The possessed doll picture has two possible problems. Either you have a horror icon that doesn't move for the entire film, or you have one that looks kinda ridiculous when it moves. Fortunately, this one balances things out by having the possessed doll do a lot of psychic influencing all around a very creepy house in the middle of nowhere. The "creation" backstory is largely a matter of the first five minutes and a late-in-the-movie monologue - most of this story is set 12 years after the doll has been created, with a pack of young orphans and a nun moving into the house of a couple who have lost their daughter - with the wife strangely reclusive and the husband reticent, the kids soon find themselves going into a room they should not enter, and spooky mayhem ensues.
There's quite a reasonable setup of tension here. The two biggest names of the cast, Anthony La Paglia and Miranda Otto, are somewhat in the background, required only for exposition purposes as the house owners, and much of the energy is carried by a pair of youngsters - 11 year old Lulu Wilson and 14 year old Talitha Bateman. Both carry it surprisingly well - Wilson in particular is an astonishingly solid find, neither being particularly cutesey or simpering. This is very much in the style of the Conjuring films which it's a spinoff of - with a litlte spooky-house wandering and being, perhaps, a ltitle too keen on showing off the demons at the end - but it's an entertaining haunted house trip. No, theere's not a lot of depth here and you shouldn't go expecting it, but as a funhouse scare ride it's pretty solid.
Sunday 27 August 2017
Sunday 20 August 2017
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Combine Luc Besson's eyepopping visuals with a comic-book classic from the 1960s and what you should get is something vibrant and fun. That would be the delightful theory. However the combo of some awkward over-fondness for some elements of the source material (in particular the bonkers "get us into as many different situations as we can draw" plot and the rather 60s French approach to sexuality), and some crucial miscasting (so our two veteran space agents are played by actors who appear barely out of their teens), we end up with an unfortunate mish-mash.
There are occasional highlights (surprisingly, given her previous cinematic record is in the highly average "Battleship", Rhianna gets a showcase section that truly is outstanding), but this is mostly a bit of a mess, with characters who just don't inspire any interest, therefore making it difficult to care where they are or what they're doing. There's almost a feeling that we've been dropped into the second or third movie of a series - all the groundwork that should get us invested is missing, and instead we're just looking at pretty pictures. As it is, Dane DeHaan's script selection for mainstream movies has tot to be considered distinctly lacking - with this, Fantastic 4 and The Amazing Spiderman 2 on his resume, some time in indies repairing his reputation is definitely recommended.
Throw in a badly projected 3D conversion (due to the shading of 3D glasses, 3D needs to be projected brighter, and this wasn't), and this felt distinctly underwhelming.
There are occasional highlights (surprisingly, given her previous cinematic record is in the highly average "Battleship", Rhianna gets a showcase section that truly is outstanding), but this is mostly a bit of a mess, with characters who just don't inspire any interest, therefore making it difficult to care where they are or what they're doing. There's almost a feeling that we've been dropped into the second or third movie of a series - all the groundwork that should get us invested is missing, and instead we're just looking at pretty pictures. As it is, Dane DeHaan's script selection for mainstream movies has tot to be considered distinctly lacking - with this, Fantastic 4 and The Amazing Spiderman 2 on his resume, some time in indies repairing his reputation is definitely recommended.
Throw in a badly projected 3D conversion (due to the shading of 3D glasses, 3D needs to be projected brighter, and this wasn't), and this felt distinctly underwhelming.
Saturday 12 August 2017
Wind River
"Wind River" is a case of having serious intentions messed up by dodgy genre conventions. A snow-capped crime story set in and around a Native American reservation in Wyoming, a hunter hired by Fish and Game to keep the wolves away (Jeremy Renner) discovers the body of a frozen girl. As the FBI are called in, the investigation uncovers a few other things along the way.
Thematically, this could be pretty interesting - the clash of cultures between Native American and the American mainstream, the tough conditions toughening the people who live in them. But unfortunately the script gives Elizabeth Olsen as the FBI agent the uncanny ability to be repeatedly wrong, largely so we can see just how awesome Renner is, and most of the Native Americans are pushed into smaller supporting roles. And yes, Renner does softly spoken badass with a tragic backstory pretty well, but .. sheesh, the white-male-saviourness kinda drips off the screen in ways that make it very difficult to take some of the higher intentions of the film (which pop up with the closing card) particularly seriously. Warren Ellis and Nick Cave's score is particularly irritating in using whispered spoken word sections, confusing you when nobody who sounds like that appears to be on screen.
