A Quiet Place - Way to ruin your film

Hello world!

Been a very very long time since I posted anything here.  I am still watching films, and still spending far too much time wondering about what they mean and what I think about them.  Trouble is that my job these days doesn't give me any chance to write reviews in my down-time.  I admit it - must be that 50% or so of reviews here were penned in downtime at my previous jobs.  New job is much more busy.  Much more interesting, but much more busy.  So fewer reviews.

A Quiet Place is - until almost the very last shot - a solid science fiction tale.  It is the near future and something (aliens, creatures from the beyond, something) has invaded the earth and brought humanity to the brink of devastation.  The something experiences the world be sound and vibration only.  So the survivors of the human race live a near-silent existence, wearing soft footwear, tip-toeing around padded environments in fear of making a sound that could be their last.

Emily Blunt and John Krasinski play the adults in a nuclear family that in the pre-credits escape attack at a terrible cost - their youngest son is killed by the alien invaders after he accidentally sets off a loud, toy rocket ship.  A year passes and they have set themselves up a silent subsistence existence on the remnants of a rural farm.  There is constant fear that any sound could bring back the destruction that killed their son, but at the same time life must go on.  The children are growing up, another baby is on the way.  How to carry on in these circumstance?

Bubbling underneath this though, the real story is about everyone actually blaming themselves for everything that has gone wrong.  If only I hadn't given my son that toy...  If only I hadn't left him by himself...  If only...  Everyone has regrets and 'what if's, and everyone hides them.  Here sound is kept to a minimum, communication is scant, there is ample space for family members to hide away themselves, their feelings and thoughts.  Science fiction isn't it?   It's a story about secrets and hidden fears set in a world that physically embodies those fears of speaking out of turn.

Until the final shot.  I'm not going to spoiler anything, even though it isn't exactly The Usual Suspects.  Suffice to say that the film ends on a siege in which the attackers do finally come to the rural idyll and the family finally must confront the issues - both internal and external.  Sacrifices are made, and new heroes arise.  For some reason though, this film of minimal crisp soundscape and thoughtful themes ends on one character cocking a shotgun as the soundtrack ramps up to 11-out-of-10 generic rock   It's utterly non-reflective of the film and a very odd way to smash-cut to black.  Perhaps the idea was to underscore that the family are no longer fearful of their own noise that held them prisoner for so long?  Perhaps.  But shifting the tone of a film towards Bayhem right at the final scene is a bold move.  I'm not sure it works in a film that's a straightforward but heartfelt exploration of  human love and communication.  Nope - not for me.

Way to ruin your film.

Red Sparrow - Largely satisfactory

When Red Sparrow was doing its rounds in the reviews last year, the opinion was largely universal.  All were agreed it was good that Jennifer Lawrence was getting her acting chops into something a little more edgy (though we shouldn't forget she was in Winter's Bone before she became a wannabee for a generation of teenage girls in the Hunger Games saga - hardly a Disney movie), but no one was quite sure if the film itself was actually any good.  Time to find out for myself. 

Edgy is right.  Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova, Russian ballerina who's leg is broken in an 'accident', takes bloody revenge on her partner and is then recruited into the Russian secret service after the state tells her that the care her ill elderly mother relies on will be taken away if she refuses.  So she goes along, initially being raped by a man who is then strangled to death in front of her, then being further coerced into training as a 'Sparrow' - an expert in seduction, working out what it is that people want and using that to be the best spy there is.  Cue multiple scenes of Lawrence being beaten up, beating people up, sexualised violence, torture, the lot.  How will she escape this world?  Will she escape this world?  Edgy indeed.

I'm always happy to see an actor who could easily settle down into the Hollywood mainstream take on different roles.  Viggo Mortensen is the go-to case-in-point here.  Lawrence has a long way to go before she matches his shunning of the mainstream, and Red Sparrow is hardly an indie movie, but its difficult material mean its a film the audience who made her famous are unlikely to seek out.

