Gifted Cert: 12A / 101 mins / Dir. Marc Webb / Trailer
My local cinema hosted an advance screening of Marc Webb's new movie last week. I was due to go, but plans shifted so that I delayed watching a heartwarming, uplifting tale of sacrifice, perseverance and belief in favour of seeing an old friend and getting blind drunk instead. This decision-making process should indicate that I'm not really the target audience for Gifted, and the rest of this review should be translated accordingly.
In the blue-collar coastal suburbs of Florida, Frank Adler (Chris Evans) is the adoptive uncle of orphaned mathematical prodigy Mary (Mckenna Grace), struggling with moving her from homeschooling to mainstream education in a bid to build her social skills and let her enjoy her childhood. But a regular school offers no intellectual challenges, only behavioural ones, and the child's grandmother has other plans for Mary's development...
What begins as an ochre-washed, ukulele driven twee-fest to rival the best of Nicholas Sparks*1, goes through the motions of sighs, tears, revelations, pacing of the courtroom floor, the swelling of the strings-section and hugs before bedtime. The film is efficiently executed, but lacks inspiration all round. Credit where it's due, the central performances by Mckenna Grace and Chris Evans are very strong. They're excellent individually, and the pair have a chemistry in their scenes together which defines the heart of the film. And Gifteddoes have a heart, it just expresses that through the medium of Hallmark Channel Autopilot™.
As Octavia Spencer's over-protective neighbour, Jenny Slate's wet-blanket of a teacher and Linsday Duncan's meddling grandmother-character dutifully tick off the boxes on their Plot Device Checklist, the problem soon arises that the more secondary/ancillary characters are introduced, the more irreversibly clichéd the while thing becomes. The film sags terribly at around the half-way mark and never manages to regain its composure. Even a shoehorned sequence of 'will Frank make the drive across town before they put the cat to sleep?'*2, is so phoned-in that by the time our hero breathlessly arrives in the vet's backroom murder-chamber, Ginger Fred's basically sitting filing his claws murmuring "Oh, you're here, then?". It's a safe play in a script that was never going to take any risks in the first place.
Also, this loses a point for Frank using 'Legos' as a collective term for pieces of the popular branded construction-set. And if the kid had been as bright as the screenplay makes out, she'd have thoroughly schooled him over that one. Legos. I ask you.
I understand why Evans wanted to do Gifted, of course, and as he's one of the two great things about the movie it's another string to his bow. But as not-inconsiderable as that bow is, the string itself is thoroughly unremarkable…
*1 Full disclosure, I'm generalising there. I've never watched any Nicholas Sparks output. Seen plenty of trailers, haven't had the strength to attempt the films themselves though. I seem to recall seeing the promo-reel for The Longest Ride and thinking 'but this looks exactly the same as every other story he's written?'. Then it occurred to me that the target demographic for these movies probably has that precise reaction while I'm two rows away squealing over the latest Marvel trailer, so fair play I suppose... [ BACK ]
*2 Spoiler: of course he does. Although I'd be interested to see one of these flicks where he doesn't. Where the wheels basically fall off everything at the end of Act III, and the final scene features the mentor character talking to their young charge, saying "Yeah, that's life I'm afraid. An unending torrent of inconvenience, loss and pain where everything drifts toward entropy until you're too tired to fight and too numb to care. But hey, there's always bourbon. Whiskey for me, biscuits for you; you're only eight.", then the beaten-car drives off into a sunset while the camera tracks over to a dude wearing a 'the end is nigh' sandwich board and the gun poorly concealed in the pocket of his dirty coat...
And that's why they keep returning my screenplays. [ 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.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Cert: 15 / 119 mins / Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu
I don't particularly enjoy using phrases like 'superlative performance' or 'plays with the form', largely because they make me sound like I'm trying to be a film-critic rather than a movie-reviewer, and especially in this case as director Alejandro Iñárritu has plenty to say about critics (although he also has plenty to say about audiences, for that matter).
