Friday 28 October 2016

The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

Every time I think there is nothing new to come out of the zombie genre some incredible film maker comes up with a new way to resurrect what should be a dead concept. The latest, an earnest drama about a "zombie girl," ends up being one of the most powerful and riveting films I have seen all year.

Zombie movies at their best are allegories (consumerism, rage, conformity) the ills of our lived modernity are often explored through this trope. Here writer M.R. Carey and director Colm McCarthy are exploring the othered, the ways we exploit and fear them, and the ways they often lead us into new worlds.

Carey and McCarthy beautifully breathe new life into the undead with this tale. They bring a minimalist, straight forward approach, one which focuses on the strength of their cast and story over spectacle. Newcomer Sennia Nanua is a strong, gifted centre taking on an almost impossible role and making it real. Her role is complicated and brutal and inspiring. She pulls it off beautifully. Everything about The Girl With All The Gifts comes together in that lightning in a bottle way that just makes you glad to see it.

If anything The Girl With All The Gifts proves that no genre runs out of new stories to tell. When people talk about "fatigue" of certain types of films (superheroes, vampires, whatever) they are being lazy. Sure there are zombie movies out there which are just repeating old ideas (get it, undead) but it's not because they are zombie movies. It's because they don't have anything new to say. That's not the case with this one, a beautiful, powerful film which will not disappoint. 

The Girl With All The Gifts
Starring: Sennia Nanua, Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine
Director: Colm McCarthy
Writer: M.R. Carey

Jack Reacher Never Go Back (2016)

If you've seen the trailer for Jack Reacher Never Go Back you see the essential problem with this film. It apparently has no idea how cheesy it is. The scene in the trailer has Tom Cruise take on a whole crowd of "thugs" then when the local sheriff shows up, Cruise smugly advises him what's going to happen (a phone ringing leading to the corrupt sheriff's arrest), just in time the phone rings and it all happens. The film presents this as if it shows how "cool" Cruise, I mean Reacher, is but instead it just makes him look like he's trying to hard. He's a past his prime movie star trying to see cool and not pulling it off. Jack Reacher has the air of trying to hard to reclaim something that's gone.

The whole film is shot by formerly A-list director Ed Zwick in an earnest approach with little to no sense of self-awareness. The character is a caricature of an action hero (you know the kind that avoids hails of bullets, takes on crowds of attackers in fist fights, and discovers clues without realistic evidence) but he doesn't seem to know just how much of a cliche he is. If there were either (1) a sense of self-awareness, an ironic winking to the audience, of the absurdity of the character, or (2) a realistic word built up to make us believe in the hero's absolute heroicness, we could maybe get on board with Reacher and his super agent coolness. But neither of these things exist in the Jack Reacher film world.

Jack Reacher Never Go Back has all the hallmarks of a vanity project; former A-lister set as star, a cast of otherwise lesser actors who won't steel the spotlight, a conveniently flattering plot to make the star look as good as possible. It has the opposite effect unfortunately. I kept thinking how far Cruise has fallen if this is his attempt to stay relevant.

The title of the film is really more of a warning. Never go back to seeing another Jack Reacher film. It's good advice.

Jack Reacher Never Go Back
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders
Directer: Edward Zwick
Writers: Richard Wenk, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz

Monday 24 October 2016

Inferno (2016)

I haven't really enjoyed the Robert Langdon series as directed by Ron Howard. The Da Vinci Code was a rather pedestrian thriller which suffered under the weight of its overblown plot. It's follow up, the rather tragically awkward Angels and Demons, was just plain bad. I wasn't expecting much from the third film in the series, Inferno.

Director Ron Howard seems to be attempting to make The Langdon Identity. More of an action movie than the previous films, Inferno apes Bond or Bourne more directly. The first two films tried to lead more on the mystery solving aspects with dashes of international super spy. This newest entry focuses more on the spy tropes.

And as pedestrian international action films go, Inferno isn't all that bad. It's more competent than Angels and Demons but falls into the same grandiosity problems The Da Vinci Code fell into. Basically that the story itself is just a little too silly for all the hype.

I was disappointed that the twists at the end didn't go the way they did in the book. I found the book's climax a bit more satisfying, cryptic, and cynical. The film goes for a more straight up save the world plot which again makes it feel sillier than I would have liked it to be. However I did like the addition of the romance. The film gives Langdon an age appropriate, peer based love interest instead of tying him to the young ingenue and that felt better than most Hollywood fare who pares the older man with a woman half his age.