As usual with a film like this, plenty of people are given ample opportunity to engage in - I presume - awful Russian accents.  Alongside Lawrence herself, Charlotte Rampling, Ciaran Hinds and Matthias Schoenaerts all get to ham it up as various arms of the Russian secret services, pledging allegiance to the state and the president, doing it for the motherland etc.  Do they even try to market these finds in CIS countries?  Probably not.

Perhaps the most surprisingly thing about Red Sparrow is that there's a lot of politics to dissect if you're willing to sit and think about it for a bit.  It's about the way that women are still treated, and are expected to allow themselves to be treated in the modern era.   Even in a post-me-too world, Dominika and her sexuality are commodities that are expected to be of use to the state (i.e. older men).  The plot flirts nicely with the idea of her being 'rescued' by the handsome American spy, with the central turn being about what she can do to beat a system she has being coerces into - go to the Americans, the nice American spy, the Russians, or something else entirely?  Perhaps it's something hinting at #MetToo, something that suggests she is far from turning into the next generation of the brainwashed automaton of the state played by Charlotte Rampling - a new generation with new ideas.  I found the result largely satisfactory, even though the film descends into spy cliche for portions at the start of its final act.

"Largely satisfactory".  Yep - that.

Hereditary - I need to stop comparing all horror to The Witch...

Everyone went mental for Hereditary last year.  Given the absolute and unchanging aversion that my girlfriend has to horror films, not only was I unable to get to the cinema to watch it, I had to wait until she was working late and safety out of the house for several hours before the DVD even got close to the player.  Scares she does not like.  Probably best she never watches this then.

Toni Collette plays Annie, mother of two and daughter to a controlling, steely-gazed matriarch who's funeral opens the film.  Her presence looms over the family, seemingly able to influence daughter Charlie from the beyond.  When further tragedy strikes the family, Annie looks to one of her mother's friends to make contact beyond the grave.  Psychosis, visions, time and space then begin to warp around Annie as she eventually realises the true motivations her own mother had towards Charlie.

It's a film that understands how to do horror, and its place in the genre.  The most obvious comparison is Don't Look Now, but its themes of loss and devil worship also lead to Rosemary's Baby.  There are numerous well-executed unnerving asides, visual illusions and tone-setting changes of lighting / camera movements - Hereditary is a very well-made film, a lot of attention has been paid to the smallest of details.  Milly Shapiro is well-cast as Charlie, her quizzical and slightly awkward appearance defy us to decide if she's about the be the victim or instigator of horrors to come

The opening shot zooms into a dolls house and enters the bedroom in which the film begins.  The implication is that this is somehow unreal, a story within a story or that the characters herein are playthings of puppeteers unknown.  This ties into the eventual themes of demonic influence, action from beyond the grave and loss of control.

I really don't want to do this, but I have to admit that I felt let down by the final few scenes.  Everything kind of gets spelled out nicely, and the camera lingers slightly too long and with too much lighting & focus on the demonic cult that has led Annie down the path of madness.  The mystery of the first two acts is unravelled just a little too much.  I don't want to keep going on about it, but Robert Eggers' The Witch has completely reset my opinion of how much a horror film can and should reveal at its close.  If you can tease just enough to maintain the mystery beyond the closing credits, and allow multiple plausible explanations, then you've aced it.  The fact that the final shine is taken off Hereditary simply because it isn't as strong at its close as The Witch shouldn't detract, but after having expected so much it would be a lie of omission to fail to state it.

Hereditary is an extremely good horror / thriller that will scare the pants of anyone unfamiliar with the genre.  The end of the first act is particularly chilling, and the constant return to death and dread throughout are emphasised by occasional and effective visual jump scares.  It definitely kept me on edge throughout - not bad for this veteran of the genre.  I think the real take-home of this review is that I need to stop comparing every scary movie that comes out from here to the end of time to The Witch - Hereditary is brutal, fascinating, gripping, unflinching and horrifying.  It's great.

