Rio Rancho Film Reviews

Nobody

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 16:52:00 +0000

Preposterous. Overblown. Completely unbelievable. But incredibly entertaining.

Bob Odenkirk stars as Hutch Mansell, an everyday loser who always forgets to put the garbage out, sleeps with his back to his wife and goes to a crummy job. In Edgar Wright fashion we get to witness his monotonous routine; we’re fed quick snippets of each part of his day, repeated again and again. This is a man sleepwalking through life.

Until one day a couple of armed burglars break into his house. In this type of scenario most people would hide and curl up into a little ball. But after grabbing a golf club, Hutch has an opportunity to turn the tables. But upon noticing that the burglars don’t actually have any bullets in their firearm, he stops himself from taking a swing. His family are mad and even the cops make snide comments, but something inside him begins to stir. A previous self that has been asleep for a long time.

Hutch tracks the burglars down but when he discovers that they have a sick baby, he leaves. But as he returns home on the bus, a group of Russian thugs get on board, harassing everyone. Rather than run away, Hutch uses this as an opportunity to vent his frustration. Hutch beats, bludgeons and stabs them. He beats one guy so badly that he performs an emergency tracheotomy on him with a soda straw just so that he doesn’t choke to death. It’s a ludicrous scene; a middle aged man against a large group of young guys, but it’s performed with such gusto and with such grisly detail that it works. It’s cartoonish but it’s still hard hitting enough to give it weight.

It’s also wonderful to live vicariously through Hutch in this scene. I’m sure that anyone who’s lived in a large city and has had to take public transport every day, has experienced multiple occasions where they’ve encountered the dregs of humanity. Who hasn’t dreamed of throwing someone headfirst into a pole or choking them out with a stop request cord?

Unbeknownst to Hutch, one of the men that he hospitalizes is the younger brother of a Russian crime lord. So rather predictably, the Russian mafioso swears revenge. However, what the Russians don’t know is that Hutch is a former government assassin. Hence why Hutch was able to take out a whole crew by himself.

So what we kind of have here is True Lies meets Falling Down meets A History of Violence meets John WIck. It doesn’t have the same quality of action as True Lies, nor is it as funny, and it’s certainly not a character study like Falling Down, but it does have lots of colour and lots of excitement.

It also helps that the film has a very lean running time of 92 minutes. The film never gets a chance to outstay its welcome.

One of the most amusing elements in the film is Christopher Lloyd, who plays Hutch’s father. Living in a retirement home and barely speaking, he, like Hutch, seems like a shell of a human being. He’s so vulnerable and helpless that when the shit hits the fan with Hutch and the Russians, they send a couple of guys over to kill the old man. To the strains of ‘What a Wonderful World’, they turn up to the nursing home to put a bullet in his head. He’s asleep like a baby, an old Western playing on the television, but when one of the Russians cocks the hammer on his gun, he wakes up and sticks his finger between the hammer and the primer, preventing the gun from firing. He then pulls out a sawn off shotgun from under his blanket and blows the Russians away. An orderly comes running in but Christopher Lloyd has the volume on the TV turned up and he mistakenly thinks the commotion was from the Western. It’s complete hokum. It makes no sense at all. There'd be blood everywhere. There’d be bodies. The sound of a shotgun going off could never be confused with a movie gun even if it was turned up loud. The old man would never get away with it. But it’s just such a funny scene that you go with it.

The only time that the film gets a bit too ridiculous is during the car chase when Hutch's car gets riddled with thousands of bullets and he somehow doesn’t get shot. But then the film redeems itself during the bonkers final action scene by having Hutch, his dad and his brother kill what seems like hundreds of Russians in a vast array of inventive ways. Explosives are detonated, steel rods are fired and refrigerated guns are used. And then to make it even better, in the climatic moments, they play Gerry and the Pacemaker’s version of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ as the family stand together shoulder to shoulder, massacring their enemy. As a massive Liverpool fan, I couldn’t help but love this moment.

Apparently this could be the start of a franchise. Whether that’s a good idea or not, I don’t know. Where else is there to go? Is it just going to be bigger and louder with even more people getting killed? Most of the film’s charm is how modest it is. I’m not confident that sequels will see any improvement but at least there’ll always be this; a small, grungy, funny action film with tons of blood and with the smarts to know to punch hard and get out while the going is good.

Pieces of a Woman

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 00:10:00 +0000

Pieces of a Woman is what happens when rich, entitled white folk have bad shit happen to them. Do they take responsibility for their bad decisions? Ha! Of course they don’t. They blame anything, everything and everyone they can.

The film begins with a technically virtuosic sequence where the lead character Martha (Vanessa Kirby) goes into labour. She’s got an awesome apartment, has a studly boyfriend played by the trainwreck of a human being that is Shia LaBeouf and has decided to give birth at home. Fair enough. That’s a perfectly reasonable decision. However, it’s also a risky decision. If you give birth at home, you’re exposing yourself to danger. You’re like a tightrope walker without a safety net. If something bad happens, you’re in trouble.

Anyone who’s made this decision should be completely honest with themselves. They should know that the potential for tragedy is far greater. But of course these assholes just want to have a beautiful home birth, listen to some shitty music on Spotify and stay out of that icky hospital where people can actually help them.

The opening sequence is well choreographed but is ruined by the acting of Vanessa Kirby. She doesn’t look like she’s in labour; she looks like she’s high. Or that she’s chugged a couple of bottles of wine. I’ve seen so many labour sequences in movies and television shows over the years and the acting from her is one of the worst. The smoke and mirrors of the shooting can’t disguise shitty acting.

The best acting comes from Molly Parker as the poor midwife who has to deal with these pampered douchebags. The creeping dread of this complicated labour is very subtly conveyed ,and she does her absolute best in difficult circumstances, but you can tell that she’s shitting bricks.

Despite some difficulties, the baby is born. All seems well. Shia LaBeouf even cracks out an old film camera and begins snapping away. Who the fuck does this? His baby is two seconds old and his first thought is to grab a camera. He doesn’t take a minute to enjoy the moment. He doesn’t hug his wife. He doesn’t use his eyes to gaze upon the wonder of his newborn baby. No, he snaps away with an old film camera. I don’t know why, but the film camera part of it makes it worse for me. I absolutely love film, but are you telling me that this roughneck is into film photography? Get the fuck out of here.

Five seconds later the baby begins to struggle to breath and turns blue. The assholes don’t notice this but the poor midwife does and tries her best to intervene. An ambulance soon arrives but it’s too late. Bet you this wouldn’t have happened in a hospital.

Is that too blunt of a statement? Is that too reductive? Is it too insensitive? But for the whole movie I was waiting for someone to mention this. Martha’s mother kind of broaches the subject, but it’s only in the final sequence that the question is explicitly asked. And it’s asked by the midwife’s lawyer. But the subject is quickly dismissed.

Instead Martha, upset by the questioning, gets to have a break. When she comes back, she asks if she can address the court directly. ‘This is highly unusual’ everyone mutters, which is movie code for ‘what’s about to follow is implausible BS’. So Martha addresses the court and makes a little speech. She says that what happened wasn’t the midwife’s fault. Everyone watching is meant to cry rivers of fat tears. I, however, was fuming. So this rich asshole gets to pardon the poor peasant? The person who was trying to act responsibly and do their best in difficult circumstances? How wonderful. How heartwarming. Yes, you’ve only put this woman through hell. You’ve only put her through months of stress and agony. You’ve only potentially taken her freedom away from her because things didn’t go perfectly. How dare you. And how dare this fucking film. The midwife doesn’t even get to say anything. She just gets to look worried and sad and then grateful. In reality she would despise Martha. The shit that Martha has put her through. Surely her professional reputation is in the toilet because of this. Who would hire her now?

So no, the ending didn’t warm the cockles of my heart. In fact, my rage only intensified during the final coda.

The ending has a child walking through a vast field and then climbing a tree. A woman calls the child and of course it’s Martha. They then walk hand in hand back to a large house. Does it make me a bad person that my sympathy is vastly eroded when the characters are disgustingly wealthy? Try losing a child when you don’t have a rich mother to bail you out. Try losing a child when you have to deal with bullshit from insurance companies. Try losing a child when your boyfriend isn’t a coked up manchild and yet you still separate anyway because the grief is too great.

The depiction here of Martha’s boyfriend Sean, played by Shia LaBeouf, is remarkably simplistic and one note. He cries a little bit but he’s mostly filled with blind rage. In one scene, not long after the incident at the beginning, he bullies his girlfriend into trying to have sex. They’re sitting on the couch and he grabs her hand and puts it on his penis. And then even though she isn’t physically or emotionally ready, forces himself on her. It’s essentially a rape scene.

As well as being a rapist asshole, Sean is also a complete moron. In one scene he spews the following toe-curling line: ‘Why are you trying to disappear my child?’ This is in response to his girlfriend trying to take apart the baby’s room. Who talks like this? Did he suddenly turn into Yoda? And Sean then goes on to say that he ‘misses’ his child? You mean the child that was alive for about ten seconds and the child that you loved so much you had to crack out your film camera for? You might be sad that your child didn’t get to live. You might wonder what kind of amazing future your child might have had if circumstances had been different. But you miss them? It’s like what someone would say if they’re trying to convince themselves they have emotions.

After this nonsense, Sean begins an affair with Martha’s cousin, who, would you believe it, is a lawyer who’s going to represent Martha in court. Why are Sean and Martha’s cousin doing this? Couples fall apart after trauma for a variety of reasons. Why reduce it to some soap opera level bullshit? Him and the cousin even start doing some coke after they have sex in her office, which is tacky as fuck.

I also find the depiction of the cousin completely unbelievable. She’s dowdy and shy looking and yet she’s supposed to be some fearsome lawyer. She also keeps on spouting disgusting shit about how the midwife must pay.

But back to Sean’s character. There was one scene of domestic abuse that was so over the top and ripe with student-level symbolism that I couldn’t help but laugh. Martha has gone out to a club and flirted with a man to communicate her intense suffering. Because this is what always has to happen in films of this ilk. It’s not enough to just suffer. People have to suffer beautifully while flirting with other beautiful people because they’re so damn sad. And then she comes home to her boyfriend and they get into an argument. She’s smoking on the couch and he throws a yoga ball in her face. She doesn’t say a thing. She doesn’t even look mad. She just stubs out the cigarette on the sofa (to communicate her smouldering rage) while her feet rest on the deflating yoga ball (to communicate that she’s sinking) as withered plants and flowers surround her (to communicate the death of their relationship). We then cut to a shot of an unfinished bridge (to communicate the gulf that exists between them). All of this happens in about twenty seconds. You couldn’t lay it on thicker if you tried.

But Sean isn’t even the most heinous character in this movie. That dubious distinction would go to Martha’s mother played by Ellen Burstyn. At first she seems like a harmless rich old lady. She even buys Martha and Sean a new car. But as the film develops we see what a bitter, twisted old fuck she is. Everything that has happened is the fault of the midwife, and the midwife must pay for her mistakes. Because isn’t that what rich people do? Rather than look at things from every perspective; rather than accept the complexity of life, there always has to be someone to blame when things don’t go the way they want. Because they’re rich. Nothing bad is meant to happen to rich people. Infant deaths and things of that nature only exist in the realm of the poor. So it must be the midwife’s fault. And she must go to jail because I don’t get to hold MY granddaughter.

In one scene Martha’s mother relates her strength of character. She says how she was born during the Second World War and how her mother would have to scrounge for food in order to survive. She barely had enough food to produce milk. In fact, people told her to get rid of the baby; that the baby wasn’t going to make it. But then to prove her strength, she held the baby upside down and the baby raised her head. Martha’s mother tells this story as a pep talk. What? So if I was an underfed baby and I still had the strength to raise my head, you should be able to get over your grief? That’s bonkers.

And Martha’s mother relates this story like she can personally remember it. Like she can remember being that baby. She doesn’t tell it like ‘my mother told me I raised my head’. No, it’s like she can remember being a few weeks old, which of course is complete and utter horseshit. It also speaks to a deeper, most insidious attitude in general. Well, if I can overcome malnutrition why can’t all those starving children in Ethiopia too? Well, if I can become stinking rich why can’t all these poor people as well? If only people would pull themselves up by their bootstraps like me.

To further illustrate this woman’s character, or lack thereof, she solves the problem of Martha’s boyfriend Sean by throwing money at him. Sean has a pretty good job so how much money would it cost to make him disappear? $10,000? $50,000? $200,000? I’m guessing it’s a bonkers amount, seeing as the check does the intended job. But again, how disgusting is this person? People are just objects or problems to be dealt with and disposed of.

Despite this, once the trial is over, we’re again meant to feel warm and fuzzy when Martha has dinner with her mother at some fancy restaurant. Martha’s mother is becoming forgetful but Martha sympathetically holds her hand. Am I meant to give a shit? I hope her mother forgets everything. I hope she forgets about her daughter. I hope she forgets herself. I hope she forgets every fond memory in her head. But most of all, I hope she doesn’t get to enjoy her granddaughter.

News of the World

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 01:55:00 +0000

When it was announced that Paul Greengrass was making a movie called News of the World, I legitimately thought he was making a gritty, documentary-style expose of the demise of the British tabloid of the same name; a probe into the phone hacking scandal. Instead it turned out that he was making a Tom Hanks western. I was intrigued.

I really shouldn’t have been. News of the World is hamstrung by a dull, stodgy, cliche-ridden screenplay and pantomime villains. It also features the worst action sequences of any Paul Greengrass movie and is devoid of any excitement or tension. At best, it feels half-hearted; at worst it’s completely inept.

The story centers on Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, played by Tom Hanks, who goes from town to town with a handful of newspapers and tells the locals what’s going on in the world. He has all the showmanship of a blind, wet dog. If I went to one of these readings, I’d want my money back, such is the excruciating boredom of him relating local news in a tortuously slow and important manner.

Things pick up when Kidd stumbles upon a bloodbath in a forest. There he finds a young girl named Johana who only speaks Kiowa and German. He tries his best to arrange a safe passage home for her but no one can help. So it falls to him to take her home.

You can immediately guess what’s going to happen. They don’t speak the same language and the old man and the kid don’t like each other. He resents her and she’s scared and angry. So something terrible is going to happen, right? He’s going to abandon her in the desert or she’s going to slit his throat while he sleeps? Who am I kidding? Of course they’re not. They’re going to slowly bond and develop a long, lasting affection for one another and share each other’s cultures and become friends on Facebook and... Sorry, I’ve nodded off.

It might be an incredibly predictable trajectory for the movie, but the relationship between Kidd and Johana is actually by far the best thing in the movie. Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel are both excellent. Yes, this movie hardly stretches Hanks’s acting range but he’s still a marvelous actor. It’s just a crying shame that he has so little to work with.

The point at which I knew that this film was going to be a crushing failure was when Kidd and Johana encounter a gang of outlaws who want to buy the girl. The thought alone is terrible. We all know what the leering criminals want out of her and what they’ll do. So when Kidd and Johana skip town and a chase ensues, a tense, white knuckle thriller of a scene should follow, shouldn’t it?

It should, but it doesn’t. This paedo posse is populated by complete blithering morons. They trap Kidd and Johana atop a rocky hill and begin the most boring shoot out in modern times. There’s zero tension, zero excitement and zero intensity. The dialogue basically amounts to ‘Oooh, I’m gonna get you!’ And then we begin with the whole nonsense of ‘You can join us!’ Oh, will Kidd betray Johana and join the paedo posse? What do you think, dear reader?

The hilltop shootout also suffers the ignominy of having the worst effects shot since Legolas Greenleaf mounted a horse by levitating like a jerky clusterfuck of pixels in The Two Towers. Kidd crushes one of his foes by pushing a massive boulder down the hill. Pretty simple, eh? Shouldn’t be too difficult for the practical effects department. Instead, for some reason only known to the filmmakers, they decide to use a CGI boulder, and by god it looks terrible. Like Legolas it looks like it comes from a bad video game.

So this garbage shot takes place and then we still have to suffer the most boring game of cat and mouse in decades. Of course Kidd manages to kill the dunderhead but not before we’ve had a nap or two.

What makes this scene all the more bewildering is that we know that Greengrass is an excellent action director. The Bourne movies, United 93, Captain Phillips and 22 July are all evidence of that. It’s like he’s consciously tried to get away from the ‘shaky cam’ tag but has failed to successfully adapt to a new style.

Once this sequence is over we almost immediately stumble upon more stupidity. Our heroes are riding along a path when some ne'er-do-wells emerge from the bushes. Apparently they’re a militia group who are looking to keep the area clear of outsiders. In reality, they just want to enslave the local population and amass wealth.

The leader of this group is so overwhelmingly narcissistic that he’s produced his own newspaper. This paper includes drawings of the leader doing all kinds of important things that he’s obviously never done, like curing leprosy and feeding orphans. They’re so cheesy that I half expected that one of the pictures would be of The Last Supper with the leader standing in for Jesus Christ.

The leader of this group gets Kidd to read this self-published rag to the local townsfolk. Kidd refuses and instead reads from another paper. The story he recounts is of a group of coal miners who turn against their harsh leader. Oh, I wonder what Captain Kidd is up to here?

The writing in this scene is so clunky and awkward that I felt sorry for Tom Hanks having to spew this claptrap. That this story could so quickly and effectively rile up this group of people is just preposterous. And would you believe it, but Kidd and Johanna use the commotion to escape from the militia, until of course the leader shows up as they try to mount their wagon. But after taking an age to shoot Captain Kidd (of course), the leader gets shot by Johanna. And then when another bad guy turns up to shoot Johanna, a kid shows up at the last second to save the day. It’s all so cliched and predictable that it almost makes you want to weep.

The kid who saves the day is a young man, and the actor who plays him is just awful. He has a weird, creepy vibe that makes you hope that he disappears quickly. And thankfully, he does.

