Underwater Cert: 15 / 95 mins / Dir. William Eubank / Trailer
The fates were already conspiring against William Eubank's new movie before the it began. Someone bastard my allocated-seat, a fire-exit sign shining directly onto the screen, then a delayed start-time due to a projector failure once the film itself began (which was going to be ten minutes, but became fifteen and then thirty*1).
So Kristen Stewart was going to have to work pretty fucking hard to turn this around in a film with a painfully literal (and yet wholly nondescript) title and a trailer which makes Underwater look average, at best.
Reader, Underwater is average at best.
A mining station in the Marianas Trench is compromised when a series of earthquakes are revealed to be the work of mysterious creatures, the likes of which haven't been seen before. The small band of survivors must suit-up, leave their ruined base and cross the ocean bed on foot to reach a relay station where they can escape to the surface. During this perilous journey, members of the group are picked off one*2 by one by the monsters, the environment, or a screenwriter who's only ever watched alien-invasion movies. Yeah, it's basically Aliens but underwater*3.
SCIENTIST Credit where it's due, it has quite a strong cast for a film this inconsequential. Kristen Stewart leads the gang as a brainy-but-tough scientist. You know KStew's brainy because she's wearing glasses in the first scene. Glasses with a prescription so ethereal that they do not bend light in any way when viewed from an angle, which is probably why she gets through the rest of the film absolutely fine without them. It feels as if Stewart is picking roles like letters from a scrabble-bag these days. As a performer, Kristen is definitely better than this, yet it's becoming more difficult to pinpoint exactly what she should be doing any more.
Elsewhere, Vincent Cassel is vaguely unlikeable (again) and TJ Miller resorts to playing himself (again). Fair enough guys, stick to what you know.
HARDEST PART A b-grade sci-fi/horror with a story that runs on rails, Underwater is the exact amount of silly bollocks you expect, and you'll enjoy it accordingly. Our heroes bicker, shriek and mumble their way through the script, so it's probably a good thing that words are largely redundant here. You could watch this dubbed into any language you don't speak and have exactly the same experience*4. You just can't shake the feeling that none of it matters. The movie looks great and is efficiently assembled, but feels generic.
Of course the film starts moralising about drilling and humanity's moral duty in its third act, but by that point the whole thing is so divorced from reality that it could segue into an episode of Spongebob Squarepants and make as much sense...
On paper, Underwater categorically does not need to exist, and the film does nothing to challenge that situation. But hey, at least it's not about sharks.
*1 With audience-members still turning up during this time, the late-running of the movie rewarding their tardiness if anything. Outrageous. [ BACK ]
*2 Because of course Mamoudou Athie, the only black cast-member with a character-name, is the first to die. Although that's probably a lucky escape, to be honest. [ BACK ]
*3Movie exec 1: So what if we made Aliens, but underwater?!?
Movie exec 2: Pretty sure that's already been d--
Movie exec 1: Rhetorical question, Terry. Kristen Stewart has already signed on and agreed to run around in her pants for half of it. We start filming on Monday... [ BACK ]
*4 Although in an early scene, Stewart's character voiceovers that you lose track of time when you can't see daylight. And fair play, 95 minutes seems like fucking forever when you know you're going to be late getting across town for your next movie, as a 45-minute travel window is hacked down to quarter of an hour... [ 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.
Arriving like an early, unannounced Christmas present from a relative you'd forgotten existed, the new iteration of 70s classic Charlie's Angels bursts onto November screens, a movie so thoroughly bland and ineffectual that I don't even have the energy to be angry about it.
TAKEN Haha, I'm just kidding; yes I do. I've got to hand it to actor / writer / producer / director Elizabeth Banks. She's taken a franchise about which I had no feelings either way and made me despise it. Working transparently through a list of checkboxes, this reboot seems to be aiming for a tonal point somewhere between Mission: Impossible and Austin Powers, but ends up at Baywatch instead. I say 'reboot', but there are in-movie nods to both the original TV series and the 2000/2003 movies suggesting a canonical continuity, which is a nice touch. But that's not enough.
Considering the star-wattage of the cast list, the dimness on display here is quite an achievement. This film fizzes like a bin bag full of dead animals. Like it's been assembled by someone who's heard of lighthearted action-comedies but has never seen one. Working from a script apparently consisting entirely of placeholder dialogue, Naomi Scott throws herself into the proceedings with admirable abandon, Ella Balinska appears to be reading her lines for the first time and Kristen Stewart is miscast as usual. Elsewhere, Sam Claflin manages to get his shrieking out through a look of mortifying embarrassment, Patrick Stewart spends two hours wearing a badge which reads For The Money and of course Elizabeth Banks is there because there's no show without punch*1. The action setpieces themselves are well choreographed and shot. But that's not enough.
