Full disclosure: I haven't seen the previous movies or played any of the games, so I was watching the new Tomb Raider purely as an action/adventure flick. Adjust your response to my responses accordingly.
So, it's mid-March and this is the first 3D movie I've seen in 2018, not that I've been avoiding them, which perhaps illustrates how the stereoscopic format has fallen in the eyes of schedulers and distributors. The last two MCU movies have opened in 2D before being joined in the listings by 3D screenings the following week. It's always been an 'event movie' gimmick, but it seems to be one which is fading in demand, rightly or wrongly. Speaking of event-movies…
Tomb Raider is the latest adaptation to make the perilous journey to our screens from gaming consoles*1, never an easy transition at the best of times. As a starring vehicle for Alicia Vikander, it's helmed by Norweigan director Roar Uthaug, and written by Evan Daugherty, Alastair Siddons and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. It is, as one would expect, the first film in a potential cinematic franchise.
We open with Ms. Croft (Vikander) scraping an existence in London as an experienced archer, average boxer and exasperated cycle courier. She's flat broke, you see, that's why she's living out of a loft-arpartment in Shoreditch. In order to make ends meet, Lara has to get involved in her mysteriously-vanished father, Lord Croft's (Dominic West), business interests, by talking in-person to Derek Jacobi and Kristen Scott-Thomas while they phone in their performances from the same room.
Anyway, upon receiving an ancient, mystical Chinese puzzle box from her dad's solicitor, Lara cleverly unlocks its contents by just twisting at it for fifteen seconds, finding a key to a secret workshop on the Croft estate, where a camcorder which has lain untouched for six years still has charge left in its battery. Then it's off to Hong Kong for some Indiana Jones shit with barely-interested sidekick Lu Ren (Daniel Wu). Walton Goggins appears as Matthias Vogel, the film's obviously-creepy baddie, and nuances his performance by continuing to act that way, relentlessly.
Oh, also the world is at stake. Something about bio-weapons. The script doesn't spend too much time on that, since the characters who really want it wouldn't conceivably know about it until the film's third act, yet there they are.
So. The exterior action setpieces are choreographed, shot and directed well (which is at least partially the point here, admittedly), but as far as praise or 'finding the good' goes, that's really about it. Tomb Raider is spectacularly ordinary at best, and it's quite often not even that.
The problem, as usual, is that the collection of well-worn setpieces will work perfectly well in a game where there's interaction to the proceedings (let's not forget that Lara Croft was essentially a gender-flipped Indiana Jones to begin with). But once that's reverse-translated back onto the silver screen, all that's left is an almighty rip-off of the cinematic properties which inspired it. There's no intrigue or story driving Uthaug's movie, just the hope that Alicia Vikander sweating through a sports-vest will be enough to distract the audience from the aching void at the heart of the screenplay. Spoiler: It's not.
From the petulant, reluctant hero, to the slave-labour archaeology camp run by an evil anthropologist, to the white water rapids with a climactic waterfall, to the prising open of a cursed casket, Tomb Raider is little more than a tedious procession of adventure tropes you've seen done elsewhere, and better. The 3D is implemented well enough from a technical level, but it's pointless in a movie with this much skaky-cam and action scenes which take place in dark environments.
Then, the level of exposition here is horrendous. We get three bursts of backstory before Lara has even left London, and the third of those basically recaps the first. If the script was any more clunky it'd be written out in Lego. Although Lara is indeed presented as resourceful and tenacious, she doesn't have to try too hard to figure out the way to the Ark of the Covenant Himiko's sarcophagus, since Lord Croft has handily left a series of clue-dropping audio-diaries from previous adventures, like a cross between Rick O'Connell and Mr Kipling…
"…I found a speck on an old map that no-one else has". Three people were involved in writing this. That's actual dialogue delivered by Dominic 'The Wire' West. I was initially amazed the man could keep a straight face for his lines, but then I remembered that he recently did a pasta sauce advert for TV. That said, his mullet here is nothing short of awards-worthy, and I hope the notoriously short-memoried Academy panel keeps this in mind for next year's gongs.
For Vikander's sake, I hope the fee she negotiated is enough to compensate for the hit to her credibility as An Actual Actress. Easy money does not necessarily mean an easy life.
