It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman looking confused in a poorly lit hospital corridor must be in the supernatural hallucination sequence of a horror movie...
To smalltown America now*1, as four teenagers enjoy a sleepover during which they inadvertently summon the hood-faced, suit-wearing, child-abducting demon known all over the internet (by the cool kids, anyway) as The Slender Man. Cue the rural backwaters shot in heavy focus with desaturated colour palettes and lots of slow dolly-zoom shots as characters stare wordlessly into a forest, soundtracked by the creaking of branches and reverb-laden dialogue callbacks. Even the scenes set in the daytime cast little light into the auditorium*2. You get the picture.
Besides, one of our doomed characters writes in a library book, so deserves everything that's coming to them, frankly.
In the olden days, it would be a mysterious old book or a ouija board used to summon the servants of Hell. These days, it's a laptop. The tech might move forward, but the tropes don't. Speaking of hardware, credit where it's due - Slender Man features nowhere near the industrial amounts of branded product placement we've come to expect from Sony movies. Although there is still some, obviously.
With visual effects ranging from passable to laughable, the full reveal of the eponymous villain is teased out slowly enough, the filmmakers perhaps aware that a third-act backstory read out from a library is the only card they have to play in this game. A textbook tale of adolescents meddling with things they don't understand, surrounded by adults who don't believe them anyway. There's little subtext here other than 'know your place and don't go poking around in the occult'.
The young central cast give spirited performances of a screenplay which runs like it's on rails. Without giving too much away, it quickly becomes apparent that the pair who are doing All The Acting will clearly be the ones still around for the shrieking finale. It's earnestly and enthusiastically acted, but feels a bit like Mozart playing Chopsticks. IE, it doesn't matter how good he is...
Slender Man is technically solid enough for what it is, but in 2018 what it is is very ordinary. My screening had a couple of walk-outs at around the hour mark, but I was unable to tell if this was from heightened outrage or abject boredom. While I can't bring myself to condemn the efficient execution of some seriously low cinematic ambitions, I certainly can't applaud them either...
And stick around until the end of the credits for a stinger which teases the crossover team-up of Slender Man, Hollow Man, Candyman and The Woman In Black!*3
This is in equal parts The Ring, It, The Blair Witch Project and Friend Request.
It's not.
Stream it, tops.
It's not.
That's entirely likely.
There isn't.
Level 2: Joey King's in this, and she was in Wish I Was Here alongside Josh 'Controller Droid in Rebels' Gad.
*1 Albeit via London Enfield, the only Cineworld remotely near me which happened to be showing this movie during daylight hours. [ BACK ]
*2 Which is the bane of that annoying guy in the row in front of you, trying to take notes by the light of the screen and basically having to angle his notebook so that everyone in the room can see it. By which I mean me. Obviously. [ BACK ]
*3 No, not really. Actually, maybe really, I didn't hang around that long to be honest. [ 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.
Come back awards-season, all is forgiven. Here to usher out the end of the cinematic graveyard shift is the latest offering from Zach Braff, somewhat ironically dragging his directorial career in precisely the opposite direction. I can't work out what's more insulting: that this weak, formulaic comedy is a straight mashup of Tower Heist and Last Vegas, or that it's actually a re-imagining of an existing film. Either option is lazy and both are insulting to the audience and industry alike.
So, in the midst of their twilight years, three grumpy old cynics decide to demean themselves by committing an offence in order to get the vast amounts of money they feel is rightly owed to them… and that's also the plot of the film!!*1 For ninety-six laborious minutes, there are jokes about belligerence and the aches/pains of getting old, the thoroughly insincere disapproval of the capitalist status quo*2, and lashings of self-indulgent forced-nostalgia and mawkishness. You've seen this shit a hundred times before, and it probably wasn't even better then, either.
Haha, it's funny because the old men are grumpy!
Normally I'd say that a cast this strong should know better. The problem is, I don't think that's the case, here. With Alan Arkin effectively phoning-in his role from Stand Up Guys, Morgan Freeman having recently partaken in Lucy, Transcendence and Ted 2, and Michael Caine being the kind of actor who routinely appears in guff like The Last Witch Hunter, there's a strong chance that this comfortably paid barrel-scraping is now the default setting for these guys. Christopher Lloyd also embarrasses his legacy in a background role; then again he's doing stuff like Piranha 3D in the 21st century, so that's no real surprise. Collectively, the film feels like the death-rattle of a creature that stopped caring long, long ago.
Haha, it's funny because the old man puts a tin of hot dogs down the front of his pants!
In the film's defence, it had amassed a reasonable-sized audience*3 for a weeknight showing, and they laughed with startling regularity. But they were also hooting through lines which were demonstrably Not Jokes™. I suspect this could have been some sort of autosuggestion-response to going out to see what had been marketed as a comedy film. "I am determined to laugh loudly and enjoy myself throughout, refusing to consciously admit that I have been sold a banger".
