Film Intel

Showing posts with label by Sam Turner. Show all posts

They Shall Not Grow Old: There has never been a more vivid representation of Ebert's 'empathy machine'

I am very fond of Roger Ebert's quote about films being empathy machines (I used it just the other day in fact). So much so that it's worth posting here with a bit more of the context.

Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live somebody else's life for a while. I can walk in somebody else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief.

Peter Jackson's revolutionary They Shall Not Grow Old is a film made for that quote. Taking archival footage from the First World War, Jackson and his team have stitched together a compelling Documentary artifact, a technical marvel and maybe the best example yet of an empathy machine.

Another quote, this time from Batman: 'People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy'. This is what They Shall Not Grow Old provides. It is a dramatic depiction of war, perhaps the most dramatic available. Jackson presents the grainy, almost experimental, footage of World War One, but corrects the timing and frame rate so that the participants move smoothly across the screen. He goes further by adding colour and sound. The sound is incredible. Sometimes it is merely contextual and other times these people - ghosts from history; your father or grandfather or his father - speak to you. Their lips read by experts and their lines delivered by actors, the effect is the emotional apex of war on film.

Whilst the technical skill of what's involved here is unquestionable, Jackson's choices of what to include, from the BBC's archive, also bear mention. There is a deliberate attempt here to both unearth the reality of war in colour, moving pictures and also to show scenes which typify it as well. We see jovial training and arriving at the front, before that gives way to rat-infested pits, the latrines and the remains of the dead. Jackson doesn't flinch, as he might; colour and sound is reserved not only for camaraderie and shared mealtimes, but for death and explosions.

It has been easy to knock Jackson over the last few years, but history is written by a series of people who looked at something accepted as 'how things are' and questioned whether that was really true. Jackson has done nothing less than change the image in our heads of the First World War. In doing so he has recreated empathy with people who could previously perhaps best have been seen in the inside of a text book and are now, once again, as human as you or I. A nagging feeling says to me that They Shall Not Grow Old is not eligible for many year end awards, because most of its footage was not shot specially for the documentary. Don't be fooled by the results of such ceremonies. There is unlikely to be a more important film this year.

By Sam Turner. Sam is editor of Film Intel, and can usually be found behind a keyboard with a cup of tea. He likes entertaining films and dislikes the other kind. He's on Google+, Twitter and several places even he doesn't yet know about.

Widows: the battle between plot and film

It feels too easy to reduce Widows down to the unusual battle between mainstream writer Gillian Flynn's script and director Steve McQueen's fine art background being mashed together into a heist film. And yet, sometimes, the easy answers are the right ones. The pairing of Flynn and McQueen looked slightly odd from the start and, post-screening, it still feels like a match that has struggled to gel. There are scenes here that look like early Tarantino; but Flynn does not have the genre nous of Tarantino the writer and McQueen is not as interested in probing genre visuals as Tarantino the director. The result can sometimes end up feeling like a post-Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs film that has not seen Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs.

You can see how the two key behind-the-camera talents here have collaborated to good effect on occasion. Without McQueen, Flynn's script may not have escaped the lure of Gerard Butler as the leading man. Without Flynn you can imagine a scenario where McQueen might have abandoned established heist movie conventions altogether. When the balancing works Widows is impressive. There are a number of scenes where something happens in the background; a chasing car; a passing runner. McQueen foregrounds characters and ups tension in one swoop.

Each one of the three leads (Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki and Michelle Rodriguez) have clear, if perhaps obvious, motivation. Davis is being chased by mobsters. Debicki pines (or does she?) for her previous life where everything was provided for her. Rodriguez has kids to think of but, more than that, wants to get on and succeed; an early scene where her shop is taken off her because of her husband's debts sets the tone.

The tension in the film boils down to the battle between the plotting and everything else; character, social comment, visuals and more. The plot cannot keep up. Time and time again obstructions are raised for characters to overcome. Then they just disappear. The crew need a driver. Then they have one. 'We need to move like men', Davis says, after Rodriguez has struggled to carry a big pack. The problem is never mentioned again. The group need to understand what some blueprints represent. Then Debicki gets a 'boyfriend' who happens to be able to explain it all. Perhaps, when you come down to it, you could boil most films down into that sort of description, but Widows blatant plot conceits are the sort that grate. If you can't spot who the group are going to need to steal from from very early on then you aren't trying.