It comes at night - horror of the inner self

There is little more terrifying than the loss of civilisation.  The threads that hold our world together are thinner and more frayed than many would want to believe.  The world as humanity knew it has fallen apart for great civilisations of the past.  It could fall apart again for ours - we are not special.  It comes at night is a horror / thriller that's huge in scale but minute in focus.  It concentrates on a small group of people hiding out in a remote cabin in a forest, they have survived day by day since the world outside collapsed.  Disease, chemical attack, alien invasion - it hardly matters.  This family just wants to live and do what they can to avoid losing their son, sanity and humanity.  When a stranger appears asking for help, which will they give up first?

It's a simple premise that's short on answers but asks a lot of pertinent questions about society, family and the lengths one would go to live in peace.  The story is less interested in teasing the viewer with the potential horror of a killer virus, rather we are teased with the very real horror of the reaction to its potential.  For the family, read the civilised world.  With all our interconnections, just-in-time deliveries and instant access, how quickly would a civilised world turn in on itself if even a sliver of that was wrenched away overnight?  Even in a world of plenty, the 'strong men' decry outsiders as invaders 'taking away' the rightful property of the 'natives'.  What horrors lie ahead in a world of chaos and disharmony ravaged by disease?

To anyone looking for a straightforward horror film with the usual signposts - look elsewhere.  The true horror here lies in inner space, amongst the comforting fires of the hearth and surety of the family unit.  By keeping the space of the story locked into a single cabin and its nearby woods, and by using fire-lit interiors whenever possible, the director maintains a singular focus on this.  The horror is knowing that this is now the entirety of the world one can feel safe in, and knowing that to defend it one might have to lose one's humanity.  And if we lose the thing that makes us human, then what is left?

Taxi Driver - the fickle tides of chance

Started the new year in film by ticking off another entry from the list of classic films my girlfriend has never seen.  Being made over 40 years ago now, it is hardly a surprise that only those with a keen interest in film have sought it out.  Robert De Niro's performance was a cultural touchstone for years, but the sheer number of films (and indeed films starring De Niro) that exist for people to consume these days means that Taxi Driver has fallen off the cultural radar.  You lookin' at me? might still be a line that trips off the tongue of the Millennial on the street, but the reason why they know it is slowly being lost in time.  It's not too much of a surprise - after all 43 years is a long time.  Consider for a moment that 43 years before Taxi Driver was made, cinema was only just out of the silent era.

The story told in Taxi Driver remains as powerful now as it ever was.  Robert De Niro is peerless as Travis Bickle - a character who is cipher for a world gone wrong in so many respects.  He is a war veteran who should be respected and offered a path in society.  Instead he is offered a view of the dregs of society, a vision of the world at its lowest, of people acting without fear of consequence in a place where no one would notice the bitterest of crimes, he is a taxi driver in New York circa 1976.  Bickle is introduced without fanfare, without background and without detailed regard for his drive in life other than simply to be able to be.  One wonders if he was nearly a nameless character in a script full of hollow people drifting through these mean streets.  He struggles to sleep and struggles to connect in a world that seems intent on ruining itself through a combination of vice and disregard for others.

Bickle's attempts to connect with Betsy (Cybill Sheppard) are initially naive and sweet, and then eventually coloured by the world around him.  He has come to assume that the scummy world of cheap blue flicks in dingy cinemas must be 'normal', otherwise why would everyone tolerate such things.  The fact that Betsy recoils at this world baffles him.  When Bickle meets the 12 year old Iris (Jodie Foster) he recoils at her scant disregard for being pimped out on New York's streets - even Bickle knows this is a step too far.  He knows he needs to do something to right these wrongs, but what difference can one man on a dark street really make?