The wilderness does look very nice and the final confrontation is pretty good, but along the way this is kinda generic material shot kinda generically. Taylor Sheridan wrote one of my favourite films from last year, Hell or High Water, but this isn't really in that league.
Thematically, this could be pretty interesting - the clash of cultures between Native American and the American mainstream, the tough conditions toughening the people who live in them. But unfortunately the script gives Elizabeth Olsen as the FBI agent the uncanny ability to be repeatedly wrong, largely so we can see just how awesome Renner is, and most of the Native Americans are pushed into smaller supporting roles. And yes, Renner does softly spoken badass with a tragic backstory pretty well, but .. sheesh, the white-male-saviourness kinda drips off the screen in ways that make it very difficult to take some of the higher intentions of the film (which pop up with the closing card) particularly seriously. Warren Ellis and Nick Cave's score is particularly irritating in using whispered spoken word sections, confusing you when nobody who sounds like that appears to be on screen.
The wilderness does look very nice and the final confrontation is pretty good, but along the way this is kinda generic material shot kinda generically. Taylor Sheridan wrote one of my favourite films from last year, Hell or High Water, but this isn't really in that league.
Friday 11 August 2017
Atomic Blonde
"Atomic Blonde" is a deliberate 80's throwback piece, set in the days just before the Berlin Wall crumbled, as a tough agent is sent into town to recover a list of agents before chaos engulfs the city and valuable secrets could be up for grabs. Charlize Theron is our tough agent, a cool customer who's a hard-knuckle fighter, with some solid support from John Goodman and Toby Jones as two of her bosses, James McAvoy as a shifty possible ally, and Sophia Boutella as a seductive French agent who may have an agenda all her own.
The action is the reason anybody's here, and ... to be honest, the first couple of action sequences don't really cut it. They're loud, certainly, and have blasting quality 80's tunes in accompaniment, but they all feel a bit by-the motions. The plot for what should be a simple genre piece is convoluted in ways that never quite manage to be particularly interesting - it's very much by the motions. THere is an outstanding centerpiece where the soundtrack largely drops out and we get, in what appears to be a continuous shot, about 7 or 8 minutes of Theron fighting her way through a series of goons to protect an informant - and certainly the film is quite happy to show at least some of the consequences of the violence, with Theron bruised and scarred (although at the intensity she fights, she should probably be having difficultly walking), but all in all this isn't quite as much superspy fun as it should be. There's neither enough depth nor enough glee in the lack of depth to make this quite work.
The action is the reason anybody's here, and ... to be honest, the first couple of action sequences don't really cut it. They're loud, certainly, and have blasting quality 80's tunes in accompaniment, but they all feel a bit by-the motions. The plot for what should be a simple genre piece is convoluted in ways that never quite manage to be particularly interesting - it's very much by the motions. THere is an outstanding centerpiece where the soundtrack largely drops out and we get, in what appears to be a continuous shot, about 7 or 8 minutes of Theron fighting her way through a series of goons to protect an informant - and certainly the film is quite happy to show at least some of the consequences of the violence, with Theron bruised and scarred (although at the intensity she fights, she should probably be having difficultly walking), but all in all this isn't quite as much superspy fun as it should be. There's neither enough depth nor enough glee in the lack of depth to make this quite work.
The Trip to Spain
:"The Trip" franchise combines food porn, scenery porn and middle-aged-men-being-passive-agressive-at-one-another porn into a reasonably successful middlebrow arthouse franchise. The dynamics of the three are pretty similar - Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon travel around from restaurant to restaurant, chatting about their professional positions, where they are in the world, and duelling impersonations of various cultural figures that have relevance to middle-aged-men (largely Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, David Bowie and Mick Jagger this time around). Coogan will be the one with the slightly higher rung of fame, seeking to either consolidate it or to better himself, while Brydon will be reasonably satisfied with where he already is, but still willing to take potshots at his friend's pretensions.
In this case, the Spanish scenery really does look very beautiful, as does much of the food, and if the remainder can feel a little slight, there's still a genuine dynamic between the two as a portrayal of a friendship that is no less real for all that it has rather jaggy edges to it. For the philosophically inclined, it's a vacation where your fellow travellers have slightly more entertaining neuroses than your own. It's not world re-inventing but it is reasonably amusing.