Eventually Captain Kidd returns Johanna to her extended family. Her uncle, who is a complete asshole, is immediately whining and complaining and saying that she needs to work (get a job!). He’s only known her for ten seconds!

Of course the extended family treat Johanna like shit and of course Captain Kidd, after a tearful excursion to his wife's grave, eventually adopts her. And they go around reading the newspaper to everyone, and have an awesome time doing it. But the film is so poorly written and poorly constructed that I couldn’t give a crap. Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel do their best but no one could make this crap work. It’s such a disappointing film given the talent behind and in front of the camera.

Dressed to Kill

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 01:39:00 +0000

For all intents and purposes, Dressed to Kill is a remake of Psycho. Both films have a lusty female lead who gets horribly murdered at the end of the first act. Both films have a killer who has conflicting personalities. Both films have men dressing up as women. And both films are obsessed with showers.

However, the quality of the films are vastly different. For the most part, besides the final dialogue with the doctor and the bland lead characters, Psycho is a masterpiece. Dressed to Kill, on the other hand, is not. It’s silly, trashy and very hard to take seriously. It’s great fun, but sometimes in spite of itself.

Another way that Dressed to Kill differs from Psycho is that Psycho has an amazing beginning but then kind of runs out of steam towards the end. Dressed to Kill, though, has an atrocious first act but then picks up once our heroine is murdered.

It’s kind of hard to put into words just how terrible the first 30-40 minutes are. I haven’t cackled so much at a movie in a long time.

The film opens with Angie Dickinson having a long, steamy, luxurious shower while watching her husband shave. The sheer rugged masculinity of this old geezer scraping hairs off his face with a kickass macho cut throat razor turns her on. She can’t help but fondle herself with a bar of soap as we’re shown many close-ups of her tits. It’s filmed in the same kind of soft-focus nonsense way that De Palma films the shower scene in Carrie. Like that scene, everything is achingly romantic as bullshit twinkly music plays.

The twist in the Carrie shower scene is that Carrie gets her period. The twist here is that a second man appears from within the steam to rape Angie. Is it a nightmare? Or is it a fantasy? We immediately cut to Angie having unsatisying sex with her husband. Once he comes, he gives her the most hilarious, patronising, ‘You did a good job’ slap in the face. No wonder she wants sexy steam guy to rape her.

The sequence in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is much lauded in certain critical circles, but I find it profoundly silly. It may have all the typical De Palma elements - long takes, split screens, lack of dialogue, great visuals - but the actual story that it tells is laughable.

Angie hangs out in the museum, watching the world go by, when she notices a guy taking an interest in her. He looks like complete Eurotrash (although we later find out that he has a very American name). He’s got huge sunglasses, jet black hair that looks like it’s been sandblasted on his head and he has a habit of thoughtfully sucking on his pen. He looks like he should be selling turtlenecks on the Cote d’Azur. Roger Moore would be envious of him.

Angie and the man give each other eyes and then eventually he sits down next to her, sucking on his pen like he’s oh so thoughtfully contemplating the artwork and totally not inviting her to suck on something else. They sit there for a while like a pair of idiots until she removes her glove, accidentally revealing a huge ring. In a hilarious moment, like Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville turning their backs on Kelly Cates, he gets up and runs off. Much nonsense follows. Where’s the guy? Where’s my glove? The guy has my glove and has terrified me with it! I must run off! Oh, now I’m outside and only have one glove. I must throw it on the floor and litter! Oh, now the guy is in a taxi outside the Met and is beckoning me by waving the other glove out of the window! Yeah, that’s totally not creepy and disrespectful. I’ll totally get into the cab with him.

Once they’re in the cab, they begin making out. And before you know it, in almost a magic trick, the man has Angie’s panties off and is going down on her. The music in the scene is hilarious. It’s very sweet and romantic, because, you know, there’s nothing more romantic than getting on the floor of a dirty, disgusting New York taxi and having someone perform oral sex on you; a complete stranger who beckoned you like you were a dog or a cat. And also having a slobbering cabbie watch it.

The next scene is my favourite. After an afternoon of rigorous, Olympic-level sex, Angie decides to sneak out of bed and back to her husband. She thinks for a moment, and in split screen, remembers her panties falling to the floor. No shit, we have a split screen of her smiling and her knickers falling off. She then decides to write a note to her one night stand, saying how much she enjoyed herself. She goes through a couple of drafts and then decides to look at something in the man’s desk drawer. She comes upon a medical report. For a moment, you think that the man might be crazy. That he’s a lunatic killer. But the reveal is so, so much better. The letter says that the man has venereal disease. By this point I was beyond myself. I was laughing like a maniac. You see what happens when you have the audacity to sleep with someone else? You see what happens when you betray your poor, condescending, selfish husband? You get the clap. As Sully in Commando would say, ‘You fuckin’ whore.’

Angie rushes away from her diseased lover but then realises that she’s forgotten her wedding ring. This is after she suffers a withering, dirty look from a small child in an elevator. The child obviously knows that she’s in the presence of a clap-ridden trollop. So Angie presses the elevator button about a million times before going back up to the man’s apartment. But before she can get there, she gets slashed up by a burly woman with a cut-throat razor. You know, because she’s a fucking whore and this is the price of a good time.

The killing, as per usual for De Palma, is a bloodbath. And then in a direct reference to Psycho, we have a shot of a blood-stained Angie Dickinson reaching out as the elevator doors open. It’s exactly the same as Janet Leigh reaching for the shower curtain.

Normally this sort of sequence should bring out the best of De Palma, but the musical score is terrible (I can’t fully explain just how horrible it is) and the reactions from the characters are unintentionally hilarious. Karen Allen’s escort girl witnesses the aftermath of the killing but then a hysterical woman sees Allen holding the weapon and screams like a banshee, thinking she’s the killer. The timing, the acting and the staging are ridiculous.

Once Angie Dickinson is killed, the film improves somewhat. Much like the vastly superior Blow Out, it develops elements of technological, surveillance thriller. Angie’s tech savvy teenage son becomes involved in the case and begins eavesdropping on cops and staking out Michael Caine’s shrink character. All of this stuff is great.

There’s also a fantastic sequence on the New York Subway. But even this is peppered with nonsense. Nancy Allen inadvertently gains the attention of a group of black men who immediately begin intimidating her. They say charming things like, ‘I’m gonna break her fucking ass.’ They’ve obviously become violently aroused at the sight of this prostitute and stalk her like a pack of wild animals. It’s the most cliched depiction of street thugs you’re likely to see. And the scene is made even more strangely amusing by the sight of a terrified Nancy Allen being stalked from one side of the train by a group of angry black men and by being stalked on the other side by a murderous transsexual.

Despite the dubious stereotypes, the scene has a lot of tension and there’s some fantastic deep focus photography. At one point we see Nancy Allen talking to a belligerent cop while the murderer sneaks onto the subway car in the background. And earlier on in the scene there’s a wonderful shot where both the murderer and Nancy Allen turn their head at the same time, both of them a distance apart but both of them perfectly in focus.

There’s a ridiculous but enjoyable scene where Nancy Allen comes onto Michael Caine’s shrink character. She needs info on one of his patients so she plans to seduce him so that she can get a look in his appointment book. It’s incredibly silly, what with the very conceit of the scene and the fact that it’s filmed with lightning and thunder (there’s a conflict within Caine...in his pants!). But despite how hokey it is, it works. And then we get the reveal that the murderer is...Michael Caine dressed as a woman!

Again, like Psycho, we have a terrible scene where a doctor conveniently explains everything that has been going on. Apparently Caine’s character has been looking to transition into becoming a woman. But inside Caine’s body there was a fight between the two sexes (!!). The female part didn’t want the masculine part to become dominant, so whenever Caine got aroused by a woman, the female side would come out and kill whoever gave him a boner.

Okay then...

But even though in the current climate that idea sounds offensive, the film is so silly and over the top that it’s hard to take offence. This film isn’t about sexuality or transsexuals. It’s about cinema. It’s a movie about movies. It’s a blatant attempt to remake Psycho and dress it up in different clothes. It’s not a disaster but it’s also not a success. There’s a lot to appreciate in the filmmaking craft and the visual storytelling, but the screenplay is appalling; lots of it is laughable. It even has the really annoying fake out ending, where it seems that the lead character has been brutally murdered but it turns out to be a paranoid dream. Thankfully lots of these ideas would coalesce into the much superior Blow Out.

American Sniper

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 16:51:00 +0000

There’s a scene in American Sniper where Bradley Cooper’s character, with complete sincerity, says that America is the greatest country in the world. As if the worth of countries can be quantified and as if America would be anywhere near the top if they could.

I feel that there’s a complete lack of objectivity in American Sniper. Clint Eastwood obviously feels that Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) is a great guy when his actions constantly suggest he’s anything but. From kicking down the doors of Iraqis, intimidating men, women and children, and beating up people in their own homes, he’s a reprehensible human being whose cowboy instincts are never used to help the Iraqi people but to perpetuate this mistaken idea of American exceptionalism.

In numerous scenes the American soldiers refer to the idigenous population as ‘savages’. I fully believe that soldiers talk this way, but I never felt that Eastwood was being objective. I feel that he, like the American characters in the movie, feel that they are somehow above the native population. Here the Americans are, rolling into Iraq to save everyone from themselves and their fucked up country, and what gratitude do they show? They don’t evacuate their homes when they’re supposed to and they even try and arm themselves against the invaders. What ingrates.

There’s no attempt here at any complexity. Chris Kyle is portrayed as a serious, committed soldier and the Iraqis are just cannon fodder. They even create a shadowy Syrian sniper counterpart called ‘The Butcher’ who slays people in cold blood and who is just generally filled with misplaced rage. He must be stopped of course by our heroic white hat.

One of the opening scenes has our hero hunting deer with his daddy as a child. Nevermind that Chris has taken his first life, his daddy chides him for not looking after his gun properly. Contrast this to an equivalent scene in Last of the Mohicans where the Native American characters hunt a deer and then give thanks to it after they kill it. They realize the enormity of what they’ve done and the sacrifice that has been made. Chris Kyle’s daddy is just concerned that Chris isn’t looking after his penis extension.

The end of the movie is basically a fantastical ‘my gun is better than your gun’ and ‘my dick is bigger than your dick’ showdown between Chris Kyle and the dastardly Butcher. Of course our hero triumphs with an impossible shot from about a mile away because he’s an American with a massive gun/penis and the other guy is just a little savage with a limp noodle.

The film makes an attempt to acknowledge the difficulties that Chris Kyle had adjusting to civilian life. He can’t concentrate at home when he has to hold his baby (which uncannily resembles a lifeless doll) and a BBQ turns into a nightmare when he almost beats a dog to death. Even in his PTSD he’s a complete asshole.

But then he discovers the joys of helping veterans. By talking to them, you say? Of course not. He helps them by shooting big guns at target ranges.

One of the most risible scenes is when Chris Kyle, who has now got his mojo back, sneaks up on his wife in full cowboy attire and draws a gun on her and makes out like he’s going to force himself on her. So sexy. You get it? The big, shiny six-shooter is his penis. Get it? Nevermind that he’s killed men, women and children with his rifle, isn’t it so sexy to fetishise guns?

The most jarring thing about the movie is how it ends. Kyle is happy and smiley and fully recovered and helping veterans and trying to pretend to rape his wife as a sexy cowboy when he gives a lift to a shifty looking fellow. A title then appears on the screen saying that the man murdered Chris Kyle. No attempt at all to depict this event or explain it. Our white hat just gets murdered.

And then you have the titles. Good Lord Almighty, you’d think that Oskar Schindler had died. American flags flutter and thousands of people line the streets to salute the paid murderer. It just goes to show that America is still deeply, painfully, worryingly and unabashedly in love with their frontier bullshit, their cowboy mythology and that most American of symbols: the gun.

Joker

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 20:59:00 +0000

I’m pretty sure that the backlash has already begun. Joker arrived on a wave of critical praise, even managing to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. But even now there are rumblings that it isn’t very good. Blah blah incels. Blah blah Scorsese rip-off. Blah blah Joaquim’s a ham.

First of all, as regards the incel stuff. Thank fucking Christ this isn’t some pro-incel nonsense. Well, for the most part. For the majority of the movie this is just a sad, sorry tale of a mentally ill man steadily losing the plot. There’s no outrage that women aren’t throwing themselves at him. He’s just losing his mind.

The only reason that I say that it mostly avoids incel-type nonsense is that there’s a scene near the end where the Joker/Arthur Fleck becomes a bit whinny. He goes on a late night TV show with Robert De Niro’s talk show host and complains about how people aren’t nice. He also confesses to some earlier murders. It’s a terribly written scene; easily the worst in the movie. Which is kind of a big deal when this is the Joker’s first big scene.

Everything about it feels wrong. De Niro’s character hardly bats an eyelid when the Joker confesses to murder, the TV show stays on the air for way too long while De Niro pompously lectures a killer and the Joker doesn’t sound like the Joker at all. It’s like it’s still Arthur Fleck talking but in drag. Which I suppose could kind of be the point. But the dialogue is still awful and self-pitying, something which the Joker usually isn't. I kind of wish that the Joker would have come on the TV show and not spoken a word; just sat there for a while and then shot De Niro’s character in the head before laughing hysterically like it’s the funniest joke in the world.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the movie’s best scene is when we first get a glimpse of what’s to become the Joker. Arthur has lost his job as a clown for hire and attracts the attention of some Wall Street-type douchebags while riding home on the Subway. He’s still in his clown gear and they taunt him, beat him and humiliate him until, like Death Wish’s Paul Kersey, he blows two of them away with a concealed weapon. The last guy, like The French Connection, he chases off the train and shoots in the back. Arthur then flees the scene and disappears into a men’s bathroom. Here, wearing full clown make-up, he outstretches his arms and gazes at himself in the mirror, finding liberation in his violent madness. It’s a beautifully poetic scene; a lunatic finally finding himself.

Another great scene is when a couple of ex-colleagues come to visit Arthur in his apartment. They’ve found out that his mother has died. One of his former colleagues is a man who gave him a gun; an action which inadvertently led to Arthur losing his job. The other guy is a little person. They find Arthur in ghostly white face (he’s dyed his hair green and is playing with his face paint). After a brief chat, Arthur brutally and hideously attacks the man who gave him the gun, stabbing him repeatedly and smashing his head into the wall. The little person can only look on in disbelief. Eventually the man asks to leave, not knowing if he’s going to be murdered in turn. The scene is dripping with tension. Arthur then says that he can go. With great relief, the little person goes to exit the apartment. However, there are chains on the door and he can’t reach. He then has to ask Arthur to help him out. You’re never quite sure what’s going to happen and it’s darkly comic to see the dwarf squirm so much in the face of madness.

Perhaps the most chilling scene, though, is when Arthur lets himself into a neighbour’s flat. It isn’t clear yet (although it’s pretty obvious if you’re paying attention) but Arthur has been imagining that he’s in a relationship with a woman named Sophie that he encounters in his apartment building’s elevator. They have a brief exchange and then we see them spending time together. Only they aren’t. It’s all in Arthur’s head. It’s very sad and pathetic but it feels like an incredibly real delusion. The fantasies that he has are exactly the kind of thing that lonely men come up with. After killing the Wall Street guys, and still in full make-up and covered in blood, he imagines knocking on Sophie’s door and making out with her. What woman would do that? And the mother of a small child, no less. As always with these types of things, Arthur casts himself as the hero of his own nightmare.

So when Arthur turns up in Sophie’s flat, after having killed his mother (of course), there’s a palpable sense of dread. The casual way that he sits down and waits for her is rife with menace. And adding tension to the scene is the fact that, when he arrives, Sophie is putting her little daughter to bed.

What I liked so much about the film is that it’s more of a mood piece than anything else. The photography and music are fantastic. Some of the visuals are breathtaking - the Joker running through the tunnel, the lighting as the Joker waits to come through the curtain on the TV show and even Arthur simply trudging through his neighbourhood. This is lightyears ahead of the bland, moribund stuff that Marvel are feeding us. Just watching Arthur get fired and then smash his head into a phone booth window had more pathos and gravity than the whole of Black Panther.

Which isn’t to say that this is a great movie. There are some glaring faults. Robert De Niro doesn’t quite convince as the TV host, Thomas Wayne is merely a Donald Trump-style douchebag and the movie fetishes the Joker character. Once his face is painted, he seems to move in nothing but slow motion and is constantly filmed leaning back, smoking a cigarette. The Joker is meant to be a fascinating character but he isn’t meant to be the epitome of cool. I get that the confidence, the smoking and the dancing is Arthur finally finding himself but there’s so little actual Joker in the movie and so much of it is filmed in slow-mo that it feels that the film loses a little perspective. Heath Ledger’s Joker was always fascinating and endlessly watchable but you didn’t feel that Nolan was identifying with him or trying to turn him into a symbol of cool.

Another fault I had with the film is that the Joker never really feels like the Joker. I always thought that the Joker was fiercely intelligent. Evil yes, but super smart. Arthur Fleck is a bit of a dolt. As he’s presented here, he wouldn’t be capable of planning anything. Perhaps that’s the point though? Todd Phillips has said that he didn’t want to make it certain whether Arthur is the true Joker or not. Perhaps Arthur inspires someone else to take on the mantle.

That being said, there’s a great scene where the Joker is ‘liberated’ from the police by a hoard of anti-capitalist protesters. They’ve picked him as their symbol, their representative. He has no fucking clue what’s going on but finds that he finally has an appreciative audience. Earlier on in the film he bombs horribly at a stand-up club and is then publicly mocked for it on De Niro’s TV show. But now everyone is cheering him. With blood on his face, he smears it over himself to make an even bigger smile. After all the false starts in the movie, is this his birth as the Joker?

