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Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated GoodFellas (1990) in Movies
Aug 25, 2020
Cast (3 more)
Sets
Script
Directing
Masterpiece
Contains spoilers, click to show
At the weekend, I was lucky enough to go and see one of my favourite films ever made on the big screen; Goodfellas. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of seeing the movie in an actual cinema, but it has been a few years since I have last seen it and seeing it after seeing some of Scorsese’s more recent efforts, I actually saw the story in a different light.
Here me out here; Goodfellas is a religious story.
I know what you are thinking, “But Scorsese has already made religious movies with The Last Temptation of Christ and Silence. Goodfellas is about gangsters and murder and the only brief mention of religion in the movie is the fact that Karen is Jewish and Henry wears a cross.” Well none of that is strictly untrue, but there were just several points of the movie that I just couldn’t help but feel an implied religious undertone.
The first of which is in the opening scene of the movie, when Henry, Tommy and Jimmy open the boot of the car to finish off Billy Batts. The bright red tail light shines harshly on Henry’s face as he watches a man die and delivers his iconic voiceover: “As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a gangster.” Here we are being introduced to a man who is capable of literally staring death in the face and metaphorically staring into the jaws of hell without even flinching.
From this point on, Henry is our guide into this forbidden underworld. He treats us the viewers as total newcomers to this chaotic landscape as he attempts to sell to us how great it is to live this way. It’s akin to Virgil guiding Dante through the various circles of hell in the Divine Comedy. This idea of Henry being a guide into hell is most explicit in the scene of his and Karen’s first real date at the Copacabana nightclub. In this scene we are treated to a glorious tracking shot that follows the couple all the way from their car to their seat directly in front of the stage. The first major direction we are taken is down. We descend down a staircase into a hallway painted red, in fact if you pay attention to the background in this entire sequence, there is almost always at least one red object onscreen. All the way to the table, Henry is greeted by various sinners as the ‘Then He Kissed Me,’ plays in the background; a song of seduction and lust.
Another example of this is the famous scene where Henry introduces us to various gangsters such as Jimmy Two Times through voiceover. Once again, the environment is littered with red light and dark shadowed areas as we are being introduced to a batch of sinners, thieves and murderers.
After Tommy’s death, the period of seduction in the movie is over. From this point on, we are seeing the intense fall of Henry’s world. It is just as chaotic as the first half of the movie, but now Henry and his friends are no longer in charge of the chaos and slowly they are beginning to lose control of everything that was once theirs. All of a sudden the momentum that has carried the movie and Henry’s life up until this point is brought to a halt, most obviously manifested in the scene of Henry driving far too fast despite being unaware of wait awaits him ahead and having to slam on his breaks and come to a screeching stop mere inches away from crashing. What direction is he looking just prior to this? He’s looking up for the chopper that he suspects has been following him, however he is also looking in the direction of Heaven, looking for a threat of something bigger than him that threatens to put a stop to his sinful lifestyle.
In the movie’s epilogue, once Henry gives up Jimmy and Paulie to the FBI, we see him in an entirely different environment. He’s dressed different, the weather is different and he describes how he is now just a nobody like everyone else as if that to him is a fate worse that death. Almost as if, he is in Limbo. No longer is he amongst the sinners in a world of gratification and sin, but instead he is in a ‘safe,’ environment where he can’t do anything even remotely illegal or morally questionable because he is being monitored by people just waiting for him to slip up. Then the very last shot we see is Tommy shooting at the audience. This is not only a very neat bookend as both the opening scene and final scene of the movie see Tommy committing a violent act, but it signifies that elements of Henry’s old life still follow him and he will spend the rest of his days looking over his shoulder for demons from his old life, like Tommy waiting to snuff him out.
Maybe I’m reaching slightly with this, but I feel like at least a few of these choices were intentionally put in by Scorsese. Especially the opening scene showing the murder of Billy Batts and the tracking shot as we are taken into the Copacabana. After watching recently watching Silence and The Irishman, it is clear that faith and mortality are both things that heavily weigh on Scorsese’s mind, so I don’t think that it is too much of a stretch to say that it was probably something that was at least in the back of his mind in 1990.
Regardless, this movie is a masterpiece and is still great no matter how many times you have seen it previously. It feels so authentic and genuine through the direction and presentation and the fantastic performances given by the respective cast members allow the characters to feel so real and deep. There is a reason that this is still considered as one of the seminal gangster movies. 10/10
Here me out here; Goodfellas is a religious story.
I know what you are thinking, “But Scorsese has already made religious movies with The Last Temptation of Christ and Silence. Goodfellas is about gangsters and murder and the only brief mention of religion in the movie is the fact that Karen is Jewish and Henry wears a cross.” Well none of that is strictly untrue, but there were just several points of the movie that I just couldn’t help but feel an implied religious undertone.
The first of which is in the opening scene of the movie, when Henry, Tommy and Jimmy open the boot of the car to finish off Billy Batts. The bright red tail light shines harshly on Henry’s face as he watches a man die and delivers his iconic voiceover: “As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a gangster.” Here we are being introduced to a man who is capable of literally staring death in the face and metaphorically staring into the jaws of hell without even flinching.
From this point on, Henry is our guide into this forbidden underworld. He treats us the viewers as total newcomers to this chaotic landscape as he attempts to sell to us how great it is to live this way. It’s akin to Virgil guiding Dante through the various circles of hell in the Divine Comedy. This idea of Henry being a guide into hell is most explicit in the scene of his and Karen’s first real date at the Copacabana nightclub. In this scene we are treated to a glorious tracking shot that follows the couple all the way from their car to their seat directly in front of the stage. The first major direction we are taken is down. We descend down a staircase into a hallway painted red, in fact if you pay attention to the background in this entire sequence, there is almost always at least one red object onscreen. All the way to the table, Henry is greeted by various sinners as the ‘Then He Kissed Me,’ plays in the background; a song of seduction and lust.
Another example of this is the famous scene where Henry introduces us to various gangsters such as Jimmy Two Times through voiceover. Once again, the environment is littered with red light and dark shadowed areas as we are being introduced to a batch of sinners, thieves and murderers.
After Tommy’s death, the period of seduction in the movie is over. From this point on, we are seeing the intense fall of Henry’s world. It is just as chaotic as the first half of the movie, but now Henry and his friends are no longer in charge of the chaos and slowly they are beginning to lose control of everything that was once theirs. All of a sudden the momentum that has carried the movie and Henry’s life up until this point is brought to a halt, most obviously manifested in the scene of Henry driving far too fast despite being unaware of wait awaits him ahead and having to slam on his breaks and come to a screeching stop mere inches away from crashing. What direction is he looking just prior to this? He’s looking up for the chopper that he suspects has been following him, however he is also looking in the direction of Heaven, looking for a threat of something bigger than him that threatens to put a stop to his sinful lifestyle.
In the movie’s epilogue, once Henry gives up Jimmy and Paulie to the FBI, we see him in an entirely different environment. He’s dressed different, the weather is different and he describes how he is now just a nobody like everyone else as if that to him is a fate worse that death. Almost as if, he is in Limbo. No longer is he amongst the sinners in a world of gratification and sin, but instead he is in a ‘safe,’ environment where he can’t do anything even remotely illegal or morally questionable because he is being monitored by people just waiting for him to slip up. Then the very last shot we see is Tommy shooting at the audience. This is not only a very neat bookend as both the opening scene and final scene of the movie see Tommy committing a violent act, but it signifies that elements of Henry’s old life still follow him and he will spend the rest of his days looking over his shoulder for demons from his old life, like Tommy waiting to snuff him out.
Maybe I’m reaching slightly with this, but I feel like at least a few of these choices were intentionally put in by Scorsese. Especially the opening scene showing the murder of Billy Batts and the tracking shot as we are taken into the Copacabana. After watching recently watching Silence and The Irishman, it is clear that faith and mortality are both things that heavily weigh on Scorsese’s mind, so I don’t think that it is too much of a stretch to say that it was probably something that was at least in the back of his mind in 1990.
Regardless, this movie is a masterpiece and is still great no matter how many times you have seen it previously. It feels so authentic and genuine through the direction and presentation and the fantastic performances given by the respective cast members allow the characters to feel so real and deep. There is a reason that this is still considered as one of the seminal gangster movies. 10/10
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Instant Family (2019) in Movies
Sep 28, 2021
Enjoyable and harmless comedy laced with a degree of sentimentality.
The Plot
Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) are focused and business-oriented home designers. They’ve talked about having kids “sometime in the future” but the years – as years are want to do – are motoring away from them. Pete is concerned that if they have their own kids now then he will end up being an “old dad” (cue very funny, black-comedy, flashback). This leads them into contact with the State’s fostering service – led by Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro) – and they progress into foster training. This introduces into their ‘perfect adult lives’ 15-year old Lizzy (Isabela Moner) and her younger siblings Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz). As these guys come from a troubled background Pete and Ellie find they have their work cut out. Who will crack first?
The turns
You’ve got to admire Mark Wahlberg as an actor. In the same vein as Steve Carell, he seems to be able to flex from dramatic (in his case, tough-guy action roles) to comedy without a blink. He’s nowhere near the calibre of actor as Carell, but he brings to all his roles a sense of menace – derived no doubt from his torrid criminal background in younger days. (His wiki page makes your eyes water: there’s a great biopic screenplay waiting to be written there! ) It must have made the kid actor who plays Charlie (Carson Holmes) actually soil himself at a key point in the film!
Wahlberg and the excellent Rose Byrne make a believable driven-couple, and Byrne has such a range of expressive faces that she can’t help but make you laugh.
Of the child actors, Nickelodeon star Isabella Moner shines with genuine brilliance, both in terms of her acting as the fiercely loyal Lizzy but also in terms of her musical ability (she sings the impressive end-title song). With Hollywood in ‘post-La-La-Showman: Here we go again’ mode, this is a talented young lady I predict might be in big demand over the next few years.
Top of my list of the most stupid “where the hell have I seen her before bang-my-head-against-the-cinema-wall” moments is the actress playing Ellie’s mother Jan. She is OF COURSE Julie Hagerty, air-hostess supreme from “Airplane!”.
Also good value, and topping my list of “I know her from lots of films but don’t know her name” is Margo Martindale* as Pete’s exuberant and easily bought mother Sandy. (*Must write this out 100 times before her picture appears in the Picturehouse Harbour Lights film quiz!).
A well-crafty script with some wayward characters
The script by director Sean (“Daddy’s Home”) Anders and John Morris zips along at a fine pace, albeit in a wholly predictable direction. It helps that I struggle the think of many films about the adoption process itself. Sure there have been lots of movies about children that have been adopted – Manchester By The Sea and Lion being two recent examples – but the only film I can immediately think of (and not in a good way) with foster care at its heart was the Katherine Heigl comedy from a few years ago “Life as we know it”. So this is good movie territory to mine.
There are some fine running jokes, notably young Juan’s penchant for constantly getting injured. However, the script also lapses as did Anders’ “Daddy’s Home 2” from last year – into moments of slushy sentimentality. (My dear departed Dad always used to affect an exaggerated snore at such points, and I could hear him in my head at regular intervals during the film!). I would have preferred a harder and blacker edge to the comedy: something that last year’s excellent “Game Night” pulled off so well.
