StateLikeSleep Cert: 15 / 100 mins / Dir. Meredith Danluck / Trailer State Like Sleep is a psychological thriller from writer/director Meredith Danluck. American fashion photographer Katherine Grand (Katherine Waterston, Inherent Vice) is slowly rebuilding her life after her actor husband Stefan Delvoe (Michael Huisman, The Age Of Adaline) is found dead in their Brussels apartment from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot.
Twelve months later with her mother hospitalised after a series of strokes, the property is due to be sold and Katherine returns to empty it. But revisiting her old life rekindles unsolved mysteries, and soon Katherine is drawn into a seedy underground club scene where she meets her husband’s secret friend Emile (Luke Evans, Midway) as well as her own enigmatic hotel-neighbour Edward (Michael Shannon, Midnight Special).
PROBLEM Despite some solid casting, the main problem is that the emotionally-anaesthetised characters and their sprawling story aren’t particularly interesting, yet neither are they presented in a particularly interesting way. And since Katherine knows at the time of his death that Stefan had issues with drugs and women, there’s no revelation awaiting her return. Everything she finds out about Stefan’s life comes more as an explanation rather than a shock.
The film’s 100 languorous minutes feel far more ordinary than a film with this cast ever should. Scenes taking place in the fetish club aren’t as provocative as they’re perhaps intended to be, and the sequences in which Katherine is quietly wide-eyed on a variety of recreational drugs feel worryingly similar to those where she’s not.
VOODOO And so what could easily have been a solid yet unambitious thriller turns out to not even make it to that mark. Originally filmed in 2016, State Like Sleep finally saw its US release back in January 2019, with an international straight-to-domestic follow up almost a year later. It’s not difficult to see why there’s been little enthusiasm to get this out there.
At one point, Katherine propositions Edward into casual sex with the disclaimer “It doesn’t have to mean anything, it can just be tonight”, seemingly unaware that this should really be the tagline for the front of the DVD…
A load of stuff on Netflix that you've never heard of.
The £3 DVD shelf in ASDA.
The distributors have wisely taken that decision out of your hands.
Stream it out of idle curiosity if you must.
Not not likely.
Quite possible.
Definitely not.
Level 2: Katherine Waterston is in this, and she was in that Logan Lucky with Adam 'Kylo' Driver and Daniel 'Gullible First Order Stormtrooper' Craig.
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.
Midway Cert: 12A / 138 mins / Dir. Roland Emmerich / Trailer
"War", as George O'Dowd once sang, "is stupid". Not to let this lie, he further opined"and people are stupid". Now, a mere thirty five years later, Roland Emmerich has refined, combined and underlined those points with merciless efficiency in his new offering, Midway.
If you've ever wonder what the grubby-end of a brutal and complicated global conflict would look like when filtered through the brain which brought us twoIndependence Daymovies and White House Down, you're in luck. Although if you have ever wondered that, you already know exactly what it would be like before you sit down. God help up all.
PEARL Ostensibly telling the True Story™ of the eponymous 1942 battle which turned the tide for the Allies after the Pearl Harbour attack, Midway is exactly what you'd expect from a movie whose gritty, blue-collar, All-American reluctant hero is literally named Dick Best*1. And that accolade works both for and against the film, depending on your pre-existing view of these things. This is a war movie, and it looks, acts and smells like a war movie. The smell, in fact, is palpable.
Credit where it's due, the many adrenaline-fuelled aerial combat scenes in Midway are absolutely outstanding, although they're coincidentally the ones where the cast do the least amount of talking. The film's script - laughably mechanical, its delivery often moreso - appears to have been assembled using the most textbook lines from the corniest war flicks by a team of 15yr old Call Of Duty enthusiasts, one of whom has an older brother "in the army". To think that this is in any way a serious tribute to those who died during the Second World War rather than an emotionally clichéd, thinly-veiled disaster epic would be to walk straight into the trap of its mid-November release date.
HOWARD The whole thing appears to be anchored to enough historical fact to prevent it being a complete waste of time, but what a way to manhandle the truth. That said, I couldn't hate Midway because it is what it is and that's a Roland Emmerich movie. But it's very clearly - and very cynically - aimed at a particular type of audience, and in that regard I must concede that it succeeds fairly well*2. But rest assured, this is far closer to the flag-waving of Battleship than the reflection of They Shall Not Grow Old.
Approach with extreme caution.
Banging a tin tray on your head for just over two hours.
For the combat scenes, yes.
Everything there is to love about this movie is on a big screen, so no.
It is not.
That's incredibly likely.
Inexplicably not.
Level 1: Tobias Beckett is in this.
I mean let's not get excited, Tobias Beckett was in Venom...
