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.

Ghostbusters

The new take on the Ghostbusters, the film that every fanboy has loved to hate since its inception and the most disliked trailer on youtube (really guys?), has finally landed and it’s definitely a mixed bag that, as a massive fan of the original (who isn’t?) left me ultimately feeling a mix of nostalgia and conflict. Ghostbusters (a.k.a. Ghostbusters: Answer the Call) is directed by Paul Feig and stars Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones as the new face of the busting crew. After a falling out in their teenage years, Abby Yates (McCarthy) and Erin Gilbert (Wiig) reunite to investigate a haunting at a local historic house that, in turn, leads to the pair combining forces with Jillian Holtzman (McKinnon), Abby’s kooky and slightly unstable assistant, with Patty Tolan (Jones) joining them along the way. From here, the group must attempt to stop a full-scale spook-pocalypse from descending on New York before its too late.

The positives: As a person who (unpopular opinion!) had no problem with a female-lead Ghostbusters cast, I really enjoyed the character’s relationships and the quick, witty banter between them was well written (nice to see a film with a lot of positive female friendship that didn’t involve someone getting jealous about a guy). Standouts by far were Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon who brought the thunder for this movie and ultimately gave us the most entertaining characters, which is ironic as I was expecting that from the big names of Wiig and McCarthy. There were definitely a few chuckles here and there, and more than a few homages and cameos from the original cast that pop up when you least expect them to, which was a nice touch. The special effects were well done and the spooks were much, much scarier this time around. I particular loved how the film took jabs at the fact that it had such a negative reception from die-hards fans, especially those who had a problem with the fact that they were women, and doesn’t try to take itself too seriously. As a side note, the new ghost-busting equipment is also seriously badass.

The negatives: One of the big issues that I had with this film had to be the villain. Although I understood the premise of why he was written i.e. to be a foil against the Ghostbusting group, he essentially could have been played by anyone and was overall pretty bland. The final end standoff that we saw in the trailer was really the only time he shone. While the film was on the whole funny, some of the humour lost its flavour by being taken that one step too far, for example with their receptionist Kevin (played by Chris Hemsworth). We know he’s a bit of an idiot (okay, a lot of an idiot) within the first few moments of his character’s arrival, and I liked that he was a parody of some of the ridiculous characters women get cast as in order to be eye-candy, but Kevin’s cartoonish actions can only entertain an audience for so long before it starts to get old and I’m not entirely convinced Hemsworth was the right casting choice. My last concern has to do with the pacing in this film: it tended to lose its momentum in places and lose my attention, however when I tuned back in not much had happened, which isn’t the best sign for such a highly anticipated film.

The film is ultimately nowhere near as bad as people were wanting it to be, but also not nearly as good as I was hoping it would be, and would possibly have been better as an homage in itself to Ghostbusters rather than a fully fledged ‘busters movie. It had its funny moments and I loved the whole girl power aspect (I’m sure there will be many tiny Ghostbusters this Halloween) but there was definitely room for revision and improvement and I wish that it had been able to stand on its own a little more. On the plus side, the kids are gonna love it and let’s face it, its no longer about our childhood, its about theirs.  

Demolition

Demolition is the latest film from Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild) and stars Jake Gyllenhaal in another of his roles as a dejected man who seems incapable of feeling emotions, a bit like how I felt at the end of this film.

Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) works in investment banking for his father-in-law Phil (Chris Cooper). Davis and his wife Julia (Heather Lind) are involved in a serious car-crash, and whilst she’s killed, he suffers only minor injuries. Wandering the wings of the hospital afterwards, he has an encounter with a dodgy vending machine and writes a complaint letter to the company that owns it, explaining his troubles for context in a unique form of grief that could only belong to a Gyllenhaal character. However, things take an interesting turn for Davis when he receives a response from customer service representative Karen (Naomi Watts). What follows is one of the most leisurely paced, unprofound, waffling films that we’ve seen so far this year.

Demolition starts off promisingly - a car-crash that will undoubtedly send Davis into a cinematic spiral of insanity - but what follows is...well, tedious. There’s always a couple each year, the films that could be brilliant but end up a conceited mess. Think Words and Pictures. Demolition is one of those. I’m not one to dismiss character-centric dramas, in fact I tend to take a high-horse attitude and think that if you judge a film solely on its supposed ‘lack of plot’, you’re most likely a toddler who hasn’t learnt to think for themselves - bloody plebs, am I right?. But the characters in Demolition are either unrelatable or just plain unlikable, which doesn’t leave much of interest to draw you in.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Throughout there are these little references to 9/11, and whether intentional or not it felt as if it’s was pushing a not-so-subtle message toward how grief has evolved in a post-9/11 America. It also keeps drawing weird linkages between Davis’s dejection and how it could be cured by embracing his inner child. Whilst normally these would be buried deep into our subconscious viewing of the film, in Demolition there’s not a lot more to focus on and so they stand out like a sore thumb. It starts to skate the thin line between intellectual cinema and ‘art for art's sake’.

