Review: Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer
(Spoilers)
Cert: 15 / 180 mins / Dir. Christopher Nolan / Trailer

Oppenheimer is a three hour, period-set film about nascent nuclear weaponry from a provenly competent storyteller which somehow features neither a young Emmet Brown sitting in a physics lesson nor Indiana Jones in a fridge.

Christopher Nolan is a fucking coward*¹.

*¹ Okay, I'll keep this as brief as I can. The note about Doctors Brown and Jones is obviously a joke. The score is not. I did not enjoy Oppenheimer. Then again, I genuinely believe that it's a film not created for enjoyment in any traditional sense, quite a demanding piece to watch and unsatisfying by narrative necessity. We should certainly expect no less a challenge from Christopher Nolan though, just as we wouldn't want him to be anything other than himself as a filmmaker. I suppose.

Playing with non-linear storytelling once again, Oppenheimer is framed as two separate interviews with associated sets of intertwining and converging flashbacks, each spanning the same twenty-or-so years from different points of view, where the guy we're supposed to be rooting for is demonstrated as being a dysfunctional, womanising moral-vacuum who's figured out how to most efficiently carry out genocide before the nazis and complains non-stop about this before, during and after the fact. Leaving a spray of failed personal and professional relationships in his wake, we see Oppo systematically piss off just about everybody in his life and then act surprised when they take against him...

Of course, this wouldn't be a Christopher Nolan movie without mumbled, unintelligible dialogue from the most important characters, battling here against Ludwig Göransson's piercing, intrusive score in a sound-mix that was finalised while somebody was hoovering. All of this has the pacing and delivery of high-drama, but with the implication of a storyline rather than the exposition of one. I know Nolan doesn't like to spoon-feed his audience, but Oppenheimer doesn't even have cutlery on the table.

You see, despite the device itself having a supporting role on the film's poster, this movie is not actually about Da Bomb. This is just as well, because shortly into the first act Nolan realises he can't narratively simplify for the audience either quantum physics nor the workings of an atom bomb, so quickly stops trying. What the movie actually is, is three clinical hours of dislikeable characters doing unpleasant but necessary admin and then everyone being unable to cope with the fall-out (literal, as well as metaphorical) of that, interspersed with the micro-management of international and domestic U.S. politics of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. So I was hardly expecting Terminator 2, but this is lots (lots) of middle-aged white guys in suits sitting around withholding information and showing they really can't be trusted (I go to the cinema to get away from that), leaving the cinema audience with quite frankly nobody to root for. Other than the demonstrable sociopath the film is named after. I suppose.

In terms of moral debate, Oppenheimer occupies the same shelf as Eye In The Sky and Red Joan, where hand-wringing and thousand-yard stares nudge aside the brutal practicalities of Not Losing A War. I never thought I'd watch a movie where Matt Damon plays the most rounded and sympathetic character, but here we are.

While the two timeline strands are clearly delineated by the use of colour, the content in each rarely seems complementary or interactive enough to warrant the effort. Like several of the director's recent pieces, the presentation seems needlessly fiddly yet is perhaps the only thing saving a story which would otherwise be grindingly linear. But without a solid grounding in the U.S. politics surrounding the Second World War, it all comes out as a mess anyway. It certainly feels like there's a price of entry here that's separate from the one printed on the ticket...

Biggest bugbear: We know that test-bomb's not going to destroy the world, lads; we're all here in 2023 watching the film and we'd probably have heard about that before now.

Second biggest bugbear: So what are these clandestine, closed-room hearings for, exactly? What are the nefarious powers in faceless American government trying to do to Mr Oppenheimer, who single-handedly won all of that very specific part of the late-war for them? Are the Suits trying to have him silenced? Discredited? Ruined? Killed, even? No, they're trying to remove his security-clearance. They want his badge back, that's all. They don't want the guy swanning around the lab like he owns the place ten years after he built them a super-bomb and has done nothing since but wear out the buttons on the highly-subsidised coffee machine. Just have a bit of dignity and retire, Oppo. Jeez...

Oh and bonus points to Kenneth Branagh, failing to control an accent in a built-up screenplay. Again. Proof positive that our celebrated auteur director was either distracted on-set, or deaf.