Never lurking far from the story of society gone terribly wrong, the film's central theme is chance and the fickle fates that can turn us into heroes or villains, princes or paupers.  Bickle was born into working class drudgery and insomnia rather than into suburbia and opportunity - that's how the cosmic dice rolled.  Bickle is nearly a motiveless murderer, nearly a 1970's Lee Harvey Oswald; instead he is lauded a hero and given a chance at redemption - that's how the cosmic dice rolled.  Anyone could be Travis Bickle.  And while we live in a world insistent on condemning those who's luck wasn't there at life's crucial moments, we continue risking sending those people down a path in which they will do anything (or commit any atrocity) to be noticed.

Taxi Driver remains one of the greatest films ever made.

Dunkirk - Bit of a slog

Though Mark Kermode was very clear in his advice that one really must see Dunkirk on the big screen, once again I fell foul of the common thread on this blog these days - that I simply don't have the time.  Christopher Nolan's portrayal of the evacuation of the British army from France after defeat in the Battle of France at the start of World War Two was it seems so epic that to experience it in any other way would fail to do it justice.  And it certainly sets itself epic goals, telling its story in 3 interweaving acts on different time scales.  We see events on Dunkirk's beaches over a week, follow a civilian rescue boat in the English Channel over one day, and also a group of fighter pilots over a single hour.  Nolan received praise by bringing dynamic and non-linear narratives to mainstream cinema with Inception, and he attempts something similar here.

The goal is to tell a story that's epic in scope by focusing on personal stories, and it's a technique that's mostly successful.  It allows intimate storytelling about a historical event so huge one can easily forget that real people were involved.  Stealing the show at every turn is Mark Rylance, an actor who's lack of cinematic output meant I only discovered him relatively recently.  Here he plays a man piloting one of the 'small boats'.  His grim determination to do the right thing tempered we assume by the memories of horrors of wars past.  The fact that the script allows such personal story-telling and performances that carry weight is impressive in a film that requires expansive shows of hundreds of men cowering on a vast empty beach.

However, the film's scope is a little too large.  No matter how great Rylance's command of the camera when he is on screen, it is very much an ensemble cast.  The fact that we flit between the timescales with only a cursory opportunity for character development does harm the flow.  I applaud the final film for its production, effects, editing, sound, attention to detail and script; but it really is a slog to watch as we know how the story ends, and it becomes a 2 hour churn of survival and boredom and escape and return for the characters involved.  I feel like you need something to break up the flow and let the story breath.  I'm not suggesting that's easy as the story truly is epic, and telling it piecemeal from different angles / time-frames necessitates tough choices.  Essentially it's amazing, but a serious slog to actually watch.  Probably best enjoyed in two sittings.

So, all films are political.  What are Dunkirk's politics?  The right wing subtexts Christopher Nolan's cinematic output are well-documented, so is Dunkirk is a film that plays into the narrative of English exceptionalism?  Its release in the year after the Brexit vote saw it being adopted by well-known Brexit supporters as somehow channelling an anti-European sentiment.  All those deceitful French and frightened Dutch running from the German behemoth - leave it to the Brits to sort it all out.  So went 1940, so goes 2017.  If that is what Nolan intended then it is sad indeed.  But I doubt his motives were quite so nakedly political in playing to the UKIP crowd.  The British soldiers on the beach are hardly portrayed as paragons of heroic intent, rather as men and boys who are caught in a historical moment and just want to see another day.  I am prepared to give Nolan the benefit of the doubt here, and hand responsibility for nationalistic tub-thumping to the Faragists.

I suppose it would had been nice to have a couple of non-white Brits on the beach (there are black French soldiers shown), but the honest truth is I have no idea what the ethnic mix of the British Expeditionary Force was in 1941.  For all I know the film is completely realistic in its casting.  I don't feel I have enough information to judge.

Well that was a bit of a slog wasn't it?

Four Weddings and Funeral - about love, but not in the way you'd think

What to do on a Friday night in when your girlfriend is deeply uninterested in the stack of 'good film' DVDs?  Well you go on Netflix and discover that Four Weddings and a Funeral has appeared.  It is 24 years since the release of Four Weddings and Funeral, and as such 23 years since I saw it.  Surprisingly little arm-twisting was required to get me to watch it.  Yes - surprisingly little.