Nonetheless, this two-hour joyride of surreal adrenaline stretches 'the form' to breaking point, being a film, play, dream-sequence and monologue all-in-one. Presented as a single, unbroken hand-held camera-shot*1, Birdman is relentless, picking up the viewer like the levitating Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) in its opening scene and refusing to put them down as they laugh, cry, rage and fly with Keaton for the duration of the film. With two notable exceptions, the film is soundtracked purely by jazz drummer Antonio Sanchez (and while a drummer often appears in-shot, that's not actually him), with the tempo always syncopated, but growing more erratic as Riggan's breakdown looms.
Trading heavily and only semi-ironically on Keaton's IRL role as Batman, we spend the vast majority of the running time seeing things through his eyes as the washed-up actor creates, directs and stars in an ambitious Broadway play, adapting the work of one of his favourite writers, Raymond Carver, in a bid to prove that he's more than just a has-been celeb in a bird-costume.
The screenplay is brutally self-aware, with the Birdman character and in-movie actor names seeming to be the only fictionalised aspects, as pop-culture references and icons of the 20th and 21st centuries are ruthlessly deconstructed. Birdman is Keaton's show of course, in a career-defining role played as only he could, but it couldn't be done without the stunning supporting performances from Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Amy Ryan and Zach Galifianakis. While their characters often seem underdeveloped, it's mainly because that's how Riggan sees them. My only niggle is that the final act of the film all but abandons the secondary characters as Riggan's psychoses close in, also leaving behind much of the dry humour that preceded it. I also have to admire that Birdman chooses not to close on the two natural end-points which occur, but on the third and actual one (which is admittedly better). I may not like that necessarily, but I admire it.
By no means a throwaway film, Birdman will command your attention from start to finish, but that's not to say it won't be enjoyed by fans of indie-film and superhero-movies alike.
Never has the phrase 'the lie that tells the truth' seemed more appropriate…
It begins to be, but nothing can come as close as the film itself.
I did.
Absolutely.
If the trailer appeals, go and find this movie at the nearest cinema to you, forthwith.
I will a bit, yeah.
I will.
There isn't.
Does anyone else want a Birdman animated mini-series anyway?
Just because?
*1 And it's not, but it's presented very effectively as one, and I confess that I spent more time than was strictly necessary ticking off the edit-points.
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.
About Time (second-pass Heavy spoilers)
Cert: 12A / 123 mins / Dir. Richard Curtis
…or 'Why the time-travel mechanism in the new Richard Curtis time-travel film is irretrievably broken'.
Hello. Some caveats before I start: 1) I do love this film, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to pick it the fuck apart. 2) Before any of you feel the need to tell me that time-travel doesn't exist anyway, I know that - I'm deconstructing this with the same rules that were used to build it. I'm not going to be applying the time-travel rules/mechanisms of other movies, even though I will reference them. I'm basing this on the internal logic of the film itself. 3) None of this will make sense if you haven't seen About Time. Obviously. If you want to read a spoiler-free review of the film, I did one here.
Right. *cracks knuckles*
1) In the closet.
When our hero Tim first time-jumps, it's to a New Year's Eve party the night before. At around lunchtime on New Year's Day, he zips upstairs and stands in the wardrobe, grips his hands tightly and appears at 11:59 the night before. This gives him just enough time to run down to the party and kiss the girl he fancies as the clock strikes twelve. Smashing. Well done, Tim. My question is, what happened to the original 11:58 Tim? Future-Tim doesn't zap into his body a la Quantum Leap, because the original 'didn't-kiss-the-girl' Tim wasn't standing in a wardrobe at 11:59; so in the reconfigured timeline, what happens to downstairs-Tim when his replacement arrives?
From what we see in the movie, it's not like Back To The Future where multiple-selves can exist in the same timeframe (and indeed, given the last beautiful scene with Tim and his dad on the beach, it appears that jumpers do manifest their earlier bodies when it suits the plot). So why does Tim materialise in the wardrobe?
2) I can't believe it's not butterfly.