In short (and I'll bet you wish you hadn't clicked into this footnote now), Chris Nolan has not made a genuinely great film since Inception. There, I said it. ^{[ 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.

Review: Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
Cert: 15 / 105 mins / Dir. Kevin Smith / Trailer



Well, it looks like I may have been hasty in calling Once Upon A Time In Hollywood the most self-indulgent flick of 2019. You live and learn.

Also living and claiming to learn is geek-maestro Kevin Smith, who after a near-fatal heart attack last year has regrouped the troops and crafted a follow-up to 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. When the eponymous pair learn that a movie studio has plans to relaunch Bluntman and Chronic after legally pilfering Jay and Silent Bob’s intellectual property rights, the boys embark on a roadtrip from New Jersey to Hollywood to stop that happening. Yes, like last time.

FINE

It genuinely pains me, reader, to tell you that Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is fine. 'Fine'. Because I don’t want it to be ‘fine’, I want it to be great. Fine isn't great. Fuck it, fine isn't even fine. I want to love this because Smith has made some of my all-time favourite, go-to movies, and I know he’s better than this lazy, opportunistic rehash. Shamelessly anachronistic in both tone and execution, a vast swathe of characters and performers from previous entries in the View Askewniverse enter and leave, each ham-fistedly issuing catchphrases and callbacks that feel like Peter Kay was the script-consultant. Because looking in to the camera and telling your audience they’re being ripped off isn't clever unless you subversively add some new ideas or themes.

More a paid-for backslap than a retrospective or confessional, Reboot is part cosplay, part tribute-act, part reunion. And like most reunions, you look at your watch after about an hour and realize you’re done and you’d rather be at home. The film doesn’t have the inherent silliness of Smith’s glory days and the irreverence just feels forced now. Some things do stay true to form however, and the writer/director is still tone-deaf when it comes to actual sentiment. But that never stopped him in the past so why would it now?

TRUE

The worst part is, this isn’t awful. It just plays like a grindingly average fan-film, like everything Kevin Smith’s critics have been accusing him of for years and now the prophecy has self-fulfilled and Smith is last to notice.

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot feels like a first-draft screenplay knocked out quickly by someone who knows precisely what film he wants to make, and knows precisely that there's no one to tell him no. Not because he's successful and powerful, but because the industry stopped paying attention once Smith was happy to self-finance and crowdfund his own failures. In that respect, there's a surprising purity to the project. Well, if something so shamelessly recycled could ever be called pure.

CHEMICAL

Things pick up for the finale, but it feels like a long ride getting there. I didn’t hate this, and despite my moaning I’d be pushed to say I even actively ‘disliked’ it, but the boredom I felt was much worse. The 15-minute pre-recorded Q&A which followed made me laugh more than anything in the movie. This only reassures me that my problem isn’t with Kevin Smith, but this sausage-machine of a movie he’s put his name to. I'm not holding my breath for Clerks 3 or Mallrats 2, although I imagine there'll at least be something more of a narrative.

For a venerable master of communication who’s had a life-transforming experience, you’d think Kevin Smith’s new insight would consist of more than just repackaging action figures from two decades ago then saying “I love my kid”...

This is similar to Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back
Without being as good.

Although in all fairness, it's not as godawful as Super Groovy Cartoon Movie.



If you're a fan, sure, why not?

But let's be clear, this movie is specifically for fans of Smith's earlier work and no one involved is even pretending otherwise.



Completists will want it for their shelves, everyone else can stream it.



HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.



Given the general reputation of Kevin Smith in the cinematic community, probably not?



There isn't.



Level 1: That First Order Stormtrooper is in this.







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.

Review: Le Mans '66

Le Mans '66 (aka Ford v Ferrari*¹)
Cert: 12A / 152 mins / Dir. James Mangold / Trailer



With November barely begun the awards-season hopefuls begin to rev their engines, each running down a checklist of inspiration, pathos and over-earnest hand-wringing. Attempting to get an early lead on the other contenders comes James Mangold’s racing-flick, Le Mans ’66.

