Moonlight

Barry Jenkin’s coming-of-age drama Moonlight may struggle to win over audiences that feed-off the latest high-concept blockbuster, but this composed and affecting three-part story brings a sorely-needed intimacy and contemplation back to the cinema.

Growing up in a world that he doesn’t understand and that doesn’t understand him, Chiron (Alex Hibbert), nicknamed “Little”, struggles to come to terms with his Mum’s drug-addiction, his troubles at school, and his sexuality. Docile in physical size and personality, Chiron’s only companions are his school friend Kevin (Jaden Piner), a kind-spirited drug-dealer he befriends, Juan (Mahershala Ali), and Juan’s affectionate girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monáe). These relations help define Chiron as he slowly tries to breaks free of his skin as a teenager (played by Ashton Sanders) and as an adult (played by Trevante Rhodes), in each act he’s very much a minor evolution of his former self, at his core he’s still “Little”.

Moonlight stems from a small drama school project by American playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, and Barry Jenkin’s manages to sustain the collected, deeply personal and reflective elements of the piece which ultimately define the film itself. As I said before, this will not appeal to the low attention-span audiences that only attend the modern blockbuster, but they’re not the sort of people who would willingly see Moonlight.

The more refined three-chapter structure of Jenkin’s script perhaps addresses the concerns of the few detractors to Richard Linklater’s Boyhood and its (in-effect) 12-part story - but whilst it might be the most comparable contemporary film to Moonlight, they are not one in the same. Where Boyhood aimed to be smooth in transition, Moonlight makes a point to divide Chiron’s deeply-personal odyssey into three distinct short-stories. These contained periods each define and build upon the whole of the man, and as the film cuts to black you feel not as if you’ve followed a boy growing up, but more as if you’ve been privileged to witness the determinate moments in the building of a character.

Neither strategy is better or worse, they’re both simply designed to serve the needs of their story. Boyhood’s Mason has an arguably normal (for a white family) set of circumstances growing up that the free-roaming structure celebrates. Chiron’s life is anything but normal in comparison to Mason, and the challenges he faces are immense, hence each new chapter is a reactionary reflection of the last and an indictment of representational issues in the film making community.

Each of these three periods emerges through the extraordinary performances of the Chiron actors. Hibbert’s “Little” is uncertain, shy and confused. Sanders’ Chiron is dejected, independent and desperately reaching out for an understanding. Rhodes’ “Black” is informed, sentimental and as equally uncertain as his young self. One character, three actors, three dominant portrayals. Then in support you have a similar situation with Kevin, one of Naomie Harris’s best performances, and Mahershala Ali s the knavish yet fostering Juan.

Much like its structure, Moonlight is at its most poignant and honest across a few moments where the dialogue drops and Nicholas Britell’s score comes in, teaming up with James Laxton’s breathtaking cinematography to beckon the audience into the most intimate moments of Chiron’s episodic pilgrimage of self. It’s the superb acting, writing and structure that build Chiron into a tour de force of empathy, but it’s these scattered moments of directorial finesse that allow us to truly understand him.

Collateral Beauty

Collateral Beauty is the sort of film that requires a more in depth review to explain just how appalling it really is. This review contains spoilers.

Are you one of the poor souls that went to see the infamous Movie 43? A film with an incredible array of stars, magnificently poor writing and a horrendous sense of direction that left everybody wondering how it was ever funded. Collateral Beauty has been similarly shot down by reviewers, and whilst the obvious comparisons to the aforementioned disaster might be unfitting, the minor glimpses of potential are far overshadowed by the fact that Collateral Beauty gets worse and worse at every turn.