In this case, the Spanish scenery really does look very beautiful, as does much of the food, and if the remainder can feel a little slight, there's still a genuine dynamic between the two as a portrayal of a friendship that is no less real for all that it has rather jaggy edges to it. For the philosophically inclined, it's a vacation where your fellow travellers have slightly more entertaining neuroses than your own. It's not world re-inventing but it is reasonably amusing.
Friday 4 August 2017
War for the Planet of the Apes
Let's start by noting the inaccuracies in the title. There isn't really a war in the film - there's a couple of battles, but that doesn't make for a full war. And it doesn't cover the planet - the film for the most sake takes place in Northern California. There are a whole lot of apes though. Indeed the perspective for most of the film is from the ape perspective as they attempt to survive in a world where much of the human population has been wiped out due to disease, and the remaining, well-armed humans are determined to fight back any way they can, increasingly more brutally.
There's a somewhat melencholic tone to this one. The CGI is, as has been the case throughout this series, exemplary - not only the mocap from Andy Serkis' Caesar, but all the various apes that appear feel very thoroughly intergrated into the real world and are fully realised performances. The main human in the film, played by Woody Harrelson, is a military figure not unlike Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now" whose methods have become extreme (indeed there's a couple of elements of Brando in Harrelson's voice here). After a strong opening action beat, there is perhaps a little too much wandering about before the story gets into gear, but once it does, there's enough to keep us engaged.
This serves as, if not the end of the ape-reboot-films, at least the end of a chapter of these films. While there are a couple of references back to the orignal that feel a little on the nose and also somewhat unlkely to link in directly straight into the first film (there's still too much space for society to move before it could reasonably end up anywhere near where the first film starts) so these tend to play more as cute fanboy references than actual mythology building
If your'e a fan of the ape movies thus far, this continues the streak. If you're not ... well, this doesn't necessarily offer much more other than mild closure for some elements of the three films. But what it does offer is pretty solid.
There's a somewhat melencholic tone to this one. The CGI is, as has been the case throughout this series, exemplary - not only the mocap from Andy Serkis' Caesar, but all the various apes that appear feel very thoroughly intergrated into the real world and are fully realised performances. The main human in the film, played by Woody Harrelson, is a military figure not unlike Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now" whose methods have become extreme (indeed there's a couple of elements of Brando in Harrelson's voice here). After a strong opening action beat, there is perhaps a little too much wandering about before the story gets into gear, but once it does, there's enough to keep us engaged.
This serves as, if not the end of the ape-reboot-films, at least the end of a chapter of these films. While there are a couple of references back to the orignal that feel a little on the nose and also somewhat unlkely to link in directly straight into the first film (there's still too much space for society to move before it could reasonably end up anywhere near where the first film starts) so these tend to play more as cute fanboy references than actual mythology building
If your'e a fan of the ape movies thus far, this continues the streak. If you're not ... well, this doesn't necessarily offer much more other than mild closure for some elements of the three films. But what it does offer is pretty solid.
The Big Sick
The Judd Apatow school of comedy has led to mixed results - in it's initial incarnation, with films like "40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up", it was a welcome mix of comedy and reality after a long run of comedies that had pushed too far into the silly and irrational, with no real humanity in them. Unfortunately much that followed has started to wander towards self-indulgent - the drama begins to look more like navel-gazing than anything with actual human stakes, and the improv-comedy often wanders around unable to settle on a punchline.
Such is not the case with "The Big Sick". It may help that Kumail Nanjiani is a somewhat different voice (being a Pakistani immigrant to the US), and the story written by him and his parter, Emily V. Gordon, is based on events that they've actually lived through. So we're not looking at movie-star types attempting to pretend that they're just like us, we're looking at what feels more like relatable people in a situation with real stakes. There's a gentle romantic chemistry between Nanjiani and his on-screen partner, Zoe Kazan, that lets us travel happily with them and get engaged as the plot kicks in. There's also a strong supporting cast - Holly Hunter gets to demonstrate both how funny and how dramatic she can be in what feels like the first time in a while, while Ray Romano proves he's more than just the nebbishy type he's been in multiple Everybody Loves Raymond and Ice Age installments.
In short, this is what good humanistic comedy-drama looks like. It hits both in laughs and in feels.
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