You also get the impression that detail is important to Davis, and so little close-up montages are scattered throughout. They work but only to a certain point, even though the editing is one of the better takeaways from this. Don’t get me wrong, there are other positives as well. There’s a scene right at the end with a carousel which was about the only time I felt something in the nearly two-hour run time, is that a positive? There’s certainly a handful of funny moments but it’s not laugh-out-loud. A lot of Yves Bélanger’s cinematography is well-constructed and interesting, even if the film isn’t. You can tell that both Gyllenhaal and Watts are invested in crafting good performances but that never really happens because of deeply flawed character writing/direction.

In the early stages of Davis’s downfall, you see him meticulously take things apart, but never put them back together. This film feels a bit like that, a series of scenes that should have some sort of coherence as a whole, but just don’t. It’s not awful, just frustrating, tedious, a waste of talent and of your time.

Trailers Week 106: 17/07/16

Tallulah

This movie is a heartbreaking look at homelessness, motherhood and family. It's also the kind of thing people should be expecting to see more of Netflix.

Loving

This is Jeff Nichols' second movie of the year and it couldn't be more different than Midnight Special. It follows the Supreme Court case about interracial marriage in the United States.

La-La Land

Another long anticipated movie, this time from Whiplash director Damien Chazelle. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone team up yet again to do some song and dance numbers.

A Monster Calls

This kids movie looks both terrifying and sad. It also has a monster cast; Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Liam Neeson, Toby Kebbell. I take it back, this doesn't look like a movie for kids at all.

The Hollars

John Krasinski's latest comedy sports one of the funniest groups of people, including Margo Martindale, Charlie Day, Sharlto Copley and Randall Park.

The Edge of Seventeen (NSFW)

This dark-ish comedy looks at all those things that seems like such a big deal when you're a teenager. You know, like your best friend dating your brother. At least she has a cool teacher to go to.

Rules Don't Apply

Veteran Warren Beatty is playing Howard Hughes in his new wacky comedy and dare I say, he looks like he's done a better job than Leo.

Boo! A Madea Halloween

Look, you can hate on Madea all you want, but I think she's pretty funny.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

I know this isn't a trailer, but we get to see new footage. So that's pretty cool.

Swiss Army Man

Like many who’ve been to see Swiss Army Man - a film by Daniels - I left with a big smile on my face and absolutely no conceivable way to explain why. So reviewing this film could be kind of challenging. At first glance, it seems just like any other farting corpse movie, but it’s oh so much more.

Hank (Paul Dano) has been stuck on a deserted island for so long that he’s finally decided to end it all. Standing on an esky beneath a grotto and with his head in a noose, his death is interrupted by a corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) that washes ashore. A farting corpse. Hank rides the corpse across the ocean, powered by flatulence, to a beach surrounded by wilderness. He’s closer to home but still has a long way to go. Then everything changes when he finds out that the corpse can talk. It also has a name; Manny, and Manny wants to learn about all the things he’s been missing out on as a dead man. What follows is 90 minutes of magical boners, Paul Dano in a wig, Daniel Radcliffe’s arsehole, many many more farts and one of the best films of the year thus far.

It’s difficult to say much more about Swiss Army Man, other than that it’s one of the most unique cinematic experiences in recent memory, and deserves huge credit for managing to do that and still be entertaining and accessible to most people. In an era where films are funded based on commercial viability and how much fan service they can pack in, original content like this is frustratingly difficult to come by.

At its heart, it’s a buddy comedy, and one of the better ones in recent years, but it also has a surprisingly profound message about just being who you want to be, no matter what others think. It’s short but sweet and doesn’t purposefully try to overreach the limits naturally imposed on it by genre. Yet it’s so much more nuanced and entertaining than most other films that rely on this sort of crude humor, thanks to the way that it flips it on its head. The lead performances are both fantastic, and whilst I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t cast an already dead actor, I’m in agreement with many in saying that this is Radcliffe’s best performance to date. Especially when you consider just how challenging the role would have been.

Staying on that train of thought, if you have any experience or knowledge of film-making you’d understand some of the unique challenges involved with certain scenes in Swiss Army Man, and full credit to cinematographer Larkin Seiple, because it looks great and is complimented with some astoundingly well executed editing. It also has a beautifully (here comes that word again) original soundtrack that actually interacts with the film in a really (and here’s the other) unique and interesting way.

It’s a movie that by the filmmaker’s own description tries to make you laugh at the first fart, cry with the last; and in a weird way it kind of achieves that. If I had to nitpick, I think the beginning could give people the wrong impression, and could explain some of the disrespectful walkouts it’s supposedly received, and whilst I’m so glad they didn’t choose the cop-out option that I had feared, the ending could probably have been stronger. But there’s really not a lot to complain about here. To sum it up in one word, majestic.

There’s no other way to put it, I loved Swiss Army Man. It’s sharp, funny, clever and original in every sense of the word. I don’t expect everybody who sees it to love it but if you’re even remotely interested then you should absolutely check it out, otherwise what the hell is the point of trying to make original movies. F*ck the sequels/remakes/reboots, embrace the farting corpse!