*1 And let me stop you right there. Yes, thanks to the helpful caption-cards acting as the film's inevitable coda, I know that "Richard 'Dick' Best" is the actual pilot's actual name. I can also clearly envision Roland Emmerich sitting in a room learning that nugget of information and yelling "Lads! Lads! This film is fucking writing ITSELF!!!".
Dick Best.
Dick. Best.
The fact that it's true somehow makes it much, much worse. It's perhaps notable that the gentleman's wikipedia page makes one solitary mention of his informal nickname. Which is to say that the film could have just called him Rick or Richard, but didn't. There is so much testosterone in this movie that our cinema gave it a half-time intermission so it could go out for a shave. Adding insult to injury is that Best is played by Ed Skrein, an over-acting live-action cartoon of a performer who at least has finally found his natural habitat under Emmerich's auspices.
*2 Yes, I'm aware that this sounds incredibly snobby, but in my defence I am an incredible snob... [ 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.
Ma Cert: 15 / 99 mins / Dir. Tate Taylor / Trailer
So apparently John Hughes movies are something that middle-aged people do now while the kids are out having fun. I knew that. Of course I knew that, I'm down with the kids. More importantly, I know that holding on to obsessions from your school-days at the expense of broader cultural perspectives leads only to bad places. Tate Taylor told me that. And how.
STALKER Yes his new movie, Ma, wears its love for dark nostalgia and high-school stalker movies on its sleeve as Octavia Spencer's Sue Ann (aka the eponymous antagonist) is the simmering pot which finally boils over in smalltown Ohio. It begins like a fairly run-of-the-mill teen horror as Erica (Juliette Lewis) moves back to her old hometown with teenage daughter Maggie (Diana Silvers) in tow after a separation. There's a distinctly indie edge to the opening and some very economical backstory exposition. Maggie quickly makes friends with her schoolmates, and an under-age booze run puts them in touch with Sue Ann, who offers the gang full use of her basement as a party-den, seemingly out of the goodness of her heart.
We move into more traditional psychological thriller fare with Ma's gradual flashbacks accompanying the unwinding of painful threads, but these still serve the purpose of the film well. Spencer is on absolute panto-form here, and it suits her. And although the movie centers around Maggie and her teenage cohorts, it's great to see a solidly capable supporting cast of 'the adults', and even better that they have constructive parts to play within the story*1.
THEODOSIA 99 minutes is a solid runtime for a movie of this nature. The whole thing moves along at such a pace that it's difficult for Taylor to really build up the foreboding atmosphere you'd expect, meaning Spencer has to work harder to sell Ma's full unhingedness by the final act. But sell it she does, with some classic batshit-crazy escalation.
The climactic sequence has quite a bitter edge to it, after writer Scotty Landes has been careful to build up enough sympathy for Sue Ann that her nastiness is justified, but not so much that it's excused.
There's not as much biting satire or behavioural-sermonising as you'd perhaps expect, but Ma is still a fun social-horror flick which demonstrates that the real monsters don't live in dusty basements.
Although they're happy to lend theirs out for parties if you promise not to misbehave…
There are notes of Carrie, Unfriended 2 and Get Out here, as well as a cracking nod-and-a-wink in the direction of Misery.
This film works well with a crowd, if that's your bag (a gentleman in the row behind me became Vocally Concerned at one point which I won't delve into here).
It is.
Probably not, but still something to be proud of on the CV.
That's unlikely.
There isn't.
Level 1: The voice of Aly San San in the rebooted Star Tours is in this.
Yes it counts.
*1 Although there's an awful lot of "OMG hey! I haven't seen you since, like high-school!!" going on here, considering the town's entire population seems to only be in double figures… [ 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.
And, relax. After the pleasant surprise that was Disney's retelling of Cinderella, but followed the next year by a rendition of The Jungle Book which left me blank-faced, I wasn't exactly a quivering bundle of excitement for Beauty And The Beast being given the same live-action treatment. Which would partly explain why it took me a week to set aside the time to go see it.
But the Friday-night performance of the film (and in my local's largest auditorium) was veritably packed. Considering there are still five-showings a day and it's been out for a week, this is an excellent turn and good news for everybody. Speaking of which, let's cut to the chase: Beauty And The Beast is marvellous. I see no reason to build up to praise, here. Following the framework of the classic story, it's primarily a remake of the 1991 animated film, with branches of the 1994 Broadway musical grafted on. And it is, to be blunt, perfect Disney.
