Review: Puss In Boots - The Last Wish

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish
Cert: PG / 102 mins / Dir. Joel Crawford & Januel Mercado / Trailer

It feels somewhat disingenuous to call Puss In Boots: The Last Wish an unasked-for sequel, not least because the world's biggest unasked for sequel is currently still in cinemas and is by all accounts making ridiculous sums of money. Nevertheless, arriving eleven years after its direct predecessor, courtesy of two directors, two story writers and two separate screen writers, the feeling of a cinematic fifth-wheel remains...

The film follows Puss (voice once again by Antonio Banderas), as he recklessly finds himself on his ninth-and-final cats' life. Having heard the legend of a lost shooting star which crashed to earth and will bestow any wish upon the discoverer, our hero sets out on a quest to find it and be granted a reset of his feline power-ups. Along the way he is joined by jaded mercenary and former-partner Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek Pinault), and the brightly optimistic chihuahua Perrito (Harvey Guillén). The journey won't be easy however, as the trio are being tracked by evil business-magnate and collector of fabled antiquities Big Jack Horner (John Mulaney), as well as cockney crime-family Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Florence Pugh, Ray Winstone, Olivia Colman and Samson Kayo). To make matters worse, Puss himself is being stalked by the literal lupine personification of the grim reaper (Wagner Moura), intent on claiming the cat's final life for himself.

CENTRAL

Taking the good points into account first, the central narrative has a stripped-down simplicity which, while it never feels dumbed-down, will be ideal for the younger members of the audience to follow and enjoy. This is a straightforward treasure-based adventure, and the use of the map as a central plot-point (physically changing the terrain depending on who holds it) is a nice anchor point for the story to keep things firmly on-track. Banderas is enjoying himself immensely in the title role, Hayek is solid (although the mostly-subdued nature of her character means the actress' vocal performance is frequently drowned out, tonally), and Guillén plays 'annoying yappy comedy dog' in precisely the way you'd imagine. The supporting voice-cast are all having great fun, and mostly merge with their animated counterparts very well.

At 102 minutes including the credits this isn't overly-long, but nor does it feel padded out. The film is a PG rather than the expected U because of the wolf's characterisation, and a string of bleeped-out profanities from Perrito are played to maximum comic effect; but apparently Olivia Coleman saying that the cat-lady's house smells of piss is just a bonus. Fair. Everything here moves at a bright, brisk pace, and the story markers are set out clearly, with frenetic action sequences and careful exposition scenes carefully placed so as not to run into one another. It's just that...

GRANADA

...well, as a standalone action feature this is way more of a mess than Dreamworks should ever have put their name on. In addition to the scattering of writers and directors, the central characters have full CGI model-rendering complete with the associated fur texturing you'd expect to see. But many of the players further down the ladder seem to be working on reduced-polycount models, giving them an overly angular appearance reminiscent of 1990s animation. The surface-texturing is photorealistic in some places (the main characters, again), given a watercolour effect in others, and even just flat-shaded in a few. The movement and film style is standard for the most part, then drops into anime effects and editing for the fight scenes, but still with the full CGI models. The film is a headache for anyone looking for a coherent experience.

On top of all this, the script takes repeated pot-shots at Disney, using its fairy-tale-world setting to include IP-baiting references to Jiminy Cricket, Pinnochio himself, and the bag/umbrella motifs from Mary Poppins. This might be charming or even cheeky from an independent studio, but given Dreamworks' standing as firmly second-tier to the House Of Mouse it feels more than a little bitter. By the time you consider the dearth of cat-jokes that a movie like Puss In Boots seems custom-built to deliver (and did, last time), you begin to wonder if all of this happened because an executive found an old contract behind a radiator which tied Banderas to one more project.

Despite my moaning, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish isn't bad. But given Dreamworks' past glories, it's pretty far from great. The Last Film would have been a more reassuring title...