There are also a couple of characters in the film that were poorly scripted and which just didn’t work. While Octavia Spencer was fine (channelling an almost identical version of her wisecracking and sardonic character from “The Shape of Water“), I just had no idea what her colleague Sharon (Tig Notaro) was supposed to be. The tone was all over the place. Similarly, who should pop up on a balcony in an unexpected cameo but the great Joan Cusack. And very funny she is too for the 10 second interruption. But the writers having got her there just couldn’t leave alone and we get a plain embarrassing extended interruption that strikes a duff note in the flow of the film.
Summary
The film is amusing and harmless without taxing many brain cells. Most notably unlike many so-called American ‘comedies’ it did actually make me laugh at multiple points. I should also point out that my wife absolutely loved it, rating it a strong 4* going on 5*.
But the really cute thing is that…
…the film is “inspired by a true family”: namely Anders’ own. He and his wife fostered three kids out of the US foster service, so the script is undoubtedly loosely based on their own experiences, which give it an extra impact for some of Peter and Ellie’s lines. In an essay for TIME (source: bustle.com) Anders wrote:
My wife Beth and I had been talking for years about whether we should have kids,” he wrote. “For the longest time we just felt like we couldn’t afford it. Then I sold a couple of scripts and was feeling like I might have a career, but we were in our 40s and worried we had left it too long. We knew kids would make our life bigger, so one day I joked, ‘Why don’t we just adopt a five-year-old and it will be like we got started five years ago?'”
It gives you a completely different perspective on the film knowing this. My wife after the film was saying “I’m not sure how accurately it portrays the fostering process”. But it clearly does.
Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) are focused and business-oriented home designers. They’ve talked about having kids “sometime in the future” but the years – as years are want to do – are motoring away from them. Pete is concerned that if they have their own kids now then he will end up being an “old dad” (cue very funny, black-comedy, flashback). This leads them into contact with the State’s fostering service – led by Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro) – and they progress into foster training. This introduces into their ‘perfect adult lives’ 15-year old Lizzy (Isabela Moner) and her younger siblings Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz). As these guys come from a troubled background Pete and Ellie find they have their work cut out. Who will crack first?
The turns
You’ve got to admire Mark Wahlberg as an actor. In the same vein as Steve Carell, he seems to be able to flex from dramatic (in his case, tough-guy action roles) to comedy without a blink. He’s nowhere near the calibre of actor as Carell, but he brings to all his roles a sense of menace – derived no doubt from his torrid criminal background in younger days. (His wiki page makes your eyes water: there’s a great biopic screenplay waiting to be written there! ) It must have made the kid actor who plays Charlie (Carson Holmes) actually soil himself at a key point in the film!
Wahlberg and the excellent Rose Byrne make a believable driven-couple, and Byrne has such a range of expressive faces that she can’t help but make you laugh.
Of the child actors, Nickelodeon star Isabella Moner shines with genuine brilliance, both in terms of her acting as the fiercely loyal Lizzy but also in terms of her musical ability (she sings the impressive end-title song). With Hollywood in ‘post-La-La-Showman: Here we go again’ mode, this is a talented young lady I predict might be in big demand over the next few years.
Top of my list of the most stupid “where the hell have I seen her before bang-my-head-against-the-cinema-wall” moments is the actress playing Ellie’s mother Jan. She is OF COURSE Julie Hagerty, air-hostess supreme from “Airplane!”.
Also good value, and topping my list of “I know her from lots of films but don’t know her name” is Margo Martindale* as Pete’s exuberant and easily bought mother Sandy. (*Must write this out 100 times before her picture appears in the Picturehouse Harbour Lights film quiz!).
A well-crafty script with some wayward characters
The script by director Sean (“Daddy’s Home”) Anders and John Morris zips along at a fine pace, albeit in a wholly predictable direction. It helps that I struggle the think of many films about the adoption process itself. Sure there have been lots of movies about children that have been adopted – Manchester By The Sea and Lion being two recent examples – but the only film I can immediately think of (and not in a good way) with foster care at its heart was the Katherine Heigl comedy from a few years ago “Life as we know it”. So this is good movie territory to mine.
There are some fine running jokes, notably young Juan’s penchant for constantly getting injured. However, the script also lapses as did Anders’ “Daddy’s Home 2” from last year – into moments of slushy sentimentality. (My dear departed Dad always used to affect an exaggerated snore at such points, and I could hear him in my head at regular intervals during the film!). I would have preferred a harder and blacker edge to the comedy: something that last year’s excellent “Game Night” pulled off so well.
There are also a couple of characters in the film that were poorly scripted and which just didn’t work. While Octavia Spencer was fine (channelling an almost identical version of her wisecracking and sardonic character from “The Shape of Water“), I just had no idea what her colleague Sharon (Tig Notaro) was supposed to be. The tone was all over the place. Similarly, who should pop up on a balcony in an unexpected cameo but the great Joan Cusack. And very funny she is too for the 10 second interruption. But the writers having got her there just couldn’t leave alone and we get a plain embarrassing extended interruption that strikes a duff note in the flow of the film.
Summary
The film is amusing and harmless without taxing many brain cells. Most notably unlike many so-called American ‘comedies’ it did actually make me laugh at multiple points. I should also point out that my wife absolutely loved it, rating it a strong 4* going on 5*.
But the really cute thing is that…
…the film is “inspired by a true family”: namely Anders’ own. He and his wife fostered three kids out of the US foster service, so the script is undoubtedly loosely based on their own experiences, which give it an extra impact for some of Peter and Ellie’s lines. In an essay for TIME (source: bustle.com) Anders wrote:
My wife Beth and I had been talking for years about whether we should have kids,” he wrote. “For the longest time we just felt like we couldn’t afford it. Then I sold a couple of scripts and was feeling like I might have a career, but we were in our 40s and worried we had left it too long. We knew kids would make our life bigger, so one day I joked, ‘Why don’t we just adopt a five-year-old and it will be like we got started five years ago?'”
It gives you a completely different perspective on the film knowing this. My wife after the film was saying “I’m not sure how accurately it portrays the fostering process”. But it clearly does.
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Baby Driver (2017) in Movies
Sep 29, 2021
A summer film so cool that air-con is optional.
Sorry for the lack of posts folks…. with a holiday in sunny Portugal, I’ve not been to the pics for weeks!
There’s something inherently appealing about the concept of a getaway driver. A skillful ‘bad-boy’, but not normally bad enough to actually DO the nasty crime stuff…. merely be an active accomplice to it. As a result, it’s a subject that the movies have returned to time after time. I’m old and crusty enough to remember being wowed at seeing Ryan O’Neal in Walter Hill’s “Driver” on the big screen in 1978. And well before that, as a kid, my poor departed mother used to be driven crazy by me begging her to take me to see “The Italian Job” (the original 1969 version) YET again… probably the greatest getaway chase in movie history: I must have seen that film at least 20 times in the cinema. Of course more recently we’ve also had Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan in “Drive” on the same theme. Any I’ve forgotten?
But with Edgar Wright at the helm, a big name cast and an enticing trailer, I had high expectations for “Baby Driver” – and boy was I happy! This is such a seriously cool film on so many levels.
Opening with a bank heist followed by a kick-ass car chase, we follow ‘Baby’ (Ansel Elgort, “Allegiant”, “The Fault in our Stars”) as a tinnitus-suffering, music-infused getaway driver under the thumb of the criminal overlord Doc (Kevin Spacey, in icy Frank Underwood mode). Doc recruits an ever-changing mix-tape of villains for each job, including the psychopathic and appropriately named ‘Bats’ (Jamie Foxx, “Sleepless”), the chillingly dangerous Buddy (Jon Hamm, “Mad Men”, “Keeping Up With The Joneses”) and his “Bonnie-style” wife ‘Darling’ (Eiza González) and the moderately incompetent JD (Lanny Joon) (who changed his neck tattoo of “HATE” to “HAT” since it improved his job prospects… LOL…. “everybody loves a hat”!).
Baby’s life gets more complicated when the hoods become aware of his fledgling relationship with fellow-orphan Debora (Lily James) a waitress in a diner and another lever to keep Baby locked into the job that he is just so, so good at.
On the surface this might be perceived as being just another good excuse for a lot of CGI-driven car stunts in the style of “The Fate of the Furious”. But no. Firstly, as Edgar Wright declared before the special screening I saw, all of the car stunts were actually performed for real on the mean streets of Atlanta (and hats off to the film’s stunt coordinator Robert Nagle and his team for these). And secondly, the car scenes are almost secondary to the fabulous story and character development in the film. The script (also by Edgar Wright) is just brilliant. There are genuinely laugh-out loud moments in the movie, with one of the highlights for me being JD tasked with procuring Michael Myers “Halloween” masks for a heist. If you don’t find this scene hilarious, you are not human – official.
The only misstep for me in the script was an unbelievable event (both in terms of likelihood and – particularly – timing) during a closing car park fight***.
Elgort is really strong in the lead role, and suggested to me that if the role of the young Han Solo in the upcoming Star Wars spin-off hadn’t already gone to Alden Ehrenreich, then here was a very strong contender. All of the supporting roles are strong (as you would expect from such a stellar cast) with Jon Hamm being a standout, appearing truly demonic in the closing scenes. The one role I was less sure about in the film was that of Lily James, whose performance as the ‘sweet as apple pie’ waitress seemed a little too “animated” for the big screen in the early scenes – I remember an acting class by Michael Caine where he advised that given the size of movie screens it’s often the case that “stillness is good”. What works well on the small screen (I am a big fan of her roles in historical TV dramas like “Downton Abbey” and the impeccable “War and Peace”) perhaps sometimes needs modifying for the wide-screen experience. I greatly warmed to her portrayal in the action sequences later on though: she’s a great actress and one that this film can hopefully now propel into the higher echelons in Hollywood.
Another star of the film is the fabulous soundtrack coordinated by Oscar-winner Steven Price (“Gravity“) featuring (amongst many other classics) Queen’s “Brighton Rock”, Golden Earring’s “Radar Love”, the Simon and Garfunkel classic (obviously) and Bob & Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle”, all used to brilliant effect. This latter track leads me on to some early Oscar predictions: if this film doesn’t get nominated this year for Oscars for Best Editing (Jonathan Amos and Paul Machliss, “Scott Pilgrim vs the World”) and Best Sound Editing (Julian Slater), then there is no God! The “Harlem Shuffle” coffee run sequence is a masterclass in editing and direction. Starting off with what I thought might turn into a tribute to “Saturday Night Fever”, the scene neatly takes on a style all of its own. It’s use of – erm – “subtitles” is just brilliant.
The often subtle, and occasionally not so subtle, edits between scenes are also truly masterful, making this moviegoer laugh-out-loud with delight periodically at the movie-making skill on display.
All of this is orchestrated by Edgar Wright as director who – for me – has been a little inconsistent over the years (loved, loved, loved “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”; “The World’s End” – not so much). Here, he delivers in spades and this film rockets immediately into my Films of the Year list for 2017. Awe inspiring.