McQueen sometimes helps and sometimes hinders. There are tender character moments and quiet scenes that stop the point-by-point movement. But then there's a scene where Davis inadvertently discovers a key reveal, which harks back to something we saw earlier in the film. Not only is the reveal palm-to-face obvious, but McQueen then cuts back to the same scenes we saw earlier in the film, just in case we hadn't got it. It's paint-by-numbers, make-sure-the-audience-is-keeping-up, directing, a world away from Shame or 12 Years A Slave.

The troubles of the film boil down to another late reveal regarding Veronica (Davis) and Rawlings' (Liam Neeson) son. Depicted another way, this could have linked several threads in the film, commenting on social justice and disenfranchisement, the destruction of family (which, admittedly, you can read the film as explicitly being about) and more, as well as providing vital background as to why several characters behave the way they do. Instead it feels throwaway; completely detached from the narrative being told; it does not seem to have huge place here or impact on what we see in the two hour runtime. It summarises an uneven film that is not without vision and emotional character moments - that scene has both - but equally never ties all that it offers together into rounded entertainment or genre-as-comment.

Colette: French sexiness, by British people

Colette is a pretty and often engaging look at Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, the French author active mainly during the early 20th Century and nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1948.

What it is not is a 'French drama'.

Shot in Hungary and at various UK locations, produced by Brit Stephen Woolley and directed by Brit Wash Westmoreland, with two British stars, Colette never nails the feeling of 1900s Paris, nor embraces the sensuality and sexuality the subject matter lends itself towards. It feels like a free-spirited French topic, as seen through the eyes of us over the channel and the repressed up-tightness we are so famous for.

This leads, inevitably, to the unfortunate guessing game where you wonder what might have been. Were Colette's story to be put into the hands of Pedro Almodóvar or Desiree Akhavan or Olivier Assayas, to name just three tantalising possibilities, then you wonder if something all the more daring, more lascivious and in-touch with its material might have been produced.

As it is, Westmoreland (who co-wrote the script with husband Richard Glatzer, who sadly passed away in 2015) organises what is here adroitly, if not with any great spunk. The leads, Keira Knightley and Dominic West, crackle with some level of significant spark and, given that they are surrounded by a fairly thin supporting cast, Westmoreland does well to rarely let them off screen. Indeed; no-one develops significantly beyond the central pairing and it is difficult to think of a scene that does not feature at least one of the couple.

West's Willy is genius, particularly placed in our modern context, #MeToo and our muddy sexual politics. Willy is resolutely not as a monster would normally be painted, but monster he is. He controls his throng of ghost writers by ransoming their work with his name and squandering the proceeds on lavish luncheons. But Westmoreland never presents it as such. There is never the wink or the nudge that what Willy is doing is evil. He just does it. On at least two occasions he explains to Colette that his affairs are 'just what men do'. A late significant action he takes as part of the act of saving himself is so blasé that he could well simply be quaffing the copious amounts of wine he consumes in restaurants. Here is your monster of today as this film sees it; unhidden, preening, presenting what he does as perfectly natural.

Knightley is much more subtle, but her character stands up to Willy in the moments where the drama demands it. Otherwise, hers is a journey of somewhat quiet awakening, punctuated by moments that show the film's strengths and where it falls short. A passionate, physical affair at about the half way point is given the lace curtain effect and fumbled even more once West gets involved. Its resolution is punctual, without any European flinging of tables and chairs; heightened emotion made British. A later love of Colette though gets much better shrift, though it is still short. Colette, by now exploring her sexuality more fully, embraces love rather than lust and the film finds something of a comfort point; walks in French (English) countryside with meaningful conversations on gender roles and the monster in the sitting room.

Watching films with a two-and-a-half year-old (a poem) (yes really)

I have recently been reading a lot of the poetry of contemporary poet Brian Bilston (discovered via none other than this parish's Ben Broadribb). In an attempt to both a) write something in his inimitable style, (because it's great and I like a challenge), b) at least partially provide an excuse (at least to myself) for a lack of posting, c) write something about fatherhood and films, and how fatherhood changes films and d) to just... write something, here's a poem about watching films with a two-and-a-half year-old. The title took ages to think up.