I’m not sure how successful this film will be with audiences. When I went to see it, everyone seemed to trudge out in a stupor. But even though it has some serious flaws, I’m glad that a filmmaker and a studio has finally tried to do something different with a comic book movie. The Marvel films have become cinematic NyQuil, regularly putting me in a coma. Here we have a movie with an amazing central performance from Joaquin Phoenix that takes lots of lots of risks. Not everything pays off, and yes the movie is highly reminiscent of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, but give me this over The Avengers any day.

Bohemian Rhapsody

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 00:53:00 +0000

For someone who led such a colourful life as Freddie Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody is a remarkably coy film. Everything is kind of kept at arm’s length - Mercury’s sexuality, his famous parties and his complicated love life. The stuff is there, on the surface at least, but we never delve into details. The film is much more interested in the band’s performances than it is in the mindsets of the members.

To be fair, the musical scenes are great. They’re superbly filmed and they’re full of energy. And we even get treated to the full Live Aid set. But it’s a beautiful decoration on a deeply unsatisfying cake. If I want to watch the Live Aid performance, I can just watch the original on You Tube. What I wanted here was to get into Freddie Mercury’s head, but I don’t think the film does a good job of that at all.

Also, it plays hard and fast with the truth. The film makes it seem like this is Freddie’s last hurrah. He gets diagnosed with HIV, has a tearful hug with his band members and then turns in the best performance of his life. The only problem is that, in reality, he was diagnosed with HIV two years after Live Aid. The cynical manipulation here is staggering. You even have the band members almost crying while they perform. ‘Oh look at brave Fred, giving it his all even though he’s on his last legs’ they say with their eyes.

Therefore this tremendous performance becomes like something out of Rocky. Freddie gets diagnosed with HIV two years early, struggles to perform in band practice and then trains his arse off. Everyone is shitting bricks on the day of, but when it comes to nut-cutting time, he sings like a mustachioed angel. Crowd goes wild. Credits roll. And then we get a brief bit of text saying that he died in the early nineties. However, we never actually see him ill (besides coughing up blood once or twice) because seeing that would be too painful and too complicated and would not sit well with this Disneyfied version of the man.

I also resent the subtext of the movie. Freddie Mercury here is portrayed as a sad loser pining after his ex-fiance. This is the reason that he decides to start having lavish parties. From what I’ve read he was indeed something of a lonely man. However, he also just liked having fun and seemed to have a good sense of humour. But this joy is never present. And it gets worryingly close to waving a moralistic finger:

‘See what I told you! If only you were sensible you wouldn’t have got the HIV! You had to go out and have ‘fun’. You had to have a ‘good time’. You couldn’t be happy with a girl. You had to have sex with a man [mouth puke]. There are consequences for that. AIDS! Having a good time got you AIDS!’

It gets dangerously close to Forrest Gump territory where the free-spirited liberal Jenny gets HIV because she won’t do what’s she’s fucking told. It can’t be that Freddie Mercury just had a hedonistic lifestyle with all the good things and bad things that go with that, and that HIV was just a horrible stroke of bad luck that nobody deserved and which no one had coming. No, he has to be fucking miserable and all the fun has to be drained out of his life.

It’s also just fucking weird how this film manages to erase all the sex and drugs out of Mercury’s life. Do we even see him kiss another man? I can’t seem to remember it. If it happens, it’s fleeting. It’s like the film thinks that I’m Mercury’s mother and it doesn’t want to show me the reality of his existence because I’d have a conniption. And the only drugs it seems to show him take are a few pills. He was doing more blow than Scarface! Is this to protect the wee little children who love that song where the guy sings and the people clap their hands and stomp their feet? Fuck those people! This film could have been more engaging, more moving, more uplifting and much funnier if we got all the gory details. Oh no, your dad’s favourite singer liked to snort coke and rim other men? Get over yourself.

These inaccuracies and omissions make me question the truth of pretty much everything in the film. Was Queen’s manager (played by the Irish driver out of Downton Abbey) really that villainous? Was the head of EMI really that much of a dunderhead (the comic stupidity of this character is really over the top)? Did Freddie Mercury really reconcile with his estranged father on the day of Live Aid and bring over a male ‘friend’? And was he even estranged from him in the first place? And did a bunch of fucking chickens really inspire the writing of Bohemian Rhapsody? Honestly, the production of Bohemian Rhapsody is a fucking travesty. Here the film makes Queen seem Spinal Tap. Everything about that sequence is just goofy as hell.

I also hate the opening section of the film. It’s woefully facile. In about ten minutes Freddie Mercury has an argument with his family, watches a student band, joins the band as the lead singer and embarks on a successful tour with them. For a film that’s so long, it’s in such an awful rush to say nothing.

So, besides the musical scenes, is there anything good about the film? Remi Malek gives a strong performance as Mercury, but that’s about it. The slick camerawork and weirdly perfect costumes that look like no one has even worn them, make the movie look like a waxwork museum. It’s a pretty miserable exercise. My suspicion, seeing as the band seemed to have so much control over this project, is that they have strangled all the life out of it; that any controversy has been swept under the rug to protect their ‘legacy’. This is the same band that were so concerned about their image and respecting Queen’s legacy that they hooked up with both Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert to squeeze every penny out of its dead carcass. Bohemian Rhapsody seems like yet another cynical ploy to make even more money and mythologise the band - to turn them into something they never were. And baffling enough, they’re trying to turn them into a simpler, less interesting version of themselves.

American Assassin

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 09:00:00 +0000

If your fiance was murdered in front of you in a brutal terrorist attack, what would be a reasonable reaction? You’d certainly experience a prolonged period of grief. You’d probably suffer some serious PTSD. You might even abuse alcohol or drugs or even try and kill yourself.

But would you turn into a James Bond figure and try and take out entire terrorist cells single-handed? Yeah, that might be a stretch.

American Assassin could possibly work as some sort of incredibly over the top fantasy fulfillment flick. But instead it’s a boring, cliched, utterly joyless piece of sludge. People smash each other in the face and blood splatters all over the lens, but it’s neither hard hitting nor exhilarating.

I knew this film was in for a rough ride when Michael Keaton turned up and started being all...Michael Keaton. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a fine actor, but he can very easily descend into some lazy, annoying ticks. He has a default crazy mode that he can switch into if he’s not feeling very inspired, and he’s certainly lacking inspiration here.

Keaton’s character has the less than enviable task of turning some milk toast pissant, Jason Bourne wannabe into, er, Jason Bourne. Cue yelling, beating and various boot camp shenanigans. But Keaton’s character is neither Gunnery Sergeant Hartman nor Obi-Wan Kenobi. He just seems to be in a bit of a bad mood all the time, but for no real discernible reason. Maybe he can’t get decent coffee or maybe he rewatched Jack Frost. But no sooner has he started yelling at Baby Bourne than they’re traipsing over Europe.

The plot plays like Donald Trump’s wet dream. Some Iranians, pissed off with their government’s nuclear deal with the US, decide to secretly build their own nuclear bomb so that they can attack Israel. You see, Trump told us that it was a bad deal! Fucking Obama trying to stabilize shit. We should have preemptively nuked those fuckers in case they tried some shit later on down the line.

Complicating matters is the fact is that the building of the nuclear bomb is coordinated by another American assassin. And would you believe it, he’s an ex pupil of Michael Keaton.

This American assassin gone bad is made out to be like the fucking Darth Vader of assassins. He’s just too good but he’s evil as shit. But then he turns up and he’s just an annoying kid with daddy issues. Apparently Keaton’s character acted like this kid was the second coming or something. He bigged him up and inflated his ego. Somewhere along the line, though, things went bad and zzzzzzz....

Oh no, was it a hard job killing people for a living? Was it not quite as easy as it seemed? Now that’s a surprise. But yes, take all of your bitterness and help to create a nuclear bomb. Oh, and then betray your Iranian colleagues and steal the nuclear bomb and attack the American Navy because you have issues with your surrogate daddy! Seriously, what complete and utter garbage this movie is.

The final action scene, I shit you not, involves the new baby Bourne assassin fighting baby Darth Vader in a speedboat as a nuclear bomb ticks down. The tension! The drama! It’s like the end of Face/Off except completely devoid of entertainment.

There’s a hilarious moment, after baby Bourne kills baby Vader, where the kid is alone in a speedboat with the nuclear bomb. ‘What do I do? What do I do?’ It’s like the modern equivalent of those silent movies with the big, round bombs and the fuse burning down. ‘Where do I throw it? Who can I give it to?’ Except it’s a nuke.

Before I go any further, I should mention the fact that there’s a scene where Michael Keaton gets tortured. He has his fingernails ripped off, he gets electrocuted and he gets sliced. And yet he tells baby Vader how much he likes it. Baby Vader almost looks like he’s about to start crying. How am I supposed to take this kid seriously as a threat when he can’t even torture someone properly? And Michael Keaton just Michael Keaton’s his arse off. There he is with no fingernails and yet he looks like he’s having the time of his life. He even manages to sucker the stupid ex pupil and bites piece of his ear off. And yet baby Vader doesn’t kill him. He wants Keaton to witness his master plan. His attack on the US Navy. He’s doing all of this so that he can make Keaton feel bad! It’s the stupidest motivation I’ve seen in a long time. ‘I’m going to torture you...but not kill you. And I’ll going to nuke the US Navy and kill myself...and you’ll feel really bad. Fuck you dad!!!’

And it’s in this post torture state that Keaton begins dangling out the side of a helicopter, yelling at his protege to drop the nuke in the ocean. Which at least stops the absolute ridiculousness of the kid trying to find a place to put the bomb. ‘Maybe if I shove it in the toilet and close the door, everything will be okay!’

So the kid gets airlifted out of the blast radius and the bomb explodes underwater which makes the CGI US Navy wobble a lot. But just when you think it’s all over, there’s the hint that the filmmakers are fishing for a sequel and an inevitable franchise. Quick, let me do a Michael Keaton like in the above screencap.

Suburbicon

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sat, 16 Dec 2017 22:08:00 +0000

George Clooney’s directing career is following a depressing downward trajectory. After the early promise of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck, he’s produced a steady stream of mildly entertaining but ultimately disappointing movies (The Ides of March being the most notable example). But with Surburbicon he produces his first outright dud.

Based on a Coen brothers script, this ill-conceived, mean-spirited, nonsensical movie doesn’t really work on any level. It looks great, but the characters are universally repugnant and stupid, and the storytelling is atrocious. Most of the movie makes very little sense.

It’s probably the character’s overwhelming stupidity that bothered me the most (much more so than how despicable everyone is). The central character, Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon), hires a bunch of criminals to murder his wife so that he can cash in her life insurance. However, he seems completely ill-prepared for the investigation that is bound to follow. You’d think, given the nature of the crime, that he’d have his story worked out. And seeing as he also has a partner in crime, you’d think that person would be prepared as well. But no, they act like imbeciles and immediately rouse suspicion. Someone might know, or think they know, that you’ve done something, but being able to prove it is everything.

In one scene the insurance investigator says that he knows that Gardner murdered his wife. Now the investigator might think he knows this or he might simply be fishing. A stupid person will fall for this tactic and immediately give themselves away, which is what Gardner does. Amazingly, he admits to the murder. You’ve immediately painted yourself into a corner. You’re either going to jail or you’ve got to kill someone else. Gardner decides on the latter. Again, the stupidity here is too much. You’re now going to kill an insurance investigator? You’ve immediately made sure you’re going to jail.

The murder of Oscar Isaac’s insurance investigator tries to straddle that familiar funny/disturbing Coen brothers line, but Clooney is incapable of performing this high wire act. The yowling from Isaac as he realises he’s been poisoned is ridiculous in the extreme - it’s like it’s from a Looney Tunes cartoon. And then the sound effects as Garnder tries to remove a poker from the investigator’s head - there’s lots of crunching and swishing - are just confusing. Is this supposed to be a funny moment? A disturbing moment? I get the grim detail of having the poker get stuck in the guy’s head - in the world of movies, deaths are usually very clean - but I just don’t get the swishing noise. It suggests to me that Clooney is trying to make this darkly funny, when instead it should have been the moment when the gravity of events finally hits home.

Oh, did I mention that the murder of the insurance investigator happens in the middle of the street? Yes, it’s at night, but still. Lots of running and yelling and yowling and bashing and swishing in the middle of the street? I don’t know about you, but my mother would have sniffed that out like a rat and shot to the window like a dart. And what about all the blood that would have been all over the road? Ah, whatever.

I guess one of the reasons that a heinous crime like this can go undetected is because a large portion of the town is distracted by racially abusing a black family in the house next to Matt Damon’s character. The narrative worth of this side story is non-existent because the family is given no screen time and hardly any lines. It’s one of the weirdest frames for a movie I’ve seen. If you’re not going to invest anything in these characters, what’s the point? What, you’re trying to make a point that suburbia is rotten to the core? That behind the civilised exterior lies greed and barbarity? Yeah, you’re already illustrating that with the main story.

Or do you have this frame because you want to indulge in some cute bookending? At the start of the movie there’s a town meeting where incensed locals say that they don’t want a black family in their community. They’re not ready to integrate, they argue, and it’ll lead to the ruin of the town. And then at the end an old lady, talking to some reporters, says that everything used to be normal before the black family moved in.

I can feel the poker hitting me in the head. ‘You see what I’m saying?’ Clooney yells. ‘It wasn’t the family. Everything has been screwed up from the beginning.’ Yes, yes, George. I get it.

The Girl on the Train

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 00:09:00 +0000

The Girl on the Train was a terrible book and now it’s been made into a terrible film. Now don’t get me wrong, there was always the kernel of a good idea within Paula Hawkins’ turd of a novel. A voyeur on a train gets embroiled in a murder mystery (it’s like Rear Window...with wheels!). But the story is so melodramatic, the characters so annoying and unlikeable, and the twists and turns so predictable and mundane, that it’s a wasted exercise. Had the filmmakers been serious about making a decent film they should have thrown the book out of a moving train. Just take the basic premise and do your own thing.

The changes that have been made are cosmetic and end up hurting the movie. The book is set in and around suburban London. The movie is set in and around suburban New York. The filmmakers have instantly made things harder for themselves. The idea is that a woman on a train becomes obsessed with a couple she sees out of the window. In the London area this is just about plausible. On my old commuter line it would seem like you were going through people’s back gardens. But in upstate New York the houses are much farther away. There’s much more space. You’d need binocular vision to be able to see anything going on.

So I was immediately calling bullshit on the whole thing. There’s no way this woman could see what was going on inside these houses. Especially when she’s pissed out of her head most of the time. In one particularly egregious moment, she even sees a couple taking a selfie while they were inside their house. It was completely laughable.

The casting too is all wrong. In the book Rachel is worn out and overweight because of years of drinking. In the movie she’s played by Emily Blunt, who, like most young actresses, is thin as a rake. She tries her best to look haggard and shitty, but she doesn’t look like she’s had a hard life. She just looks tired.

Another poor piece of casting is the girl who plays Megan Hipwell. Megan is supposed to be this super sexy young woman that all of the women are jealous of and all the men want to fuck. But the actress here looks like she’s about 15. She pouts and she sulks, but she’s not remotely interesting. And it’s not like she’s super curvaceous to make up for the complete lack of personality. She’s an average blonde girl, the likes of which are two a penny in New York. So the fact that three different men go bananas over this woman boggles the mind.

Megan even manages to bewitch her therapist. At one point, like something out of a telenovela, he starts screaming in Spanish about her driving him out of his mind while she does some dopey shit like squinting in the sunlight and rubbing herself.

I also found it hilarious that they cast a Venezuelan actor in the therapist role. The therapist’s name is Kamal Abdic. I was kind of expecting a Middle Eastern actor, not a Spanish speaker. Seriously, it you really wanted this actor playing the role, why not change the name? It’s just too jarring. I kept thinking to myself, ‘How is this guy named Kamal?’ Now I’m sure that some fans of the book (poor, sad people) would bristle at the idea of changing Kamal’s name, but this is hardly Dickens, is it? Change whatever you like.

Now because Megan is oversexed and because this is a thriller, she dies a horrible, violent death. You see, not only is she married to a jealous beefcake who has skin so red that he must constantly be slapping himself, and not only is she fucking her therapist, but she also has something going on with Rachel’s ex-husband. They fuck in the woods up against the poor humiliated trees and everything is oh so hot and sexy...until he bashes her brains in with a rock. The murder is actually pretty tough to watch but, really...who cares? All of these people are irremediably shallow and annoying.

My least favourite character is Anna. She’s married to Rachel’s ex-husband and lives in Rachel’s old house. She’s also Megan’s employer, as Megan has a job there as a nanny. At the beginning Anna says that being a mother is the most important job in the world. This despite the fact that she has a full-time nanny to look after her kid while she goes to the Farmer’s Market. Apparently the wee little kid, like any good suburban baby, has allergies and can’t subsist on peasant food. She needs the good stuff. The natural stuff. And apparently she’s too good to get in a car with her mother or on a bus. Fucking suburban assholes who have the luxury of dumping their kid on paid staff. Anyone else would have to drag their kid along everywhere or give them to granny or grandpa.

Sudden brainwave. Why doesn’t Anna just order all of this fancy food online? That way she could spend more time worrying about vaccines and researching delicious cake recipes that don’t have sugar or flour amongst the ingredients.

At least Megan has the right idea and says that she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life changing diapers or doing laundry. What she wants is cock. Lots and lots of cock. Which is why she has to die and drive the plot of this idiotic film.

In the book, when Rachel finally gets embroiled in the murder mystery, you at least get the sense that she’s on some kind of mission. There’s some sort of purpose and some sort of narrative drive. But here the film just drags its way to the feeble, Hallmark-level conclusion.

I kind of feel like there’s an excellent Shannon Tweed movie hiding here. But as a big budget thriller, it’s an embarrassment. The direction, in particular, is dreadful and makes it seem like the filmmaker is barely sentient. Every single choice is the wrong one. Somewhere Hitchcock is laughing his ass off.

The Martian

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 22:15:00 +0000

What was it with the Oscars last year? First Mad Max and now this. Was there a massive shortfall in quality in 2015?