Beg, steal, borrow, rob a bank – – do what you have to, but make sure you catch this film on the big screen.
There’s something inherently appealing about the concept of a getaway driver. A skillful ‘bad-boy’, but not normally bad enough to actually DO the nasty crime stuff…. merely be an active accomplice to it. As a result, it’s a subject that the movies have returned to time after time. I’m old and crusty enough to remember being wowed at seeing Ryan O’Neal in Walter Hill’s “Driver” on the big screen in 1978. And well before that, as a kid, my poor departed mother used to be driven crazy by me begging her to take me to see “The Italian Job” (the original 1969 version) YET again… probably the greatest getaway chase in movie history: I must have seen that film at least 20 times in the cinema. Of course more recently we’ve also had Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan in “Drive” on the same theme. Any I’ve forgotten?
But with Edgar Wright at the helm, a big name cast and an enticing trailer, I had high expectations for “Baby Driver” – and boy was I happy! This is such a seriously cool film on so many levels.
Opening with a bank heist followed by a kick-ass car chase, we follow ‘Baby’ (Ansel Elgort, “Allegiant”, “The Fault in our Stars”) as a tinnitus-suffering, music-infused getaway driver under the thumb of the criminal overlord Doc (Kevin Spacey, in icy Frank Underwood mode). Doc recruits an ever-changing mix-tape of villains for each job, including the psychopathic and appropriately named ‘Bats’ (Jamie Foxx, “Sleepless”), the chillingly dangerous Buddy (Jon Hamm, “Mad Men”, “Keeping Up With The Joneses”) and his “Bonnie-style” wife ‘Darling’ (Eiza González) and the moderately incompetent JD (Lanny Joon) (who changed his neck tattoo of “HATE” to “HAT” since it improved his job prospects… LOL…. “everybody loves a hat”!).
Baby’s life gets more complicated when the hoods become aware of his fledgling relationship with fellow-orphan Debora (Lily James) a waitress in a diner and another lever to keep Baby locked into the job that he is just so, so good at.
On the surface this might be perceived as being just another good excuse for a lot of CGI-driven car stunts in the style of “The Fate of the Furious”. But no. Firstly, as Edgar Wright declared before the special screening I saw, all of the car stunts were actually performed for real on the mean streets of Atlanta (and hats off to the film’s stunt coordinator Robert Nagle and his team for these). And secondly, the car scenes are almost secondary to the fabulous story and character development in the film. The script (also by Edgar Wright) is just brilliant. There are genuinely laugh-out loud moments in the movie, with one of the highlights for me being JD tasked with procuring Michael Myers “Halloween” masks for a heist. If you don’t find this scene hilarious, you are not human – official.
The only misstep for me in the script was an unbelievable event (both in terms of likelihood and – particularly – timing) during a closing car park fight***.
Elgort is really strong in the lead role, and suggested to me that if the role of the young Han Solo in the upcoming Star Wars spin-off hadn’t already gone to Alden Ehrenreich, then here was a very strong contender. All of the supporting roles are strong (as you would expect from such a stellar cast) with Jon Hamm being a standout, appearing truly demonic in the closing scenes. The one role I was less sure about in the film was that of Lily James, whose performance as the ‘sweet as apple pie’ waitress seemed a little too “animated” for the big screen in the early scenes – I remember an acting class by Michael Caine where he advised that given the size of movie screens it’s often the case that “stillness is good”. What works well on the small screen (I am a big fan of her roles in historical TV dramas like “Downton Abbey” and the impeccable “War and Peace”) perhaps sometimes needs modifying for the wide-screen experience. I greatly warmed to her portrayal in the action sequences later on though: she’s a great actress and one that this film can hopefully now propel into the higher echelons in Hollywood.
Another star of the film is the fabulous soundtrack coordinated by Oscar-winner Steven Price (“Gravity“) featuring (amongst many other classics) Queen’s “Brighton Rock”, Golden Earring’s “Radar Love”, the Simon and Garfunkel classic (obviously) and Bob & Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle”, all used to brilliant effect. This latter track leads me on to some early Oscar predictions: if this film doesn’t get nominated this year for Oscars for Best Editing (Jonathan Amos and Paul Machliss, “Scott Pilgrim vs the World”) and Best Sound Editing (Julian Slater), then there is no God! The “Harlem Shuffle” coffee run sequence is a masterclass in editing and direction. Starting off with what I thought might turn into a tribute to “Saturday Night Fever”, the scene neatly takes on a style all of its own. It’s use of – erm – “subtitles” is just brilliant.
The often subtle, and occasionally not so subtle, edits between scenes are also truly masterful, making this moviegoer laugh-out-loud with delight periodically at the movie-making skill on display.
All of this is orchestrated by Edgar Wright as director who – for me – has been a little inconsistent over the years (loved, loved, loved “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”; “The World’s End” – not so much). Here, he delivers in spades and this film rockets immediately into my Films of the Year list for 2017. Awe inspiring.
Beg, steal, borrow, rob a bank – – do what you have to, but make sure you catch this film on the big screen.
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated La La Land (2016) in Movies
Sep 29, 2021
“It’s very nostalgic – will people like it?”
A little film. Not sure whether you might have heard of it yet? Damien Chazelle has followed up his astonishingly proficient “Whiplash” – my top film of 2015 – with a sure-fire theatre-filler in “La La Land”. The old-fashioned musical extravaganza is back, and back with style!
“La La Land” tells the bittersweet love story of Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) who first meet in an LA traffic jam but then get thrown together by chance (LA is such a small place after all!). Over the course of the next four seasons romance blossoms. Mia is a struggling actress bouncing from audition to audition in a hopeless attempt to break through in LA’s tough movie business. She makes ends meet as a Barista on the Warner Brother’s lot. Meanwhile Sebastian is on a mission of his own: a talented musician, he is trying to restore jazz to the main stage (something the film’s soundtrack will undoubtedly help do!) by opening his own classic jazz bar. As both strive for success on their own terms can love survive to deliver us the classic ‘Hollywood ending’?
The film is technically astonishing, with clever continuous shots of the “Birdman” variety and masterly cinematography (by Linus Sandgren of “Joy” and “American Hustle”). The lighting team in particular is superb: a case in point is Mia’s ‘in-Seine’ (sic) song, with breathtaking fades of the background to darkness, a camera whizz-around the actress for effect and then a brilliant fade back to reality. Loved it. Overall, there are enough similar moments in the film to make cinema-lovers like me gasp with delight.
There’s a curious timelessness about the piece which is surely deliberate. While there are obvious and non-apologetic throwbacks to the classic musicals of the 50’s like “West Side Story” and “Singin’ in the Rain” and references to both “Casablanca” and “Rebel without a Cause”, there is also a 60’s vibe to the ‘girls getting ready’ sequence; an 80’s A-ha cover thrown in at a pool party; and a Californian Prius obsession that is surely more ‘noughties’ than current. Most curiously, while everyone has smartphones noone seems to text anyone to announce changes to plans: the film is almost distancing itself from much of modern life.
In the acting stakes Emma Stone again shines like a beacon. She is just magnetic on the screen: the biggest plot hole in the film (tiny spoiler) is why on earth she wasn’t given the part for her first audition! I was disappointed she didn’t win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “Birdman” in the “87th Awards” (she lost out to Patricia Arquette for “Boyhood”): but she just keeps getting better and Better and BETTER.
Ryan Gosling’s confident and cocky turn also radiates charisma: in particular, it is astonishing that Gosling could play “only a few chords” on the piano before training for the film. A confidence boost for struggling piano learners everywhere.
It is actually difficult to imagine two better actors for the roles. (Emma Watson allegedly turned it down for “Beauty and the Beast”: something she might be kicking herself for!) Are they both the best singers and dancers when compared to Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Debbie Reynolds (R.I.P.) or Cyd Charisse? No, undoubtedly not, but they have an undeniable charm all of their own. (Perhaps we will see the ilk of the great hoofers and crooners rise again with a resurgence in the classic musical. Can Hollywood take a hint?)
The big question: now that both Stone and Gosling have won Golden Globes for acting in the “Comedy or Musical” category, can they convert that to Oscar glory where there is a single category in play? I’d like to think so.
It’s also great to see proper movie-making taking place in the Hollywood studios again: during my recent visits to LA there seemed to be little other than TV work going on in the main studio complexes there (although its worth pointing out that for this film not all of the filming was actually done on the Warner Brothers lot). (As an aside, the Warner Brothers tour – which you need to book well in advance – is a GREAT day out for movie lovers, with a Sunday visit giving you the best access to live sets. #insideknowledgetrivia: that small grassy triangle with the gravestones on it is where they filmed many of the “Friends” outdoor scenes such as the baseball match!).
Musicals are clearly measured by the quality of the music, and Justin Hurwitz (“Whiplash”) has produced a gem with – notwithstanding the jazz numbers and a catchy little pop number from John Legend – merely a handful of simple but unforgettable melodies that recur in different variations throughout the film. The soundtrack is already in my Amazon library and uplifting my mood on what is a damp and dreary Monday here in the UK.
Damien Chazelle has delivered a triumph in both direction and original script. There is really very little I can fault the film on. In what was the somewhat patchy Coen brothers offering from last year – “Hail Caesar” – there was a standout moment of a throwback song and dance number with Channing Tatum that I raved about (you can catch it here). If I was being picky, then this tantalising snippet would be a better representation of the style and vim of the original genre – – with the exception of the opening number, few of the song and dance numbers in “La La Land” quite get to that “Broadway Melody” level of scale and energy. This, together with a few concerns about the pacing in some places, led me to rate this as a 4.5 on first viewing.
However on now seeing it twice within 36 hours, it’s got me well and truly under its spell! I normally emotionally resist films that arrive with excessive hype… but, in this case… I give in.
“La La Land” tells the bittersweet love story of Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) who first meet in an LA traffic jam but then get thrown together by chance (LA is such a small place after all!). Over the course of the next four seasons romance blossoms. Mia is a struggling actress bouncing from audition to audition in a hopeless attempt to break through in LA’s tough movie business. She makes ends meet as a Barista on the Warner Brother’s lot. Meanwhile Sebastian is on a mission of his own: a talented musician, he is trying to restore jazz to the main stage (something the film’s soundtrack will undoubtedly help do!) by opening his own classic jazz bar. As both strive for success on their own terms can love survive to deliver us the classic ‘Hollywood ending’?
The film is technically astonishing, with clever continuous shots of the “Birdman” variety and masterly cinematography (by Linus Sandgren of “Joy” and “American Hustle”). The lighting team in particular is superb: a case in point is Mia’s ‘in-Seine’ (sic) song, with breathtaking fades of the background to darkness, a camera whizz-around the actress for effect and then a brilliant fade back to reality. Loved it. Overall, there are enough similar moments in the film to make cinema-lovers like me gasp with delight.
There’s a curious timelessness about the piece which is surely deliberate. While there are obvious and non-apologetic throwbacks to the classic musicals of the 50’s like “West Side Story” and “Singin’ in the Rain” and references to both “Casablanca” and “Rebel without a Cause”, there is also a 60’s vibe to the ‘girls getting ready’ sequence; an 80’s A-ha cover thrown in at a pool party; and a Californian Prius obsession that is surely more ‘noughties’ than current. Most curiously, while everyone has smartphones noone seems to text anyone to announce changes to plans: the film is almost distancing itself from much of modern life.