Watching films with a two-and-a-half year-old

I've watched more films on a plane than in a cinema this year,
A two-point-five year-old son means there's just no time for Cape Fear.

Watching films up on high isn't exactly ideal,
But they do have those mini wine bottles and those blankets you can steal.

Still, there's plenty of 'screenings' happening in our house,
Totoro almost daily, and the odd one with Disney's mouse.

Some are watched for an hour, some only for five minutes, or two,
The two-point-five year-old saw 101 Dalmatians whilst he was having a poo.

I've watched more films on a plane than in a cinema this year,
And some would say that's a tragedy, (though I'd settle for a good Comedy, or even the new version of King Lear).

Kubo and The Two Strings was perhaps a bit too dark,
But I think he'd forgotten about it by the time we arrived at the park.

Song of the Sea is one our favourites; dad, son and mum watching Cartoon Saloon's best,
One of that crowd decided to take everything off but his vest.

I've watched more films on a plane than in a cinema this year, and that's a trade worth making,
There's less movies now but plenty more hugs and afternoons of messy baking.

Yes, sure there might be the occasional potty accident,
But there's also a huge smile when you create a den, or a DVD-box tent.

The best ones might not get watched as often but they're still fulfilling a purpose,
'Empathy machines' and man, you look at him and think... 'it was all worth it'.

The low-fi, B-movie Thriller lives on in Bushwick. Still isn't very good.

Bushwick appears to have been afforded a level of respect above that normally granted to low budget Thrillers, starring a recently ex-wrestler. For reference, see early John Cena vehicles The Marine and 12 Rounds, or rather, don't.

Some snappy pacing and a dedication to grit aside it's difficult to see why Bushwick has been elevated out of its particular allotted place. Dave Bautista, the man formally known simply as Bautista, has shown significant promise in Guardians Of The Galaxy, but here he's back being another ex-wrestler who can't really act, given a sound mix which unkindly suggests he can barely speak. Predictably he does finally get a shouty moment to prove he can act/annunciate, barking at co-star Brittany Snow just before he breaks down and gives her his life story.

That odd couple are paired together when Lucy (Snow) emerges from the subway with her boyfriend (soon departed) to find her old neighbourhood of Bushwick at war. With whom exactly isn't made clear and the film is all the better for it the longer it isn't made clear. When one of the black-suited men is finally cornered and spills the beans on the 'plan' (after Bautista has performed the obligatory 'looks like a scrap, might be a wrestling move' on him) mouths start to open and eyes start to widen. Really? Is that really the excuse for the film's violence? Are we expected to believe that one of the antagonists sat down and seriously thought that was going to work? Does he also have a job as a Scooby-Doo scriptwriter?

The logic then is lacking and the same goes for the co-director's (Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott) exploration of the themes on show. Bushwick is a multicultural, integrated neighbourhood and whilst the antagonists think it should just roll over, the residents are banding together to fight back. Cue scenes of orthodox Jews charging armed men with assault rifles and the local gang (or 'club', if you believe the leader's mother) supplying munitions to the citizen uprising. It's a nice idea, but it's muddled and ill-explored. There seems to be scope in Lucy's family to explore the idea of strength through integration and harmony, for example, but her sister is introduced far too later in proceedings to matter, which also ends up undercutting some of the plot machinations.

Murnion and Milott shoot mainly in close-up and behind the characters, following them at close quarters as they navigate the warring streets. This produces effective imagery of armed men disappearing behind the car Lucy and Stupe (Bautista) are using to hide and exiting, frame right. It's effective on this level of budget and whilst it doesn't entirely convince you that Bushwick is now Iraq, it does get close. Too soon though there's a lack of logic as to why the characters are going where they are going. There's an almost videogame level of hopping from place to place to get this person or complete this quest. It becomes an excuse for another effective scene behind a car, a reason for the characters not to just stay in a flat and wait it out, rather than anything more involved. That fact is eventually proven when the finales start and your emotional engagement stays at home.