Haha, it's funny because there's an old lady and she gets a shock and says the fuck-word!
Everyone's allowed the occasional slip of course, but Warner Bros have put out this film and C.H.i.P.s. in the same quarter. At the rate things are going, I expect Gazza to turn up at 3400 Riverside Drive with some chicken and a fishing rod before the end of June...
Last Vegas. Tower Heist.
Pretty much any Warner Bros/Universal comedy of the last ten years.
No you should not.
No it does not.
Well it's directed by the guy who made Wish I Was Here, and stars people from The Shawshank Redemption, Argo, Get Carter and Back To The Future, so what do you think?
*1 Yes, I am hilarious, thank you. Although that is funnier than anything in the film, I promise. I smiled once during this, when there was a puppy on-screen (I'm not a complete monster). Although I didn't smile when the same puppy was brought back later. What the hell kind of film hardens its own audience into puppy-fatigue? [ BACK ]
*2 Y'know, that same capitalist system without which the film wouldn't have been financed or made, nor would there be a room-full of people shedding their disposable income to watch the result. The only things this film rebels against are thoughts of cinematic creativity. [ BACK ]
*3 Although it's noting that this studio-comedy was preceded with trailers for no other comedy films. Instead we got the promo-reels for Dunkirk, Their Finest, Rules Don't Apply, The Sense of an Ending and The Promise. Even accounting for the varying scales of those, they're all period-pieces and 'fogey-flicks'. The UK distributors of Going In Style clearly think that no-one in the audience is going to be under age 50. Although after looking around, they weren't too far off the mark, admittedly… [ 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.
So it turns out I did the right thing by going home halfway through last night's ID4 double-bill after all. I'll say from the outset that I didn't actively dislike Independence Day: Resurgence, but I had so many gripes with it that I'm glad I didn't sit up until the small hours having them thrown at me immediately after the first lot...
The film opens twenty 'real-time' years after the events of Independence Day, in the radically different 2016 that sprang from the events of that movie. But rather than let the social and technological details of this timeline seep through to the audience over the course of the first act, the screenplay mechanically explains them all in very small words, with a pseudo-narration to begin with, followed up by the exposition-heavy conversation that no-one has, even in fiction ("Alright Terry, how's your alien-powered magic bladeless helicopter like we all have here in the present day?").
The film spends so much time explaining minutiae and introducing characters we don't need to meet, that it almost forgets to be a movie about aliens who want to smash the living-shit out of the Earth. Almost, but not quite. There's more up-close ET involvement in this sequel I'm glad to say, and while they're still effectively personality-free drones, the film's best scenes are the melee and ground-battle engagements. The rest is entirely formulaic blockbuster fluff, though.
Now, unlike the modern breed of city-smashing superhero movies, Resurgence doesn't spend its climactic battle committing bystander-genocide. No, it does this off-handedly in the middle of the film, apparently for no other reason than making our heroes pull slightly concerned faces at monitors and news reports as millions of civilians die because they were in the wrong hemisphere at the wrong time. Still, as any good despot knows, the more you kill, the less it seems to actually matter, somehow.
Another regular complaint of modern movies is that the CGI effects feel hollow and without punch while the cast over-emote against greenscreen backdrops. But the opposite seems to be in play here, as the film's visuals are detailed and vibrant, while it's the acting that's completely weightless. Roland Emmerich seems completely satisfied that his cast have learned their lines, so he doesn't bother getting them to put any actual feeling into reciting them. No-one appears to be enjoying themselves on-set (although with a script as laboured and cumbersome as this, it's hardly surprising), and as I've seen most of the cast be much better elsewhere, that's got to come down to poor direction.
This really feels like a generic alien-invasion movie that's been retrofitted with Independence Day continuity in its third draft, presumably on the promise of a bigger budget. While Independence Day: Resurgence is distracting enough, I didn't exactly find it entertaining.
It's not that the film left me with nothing afterwards, more that it left me with nothing while I was watching it...
Best bit: How, when ex-president Whitmore has his third-act hero shave and pops on his old flight suit, he suddenly doesn't need that walking stick any more. #Bang! #Heroism!
For the visuals? Sure.
For the performances? HAHAHAHAHA!.
Blatantly set up its next installment? Absolutely.
Cast, no.
Director… well that's a tough call. It's certainly not Emmerich's worst.
Nah.
There is.
Level 2: Independence Day: Resurgence stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, who also appeared in 2003's 21 Grams, as did Benicio 'going to be rocking up in Star Wars Episode VIII in an as-yet un-named role' Del Toro.
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.