Howard Inlet (Will Smith) is a successful advertising executive who falls apart after the harrowing death of his six-year-old daughter. Depressed, contemplating death, and worst of all, under performing at work, Howard’s concerned “friends” (Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Michael Peña) worry in supposed equal measure for Howard’s mental state, and the state of their own professional futures. The trio hire an investigator, Sally Price (Ann Dowd) to acquire evidence that would allow them to take control of the company from Howard (with his best interests in mind of course), and they soon find out that he is writing letters to Love, Death and Time – three constructs that he once used in his advertising work and is now blaming for the death of his daughter. With all obvious options ignored, Howard’s “friends” hire three actors (Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley and Jacob Latimore) to each approach him pretending to be one of the constructs, hoping that he will have a public outburst whilst their PI is filming so that they can then - after digitally removing the actors - show it to the board to prove that Howard is unfit to run the company.

*Oh the humanity*

Written by Allan Loeb (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, 21) and directed by David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada, Marley & Me), Collateral Beauty had enough capability behind it to produce at least a half-decent film, but somewhere between the ethically-barren plotline and the kindergarten dialogue, the film collapses into a hilarious smoldering pile of Hollywood farce. The story in full is as unbelievable as it is in summary - a gently sickening ride through saccharine and syrupy messages, superficial plot twists and an array of A-listers trying to act their way out of one of the worst dramatic scripts in recent memory. One horrendous issue is the dialogue, which is more literary abomination than uplifting quotage - when you have Dame Helen Mirren spitting out lines like “Nothing is ever really dead if you look at it right” surely it must be obvious that you’ve created a steaming pile of script.

Putting aside the fact that none of the characters other than Howard are even remotely able to draw empathy from the audience because of their involvement in the repulsive scheme, we also have to sit through the hilariously-poor establishing of these token issues that each of them are struggling with. Norton’s Whit is drifting further apart from his daughter, Winslet’s Claire is running out of time to have a child, and Peña’s Simon is dying - we’re all dying Simon, but you decided to die an arsehole, so I don’t care. The acting is mediocre across the board, particularly when you consider the talent on screen, but the material is so atrociously bad that there’s hardly room for improvement. Will Smith’s is the only half-decent performance, but that’s mainly because he doesn’t have to talk.

There’s a swath of other annoying issues throughout like the fact that the investigator is “secretly” filming in the background with her phone in portrait mode, but when they show the footage to the board it’s in landscape and clearly shot with a cinema camera, or the hilariously stupid idea that they could simply digitally remove the actors without an expensive composite artist. Then when they show it to the board they acknowledge the fact that they’ve hired the actors anyway. What was the actual point of it then? I could go on, if not for the inevitable brain hemorrhage that analysing this excrement would give me.

Somewhere deep in the heart of this film there was a tinge of potential, completely lost in the overblown lunacy of this attempted storytelling. In the end though, watching Collateral Beauty is a bit like pondering how quickly your life is flying by, your crippling debt, the irreparable damage we’ve done to the environment, total nuclear annihilation, the futility of existence, the end of time, a Trump presidency; the more you think about it, the worse it gets.

Our Kind of Traitor

For a movie written by Hossein Amini (he also wrote everyone's favourite movie, Drive), based on a novel by spymaster John le Carré and with a cast of stars that should be impeccable, this thriller ends up being a laborious adventure in mediocrity. It probably has to do with the director Susanna White's first time attempt attempt at a thriller and the insanely distracting camera work.

Perry (Ewan McGregor) and his wife Gail (Naomie Harris) are having a holiday in Marrakech in order to reconnect after some specified bad blood between the two. One night, Perry meets Dima (Stellan Skårsgard), a Russian oligarch who soon reveals that he has previously worked for the Russian Mafia and has information he would like to exchange for he and his family's safety. Once back in London, Perry gets in contact with MI6 agent Hector (Damian Lewis), who deems the information Dima holds to be of value. However, he is unable to convince his superiors of the value and must embark on an unsanctioned mission with the help of Perry and Gail.

Despite being a relatively good story, there are a few points when the script gets sticky. Early on, there is a scene in which Dima meets with Hector for the first time and while it plays out like an amazing game of cat and mouse, it happens way too early in the story. This really affects some similar scenes that happen later on. The climax of the film also falls flat as well. It is something that you can see a mile away, but then when it happens, there's no real emotional response. I suppose one of the biggest distractions for me however, was Ewan McGregor's line readings. Whenever he said anything, it felt like he'd looked at the script for the first time and gone, "woah, I get to say that?"