Quick awards season takes: Three Billboards, The Post, Molly's Game

There is plenty of talk at the moment around a The Post ‘backlash’, which I must admit to me seems like a misnomer. Was it a film that garnered a massive amount of support to begin with? It sits with just a 6.6 average on IMDb and a 65% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The critic Rotten Tomato score is admittedly better at 86%.

Still, it’s not as if there have been unequivocal raves for it and I’m on board with not unequivocally raving for it. Spielberg’s recent cinema has, for me, lagged behind his contemporaries, lacked dynamic plotting and visual flourish and, most surprisingly of all for this director, followed some fairly turgid pacing.

The Post is the apex of that trend. It plays as if Spielberg hasn’t seen the newsroom covered on film before. There’s none of the tension or drive of Spotlight, none of the thrill of Zodiac. And that’s before we get on to the All The President’s Men references, which raised The Post for me from dull and flaccid to downright irritating.

The film covers the period immediately before All The President’s Men and is therefore almost obligated to touch on it. But the way that this happens, placing itself in the All The President’s Men continuum, has a smack of arrogance about it. Does Spielberg deserve licence to give himself such a lofty perch? On balance, yes, probably; but his film does not. We are a whisker away from Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) meeting a young journalist who introduces himself as either Woodward or Bernstein, prompting a double-take of James Bond-pigeon proportions. It’s unsophisticated, plain of message and lacking in thrills.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a brighter watch, although not to the point where I felt it troubling my top 10 of the year (constantly in progress here).

This is the first Martin McDonagh film I’ve felt mixed on, rather than at one end of the spectrum or the other. I admire the morals of the film and the attack on the ills of the world, the intricacies of being human and making mistakes and the plain wrong.

That said, in doing all of that, McDonagh comes across a little like a highly strung film student; someone who knows right from wrong and is going to lay all of that out over a couple of hours, so that we do too.

In doing so he leaves himself a lot to resolve and only manages a portion of it. One character turns into an omnipotent controller of the plot and the other characters within it. Another goes through an about turn that chimes as much with his previous roles as it grates against his initial casting against type. The victim in the central murder is lost somewhere in everything else that is going on. Perhaps that’s a fair reflection of the familial chaos that follows such an event.

The performances stick with you above anything else. Lucas Hedges shows Manchester By The Sea was no fluke. Woody Harrelson does his thing and can continue to do it until the end of time. Sam Rockwell is impressive. Frances McDormand is a titan and deserves awards recognition. Abbie Cornish bizarrely fails to mask her Australian accent on a regular basis. Caleb Landry Jones’ drawl is, for probably the first time ever, not completely distracting.

Giving much more trouble to my top 10 consideration was Molly’s Game, during which Jessica Chastain gets to take on a series of moronic powerful men and Idris Elba acts as the audience’s moral guide. Elba’s character is at once impressed by Chastain’s Molly and uncertain of her aims and values. As he attempts to unpick them so do we.

There are two missteps that belie the fact that Aaron Sorkin is a longtime writer but first time director. A scene where Molly is assaulted is shot with horrible fades and generally gives the impression that Sorkin has never directed a piece of very physical ‘action’ before, nor asked anyone how he should do it. Late on, he manufactures two characters together in a way that doesn’t make sense and could surely have been solved in the script.

That script though is impressive and Sorkin proves that he can keep up with himself. He has described the film as his typical mid-budget adult Thriller; the only things he knows how to write and now, demonstrably, direct. If screenplay is everything and this is by one of our greatest living screenwriters then, hey, it must be good to a degree. The real skill is in that negotiating of Molly's morals. Sorkin has spoken of how he was never in doubt of where Molly lay on a spectrum of good and evil, but the film paints in enough shades of grey to both keep you guessing and keep the character sympathetic.

Elba, released from the mumbling shackles of his iconic Bell and Luther roles, really impresses. His future is more intelligent and more cerebral than Bond; interestingly a similar arc that Chastain continues to tread.

Mudbound: Netflix's Oscar-winner?

The Netflix business model revolves around offering something for everyone so that no-one can refuse a subscription. This 'all things to all people' mentality is clearly working so far (depending on how far you dig into the accounts), with one significant area still 'under development': feature films. Looking down a list of 'Netflix films' you could probably pick one or two that interest you, whatever your tastes, but there's little there that's truly unmissable. Do Ricky Gervais fans need to see Special Correspondents? Will Steven King completists subscribe just for Gerald's Game?