So Inferno isn't a mess like its predecessor but its pretty much in line with a series that is average at best. If you are a fan, you'll likely be happy with it. As a more casual viewer, there is better stuff out there which will be more entertaining. 

Inferno
Starring: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Omar Sy, Ben Foster, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Irrgan Khan
Director: Ron Howard
Writer: David Koepp


Friday 21 October 2016

Denial (2016)

Not all opinions are of equal weight. Whether it is climate change, sexual assault, or, as in this case, the Holocaust, there are those who try to discredit the truth by invoking the right of free speech, by gaslighting others into doubting what we know to be true. This is a misunderstanding of free speech. Yes you are free to be a bigot, a racist, an antisemite and to speak your vile views, but you aren't free from being called out on it, for having your lies rebuked. That is what Denial is about.

Based on the true story of scholar Deborah Lipstadt's experience of being sued for liable after she called out Holocaust denier David Irving, Denial gets into the historicity of the Holocaust of WWII, but it is even more than that. It is an exploration of the ways those who try to suppress knowledge, fact, academia, education, for whatever political position they are trying to advance, exploit the virtue of free speech and twist it into its opposite.

The film gets bogged down often in its arguments, both the actual argument (the film shows us just how boring real trials are and how they are nothing like the way TV portrays them) and it's own logical argument. Unfortunately director Mick Jackson doesn't often find artful ways to tell his story, instead just letting it be told. He has Rachel Weisz be utterly forthright but rarely engaging. His points are all there but he doesn't make it overly fun to watch. The film fortunately doesn't drag and there are beautiful, powerful moments. Weisz and Wilkinson visiting Auschwitz is remarkably potent. But often Jackson gets caught up in TV style drama like dragging out the verdict despite the fact that we all know what it was.

While not a perfect film, as a moral lesson Denial is dead on. We are all entitled to our opinions but we aren't entitle to our own facts. We must stand up to the deniers out there, especially when it touches on a subject as vile and dangerous as hate mongering.

Denial
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Spall
Director: Mick Jackson
Writer: David Hare

American Honey (2016)


163 minutes can be a turn off for a lot of viewers. Even in an age where we binge watch television programs for days on end, a movie that lasts longer than 2 hours is a test of endurance for most. Perhaps it is because we see television "episodes" as more manageable units of time. We finish one and can then choose to move into another. With movies we often feel we have to commit to the whole thing at once. Even though so many of us don't go to theatres to see films (like I do) where you actually do have to commit to sitting through the entire thing. Watching at home we can pause for a break, save the rest for another day. In this day, watching a movie can take place at whatever pace we want. Yet we still have trouble sitting down to watch something more than a couple of hours.

It's too bad cause sometimes it's worth it.

This is one of those times. 

This is the story of a young woman with little to loose, a woman who we might say in our current parlance is part of the "underclass," who upends her life to run away with a traveling band of similarly situated folks who also have received the fuzzier end of America's lollipop. She leaves her small southern America town and hits the highway with a shady but joyful group of misfits who find some tepid survival together. It's La Boheme in red states, seeking to take what they can from those with more to eke out an existence that is better than what they were getting.

Brit filmmaker Andrea Arnold captures what is both a critique of the underbelly of the American Dream and a satisfyingly tragic portrait of a female survivor by sticking to a clear story. She uses the tropes of indie films, hand held cameras, realish desperation (are they really having sex?), extended scenes of everyday mundanity, to create a generally enjoyable road trip adventure. And it mostly works. Yes it is long and yes there are moments where it drags, but I appreciate it when a film maker takes the time to tell her story and this story is well told.

I called it tragic but the ending is actually fairly liberating. The tragedy comes in knowing our heroine isn't going to save herself beyond the life that she is prescribed. But she still takes control of it for herself and makes it what she needs it to be.  There is victory in that.

And it's worth seeing through. Despite what you may hate about Shia LaBeouf, he reminds us here why we all thought he had so much potential when he first broke out. And while I think new find Sasha Lane is a bit overhyped, she manages well throughout. American Honey is a melancholy little adventure worth tagging along for.


American Honey
Starring: Sasha Lane, Shia LaBeouf, Riley Keough
Director: Andrea Arnold
Writer: Andrea Arnold