Adapting the story of the Ford/Ferrari dispute which resulted in the former building the GT40 performance car, Christian Bale plays legendary driver Ken Miles*², Matt Damon becomes auto-entrepeneur Caroll Shelby, and everyone else is shoved onto the sort of ancillary placeholder character shelf which blights this sort of movie and makes it more average.

GRIMLY

Le Mans ’66 is good. It’s just also very average. It’s good at being that sort of grimly determined underdog story, not least because it has one foot firmly in recorded historical fact. Unfortunately that’s gone through the screenwriting process to become a trite, over-acted soap opera of a movie which also happens to have some of the greatest breath-holding race cinematography to hit our screens in recent memory. There’s just not enough of the latter. For a movie about a race that’s named after a race, there’s an awful lot of Le Mans ‘66 spent listening to characters explaining backroom politics and not showing a race.

And yet, the cliché on the surface masks an oddly counter-reverse-cynicism running throughout. By its final reel, this is a film about sticking it to The Man by continuing to work for The Man. It’s about the great American success story being achieved for those who don’t deserve it, by the ones who couldn’t otherwise have done it without their help. About teamwork ultimately resulting in failure when the boss has his name-badge on the glory anyway. About the intuitive racer going against their pathological need to win because the CEO of a corporation told them that would look better. All of these conflicts make the film more interesting than this type of thing usually is. And yet none of these conflicts are resolved as the credits roll, perhaps leaving a bitter taste for anyone who hasn’t come to watch the film just for All The Cars*³.

IN ARMSLY

With sharper scripting, this could have been an interesting companion-piece for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood - the colour palette and production design are certainly there. Would it have hurt Mangold to get a few Rick Dalton movie posters up in the background? Come on, man! Although I accept that having Clint Booth hanging around the track to pick up stunt-driving tips would probably have been too distracting for something that's meant to be A True Story, after all.

But in the moments where it counts, cinematographer Phedon Papamichael captures the racing beautifully. The camera isn’t locked off above the cars and it’s only momentarily at driver-level; the rest of the experience is delivered somewhere around the top-rim of the wheel, visibly shaking with raw speed and adrenaline. More of this and less yakking would have been a good thing.

Ultimately, Le Mans ’66 is a two-and-a-half hour tribute to the podracing sequence in The Phantom Menace, if Anakin Skywalker had come from Sutton Coldfield and verbalised his entire inner monologue. And I’m absolutely fine with that.

If you thought Rush had 'too much edge', James Mangold is your friend.



For the good bits, yes.



It is.



Let's be fair, it's not.



We will.



There isn't.



Level 2: JJ Feild is in this, and he was in that first Captain America film along with Sam 'Windu' Jackson and Richard 'Tonra' Armitage.





*¹ First point of contention before we even sit down. The movie is called Le Mans '66 in the UK "and other territories", one would imagine because it's about the 24 Hours Of Le Mans race in 1966. And that's fine. Meanwhile in the US it's called Ford v Ferrari, a title which is also technically accurate but feels like it's been applied with considerably less flair. Now, re-titling movies for international markets is by no means a new thing, and obviously the marketing teams know best (it's their job after all), but given the amount of metaphorical flag-waving on display in Mangold's movie, and our transatlantic cousins' previously noted distaste for our Gallic chums, what exactly are 20th Century Fox trying to say about their target American audience here?

No need answer, the question is metaphorical as well. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² With, it's notable to add, a sort of weird Brummie accent which sounds like Dick Van Dyke has set up shop in Wolverhampton. Now, as someone who a) knows nothing about racing history, b) watches a lot of movies and c) gets easily bugged by accents, the first thing I did when returning home was to look up where Ken Miles originated. And lo and behold, he was born in Sutton Coldfield, just north of Birmingham. Fair enough then, I don't need to raise that in my review. It appears that Christian Bale's research stopped at precisely the same point as my own however, as a fellow cinephile at work pointed out the next day that Mr Miles actually sounded... *checks notes* nothing fucking like Bale's interpretation in Le Mans '66. Whatever, it just seems like an odd choice, that's all, which not a single person on-set felt able to call Bale out over. Can you imagine if James Mangold had directed Logan in the same vein? Jackman pacing irritably around a dusty shack mumbling "Roight, I'm gawin't stab yow with these knoives in a minnit!".