Despite Tim's dad's assurances that the universe hasn't been (thus far) torn apart by the family's meddling in the space-time continuum, the fact remains that if the past can be changed, causality is a factor, and there is a danger of immense damage being done, not least to the jumper*1.
When Tim breaks the cardinal rule and shows his non-jumping sister his ability (and I'm not even going to complain about how he's somehow able to transport her back in time as well), they arrive at the party, change the course of history and zip back home, with Kit Kat being amazed that she's wearing different clothes and that everything really has changed.
Except in this newly created strand of the timeline, Tim and Kit Kat would have had no reason to be standing in the cupboard they return to, especially not at the time they return to. Let's not forget that there's no such thing as a small tweak, especially the larger the gap is between the present and the point you're changing. The fact that Tim says "this is going to be weird" means it's at least occurred to him, but with a change as massive as the one they engineer, their family life would be almost unrecognisable once they return to it, and there are bound to be other unfortunate side-effects which they weren't expecting.
If anything, this is illustrated by the film's failsafe device, whereby travelling back beyond a certain point changes the sex, hair-colour and personality of children unborn at that point*2. Tim's dad's assertion that "a different time or different position" can substitute an entire person is exactly why you can't realistically hope to solve any problems that will impact on any non-jumper's life. In the new timestream, how many other people died in seemingly unconnected, chaos-theory circumstances due to Kit Kat and Jimmy not being together? Would Tim's dad really just give that knowing smile at the New Year's Eve party, knowing that the boy he hasn't told about time-travel "yet" is clearly and openly messing with the timestream in an unruly way?
3) Thanks for the memories.
As I mentioned, upon returning to the cupboard, Kit Kat is amazed at her new life and how everything turned out better (y'know, as opposed to freaking out and wondering why she's just popped into a dark cupboard with her brother when she'd previously been sitting in a coffee shop thinking about how great her life is). Why is she amazed? Well, it's because she remembers both timelines. She remembers the wreck that her old life had become, and that she's now seeing Jay due to her actions at the key-point in her past. Tim however, doesn't have any knowledge of the subsequent events in the newly created timeline. When it turns out that the re-routing has resulted in Tim and Mary having a completely different baby, he still remembers the old thread with his daughter (as opposed to his 'replacement' son), despite the fact that he was present when the timeline was actually altered, and has no recollection of the restructured life he now leads (and I'm not even going to complain about the miracle that he's still living at the same house, etc). Why does Kit Kat know the new layout of reality, but not Tim? Will Kit Kat's knowledge of her alternate past fade like a dream, in time?
Just like everyone else in the world he returns to, Tim has lived through the intervening days/months/years since the junction-point, but unlike everyone else he has no genuine memories of what's happened, only what is now a false-past. He's effectively an amnesiac. He knows his family and friends up to a point, but he'll now have friendships, acquaintances, maybe even jobs that he has no knowledge of (in which case there will be entire skill-sets which have been seemingly forgotten as they haven't been learned by the returned traveller).
To make matters worse, Tim will now be unable to jump back to any point in between the rift he and Kit Kat created and their return point, as he can't remember any details in between to jump back to. Anything he wishes to alter in the new-present will have to be experimentally changed back at the junction-point. He could always jump back further, of course, but then he runs the risk of erasing the initial junction. Whichever way he chooses, making further alterations to the timeline will only compound the problems he faces on his return. The further back Tim jumps (where he's affecting a timestream change, of course; the final jump-within-jump with his dad is perfectly permissible), the more knowledge he risks losing. A persistent traveller could end up almost self-lobotomised, unable to recognise the world around him save for a few key faces, and unable to reset the timeline no matter how desperately he tries.
Which would be a great explanation for ditzy, forgetful Uncle Desmond, frankly. I think there's an untold wraparound/sequel to be told with Desmond making increasingly irrevocable changes to his timeline, and growing more and more insane with each jump. I don't think it'd be especially funny, but I want to see it. Although Desmond is introduced in the first five minutes of the film as "Mum's brother", so that's another opportunity wasted, eh Curtis?
