a two-hour melodrama about kitchen mops...

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.