Review: La La Land

La La Land
Cert: 12A / 128 mins / Dir. Damien Chazelle / Trailer



As I write these words, two things of note have happened to me in the last forty-eight hours. On Saturday morning, I went to my dentist to have an infected tooth removed. On Sunday evening, I went to my cinema to watch a preview-screening of La La Land.

As I write these words, it's Sunday night and I'm trying to work out the low-point of the weekend…



…if you enjoyed being invited to your niece's stage-school reimagining of Singin' In The Rain, only to remember twenty minutes in that you don't have a niece, you don't know anyone on the stage and other people's children are precocious shits anyway, but you're pretty much trapped now so the only options are a) grimace through the taped-on enthusiasm looking for any trace of subtlety and meaning, or b) stand up and yell "when does this END?" towards the stage. If, like me, you over-value politeness you'll probably go for A, knowing at least that you'll give the production a fucking rinsing as soon as you're in front of a keyboard.



Well, advance screenings (of which this was one) always have a slightly earlier start-time, due to no adverts being shown and fewer trailers before the film. It's usual, therefore, for there to be several 'late arrivals' as the feature presentation is in its first ten minutes, and tonight was no exception. And how I envied those souls as time went on, if only because they'd had to sit through less of La La Land than I had….



Well if - if - writer/director Damien Chazelle was aiming for 'directionless, overly-long, overly-kitsch and self-indulgent fan-film of Hollywood's Golden Age, clearly hoping to do for the big-number musical what The Artist did for silent cinema but seemingly forgetting that the things which made those musicals great were craft, charm, characters you actually gave a shit about and above all else the music', then yeah it probably does.

Point also deducted for having John Legend in the film (whom one can only assume has been cast because of his in-movie singing rather than his acting) to lecture our lead character about being 'stuck in the past', a speech inserted artlessly into a screenplay whose only concession to the modern day is that the characters have iPhones.

If you want a film about a bittersweet, nearly-made-it love story in Hollywood between two flawed but engaging characters, watch Café Society. If you want a film about the relevance of Jazz in the twenty first century, watch Miles Ahead.



Oddly, both Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are on pretty good form, here. But being a good performer in a thing that's awful doesn't make that thing any better (cf the cast of Exodus: Gods & Kings).



Of course not.
Everyone seems to love La La Land so far, and I'm aware that my opinion's in a minority.

Albeit a minority of people who are right.



There isn't.



Level 2: This film stars that Ryan Gosling, who's also in the upcoming Blade Runner sequel alongside Harrison 'Solo' Ford.





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: Silence

Silence
Cert: 15 / 161 mins / Dir. Martin Scorsese / Trailer

"It is so often the way, sir, too late one thinks of what one should have said. Sir Thomas More, for instance, burned alive for refusing to recant his Catholicism, must have been kicking himself, as the flames licked higher, that it never occurred to him to say, 'I recant my Catholicism'..."

~ Edmund Blackadder, 1987.

Okay, I'd be lying if I said Martin Scorsese's 160-minute exploration of belief didn't basically evoke ^that^ scene and my childhood memories of watching Shogun for he majority of its run-time.

In 1640, two Portuguese Catholic Jesuit priests (Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield) learn from a belated letter that a former mentor of theirs (Liam Neeson) has gone missing whilst carrying out missionary work in Nagasaki. Refusing to abandon him to his supposed death, the two travel secretly through Japan, a country that (at the time, obviously) holds a strong and brutal anti-Christian sentiment. On their journey they must evade detection by the authorities, tend to the underground Catholic community and of course have their own faith tested to breaking point...

It's not as dynamic as I've made that sound, unfortunately. The film's hardly meant to be entertainment I know, but Scorsese makes it feel a bit too much like hard work. And not in a 'ooh, their suffering looks terrible!' way, but more '...okay, where is this going?'. Languidly paced, deliberately ponderous and often self-indulgent for a story containing such urgency, I appreciated the craft of film-making, but wasn't particularly bothered either way by the rest of it.

Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield are both on great form here, but the latter in particular doesn't seem to be quite ready for a role of this weight (yet). The naive determination we see in his performance feels like it belongs to the actor, not the character. Speaking of those two, it's not clearly laid out until more than half-way through the film that the 'English' dialogue we hear is in fact Portuguese. It makes perfect sense narratively and historically, but why waste time having Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield affect those half-accents they can't keep a grip of? (Liam Neeson pays this technique no mind, needless to say). There's enough pidgin english (or Portuguese, as the case may be) in the film as it is with the Japanese villagers, without having the leads needlessly mangling the script.

But Silence is a nicely shot film. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto uses a cool colour palette and a lens which is unflinching during the harsher moments without feeling exploitative. Not necessarily a film about faith, but having faith in faith. Naturally it's pretty heavy-handed when it needs to be, but that's the nature of the story itself. I just felt like this was 100 minutes of story stretched out for an hour longer than it really needed...



Shogun and Apocalypse Now.
Yeah, I said it.



If you're on for it, absolutely.



I imagine it does and that that thing just wasn't really aimed at me.



With the best will in the world, no.



I shouldn't imagine so.



There isn't.



Level 1: Qui-Gon Jinn and Kylo Ren? Hell, yeah!





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: Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed (2D)
Cert: 12A / 115 mins / Dir. Justin Kurzel / Trailer



Imagine, if you will, a video game where levels are about four-to-six minutes long, and each one is punctuated with a thirty-minute interlude of plot-exposition and needless padding. I've only played through one Assassin's Creed game, but I don't remember it being like that*¹...

Attempting to adapt a massively successful game-series for the big screen is Justin Kurzel, crouched in the wings as his cast stand around in a circle watching Michael Fassbender remembering things that didn't happen to him. I don't really need to explain more as a) if you don't know the premise to begin with you're unlikely to be watching the film, and b) the film spends most of its time explaining things which make no sense, anyway. Oh, this takes itself far too seriously.