But it's not as though the rest of the cast is this bad. Naomie Harris is a splendid performer and I really felt like she cared for the family they were trying to save. She didn't really have a chemistry with McGregor, but I'm guessing that's kind of the point. Stellan Skårsgard is always great at playing either the reserved quiet type or the over the top criminal. Here he straddles the middle ground quite nicely. It's good to see Damian Lewis returning to his natural accent because the American accent he does in the TV show Billions is quite grating. The only reason I bring that up is because this is how Susanna White must have got this job because she's a director on that show.

Finally, the camera work. I don't know where to begin. It's just so distracting. During the opening sequence, there was a highly stylised glittery thing going on that had me thinking, "Oh this is only for the intro, it'll settle down." But it didn't. The amount of reflective surfaces that they sparkled lights off was unbelievable. And then they decide to shoot it from some new and unusual angles. The result ended up being a disorienting mess. Some of the time, I didn't even know where we were supposed to be in the room.

The slowness of this movie made it nowhere near as enjoyable as it should have been. The story had all the intrigue that a spy movie should have, but it also just felt like a lighter version of 2014's A Most Wanted Man, also a le Carré adaptation. In fact the endings of both films are slightly similar, just this one feels a little more resolved. It just needed more excitement.

Jack's Thoughts - Spectre

I am not going to lie about how much of a shameless James Bond fan I am. Well at least I used to be, until this latest installment Spectre absolutely killed any enjoyment I once had of the classic series of films. Now while not every film has been great, this Daniel Craig film has hit a new low, with more attention paid to fan service than actually trying to make a good movie.

Bond starts out in Mexico, investigating an Italian crime boss who he was directed to by the former M (Judi Dench) in a video message she recorded before her death. This leads him on a journey to uncover a secretive criminal executive named SPECTRE, led by his older foster brother Franz Oberhauser (Cristoph Waltz). Meanwhile, the current M (Ralph Fiennes) is facing pressure from a committee set up by C (Andrew Scott) which is proposing a new surveillance program that would make the 00 Section redundant.

I think what has hurt the last couple of Bond movies the most is this need to make them a continuation of the films that came before. The end of Skyfall seemed so clear cut as though EON Productions were saying that we're going to start afresh and give you a new standalone adventure. But that isn't the case at all. So much assumed knowledge is needed from the previous films it's laughable. Gone are the days of simply enjoying a wacky adventure with a man in a tuxedo. Now you actually have to work when you watch this movie. Top that off with a shitty plot that had me squirming with discomfort and a final revelation that was so obvious that I was actually saying the dialogue in synchronisation with the characters.

I was shocked to learn that this film cost $350 million dollars, but then again I can see where it all went. Maybe spending millions on 10 exclusive Aston Martin cars that will never be available to the public, one of which you destroy completely is not such a great idea. Or maybe spending a lot more on an explosion that will get you into the Guiness Book of Records and not at all add to the enjoyment of your film is an equally bad idea. There is way too much action in this movie. I understand that it's trying to say something about mass surveillance, but I feel as though it's coming a little late to the party.

The film is lacking lots of things, but one I noticed above all else was the lack of sauveness. Bond is a partygoer and the definition of cool, but none of his actions in the movie indicate that. I mean you can still wear a suit and not do cool things, just look at Dave Bautista's Mr Hinx (full disclosure, his fight with Bond on a train was probably the only thing I liked about this film.

I was confused with the choice of cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema to make the colour palatte of this film a dull brown. His previous work on films like Her and Interstellar had been so vibrant, but here it matched Daniel Craig's enthusiasm to play Bond. And speaking of that, he just brought the whole movie down. Toward the end I was hoping that they'd just kill him and put us all out of our misery.

Look how much he hates your enjoyment

Look I'm going to go so far as to say I hated this movie and it's the worse Bond film since Die Another Day. In fact it's much worse. I can at least sit through that film.