The movie plays out like a two-hour cutscene from a game you won't be bothered about finishing, and feels like it should be the fourth entry in a series, not the first. Just before it's re-cast for straight-to-DVD continuations and a kid-friendly animated spinoff.
Tomb Raider brings little interesting and nothing new to action-cinema, nor (I imagine) does it shed any new light upon the game series which spawned it. It's faintly ironic that the film has been rated 12A since it's natural target audience is ten years old and too wired on Haribo and Tango Ice-Blasts to analyse anything they see...*2
I was going to give this an 'unsatisfying' 3/7, but reading back everything I've said about it, that hardly seems right...
*1 Content-generators: Please stop penning speculative articles asking "Will this be the first good video-game movie?" every time one of these things comes along. We can safely assume it won't be, until we're miraculously proven wrong, upon which you can fill your clickbait boots retrospectively. Thanks. [ BACK ]
*2 And even your kids will have seen all this before. [ 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.
Oh, Gary. The make-up's good, but your Alfred Hitchcock-voice needs some work, mate. As January continues to raise everyone's expectations for the year ahead and bring us All The Worthy Films, we find ourselves once again back in May 1940. The Second World War rumbles on, nervous glances abound in UK parliament and there's barely a likable person left in the country. Apparently. Yes, it's Darkest Hour, the brooding political thriller from the director of 2007's Atonement starring Gary Oldman as Prime-Minister-of-the-moment Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, Kristen Scott-Thomas as his long suffering wife Clemmie, Lily James as his more-recently-suffering secretary Elizabeth Layton, and a wide range of Him You Saw In That Thing performers as various members of the British government and military.
And I wish I'd enjoyed it more.
Oh, the film's got pedigree, though. Pedigree coming out of its ears. But from the excess of desaturated wooden panelling, wry acerbic gags*1 and furious imperialistic bickering, Darkest Hour begins like a car crash between a Richard Curtis melodrama and a Brexiteer's wank-fantasy. This is the gear it stays in, more or less, throughout. The primary problem is, where do you take the story of a man whose life has been chronicled (obviously and rightly so) extensively since 1945? The apparent answer is to make this depiction slightly less-than-flattering, and it's to director Joe Wright and writer Anthony McCarten's credit that neither shies away Churchill's reputation as an unrelenting a-hole, one who apparently succeeds by shouting down his adversaries rather than using tactics, skill and stoic determination. Unfortunately, most of the film's other characters are also cut from the same cloth. This is effectively two hours of people grumbling then yelling at each other, at least one of whom you know for a damn fact was absolutely right in doing so. But hey, we can't change history.
Not that I'm an expert in the field, by any means. I didn't know the full ins-and-outs of the situation before sitting down in Screen 1, yet I still wasn't surprised by anything I saw there. The film is an easy target for raking in the grey pounds, and one which throws few challenges at an audience (unless you count the aforementioned unlikeability, of course). A few attempts are made at humanising the statesman, but they feel like spurious anecdotes which have morphed over the years into a party-story nobody believes any more*2. Wright's direction is certainly more delicate than Anthony McCarten's writing, although obviously these play off each other. The film lacks the quiet introspection of Wright's work on Atonement, but then the sceenplay's not there to support that, anyway.
The next speedbump we hit is that since the story follows Winston from his appointment to the office of Prime Minister in early May to right before the Dunkirk evacuation in early June, the entire audience can just knows That Speech is being saved for the film's crescendo. So like the sinking of the Titanic, that's all everyone in the room is waiting for. And, as mentioned, this is all accomplished with great gusto and absolute conviction but the film never feels like it's shining a new light on its subject. Whereas Dunkirk at least played with the narrative form and raised tension accordingly, Darkest Hour feels more like a dramatised documentary. All that's missing is intercut shots of David Starkey pacing around Whitehall with an ongoing narration.
There's some great photography, some great performances, and the whole thing generally failed to interest me. I have to accept, of course, that all my niggles with the film are entirely intentional on the part of the film-makers, and this is just Not The Movie For Me. Gary Oldman is, as reported, very good*3.