In the acting stakes Emma Stone again shines like a beacon. She is just magnetic on the screen: the biggest plot hole in the film (tiny spoiler) is why on earth she wasn’t given the part for her first audition! I was disappointed she didn’t win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “Birdman” in the “87th Awards” (she lost out to Patricia Arquette for “Boyhood”): but she just keeps getting better and Better and BETTER.
Ryan Gosling’s confident and cocky turn also radiates charisma: in particular, it is astonishing that Gosling could play “only a few chords” on the piano before training for the film. A confidence boost for struggling piano learners everywhere.
It is actually difficult to imagine two better actors for the roles. (Emma Watson allegedly turned it down for “Beauty and the Beast”: something she might be kicking herself for!) Are they both the best singers and dancers when compared to Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Debbie Reynolds (R.I.P.) or Cyd Charisse? No, undoubtedly not, but they have an undeniable charm all of their own. (Perhaps we will see the ilk of the great hoofers and crooners rise again with a resurgence in the classic musical. Can Hollywood take a hint?)
The big question: now that both Stone and Gosling have won Golden Globes for acting in the “Comedy or Musical” category, can they convert that to Oscar glory where there is a single category in play? I’d like to think so.
It’s also great to see proper movie-making taking place in the Hollywood studios again: during my recent visits to LA there seemed to be little other than TV work going on in the main studio complexes there (although its worth pointing out that for this film not all of the filming was actually done on the Warner Brothers lot). (As an aside, the Warner Brothers tour – which you need to book well in advance – is a GREAT day out for movie lovers, with a Sunday visit giving you the best access to live sets. #insideknowledgetrivia: that small grassy triangle with the gravestones on it is where they filmed many of the “Friends” outdoor scenes such as the baseball match!).
Musicals are clearly measured by the quality of the music, and Justin Hurwitz (“Whiplash”) has produced a gem with – notwithstanding the jazz numbers and a catchy little pop number from John Legend – merely a handful of simple but unforgettable melodies that recur in different variations throughout the film. The soundtrack is already in my Amazon library and uplifting my mood on what is a damp and dreary Monday here in the UK.
Damien Chazelle has delivered a triumph in both direction and original script. There is really very little I can fault the film on. In what was the somewhat patchy Coen brothers offering from last year – “Hail Caesar” – there was a standout moment of a throwback song and dance number with Channing Tatum that I raved about (you can catch it here). If I was being picky, then this tantalising snippet would be a better representation of the style and vim of the original genre – – with the exception of the opening number, few of the song and dance numbers in “La La Land” quite get to that “Broadway Melody” level of scale and energy. This, together with a few concerns about the pacing in some places, led me to rate this as a 4.5 on first viewing.
However on now seeing it twice within 36 hours, it’s got me well and truly under its spell! I normally emotionally resist films that arrive with excessive hype… but, in this case… I give in.
Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) in Movies
Jul 19, 2017 (Updated Apr 16, 2021)
80's setting (2 more)
Quicksilver
Oscar Isaacs
Mutants Have Mankind Divided
This movie has had the most mixed reaction that I have seen since Batman V Superman, however I do objectively believe that X Men is a better movie and to be honest I don’t understand the mixed response Apocalypse has gotten. The year is 1983, 10 years after the last x men movie, Days Of Future Past (as in the kind of 10 years where no one ages a day,) and we know that it is 1983 because some of the young mutants go and see Return Of The Jedi in the cinema. The hairstyles and fashion statements are suitably 80’s, which is an appropriate motif to choose as it adds a more comic book feel to the movie and forces it to stick to a brighter colour pallet than some of the previous X men outings. Another positive is the return of Quicksilver, who has another awesome slow motion scene, which possibly isn’t as well choreographed as the one in DOFP, but is definitely grander in scale. While the design of Apocalypse in this movie has been heavily criticised, I didn’t feel that it took me out of the movie and I felt that Oscar Isaacs’ portrayal of the ancient mutant is another great turn by the actor and proves yet again how diverse and chameleon like he really is. The one downside of his character is that he has been significantly nerfed in terms of his powers here. He does feel powerful, but never overwhelmingly so and when the final confrontation does take place, it feels like he is holding back. This could be explained in a contrived manner by saying that he doesn’t want to kill mutants, because they are all his children, but if the success of his plan depends on it then he shouldn’t even hesitate, he should just wipe all the X Men out in an instant like we know he can.
The tone is another issue I have with the movie, it is fairly inconsistent throughout and never reaches the level of threat that it is aiming for. However, this is through no fault of the cast or the performances. MacAvoy and Fassbender stand out here as you would expect, their relationship also remains one of the most interesting parts of the plot. Isaacs’ performance is also suitably threatening and sinister, the only thing lacking in his character other than the odd design choice, is how short he is next to the other mutants. He doesn’t have to be huge like in the comics and cartoons, but making him a little bit more physically imposing with clever camera tricks would have went a long way in adding to the character. Jennifer Lawrence is fine here as usual and young Cyclops and Jean Grey are perfectly serviceable, although Sophie Turner’s American accent does come and go in certain scenes. Even Peters is typically brilliant as Quicksilver and the actress who plays Storm here is also pretty convincing, as is the young English actor who plays Angel. Nightcrawler is a welcome addition to the roster as I feel that he has been criminally underused since the second X Men movie and his power set is definitely one of the most interesting in all of the X Men movies, also the actor playing him here does a good job throughout the film. However the same can’t be said for Olivia Munn who plays Psylocke in this movie, I have disliked this actress in every role I have seen her in to date and the same goes for this one, she brings nothing to the movie and she constantly has a resting bitch face that suggests she doesn’t want to be there.
Like Civil War, X Men wasn’t anything like the comic it was based on and we didn’t get what we expected, but what we did end up getting was fresh and entertaining in it’s own right, so it’s okay that the film plots aren’t 100% faithful to the source material and that is something that Singer has been preaching since he made the first X Men movie back in 2001, which incidentally wasn’t based on any comic book and was a totally original plot. Also I love how because of the alternate timeline they are now free to do whatever they want in terms of the timing of certain events. For example, (and this is a slight spoiler, but the movie has been out for a while now so deal with it,) the Phoenix Force makes an appearance in this movie, which typically isn’t something that Jean Grey acquires until later in her life. Also the fact that we saw Wolverine escaping from Weapon X again, (again spoilers but this was in the trailers anyway so again, deal with it,) was awesome and this time we saw him being broken out by the young X Men and this time he had the comic book accurate electric headgear on while he escaped and I also loved how we saw him interact with young Jean Grey and regain some of his memories. This could also could be a change in the timeline caused by the butterfly effect as a result of the events of Days Of Future Past. This would also explain why the Magneto/Quicksilver, father/son relationship has never been discussed before, because if Apocalypse never awakened in the original X Men trilogy, then Quicksilver would have never went to the X Men mansion and therefore wouldn’t have come into contact with his dad during the final battle scene. Also Mystique looks like she is now a member and potential leader of the X Men team, rather than an enemy of the team like she was in the original movies when she was played by Rebecca Romjin. The other big change in the timeline is the death of Magneto’s family and even the fact that he had a wife and another child besides Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch.
Overall I really enjoyed this movie, however I can also see why some people would take a disliking to it, as it does require a good amount of previous knowledge of the universe, but as an X Men fan, I loved it. Also another criticism I have read is that people aren’t happy with the length of the film, stating that it is too long and it drags in, but I actually thought the pacing was spot on. Anyway as an X Men fan, I loved my time would this movie and I look forward to seeing it again and I’d recommend it to anyone who is a mutant superhero fan.
The tone is another issue I have with the movie, it is fairly inconsistent throughout and never reaches the level of threat that it is aiming for. However, this is through no fault of the cast or the performances. MacAvoy and Fassbender stand out here as you would expect, their relationship also remains one of the most interesting parts of the plot. Isaacs’ performance is also suitably threatening and sinister, the only thing lacking in his character other than the odd design choice, is how short he is next to the other mutants. He doesn’t have to be huge like in the comics and cartoons, but making him a little bit more physically imposing with clever camera tricks would have went a long way in adding to the character. Jennifer Lawrence is fine here as usual and young Cyclops and Jean Grey are perfectly serviceable, although Sophie Turner’s American accent does come and go in certain scenes. Even Peters is typically brilliant as Quicksilver and the actress who plays Storm here is also pretty convincing, as is the young English actor who plays Angel. Nightcrawler is a welcome addition to the roster as I feel that he has been criminally underused since the second X Men movie and his power set is definitely one of the most interesting in all of the X Men movies, also the actor playing him here does a good job throughout the film. However the same can’t be said for Olivia Munn who plays Psylocke in this movie, I have disliked this actress in every role I have seen her in to date and the same goes for this one, she brings nothing to the movie and she constantly has a resting bitch face that suggests she doesn’t want to be there.
Like Civil War, X Men wasn’t anything like the comic it was based on and we didn’t get what we expected, but what we did end up getting was fresh and entertaining in it’s own right, so it’s okay that the film plots aren’t 100% faithful to the source material and that is something that Singer has been preaching since he made the first X Men movie back in 2001, which incidentally wasn’t based on any comic book and was a totally original plot. Also I love how because of the alternate timeline they are now free to do whatever they want in terms of the timing of certain events. For example, (and this is a slight spoiler, but the movie has been out for a while now so deal with it,) the Phoenix Force makes an appearance in this movie, which typically isn’t something that Jean Grey acquires until later in her life. Also the fact that we saw Wolverine escaping from Weapon X again, (again spoilers but this was in the trailers anyway so again, deal with it,) was awesome and this time we saw him being broken out by the young X Men and this time he had the comic book accurate electric headgear on while he escaped and I also loved how we saw him interact with young Jean Grey and regain some of his memories. This could also could be a change in the timeline caused by the butterfly effect as a result of the events of Days Of Future Past. This would also explain why the Magneto/Quicksilver, father/son relationship has never been discussed before, because if Apocalypse never awakened in the original X Men trilogy, then Quicksilver would have never went to the X Men mansion and therefore wouldn’t have come into contact with his dad during the final battle scene. Also Mystique looks like she is now a member and potential leader of the X Men team, rather than an enemy of the team like she was in the original movies when she was played by Rebecca Romjin. The other big change in the timeline is the death of Magneto’s family and even the fact that he had a wife and another child besides Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch.
Overall I really enjoyed this movie, however I can also see why some people would take a disliking to it, as it does require a good amount of previous knowledge of the universe, but as an X Men fan, I loved it. Also another criticism I have read is that people aren’t happy with the length of the film, stating that it is too long and it drags in, but I actually thought the pacing was spot on. Anyway as an X Men fan, I loved my time would this movie and I look forward to seeing it again and I’d recommend it to anyone who is a mutant superhero fan.
Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated Ready Player One (2018) in Movies
Sep 20, 2018 (Updated Sep 20, 2018)
Not Quite Ready
I saw this movie in the cinema back when it came out in March earlier this year and I honestly didn't feel ready to review it after a single viewing because of all of the references etc that there was to take in. After watching the movie a couple more times and watching a bunch of Easter Egg videos on Youtube, I feel more equipped to discuss the film.
Up top, I never read the book that this film is based on. It has been recommended to me quite a few times, but I have never gotten around to reading it, so I was going into this with no pre-conceived ideas of what it was going to be other than what I had seen in the various trailers for the movie.
Let's start with the good stuff. Although I have some issues with the overabundance of CGI onscreen, as a 3d animator myself I was extremely impressed at the sheer quality of the animation in the movie. I know that this thing had a pretty high budget behind it, but still the level of quality in the animation is really high throughout the film. The references are also pretty cool, at least for the first third of the movie but the novelty of seeing some of your favourite pop culture characters does wear off after a while and ends up feeling like a cheap gimmick before too long. Finally, if all you are looking for is a big dumb fun blockbuster, then this movie provides that in spades.
Ok, onto the stuff that bothered me. As I said above, although the quality of the CGI is pretty incredible, the vast amount of it gets tiresome after a while. I also don't like the character designs at all, Parzival looks like a rejected piece of Final Fantasy artwork, Art3mis looks like a stereotypical version of a what a middle aged man thinks a cool hacker looks like with a weird resemblance to a feline, Aech just looked chunky and awkward, like something from a last-gen Gears Of War game, I-R0k's weird, edgy, fantasy-based design didn't fit his voice or the tone of the scenes he appeared in and Sorrento's avatar just looked distractingly like a dastardly Clark Kent for some reason. Also, these original character designs seemed oddly out of place being surrounded by other characters from franchises that we already know like DC and Mortal Kombat, none of it meshed well.
From this point on I am going to delve into some mid-movie spoilers, so here's your warning.
It really annoyed me how they kept touching on the idea that someone in the Oasis might not necessarily look the same as they do in real life and if you ever met them in real life you would be sorely disappointed, only for the reason for all of this to be a birthmark on Olivia Cooke's character's face. The way that they make her out to some sort of beast-like monster because of a slight skin-irregularity is ridiculous and also kinda offensive. Also, we are told during the movie's opening sequence that the Oasis is a worldwide thing, where people from anywhere on the planet can meet up online and fight together or kill each other for coins, then halfway through the movie, all of the characters meet up in a small ice cream truck in the real world and it turns out that they all live within a few miles of each other. It just made the whole thing feel really small scale. Another issue is that the movie is only 6 months old at this point and it already feels slightly dated. I don't see this movie ageing very well at all and this is both due to the CGI and the references that they choose to include.
Lastly, as I said earlier, if what you want out of this movie is mindless fun, then you'll walk away satisfied, the problem with that is that the movie seems to want to be more than that. The way that the movie treats itself and the way it was marketed along with the fact that it's got Spielberg in the director's chair, signifies that the filmmakers were intending for this to be this generation's Back To The Future or Star Wars and on that front it totally fails. In these other movies that this film is aspiring to be, you care about what happens to the characters and want to see where they go, whereas here the audience cares way more about seeing the next popular franchise references than anything that happens to the main characters at the heart of this story and once you've seen the film, you are going to leave talking about the characters that appeared from outside franchises rather than the ones created for this story. The characters are also instantly forgettable, for example I have seen this film three times now and still couldn't tell you the real world names of any of the characters other than Wade Watts and Sorrento and that's only because he has the same name in the real world as he does in the Oasis. I also don't care if I ever see any of these characters again if I'm being honest. I'm sure there is probably a sequel to this already being planned seeing as it made a bunch of money at the box office and there is apparently a sequel book in the works, but frankly I wouldn't care if I never saw any of these characters again and I don't care where the story is going either.
In conclusion, Ready Player One doesn't achieve the goal that it sets for itself of being a modern sci-fi classic, but there is a lot of fun to be had here along with some impressive animation to boot. The movie has a fairly shallow, hollow feel to it throughout, as if we are scratching the surface of something potentially engaging and worth investing in, but the filmmakers constantly keep distracting us with flashy visuals and obscure pop culture references. If the movie committed to telling a more original story rather than being obsessed with the 80's classics it is exploiting, then it may be more worthwhile. Also, it's definitely not Spielberg's best, this may be a bit harsh but it's probably closer to Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull than Raiders Of The Lost Ark. I wish that Smashbomb had a half star rating system, because although I feel that the movie was better than a 6, I don't like it enough to give it a 7, so a 6.5 would sum up how I felt about the film more accurately.
Up top, I never read the book that this film is based on. It has been recommended to me quite a few times, but I have never gotten around to reading it, so I was going into this with no pre-conceived ideas of what it was going to be other than what I had seen in the various trailers for the movie.
Let's start with the good stuff. Although I have some issues with the overabundance of CGI onscreen, as a 3d animator myself I was extremely impressed at the sheer quality of the animation in the movie. I know that this thing had a pretty high budget behind it, but still the level of quality in the animation is really high throughout the film. The references are also pretty cool, at least for the first third of the movie but the novelty of seeing some of your favourite pop culture characters does wear off after a while and ends up feeling like a cheap gimmick before too long. Finally, if all you are looking for is a big dumb fun blockbuster, then this movie provides that in spades.
Ok, onto the stuff that bothered me. As I said above, although the quality of the CGI is pretty incredible, the vast amount of it gets tiresome after a while. I also don't like the character designs at all, Parzival looks like a rejected piece of Final Fantasy artwork, Art3mis looks like a stereotypical version of a what a middle aged man thinks a cool hacker looks like with a weird resemblance to a feline, Aech just looked chunky and awkward, like something from a last-gen Gears Of War game, I-R0k's weird, edgy, fantasy-based design didn't fit his voice or the tone of the scenes he appeared in and Sorrento's avatar just looked distractingly like a dastardly Clark Kent for some reason. Also, these original character designs seemed oddly out of place being surrounded by other characters from franchises that we already know like DC and Mortal Kombat, none of it meshed well.
From this point on I am going to delve into some mid-movie spoilers, so here's your warning.
It really annoyed me how they kept touching on the idea that someone in the Oasis might not necessarily look the same as they do in real life and if you ever met them in real life you would be sorely disappointed, only for the reason for all of this to be a birthmark on Olivia Cooke's character's face. The way that they make her out to some sort of beast-like monster because of a slight skin-irregularity is ridiculous and also kinda offensive. Also, we are told during the movie's opening sequence that the Oasis is a worldwide thing, where people from anywhere on the planet can meet up online and fight together or kill each other for coins, then halfway through the movie, all of the characters meet up in a small ice cream truck in the real world and it turns out that they all live within a few miles of each other. It just made the whole thing feel really small scale. Another issue is that the movie is only 6 months old at this point and it already feels slightly dated. I don't see this movie ageing very well at all and this is both due to the CGI and the references that they choose to include.
Lastly, as I said earlier, if what you want out of this movie is mindless fun, then you'll walk away satisfied, the problem with that is that the movie seems to want to be more than that. The way that the movie treats itself and the way it was marketed along with the fact that it's got Spielberg in the director's chair, signifies that the filmmakers were intending for this to be this generation's Back To The Future or Star Wars and on that front it totally fails. In these other movies that this film is aspiring to be, you care about what happens to the characters and want to see where they go, whereas here the audience cares way more about seeing the next popular franchise references than anything that happens to the main characters at the heart of this story and once you've seen the film, you are going to leave talking about the characters that appeared from outside franchises rather than the ones created for this story. The characters are also instantly forgettable, for example I have seen this film three times now and still couldn't tell you the real world names of any of the characters other than Wade Watts and Sorrento and that's only because he has the same name in the real world as he does in the Oasis. I also don't care if I ever see any of these characters again if I'm being honest. I'm sure there is probably a sequel to this already being planned seeing as it made a bunch of money at the box office and there is apparently a sequel book in the works, but frankly I wouldn't care if I never saw any of these characters again and I don't care where the story is going either.
In conclusion, Ready Player One doesn't achieve the goal that it sets for itself of being a modern sci-fi classic, but there is a lot of fun to be had here along with some impressive animation to boot. The movie has a fairly shallow, hollow feel to it throughout, as if we are scratching the surface of something potentially engaging and worth investing in, but the filmmakers constantly keep distracting us with flashy visuals and obscure pop culture references. If the movie committed to telling a more original story rather than being obsessed with the 80's classics it is exploiting, then it may be more worthwhile. Also, it's definitely not Spielberg's best, this may be a bit harsh but it's probably closer to Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull than Raiders Of The Lost Ark. I wish that Smashbomb had a half star rating system, because although I feel that the movie was better than a 6, I don't like it enough to give it a 7, so a 6.5 would sum up how I felt about the film more accurately.
Lee (2222 KP) rated Welcome to Marwen (2018) in Movies
Jan 11, 2019
Steve Carell (1 more)
Leslie Mann
This year, I made a resolution to try not to let critic reviews heavily influence my decision to go see a movie or not. In the period between Christmas and New year, I'd booked to go see Holmes and Watson, but when the very bad reviews for it started coming it, I decided to cancel, opting to continue lazing on the sofa with food, drink and Netflix instead. That particular choice I don't regret, but I feel there have been many occasions over the last year where I've either hated a movie the critics loved, or loved a movie the critics were negative about. Time to try and change that.
I almost did miss out on seeing Welcome to Marwen though, due to the large number of mediocre reviews I read. In fact, it doesn't seem to have appealed to the general public enough to keep it in the cinemas for very long at all. Having only opened here in the UK on New year's Day, the screening I went to last night was actually the last screening being shown at that particular cinema, and I was one of only a handful of people there watching it. What prompted me earlier this week to give it a go though was after listening to director Robert Zemeckis talk passionately about it, along with his other movies. It was a gentle reminder that this guy is responsible for so many of my favourite movies, and I decided to give it a shot. While I'm glad I did, and overall I enjoyed it a lot, I can certainly appreciate where some of the criticism is coming from.
Welcome to Marwen is based on the true story of Mark Hogancamp, and the 2010 documentary on his life title 'Marwencol'. Mark (played in the movie by Steve Carell) suffered a severe beating at the hands of a bunch of thugs following an altercation in a bar regarding his lifestyle choice of being a cross dresser. After nine days in a coma, the beating understandably left him traumatised, but it also left him without any memory his life prior to the attack - once a talented war illustrator, he now can't even write his own name. But Mark remained an artist, building a miniature World War II Belgian town called Marwen outside his home and populating it with dolls. Using them he creates scenes and a story which he then photographs, helping him to express and deal with his lack of memory, the pain and trauma he now experiences, and the relationships with the people around him. Captain Hogie is a fighter pilot, an Action Man/GI Joe figure representing Mark. The residents of Marwen are all women, alter egos of various people who have helped him in the past or continue to help him. The toyshop worker who supplies him with the dolls, a friend he met during rehab, a co-worker, his carer and the woman who came to his aid following his beating. The town is also terrorised regularly by a bunch of Nazis, representing the men responsible for attacking him. And whenever the Nazis are beaten and killed, they are brought back to life by a Belgian witch! When a woman called Nicol (Leslie Mann) moves in across the street, she strikes up a wonderful friendship with Mark, earning her own doll in the town of Marwen where she strikes up a relationship with Captain Hogie. As the movie progresses, Mark has to deal with the pending sentencing of his attackers and the anxiety surrounding an upcoming exhibition showcasing his photographs. Marwen, and its inhabitants, help him to work through all of this.