If Netflix were to get an Oscar winner though, things change. People seek out Oscar winners. They are unmissable. You can see where Netflix's thinking is going. In the coming year they will release films like Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, another that falls into that category, but first comes Mudbound, a genuine Oscar contender, at least in some of the acting categories.

And acting is where most of the film's merit lies. All of the characters here are uncomfortable in their present situations to some degree (except Jason Clarke's Henry, who should be), which invites terrific turns of conflict and inner angst. Director Dee Rees grants most of the major characters with a segment of Malickian monologue, over Malickian imagery, which gives each star their moment in the spotlight/beatific corn field. Carey Mulligan, Rob Morgan, Jason Mitchell and Mary J. Blige are all terrific. The latter is amongst the favourites for Best Supporting Actor. Garrett Hedlund still cannot quite shake the feeling that his efforts are greater than their end results, but those efforts are at least there.

The film tells the story of a white family (led by Clarke) working the same land as a black family (led by Morgan) in rural Mississippi, both during World War Two and in the immediate post-war period where both families welcome home a younger family member who has been away fighting (Hedlund and Mitchell). The issue with the film is that that is a big melting pot of characters, socico-economics, race, gender and plot and Rees never manages to balance it all satisfactorily.

Pappy (Jonathan Banks), for example, the senior member of Henry's clan disappears for a vast swathe of the narrative, proving finally to be a dramatic plot device waiting to be revealed, rather than a true character. Another white family, working for Henry, are introduced and seem to be heading somewhere, but you have to watch very closely for their conclusion, which arguably doesn't match that moniker. Each character has a complex relationship with every other on the farm but a massive amount of the most interesting ones get only lip service. Henry and Laura (Mulligan) are set up as on a rocky road from Mulligan's early narration, yet they get more and more time to show that rocky road in full trundling travel. The few interactions that Mulligan has with Blige are delicious, but they are just that: few and far between. The excuses for why characters aren't developing with other characters properly get thinner and thinner. 'Henry always seemed to be away when something happened', Laura tells us at one point.

The film ends on a genius piece of suggestive fancy, a bittersweet note of hope, which hints at what this could have been had a little more refinement been utilised elsewhere. As it is, Mudbound may well be Netflix's first Oscar winner. But it doesn't quite earn an 'unmissable' tag.

Cartoon Saloon's The Breadwinner: just how bleak do you like your animation?

I've recently rewatched Cartoon Saloon's Song Of The Sea with my nineteen-month old, albeit in three thirty-minute stints. Whilst every nuance of the plot might not quite have been absorbed, it is fair to say that it had an effect. There were sections watched in complete stillness, mouth agape. When Ben, the protagonist of the film, comes to an emotional realisation late on, and sheds a tear, there was a rubbing of eyes from the small one on my own sofa. During the climax, Cú, an old English sheepdog, spurred on by two spirit dogs, races home, with Ben and his sister Saoirse on his back, as the music stirs a crescendo. Most of that section was absorbed whilst bouncing around the sofa, shouting at the screen in two minutes of pure joy. It's the first time anything on film has produced that sort of reaction.

It's with mixed emotions then that I watched Cartoon Saloon's latest, The Breadwinner, alone. Directed by Nora Twomey, who co-directed The Secret Of Kells with Song Of The Sea's director, Tomm Moore, the film tells the story of Parvana (Saara Chaudry), an eleven year-old girl growing up in Afghanistan. When her father is arrested and taken away by the Taliban, Parvana disguises herself as a boy so that she can support her older sister, mother and younger brother.

From very early on, The Breadwinner created an uneasy feeling in my stomach, which I never shook off until the end credits. There is genuine and repeated heartache here, not just in the reveals and the developments of the plot, but in the very fabric of the film. Mark Kermode often quotes Roger Ebert's assertion that films are 'empathy machines' and never is that more true than here. The Breadwinner confronts the hardships of the world - and the very specific hardship of this time and location - in such a matter of fact manner that it is impossible not to be moved by what it has to show. There will be guilt too. The idea that the events of the story happen in a world to which we all share citizenship seems preposterous. How can we allow it? How did we allow it?