Like Mad Max, The Martian is an entertaining film, but it’s pure fluff. It deserves to make money but it doesn’t deserve to win awards. It’s likeable, it’s well made but it’s completely shallow.

It also suffers terribly in comparison to the recently nominated Gravity. Gravity was also a tale of survival in space, but it had more weight to it. It was more visceral, it had more imagination and a lot more emotion. This, in comparison, is a trifle, even if the fate of the central character is potentially a lot worse than that of Sandra Bullock.

Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is one of a group of astronauts exploring Mars. The expedition’s base is hit by a massive dust storm and the commander gives the order to evacuate. During the evacuation Watney is hit by debris and presumed dead.

Only, he’s not.

Watney is now stranded alone on Mars. With his crew beginning the long voyage back to Earth and with another crew not arriving on Mars for another four years, he has to find a way to survive for almost half a decade with a limited amount of supplies. As he says. he’s going to have to ‘science the shit out of it’.

There’s a lot of joy to be had in Watney’s simple, mundane day-to-day routines. The rationing of food, trips outside to gaze at the Martian landscape and the recording of his video diary. But once the movie begins to open up and expands beyond the narrow focus of Watney’s isolation, it becomes less interesting. The struggles of NASA to get their man/men back home safely was much more effectively depicted in Apollo 13.

I don’t think the casting helps that much. Kristen Wiig is completely out of place and Sean Bean stands out like a sore thumb. Why is a man with strong Northern English accent the mission controller at NASA? Plus, every time I see him now I’m waiting for his inevitable death scene.

Jeff Daniels, too, as the NASA administrator fails to convince. But maybe that’s my fault. For me he’ll always be Harry from Dumb and Dumber.

There’s also a serious issue with the tone of this film. One of the running gags is that Mark gets stuck on Mars with nothing but crappy disco tunes to listen to. It’s meant to add levity to the movie but for me it completely robs it of dramatic weight. Fucking ‘Hot Stuff’, ‘Love Boat’ and ‘Rock the Boat’ all make an appearance. Still, it could be worse. It could be Kanye West he gets stuck with.

But I feel that this movie should have been stripped back completely. I’d want to remove the rescue mission entirely. I’d want to see everything from Watney’s perspective. His isolation should be palpable and absolute. We should only be relieved of his loneliness when he is. We should see the rescue mission when he sees the rescue mission. For a film where there’s so much at stake, there’s very little sense of jeopardy.

Even when Watney blows up his base and destroys his crop of potatoes, it doesn’t feel like the end of the world. And it should. It should be utterly crushing. It should be like that scene in Touching the Void when he falls into the crevasse and is positive that he’s going to die. It’s emotional armageddon. But here it’s a blip. It’s an inconvenience. Because you know that the NASA guys are going to speed up their rescue mission and they’re going to save him at the last moment.

And the actual rescue is preposterous. The movie does a decent job of building up the tension for Watney’s take off from Mars. He has to strip the take off vehicle of all its weight, which includes removing the windows and replacing it with a tarp, but then the final rescue just involves too much action movie nonsense.

Watney’s vehicle and the rescue vehicle are moving at completely different velocities, so a bomb is rigged and exploded, the Captain goes out on a teether to ‘catch’ Watney and he has to stab his spacesuit to provide propulsion so that he can bridge the gap between him and her. It’s really silly and not at all believable.

Kind of like the film itself. It might have a NASA advisor making sure that everything is kind of possibly, just about feasible, but we all know it’s bullshit. Entertaining bullshit. But bullshit. And certainly too facile to be remembered in the long run. There’s more weight and more gravitas in ten seconds of Alien than there is in this.

Ex Machina

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 05:41:00 +0000

It seems like every major film in the last year or two stars either Oscar Isaac or Domhnall Gleeson. So of course, it was inevitable that they would eventually be cast in a film together. (And then, later in the year, they both starred in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as well, thus furthering their quest for world domination.)

Both are good actors, but I have to question Domhnall Gleeson’s casting in this. Why do big budget films continually keep casting either British or Irish actors in American roles? If you want an American, hire a fucking American. There are plenty of them around. I can see very few instances where you’d be better off hiring a British or Irish actor in an American role. Maybe you’re making a film about a famous figure and an Irish guy bears an uncanny resemblance to the person in question. Okay, go and hire them. Or maybe a British actor is such a huge mega star that it just doesn’t fucking matter that he’s not an American. But for god’s sake, this is Domhnall Gleeson we’re talking about.

And if you really want to hire Domhnall Gleeson in your film, wouldn’t it just make more sense to make the character Irish? Eventually I forgot about the accent, but it distracted me for the first ten minutes or so; the American accent makes him seem more bland that he really is.

Miscasting aside, Ex Machina is a massively successful directorial debut from Alex Garland (writer of The Beach, 28 Days Later and Sunshine). It’s talky and almost devoid of action, but it’s all the better for it.

In a weird way, Ex Machina is almost like an old-fashioned film noir. Film noir often involves some schmucky guy getting hired by a mysterious man who isn’t all that he seems before being manipulated and misled by some femme fatale.

Ex Machina definitely follows this path. Our hero, Caleb (Gleeson), ‘wins’ a competition to spend a week with billionaire software genius Nathan (Isaac). Nathan then reveals that he has a humanoid robot that he wants Caleb to perform a Turing Test on. He wants Caleb to test whether the robot exhibits artificial intelligence that is indistinguishable from our own.

Before you know it, Caleb is hearing sweet nothings from the robot and is ready to drop everything for her (including his pants...probably). She seems sweet and innocent, so he’s horrified to hear that Nathan is mistreating her. Caleb’s conversations are observed by Nathan, but the robot, named Ava, can trigger temporary power cuts so the two can talk privately.

The strength of the film is that, much like Caleb, you feel sorry for Ava. She seems like such a sweet, harmless little thing that you too want to break her out of her ‘cell’. Her body looks half finished so she covers herself in wigs and clothes to appear more human. It’s a little sad and pathetic and certainly earns your sympathy.

But like a true femme fatale, she’s playing everyone. She tells Caleb that she wants to be with him, but once she’s free, she forgets all about him. She kills Nathan and then, without a master key for this high tech palace, Caleb is trapped in a room. Caleb bangs on the window and Ava can easily free him, but she’s totally oblivious to his plight. She doesn’t seem to be acting in a vindictive way. Instead she acts like a child. She’s completely narcissistic and self-absorbed. She’s so drunk with her newfound freedom that she leaves poor Caleb standing there, screaming like a lunatic. With Nathan dead and with no key, he gets to look forward to eating his own fist to survive.

But again, what a schmuck Caleb is. He think he’s going to ride into the sun with this robot and live happily ever after? Yeah, right.

I also feel that the film borrows subtly from Blade Runner (which, funnily enough, also borrows heavily from film noir). In Blade Runner, Dr Tyrell creates Replicants with AI. Much like an iPhone, they have a built- in obsolescence. After a few years, they die. They become furious with their creator and kill him. They want 'more life'. In Ex Machina, a similar fate awaits Nathan. His creation, tired of being imprisoned, wants to experience life and turns against him, stabbing him in the chest.

It’s actually kind of weird the way that Nathan is killed. He’s stabbed in the chest, but he’s stabbed in such a slow, clean way that it makes it seem like he’s made of butter. It’s a little bit odd.

But also in a nod to Blade Runner, Nathan has other ‘toys’. In Blade Runner, genetic designer J. F. Sebastian has a bunch of humanoid toys that keep him company in his apartment. Nathan meanwhile has a personal assistant who doesn’t speak a word of English. She’s very attractive and Nathan is fucking her. It’s then later revealed that she too is a robot. Which kind of figures for someone like Nathan who has a massive god complex. Why get sexually involved with a human being with real feelings and real emotions and who has real imperfections? You can just create a perfect copy who doesn’t speak a lick of your language and who picks up after you and you can then fuck them whenever you feel the need.

Of course, seeing as Nathan is a computer nerd, it goes without saying that the fuck-bot is Asian.

But the ending of the movie is fantastic because it’s truly chilling. This isn’t a robot that’s running around, killing people with laser eyes. She’s just like a child that has absolutely no moral compass. She might speak like a human and act like one, but it’s all an impersonation. She doesn’t feel bad for people. She can’t empathize. In one scene, she cannibalises Isaac’s other creations for parts. There’s no malice there but there’s also no feeling. It’s cold and logical. Which is why she leaves Caleb alone in that room to die. She can’t put someone else’s needs or feelings before her own. The only thing that matters is her. Over time we’ve evolved so that we care about other people. This helps us to thrive as a species. Anyone who acts selfishly is threatening the group. But a robot hasn’t had that. Which is why it would be so dangerous to do something like this. Intelligence without compassion and morality is a terrifying thing.

Mad Max: Fury Road

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:12:00 +0000

One part of me is thoroughly delighted at the success of Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s a completely bonkers movie. It doesn’t fit into the blockbuster norm at all. Plus George Miller has been trying to make another Mad Max for ages. So it’s a nice comeback story - a man who has been lumbered making Happy Feet and Babe sequels scores a massive commercial and critical success.

But then there’s another part of me. The unsentimental side, who says, are you fucking kidding me? All of the critics are going bonkers over this? This is the movie that is appearing in critics’ top ten lists? Because this is not a great movie. It has loads of imagination and energy, but it’s also crass, monotonous and it’s lumbered with an incredibly dull central character.

Tom Hardy as Mad Max is Tom Hardy on autopilot. He scowls, he mutters and he looks ‘intense’. But he doesn’t look like he’s having any fun. Nor does his character or his performance contain any depth. He’s just a series of tics. It’s a lazy kind of performance. Tom Hardy sort of reminds me of Christian Bale. They burst into life at the beginning of their careers and then they plateau a little and trade off their ‘intensity’. Mumbling and grimacing with wild eyes is nothing if there’s no meat in the script or if there are no internal twists and turns within the character’s journey. Because, yes, Max is constantly being pulled this way and that way, but it’s entirely physical. As a person he just is who he is. Nothing more, nothing less. And he’s not a particularly fun, interesting or engaging character.

More effort is invested in the character of Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron. She has the vulnerability, conflict and complexity that Max lacks. As the driver of an armoured truck called the ‘War Rig’, she liberates the wives of the local warlord, Immortan Joe. And so all hell breaks loose.

But despite the feminist, eco-warrior pretext of the movie, character development is at the bottom of the agenda. And there’s zero emotional connection to anything that’s happening. So although women are in jeopardy and dastardly individuals are trying to recapture a pregnant girl, the human struggle behind the movie is a secondary consideration to blowing shit up.

Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s really good action. It’s always entertaining. But we don’t have a feminist masterpiece in the vein of Aliens. Nor is it a treatise on the Middle East conflict or environmental devastation. It’s a loud action movie that occasionally leans in interesting directions but never settles for long enough to make any interesting points or metaphors.

Part of the thing that makes Fury Road entertaining is also the thing that holds it back. Its constant forward momentum. There’s no room to breathe. No room for silence or contemplation. It’s very Australian. What do I mean by that? There’s a tendency for Australian films to be very loud and very brash. Of course there are exceptions to that stereotype, but Fury Road falls into the Baz Luhrmann mould of more is more is more is more.

But it’s not. Excess is exhausting.

The overacting is also sometimes hard to take. Nicholas Hoult, who played the kid with the bowl haircut in About a Boy, overacts like crazy. And yeah, I get it, he’s supposed to be taking drugs to enter a state of suicidal rapture, but the performance is far too theatrical.

The main villain, also, is completely ridiculous. He’s some fragile, crotchety old geezer who wears an oxygen mask in the shape of a skull. The mask looks pretty cool but he looks like he should be getting his nappies changed in an old people’s home. Also, the idea of this hideous little Oompa Loompa mounting all those women is appalling. But then again, I think it’s supposed to be.

However, all of these negatives can be countered by the fact that among Immortan Joe’s war party is a guitarist with a double-necked guitar. Like some fucking god, he hangs from a wall of amplifiers and churns out heavy metal riffs while his guitar belches fire. Seriously, it’s the most hilarious, most fucking awesome thing I’ve seen in a film for years. And in a weird way, it makes complete sense. Military drums have been used for centuries to demoralize the enemy (big bastard drums also feature here), so why not have some heavy metal?

Of course, you have to consider if this is an appropriate use of your resources. You know, you’re living in a post apocalyptic wasteland, and you’re using your precious gasoline to billow fire from a steampunk guitar. And you’re using electricity for all the amps in the world. But you know what, fuck that. Immortan Joe is obviously some Saddam Hussain, Kim-Jong-il, Nicolae Ceausecu, cult of personality type mentalist who wants to constantly show off his wealth and abundant resources, so yeah, he’d totally do this.

And those guitar riffs fucking rock! And it’s hilarious that he changes his speed of playing to how quickly the war party is going. When they’re going really fast, he shreds like a motherfucker, but when they slow down he methodically hacks some chunky chords. And at one point he even gets involved in a fight. So even if the film as a whole is just too excessive for my taste, this one bit of insanity does a hell of a lot to make the film more enjoyable.

It’s also got to be said that the stunts are excellent and that the photography is consistently amazing. I also got a kick of the retrograde fight scenes that were speeded up like this was filmed in the 70s or 80s. It’s just the characters and the script which aren’t up to much.

I think the film is also a victim of raised expectations. This is a film that is now nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. I’m all for genre films getting nominated for the big prize...but only if they’re good enough. And this film isn’t. There are some great sequences, but the movie doesn’t really add up to much. Not that it has to make some grand statement or anything, but you’ve got to feel something more than ‘oh, that was cool’ if you’re going to get all these plaudits. Aliens, The Fellowship of the Ring and Raiders of the Lost Ark, as three of the best examples of the action/adventure genre, succeed because of the human heart beating within them. They have really cool sequences, but they also have people you’re invested in. Mad Max: Fury Road is just a bunch of occasionally cool shit that should get nowhere near an awards ceremony.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 21:30:00 +0000

The build-up is over. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is now a living, breathing reality. It’s already sitting there in movie theaters, making (probably) billions of dollars in box office receipts. But is it any good? I guess it depends on how you’re measuring it.

Compared to the disastrous, soul-sucking prequels, it stands up very favourably. But against the originals it falls way short. Way, way short. For every good thing in this movie, there are a couple of bad things to counter it.

The biggest problem is that the central villain, Kylo Ren, is emo as shit. Darth Vader was a cool, clinical psychopath who would quietly dispatch his subordinates whenever they did something that wasn’t to his liking. Our Kylo, on the other hand, is a pouting drama queen. When he doesn’t get his own way, he destroys shit like a toddler having a tantrum. It’s not scary and it’s fairly ridiculous to watch. Plus Kylo is played by Adam Driver, whom I last saw in HBO’s Girls. So basically you have a millenial hipster trying to rule the galaxy while not ruffling his floppy hair. How far we’ve fallen as a society.

Another problem is the larger villain of the piece, the ‘Supreme Leader’. This is the guy that Kylo Ren answers to, much like Darth Vader answered to The Emperor. But while The Emperor was an amusingly withered old guy, who cackled like some terrifying man-witch as he made a catty remark, the Supreme Leader is a horrible CGI creation. A big deal has been made that these films are going to use more practical effects, but this thing is an abomination. It looks like something you’d expect to see in the upcoming World of Warcraft movie, not Star Wars.

And what was with his hologram being about thirty feet tall? Is he that tall in real life? Or does he just have a tiny penis and therefore demanded a fucking huge hologram when the tech guys were installing all the telecommunications? ‘Oooh. Supreme Leader. How terribly big you are.’

And why is this film basically a less satisfactory rehash of the original Star Wars? It’s almost the same plot, just far less engaging. So the The Empire (or the First Order as they’re called here) are searching for a droid which has some secret information inside it. A lonely, idealistic daydreamer then intercepts said droid. However, while in Star Wars this individual had an aunt and an uncle, and there was some character development, in The Force Awakens the daydreamer has no parents or guardians and is very quickly swept up in the galactical drama that ensues.

But again, just as in Star Wars, the greenhorn encounters an old, wise hero from a bygone era. In the previous series, it was Obi-Wan Kenobi. Here it’s Han Solo. Then there’s a Death Star rip off that’s actually a planet with a massive weapon in it. Except this new weapon is far worse than the Death Star. While the Death Star was a space station that could go wherever it wanted, this thing is a fucking planet and can go nowhere. Why the downgrade? But then there’s a plan to shut down the weapon and attack it with spacecraft. It’s the exact same fucking film! It’s just more sloppily written and directed.

Don’t get me wrong, though, there are good things about the movie. Rey, the surrogate Luke Skywalker character, is excellent. She’s not the wet blanket that Luke Skywalker was in the first film and she has plenty of charm and strength. It’s also good to see that the male hero in this film is black. It’s sad that even in this day and age it feels brave that a blockbuster has a woman and a black man as the heroes of their movie, but it does.

It’s also great to see Han Solo back. It’s quite amazing how much the film improved when he finally turned up. Maybe it’s partly nostalgia, but nostalgia only lasts so long. The film genuinely became much better once he made he finally made his appearance. It’s a pity that they decided to kill him off and that that emo bastard was the one to do him in, but it was a pretty good scene.

The action scenes were also pretty decent, but even these were riddled with problems. So we eventually find out that Rey is strong with The Force. There’s a fantastic scene where Rey resists Kylo’s attempts to interrogate her. She shows her strength of will and it’s wonderful. But then at the end she’s having a very involved lightsaber duel with Kylo. Here it just becomes silly. Rey has never picked up a lightsaber before but here she is, holding her own with a guy who’s probably been in training for years. Just because you’re strong with The Force, doesn’t mean that you know how to fight yet - that takes training. So even though you have this pretty decent action scene taking place, it’s ruined by the fact that the logic behind it is totally fucked.

Compare this with the original trilogy. Luke doesn’t get to use his lightsaber until the second film and then he loses his hand in a fight to Darth Vader. So yeah, The Force is strong with Luke, but he needs training and experience. He can’t just go into a fight with someone and hold his own.