The scenes and stories in Marwen that Mark is creating and imagining are brought to life in the movie using impressive motion capture CGI which, if you've seen the trailer or any clips of the movie, will know looks incredible. When you think about the animation Zemeckis and his team were producing for The Polar Express back in 2004, through Beowulf and Disney's The Christmas Carol to where we are now with this movie, it's simply amazing how far we've come. Perfect recreations of the movie characters in doll form, moving and interacting with the real surroundings and the CGI is just faultless. But for the earlier parts of the movie, this aspect of the movie for me was for a while the most frustrating and dull. The movie opens with a big scene as Captain Hogie crashes his plane, comes across a group of Nazis before being rescued by the girls of Marwen and we get a few more of these lengthy sequences early on, with only short glimpses of Mark and his life inbetween. I found myself become interested and engrossed in the life of Mark, wanting to learn more, only to be snapped out of it by a not so interesting scene involving some dolls. Thankfully, the length of those scenes reduces over time, and as you begin to empathise more with Mark and his life, you start to appreciate more the reasons why a certain scene is playing out the way it is. At that point, I began to really appreciate and enjoy them a lot more.
My only issue overall with this movie is that I wouldn't really know the age range to pitch it at, and that's possibly why it doesn't appear to have done so well with audiences. You've got the fun elements involving the dolls and the CGI, but then some of these scenes do involve a fair bit of violence which actually appears quite realistic at times. Then you've got the trauma and the flashbacks involving the beating - the movie doesn't go as dark as it could, or maybe should have done with that subject matter, but I certainly wouldn't say this is a fun movie for all the family to enjoy. Which is a shame really because I did enjoy this a lot. Steve Carell does an outstanding job, and Leslie Mann is just wonderful as always. It's opened my eyes to some of the consequences of brain injury and made me want to learn more about Mark Hogancamp, which parts of the movie are true and which parts were added for entertainment. I'll be sure to try and watch the documentary at some point.
I almost did miss out on seeing Welcome to Marwen though, due to the large number of mediocre reviews I read. In fact, it doesn't seem to have appealed to the general public enough to keep it in the cinemas for very long at all. Having only opened here in the UK on New year's Day, the screening I went to last night was actually the last screening being shown at that particular cinema, and I was one of only a handful of people there watching it. What prompted me earlier this week to give it a go though was after listening to director Robert Zemeckis talk passionately about it, along with his other movies. It was a gentle reminder that this guy is responsible for so many of my favourite movies, and I decided to give it a shot. While I'm glad I did, and overall I enjoyed it a lot, I can certainly appreciate where some of the criticism is coming from.
Welcome to Marwen is based on the true story of Mark Hogancamp, and the 2010 documentary on his life title 'Marwencol'. Mark (played in the movie by Steve Carell) suffered a severe beating at the hands of a bunch of thugs following an altercation in a bar regarding his lifestyle choice of being a cross dresser. After nine days in a coma, the beating understandably left him traumatised, but it also left him without any memory his life prior to the attack - once a talented war illustrator, he now can't even write his own name. But Mark remained an artist, building a miniature World War II Belgian town called Marwen outside his home and populating it with dolls. Using them he creates scenes and a story which he then photographs, helping him to express and deal with his lack of memory, the pain and trauma he now experiences, and the relationships with the people around him. Captain Hogie is a fighter pilot, an Action Man/GI Joe figure representing Mark. The residents of Marwen are all women, alter egos of various people who have helped him in the past or continue to help him. The toyshop worker who supplies him with the dolls, a friend he met during rehab, a co-worker, his carer and the woman who came to his aid following his beating. The town is also terrorised regularly by a bunch of Nazis, representing the men responsible for attacking him. And whenever the Nazis are beaten and killed, they are brought back to life by a Belgian witch! When a woman called Nicol (Leslie Mann) moves in across the street, she strikes up a wonderful friendship with Mark, earning her own doll in the town of Marwen where she strikes up a relationship with Captain Hogie. As the movie progresses, Mark has to deal with the pending sentencing of his attackers and the anxiety surrounding an upcoming exhibition showcasing his photographs. Marwen, and its inhabitants, help him to work through all of this.
The scenes and stories in Marwen that Mark is creating and imagining are brought to life in the movie using impressive motion capture CGI which, if you've seen the trailer or any clips of the movie, will know looks incredible. When you think about the animation Zemeckis and his team were producing for The Polar Express back in 2004, through Beowulf and Disney's The Christmas Carol to where we are now with this movie, it's simply amazing how far we've come. Perfect recreations of the movie characters in doll form, moving and interacting with the real surroundings and the CGI is just faultless. But for the earlier parts of the movie, this aspect of the movie for me was for a while the most frustrating and dull. The movie opens with a big scene as Captain Hogie crashes his plane, comes across a group of Nazis before being rescued by the girls of Marwen and we get a few more of these lengthy sequences early on, with only short glimpses of Mark and his life inbetween. I found myself become interested and engrossed in the life of Mark, wanting to learn more, only to be snapped out of it by a not so interesting scene involving some dolls. Thankfully, the length of those scenes reduces over time, and as you begin to empathise more with Mark and his life, you start to appreciate more the reasons why a certain scene is playing out the way it is. At that point, I began to really appreciate and enjoy them a lot more.
My only issue overall with this movie is that I wouldn't really know the age range to pitch it at, and that's possibly why it doesn't appear to have done so well with audiences. You've got the fun elements involving the dolls and the CGI, but then some of these scenes do involve a fair bit of violence which actually appears quite realistic at times. Then you've got the trauma and the flashbacks involving the beating - the movie doesn't go as dark as it could, or maybe should have done with that subject matter, but I certainly wouldn't say this is a fun movie for all the family to enjoy. Which is a shame really because I did enjoy this a lot. Steve Carell does an outstanding job, and Leslie Mann is just wonderful as always. It's opened my eyes to some of the consequences of brain injury and made me want to learn more about Mark Hogancamp, which parts of the movie are true and which parts were added for entertainment. I'll be sure to try and watch the documentary at some point.
Chris Sawin (602 KP) rated Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (2009) in Movies
Jun 22, 2019
In 2009, I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in theaters during a midnight screening on its day of release. Somehow I managed to sit through a two and a half hour movie, drive home, write a review, post it, and promote it all before I went to bed that morning at 5am. Looking back, I still have no idea how something like that was accomplished while also juggling a full-time job. Needless to say, I've been eager to revisit Revenge of the Fallen ever since. Delirium begins to set in at that hour and midnight screenings are rarely ever not fun. Not to mention my skills as a movie critic have evolved greatly since then and my tastes have altered. The movie deserved a proper review with a sober state of mind. And yes, thankfully, the trip was worth taking because I'm not quite as enthusiastic about Revenge of the Fallen being such a great piece of cinema as its glaring flaws tend to overshadow what little good it had going for it.
The writing is obviously the sequel's biggest flaw and not just the storyline, but the dialogue as well. The Fallen touched down on earth all the way back in 17,000 B.C. and while we've been able to uncover the likes of cavemen existing thereabouts during that time period, there's no evidence of autobots or decepticons existing in that point in history. With the way they fight and their vast numbers, that seems pretty hard to believe. Oh, and look, Sam has held onto the shirt he wore when the world almost came to an end in the last movie and apparently hasn't ever washed it. A sliver of the allspark has just been sitting in that thing this entire time. Alice actually being a decepticon didn't feel right either. Probable maybe, but it just didn't seem to fit with all other transformers being vehicles of some kind. Meanwhile Soundwave is a satellite in this movie, but walks around on earth with some crazy worm thing in Dark of the Moon with no reason of him evolving between films.
The movie has a thing about humping, too. We see two male dogs humping on more than one occasion and Wheelie also humps the crap out of Megan Fox's leg, but that's not the only time male genitalia comes into play. We also get a good glimpse at the testicles of the Sun Harvester as John Turturro spits out a one-liner about its scrotum. Leo and his freaking out over absolutely everything is also really annoying and makes Shia LaBeouf's "BUM-BULL-BEE!!!" and "OP-TIM-US!!!" squawks feel like a breath of fresh air. Sam's parents are practically the kryptonite of the movie as they're featured way too much and in the worst of times. Sam's mom has the lamest dialogue while also overreacting to everything while his dad can't decide to let Sam go or protect him. Why they were ever even Egypt is a boggling question in itself. Why are there autobots in heaven? If Megatron's master was The Fallen and he took orders from Sentinel Prime in Dark of the Moon, just how many other Decepticons does he answer to? The questions and plot holes just seem endless.
The atrocious dialogue practically echoes through your bones. It starts with Ironhide saying, "Punk ass decepticon," and never really lets up. Between Sam's parents "smelling" a "$40,000 education," and Simmons telling everyone that what he was about to show them was "top secret" and "do not tell my mother," the bases are pretty much covered. Military sergeants listening to a kid in college seems outlandish anyway, but throwing their absolute blind faith in him seems really outrageous. I realize the cast of the movie had the writer's strike to deal with, but two of the three writers for Revenge of the Fallen also wrote Star Trek which showed none of the same problems that this movie had. The writing in a Michael Bay movie is already secondary. Throw in a writer's strike and you've got something as apocalyptic behind the camera as what's taking place on screen.
There is something entertaining deep within the loins of this cinematic abomination though. The special effects are more than satisfying and pretty much outshine the special effects in the first movie. Onscreen battles are more extraordinary, explosions are bigger, and the numbers are more massive. It feels more like an actual war this time around. Bumblebee also gets his time to shine in the sequel. His scene in the garage with Sam at the start of the movie is one of the better calm scenes in the entire thing and then there are his fight scenes. Several of the fight scenes seem inspired by Mortal Kombat; Bumblebee's spine-rip sequence and Optimus’ face ripping and hand bursting through the chest of The Fallen with its villainous heart. Optimus feels very scarcely used in the two Transformers sequels. He has a few scenes where he gets to be awesome and then spends a good portion of the movie being incapacitated. At least he was dead in this one, that's a liable excuse. In Dark of the Moon, he's basically just hanging out upside down for thirty to forty minutes while hundreds of people die. Even though The Fallen is dealt with in a matter of minutes, he is kind of cool. He teleports a lot like Nightcrawler and is voiced by Tony Todd. Unfortunately, he's only appealing on the surface, kind of sucks as a main villain, and is a total embarrassment to the decepticons.
Michael Bay needs to learn that more explosions and more destructive mayhem don't automatically make a film better than its predecessor. There are more battles between the autobots and decepticons, the stakes are higher, and the special effects are more impressive, but it's essentially just eye candy or like giving reconstructive facial surgery to a really hideous person; they're still ugly but their appearance is at least nice to look at now. With a storyline that jumps all over the place for no rhyme or reason, really terrible dialogue being spewed from just about every major character, and The Twins probably being more offensive than they are humorous, Revenge of the Fallen falls short of being half as good as Bay's original effort and is quite difficult to think of as anything more than a guilty pleasure.