Twomey's film shows Cartoon Saloon refining their animation style to new heights. The content matter is belied by the gorgeous and fluid animation and sound design. Like Song Of The Sea, there are diversions to slightly different animation styles throughout, mainly to a story Parvana tells in segments throughout the film about a young boy from a village challenging an evil force which has taken the village's supplies. 'Is it a happy story, or a sad story?', Parvana's friend asks at one point. 'Just you wait and see', comes the reply.

Both the film within the film and The Breadwinner itself take a similar approach. By the conclusions, you can read happiness or sadness, or maybe just life. That's about as a bold a message from a 'children's' animation as you're likely to receive. If you or your children found Inside Out too emotional or cerebral then be warned: this is another level entirely.

Which leaves me in something of a quandary. This is 'notable' in the truest sense of the word. It's a western animation that deals with major social questions in a mature, considered and gorgeous way. It is currently in my top ten of the year list and I suspect that it will stay there. It is also, I would suggest, too bleak for most children under thirteen (it has a PG-13 rating in the US), which means that it will be some time before I can sit down with my son and enjoy Cartoon Saloon's latest. That feels a little like a missed opportunity. If some of this story could have been balanced by a little more lightness then the message of the film could have made it beyond the thirteen-and-above audience and to Cartoon Saloon's core crowd. Perhaps that's being too harsh on a film that dares to tell a story many would have rejected and, because of that, creates something of true significance.

Quick awards season takes: Lady Macbeth and, erm... Despicable Me 3

Awards season is here! In Hollywood's head this means glitz and glamour. In reality, John Travolta is dusting down his tux, ready to prowl the red carpets performing all kinds of 'hilarious' 'shenanigans'. Meanwhile, studios are organising their pushes for awards-likely releases, which brings me neatly on to...

Lady Macbeth, which will probably feature at a few of the independently-minded awards and may sneak onto the BAFTAs in some way shape or form. The writing debut of Alice Birch and the feature debut of director William Oldroyd, the film looks lovely, but nevertheless manages to leave you sitting in a slightly uncomfortable manner. Some of this may be my own fault. For whatever reason (and I'm aware it should be fairly obvious) I did not have where the film was going pegged and the change in tone over what appeared to be an interesting sexual awakening drama left me a little cold. It's a cop out, but I need to see it again: the feeling I left with - of the character handling being flat-footed - may be down entirely to my expectations of where it was going to go.

That said, there are definite areas that smacked of 'first draft'. The story, based on a novel by the Russian writer, Nikolai Leskov, hinges on a character losing the power of speech when she has information to share that would stop the plot in its tracks. In writing terms that's a whisker away from everything being a dream and in directing terms it's never sold well enough to make you forget it. The opening is also a little too full of hints about Katherine's (Florence Pugh) wild nature. She talks of being 'comfortable outside', whilst other characters mix thinly veiled metaphors about animals being tied up for too long. Pugh is good but overall and, again, on first viewing only, it didn't live up to some of the effusive praise it has received.

At the other end of the spectrum, Despicable Me 3 starts with two minions becoming DJs after the opening action sequence. Their hit of choice is Ricky Martin's 1995 'classic' Un, Dos, Tres, Maria which tells you all sorts of things about how out of touch the film is and how clever the 'jokes' and musical cues are going to be.

Universal is pushing Despicable Me 3 for Best Animated gongs, but really this is the franchise running its course. The writing and jokes are lame compared to the first two films and even the minions offer little respite this time round. The story ideas test the definition of that word, opting for the 'long lost sibling' angle and doing very little of interest with it beyond the initial, obvious, 'surprise' jokes.

Worse, the film seems to have completely lost sight of what crowds of children want to watch. Even adults are likely to be a bit non-plussed by the ex-child TV star villain, complete with eighties tash, charmless robot companion and near constant glitterball accessory. What nine year-olds will make of jokes pitched around Rubix cubes is anyone's guess, but as someone who actually knows what a Rubix cube is, I'm happy to tell them that they weren't funny.

It lost me at Un, Dos, Tres and never offered anything that suggested that decision was in any way isolated or forgivable.