The best bit comes in one scene where Winston's dictation to his secretary tails off, and around a minute later she bashfully admits "...I didn't understand you sir, you were mumbling".
We need more of this exact character in films starring Tom Hardy and Jeff Bridges, please.
This film wants to get off the tube at the same stop as Dunkirk, but ends up walking up the stairs just ahead of Their Finest.
If you like stirring tales of That Sort Of Thing, I imagine it is.
Only the hardcore will want to keep this on the shelf for re-watching.
Put it this way, if (as is being rumoured) Gary Oldman finds himself nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, I think he should only be allowed to pick it up if he does so in-character.
*1 With the delivery of these laboured witticisms and the requisite knowing-chuckle from the audience, I exhaled a little further each time. [ BACK ]
*2 At one point Winston Churchill decides - on a script-signposted whim - to ride the London Underground for the first time. "How do I get to Westminster?" he inquires, perusing a Tube-map.
"District Line east, one stop", says the young woman next to him. Somehow managing to not add "Are you a tourist? You're in the centre of London mate, that's walking distance. Like, it's less than half a mile. Even a fella in your shape could do that in five minutes. You'll be covering more distance by hoiking down here, getting onto the train then going up at the other end. And that's not taking into account how long the train is going to inexplicably wait on each platform while you apparently discuss government policy with the filthy proles. 'Loose lips', and all that. 'Sir'.", before rolling her eyes and deciding to get the bus instead.
Oh, and during that tube-scene, where (apparently) the actual Prime Minister of an actual country at actual war bolsters his own gut-feeling by getting the hasty. self-righteous opinions of half a dozen strangers with no objective view of the situation, I may well have broken The Code by mumbling "Oh fuck off" even louder than I did during the 'I am Spartacus' bit in The Commuter. Like I said, the film's A Bit Brexit at times, which is faintly ironic given how committed its protagonist was to the European ideal.
[ BACK ]
*3 But then why wouldn't he be? He's Gary Oldman. Why are people so surprised at this? [ BACK ]
*4 In this context, it almost certainly is. THAT DOESN'T MAKE ME WANT IT ANY LESS. [ 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.
Not really my usual fare, not least because the film's trailer failed to convince me, but Michelle Williams and Kristin Scott Thomas are always worth a punt, so it was off to the indie-arthouse cinema for a Sunday morning preview (yes, the same cinema that had all the monumentally rude people in it last time). As luck would have it, war films set in the 1940s attract a much better class of punter than those set in the 2000s, apparently.
And so, Suite Française sees the inhabitants of Paris being evacuated to the countryside following German bombing raids in 1940. As a sleepy rural town adjusts to its influx of new neighbours, they have to band together to face a greater challenge: the occupation of France by the Nazi forces, and a platoon of soldiers compulsorily stationed in their homes. Tensions rise further as some members of the community seem to be less reluctant than others to give the Germans a cold-welcome…
The good? Suite Française is a fantastic film about loyalty, regret, trust and pride. The dynamic between the townsfolk and their occupying-guests is clinically honest, showing people at their best and worst on both sides*1. Human nature is timeless, it would appear. I'm not sure if it's not a little British for a film set in France, though. That the cast speak largely with Home Counties accents doesn't impact the flow of the film at all (it's not 'Allo Allo, after all), but there's an edge of bitterness and quiet restraint that more usually appears in portrayals of stately homes in England. But like I said, human nature and all that.
The bad? I wasn't sold on the love-story, if I'm being honest (and neither was Mrs Blackout, and she has a far greater reservoir of wartime romantic literature/cinema references to draw upon than I do). It's not so much that I found the course of events unbelievable between Lucille (Michelle Williams), a reluctant landowner whose philandering husband has been drafted to the front-lines, and Bruno (Matthias Schoenaerts), a visiting Nazi officer who writes symphonies in his spare time and doesn't really like all that Being A Nazi stuff, despite Still Being A Nazi. And it's not that their respective portrayals are at fault, either. I just didn't buy the chemistry between them. Or, more to the point, I found the sociological story far more interesting than the romantic one.