COMMUTER The film loops through a drawn-out, patronising cycle of Action Sequence > Outfit Change > Plot-point Exposition > Soulless Needle-drop, like being locked in Primark after hours while hiding from a hen party that are doing Stella and absinthe. Charlie's Angels is as visually, emotionally and artistically rewarding as being strapped to a chair and forced to watch all of BBC3's output simultaneously. There are noticeable rhythmic gaps in the screenplay which seem to have been left for the audience to fill with laughter, the main problem with this being that they aren't preceded with any jokes. I didn't think we'd get a worthy companion-piece to The Hustle this soon. I may have to go and see that godawful firefighter comedy now just to get this taste out of my mouth.
Still, it's some consolation to know that even Elizabeth Banks herself is suffering some disquiet over the movie. So that makes all of us.
Hey, her heart's in the right place.
But that's not enough.
NEVER LET PATRICK STEWART FORGET THAT HE SAID OKAY TO THIS, I DON'T CARE IF HE'S LOVELY.
That's possible.
There isn't.
Level 2: Elizabeth Banks is in this and she was in those Hunger Games movies with Woody 'Beckett' Harrelson.
*1 You can call that catty but her name appears on the poster three times, she's hard enough to take the fall for this one. [ 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.
I like that thing where you see a location in a movie which you were at, less than an hour earlier. Granted, that doesn't happen very often, but the chances certainly seem to be increased by catching a film when you're passing through London. It's almost like Oliver Assayas' Personal Shopper took a (literal) five minute detour through London just to show me St Pancras station and make me smile. Almost like it had some kind of otherworldly, psychic power. Almost. But not quite.
Maureen*1, a young American woman working in Paris as a personal shopper to the rich and famous, is grieving the recent loss of her twin brother. Both had nascent paranormal abilities, and Maureen spends her downtime trying to make contact with her sibling, although this holds the door open to other entities as well. Also, there's a murder.
Well, then. Most movies revolving around the supernatural will begin with a layer of audience-oriented skepticism, gradually increasing the in-plot, coalescing evidence until the point where a pay-off can be reached that (hopefully) doesn't stretch narrative credibility. Personal Shopper is almost the exact opposite, having a concrete level of 'oh, ghosts are real btw' from act one, but introducing uncertainty through the events elsewhere in the plot. And the more this is applied, the more the whole thing becomes unstuck.
When Maureen begins receiving anonymous texts from someone (or thing) that apparently knows her*2, the film loses balance slightly and never manages to regain its footing. Personal Shopper isn't sure if it wants to be an unconventional ghost story, or a philosophical psych-thriller. As a result, it commits to neither and achieves results accordingly. The film is more about dealing with the PTSD of a close family bereavement than any exploration of spirituality, and Kristen Stewart's on very strong form as a medium who's terrified of the unknown. Although it perhaps says a lot about the script that her best scenes are essentially solo-performances. Marreen's backstory is teased out relatively naturalistically (for the most part), although the screenplay does seem to assume that no-one in the audience has any idea what a medium is, judging by how laboured that point becomes.
On the plus side, the film gains a point for being set largely in Paris without a single establishing-shot of the Eiffel Tower. Although to be fair, that's no less than I'd expect of an actual French production. That said, the point is instantly deducted for the occasional swathes of un-subtitled French dialogue (and at one point, Swedish). They're reasonably short in themselves, but I've no idea what was being said there, only that everyone looked very concerned. And I have to assume that this was a deliberate move rather than an oversight, but it's pretty rude either way; don't assume that your audience will be fluent in two languages. Either the content of your script is important to the film or it isn't*3.
Certainly an interesting film, by no means a great one. I'd like to have liked Personal Shopper more, but found the forced ambiguity unsatisfying.
Fair play for showing the ghosts, though. I hope The Vomiting Lady gets her own spinoff movie. We've certainly had worse.
You may as well, all atmosphere will be effectively lost on a smaller screen.
For me? No.
Kristen Stewart is great.
But she's been great before and she'll be great again.
Oh, probably not.
There isn't.
Level 2: Kristen Stewart's in this, and she was in that Adventureland, along with Bill BB-8 Hader.
*1 Yeah, the protagonist's name is Maureen. On Friday, I saw a film where it was Elaine. It's like the supernatural heroines of 2017 are friends of my Grandma. [ BACK ]
*2 Okay seriously, though. She's there with her phone and a text comes through with the number marked as "unknown". This means the phone and/or network has no traceability for the sender's number. Which means the text can't be replied to. When you receive a text from someone who isn't in your phonebook, the phone displays the raw-number, not just 'unknown'. There are apps you can use to block your number when texting, but in order to be able to reply to these, the carrier will need to figure out the number of the sender. Which will then display the number. Yet there Maureen is, having a lengthy anonymous conversation with appalling punctuation. And that's another thing we learn, that Kristen Stewart is the kind of person who'll finish a sentence in a text without any punctuation. Or worse, she'll use punctation with a space after the final word, but before the full-stop/exclamation-mark etc. Unforgivable. And don't get me started on multiple consecutive question-marks. [ BACK ] EDIT: Very much aware that I've complained about a lack of realism in a film specifically featuring ghosts. Don't even care.