The place of the Western in 2017: Ti West's In A Valley Of Violence

The fact that the Western is a genre intensely linked to the state of play in American culture, sociology and theology is a statement approaching cliche. The discussion of the modern place of genre entrants is inseparable from its roots in (predominantly) white American expansion and the pejorative meaning of 'the American way'.

In one of the latest entrants to the genre, director Ti West shows an awareness of what the genre can consider. Like many of his contemporary forebears though, West doesn't seem to know exactly what the Western has to say today. In A Valley Of Violence proves both that the genre is alive (or at least present) and confirms that it has largely said all it has to say.

We begin with Paul (Ethan Hawke), happening across a luckless priest (Burn Gorman) swigging from a whiskey bottle. After a predictable encounter where Paul and canine companion Abby prove their metal, Paul makes it to Denton where the ridiculous Gilly (James Ransone) 'rules' the roost like a fratboy banker on coke.

Gilly, though overplayed wildly by Ransone, is more or less the sole new idea when it comes to contemporary relevance. Surely destined to be played by Ben Foster had he not gone on to bigger and better things, the character treats his woman (a wasted Karen Gillan) terribly, brags to his friends without substance and is both criticised and humoured by his father (John Travolta) in equal measure. It's a nice idea, but Ransone's execution leaves something to be desired and the character lacks the menace you need in an antagonist.

The film is then notable in the minor sense for the ideas it has which have been considered better elsewhere, though still with fairly little genre progression.

The apex of the film turns at around the halfway point. The sequence itself is unremarkable, featuring as it does a predictable death and a decision by Ransone which passes Bond-villain-stupid and makes it to Scooby-Doo-lazy. At that point though, West gives himself half a film to carry out the titular violence. Open Range has done this. Open Range has also done this significantly better. West shoots and choreographs with little flair and Eric Robbins' photography is a long way from, say, Robert Richardson's work on The Hateful Eight, even allowing for the latter's much-hailed non-digital approach.

West, best known for his work in the Horror genre, bring elements of that to the finale but, again, he's been beaten to the punch recently. Bone Tomahawk is a genuinely nasty Western/Horror cross that really goes for the grisly elements, and follows through with character moments that fit. West settles for a few close-ups of bloodied people and a heightening of the strings in Jeff Grace's already too-obvious score.

On the plus side, when the script is lazily having Hawke explain backstory by way of talking to Abby, there's some really great work from Travolta. Though now mainly appearing in forgettable tumbleweed and awkward red carpet encounters, the veteran reminds us that he has the gravitas Ransone is lacking and the smart delivery to make rapid fire delivery sing. Apart from a disappointingly low-key conclusion, he elevates West's film whenever he is on screen.

Amazon Instant Video hidden gems: Black Coal, Thin Ice

The type of winter on show in Black Coal, Thin Ice places the film into the pantheon of offerings that use the season as, if not a character, then a very distinct, black, cold-hearted mood. Think Fargo with an eastern sense of humour and you're somewhere in the right region. This is the kind of ice-blanketed landscape that sees each of the main characters wrap their faces in thick scarves or fall over when they should be doing something more important. It's the type of setting, mood and plot where ice skates are a primary murder weapon, though icicles could just have readily been used.

Who knows how this ended up on my watchlist, but I strongly suspect Leeds International Film Festival had something to do with it at some point. A Chinese offering following a flawed but brilliant cop on a shambolic trail of a killer who manages to dispose of their victims in various coal heaps throughout China has LIFF written all over it.

The narrative and seasonal chillyness is bracketed by traditionally off-kilter eastern cinematic levity. In an early arrest scene, one cop flings himself across the picture, to presumably land on a suspect who has since exited stage right. As the cop disappears from view, a stool is flung in from the wings. It's classic Bugs Bunny and silent cinema stuff. In another scene, Zhang (Fan Liao), now a drunk security guard, has stopped at the side of an icy road for a lie down. A kindly passerby stops to check how he is, before promptly stealing his bike. The culture norms may be different and, arguably, the dark side of it is darker, but this is only an occasional 'yarp' or 'you betcha' from The Coens' own icy wilderness.