So, speaking as a man who finds himself apparently middle-aged (somehow), and with no real idea what he's supposed to be doing, Wish I Was Here really connected with me. It's the story of a struggling actor Aidan Bloom trying to come to terms with his father's terminal illness, a slacker brother, a wife he can't seem to find enough time for and the daunting task of homeschooling his two children. Not necessarily a blindingly original idea, this could have well been a lot more saccharine in different hands, but the film has a clarity and honesty which comes from being written and directed by its central actor, Zach Braff. Rather than just focusing on the family issues, Braff casts the net wider to ponder childhood hopes, the purpose of life and of religion. It's nowhere near as heavyweight as I've made that sound, I promise you.
The force holding everything together here is Braff, and the chemistry between the whole cast is amazing - especially Joey King and Pierce Gagnon as his children, Grace and Tucker. Their exchanges throughout the film are witty and upfront without feeling forced or rehearsed, and as sentimental as the film gets at times, it does so with a curious lack of sugar-coating (especially when it comes to the various family disputes). Also handled playfully yet delicately is the religious element, with Aidan's orthodox Jewish father still having a huge influence over the family - despite Aidan having stepped away from that arena - and his daughter seemingly embracing the faith with gusto. Although the story weaves around Judaism, the themes can apply to any religion and while the film asks many questions, it's wise enough to admit it doesn't know the answers.
There are a few short fantasy-sequences intercut into the story (there's a quick shot of one in the trailer with the floating probe-droid type thing), and I'd have liked to have seen this expanded. By which I mean the theme it's carrying, not just more robots. But also more robots, I suppose, yes. But ultimately, it's Aidan's brother Noah (played ably by Josh Gad) who gets to wear the man-child trousers in here. This is an entertaining and touching film; a sort of mid-life-crisis version of The Way, Way Back. Which probably goes some way to explaining why I enjoyed it so much.
Inspirational without preaching; this, Mr Favreau, is how you write, direct and star in a film with a sincere message.
A personal and spiritual journey with a fucking foul mouth, Wish I Was Here effortlessly highlights the absurdity of both dying and living, irrespective of where your faith (or lack thereof) lies.
It is.
I did.
For me, yes.
You won't lose too much by watching at home, but the film's worth travelling for if a cinema near you is showing it.
I won't.
I will.
There isn't.
I can't be the only one who thought Noah's Comic-Con costume was astoundingly average though, can I? I mean I know that wasn't the point, but still…
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.
Roll up, roll up, who wants to see the USA get taken down a notch or two? Again? With the two movies so close to each other in just about every aspect (Olympus has just hit DVD in the UK), you really can't help but compare them. In many ways, WHD is the more enjoyable film (it's certainly less sadistic and xenophobic), but the lightness of tone comes at a price; other than 'some people in America don't like how America currently is', the film struggles to find any real message. It's often the case that a dumb action flick doesn't need a message, obviously, but with a symbol as iconic as Mr President's crash-pad, it's difficult to reduce it to expensive rubble unless you're trying to say something.
The highpoints of the film are the scenes with Jamie Fox and Channing Tatum. They have great chemistry together, and play the President/Minder relationship more like a buddy-cop setup. However, everything outside of their wisecracking action sequences veers between 'gleefully disposable' and 'absolute bollocks'. You really just have to accept the ludicrous aspects of the Die Hard Lite plot, its one-dimensional antagonists, and the thought that the global media may actually broadcast, on television, the full name and photograph of a hostage responsible for sneaking siege footage online, while that hostage is still in the building.
But if anything, it's Emmerich's terrorists that are the weak link. Rather than demonising an entire country (y'know, like the other one did), he gives us corrupt politicians and racist redneck mercenaries. We're aware they already exist, of course, but it seems doubtable that they could bring about a coup as depicted in the film. Also suffering from Underdevelopment Syndrome is Jimmi Simpson's ace-hacker, Tyler, who strolls in like a bizarre cross between Limmy and Reece Shearsmith, exhibits too much personality for his brief scenes and is then treated as a background note. But, don't worry too much about the mechanics (and the often ropey script), just try and enjoy the ride and you shouldn't go too far wrong.
In the midst of a screenplay that doesn't quite know what it wants to be, Foxx and Tatum seem to bring the only genuine feeling to the film. In fact, I couldn't work out if the exterior shots of the massed public had been shot on a soundstage or were just appallingly lit outdoors, everything feels that synthetic.
White House Down is enjoyable enough, but ultimately it's the empty can, rattling away.
Oh, and Roland: that cack-handed reference to your Independence Day movie was shameful. Really.
No, the trailer suggests a gravity which just isn't there.
Sometimes.
I suspect not.
Unless you like seeing your helicopter crashes larger than life, you won't lose much by watching it at home.
Not really.
At some point.
I didn't hear one, but I may well have missed it in the mayhem..
Can we give it a rest now, though? Can we?
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.