I also feel that the film left far too many things unexplained. Why does Finn suddenly decide that he doesn’t want to fight anymore? He begins the movie as a Stormtrooper but then he has a crisis of conscience and flees. This is a great idea for a beginning but the reasons and the emotions aren’t really explored, which makes Finn’s journey half-baked and unsatisfying. And even though Han’s appearance is extremely welcome, he seems to appear out of nowhere and then instigates a fun action scene with some space monsters. The machinations behind it are explained so quickly and so poorly that I couldn’t help but ask myself what the fuck was going on, so even though I’m enjoying the action, I don’t really know for sure why it’s happening. And what the fuck happened with Poe? How did he survive that crash? I’m sure it got explained, but I’m also sure that the explanation lasted 0.7 seconds and was probably mumbled under all the Dolby Surround sound.

But then the whole script is muddy. You get the feeling that JJ Abrams just couldn’t give a shit about telling a decent story. He just wants to move onto the next thing. And I have to say, I never thought that JJ was a good choice for this. He’s never convinced me as a filmmaker. And again he’s produced another superficial movie. It looks pretty good and everything feels like it should work, but it doesn’t.

The ending with Luke promises that there will be something to look forward to in the future, but I’m not going to get my hopes up. I haven’t seen enough to warrant getting excited. And I haven’t even mentioned a couple of really little things that bugged the hell out of me. Number one - why is a TIE Fighter on a tether? So you have all this enhanced technology and someone steals your spacecraft but the way you’re going to get around that is with a chain? What the fuck? The sight of Finn and Poe trying to escape in a TIE Fighter that’s tied to the wall is one of the saddest sights in recent cinema.

Number two - did you only hire the most weasly of British actors? The first trilogy had loads of English actors, but the weasel factor was nowhere near this high. The sight of Domhnall Gleeson (yes, yes, I know, he’s actually Irish) trying to give a rousing speech while squinting and grimacing like Vole was a little embarrassing.

Oh, and Captain Phasma is a fucking terrible villain. She’s not quite General Grievous terrible (multiple lightsaber attack!), but she’s about as tough as a sponge. A couple of kids hold a blaster to her head and she does everything they say. Fuck. Me.

Despite this, I feel that The Force Awakens is going to get an easy ride because it’s not The Phantom Menace, or Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith. But I do have to wonder whether this is going to prove a worthwhile endeavour after all.

All is Lost

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 15:26:00 +0000

I can just imagine the masses watching this film. Wah! Wah! Why doesn’t he talk? Why isn’t there any dialogue? Why isn’t he shouting and screaming every five seconds? And who the hell is this old gentleman? I’ve never seen him in anything else before.

All is Lost is kind of like Life of Pi if you removed the tiger, the hyena, the zebra and the orangutan and replaced them with an old gentleman who doesn’t say much. Okay, so it’s nothing like Life of Pi, except for the fact that both main characters are stuck in a boat.

I’m kind of a sucker for these films. Films where the characters are pitted against the elements. Touching the Void, 127 Hours, Gravity etc. All films where stoic individuals are thrust into impossible circumstances and have to perform incredible feats in order to survive. I don’t know why, but I find all of these stories fascinating. The strength of the human will is truly a marvel.

For a while I didn’t think that All is Lost would live up to those aforementioned films. It seemed a little straightforward, perhaps moribund - it lacked a magical moment to spark it off. But then there’s a scene where our hero, having abandoned his boat and now surviving in a rubber raft, is thrust into a second storm. He survived the first one, at the expense of his boat, but now he’s just in an inflatable piece of plastic. From under the water we see the raft approaching the storm like a lily in the sea. How can something so fragile survive something so brutal as this?

Juxtaposed with this marvellous visual is an amazing piece of music. It elevates the scene into something transcendent. This is man finally facing his mortality. It might just be one man and one little life raft, but this is an epic battle. At first the man hangs gamely on, grimacing at every wave, but then the raft capsizes and he has to unzip the top of the dinghy in order to escape drowning. Outside he then manages to pull the raft back over. He then cowers in his raft, hands over his ears as he tries to block everything out.

Whatever the folly of sailing alone in the ocean, you can’t help but feel tremendously for the man. What more does he have to do? What more does he have to go through? If he’s paying for his sins, this is some hell of a test.

This is perhaps the first time, though, that we see cracks in the man’s armour. Previous to this, he faces every test with an impassive face. Oh, there’s a hole in the side of my boat? Let me whip something up and fill the hole. Oh, there’s a problem with the radio? Let me climb up the mast and try and fix it. Oh, there’s a storm coming? Let me have a shave and freshen up.

But would you want anything else? Do you want someone continually talking to themselves and explaining everything to the audience and crying in frustration when something bad happens? No, I wouldn’t. This is Robert Redford. The character he’s playing is obviously a highly experienced sailor. Nothing much is going to faze him. Plus he’s not a young kid. He’s not going to be a hot head.

So I’m completely at ease with the fact that the man here doesn’t talk. It also helps the story. The fact that he doesn’t talk helps you figure things out yourself. What’s he doing here, you find yourself asking. And then a few minutes a later you figure it out. There’s one moment where, in the middle of a heavy storm, he gets out of the boat and begins steering and then fucking around with the sail. Is it because he has the biggest balls in the world and wants to feel the wind in his hair? Well, yes, he does have bigger balls than you, but he’s setting the sail so that he doesn’t have to steer the boat. The idea is that he can hide below deck and the boat will steer itself.

This is a great plan in theory, but the man gets swept over the side of the boat and he struggles to clamber back on board. I swear, each time the man ends up in the water, the film suddenly becomes one of the most stressful viewing experiences out there. I can think of fewer things scarier than being thrown into the open sea during a storm. Even being in the open ocean on a calm day is thoroughly appalling.

As the film progresses, the imagery becomes more and more threatening. We see several shots from below the life raft. At the beginning, there’s only water. But then fish begin to gather and pretty quickly they’re joined by sharks. Death is getting closer and closer.

The man manages to navigate into some shipping lanes by teaching himself how to use a sextant. He spots a couple of ships and manages to fire flares, but nobody sees him. Later on, when he spots another ship, he starts a small fire in his raft. The fire quickly gets out of control and he jumps over the side.

With all hope gone, the man decides to drown himself. But then as he sinks down into the water, he sees a boat on the surface and flashlights searching for him. It’s a miracle and he floats back to the surface. An outstretched hand is waiting for him and the film cuts to white.

The relief, after such a stressful film, is palpable. But then you begin to wonder whether this actually happens. Is this the fantasy of a dying man? Is this him, having given his earthly life, ascending to heaven? The whiteout at the end leaves the film with a lot of ambiguity. Which, for me, is a perfect way to end this movie. As the film progresses, it kind of feels like the man is paying for his sins. He goes through so much. At the end does he achieve salvation or was this all for nothing? Your guess is as good as mine. But what I can say for certain is that this is a wonderful movie. It builds and it builds and it builds. It’s a powerhouse of a film.

Whiplash

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 02:18:00 +0000

For a genre that’s renowned for being cool and free-spirited, these jazz bastards aren’t half uptight.

The best way to describe Whiplash would be Full Metal Jacket with drums. The film is basically a loud, rude, abusive teacher (JK Simmons, in the R Lee Ermey mould) bullying a wee little lamb who turns into something of a wolf (Miles Teller, mirroring a young Matthew Modine).

This is a gross simplification of the film but it’s still an appropriate comparison. Now for those of you who want a more contemporary parallel, think of it as a kind of Hell’s Kitchen deal. The Gordon Ramsay figure hurls a torrent of foul-mouthed abuse and the petrified student has to either sink or swim. Meanwhile, we sit there grinning with glee, because it’s not us getting abused. I’m not quite sure why we, as a society, get such a kick out of these relationships. If this kind of stuff happened between spouses, we’d be horrified. But because it’s between a student and teacher, we’re more likely to allow it. There’s a part of us that feels that this kind of stuff is character building. That to be upset by it is to be weak or wet.

The sick and brilliantly perceptive part of the film is that Neiman (Teller) thoroughly rejects his own father over this bully of a teacher. His dad is a little insipid and isn’t fully understanding of his son’s desire to be a great drummer, but he’s essentially a good man. He certainly provides him with plenty of emotional support. But he doesn’t push his son. Perhaps because of this, Neiman feels like his father is leading him to a life of mediocrity.

And mediocrity is one thing that Neiman doesn’t want. Like many ambitious young men, he has an insane drive to make his mark on the world - to be remembered. He becomes thoroughly obsessed with his drumming and dedicates all of his energy towards it. In one scene, he breaks off with his girlfriend because he knows that he can’t give her the time that she needs and that if he does give her time, he’ll only resent her. It’s a cruel scene, because he’s admitting to her that she’s less important to him than his drum kit, but it rings completely true. Especially the way that he thinks he’s being nice about it. He speaks completely rationally, explaining everything honestly and thoroughly, but the lack of passion for her is slightly chilling. She means nothing to him.

He’s also young enough to have the delusion that he’s going to change the world. Only when you’re in your early 20s are you arrogant enough to think that you’re bringing something fresh to your art and that you’re going to change things. And then a few years later you realise what an insufferable twat you are. But maybe, in the end, after his final performance, his arrogance is justified...

But it might not just be the arrogance of youth that’s at work with Neiman. There’s a hint or two that he might have Asperger’s or some other behavioral disorder. His girlfriend, at one point, notes that he doesn’t look the actors in the face when he goes to the movies. He’s also incredibly compulsive and trains so much that he rips his hands apart. And then in another scene, where he forgets his drumsticks, he gets into a car crash but still drags himself to his band’s competition. This is obviously not normal behaviour. But still, it might be a little lazy to say that Neiman has some kind of disorder. This behaviour might just be indicative of him being an obsessive young man.

The meat of the film revolves around Neiman and his relationship with Terence Fletcher (J. K. Simmons). Fletcher is firmly in the Sergeant Hartman mould. He intimidates his students, he curses at them and sometimes he even physically assaults them. He’s a horrible, wretched human being, but I can still understand the relationship Neiman has with him. He basically becomes a surrogate father. Neiman constantly wants approval from him.

That approval is almost impossible to obtain. Fletcher’s standards are scarily high and nothing short of being the next Charlie Parker will please him. But for an obsessive young man, this makes his approval far more meaningful. He’s like a kid with an abusive parent. The abused kid might get yelled at for any little thing, but any show of affection is more meaningful for it. It’s a completely wrong way of thinking, but I understand where it comes from. If approval is harder to come by, it somehow has a higher value. If you finally do get a ‘well done’ or a pat on the head or a nod of approval, you feel like a million bucks - you had to work really hard for it. For example, for Neiman, the love he gets from his father is easy and therefore, to him, cheap and meaningless. But Fletcher is giving nothing away. He even admits that there is nothing more harmful than saying ‘good job’.

To a certain degree, he might have a point. Praise should be hard earned but it shouldn’t be this hard earned. Fletcher is borderline psychopathic. In Neiman’s first class he bullies and bamboozles a kid into quitting his band just because he’s fat. A nice guy Fletcher is not.

It’s no wonder that there aren’t any women in Fletcher’s band. They wouldn’t put up with this kind of shabby treatment. But the guys eat it up and ask for more. One of the most amazing aspects of the film is the musical chairs that Fletcher plays for the seat on the drums. At one point Fletcher has three different guys vying for the place and spends hours torturing them in order to find his number one. How anyone can put up with that kind of abuse, I don’t know, but young guys can be stupid and easily manipulated.

What endpoint Fletcher has in mind, I’m not sure, but at one point he admits that he’s looking for the next Charlie Parker. So that suggests that he’s going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing until he eventually finds someone worthy.

The power struggle that drives the film culminates, like a sports movie, with a final performance. Neiman has been responsible for getting Fletcher fired from his teaching position, but still, like a moth to the flame, Neiman is drawn back to his old mentor. Fletcher recruits him for his new band. When Neiman gets there he has to perform a piece he’s never played before - he’s been set-up and flounders horribly before exiting the stage with his tail between his legs, much to Fletcher’s amusement.

Backstage, he gets hugs from his father, but this embrace doesn’t console him. He charges back onto stage and begins playing. With Fletcher fuming, he begins a new song and shows what he can do. But this is just an appetizer. After this he begins a frantic drum solo which eventually leads into the next song. Fletcher’s anger turns to interest. Neiman is finally ascending into that far off realm - Fletcher is impressed by his playing and the film ends with the two of them in harmony.

I’m not quite sure what to think of the ending. On the one hand, Neiman’s hard work and dedication is finally paying off. But at the same time, is this an endorsement of these teaching methods? The only way to become great is to be treated like absolute crap? I don’t think it’s quite that simple, but it’s certainly open for debate. I personally think that you don’t have to frighten and intimidate to get the best out of people, but at the same time, sometimes it works. Look at someone like Alex Ferguson (former manager of Manchester United). He would bully and intimidate his players. He would famously give them the ‘hair dryer’ treatment - shouting in their faces with such ferocity that it was like turning on a hair dryer. And he got amazing results from his players. He dragged some sub-standard squads to glory - teams that would flounder under different management. So there’s something to be said for this kind of teaching, but it’s certainly not the only way.

Regardless, the film is a powerhouse. The performances are amazing, the writing and direction are excellent and the music is superb. Well, superb for jazz. We all know that jazz is the lowest form of art. But here it’s actually tolerable. But I have to point this out again. Fuck me, these jazz bastards are uptight. Like, really, really, really uptight.

Commando

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 16:02:00 +0000

I can picture it like it was yesterday. I’d gone round a friend’s house and they’d rented a video. It was an 18 certificate (R for you fucking Yanks - even NC-17 in some instances). I’d never seen an 18 before. I was worried that my parents would find out. I was worried that the film would traumatise me forever. If it’s an 18, it must be some heavy shit. I wasn’t quite sure I could handle it.

Ten minutes in and numerous people had been killed. But it wasn’t so bad. I hadn’t been scarred forever. I hadn’t spontaneously shit myself and my parents hadn’t disowned me. All was right in the world.

The film that day happened to be Commando. Looking back at the movie, I have to question the logic of those first few minutes. Firstly, the initial killing. So some guy is sleeping in bed and then hears the dustmen/garbage men approaching. He’s forgotten that it’s garbage day and staggers outside to take out the garbage in time. The dustmen then rip him open with Uzis. And then rather hilariously, while he’s dead on the floor, they shoot him some more. Really, is there any need for that? Look at him, he’s fucking dead! You’re just wasting ammo now.

But this has to be the most presumptuous assassination ever. Okay, so you’re tricking him into thinking it’s garbage day and you’re luring him out of his house. How do you know that the sound of the approaching truck is going to wake him? How do you know that he’ll fall for your deception and come out? It seems like a bit of a long shot to me. And what are you going to do if he doesn’t come out? Just drive on by? ‘Oh well, I guess he didn’t fall for it. Time for Plan B.’ Or would you just kick his door in and shoot him in his house? In which case, why do you need the fucking garbage truck?!?

Then in the next scene, Cooke, one of the guys who committed the garbage truck hit, walks into a car dealership. As we find out later, Cooke is working for a well funded South American military dictatorship, which makes his actions in this scene a little bizarre. He decides to steal a car and propel the salesman through the window to his possible death. Now I know that we all hate car salesmen, but isn’t this a little stupid? I’m sure the South Americans would buy you a car or at least allow you to expense one. They’re a corrupt military regime. I’m sure they’ll take care of you. But is Cooke a kleptomaniac or merely a psychopath who likes a good bargain? ‘You know what I like best?’ he asks, just before he drives the guy through the window. ‘The price.’

Cooke then goes on to blow up a boat with a remote control. I swear it has the longest antenna in the history of the world. The thing just keeps on coming. You’re the most conspicuous man performing an assassination I’ve ever seen. ‘Who blew up that boat?’ [Five seconds of searching] ‘That guy over there with the massive remote control and antenna! Get him!’

Can I reiterate that this is just the first couple of minutes!!

Just when you thought that things couldn’t get any better, we cut to Arnie. Now how does he make his appearance? By carrying a chainsaw and huge fucking log. Yes, you’re right, he does have a giant dick, thank you very much.

Accompanied by the most awesome steel drum instrumental in the history of the world (makes total sense for a film about a Commando who has to go to South America), we get to see John Matrix (best name for a hero...ever!) live his idyllic life with his daughter. They tickle, they chop wood, they rub ice cream in each others faces, they practice martial arts and they feed baby deer by hand. Yeah, that’s right, they feed baby deer by hand! Check your jealousy at the door you fucking pissant.

Geez, look at them. They’re just so perfect! Maybe a little bit too Aryan for my taste, but then again, I’m just a humble muggle, so I shouldn’t hate on them. However, there’s definitely something a little weird here. The way that they express their love for each other is way too intense. This kid is going to have some serious daddy issues in the future. But even though John does all this touchy-feely sensitive shit with his daughter, he quickly dispels any notions that he might be a fucking homo. As he reads a magazine with his daughter, he’s quick to pour scorn on Boy George. ‘Why don’t they just call him Girl George?’ Feel the fucking burn, George O’Dowd, you wee, poofy bastard. This is a real man here! A log-carrying, deer-feeding, badass motherfucker who reads Tiger Beat.

Now where is the mother you might be wondering? Yeah, she’s dead. How or why we don’t know. It’s not important. She was just a vessel anyway. Once she birthed the kid she was surplus to requirements. She probably had a fatal laundry accident or succumbed to the sheer power of John Matrix’s sex. And the daughter isn’t even important either. She’s just a damsel in distress - a conduit for Matrix’s pent up fury. Fucking women, man.

Or course, this idyllic life lasts for about ten seconds before the daughter is kidnapped. One guy tries to reason with Matrix, saying that now that they have his kid, he has to cooperate, right? ‘Wrong’ is Matrix’s response and he shoots the man in the head. Negotiations are for pussies, you foreign twat.