Oh, and Ken Miles may have been a genius driver but if Le Mans '66 is anything to go by his sandwich-game was fucking atrocious. That wouldn't have happened in a Jon Favreau version of this movie. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Although over the previous two and half hours, I'd been under the impression I was watching a film about Christian Bale's Ken Miles. So if anyone can tell me why the final minute of Le Mans '66 is spent watching Matt Damon crying in his car like a potato that's sprung a leak as if that's supposed to mean anything, that'd be lovely. ^{[ 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.

Review: Downsizing

Downsizing
Cert: 15 / 135 mins / Dir. Alexander Payne / Trailer



Much like the preview screening I attended last week, I'm not entirely convinced I'm on the same page as this film*¹. All that follows is highly subjective and based on the track record that any Matt Damon movie being released in the early months of the year will likely be found wanting…

And so, Downsizing is the new feature project from writer/director Alexander Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor, the team behind Sideways. It follows the aforementioned Damon as Paul Safranek, a low-level occupational therapist*² looking for a fresh start in life and opting for a revolutionary miniaturisation technique, whereby the newly-small subjects live in closed communities at a similarly reduced financial burden, with the added benefit of having a much smaller eco-footprint. When his wife backs out of the procedure at the last minute (that's not a spoiler, it's in the trailer), Paul has to adjust to his new life alone, hoping to fit into the new society with the ease with which it was all advertised. Small chance.

Credit where it's due, this is certainly an interesting premise for a movie. But Downsizing’s natural home is the 85-minute wry, quirky, introspective comedy with a yellow poster, mainly playing in the smaller, indie cinemas and finding its real audience on DVD/Streaming. So, not a 135 minute multiplex navel-gazeathon starring Matt Damon; a film that does have funny jokes, but which arrive so sporadically that they feel like less of a feature and more callbacks to previous revisions of the screenplay.

By the time that Paul works out that the the grass isn't necessarily greener on the other side (a promise literally spelled out by the set of the film at one point), the audience has realised that about 45 minutes earlier, on account of having thought the concept through for more than 30 seconds. It's entirely possible that the central character’s folly is intentional of course, but if that's the case then there’s no real moment of realisation to act as his redemption or turning-point - Paul just rolls with his de-escalating flow of poor choices until around two minutes from the end of the movie, by which point he’s really just resigned to not having a choice, anyway.

I know this seems like I’m being unduly harsh on what is essentially a social parable in a fantasy setting, but that metaphor is so heavy-handed that it becomes worn-out in the first act, and the fantasy-aspect is presented as (albeit inconsistent and hazily explained) science, throughout. Downsizing is occasionally intriguing from a cinematography point of view, managing to represent environments as miniature with very few visual reference points to the things which aren't. Although there are an equal number of scenes where everything in-shot is small, so just looks normal as a result*³.

Christoph Waltz and Udo Kier put in good turns at a 'character' level, but many of the film’s smaller, more incidental parts appear to be filled by people who have never acted before. That said, it’s a point of more genuine concern that Kristen Wiig gets her name on at least one version the poster when Hong Chau doesn’t*⁴. The former’s role is effectively a cameo, while the latter’s is positively scene-stealing, as Chau out-acts the rest of the cast combined. My main gripe on the performance front has to be Matt Damon, though. He's not outright awful, but as the audience's surrogate in this crazy world, all the wonder, excitement, fear, disappointment, discovery and transformation is supposed to be relayed through the central performer. Instead we get Matt Damon, the expressive equivalent of a Bunraku performance being led by wooden spoon a with face drawn on it in marker. Damon brings nothing to this screenplay. Nothing. And the completed film returns the favour, accordingly.

In terms of a surreal morality tale with a premise so brittle it falls apart the moment it's examined, Being John Malkovich already has this covered. And as a saccharine infused midlife crisis for the over-privileged 21st century white male, Ben Stiller was skateboarding past volcanos in 2013 (also with Kristen Wiig). But if all you're after is a deconstruction of the American dream, Damon himself is better in the still-troublesome Suburbicon. 

A neat idea, Downsizing gets worse the more the runtime grows.
Which is either faintly ironic or perfectly apt, I'm not sure which.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (remake), in both aspiration and execution.