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: King Of Thieves

King Of Thieves
Cert: 15 / 108 mins / Dir. James Marsh / Trailer



Hatton Garden heist. True story. Dear lord. Shoddily constructed, poorly dialogued, badly acted, no direction, editing's all over the place and the soundtrack's like someone going through a pile of CDs they picked up at a car boot sale. Features more f-bombs than you can wave a BBFC examiner at, and five c-bombs (all of which are unnecessary in terms of context, emphasis and dramatic intention) yet still manages to cruise in with a 15 certificate like Guy Ritchie rebooting Last Of The Summer Wine. This crime caper is so intrinsically lazy I'm surprised they managed to finish making it. Although given the state of the final scene I think it's more that they just gave up.

Who is this film for? What's its message? If Michael Caine's criminal mastermind is the 'king of thieves', why does he feel like a secondary character in his own film? Nobody knows. Considering the budget percentage attributed to Nina Gold's address book here, it's really not good enough.

The audience I was with quite enjoyed it.

Well I haven't seen them myself, but I imagine this is fairly similar to the two other movies which already exist depicting the same heist, and the four-part TV series.

The actual robbery itself only happened in 2015, for fuck's sake. Come back this time next year and it'll have been turned into a jukebox musical to tour provincial theatres.



End of aisle. 'Gifts for Father's Day'. £3.



As above.



Well let's just say that the cast are firmly on minimum-effort autopilot, a situation director James Marsh has absolutely no intention of remedying.



Oh hell yeah.



There isn't.



Level 1: That X-Wing pilot from out of The Force Awakens is in this.
You know the one. You do. You know him.







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.

Adaptation: Edge of Darkness

The A-word.
It's the bane of cinephiles, everywhere.

That book you love; the comic you remember; the show you used to watch; the game you lost an entire summer playing? Oh, someone's adapted it and it's getting made into a movie! Whether a cause for pre-emptive celebration or foreboding caution, it leads to only one thing: expectation. And expectation is the death of the 'clean' movie-viewing experience; no matter how closely the film sticks to its source material, or how much it tries to distance itself, it will be faced with the hurdle of comparison.

And while the movie industry loves the pre-built marketing buzz of 'now a major motion picture!', they loathe the comparative references which will be made from the first review onwards. Because many punters will expect to get exactly the same reaction from a completely different medium, to a story they already know. And therein lies the problem.

In this monthly series, we'll look back at some of the most respected and best-loved properties which have made the perilous journey to the big screen; often with some controversy, and almost always with far too much hype. This isn't so much a review of the films themselves, more an appraisal of their suitability as an adaptation.

Edge of Darkness
Lionheart / BBC TV (1985)

And so, the final stretch of Adaptation's televisual leg moves forward to its next decade, smack-bang in the middle of the 1980s when social and political unrest in the UK was a given, and everyone somehow got by with the perpetual fear that nuclear annihilation may well arrive before the weekend did (cf. what I was saying last month about 'inappropriate synchronicity'). It stood to reason then that a six-part conspiracy-thriller in the post-watershed 9pm slot would do fairly well, but Edge of Darkness flourished so much that the BBC2 drama was repeated on BBC1 a month later and went on to win six BAFTAs. While I was definitely of TV-consuming age in 1985*¹, this type of thing wasn't exactly on my radar, hence me watching it for the first time now, and without the tinted lenses of nostalgia.

The story follows Ronnie Craven (played by Bob Peck*²), a police inspector from Yorkshire who attempts to unravel the murder of his daughter Emma (Joanne Whalley), an environmental activist trying to expose a cover-up at a British nuclear waste processing plant. But the path of truth (let alone justice) is never smooth nor straight, and Craven soon finds himself mingling with the top brass of the Ministry of Defence, the CIA not to mention those with a more commercial interest in the matter…

The mistrust surrounding the nuclear industry and governmental authority in general make this very much a thing of its time (there's at least more education these days about nuclear processes). Outside of our main protagonist, it's not entirely clear who 'the bad guys' really are at the start, middle or end of the tale, which only serves to make them all the more compelling. Among the supporting players are distinguished character actors such as Ian McNeice, Hugh Fraser, Joe Don Baker, Zoë Wanamaker, Charles Kay and John Woodvine; familiar faces to TV audiences, but always willing to submerge themselves in their roles, here as untrustworthy types all round.