The child is kidnapped by a team of mercenaries, led by Bennett, a Freddie Mercury lookalike and a raging homosexualist. He says that Matrix ran him out of his unit. I think by unit, he means ass, but the message is plain as day regardless. With his Village People moustache and string vest, he’s clearly queer for Matrix and wants revenge.

But even though Bennett is one of the most hilarious villains in movie history, he’s still not as good as Sully. Played by David Patrick Kelly (‘Warriors, come out to plaayayy!’), he’s possibly the sleaziest man in movie history...and definitely the most awesome. Sully, along with some other heavies, is trying to deliver John Matrix to a dethroned South American dictator (played by Dan Hedaya, who seems to be brown facing in his attempt to look Latin). But Sully is more interested in perving out on random women than the task in hand. There’s one hilarious moment where the heroine of the film is talking on a public phone and Sully is just standing there, cigarette in mouth, grinning like a lunatic as she’s having a personal conversation. It’s incredibly inappropriate but Sully just doesn’t give a shit. He’s the Michael Jordan, Roger Federer and Luis Suarez of sleazeballs.

Sully then follows the woman to a car park. Part of Sully’s charm is that he doesn’t do this in a secretive fashion. He’s quite brazen about his stalking. He swaggers like Vincent Kennedy McMahon. And his attire is beyond reproach. He’s got a black suit with what looks like chalk marks all over it, a grey-blue shirt with horizontal stripes and a skinny grey tie with widely spaced thin black stripes. In short, he looks like a million bucks. Any woman would be lucky to hop on his eager little penis.

Unfortunately, the object of his affection, Cindy (played by Rae Dawn Chong), has no fucking taste and rebuffs him. To be fair, though, his chat up technique is a little...blunt. As she’s trying to unlock her car, he walks up to her and says, ‘You know, there’s something I’d really like to give you.’ Oooh! Oooh! Let me guess! It’s your knob you’re talking about, right? I think he’s talking about his knob. Am I right, you’re talking about your knob?

Cindy then calls him a nightmare, to which Sully has the ultimate retort. And this is possibly the best line in the history of cinema. ‘You fucking whore.’ Whoah, that’s a bit harsh, Sully! But still, total genius. What better way to piss on someone’s day than just to call them a fucking whore? It’s going to make anyone feel like crap for ages. And here I was thinking that Sully was just going to rape her. I didn’t know he could be this brutal. But I beg you to try this in your everyday lives. If someone gives you bad service or does something that isn’t to your liking, just call them a fucking whore. You’ll make them feel like crap for days while you strut off like a champion. (The man-logic of this scene is actually scarily perceptive. How many times do pestering men get rebuffed by women and then dismiss them as whores or sluts because they wouldn’t fuck them?)

While all of this is going on, Matrix is breaking out of a passenger plane. He’s being shipped to the awesomely named Val Verde (a country which, hilariously enough, seems to have stolen its national flag from Portugal) while accompanied by a random heavy. But before the plane even leaves the tarmac, he breaks the guy’s neck and gets hit on by a flight attendant. Matrrix doesn’t reciprocate because he doesn’t have any interest in women. But that doesn’t make him gay. Okay?

No, he needs to get to his Jenny. So after he breaks the guy’s neck (‘Don’t disturb my friend, he’s dead tired’), he manages to get to the undercarriage of the plane and jump down into a bunch of reeds. Yep, the plane is taking off and John Matrix manages to perfectly measure his jump so that the reeds absorb his impact. He then wades through some water and begins his pursuit of Sully.

I neglected to mention one of the things that makes Sully’s stalking of Cindy even funnier. The fact that as Sully is stalking Cindy, Matrix is stalking Sully - it’s a three way. But for some reason only know to Matrix, rather than just creep up on the sharp-suited nincompoop and extract whatever information he needs, he goes through a whole charade of tracking him from a distance, which results in a completely unnecessary action scene where Arnie swings on giant balloons like a juiced up Tarzan. There’s also a scene where ten different mall cops try and restrain Matrix at the same time. Somehow Matrix has the power to repel all of them. They jump on him and then they all go flying.

Sadly, shortly after this, Matrix kills Sully by grabbing him by one leg and dropping him off a cliff (‘Remember when I said I’d kill you last? I lied’). The casualness of the murder is amazing. There are no second thoughts, no hesitation. He just drops him off the side of a mountain and then makes a Roger Moore-style quip - ‘I had to let him go’. This is the 1980s, Reagan model of a man. A pumped-up American Superman who eats foreign scum for breakfast and then shits them out with a catchy one-liner. There’s no hand-wringing here. John Matrix can coldly throw someone off a mountain and then pet a deer with his daughter like nothing happened.

Matrix also has no problem whoring women out. First of all, he watches from a distance as Sully tells Cindy that he has something he really wants to give her and then later, in a motel room, he’s okay with whoring out Cindy for Cooke. Oh yeah, something amazing happens in this scene. So Matrix and Cooke get into a fight. A very loud fight that involves gunshots. But despite this, as they throw themselves through a motel wall, they disturb a couple having sex. First of all you think to yourself, how did they not notice all the noise? And then you notice the fact that the woman is behind the man with him bent over. This film is more liberal than I give it credit for!

Two other things to note from this scene. The man has a terrible haircut that makes him look like a woman. Could they not find find two actresses willing to play lesbians and then decided to dress a man up as a girl? Secondly, the woman has massive breasts. Like basketballs.

Of all the ridiculous things to happen in Commando, and there are many, one of the things that I can’t quite get my head around is when Cindy decides to use a rocket launcher to free Matrix from an armoured police van. First of all, the fact that she can use it at all is crazy, seeing as she’s just a civilian. But then she manages to use it in such a way that it merely knocks the van over. I mean, really, what are you thinking? The rocket launcher should destroy the van and kill everyone inside, including the cops. Is this what Cindy is really thinking? After all, Matrix has done nothing but put her life in jeopardy. I have no difficulty believing that she’d want him dead. But no, she’s genuinely trying to free him and this is her way of doing it. Somehow, of all the crazy things in this movie, this is the one that stands out most.

Once Matrix and Cindy get to Val Verde, we’re treated to the site of Matrix wading around in an inflatable boat in his obscenely tiny speedos. This is just in case any males in the audience have somehow lost their erection.

And then we’re treated to close-ups of bulging muscles as Matrix suits up. He even puts camouflage on his face, even though he’s going to be killing people in a palace rather than a jungle. Seems a bit unnecessary to me. Also, as he’s posing with his weaponry, some smoke appears out of nowhere just to make him look even more badass. Were there smoke machines on the rubber dinghy along with the crazy amount of weaponry he was carrying? Seriously, how did that dinghy not sink? Along with the weapons and the weight of Matrix’s rippling muscles (and penis), it surely should have sunk to the bottom of the sea.

Matrix is on Val Verde for about ten seconds before he begins slaughtering moustachioed soldiers. And because they’re not really white, what with their big moustaches and slightly brown skin, they can’t shoot straight. It’s really quite amazing how many people Matrix gets through. He kills a small country. He throws knives in people, he chops limbs off, he blows people up and he shoots seemingly thousands. It’s a genocide on the par of Death Wish 3. And the fetishism is amazing. The close-ups of Arnie’s rippling muscles are arousing beyond measure.

But the most amazing moment is when Matrix gets trapped in a garden shed. Seeing as his bullet proof vest is smoking, he has to strip down so that once again we can look at pecs and biceps. Meanwhile about ten guys line up outside and riddle the shed with bullets. However, Matrix survives and then kills soldiers with saw blades, a pitchfork and even chops a man’s arm off with a machete. I’m surprised that Arnie doesn’t make some quip about ‘disarming’ the man. But yeah, an unarmed Matrix manages to improvise death on ten guys. A totally believable turn of events.

As all of this is going on, Bennett gets orders to kill Jenny. However, she escapes her cell before he can get to her which leads to the brilliant image of a fat Bennett diving through a boarded up window. It’s so undignified it’s amazing.

Once Matrix has killed the entire army of Val Verde, it’s down to him and Bennett. I swear, every single line that comes out of Bennett’s mouth is pure gold. ‘No, not daddy,’ he hisses as he stalks Jenny. And then once he’s face to face with Matrix he seemingly ejaculates in his pants at the idea of gutting Matrix with a knife. ‘Don’t deny yourself some pleasure’, says Arnie and Bennett splooges everywhere.

But Bennett will probably be best remembered for shouting that he ‘doesn’t need the girl’. You’re not kidding Bennett. I know you don’t need the girl. The girl gives you no pleasure at all. Matrix on the other hand though...

The knife fight that ensues between Bennett and Matrix is horribly choreographed, but there’s one bit I love. Matrix propels Bennett into some power cables and Bennett gets electrocuted. You’d think that this would kill Bennett or at least disable him, but instead it energises him. What the fuck, is this a wrestling match? Is he Hulking up? Immediately after getting electrocuted he says that he feels better. It’s like a Looney Tunes cartoon made flesh.

Pretty soon after he says he feels better, Matrix hurls a pipe through Bennett’s chest. For all the subtlety of the symbolism, Arnie might as well of have fucked him to death. The pipe is Matrix’s massive dick and the steam that’s pouring from Bennett’s chest is his death orgasm.

But really, how hard do you have to throw a pipe in order to have it penetrate someone’s chest? Wouldn’t it just bounce off? I’d like a scientist to calculate how fast it would have to be thrown. Surely there should be an alternate cut where the pipe bounce’s off Bennett and he does indeed shoot Matrix between the balls.

Now seeing as Matrix has killed hundreds of people and his old buddy, you’d think that John and Jenny would be traumatised by their ordeal. Not a bit of it, you limp-wristed liberal pussy. Accompanied by rock music they walk off into the sunset. ‘What did you leave behind?’ ‘Just bodies.’ Yeah, and lots of fatherless families and widows. But I forgot, these are non-white families, so who really gives a fuck?

Weirdest thing at the end though is that Cindy is waiting for John and Jenny. Jenny then, without a word from John, runs into her arms. She has no fucking clue who this person is! But apparently she’s already decided that Cindy is her new mummy. John, you marvelous bastard. You killed a thousand people, you murdered Sully, you fucked Bennett to death and you found Jenny a new mother. You’re the manliest poofter in the history of cinema.

Paddington

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 19:08:00 +0000

Now that I have a wee little sprog of my own, bouncing around my apartment like a hyperactive midget that talks faster than Quentin Tarantino, I’ve been revisiting characters from my childhood. One of which is Paddington Bear. Now before he became a whore for Marmite, I remember him from the cute little stop motion animation in the 70s and 80s. Fucking adorable he was, with little hint that he was going to betray his love of all things marmalade and sell his soul to the salty yeast god for some easy cash.

After this, came a cartoon. The bear wasn’t as fucking adorable, but it was an excellent show. It quickly became a staple for my little one and I can now sing the theme tune from memory - fucking kill me and fill every orifice with juicy, juicy marmalade.

Of course, the next step had to be a CGI movie and a bastardised big screen version from Hollywood where Paddington moves to New York and calls himself Grand Central and eats hot dogs and becomes a born again Christian and kills his moocher Aunt Lucy for being a drain on the State and shoots and kills an evil Mr Curry when Mr Curry rats him out to INS.

Wait, that didn't actually happen? Britain and France produced a fun, charming, witty little family film of their own? Fuck yeah!

It’s rare to watch a family film that gets almost every little thing right. Paddington is sweet without being sickly, funny without resorting to the lowest common denominator and charming without having to shamelessly play on your emotions. Sure Paddington’s uncle is killed within the first fifteen minutes, but it’s done in an almost alarmingly matter of fact way. No sooner have we been enjoying Paddington live his idyllic life in deepest, darkest Peru, than he’s running through the trees in desperation, trying to escape from an earthquake.

It’s this disaster that kills Paddington’s poor uncle, and which has Paddington set off to London, leaving his aunt Lucy to see out her twilight years in a retirement home for elderly bears.

Paddington is living life under the false assumption that the English are a warm, friendly, welcoming lot. He obviously hasn’t been listening to the UKIP party and hasn’t been paying attention to our current Prime Minister, David Cameron. We don’t much like Johnny Foreigner, what with his weird ways, his strange food and his emotions. If we open our arms to a few foreigners, next thing we know, we’ll all be speaking Polish or praying to Allah.

There’s a neat little undertone of racism running through the film. Paddington’s neighbour Mr Curry immediately dislikes the bear and worries about ‘jungle music’. Spoken like a true disciple of Nigel Farage. At the beginning you have nothing but The Beatles and Stones playing from the street, but if you let just one bear in, next thing you know, it’ll be nothing but jungle music. Mark my words.

The Brown family, who take Paddington in, are wary of him also. Their new guest is uncouth and messy. He also has an Inspector Clouseau-type skill for creating mayhem out of nowhere. In one scene he manages to destroy the Brown’s bathroom, culminating with a flood that propels the bathtub down the stairs. It’s pure slapstick but it works brilliantly. However, after such a huge accident, there seems to be no water damage in the house. What’s that? I’m nitpicking, especially as the films centers on a talking bear? Fine.

But the core of the film is Paddington’s desire to find a home and to fit in somewhere. He’s not treated with much affection at the beginning. He’s locked up in the attic and told that he’s going to be handed over to the authorities in the morning. But this is the English way. We pretend that we don’t like outsiders. We put up all kinds of walls and obstacles. But deep down inside we always want to help someone out and we’re always capable of being won over.

Which is exactly what happens to Henry Brown, the patriarch of the family. Played by Hugh Bonneville, who plays the odious Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey, he’s a stiff-assed middle class twat who’s mortally afraid of risk. He wants to ship off the bear as soon as possible; let someone else take care of it. But before you know it, he’s helping Paddington out, dressing up as a woman (which is seemingly the secret dream of every Englishman) and even enticing men into illicit rendezvous to get what Paddington wants. Yeah, the promise of casual sex was a turn up for the books in this family film.

Even Mr Curry, played by the cadaverous looking Peter Capaldi, ends up helping the bear. Sure he wants the foreigner to get the hell out of his country, but he’s appalled when he finds out that someone is planning to stuff the poor wee little caniform. This is simply too much. We English might be suspicious of outsiders, but we don’t want them stuffed! Especially cute bears!

The only thing that doesn’t really work is the villain, played by Nicole Kidman. Kidman is obviously having fun and is trying to summon a Cruella de Ville vibe, but she feels a little out of place. Whenever she’s on screen, the movie suddenly becomes something completely different. But she’s not funny or scary enough to warrant the distraction. She’s a plot device, nothing more.

And the plot, it must be said, with Paddington trying to find an explorer who once visited his aunt and uncle in Peru, and Kidman’s crazy taxidermist who wants to stuff him, is a little weak. But the situations that the characters get themselves in, and the general humour and tone of the film, are delightful. There's a great scene where Paddington is taking the Tube and sees a sign that says 'Dogs Must Be Carried' on the escalator. Of course, Paddington takes it literally and ends up finding a pooch so that he can indeed ride the escalator. Cue the adorable sight of Paddington carrying a chihuahua under his arm.

And the CGI of Paddington himself is a huge success. I was very doubtful that they could pull it off, that he would either look too much like a real bear and would look weird or that he would look too cartoonish. But the animation is terrific and Paddington is adorable. It helps hugely that Ben Whishaw was cast - he lends Paddington the right amount of sweetness and innocence. But then again, Kidman aside, all of the casting is spot on. Even Hugh Bonneville is great! Just don't make me watch Downton Abbey again. Fucking ever!

The World's End

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 22:38:00 +0000

Years and years ago it felt like I was a lone voice of dissent. Spaced is utter dogshit I would tell people. It’s just a series of film references. Yes, you’ve watched Star Wars a million times and now you’re referencing Jedi mind tricks. Oh, what a fucking genius you are.

Colour me pleasantly surprised when Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz turned out to be rather good. Maybe Spaced was just a painful learning exercise. From now on, everything’s going to be great.

Yeah, bollocks to that. The World’s End is a painfully disappointing film. It feels like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. It’s Shaun of the Dead’s pasty, unfunny, twin brother. So much of the film falls flat.

Right from the off you know you’re in trouble. The film begins with a painfully unfunny introduction to the main characters. The writing is plodding, heavy-handed and stale, and all the visual pyrotechnics in the world aren’t going to save it. Yes, here are some kids who were friends at school and then they went out drinking. It feels like the film takes ten minutes to convey this information. It’s a completely unnecessary sequence.

For what it’s worth, the story focuses on a fucking loser played by a rather emaciated and unhealthy looking Simon Pegg. He’s an alcoholic who has never moved on from his teenage years. He wants to complete a pub crawl comprising of twelve pubs in his childhood town. But he wants to do this with all of his old friends. Needless to say, they’ve all moved on with their lives. We’ve got a car salesmen, an estate agent, a business executive etc. Will they join Gary’s (Pegg) quest to reach The World’s End and down a twelfth pint? What the fuck do you think?

But they’re not going to do it before some desperate padding and unfunny attempts at comedy. One-by-one Gary has to convince his old friends to join him, leading to some horribly repetitive shit. With each successive scene, Gary comes over as increasingly sad and pathetic. And not in an amusing way. He’s no Withnail. He doesn’t have any funny lines. He doesn’t have any amusing behaviour. There’s no wit, there’s no edge and no bite. It’s just Simon Pegg horribly overacting as he tries to wring some juice out of his hapless script.

Once they finally start the pub crawl, we again have to put up with annoying repetition. Ask for drinks, same shot of pints being pulled, cut to characters chugging it down, cue a little bit of squabbling about the past. By the time you get to the third pub, it begins to dawn on you that you’re going to have to put up with this another nine times. Hand me a bottle of vodka and pour it into my eyeballs, this is going to be a long ride.