*3 Any real supernatural tension the film managed to muster (and it is there) was offset by the light of the needlessly powerful bulb in the Fire Exit sign, bleeding directly onto the bottom-left corner of Screen 6. Obviously this is no reflection on the filmmakers, but the presentation of a movie is every bit as important as the content itself. Something you'd expect a cinema to be especially aware of. I know why the sign is there and I know it has to be illuminated, but it doesn't have to be visible from outside…[ 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.
Well, I'm not sure which theatrical gods I've appeased recently, but while the faintly trashy thriller Morgan didn't arrive at my local multiplex*1, the latest offering from Woody Allen did. And unless I'm very much mistaken, it's the first film of his to play there in the cinema's nine-year tenure.
** proudly wears film-snob hat **
The tale of Bobby, a self-conscious young Jewish man in the 1930s, moving from New York to Hollywood to work with his successful film-producer uncle, Café Society is one of Woody Allen's more Woody Allen™ films, and is all the more enjoyable for that. When falling for the girl of his dreams turns out to be far more complicated than he'd hoped, Bobby returns to the Big Apple to help run the family business, a decidedly dodgy nightclub. Naturally enough, the past returns to haunt him, and Allen's comedy of manners turns into a rumination on guilt, regret and idealism (don't worry, it's not as heavy as I've made that sound).
Jesse Eisenberg is almost tailor-made for the protagonist's role, seamlessly blending his trademark awkward muttering with Allen's script. He's supported in this by Steve Carell as the aforementioned uncle and Kristen Stewart as both his love-interest and macguffin. Carell cruises through his role as the troubled Hollywood mogul, not having to strain himself at all, but being able to deliver what's required without autopiloting. Stewart is a little more concerning, though. While it's great to see her and Jesse back together again, and while they have an undeniable screen-chemistry, Kristen never really convinces as someone from the 1930s. I think Stewart's a very underrated actress but she carries a modern aesthetic she can't seem to shake off here. And in this case, I have to lay the blame at least partly at the feet of the director. The rest of the cast blend into the timeframe so effortlessly that I can't believe Allen just let one of the most important performances of the film stand out in the wrong way. Things are made even more glaring when Blake Lively arrives in the second half, exuding a bygone era once again and thoroughly upstaging her counterpart.
But, on the whole, the film works perfectly well. Woody Allen is completely at home in the 1930s, and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro bathes the depression-era in a golden glow which matches both the script and the narcissistic characters delivering it. As noted above, what begins as a zippy farce ends quite ponderously, and often feels more like the Coen Brothers at times. Café Society won't be one of its director's most loved works, but it's a more-than-acceptable offering until the next one of those comes along...
Possibly, but I don't think it achieves all it could.
No, not that that's a criticism in itself.
No.
No.
Level 2: This movie stars Ken Stott, who appeared in those Hobbit films, along with Richard 'Bravo Six' Armitage and Christopher 'Dooku' Lee.
*1 It's not like I purposely travelled to watch Morgan, it just happened to be playing near where I was at the time. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate the movie, I'm just glad that a) I was able to use my Unlimited Card and b) it was genuinely a rainy afternoon as an alternative.
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.
Well, this might be the most fun I've had in Jesse Eisenber's company since Zombieland (although his character here isn't a million miles away from that other). Like some inspired mashup between Clerks and The Manchurian Candidate, American Ultra tells the tale of Mike Howell, a CIA sleeper-agent turned stoner store-clerk as his worlds collide when he's marked for termination by his superiors.
The film's opening scene sees a beaten and bruised Howell (Eisenberg) in a police cell after the events of the story. What follows is a super-fast rewind of the tale, showing snippets of what's going to unfold and robbing the narrative of at least one point of tesion (Howell's survival) in the process; but it also drops plenty of call-forwards in the process and is an early indicator of the fun to come.
Massively entertaining when it's on-fire, and one of the very few stoner-comedies that didn't irritate me on any level (I generally find them quite self indulgent), American Ultra never quite manages to reconcile its dark-streak as the film's characters are drawn primarily for comedy, and the film's second act sags a little when things slow down and move towards traditional thriller territory. It's much better at being an action-comedy than an action-thriller, although the final showdown is almost Matrix-esque in its brutally slick precision.
As funny as the film is, I have to say that many of the gags from the trailer worked better in the trailer, due to the sharper timing. But, if Hawaiian shirts, gunfire, claw-hammers and astronaut-apes are your thing, there'll be plenty for you in American Ultra…
I probably wouldn't go that far…
If you buy it once it comes down to around £7, it'll stand you in good stead for nights in with friends and the mind-altering chemicals of your choice (legal ones, naturally).
Everyone's clearly having a great time, that's what's important (this really isn't a 'performance' film).
It does.
I won't.
There isn't.
Topher Grace starred in 2000's Traffic along with Benicio Del Toro, who's set to make an appearance in 2017's Star Wars Episode VIII.
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 fates were already conspiring against William Eubank's new movie before the it began. Someone bastard my allocated-seat, a fire-exit sign shining directly onto the screen, then a delayed start-time due to a projector failure once the film itself began (which was going to be ten minutes, but became fifteen and then thirty*1).