Classic Movie Review: The Phantom (1996)

Long before the current wave of superhero movies, but after Batman had appeared on our screens, there was The Phantom. Based on one of the oldest masked heroes in comic book history, this movie is fun mix of action and adventure. It's also one of the most 90s-ist (that's a real word) movies out there.

In the 1500s, a merchant vessel is attacked by the Sengh Brotherhood and the only survivor is a young boy who is raised by natives on the island of Bengalla. Four hundred years later, that boy survives as the Phantom (Billy Zane), a masked avenger who is seemingly immortal. Just kidding, the role is passed down from father to son, but don't tell the bad guys that. Quill (James Remar) is one of these bad guys, working for the evil Xander Drax (Treat Williams), and has been sent to Bengalla to retrieve one of the Skulls of Togunda. Whoever owns all three will become an immortal force. Along with the Phantom, comes Diana Palmer (Kristy Swanson) who is investigating Drax, as well as being the ex-girlfriend of the Phantom's alter ego, Kit Walker.

Now I'm going to be completely honest with you. I didn't pick The Phantom because it's a good movie. I picked it because it is a fun, incredibly cheesy action adventure flick. It almost plays out like a mixture between an Indiana Jones and a Robin Hood movie, with plenty of swords and gunplay. In fact the opening sequence is taken right out of Temple of Doom, with a rickety bridge being destroyed. The only difference is that this one is full of that awfully fantastic 90s CGI. The whole story of the skulls and the ancient pirate brotherhood is the sort of exciting story that sends chills down my spine. As for the Phantom himself, he's got enough exciting backstory told, but not so much that he still isn't mysterious by the end of the movie.

The performances in this movie are pretty cheesy, especially Billy Zane. His way of fighting people seems to be to flash his pearly whites and then shoot them, but it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's one of the best things. Treat Williams' Drax is such an over the top bad guy that it absolutely believable that he would have actually existed in 1930s New York. Catherine Zeta Jones' Sala is one of those old stereotypical femme fatales and she plays it so well. And as for James Remar, well he's Indiana Jones' evil twin brother.

This superhero is more Indiana Jones than Iron Man, but that doesn't stop it from being a more interesting one than anything that Marvel or DC are bringing out over the next couple of years. Why is that? It's just so 90s!

The Legend of Tarzan

Before I watched this movie, I had myself thinking that I had never seen a Tarzan movie. But then I remembered Disney's Tarzan and it's TV spinoff, the parody George of the Jungle, the comedy Jungle 2 Jungle and even listened to Baltimora's 1985 hit Tarzan Boy (here's a fun challenge, give that one a listen while you read this). But all of those had a fairly upbeat tone to them. How does the one hundred year old character hold up in this era of gritty reboots? Not as well as it should have.

In 1890, Belgian envoy Léon Rom (Christoph Waltz) has been sent to the Congo in an attempt to make some money for the bankrupt king. He comes across Chief Mbonga (Djimon Hounsou), who promises him a lot of diamonds in exchange for the jungle man Tarzan, who killed his son. In England, Tarzan is reformed as Lord Greystoke (Alexander Skårsgard) and has received an invitation to return to the Congo to tour for some publicity. He is initially hesitant to visit, but American spy George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson) convinces him to go after hearing rumours of slavery taking place. Tarzan's wife Jane (Margot Robbie) also tags along, but this ends up being a mistake after she is kidnapped by Rom. Of course Tarzan is there to the rescue.

Tarzan suffers from some pretty bland plot problems. After a really interesting hint at some politics and great introduction to Léon Rom, the film just kicks into regular action/adventure tropes that follows perfectly in line with, well, the legend of Tarzan. And while it's not the generic discovery of Tarzan, the return of Tarzan isn't much more interesting. Another thing I found very distracting was the behaviours of some of the animals. Everyone knows that gorillas don't swing from vines and I thought it was really stupid that Tarzan would learn this from them. I would be fine with him developing this technique on his own. There is a heavily proliferation of CGI animals at work here and while it's not as bad as The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we really don't need a cameo from a group of poorly rendered elephants.

The characterisation is at least good. Tarzan is introduced with a shot of disfigured knuckles, a remnant of running around on all fours and although Skårsgard's accent is a bit shaky, his diet of raw eggs and whiskey is something we should all aspire to (take that Rocky). Margot Robbie's Jane offers a lot more than a damsel who's nice to look at. She works well in a sticky situation and her relationship with the African tribes proves invaluable. While I said that Christoph Waltz had an intriguing intro, he ends up being a bit of a generic villain, a thing that he has become lately. Of course, Samuel L. Jackson is there to be the good sidekick as always.

While The Legend of Tarzan promised to give us a different look at the famous jungle man, it ends up being the same old story, with all the elements of his adventure we've come to expect. The only thing missing was his chimpanzee buddy Cheeta.