And when I can find all that wrong with a film and still love it, it's got to be a bit special. About Time is great, but it has holes you could drive a DeLorean through...
Mostly, although the film carries more weight than the trailer can.
I did.
It does.
If you haven't seen it by this point, you're probably going to wait for the DVD. But yeah. Cinema.
A little.
Yes.
No.
So. What would you change? (and keep it lighthearted, yeah?)
*1 For example, Tim could have changed the timeline so that Kit Kat didn't have a car crash a year later, only to create a one where he did and was killed a week after the party. As soon as he tried to return to his present-self body, he'd cease to exist. Think, Tim, think! *2 Although at the time of Tim and his dad's last jump, Mary is pregnant again. Not only could this conceivably (no pun intended) change the sex of the developing foetus, but also change Tim's two existing children. Again. Admittedly, the final jump doesn't directly affect any other people, being on a deserted beach, but the principal still remains, even moreso with a jump-gap like that. For crying out loud, Tim / Tim's dad! Then again, Tim's dad also says that nothing changes "until it pops out", which is clearly bollocks as babies aren't assembled in the last five minutes or pregnancy. But I digress…
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.
About Time (Mild spoilers)
Cert: 12A / 123 mins / Dir. Richard Curtis
Wow. This one sort of crept up out of nowhere, with very little in the way of publicity. The advance screening of the new Richard Curtis comedy played to a modest audience*1, and was policed by two suited gentlemen asking people to turn their phones off at the door. Naturally, this didn't stop at least one person from turning it back on and texting during the film. But it makes Universal feel happy, and the audience feel important, so that's all good.
I digress.
So, the good news… I really rather enjoyed About Time. It's way too long*2, largely because the first two acts are essentially a very twee version of Groundhog Day, and the third one feels like an extra film's been tacked on the end; but when Curtis finally ups the ante in that last section, you're glad of the groundwork that's been painstakingly laid. The last half-hour is really what the film's about, and apart from a slightly preachy final five minutes, it's worth waiting for. For all my grumbling about Bill Nighy, he's been brilliantly cast in this, and despite Domhnall Gleeson's and Rachel McAdams' parts having been transparently written for the Grant/Roberts dynamic, they're on par with Nighy as the high-points of the film. Oh, and Tom Hollander is absolutely marvellous, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't meant to find him as likeable as I did. At its core, About Time is a film about love, romantic and familial; and if it takes a poorly executed time-travel mechanism to tell that story, so be it.
Oh, the bad news is that the time-travel mechanism is quite poorly executed (for reasons I won't go into here for fear of spoiling the film). Early on in the movie, we get Bill Nighy paraphrase Basil Exposition with his "…don't you worry about all that" speech, from which point we're meant to just accept it for what it is. Which would be easier to do if it wasn't so fascinatingly used, quite often. It should work, and I wanted it to work, but for anyone who's thought about any t/t movie they've ever seen, there are holes you can drive a bus through. The easiest way to think of it is that About Time is to time-travel movies what Shaun of the Dead is to zombie flicks; it's not what it's about, but it's how the story happens.
There also seem to be setups for potential callbacks/explanations littered around the film which don't get tied up. But I'm aware that could be me thinking with my time-travel head on. If I review this again, I'll delve deeply and mercilessly, I promise you.
If you can forgive the duration, About Time is a funny, moving film that deserves a wider audience that it'll probably get. Although it also deserves a more ruthless editor…
No, it's better than the trailer.
For the most part, yes.
Eventually, yes.
It's great on a massive screen, but you won't lose anything by watching it at home.
A little.
I will.
There isn't, strangely..
You'd put at least one bet on at the bookies though, wouldn't you? No, you would.
*1 I mean 'modest' in terms of quantity, of course. I, for one, am pretty fantastic.
*2 I'm still not sure if it's strangely ironic or comfortingly fitting that a film about time-travel can feel too long. It's definitely one of those.
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.