Not that it's all po-faced realism, though*³. The series is as much a study of grief as it is a political / ecological / conspiracy thriller. Although Emma dies early in the first episode, Ronnie continues to both see and converse with her, as he tries to come to terms with what's happened, to the point where she leads him toward clues surrounding the case. Their interactions are at odds with the rest of the procedural-aspect but not unwelcome at all, being the one wild-card the screenplay has constantly up its sleeve. This surreal factor is grounded by the documentary-style camerawork and terse scripting, the length and frequency of Emma's 'visits' correlating directly with her father's level of emotional stability and focus.

Speaking of focus, there's some beautiful tracking camerawork on display, a bystander's point-of-view syncing with characters moving in and out of the lengthy shots. Generally speaking it's the kind of cinematography that the pacing of a film doesn't really allow for (certainly not to the extent it's used here), whereas director Martin Campbell has around five and a half hours to tell writer Troy Kennedy Martin's story, allowing for a lot of great 'character' moments. And while I'm on with the more technical aspects of production, as nice as it is to have Eric Clapton's guitar-work on the soundtrack, he's going to wear out that riff if he's not careful. Although like most TV before our current age this wasn't really meant to be binge-watched, so the hooks of weekly scheduling can quickly become repetitive*⁴.

From the outset, there's the feeling that the programme isn't sharing as many secrets as it could be. Not that it's saving them up for the finale necessarily, just that since the story is told almost exclusively from Ronnie's point of view, there'll be a fair amount that he doesn't uncover personally (with the writer being completely unafraid to leave behind previously-pivotal characters once the story's location shifts). Scenes 'external' to Ronnie's immediate thread take place to keep the audience in the loop, but only as much as the narrative flow requires.

So it was some relief when I watched the disc one bonus features (namely a segment from the long-running review show Did You See) and saw the critic-panel remarking that at three episodes in, they weren't entirely sure what was going on half the time. Which is good because I thought it was just me. All becomes clear in the end, or as clear as it needs to be at any rate. Although it almost didn't; Troy Kennedy Martin originally wanted push the reality-envelope and have Ronnie to turn into a tree. Spoiler - that doesn't happen. Well, not quite…

Intriguing in scope and satisfying in execution, if Edge of Darkness were made in this day and age it would probably explore the elements of psychosis and spiritualism more deeply. Of course, a movie released a mere seven years ago pretty much is in this day and age, so let's take a look...

Edge of Darkness
Martin Campbell (2010)

Landing in our cinemas back in 2010, I watched this at the time (before I started reviewing everything here) but didn't recall too much about it*⁵ (which is partly why I started reviewing everything here). While Troy Kennedy Martin's story has been adapted for the big screen by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell, original series director Martin Campbell has returned, which lends a sense of continuity at least (and with BBC Films getting a production-ident).

Watching in relation to its televisual forebear however, the changes other than shortened run-time are interesting in their counterpoints. The heathland of Yorkshire becomes the rocky coastline of Massachusetts; Bob Peck's grieving British father becomes the American Mel Gibson, while the American 'security expert' and uneasy ally of Joe Don Baker becomes the British Ray Winstone (it's also curious to note that our hero goes from being Ronnie Craven to Tommy). The core storyline of an assassinated daughter and government/corporate nuclear conspiracy still remains, but how it's expanded out is markedly different*⁶.

The key divergence here is that Mel Gibson's Craven doesn't spend the film talking with Emma. His daughter's 'adult' voice is heard in the scenes immediately following her death, but the film doesn't go as far as having her physically appear*⁷, which undercuts the severity of Tommy's fight against total psychological breakdown. There are several appearances by his child-aged daughter, but they're framed more as vivid flashbacks than full-on hallucinations.

And naturally, Mel brings his own style to the proceedings. While his furtive brooding is certainly on-par with Peck's, this telling becomes less of a metaphysical conspiracy puzzle and more a procedural revenge thriller. Gibson can do a lot of things, but 'concerned everyman' isn't one of them, his theatrical scowling only topped by Mr Winstone in a role that's no longer Craven's behavioural diametric opposite. The nuclear aspect is also ramped up a little heavy-handedly, but the original BBC version probably didn't look particularly subtle back in '85 either, I imagine.