Emma Watson and Dan Stevens bring equally bold performances, with subtle character-development on each side which could easily be overlooked by many another director. They're reliably supported by an ensemble cast of established character actors*1 and near-flawless visuals. There are enough songs to make the film A Musical™, but still plenty of gaps in between to allow for actual storytelling to occur. Although speaking of the cast, I can't help but feel that the Scottish Ewan McGregor's vocal performance as the French candelabra Lumiere is a calculated, 30-year payback for Christopher Lambert's work in Highlander. Never entirely comfortable with anything other than his native-brogue or Kenobi British, the actor's nowhere near 'bad' here but always just sounds like Ewan McGregor putting on an arch, comedy-French accent.
And speaking of retribution, there's been much (and needless) controversy about Josh Gad's LeFou being depicted as gay in the film, of course. While his moments are certainly played up for comic relief, he is nonetheless one of the film's character high-points. But the cynic in me couldn't help but wonder if this more sympathetic turn is Gad showing some form of penitence for his borderline homophobic character in PIxels. I actually hope it is.
But all in all, there's really very little for me to say about Beauty And The Beast. The audience know what they're going in for, and the film delivers. Although more eager to see the film that I was, Mrs Blackout actually found the film's finale to be a bit over the top. I, on the other hand, think that by that point, the film has earned every second of its self-indulgent and boisterous crescendo.
With a cast this strong, probably not, to be fair.
Nope.
I didn't hear one.
Which is ridiculous, because there's a five-minute segment just crying out for it.
Level 1: This film's got the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi in it.
*1 With the unsurprising exception of Luke Evans, who seems to think he's starring in an am-dram pantomime version of the tale. It's perhaps not his fault as he's a) almost uniformly awful in everything, and b) been mis-cast terribly to begin with. While Gaston is certainly a deplorable archetype, part of that is his deceptively-dashing exterior. It's never a 'reveal' that the character's actually an arsehole, but you're supposed to come to the conclusion gradually. Evans' version just looks like a wrong'un from the moment he steps onto set, barking like Peter Kay auditioning for The Pirates Of Penzance… [ 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.
Now you could go to see The Girl On The Train and compare it, perhaps unfavourably, to last year's Gone Girl. Alternatively, you could make the same comparison after watching the trailer and save yourself two hours*1...
Troubled commuter Rachel gazes out of the train window every day, imagining the details of the perfect lives of strangers. But when one such subject, Megan Hepwell*2, goes missing, a police investigation turns up unexpected connections between the two and unearths more uncertainty than it resolves...
Tate Taylor's adaptation of the best-selling novel runs in dual timelines, each slowly filling in the past and the present, intertwining to paint a full picture (yeah, like Gone Girl). And that's fine, but the drawback is that the past of the core players becomes much more important (and more interesting) than their present/future. Despite a sizeable secondary and tertiary cast-list, there are really only five characters in the story (and one of them's dead for most of it. Spoilers), so when the curtain is lifted on the final reveal it works, but you could imagine three other versions of the film showing different outcomes and being just as convincing. With this in mind, it's probably not unfair to say that the performances in The Girl On The Train are far better than the film itself.
Speaking of which, Emily Blunt's performance in particular is far better than everyone else's. I was initially concerned that she opens the film basically 'turned up to 10' as neurotic alcoholic Rachel, because where do you take things from there? But to her eternal credit, as the film slowly digs deeper and piles up tension around the character, Blunt sustains her unhinged intensity perfectly. Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson both put in strong turns, albeit with slightly flimsier characters; Justin Theroux and Edgar Ramírez chew the scenery slightly as one-note placeholders (in a nice reversal of typical Hollywood gender-typecasting); and Luke Evans seems to have peaked for the year, so is back to comedy-scowling and failing to control an accent in a built-up screenplay. Bless him.
All in all, The Girl On The Train is a pretty good thriller. It's just nowhere near as groundbreaking or insightful as it seems to hope it is*3.
It's not essential to your enjoyment of the film, no.
I think so, but it's not trying to reinvent the genre or anything.
Blunt is on top form here, with reliably solid support.
Nah.
Nah.
Level 2: You remember when that Emily Blunt was in Wild Target with that Ewan 'Kenobi' McGregor? Well, she was…
*1 That joke stolen wholesale and unashamedly from Mr Stewart Lee.
*2 Although Megan's life isn't that perfect, is it? Water-view from her balcony or not, she's still got a commuter-level train track running past the bottom of the garden. Good luck trying to get a lie-in with that racket going on…
*3 Although it's nice that when you find out who-did-it, there's no deep psychological layering to explore. It's just "yeah, because [person] is an arsehole, mate". Which is probably far, far closer to most real-life cases of this type, I'm guessing. Fair play.
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.
State Like Sleep is a psychological thriller from writer/director Meredith Danluck. American fashion photographer Katherine Grand (Katherine Waterston, Inherent Vice) is slowly rebuilding her life after her actor husband Stefan Delvoe (Michael Huisman, The Age Of Adaline) is found dead in their Brussels apartment from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot.