Spectre

In the beautiful secrecy of Rome at night James Bond arrives at a secret meeting. Uninvited he smirks his way past the guards in Craig's now signature brutish fashion. As he arrives in the upper gallery viewing deck of this clandestine conglomerate, he makes his way through the witnesses looking down at a vast hall wherein an international assortment of organised crime discusses business. The lighting is low and reflective of the power and secrecy of this event, the sound echoes in the cavernous gloom as Bond stalks silently between faces cloaked in darkness. Suddenly the arrival of a shadowy man in the meeting creates a palpable atmosphere of fear within the cavernous hall. Within minutes a man is killed and no one moves a muscles. The recent arrival. surely the head of this cabal speaks into the microphone. Bond is enamoured, captivated by this man and his power. The man makes a public address to everyone in the room but it seems he has one particular person as his intended audience. "Welcome, James. What took you so long?" The man turns and looks up into the gallery, make direct and immediate eye contact with Bond. The light captures his face, Bond knows this man.

With 2012's Skyfall director Sam Mendes furthered the modern Bond revival with it's stylish action and settings, breath-taking cinematography, retro-appeal and personal storyline. But with Spectre, all the goodwill of Skyfall seems to be slowly bleeding out of a film that too doggedly holds onto contemporary blockbuster ideas on stakes and motivation, and classic Bond nostalgia. The effect being a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly of Bond. Spectre begins with a lovely but needlessly showy (seemingly) single-take shot in Mexico City during Day of the Dead with Bond on the trail of a bad guy. After the event naturally ends in a helicopter fist-fight metres above the streets of Mexico City and Bond killing his target he's left with naught but a strange silver ring whose only distinction is a black octopus engraving. It turns out Bond has gone somewhat rouge after receiving a tape from the now deceased Judy Dence M and without approval from the new M (Ralph Fiennes) goes in search of the men who sent Skyfall's villain Raoul Silva, which turns out to be the eponymous committee. Along the way Bond is surreptitiously joined by Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), Q (Ben Whishaw) and Madeline Swann (Lea Seydoux), a woman with an mysterious link to the organisation and a prime target for them.

Spectre is a lovely film for the most part, fulfilling in all the necessary requirements for a Bond film, beautiful women, beautiful cars, seduction, varied scenery, vodka martini's. secret bases, ridiculous fun action and villains, villains, villains galore. But the whole way through the film just feels off. Motivations are lacking, plot-holes are apparent and a general sense of dualism is present, the film is never sure if it should be a throwback or re-invent the wheel and is seemingly stuck between the two points. In spite of the brilliant and armour-cracking portrayal of the aging, bitter Bond during Skyfall and the surely tragic death of M, Craig has perfected the formula for his Bond in this film. He's strong, silent, smarmy, apparently suave and frankly brutish, and in possibly the most satirical take on Bond's persona after killing an Italian bad guy in Mexico, he goes to the man's funeral, meets his wife, saves her from assassination, fucks her on the night of her husbands funeral and she is gotten by the next scene. It's enough to make even the most casual Bond fan ache for the bravery to return to a campy Bond with torturous puns.

Though the film is surely competent and interesting enough it's the bad that draws the attention after the objectively enjoyed Casino Royale and Skyfall, and (perhaps over-criticised Quantum of Solace). The reveal of Bond's connections to arch-villain Oberhauser are lazy as they are stupid (SPOILER ALERT), Oberhauser's plan is needless, and the whole thing smacks of prequel-level writing in the need to bring things to a certain point. Madeline Swann is one of the most disappointing Bond women in a good while and the romance between her an Bond is nothing short of tacky, there is absolutely no reason these people should be together whatsoever. Finally, the finale is derivative, lazy, blockbuster trash, with a few genuinely interesting moments, but hampered by senselessness and carelessness. Overall, Spectre is a hot mess, when it does well, it can be lovely, but overall it's just an unpleasant odour that lasts for two-and-a-half hours. While not bad, it's certainly a film that will become less appealing the more one applies thought and time to it.