The writing is obviously the sequel's biggest flaw and not just the storyline, but the dialogue as well. The Fallen touched down on earth all the way back in 17,000 B.C. and while we've been able to uncover the likes of cavemen existing thereabouts during that time period, there's no evidence of autobots or decepticons existing in that point in history. With the way they fight and their vast numbers, that seems pretty hard to believe. Oh, and look, Sam has held onto the shirt he wore when the world almost came to an end in the last movie and apparently hasn't ever washed it. A sliver of the allspark has just been sitting in that thing this entire time. Alice actually being a decepticon didn't feel right either. Probable maybe, but it just didn't seem to fit with all other transformers being vehicles of some kind. Meanwhile Soundwave is a satellite in this movie, but walks around on earth with some crazy worm thing in Dark of the Moon with no reason of him evolving between films.
The movie has a thing about humping, too. We see two male dogs humping on more than one occasion and Wheelie also humps the crap out of Megan Fox's leg, but that's not the only time male genitalia comes into play. We also get a good glimpse at the testicles of the Sun Harvester as John Turturro spits out a one-liner about its scrotum. Leo and his freaking out over absolutely everything is also really annoying and makes Shia LaBeouf's "BUM-BULL-BEE!!!" and "OP-TIM-US!!!" squawks feel like a breath of fresh air. Sam's parents are practically the kryptonite of the movie as they're featured way too much and in the worst of times. Sam's mom has the lamest dialogue while also overreacting to everything while his dad can't decide to let Sam go or protect him. Why they were ever even Egypt is a boggling question in itself. Why are there autobots in heaven? If Megatron's master was The Fallen and he took orders from Sentinel Prime in Dark of the Moon, just how many other Decepticons does he answer to? The questions and plot holes just seem endless.
The atrocious dialogue practically echoes through your bones. It starts with Ironhide saying, "Punk ass decepticon," and never really lets up. Between Sam's parents "smelling" a "$40,000 education," and Simmons telling everyone that what he was about to show them was "top secret" and "do not tell my mother," the bases are pretty much covered. Military sergeants listening to a kid in college seems outlandish anyway, but throwing their absolute blind faith in him seems really outrageous. I realize the cast of the movie had the writer's strike to deal with, but two of the three writers for Revenge of the Fallen also wrote Star Trek which showed none of the same problems that this movie had. The writing in a Michael Bay movie is already secondary. Throw in a writer's strike and you've got something as apocalyptic behind the camera as what's taking place on screen.
There is something entertaining deep within the loins of this cinematic abomination though. The special effects are more than satisfying and pretty much outshine the special effects in the first movie. Onscreen battles are more extraordinary, explosions are bigger, and the numbers are more massive. It feels more like an actual war this time around. Bumblebee also gets his time to shine in the sequel. His scene in the garage with Sam at the start of the movie is one of the better calm scenes in the entire thing and then there are his fight scenes. Several of the fight scenes seem inspired by Mortal Kombat; Bumblebee's spine-rip sequence and Optimus’ face ripping and hand bursting through the chest of The Fallen with its villainous heart. Optimus feels very scarcely used in the two Transformers sequels. He has a few scenes where he gets to be awesome and then spends a good portion of the movie being incapacitated. At least he was dead in this one, that's a liable excuse. In Dark of the Moon, he's basically just hanging out upside down for thirty to forty minutes while hundreds of people die. Even though The Fallen is dealt with in a matter of minutes, he is kind of cool. He teleports a lot like Nightcrawler and is voiced by Tony Todd. Unfortunately, he's only appealing on the surface, kind of sucks as a main villain, and is a total embarrassment to the decepticons.
Michael Bay needs to learn that more explosions and more destructive mayhem don't automatically make a film better than its predecessor. There are more battles between the autobots and decepticons, the stakes are higher, and the special effects are more impressive, but it's essentially just eye candy or like giving reconstructive facial surgery to a really hideous person; they're still ugly but their appearance is at least nice to look at now. With a storyline that jumps all over the place for no rhyme or reason, really terrible dialogue being spewed from just about every major character, and The Twins probably being more offensive than they are humorous, Revenge of the Fallen falls short of being half as good as Bay's original effort and is quite difficult to think of as anything more than a guilty pleasure.
Piper (13 KP) rated Halloween (2018) in Movies
Nov 27, 2019
Strong Characters (3 more)
Clever Camerawork
Myers is Finally Threatening Again
Callbacks and Subversions
"You're The New Doctor Loomis" (3 more)
Plot Holes
Predictable
Too Much Off-Screen Action
Halloween: Predictably Unpredictable
Contains spoilers, click to show
After the nightmare of a film that was Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake, I refused to bother seeing the new Halloween on its release, choosing instead to pick up a DVD when the price got knocked down significantly enough - after all, we’ve had sixty-three Halloween films now and only half of them were worth watching (really, Season of the Witch?) and this looked, in all honesty, like just another slasher-film-reboot that wasn’t worth the time. Now don’t get me wrong, it absolutely was just another slasher film, but I wish I’d seen it in the cinema. And a year earlier than I did, too, because I missed out big-time with this one.
The plot is predictable, because of course it is. It’s Michael Myers, what’s he going to do except escape from a mental institution and murder some people? But it’s beautifully subverted; some of the characters you might expect to last till the end die before the halfway mark, and while there are a fair amount who are clearly written in just to be killed minutes later, they contribute to some fine, gory moments, so it’s kind of okay. There’s no real heartbreaker here - everyone you really rooted for just about makes it, and everyone that was kind of a dick is killed. And that’s fine, because in a way this isn’t the kind of slasher where it matters who lives or dies. This is a film about preserving a legacy, or perhaps just making one, and it works. We’re told fairly early on that this is a direct sequel to the original Halloween (Myers’ death toll at the start of this version, apparently, is five, which matches the amount of kills he made in the first movie - as far as I’m aware, Myers has actually killed over 100 people in all the films combined, so this is a nice subtle way of telling us what to remember and what to ignore completely). Having said that, references are made throughout to previous films, the best of which is of course a callback to the infamous scene where Myers tumbles out of a window only for his body to completely disappear - this time it’s Laurie Strode who does the tumbling, and she very much intends to do a little vanishing act of her own, Michael, so keep an eye on - oh, no, you looked away, I wonder what’s happening down there!
Focusing on Laurie for a moment, Jamie Lee Curtis does an absolutely excellent job here. Age has given her character wisdom, paranoia, and a whole lot of guns, and the acting carries a huge amount of weight and strength with it. Having said that, there are a couple of moments where all of Laurie’s fear-induced calculations don’t seem to have quite worked out - why bother going to such extreme measures to protect your house, if the front door you’re standing behind is half glass? But that’s the thing about this movie - whatever you plan for, whatever you think Michael Myers is capable of, he’s stronger than you think, he’s far more terrifying than you remember, and right until the end, he’s here to remind you that nothing you can plan for will ever be enough. Of course, we never actually see him die (again) so here’s looking forward to the next sequel…
The cinematography is something to at least wonder over - settings and locations are used well and established with some wonderful wide shots, and some of the best scenes are those where the camera just stays in one place, at a very carefully-selected window for example, and watches. Two scenes are worth a particular mention; the first, in which we follow our two podcast-host characters to a gas station, seems fairly dull until Myers catches up to them, but if you watch the background carefully enough you’ll see he’s there all along, beating people up and murdering quite happily (swapping his prison jumpsuit for those traditional blues in the process). The second seems a little superficial, in the grand scheme of the movie, but it’s well-shot nonetheless - we watch, from that aforementioned window, as a woman hears about all the nasty things Michael might do, and of course we can see him through another window, heading for her front door, and when he finally appears inside the house he’s all the way across the room, somehow, and he calmly wanders on over and stabs the woman quite coolly through the throat, in a scene which I think is most reminiscent of the original films.
However, there are moments when you don’t see Michael at all, just the aftermath, or where we watch him enter a room and are forced to linger in the corridor while he does the dirty work. A couple of times that’s just fine, but considering the nature of the film it would be nice to watch the magic happen a couple more times. And while we’re on the negatives, I might mention that the reveal that the Doctor Loomis-type character who looked, felt, and sounded like a rip-off of Doctor Loomis, and was even referred to as “The New Doctor Loomis” did EXACTLY the same thing that Doctor Loomis did, surprise, and we were somehow expected to not see that coming like it was all one big, obvious, heavy-handed bluff. A couple of the other characters, too, felt like they were purely rammed in there to be irritating - there were a couple of strong scenes with our podcast hosts, but ultimately they were rude, on-the-nose and annoyingly egotistical, and I was happy to see them go, just like Alison’s friend Foggy Nelson.
The score, incidentally, is worth mentioning, from a haunting retune of the original Myers theme to darker and more dramatic variations on it later on that really would have been quite something to hear in surround-sound. I’m never usually one to appreciate the music of a film quite fully enough, so it was nice to have this grab my attention in quite the way it did. Overall, it’s a genuinely good follow-on that takes the best of the films before and makes the best use of the worst of them. Some of the characters might be a little annoying, some of the action could have translated better on-screen than off, but it was an honest and straight-up slasher film and it just wasn’t that bad at all.
The plot is predictable, because of course it is. It’s Michael Myers, what’s he going to do except escape from a mental institution and murder some people? But it’s beautifully subverted; some of the characters you might expect to last till the end die before the halfway mark, and while there are a fair amount who are clearly written in just to be killed minutes later, they contribute to some fine, gory moments, so it’s kind of okay. There’s no real heartbreaker here - everyone you really rooted for just about makes it, and everyone that was kind of a dick is killed. And that’s fine, because in a way this isn’t the kind of slasher where it matters who lives or dies. This is a film about preserving a legacy, or perhaps just making one, and it works. We’re told fairly early on that this is a direct sequel to the original Halloween (Myers’ death toll at the start of this version, apparently, is five, which matches the amount of kills he made in the first movie - as far as I’m aware, Myers has actually killed over 100 people in all the films combined, so this is a nice subtle way of telling us what to remember and what to ignore completely). Having said that, references are made throughout to previous films, the best of which is of course a callback to the infamous scene where Myers tumbles out of a window only for his body to completely disappear - this time it’s Laurie Strode who does the tumbling, and she very much intends to do a little vanishing act of her own, Michael, so keep an eye on - oh, no, you looked away, I wonder what’s happening down there!