Not quite destined for all-time-greatness, Suite Française is still a compelling watch and worth a Sunday afternoon viewing. But if that viewing is at home in about three months time, you probably won't lose too much in the transition…
Probably not unless you know it's your thing before you go in.
Rental, I reckon.
Not the absolute best, but never less than inherently watchable…
Partly.
Not at all.
There bloody isn't.
Michelle Williams starred in 2010's Shutter Island, as did Max Von Sydow, who's due to appear in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
*1 It's worth keeping in mind that while Suite Française isn't a true story, it was written during the war by someone on the receiving end of the hardships, so it's very difficult to pass off as mere fiction on a tonal level.
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.
Now I'll openly admit that I read the plot synopsis for Only God Forgives on the film's Wiki page before I went to the cinema this evening. After the trouble I had with Drive*1, I felt the need to be fully informed before watching, and frankly I'm glad I did. It never gets to absolute crisis-point, but there are hallucination-sequences that threaten to derail things on several occasions, and even the more straightforward scenes are smouldering looks and things left unsaid. This is an arthouse film, playing in a multiplex; and there's no judgement there, that's just the way it is.
But the film looks, and feels, outstanding. Cinematographer Larry Smith captures a Bangkok that's gritty without being dirty, and Refn makes it salacious without being vulgar. There's an edge of menace to the underworld, but it's not shown with any derision or judgement. Kristin Scott Thomas is on particularly good form in here; thoroughly unlikeable, although that's exactly the point. Ryan Gosling plays Ryan Gosling™. Not a bad thing, but you've seen it before. And despite his self-serving tendency to execute the spirit of the law, if not the letter, Vithaya Pansringarm's Police Lieutenant Chang is the most sympathetic character in the whole hour and a half, and he's a borderline psychopath. All the other main players are intriguing, certainly, but not to the point where you necessarily care what happens to them. Which is probably just as well. A couple of the more violent scenes did have me cackling in my seat, not least because of the bold move in including them in the first place. Let's just say it earns that 18 certificate.
In short, if the trailer pushes your buttons you'll enjoy what the film has in store. If it leaves you scratching your head, you'll continue to do this throughout Only God Forgives.
Visually arresting, thematically stunning, narratively bewildering. Refn persists in his attempt to turn me into a reverse film snob, but while his films look this beautiful I can't give up on him just yet.
Well, largely.
Sometimes, yes.
I have no idea.
It looks beautiful, but your DVD player should be able to do it justice.
No.
Maybe.
Not that I heard.
Is it just me? OGF's Rotten Tomatoes score would suggest not, but is it?
*1 I don't care what anyone says, that film is fucking infuriating. Even when things are going on, nothing's happening.
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've learned a lesson today. I've found my line. It's at my local multiplex, watching the sequel to G.I. Joe in eye-straining 3D. Leaving aside my grumbles with the Independent Cinema which was to be my venue for the film*1, I probably didn't bond with Dans La Maison as much as the director intended.
The short version is, I found it hard to like the central character, the school-teacher Germain, and he's the one we're supposed to be relating to. And if I can't get along with him, you can only imagine how I felt about the others; the flawed, oblivious, lying, narcissistic characters which flesh out two hours of deliberately ambiguous, depressing whimsy. Outside of these, I didn't particularly enjoy the story, either in narrative or in subtext. I'd like to think it's a cultural difference, but I know it isn't; it's an entirely personal disconnect.
But, at its core, Dans La Maison is a story about writing, itself. I found it extremely irritating that Germain frequently berates his protegé, Claud, for using form over content when the film I was watching had a patchy form and next to no content. It felt a little like a concussion sufferer trying to recount details of an accident he barely remembers being in; disjointed, confusing, and ultimately aimless.
At the end of the two hours, as the credits rolled, I thought to myself 'what have I gained from the story I've just watched?. With the best will in the world, the answer is fuck all.
There are shades of Ruby Sparks, except that it all pretty much happens as you see it, and you can't like anyone on screen. So that's all good, then.
I feel no shame whatsoever in longing for Iron Man 3 at my local Cineworld.
Kinda.
Not really.
Probably. Just not what I want it to achieve.
Pfff. DVD, I suppose.
Oh, yes..
Nope.
I wish.
*1 I'll save that for another post.
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.