The problem, once more, is that game-logic is not film logic. While players are willing to sit through overly-long introductions and training sequences in anticipation of unleashing carnage with a controller, the same patience doesn't apply when you're only waiting to watch someone else playing the game.

When we do finally get to the action, the implementation of shakycam, fast-cut editing and smoke machines (no, seriously) serve as a cover for freerunning stunt-doubles and the violence (in a film about murderers, remember) being nerfed down to 12A-compliant levels*². Threading through the film is the un-subtle suggestion that the harmless expression of pent-up violence is a good thing, and that attempts to subdue that are akin to the forced removal of free will. That idea would be bollocks enough on its own, but in a film which is basically an advert for a gaming-franchise, it's nothing short of shameful.

For all the great lengthsAssassin's Creed goes to in showing us the Animus simulation software and hardware, it's never quite explained why all this is needed when a hypnotherapist could do the same job (because you either believe in past-life regression or you don't)? Indeed, the main plot-mechanisms here are a macguffin that Dan Brown would have discarded unused, and a thing called ‘genetic memory’, the narrative equivalent of homeopathy. Michael Fassbender grumbles his way through the script with minimal dialogue*³, Marion Cotillard stumbles awkwardly through her part, and Jeremy Irons just sucks the whole thing up and Thinks Of The Money, with the practiced ease that his co-stars have yet to master.

Justin Kurzel's film is certainly ambitious, but ambition's not enough. Although for all my grumbling, I didn't detest the movie as much as some, and I've certainly seen far worse game-adaptations in the last twelve months.

In gaming-parlance, Assassin's Creed is a literally two-hour cutscene. In cinematic parlance, it's a two-hour trailer for a game.

Best two lines of dialogue in the movie:
Fassbender: ...what the fuck's going on?
Cotillard: ...this is wrong.

Oh, probably Hitman, or something.



Well you'll be used to watching the game through your telly, so...



I hope not.



No.



That would depend on the specifics of our disagreement...



There isn't.



Level 1: This movie features Rufus 'Lt. Casido from off of Rogue One' Wright.





*¹ But the fact that I only played through one would suggest that maybe I'm not the target audience, admittedly.

*² It's perhaps interesting to note that the games in the series are mostly rated 15, yet it's okay for 12yr olds to watch characters bloodlessly killing each other. Okay, then.

*³ Although one thing this film does do brilliantly is casting Brendan Gleeson as Fassbender's father. When we hear his soft Dublin tones in the second act, it suddenly makes perfect sense that his screen-son's American accent should be skittering about like Bambi, pissed on an ice-rink...


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: A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls
Cert: 12A / 108 mins / Dir. J.A. Bayona / Trailer



And so, my bid to watch and review all of 2017's movies in alphabetical order begins on a strong footing. My bid to evade more heavyweight fare in search of entertainment and escapism? Not so much.

The cinematic adaptation of Patrick Ness's award-winning book is a musing study of grief, anger and forgiveness, and one which is as deliberately frustrating and contrary as its subjects. Seen through the eyes of the introverted young Conor O'Malley as he struggles to accept his mother's cancer, the film shows a series of lucid dreams where he's visited by a monster formed from a tree in the local churchyard. The monster tells Conor three stories, and insists that after the final one, Conor must tell his own. Although he becomes unsure of what is real and what he's imagining, Conor knows the monster isn't an enemy, but an embodiment of the challenges faced by his whole family.

The film is driven by fantastic performances from Lewis MacDougall and Felicity Jones as Conor and his mum, Lizzie. Liam Neeson's voice and motion-capture work as the monster is convincing enough for the audience to take for granted, and gracious enough to know that it's not the real star of the movie. This is a slow-burner for the first act, but once the monster tells his first story - the first two are illustrated through some frankly beautiful animation - the structure becomes more clear. And this clarity is needed because there's a lot going on in A Monster Calls. Even though it's a film which frequently pauses to examine and interpret its own analogies, the third act is a triumph of emotional writing. That Ness has adapted his own novel for the screen helps a lot, especially since the story origininated from author Siobhan Dowd during her own terminal illness, and Ness has the best hand for keeping that closeness. While the film never quite blew me away, the intricate web of metaphor it weaves will stay with me for a long while.

That said, the pacing can feel a little uneven, especially with that slow build-up. The film is also occasionally a bit too whimsical, even for a fantasy-tale. Toby Kebbel appears as Conor's estranged father, and while he plays the role sympathetically enough, I can't help feeling he should have had a greater impact on the story (it's not like Conor or Lizzie hate him at all). And while I'm prepared to go with a 1,000yr old tree in England having that sort of vague Irish brogue that Liam Neeson brings so effortlessly and so often, I can't help wonder why/how Sigourney Weaver passed the audition process as 'an English grandmother' when she can't keep her native accent under control. It doesn't de-rail the film, but it's more distracting than it should be.

But none of this stops A Monster Calls from being an outstanding piece of cinema. It's just probably one that I don't think I'll have the strength to watch again.

If you've had enough fun and frollics over the holiday season but you're not quite ready for the earnest hand-wringing of true-story adaptations that the awards season has lined up, you could do a lot, lot worse than A Monster Calls.

It's heavy-going.
It's meant to be heavy-going.
Try not to cry.

Tale of Tales, Arrival.



Not necessarily, the film's hook is mainly emotional so should work on any size screen.



Yes.



It's definitely up there.



Probably not.



There isn't.



Level 1: Not only has this film got Jyn Erso and Qui-Gon Jinn in it, Toby Kebbel's in there as well and he did voice-work in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Oh, yes.





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.