Southpaw

After the first photos emerged from Southpaw, all everybody could talk about was Gyllenhaal's physical transformation for the role. But since the metamorphosis of actors seems to be the current zeitgeist of Hollywood, I was more interested in what director Antoine Fuqua could do with his dark cinematic style and a sports drama. The answer is: everything that's been done before, with Eminem slapped over the top.

Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an undefeated light heavyweight boxer with a wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams) and daughter Leila (Oona Laurence). Billy lives the high life, with his large mansion and blinged-up posse, but after sustaining an eye-injury during a match, Maureen convinces him that it's time to retire. After another boxer, Miguel Escobar (Miguel Gomez) taunts him, leading to a very public brawl, Maureen is accidentally hurt and dies at the scene. Heartbroken and depressed, Billy also loses his daughter to social services. The only way he can get his daughter back is to get his life back on track, which he starts doing by getting a job at a gym owned by ex-boxer Titus "Tick" Wills (Forest Whitaker). After Tick starts to train Billy, he strives once more to seek the redemption he needs.

This is basically an hour of watching Billy Hope's life fall apart, then an hour of him picking up the pieces, in the most unoriginal of ways. I have no doubt that Gyllenhaal gave this role his all, but his character is constantly reduced to polarising extremes of emotions - either depression or extreme anger - but never anything in-between. The blame very much lies with the plot, which, cliche after cliche, tells the same story of redemption that we've seen in boxing films more times than anybody would like to admit. The first act of Southpaw establishes the obnoxious characters, entrenched in a shallow, tedious world. The early development is so shockingly bad that I honestly couldn't care less about Hope's wife dying. From the banal script-writing to the emotion-milking dialogue, the film opens a wreck.

It's not until the second act, when Whitaker's character comes into the mix that Southpaw manages to conjure up some dignity. Whitaker similarly pours everything into Tick, and at times the potential of the character shines through, but he's eventually reduced to the typical enigmatic black motivational trainer movie trope. If it wasn't him, it was Morgan Freeman in Million Dollar Baby before him and so on. As for the other characters, McAdams's portrayal of a sidelined boxer's wife is as dreary as it is two-dimensional, and 50 Cent's character is just an outright arsehole. The biggest insult is the suggestion that we could empathise with almost any of these characters.

Boxing films are well known for their cinematic exuberance, and at times Mauro Fiore manages to capture the raw emotions of the moment, but Southpaw visually lacks the ingenuity that others like it have been brave enough to attempt, and ultimately the film is degraded to the archetypal training montages - complete with Eminem soundtrack - that we could all see coming from a mile off.  In the end, Fiore can't manage to stretch the style of Southpaw beyond what we've seen before. 

Of all the great boxing films - Million Dollar Baby, Raging Bull etc. - the triumphant ones create an atmosphere and tell an original story. Whilst the two leads manage to conjure up surprisingly decent performances given the material, Southpaw is ultimately the antithesis of original, and risks fading into mediocrity.

The New James Bond Movie has been announced!

Some very exciting news has just been announced. Director of Skyfall Sam Mendes made the announcement on Thursday from Pinewood Studios (the home of James Bond) that the new Bond movie will be called Spectre.

Fans of the Bond series will instantly recognise what this title alludes to. SPECTRE (standing for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) was the organisation that Bond was a constant foil to in the early movies, especially the Connery years. This organisation was headed by the ever-changing and mysterious Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Before you get excited thinking that we are seeing the return of Blofeld, it has been announced also that Christoph Waltz will play the villain Oberhauser, the son of the late Hans Oberhauser, a man who acted as a father figure for Bond. This sounds like a whole bunch of misdirection to me. Remember when they said that Benedict Cumberbatch WASN'T playing Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek Into Darkness.

In addition to Waltz, the new cast members will include Lea Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Monica Bellucci and Andrew Scott. Returning from Skyfall are Ralph Fiennes as M, Ben Whishaw as Q, Naomie Harris as Miss Moneypenny and Rory Kinnear as Tanner. All more I can say is that we here at the blog are more excited than we have ever been.