Of course, The World’s End has a twist, but again it feels recycled. Shaun of the Dead had zombies so The World’s End has...alien androids. Sounds like it could be amusing, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. It just feels like warmed up leftovers. Oh, so before we were killing zombies? Now we get to kill androids that have blue blood! See what we did there? See how we made it totally different and unique?

The first attack on Gary, by a pack of chavs, is ridiculously choreographed. Gary gets into a scuffle with a kid and then does a Rock Bottom into a urinal and decapitates the teenager. Okay, so drunk Gary can execute a perfect wrestling move? And of course he has no idea that this kid is a robot. So he legitimately thinks it would be a good idea to do this move through a urinal which, if the kid were human, would probably kill him? Look, I know logic isn’t high on the agenda of this film, but the characters in this movie are so stupid that it beggars belief. And after this, Gary’s friends and a whole bunch of alien robots join together for a huge fight with more ridiculous choreography. Apparently everyone here should be wrestling in WWE. Everyone’s flying around like Rey Mysterio. There are gorilla presses and back breakers and flying elbows. And it also seems like the alien robot kids are made of glass, because they shatter with just the slightest impact. One kid gets broken in half when he gets thrown against a sink and another shatters when he gets elbow dropped in the head. High technology but terrible construction. Are they are a bunch of iPhones?

You’d think that after this attack, Gary would maybe decide to go home and forget the pub crawl. But seeing as he’s insanely single-minded, we have to carry on with the arduous endeavor. On and on it goes as the group debates whether so-and-so is a robot or not.

Eventually all hell breaks lose and the androids are chasing Gary through the streets. When he reaches the final pub, The World’s End, he’s interrupted and lead to a secret chamber where it’s revealed that alien androids have already infiltrated the world and that they’re responsible for all the advancements in technology. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Everything then goes kaboom and the film ends with an apocalyptic hellscape.

What makes the ending thoroughly amazing is that it kind of ends as an action movie. Most of the characters are doing their best to make the most of the end of the world, but Gary, ever the child, is transformed almost into an action hero. He walks into a bar with some android friends, who are not trusted by anyone, seeing as they kind of helped to destroy everything, and then draws a sword when a bartender refuses to serve the androids. It’s thoroughly bizarre and quite depressing when you think about it. So the world has ended and yet you’re still some ridiculous cartoon. You’re still a child. You’re now living some post-apocalyptic, comic book fantasy. Please take this movie away. Please eject it violently from the rectum of the film landscape.

Frank

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 02:54:00 +0000

‘I love your wall.’

No, I love your wall. And I love your big, freaky head and your crazy songs. You’re awesome Frank.

When I was a kid, there was a television character called Frank Sidebottom. He had a broad Northern accent and he would play the banjo and he would conduct interviews in his shed. He also had a huge papier mache mask. It was incredibly weird and cartoonish. The eyes kind of looked like something out of an anime and the hair looked like it was coloured in with felt pen. It was incredibly bizarre and I didn’t quite understand it.

I hadn’t thought about Frank for several years and then he turned up in the movie Filth. James McAvoy’s character imitates Frank Sidebottom when making dirty phone calls to the wife of a friend. And then, weirdly enough, Frank got his own film.

It was amazing to me that Michael Fassbender got cast as Frank. Fassbender is a massive sex symbol and Frank is, well, a freak. A kindly, well intentioned freak, but a freak nonetheless.

The Frank in this movie deviates from the previous incarnation, in that he’s an American and he’s the leader of an experimental synth band. Gone is the broad Northern accent and the banjo, but it doesn’t matter. This movie is lots and lots of fun.

The story centers around Jon (Domhall Gleeson), a young, aspiring songwriter. The movie begins with the protagonist desperately trying to write a song. His lyrics describe the things that he sees as he walks around, and the song is pretty terrible. We then see him struggling in his room to write melodies. Just as he thinks he’s stumbled upon something great, he realises that he’s playing a Madness song. This is a kid that hasn’t found his creative voice yet and who is desperately lacking inspiration.

One day, as Jon is hanging out near the beach, he sees a man trying to drown himself. It turns out that the man is a keyboard player for a band that’s in town. Jon ends up talking to one of the band members and before he knows it, he’s invited to play keyboards for a gig that night.

The gig is suitably weird. Jon turns up with the show already beginning and with an empty keyboard waiting. Frank then walks out, slapping a cymbal as he strides in (a little detail that cracked me up) and then proceeds to sing a song about soup. Jon kind of stares in disbelief but then begins to get into it, the allure of the bright lights too much for him to resist. Finally he belongs to something.

Well, kind of.

Even though Jon loves being part of the band, he faces hostility from most of the members. There are two French players who basically ignore him and then there’s Clara (Maggie Gylenhaal), the theremin player, who’s openly hostile. They know that this guy has no place in the band, that’s he’s just some sad guy desperate to belong to something, desperate for fame, but innocent Frank only sees goodness in him.

Have I mentioned yet that Frank never takes his mask off, no matter what? Yep, no matter what he does, he keeps it on. There’s one hilarious moment when Jon, who’s desperate to see Frank without his mask, goes into Frank’s room and sees the mask on the floor. Finally, I’m going to see what he really looks like, you can imagine him saying to himself. He then goes into the bathroom and is confronted with the sight of Frank showering with a plastic bag on his head. He’s wearing another mask. He has multiples.

At first you think that the band are being unnecessarily mean to Jon, but as the film progresses, you begin to realise that he’s the poisonous element of the group. He posts videos of the band on YouTube, he blogs and he tweets. This social media presence is meant to promote the band, but it ends up turning them into a joke. And Jon is all too willing to capitalise on this.

After completing an album, the band travels to America for a music festival. Frank can’t handle his newfound fame and the group disintegrates. Eventually only Frank and Jon remain. Frank is a nervous wreck but Jon drags him onto the stage and they end up performing a song that Jon wrote. At the beginning of the performance, Jon states that it’s the greatest day of his life but it quickly turns into a nightmare, as Frank collapses on the stage, mumbling that the music is shit.

Some people have criticised the final act of the film but I think it’s excellent. Jon is a hack and fame hungry. He isn’t a bad guy per se, but he doesn’t fully understand the consequences of his actions. Frank’s band isn’t so much about the music. It’s a way for this damaged individual to retain some measure of sanity (or at least to release his insanity). All of the other band members are there helping him. They realise that Frank is the center and they don’t try and disturb their orbit around him. But then Jon comes along, thinking that he can share the limelight and propel them to some measure of fame. This lunatic asylum is never meant to become famous.

And so Clara, who for so long seems like the meanest bitch in the universe, comes out really as the hero. All along she’s trying to protect Frank. She can see through Jon. She knows that he has stars in his eyes and that he has the potential to destroy them all.

One of the funniest scenes is when Frank decides to preview a new song he’s written. Under the influence of Jon, he decides to write his most ‘likeable song ever’. With a crazy dance beat and an ear-piercing falsetto he proceeds to sing a song about Coca-Cola, lipstick and kissing. Clara, in complete deadpan, tells Frank that yes indeed, it is his most likeable song ever. In other words, he’s completely sold out and has produced a bag of shite.

After the failed festival performance, Jon and Frank hole up in a motel. They get into an argument and Jon tries to rip his mask off. It’s further evidence of what a reprehensible person Jon is. The rest of the band are content to let Frank just be Frank. But Jon wants to see the ‘real’ Frank and selfishly tries to expose him in order to satisfy his own curiosity. Frank then runs out of the motel and gets run over, his mask shattering in the process.

We do eventually get to see Frank without his mask. He’s a completely broken person, his hair patchy and bald in places because of the mask rubbing against his head. He looks completely lost. But he comes to life at the end when Jon reunites him with his band.

Jon’s final shot at redemption is to take Frank to a hick bar where his old band is performing. Clara is warbling some terribly depressing tune but then Frank turns up. At first she doesn’t recognise him but then it dawns on her who he is. He begins to improvise a tune and Clara returns to her familiar place on the theremin. The band quickly get into the song and begin rocking out.

And the final song is actually really good. Frank sings about everything he loves and you can’t help but feel that this is a love song to his band. They’re his therapy, his meaning, his life. They’re all back together, the familiar pieces back in place. This is the way it should have been all along and it’s completely appropriate that Jon returns back to obscurity. But who knows what lies in store for Frank’s band. They’re not built for success but this last song is actually really good and completely heartfelt. The ending is actually really moving. Maybe they’ll have some success despite themselves.

Guardians of the Galaxy

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 03:50:00 +0000

Having been disappointed by 2014’s most critically acclaimed film, Boyhood, I decided to give 2014’s highest grossing movie a chance. Surely I can’t go wrong here. Everyone loves Guardians of the Galaxy. This is going to be loads of fun, isn’t it?

Sadly, I was wrong. This is a painfully ordinary movie. Pedestrian action scenes, plodding screenplay and mediocre direction. Starved as we are for fresh, inventive summer blockbusters, I can understand the willingness to pounce on anything that rises above the mediocre standards set by this rather moribund industry, but Guardians of the Galaxy is not a film to get excited about. It offers nothing that we haven’t seen before and nothing that hasn’t been done better countless times.

Want a sci-fi soap opera western? Watch Star Wars. Want a wisecracking hero? Watch Indiana Jones. Want a gang of colourful heroes? Watch The Great Escape or The Magnificent Seven.

What makes this extra disappointing is that the film starts so strongly. The film begins with Peter Quill as a child. His mother is on her deathbed and he’s listening to some 10cc on his Walkman. It’s incredibly sad and moving, and they manage to film it in such a way that it resembles a Spielberg film from the 70s. But then Peter gets kidnapped by aliens and we’re thrust into mediocrity.

The film is just incredibly disjointed and random. Like so many action and adventure films these days, they’re impatient. Everything has to move at a hundred miles an hour. They never take the time to set up situations and characters correctly. I watched Guardians and it was just like *random shit, random shit, wisecrack, random shit, random shit, action scene*. How about, you know, a story?

And really, the MacGuffin in this film is some round thing? And the bad guys are armour-plated aliens with blue faces? In The Avengers the MacGuffin was a square thing and the bad guys were amour-plated aliens with skeleton-like faces. Nice to see that Marvel is awash with fresh ideas. What’s next? Are we going to have a triangle MacGuffin and are the bad guys going to be amour-plated aliens with red skeleton faces? Yeah, that’s stupid, Captain America already has the red skeleton thing covered.

Maybe I’m just a joyless, miserable bastard. Everyone else also loved The Avengers, while I thought it was terrible. But no, I refuse to believe that I’m the problem here. Just because other people have lowered their standards beyond all recognition, doesn’t mean that I have to. How can you aspire to create a compelling adventure film when you have some of the dullest villains ever seen in a movie? A film like this lives and breathes with its villains. A hero is only as good as his/her adversary.

The villain here is a roided, blue alien dude. He doesn’t say anything interesting. He doesn’t say anything cool or scary. He doesn’t kill people in frightening/amusing ways. He doesn’t have any witty banter or one liners. He’s just like a guy from The Blue Man Group who’s gone seriously rogue and has taken far too much whey supplement. He probably has teeny, weeny testicles and is doomed to overcompensate on a cosmic scale.

The best character, by a country mile, is Groot. Who would have thought that Vin Diesel as an intergalactic Hodor would be the best thing about this blockbuster? But weirdly enough, Groot, the alien Hodor tree, is the most rounded, most human, most selfless character in the movie. He even gives his life for his friends. In one of the best scenes in the film, he wraps his friends in a cocoon to protect them, taking his own life in the process. It’s a great scene.

There’s also another great moment when Groot saves his friends by taking out a bunch of guys with his branches/arms. Groot drives his limbs through his adversaries and then batters them against the wall like rag dolls. Once they’re defeated, he turns around and gives his friends a big, goofy grin. It’s another excellent moment.

However, even with Groot the film has a touch of randomness about it. His powers are never truly explained and it’s only when he’s saving his friends with his cocoon that you’re told that this will kill him. Again it leaves you with the impression that things are being made up as they go along.

But there’s actually some pretty genuine pathos when Groot is killed and Rocket is sobbing into a handful of branches. For that, for having a character you genuinely care about, the film deserves some credit.

It gets nothing from me, though, for the fearsomely dull action sequences towards the end. We’re not quite in Avengers territory where you have a forty minute action scene with flying space turtles and millions of people dying bloodless deaths offscreen in a citywide rampage, but it’s almost as dreary. Really, these big space battles and citywide assaults haven’t excited me for a long, long time. Pixels get destroyed, stuff goes kaboom and everyone gets on with their lives. None of these big Marvel action sequences have any flavor. They all feel incredibly bland. I’d rather watch the crazy father versus son fight in Hulk than this. And that film is still a lot better than anything Marvel has produced since.

Boyhood

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sat, 10 Jan 2015 17:07:00 +0000

Boyhood is a horribly depressing film; a film with an amazing concept that fails to deliver in every regard. Shot over the course of twelve years, we get to follow a boy as he becomes a man. The movie begins with him as a six-year-old and culminates when he begins college. But while there is all the potential in the world for an amazing statement on childhood and growing up, we end with a curiously cold and detached movie. A film that never gets into the head of its protagonist and which simply feels like it’s going through the motions.

It’s kind of the polar opposite of Linklater’s Before movies. In those films, we really feel like we get to know the characters. We feel close to them. But I didn’t feel that here. Everything felt very facile. Maybe the Before movies benefit from having their characters locked down for each film. We get to spend a single day with them - you could call it ‘quality time’. But here a single year can pass in the course of one ten minute scene. It just isn’t particularly satisfying. Children change at an enormous pace, but because the film is basically a highlight reel, all we really notice is the growing body and the different haircuts.

Forget about this being anything like Michael Apted’s Up series. You’re not going to have a fillet mignon to sink your teeth into. You’re not going to get into the child’s head and hear his hopes and dreams. Instead you’re going to get a pack of Doritos to nibble on. And it’s one of those massive packs that when you open it, it’s mostly filled with air.

We’re told at the beginning, when Mason is a young child and just starting school, that he spends all his time staring out of the window, hinting that he’s something of dreamer. But we never see this. I don’t want to be told that Mason’s a dreamer. I want to see it. Children and teenagers, contrary to some of Hollywood’s precocious examples, aren’t really very good at expressing themselves verbally. The most interesting thing about them is their inner life. This is something that is usually best captured visually. But this is a meat and potatoes kind of film. It’s incredibly unlyrical.

Not that the dialogue is anything to get excited about. Mason mumbles and grumbles but aside from the odd moment here and there everything is purely functional. There’s a fairly insightful scene when Mason bemoans our collective addiction to cell phones and how we view everything through a screen, but this kind of commentary is hardly the norm. Not that I really want the film to be three hours of social commentary. But I do want to feel close to the lead, which I didn’t at all.

Even more disappointing than Mason’s role is that of his mother, played by Patricia Arquette. Her role must be one of the most thankless female roles in recent years. All she seems to do is sit at a table and pay bills. Plus Arquette’s acting is mediocre at best. She’s cold, detached, humourless and unemotive. In one scene she encourages a Mexican laborer to go back to school. When years later they encounter one another and he tells her that her words inspired him, you’d think that she was listening to the weather forecast.

It kind of takes the piss that Ethan Hawke gets a much better role as the kids’ father. Separated from their mother, he just gets to sweep in every now and again and hang out with them. He can be the ‘cool’ one. He can have fun with them and take them bowling, to baseball games and go camping. Meanwhile I don’t recall one, single scene where the mother has any fun with her kids. Almost all of her scenes are completely joyless. I understand that she has the day-to-day hard work and drudgery to deal with, while the father can just saunter in, but the mother is a tiresome presence. She’s a grouch, a nag and, in the end, hysterical.

When Mason finally goes to college, and Mason’s mother is confronted with an empty nest, she has a kind of meltdown. She complains about time going so fast and having nothing to show for herself. She also says that in another forty years she’ll be dead. It’s a hysterical reaction but it feels authentic enough. It’s a big thing when your kids move away. It’s normal to go through a crisis. But again I kind of feel like the film is doing mothers a disservice. The movie falls into the cliches of women being hysterical and unreasonable, and of them being victims.

Seeing as Mason’s mother is cast as a victim here, she gets to marry not one but two alcoholics. The first one provides some of the only drama in the movie. At first he seems like a decent guy, but then he begins to indulge in some secret drinking and all of a sudden we have a monster on our hands. Again, because we’re in such a rush to get through the years, it seems like he turns into an alcoholic overnight. It also doesn’t help that the stepfather’s acting is ridiculously broad. He’s a leering, gurning, obnoxious buffoon. But at least, when he’s on the screen, something happens.

There’s one scene where the stepfather forces Mason to have his long locks shorn off. It’s pretty brutal in its assholery. But how does Mason’s mother react to this hair rape of her young son? She just kind of says...sorry. Oh, and for a couple of years when Mason’s stepfather is being a gigantic dickhead, she’s sitting at the table, paying bills. She seems to spend years at a time in a coma.

Mason’s mother eventually leaves this tosser when he begins beating her and we have the excitement of her rescuing her children from his clutches, but this story arc ends up leaving you with more questions than answers. The stepfather had kids of his own. What happened to Mason’s step brother and step sister? Does he keep in any sort of contact? Does he ever see them again?

The second asshole alcoholic stepfather is far more rudimentary. Mason’s mother marries some soldier. In his very first scene I thought that something was wrong with him. He’s been in the Iraq war and he seems to be hiding some kind of deep trauma. But Mason’s mother marries him and before you know it, he’s questioning Mason’s sexuality and he’s supping from cans of beer. But then as quickly as he appears, he’s gone. Why exactly did Mason’s mother leave him? He was turning into a bit of a morose prick, but he hadn’t done anything like the first stepfather. But once again he’s neatly swept under the rug.