Best line: "…you're in a position where you'd better decide if you're hangin' on the cross, or bangin' in the nails.". I'd be lying if I said I'm not now looking for an opportunity to use this in a conversation at work.

So, they re-made the 1985 drama in this day and age, and didn't explore the things which made the original work interesting. Okay.

A serviceable (if ultimately forgettable) action-thriller, Edge of Darkness has a decent go of capturing the politics and mechanics of the original story at a brisker pace, even if that means jettisoning the philosophical baggage and going Full Neeson in the process…

It bears all the hallmarks of mid-80s televisual drama, but yes.



It's not as good as I remember. Then again, in 2010 I hadn't just finished watching a far more nuanced version of the same story.



Either will work as Sunday night entertainment, but you'll get more out of putting six hours aside for the company of Bob Peck.



There's not. In either version.



For the TV version...
Level 1: Nien Nunb, that Hoth Rebel Officer and that Rebel snowspeeder pilot are all in this.

For the film version...
Level 1: In a break from my usual front-of-camera comparisons, I'm going to go for Mr Steve Mair, who played double-bass in the orchestra for Edge of Darkness as well as for The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.



*¹ While I've mentioned plenty of times before that I generally navigate the chronology of my life by the release of Star Wars films, it's also true that my first fifteen years or so also use TV programmes as pegs in the ground, the next fifteen are attributed to the release of rock/metal albums and anything after that is cinema in general. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Man, I fucking love Bob 'they remember' Peck. Early on, I thought I was going to have A Macnee Moment™ in realising that Ronnie Craven, this dour, determined middle-aged man on the edge of breaking, may well be the same age me (a sprightly 44), casting chronological and dramatic disparity between the performer and the audience once again. Not to worry, though! Peck was born in 1945, which means that when Edge of Darkness was being filmed, he was actually 4-5 years younger than I am now… ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Seriously, if you think computer-hacking sequences are painful to watch now, you should see how the BBC were doing it in '85. From the information the MI-5 computer gives out based on the 'commands' typed in, you'd think it had a psychic-awareness-modulator plugged into the back … ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ cf. the "Yeeeah-whooo!" sound-effect. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁵ Other than being the start of my obsession with screen-performers mangling the Boston/Massachusetts accent, in particular. It's not even an accent I can do myself, I just know when it's being recreated badly. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁶ Of course, it was only after watching the preceding six hours of television plus bonus content that I noticed that the movie DVD has a featurette titled 'adapting the Edge Of Darkness mini-series'. Which, I'll be honest, sort of makes you wonder why you bother. During this short add-on (it's three and a half minutes, which is less time than you'll spend reading this rambling), screenwriter William Monahan is on-camera as saying "The series… really shouldn't hang over this film at all. It's only the premise". And that, William, is why Adaptation is happening at all. Because it does hang over the whole thing. All cover-versions do. I suspect you're saying this because you know it's a lie but you feel it's a one you must refute, William. I'm onto you. And on a physical-media related note (and one which is not-at-all-the-fault-of-the-filmmakers), the DVD transfer of this movie is appalling. There are interlacing lines all over the shop and the default volume level is 'barely audible'. This disc was released in 2010, it's not like DVD was a new format then. Icon Entertainment should be mortified. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁷ Although oddly, Emma does appear at the end of the movie, which I remember thinking odd when I saw the film in 2010. Without the context of Tommy speaking with his daughter throughout the story, it makes almost no sense and hints at another cut of the movie (or draft of the screenplay, at least) which explored this more thoroughly. ^{[ 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: The Legend Of Barney Thomson

The Legend Of Barney Thomson
Cert: 15 / 96 mins / Dir. Robert Carlyle / Trailer



To many moviegoers, (myself included) Robert Carlyle will always be the middle-aged, foul-mouthed killer Francis Begbie from Trainspotting. Which is unfair really, as he's played a variety of other roles too, but after many years of trying to shake the image, he's finally taken the directorial reins and stars now as the middle-aged, foul-mouthed killer Barney Thomson.