Only if you're a hardcore Matt Damon fan.



Streaming; there won't be a lot of re-watch value in this.



Nope.



I shouldn't imagine so.



There isn't.



Level 1: Amilyn Holdo is in this.





*¹ Although given levels of grumbling afterward on social media and the consensus on a certain aggregate review-site, it appears that not many people are. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Not the low-level, unhappy call centre worker we see in the trailer. That's the shit job he gets after being made small. Now I'm aware that this revelation is technically a spoiler, but I think it's important to note that the trailer is selling a markedly different film to the one which actually plays out. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ And let's not get into how some materials just wouldn't scale down to make their functionally-identical small-world versions. As I said, it’s inconsistent at best. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that on the main-version of the poster, neither Kristen Wiig nor Hong Chau's names appear, but Alexander Payne's does. Three times... ^{[ 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.

Review: Suburbicon

Suburbicon
Cert: 15 / 104 mins / Dir. George Clooney / Trailer

"Hey guys! Have you ever noticed how creepy and disquieting that whole 'picture-perfect 1950s Americana' thing is, when you stop to look real close at it?"

~ pretty much all media, from around 1961 onwards.

Arriving in our cinemas like a flustered latecomer bearing flowers from a garage forecourt is director George Clooney with Suburbicon, starring Matt Damon as Gardner Lodge, an office clerk living in the idyllic L.A. suburbs with his young son Nicky (Noah Jupe), wife Rose (Julianne Moore) and her sister Margaret (also Julianne Moore). When their house is burgled and the robbers inadvertently end up killing Rose, the family are drawn into a web of suspicion and corruption, while racial tensions flare in the neighbourhood around them.

The film has been adapted by Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov from a Coen Brothers script which dates back to 1986, and has had George's name attached to the project for the last twelve years. This staggered production pace certainly seems to have affected the movie's momentum on its journey, as the final product bears all the hallmarks of the Coens with little of the precision or wit. From the off, it's clear that Suburbicon has a far darker heart than the trailer suggests, but the dryness constantly vies for attention with the Quirky-Comedy™ aspects of the screenplay, and the two don't always sit well together.

The 1950s kitsch seems unduly exaggerated, and the outward 'sunny normality' of the setting isn't well enough established to offset the outright racism running in the sub-plot from the very beginning. In fact, the Lodge family's neighbours - the first Afro-Caribbean family to move into the previously-entirely Caucasian neighbourhood - seem to have their bare-bones story told in a parallel film that's been dropped into the edit, and while their characters occasionally interact with the main protagonists, the plot-strands themselves barely touch. Ordinarily, the decline in both family's fortunes would be used as a thematic counterpoint, their problems mirroring and contrasting. In Suburbicon, it just feels like there's a separate movie running on the next street.

There are some neat ideas, and it's clear what the screenplay was originally going to be, although making out what it became is a little harder. As with 2014's The Monuments Men, George Clooney brings a directorial softening which feels out of place telling a story which is, by definition, unpleasant. He's certainly got that 'Golden Age of Hollywood' touch, it's just not compatible here. Many of the quips and gags which worked well at the pace of the trailer are left floundering in a feature over an hour and a half long.

Julianne Moore and Matt Damon are as strong as the screenplay will allow, although their screen-son Noah Jupe brings the most complex and genuine performance of the whole movie (which I realise is very probably intentional, but with Clooney's direction one can never be sure). Oscar Isaac does well here as a slightly slimy insurance-claims investigator, but seems to be playing the part in the precise way that Clooney would have. I'm not sure if this is flattery on the actor's part, or narcissism on the director's. But the fact is that everyone else (and to a certain degree, Moore and Damon as well) feels half-written; cover-versions of Coen Bros characters intended for bit-part roles in a parody of a pastiche.

Suburbicon is an intriguing project, but it feels like the writers, director and editor all wanted to make different types of film. And to no uncertain extent, they succeeded...

George Clooney is hoping against hope you like things by the Coen Brothers.



It's a bit of a DVD-night-in, to be honest.



Not as well as it should and could.



Nope.



Nope.



Not that I heard.



Level 1: Poe Dameron's in this.







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.