Focusing on Laurie for a moment, Jamie Lee Curtis does an absolutely excellent job here. Age has given her character wisdom, paranoia, and a whole lot of guns, and the acting carries a huge amount of weight and strength with it. Having said that, there are a couple of moments where all of Laurie’s fear-induced calculations don’t seem to have quite worked out - why bother going to such extreme measures to protect your house, if the front door you’re standing behind is half glass? But that’s the thing about this movie - whatever you plan for, whatever you think Michael Myers is capable of, he’s stronger than you think, he’s far more terrifying than you remember, and right until the end, he’s here to remind you that nothing you can plan for will ever be enough. Of course, we never actually see him die (again) so here’s looking forward to the next sequel…
The cinematography is something to at least wonder over - settings and locations are used well and established with some wonderful wide shots, and some of the best scenes are those where the camera just stays in one place, at a very carefully-selected window for example, and watches. Two scenes are worth a particular mention; the first, in which we follow our two podcast-host characters to a gas station, seems fairly dull until Myers catches up to them, but if you watch the background carefully enough you’ll see he’s there all along, beating people up and murdering quite happily (swapping his prison jumpsuit for those traditional blues in the process). The second seems a little superficial, in the grand scheme of the movie, but it’s well-shot nonetheless - we watch, from that aforementioned window, as a woman hears about all the nasty things Michael might do, and of course we can see him through another window, heading for her front door, and when he finally appears inside the house he’s all the way across the room, somehow, and he calmly wanders on over and stabs the woman quite coolly through the throat, in a scene which I think is most reminiscent of the original films.
However, there are moments when you don’t see Michael at all, just the aftermath, or where we watch him enter a room and are forced to linger in the corridor while he does the dirty work. A couple of times that’s just fine, but considering the nature of the film it would be nice to watch the magic happen a couple more times. And while we’re on the negatives, I might mention that the reveal that the Doctor Loomis-type character who looked, felt, and sounded like a rip-off of Doctor Loomis, and was even referred to as “The New Doctor Loomis” did EXACTLY the same thing that Doctor Loomis did, surprise, and we were somehow expected to not see that coming like it was all one big, obvious, heavy-handed bluff. A couple of the other characters, too, felt like they were purely rammed in there to be irritating - there were a couple of strong scenes with our podcast hosts, but ultimately they were rude, on-the-nose and annoyingly egotistical, and I was happy to see them go, just like Alison’s friend Foggy Nelson.
The score, incidentally, is worth mentioning, from a haunting retune of the original Myers theme to darker and more dramatic variations on it later on that really would have been quite something to hear in surround-sound. I’m never usually one to appreciate the music of a film quite fully enough, so it was nice to have this grab my attention in quite the way it did. Overall, it’s a genuinely good follow-on that takes the best of the films before and makes the best use of the worst of them. Some of the characters might be a little annoying, some of the action could have translated better on-screen than off, but it was an honest and straight-up slasher film and it just wasn’t that bad at all.
Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated 1917 (2020) in Movies
Jan 22, 2020
It has felt like a long wait to get to this film, there was a lot of talk when Midway was coming out so I was very glad it finally arrived.
Lance Corporal Blake has been told to report with another soldier, the respite from war was short but something important must be afoot. It's more than just important, it's life and death for Blake's older brother. His company have sent word that they're going to advance on the retreating German troops but communications are down and they don't know they're going headfirst into a trap.
Blake and Schofield are tasked with finding a way to their position to stop the advance before they lead 1,600 men into the ambush. Between them and their objective? No man's land, abandoned German trenches and large expanses of open land. One another and vigilance are all they have to get them to their objective.
I ended up seeing this twice on its opening weekend, mainly for technical reasons. When I completed my first watch I saw a lot of tweets about its "one-shot" filming and details of an interview about the filming techniques used, that all made me want to go back and watch for more detail.
If I'm honest with you I didn't notice the "one-shot" filming during my first trip to the cinema. In the interview I saw it said that there were no takes longer than 9 minutes, with its running time that meant that at the very least there were 14 cuts... of course I wanted to go and try to spot them. There were only a few "obvious" ones, but even then some of those felt so seamless that you wouldn't question if they said it was done in one (two) shot(s).
The effects in the film are fantastic, but also one of my only quibbles. There are several video clips with and without effects on floating around the internet and you'll see the massive effort that went into these effects. The major scene that comes to mind is in the trailer, Schofield is running across the field as the regiment is advancing around him. I had just assumed that the shot was aerial, but no, it was filmed from the back of a truck. That doesn't sound all that strange until you see in this video that the truck has a road to drive down that is then CGId out for the final cut. That was incredible to see. But this scene is also the only scene that made me doubt the effects too. When I watched it on the big screen it felt clear that some of the explosions were generated, and watching the clips proved that feeling to be right.
I could ramble on about the effects in this for ages but I need to remember there are other things to talk about... but well, I want to rave a little.
The nighttime scene is truly incredible to watch. It makes you paranoid and scared, you watch the shadows for soldiers and survivors, ugh, gripping and terrifying all at the same time.
Right, come one... move along, Emma!
Not much of a switch but I want to mention what I believe are mainly physical effects. One of the first scenes shows Blake and Schofield going through the trenches and over no man's land, walking through the trenches takes a long time, the fact they dug all of that and decked out the entire length for what is sometimes just a fleeting view. The soldiers as they sleep against the walls blending in like they're not there, the claustrophobic feeling as they walls creep higher and closer around them, and just the sheer volume of people down there. Both fast-paced and drawn out at the same time this whole sequence is complex and important.
After the trenches we see them go over the top into no man's land. The pair of them make an amazing job of playing in the mud. It's another part of the film that makes you look around. What's floating in the water? What's hidden in the mud? Truly spectacular additions and I imagine that on every viewing you'd see something different and horrific appear.
Come on, Emma... acting.
There are a lot of cameos from recognisable talented actors but the nature of the story means they're only the briefest of scenes. Mark Strong was probably my favourite of those, his tone at that critical part of the film was perfect.
To our main duo... Blake is played by Dean-Charles Chapman, a face I recognised but had to look up. I'd seen him most recently in The King and Blinded By The Light but clearly neither of those roles stuck with me. Schofield is played by George MacKay who I haven't seen in anything before. The pair had an interesting dynamic, there was certainly a camaraderie there but I swung between thinking they were good friends and just acquaintances because of their behaviour towards each other. Their characters felt very much at two ends of the scale, Blake optimistic and almost a little green, Schofield, battle-worn and sceptical.
Between the two I can easily say that George MacKay was the better performer. He does get some of the headier scenes to deal with but Chapman felt like he wasn't in a warzone. There were still good moments there but I wasn't as convinced by his performance. MacKay was acting even when he wasn't acting, his moments of silence were just as impressive as his scripted parts.
There is just so much in 1917 to look at, the background is so well thought out that you're drawn to it just as much as the action that's in the foreground. You're scanning everything as they move with them like you're a member of their regiment. It feels like it needs to be watched a couple of times. I watched it to see it, I watched it to watch the techniques and I feel like I want to see it again just to watch that background. None of these watches are for anything other than the technical side of things though. Even though I felt emotional connections with parts of the story it's still a basic quest with obstacles and while it's an interesting look at soldiers and their dedication it's not all that extraordinary.
This truly deserves to win a lot of technical awards. I'm not sure that the acting or script hit the same heights, but as a whole 1917 is definitely something special to see.
Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2020/01/1917-movie-review.html
Lance Corporal Blake has been told to report with another soldier, the respite from war was short but something important must be afoot. It's more than just important, it's life and death for Blake's older brother. His company have sent word that they're going to advance on the retreating German troops but communications are down and they don't know they're going headfirst into a trap.
Blake and Schofield are tasked with finding a way to their position to stop the advance before they lead 1,600 men into the ambush. Between them and their objective? No man's land, abandoned German trenches and large expanses of open land. One another and vigilance are all they have to get them to their objective.
I ended up seeing this twice on its opening weekend, mainly for technical reasons. When I completed my first watch I saw a lot of tweets about its "one-shot" filming and details of an interview about the filming techniques used, that all made me want to go back and watch for more detail.
If I'm honest with you I didn't notice the "one-shot" filming during my first trip to the cinema. In the interview I saw it said that there were no takes longer than 9 minutes, with its running time that meant that at the very least there were 14 cuts... of course I wanted to go and try to spot them. There were only a few "obvious" ones, but even then some of those felt so seamless that you wouldn't question if they said it was done in one (two) shot(s).
The effects in the film are fantastic, but also one of my only quibbles. There are several video clips with and without effects on floating around the internet and you'll see the massive effort that went into these effects. The major scene that comes to mind is in the trailer, Schofield is running across the field as the regiment is advancing around him. I had just assumed that the shot was aerial, but no, it was filmed from the back of a truck. That doesn't sound all that strange until you see in this video that the truck has a road to drive down that is then CGId out for the final cut. That was incredible to see. But this scene is also the only scene that made me doubt the effects too. When I watched it on the big screen it felt clear that some of the explosions were generated, and watching the clips proved that feeling to be right.
I could ramble on about the effects in this for ages but I need to remember there are other things to talk about... but well, I want to rave a little.
The nighttime scene is truly incredible to watch. It makes you paranoid and scared, you watch the shadows for soldiers and survivors, ugh, gripping and terrifying all at the same time.
Right, come one... move along, Emma!
Not much of a switch but I want to mention what I believe are mainly physical effects. One of the first scenes shows Blake and Schofield going through the trenches and over no man's land, walking through the trenches takes a long time, the fact they dug all of that and decked out the entire length for what is sometimes just a fleeting view. The soldiers as they sleep against the walls blending in like they're not there, the claustrophobic feeling as they walls creep higher and closer around them, and just the sheer volume of people down there. Both fast-paced and drawn out at the same time this whole sequence is complex and important.
After the trenches we see them go over the top into no man's land. The pair of them make an amazing job of playing in the mud. It's another part of the film that makes you look around. What's floating in the water? What's hidden in the mud? Truly spectacular additions and I imagine that on every viewing you'd see something different and horrific appear.
Come on, Emma... acting.
There are a lot of cameos from recognisable talented actors but the nature of the story means they're only the briefest of scenes. Mark Strong was probably my favourite of those, his tone at that critical part of the film was perfect.
To our main duo... Blake is played by Dean-Charles Chapman, a face I recognised but had to look up. I'd seen him most recently in The King and Blinded By The Light but clearly neither of those roles stuck with me. Schofield is played by George MacKay who I haven't seen in anything before. The pair had an interesting dynamic, there was certainly a camaraderie there but I swung between thinking they were good friends and just acquaintances because of their behaviour towards each other. Their characters felt very much at two ends of the scale, Blake optimistic and almost a little green, Schofield, battle-worn and sceptical.
Between the two I can easily say that George MacKay was the better performer. He does get some of the headier scenes to deal with but Chapman felt like he wasn't in a warzone. There were still good moments there but I wasn't as convinced by his performance. MacKay was acting even when he wasn't acting, his moments of silence were just as impressive as his scripted parts.
There is just so much in 1917 to look at, the background is so well thought out that you're drawn to it just as much as the action that's in the foreground. You're scanning everything as they move with them like you're a member of their regiment. It feels like it needs to be watched a couple of times. I watched it to see it, I watched it to watch the techniques and I feel like I want to see it again just to watch that background. None of these watches are for anything other than the technical side of things though. Even though I felt emotional connections with parts of the story it's still a basic quest with obstacles and while it's an interesting look at soldiers and their dedication it's not all that extraordinary.
This truly deserves to win a lot of technical awards. I'm not sure that the acting or script hit the same heights, but as a whole 1917 is definitely something special to see.
Originally posted on: https://emmaatthemovies.blogspot.com/2020/01/1917-movie-review.html