This film follows the eponymous Barney, a Glaswegian barber on the verge of a mid-life crisis, whose life and sanity begin to unravel when he accidentally kills his boss moments after being sacked from his job. Because the death looks so obviously like a murder, and because the Glasgow Police are simulateously trying to track a prolific serial killer, Barney decides to get rid of the body with a minimum of fuss. It's then that help arrives from a most unexpected source…

Wonderfully scripted, acted directed and photographed, TLoBT is one of those comedies which will work best for audiences with a dry/twisted sense of humour (cf. Sightseers). In fact, it's probably not unfair to say that the collective cinematic result is far stronger than the story itself. In many ways, the film is a bit too low-key for a directorial debut and feels almost hesitant, despite its overt language, humour and ghoulish subject matter. But Carlyle shows he's really An Actor's Director, and this film is all about the performances (and in that respect, he doesn't give himself an easy ride, either). Ray Winstone plays a very good Ray Winstone as the browbeaten police inspector tracking the serial-killer case, and Emma Thompson is having a lot of fun (and brilliantly) as Barney's foul-mouthed, bingo-addicted mum. But the standout performance for me was Tom Courtenay as Chief Superintendent McManaman, whose soft, Alan Bennett-esque tones belie some of the finest comedic scripting I've heard this year.

Both visually and thematically, The Legend of Barney Thomson is very much like a head-on collision between Trainspotting and Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, and Cinematographer Fabian Wagner's camera captures the urban claustrophobia of East-end Glasgow terrifyingly well. The streets are desaturated, but the film carries enough energy that walking through them never seems like hard work (and if anything, you just want to walk faster so you can be off them). The overbearing grimness of the tale is held at bay by Carlyle's hand, and I look forward to his future projects.

It's not all plain sailing, however. As I've mentioned, the narrative itself seems almost undercooked, not quite making the leap from page to screen. I suspect the books will be just as enjoyable, but for different reasons, having time to paint the surroundings (and supporting characters) more fully. The film just about pulls it off, but you get the feeling it's scrabbling to fill its already-brief 96 minutes. Other aspects, like Barney's first-person narration, are so under-used as to be pointless.

On a more technical front, the incidental music is too loud in the mix, as is much of the background noise, and vast swathes of dialogue disappear through mumbling. And it's not the Glaswegian accents, it's the mumbling. There's the distinct possibility that it was just the audio setup in the screen, of course, but I've had no previous with the cinema in question. Oh, and shouldn't there be some sort of law against a cinema showing a 2.35:1 aspect-ratio film in a 16:9 setup auditorium? The aforementioned Mr. Wagner didn't work his bollocks off making this film look grimily fantastic so that it can be shoved on the only available screen as an afterthought, with black bars projected at the top and bottom ;)

If you only see one movie this year which features interior and exterior shots of Glasgow Barrowlands, make it The Legend of Barney Thomson.

If you can find it near you, sure. That said…



Well, as much fun as the film is, its sparse release-schedule means that you'll probably end up watching it on DVD with a bottle of wine one Sunday night; a task for which it's absolutely ideal.



Well, Robert Carlyle will always be Begbie to me, but he's also very good in this.



Given that it almost runs out of story, yes.



I won't.



There isn't.



This film stars Robert Carlyle, James Cosmo and Finlay Welsh, all three of whom appeared in 1996's Trainspotting alongside Ewan 'Kenobi' McGregor.
(All roads lead to Kenobi, today.)







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: The Gunman

The Gunman
Cert: 15 / 115 mins / Dir. Pierre Morel / Trailer



Oh, Sean… you can soapbox your political views all you like, but if you're going to produce and star-in films like The Gunman then you can't expect to have your judgement taken too seriously. As much as this movie would like to assure its audience that it's an intelligent, political conspiracy thriller, it quickly becomes apparent that it's just a Liam Neeson film*¹ with A-levels…

The Gunman is a competently assembled film, doesn't spoon-feed the audience too much and has some beautifully tense set-pieces. It also features some fantastic melee-choreography and enough 'wet-kills' to justify that 15 Certificate. So it's a bit of a shame really that the film doesn't bring enough to the party to set it apart from the other guests. Beginning with Penn as 'security contractor' Jim Terrier carrying out an assassination in the Democratic Republic of Congo*², we then jump forward eight years as he reconnects with his former acquaintances in a bid to find out who's trying to permanently silence him. Yeah, you can pretty much guess the rest from there.