Of course the talk now is of Boyhood vying for Oscars. If it did, it wouldn’t be a crime on the scale of Crash and Forrest Gump, but it’s most certainly not a worthy movie. Having the balls to film a movie over the span of twelve years is not enough to warrant critical acclaim. A great concept is nothing without great execution. The idea here is superb but the delivery is sorely lacking. No drama, no emotion, no insight, poor acting and ordinary writing are a recipe for a mediocre movie, which, sadly, this is.

Winter's Tale

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 18:38:00 +0000

There’s a kernel of a good idea somewhere within Winter Tale’s body. It’s a tale of demons, love and miracles. But it also happens to be a completely stupid, wretched, worthless piece of filmmaking - the kind of movie that takes whatever good ideas it has and chokes them thoroughly to death.

The murderer here is Akiva Goldsman, a filmmaker whose work has run the gamut from Batman Forever to Batman & Robin. Okay, he also wrote the scripts for A Beautiful Mind (one of the worst films to win the Best Picture Oscar), Lost in Space and he tried his darndest to ruin I Am Legend. He’s an appalling filmmaker without any discernible taste.

Therefore it was rather terrifying to think that he was going to direct his first movie. Let loose without the likes of Ron Howard to try and redeem his risible words, how would he fare?

Badly, of course.

The film begins with an immigrant couple trying to gain entry into America with their newborn child. The mother, however, has consumption and they’re denied entry. Not wanting their baby to suffer their fate and rot in some European hellhole where everyone drinks their own piss and eats old ladies, they decide to sneak him in New York. They do this by placing him in a model sailboat and lowering him into the water so that he can float to Manhattan. They obviously have a lot of faith that the little model isn’t going to capsize on the way and that the currents will wash him up in the perfect location and that he won’t starve or freeze to death. Either that or the little bastard is keeping them up all night and they don’t give a shit either way.

Being that this is a fairytale, the baby survives its worrisomely long journey to Manhattan and grows up to be Colin Farrell.

As soon as we meet Mr Farrell, he’s being chased by a gang of thugs. Oh no, he’s gonna get a clobberin’, you think to yourself, but before Russell Crowe can finish chewing up all the scenery, he’s riding a magic horse that’s apparently his guardian angel.

Okey dokey. Colin Farrell is playing about twenty years younger than his real age and he’s befriended a magical horse and Russell Crowe looks like he’s suddenly lost the ability to act, but I’ll give it a go. What’s next?

Oh shit, the horse is telling him to rob a mansion and now he’s flirting with a girl who has consumption. ‘What’s the best thing you’ve ever stolen?’ she asks him (the fucking guy who broke into her fucking mansion!). ‘I’m beginning to think that I haven’t stolen it yet.’ Vomit! Vomit! Tons and tons of vomit spewing from every orifice! Yes, I know this man is dreamy, but he just admitted that he wants to rob your gaffe and now you’re making him tea and falling in love with him. And you’re the same silly girl that fell in love with the Irish chauffeur in Downton Abbey and then carked it while giving birth. Do you have an Irish fetish, lady?

Maybe Russell Crowe will save this film. Maybe the opening scene was just a one off. He’s a great actor, after all. Okay, he sounds like he should be handing out Lucky Charms but he’s intense as always. Oh, nice, he’s intimidating wait staff and being a dick. Business could be about to pick up... What the fuck! He’s turned into a demon and killed the wait staff! A magical horse and a demon Russell Crowe? This is just stupid. But it can’t get any worse. No, no, no. Not possible.

Pissing hell. Russell Crowe is now actually throwing Lucky Charms! Watch the fucking trailer. One minute and two seconds!

I’m crying now. I can’t take this. No more.

Ooh, Russell Crowe is meeting Satan. Alright. This could be interesting. Hmm. Risible dialogue. Satan’s voice getting deeper when he gets mad. Not so interesting after all... You’re shitting me!! Will Smith as Satan! You’ve just taken the most likeable man in Hollywood and made him Beelzebub! I get it. I get it. You’re casting against type. Blah, blah, blah. Henry Fonda was great as a villain in Once Upon a Time in the West. Yadda, yadda, yadda. But Smith isn’t doing anything to make us fear or hate him. He’s just occasionally reaming Russell Crowe, who’s acting like a dick anyway. We bloody well want him to get reamed. This just isn’t working at all. And now it looks like they’re chilling! Russell Crowe is chewing the shit and chilling out with Satan Smith! Utterly, utterly ridiculous. And Smith even has an earring, like he’s a pirate Lucifer! Can you not make one decent decision in this film?

I think there’s possibly one good scene in this movie. After Colin Farrell’s consumptive girlfriend pops her clogs, he’s confronted by Russell Crowe on horseback. Farrell’s horse, of course, is white and Crowe’s is black. Crowe barks at him and briefly there’s some gravitas (he talks about blackening souls and crushing miracles), but then it kind of turns into The Matrix with a hundred anonymous guys in bowler hats trying to crush our hero.

If the film wasn’t crude and manipulative before, it gets even worse when our hero is transported into modern times. He encounters a little girl in a park who happens to be wearing a hat. Now if you’ve watched any films before, you’ll know that this is suspect. A hat on a little girl means that she has a 90% chance of having cancer. And of course this little girl does have cancer.

Oh, what’s going to happen here? Is she going to wither and die? Or is our hero going to find a way of performing a miracle and save the wee innocent poppet and try to wring out some undeserved emotion from this festering shitpile of a movie? What do you think?

This movie is so bad that it really should be studied. It’s a brilliant encapsulation of how you can get everything wrong. You can take this good idea and fuck it up with terrible writing, awful casting, atrocious acting and hamfisted melodrama. A film like this could be wonderful like Wings of Desire. It just needs someone with a bit of intelligence and taste. Instead we get the guy who wrote Batman & Robin. It would have been a real, genuine bona fide miracle if this had turned out well. But of course, it didn’t. I guess I’m sticking to atheism then...

The Counselor

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 19:36:00 +0000

For someone in the upper echelons of the film community, Ridley Scott doesn’t half produce a lot of crap. For every good film he makes, there’s a steamer in his back pocket. He gives us Gladiator but he also gives us Hannibal. He gives us Blade Runner but he also gives us Legend. He gives us Black Hawk Down and Alien but he also gives us Robin Hood, GI Jane and Thelma and Louise. You never know where you stand with Sir Ridley.

The Counselor is firmly in the steamer category. It doesn’t possess one, single redeemable quality. The acting is horrible, the dialogue is atrocious, the plot makes no sense and it looks like shit. If anything, it looks more like a Tony Scott film from the 80s than a Ridley Scott movie. There’s plenty of smoke and backlighting.

But Ridley is desperately trying to make this into a glossy, luxurious, decadent crime epic. Instead it resembles a Ferrero Rocher commercial or some cheesy advert in the front pages of Vogue. For fuck’s sake, there’s a scene where Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz are watching their pet cheetahs hunt prey in the desert. They’re decked out in designer safari outfits. These people are the two biggest assclowns in the history of the world. Forget Kim and Kanye, these two dickheads have them licked.

Compounding matters is the fact that Javier Bardem has a haircut that makes him look like Sonic the Hedgehog and that Cameron Diaz has a cheetah tattoo on her back along with a gold tooth and fingernails that look like claws. Do you get it? She’s a hunter like her pet cheetahs. She’s bad news. Subtle, no?

Just in case that wasn’t enough evidence for you to prove that Diaz’s character is a little touched in the head, there’s a scene where she fucks Javier Bardem’s car. Yeah, you’re reading that right. She fucks Javier Bardem’s car. Before you get ahead of me, no, she doesn’t have sex with the exhaust pipe or the gear stick. What are you, a fucking pervert or something? Geez. No, she decides to hump the windshield instead. Javier Bardem’s character watches in horror. He says that watching her rub herself on the glass was too gynecological to be sexy. He likens her pussy to a catfish. Charming image, no? But somehow, rather than hit the gas pedal and propel the crazy woman off his car, or take her home, say he has a headache and never return her calls, he continues to pursue a romantic relationship with this mentalist. A woman who fucked his car! A woman who did the splits, lifted up her skirt and humped his windshield. For me, that’s pretty high up on the list of reasons to break up a relationship. Cheating is bad, as is lying and stealing, but shagging a car is just weird and disturbing. Whats’ next? The TV? The oven? Random door handles? The cats?

Over time we’re supposed to get the idea that Diaz is some kind of evil genius. She attempts to steal some drugs from the Mexican drug cartel but then fucks up along the way. However, this doesn’t stop her from stealing the money she wants and brutally killing Brad Pitt’s character. In the final scene she mentions how hunters have grace, beauty and purity of heart. The film then ends with her saying that she’s famished. You see what she’s saying? She’s the hunter. She’s the one that’s pure of heart, she’s the one that’s beautiful. Wow, I spent two hours watching a bad thriller so that you can verbally wank yourself off.

It also cracks me that up that during this final scene, Diaz is sitting in a restaurant, wearing a hood. You can see that her male companion is shitting himself. ‘This woman is crazy. First of all she turns up for our date looking like Emperor Palpatine, now she’s talking about herself being a hunter. Can I escape before she gets her catfish out and humps the creme brulee?’

It doesn’t help that all of this egocentric nonsense is coming out of the mouth of Cameron Diaz. She doesn’t have an ounce of danger in her body. She doesn’t convey a shred of intelligence. Not for a single second do I think that she’s capable of any of this. This role would have demanded an actress much finer than her. Diaz just comes over as a cheap hood rat. Lots of the time she’s duck facing. And there’s one particularly hideous scene where she’s talking to Penelope Cruz about a diamond ring. She’s supposed to be imparting her vast knowledge. But instead she just sounds like a robot reading cue cards.

And what the hell is with her make-up? She doesn’t look like a cheetah. She looks like a panda with a fake tan. She’s painful to look at.

Something else that doesn’t sit well is the pointlessly contrived extreme violence. In one sequence, Diaz hires a couple of people to steal from the Mexican drug cartel. In order to get the drug cartel’s vehicle to work, she has to obtain a special component from a guy on a motorbike. The component is in his helmet. Now how would you go about stealing from this guy on a motorbike? Knock him off his bike with your car? Shoot him? Or drive miles and miles ahead of him and spend ages setting up a wire that will decapitate him? With this wire you have to spend lots of time measuring and you have to make sure that he drives down a particular road and you have to set it up at night so that he can’t see it. You also have to make sure that the guy looks up so that he can present his neck for you. To do this, you need to make sure to hit some car lights at the crucial moment. But surely this is the most logical option? Much better than shooting the guy and taking his helmet off. But yeah, these people do indeed set up this wire and his head does indeed roll.

Foreshadowing another bloody set-piece is a conversation between Javier Bardem and Michael Fassbender. Bardem tells The Counsellor about an innovative way to kill someone. He tells a story about a device that slowly garotes you. A wire is looped around someone’s head and then a motor slowly tightens the wire. Eventually it cuts through your neck and through your arteries. Again, as a method of execution, this seems to be a little fussy. Plus it lacks the personal touch. At least in the past some burly guy would have to huff and puff and use some muscle to kill you. This is the millennial way to kill someone - it’s like having a fucking app do it. Throw something over someone’s head, press a button and voila!

But you know that this machine is going to turn up later in the film and indeed it does. Brad Pitt is hiding out in London and Cameron Diaz gets one of her underlings to throw this thing over his head. Sure enough it tightens around his neck. And then as he tries to pull it off, the wire cuts through his fingers and chops them off before severing the arteries in his neck, leaving him to die in geysers of blood. Again, this just seems silly. It’s too contrived. Just shoot him with a silencer. What happened to the cool, civilised ways of killing someone?

I haven’t talked much about the story, have I? Or Michael Fassbender. It doesn’t matter. The story is complete nonsense, the dialogue is pretentious drivel and Michael Fassbender has nothing to do. He’s just an idiot patsy who gets what’s coming to him. Oh, wouldn’t it be a great idea, seeing as I’m a lawyer and already making lot of money, to suddenly get in the drug business? And to do business with the Mexican drug cartel. That sounds like the best idea in the history of the world. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Oh wait, everything’s gone wrong and my future wife has been kidnapped and they’ve made a snuff film where they behead her and she’s been dumped in a landfill. Who could have guessed?

Wait, this was written by Cormac McCarthy? Shit in my boots and call me a whore. How? Why? What...the...fuck?!?

The Wolf of Wall Street

noreply@blogger.com (Ricky Roma) — Sun, 27 Jul 2014 03:58:00 +0000

I know some people have trouble with Scorsese’s films Goodfellas and Casino. There were often claims that they glamorized the worlds they portrayed. I would counter that with the brutal violence that was depicted. Yes, Scorsese’s craft was such that they were seductive, beautiful films, but then the characters would end up getting brained with a baseball bat or shot in the head. So yeah, you can have this exciting life with money and girls and power, but you’re probably going to come to a sticky end. Do you still want a part of it?

The Wolf of Wall Street is a bit more morally ambiguous. But then that’s kind of the point. Like the gangsters in Scorsese’s mob films, they have money, power and lots of sex, but their comeuppance is far less significant. A little bit of jail-time is the most they have to worry about. Hell, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), the Wall Street broker depicted in this film, steals millions and millions of dollars and only gets a couple of years in prison. They’re gangsters who don’t have to look over their shoulder.

I know my wife had a big problem with the tone of this movie and the ending, but the final scene is kind of a mirror of the one in Goodfellas. At the end of Goodfellas, Henry Hill, who rats out his friends and escapes his life of crime by disappearing into the the Witness Protection Program, complains bitterly about his new life. As he picks up the paper, he says that now he has to live a life like everyone else. He can’t even get proper pasta. And you think to yourself, what fucking ingratitude. The government saves his life and gives him another chance and all he can do is moan. Here, in The Wolf of Wall Street, Agent Denham, the guy mainly responsible for bringing Belfort to justice, looks at his paper and contemplates the lenient sentence given to the broker. He then looks around the subway car and the people surrounding him. The way it’s filmed is incredibly heavy-handed; he’s surrounded by the dregs of humanity. But the point is a valid one. This guy has invested himself enormously in this case. He’s put all this effort into it and he’s still at the same place. Therefore Jordan Belfort’s words ring in his ears. In one scene, they discuss how little the Agent makes and how much money Belfort is swimming in. And so at the end, Denham realises that he can never really have revenge over this guy. Belfort still has money and is only going to serve a couple of years. Denham really wanted to stick it to him and bring him down to size, but justice has not been served.

My wife took this scene as a massive fuck you from Scorsese - that he’s laughing at us for being do-gooders and cowards who don’t have the balls to go out and earn lots of money. I didn’t see it like that. I saw it as the grim reality. These people just keep getting away with it and the rest of us just have to sit there and eat it all up.

And the final scene is truly depressing. Belfort, now out of prison, is conducting a sales seminar. He has a whole room full of eager disciples who want to learn his sales techniques. This is a man who should be despised. This is a man who should be a pariah. Instead he’s a man who’s admired. He’s a man who’s worshipped. The eager faces in the audience are almost drooling. They want what he has; the ability to make money. And that’s why someone like Belfort will never be completely hated. Because, as a society, we love money. And we love anyone who can make it. We want some of that gold dust to rub off on us. And that’s why Scorsese’s ending is so brilliantly depressing. We’re just going to keep lapping this shit up. We’re never going to learn. The dollar is God.

The one character I was rooting for in this movie was Agent Denham. You can feel his seething moral/class outrage as he pursues Belfort. This is a man who can’t be bought. This is a man who doesn’t make a lot of money. This is a man who desperately wants to serve as an equalizer. He wants to bring this cocky, arrogant, gloating prick to justice. He wants to do it for everyone who is busting their ass to make an honest living. The boats, the women, the money don’t impress him. He knows they’re not deserved.

But at the same time, he’s not a goody two-shoes, saintly G-Man like Elliot Ness in The Untouchables. In Brian De Palma’s film, Elliot Ness has a perfect wife and a perfect baby and is about as morally pure as you can get. With Agent Dunham, though, you feel like he probably has no life and obsesses about this case when he’s at home. He’s a bit like The Terminator. He doesn't have any charm, but I was behind him and his pursuit one hundred percent.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Donnie Azoff, played by Jonah Hill. I don’t think I’ve been so repulsed by a film character for a long time. I wanted this guy destroyed after only seeing him for about thirty seconds. Vain and arrogant but without a hint of charisma, he’s a turd of a human being. He has no talent, he has no discernible skills, but by latching onto Belfort like a parasite, he manages to obtain fabulous wealth. And to make it even worse, he flaunts his money at every available opportunity and always acts like a colossal dick. His character is actually so repugnant that I don’t know whether this is a good performance from Hill or not. But then I tend to despise Hill in general, so I’m thinking that it’s probably not a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination.

One can question the tone of the movie. Most of it is played for laughs. But whether this pleases or annoys you depends on whether you find it amusing when people are fucked up on drugs and alcohol. Personally, I found a lot to laugh at. One of the funniest scenes is when Belfort gets high before an air flight and ends up being strapped to his seat. He has no memory of trying to molest the aircrew and can only beg for more drugs.

Yeah, the tone here is far from serious. And one could argue that this means that the film is condoning or somehow endorsing the behaviour depicted, but I’d argue against that. The stuff that happens in this movie is so ridiculous that you can only film a lof of it with your tongue planted firmly in your cheek. If you tried to film some of these incidents in a more serious manner, you’d end up with a pompous, sermonising piece of crap. Maybe a Reefer Madness for the new millennium.

One of the few times that the film gets serious is when Belfort tries to kidnap his own daughter and ends up crashing his car and injuring the girl. But this is a minor comeuppance. Belfort escapes from his assholery almost completely unscathed. Such is the unfairness of life.

And part of the genius of the film is that nothing truly bad does happen to Belfort. And so therefore some really tough questions are asked of the audience. You’ve watched this guy embezzle millions. You’ve watched him live the high life. You’ve watched him take drugs and get drunk and get into cartoonish scrapes. How do you feel about him? If you like him, you’re wrong. This guy is a Grade A asshole. This movie is a good test of your moral fibre.