There are a lot of people out there for whom the film will require no introduction, such was its absolute domination in British popular culture in the mid-90s.  It made a star out of Hugh Grant and raised Wet Wet Wet to the status of pop gods after the film's sound track included 'Love is all around' - which then spent the whole of the summer of 1994 at position #1 in the UK singles charts.  The film's title explains its structure.  We follow Hugh Grant and his lower / middle / upper London society friends as they free-load their way through 4 weddings and 1 funeral.  It's a series of 5 short vignettes, each beginning shortly before the event with Hugh Grant (playing Charles) swearing merrily as he struggles to arrive on time.  At each event we see a little more about the connections between the characters, and learn that Charles worries he will never find the woman of his dreams, that he will never have his 'thunderbolt' moment when he falls in love.  At wedding 1, Charles meets the mysterious American Carrie (Andie MacDowell), after wedding 4 doesn't pan out as planned, Charles and Carrie have their 'thunderbolt' moment.  The end.

This film is seminal for many people - but not for me.  Far too many head-scratching oddities about the story.  It is never clear why this group of people of different ages and backgrounds are friends.  Perhaps it's meant to reflect the political rhetoric of 90's Britain in which John Major called for a post-class society?  It's hardly representative of British society though.  Why did they include a mute character as Charles brother?  He brings much needed heart to the story, but having conversations in sign language slows the pace of the film down at crucial moments.  It certainly nails the film as one that wants all-inclusive Britain in the modern age ensuring everyone is represented.  But doing this to the detriment of your story-telling is extraordinarily careless.

The most glaring oddity is the final 5 minutes.  There are 3 specific things that happen in the final 5 minutes that undercut much of any prior enjoyment.  The first is Charles and Carrie kissing in the rain - Andie MacDowell's line "I hadn't noticed it was raining" is one of the most jarringly poor moments of acting I've ever seen in a major motion picture.  Perhaps the line itself is the issue, and MacDowell's problem is that she's trying to work out how to deliver it without sounding like she's reading the script.  Whatever - it takes you out of the drama immediately.  The second is the literal thunderbolt we hear when Charles and Carrie declare their love in the rain.  I know that we have been told Charles has been searching for his 'thunderbolt' moment all his life - but seriously: if you look up the meaning of weather in fiction 1-0-1, it says thunder = bad.  If someone says something and then thunder and / or lightening happens, it means THIS IS BAD.  This casual misuse of the language of storytelling is perhaps more jarring even than Andie MacDowell's inability to deliver bad dialogue.  The third thing is that the most sympathetic character in the film, played by the best actor in the film (Kristin Scott Thomas as Fiona), is revealed in the closing montage as the only character who ends up with no one despite previously declaring her life-long love for Charles.  So we have bad acting, bad use of audio effects and a bad epilogue.  What hope for love Richard Curtis?

So the message of the film is that people who demonstrate heartfelt love are doomed to live a single life?  Or perhaps the thunderbolt that accompanies Charles and Carrie kissing really should be taken as a bad omen.  After all Carrie spends the night with Charles after wedding 2, when she is already with her future husband of wedding 3 - perhaps she's not as loyal as Charles imagines.  Perhaps their time together will be as short-lived like all Charles' other relationships?  Perhaps the message is that pining for your 'thunderbolt' moment stops you seeing what's in front of your eyes?  Perhaps the film's not quite as superficially about love as most of its fans in the 1990s imagined?

Or maybe it's simply a feel-good movie that reflected the cultural dynamics of the era, put its handsome young leading man in a series of good suits at weddings, didn't think very hard about its plot / structure and came out on top by rinsing a pop track until everyone was sick to death of hearing it.  Anyway, I wouldn't go too far out of your way to watch it.  Watch Black Mirror instead.  Seriously.