Despite Penn's contractually-assured shirtless scenes, he's really a bit too old to be starting in this genre. All that's missing from this performance is a comedic gripe about his bad hip. I expect more from Penn as an actor somehow, even though I don't particularly like him. This becomes part of the problem too; Sean Penn has the raw charisma to lead the film, but not the charm to be likeable while he's doing it. And if you can't like Jim Terrier, it's going to be an uncomfortable two hours. A fairly heavyweight cast surrounds him, pulling their weight with a laboured script, including Javier 'Skyfall' Bardem and Mark 'Wolf Hall' Rylance going full-pantomime (with the latter growling away like a pissed-up British Batman).

While it's never less than watchable, The Gunman is also never more than passable, and feels far longer than it's 115 minutes. It's also very considerate that Jim's Incredibly Fragile Brain Trauma™ is diagnosed in the first act then lies dormant throughout the bullet-ridden second one until the plot requires its resurgence at the film's climax. Although the best part for me was a script is so switched-on that at one point it has a rowdy skinhead start a fight in a pub in the East End of London, then mid-way through shout "call the fucking pigs!". A phrase which, for his character, sits on the real-life-probability-chart just behind "I really like crochet!". Although the hardened-reality of this film also has the characters engaging in a conversation between bursts of an un-silenced firefight indoors. I'm imagining the "military advisors" listed in the credits had the day off for the Spanish villa scene?

Say what you like about Penn's politics, but you've got to love his taste in Hawaiian shirts. They're certainly more colourful than his performance in The Gunman, anyway…

Probably not, to be honest.



Netflix / telly.



Not in the cases of the cast members whose work I'm familiar with, no.



I'd be very surprised if it did.



Not particularly.



Of course there bloody isn't. What do you think this is, some two-bit action flick? …oh.



The Gunman features a 'you-get-what-you-pay-for' performance from Ray Winstone, who starred in 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' opposite the Corellian smuggler himself, Harrison Ford.







*¹ Oh, and as with Run All Night, the trailers for The Gunman included Cinderella, Minions and The Moomins. Who the fuck do Studio Canal think is watching a 15-rated film of Sean Penn shooting people in the face for two hours??

*²Where, it has to be said, not one person is shown to be drinking Um Bongo. Hollywood lies, yet again.

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: Noah

Noah
Cert: 12A / 138 mins / Dir. Darren Aronofsky




While I'll freely admit that I found Darren Aronofsky's interpretation of Noah far more engaging than the trailer had suggested, I'd still be hard-pushed to tell you that I enjoyed watching it. Veering between batshit-crazy and infuriatingly monotonous, as an exercise in film-making, I think it's unfocused compared to Aronofsky's other work. As an exercise in storytelling, it's all over the shop, with the inconsistencies of the original tale and a whole host of new ones. Although to be fair, most of those pale into insignificance when Ray Winstone's army is being battered into the dirt by 20ft high Rock-Megatrons. The first half of the film has some gorgeous touches (the constellations visible in the daytime sky, the strangely modern wardrobe choices), but by the time the rains come the creativity takes a back seat to the brooding storyline. It's surprisingly well acted given how preposterous it all is (with the exception of Jennifer Connelly's "emotional scene").

Besides, when you've got Percy Jackson and Hermione Granger on your team, surviving a heavy shower should be a doddle, shouldn't it?

Like a drunken mashup between Lord of the Rings, Kevin Smith's Dogma and Hitchkiker's Guide To The Galaxy*¹, Noah has to be seen to be believed. A striking effort indeed, but an effort at what, I'm not sure.

In many ways, not at all. Those aspects of the trailer are in the film, but that's not an accurate summation, no.



I don't think so, but it held my attention.



I have no idea.



It does look nice on a massive screen, but this is an Orange Wednesdays kind of film.



No. If anything, talk to me about it, I don't care if we disagree.



I doubt it, but never say never.



I didn't hear one. Plenty of opportunity, too.

If God's been flooding the UK recently because he doesn't like The Gays, how come he told Noah everything was going to be just fantastic now by sending him a massive rainbow, eh?

*¹ Because I really wanted one of those angels to say "God? Don't talk to me about God..."

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.