As Zhang continues to investigate the murders some years after they first began, the plot wraps itself in too many holes to be entirely satisfying. The main riddle can be solved after about an hour by those paying attention and is confirmed about ten minutes later. Some of what remains, following Wu (Lun-Mei Kwei) feels fairly superfluous. Given the film's season, its economic links and its downtrodden 'heroes', you would have thought it could muster more to say. The IMDb trivia tells us that the first cut was two-hundred and ten minutes long and perhaps in the edit something has been lost.

There's certainly major suggestions that the original script had something more to do with misogyny, even before the finale. We open, for example, on Zhang with what appears to be his recently ex-wife, in a bravura sequence that follows a spiralling severed hand and cuts to Zhang's ex-wife's own (still attached), on a bed. But despite a constant slew of scenes that factor into the conversation (not least what appears to be a troubling rape sequence late on), writer/director Yi'nan Diao can't seem to hone in on what it is he was trying to say, and a general feeling of everything around the topic not quite adding up to much pervades.

What remains though is a frosty, entertaining mood piece, worth seeing for many reasons, even if the moralising isn't one of them.

The underlying Game Of Thrones anxieties released by Beyond The Wall

SPOILER WARNING - The following article discusses key plot points in several Game Of Thrones episodes, including the latest: Season Seven: Episode Six - Beyond The Wall.

The first time the Game Of Thrones doubts were released was at the end of Season Five.

Jon Snow was dead. Originally a fairly minor character - behind at least Robb in the hero stakes - Snow had grown into the series' much-needed hero with 'stickability' and a skill at not getting stabbed. Then he was unceremoniously offed by tricky betrayers, in a death which called to mind countless other unexpected deaths in the series and therefore carried a level of plausibility.

The problem was that, as it appeared more likely that Jon could be gone for god, this one hurt and shouldn't have happened. As the season ended and we faced a winter-long wait to find out the true outcome, there was a creeping anxiety. Had the showrunners got this one wrong? Had they made the mistake in thinking that everyone in the show was disposable, instead of merely most of the cast save Jon, Daenerys and, at that point, Tyrion.

They hadn't, of course, but the Games Of Thrones anixety had been born. The showmakers could come perilously close to getting things wrong. For all of the key character deaths we had come to expect, at what point was one going to arrive that tipped the balance of the show over from 'bloodthirsty' to 'bloody stupid'? The idea that things could go wrong in this most thrilling and successfully complex of shows was suddenly very real.

Beyond The Wall, this week's episode and the penultimate of Season Seven, brought that anxiety back in a new form. Whilst previously the showrunners have excelled in managing a vast number of plots and subplots, characters and motivations, suddenly things were all wrong.

There was a very real sense of an ending, and not one that anyone was going to be satisfied with.

By the time the camera zoomed in on a dragon's eye about to turn blue, with inevitability as glum as an ice king, we had witnessed Gendry running a marathon distance in three or four shots, where previously forty-odd minutes of episode had been needed. Meanwhile, for our heroes stuck on an ice island, time passed. No-one really seems to know how much exactly. The tension, hardly there to begin with, evaporated like steam off a previously wet and cold, now flaming, sword.

The root cause of the situation is that Thrones has a stated aim to finish next year and a lot of threads to cover in the meantime. The showrunners seem to have inherited an anxiety of their own, rushing over events which previously would have merited episode-long examination to squeeze in what currently seems to be the periphery, presumably in order to give everything a neat conclusion.

It's just a few episodes ago, last season, that The Battle Of The Bastards gave over most of an episode-long runtime to a single skirmish. Here, the key finale gets barely twenty minutes, as time is given over to Sansa and Arya, apparently being torn asunder by the plotting of Little Finger, not to mention the quest of the band of seven, whose time together spanned just one episode.

Meanwhile, back on the ice, the desire to wrap things up neatly results in the aforementioned dragon shot which every man and his dire wolf saw coming.

The anxiety then is around what's to come. Thrones continues to be one of the most thrilling shows on television and Beyond The Wall was no exception. But being thrilling doesn't mean you excuse yourself from logic, structure and sound storytelling. Fans can forgive a lot of things, but many will struggle to forgive the show (which started out so complex) ending with a whimper of predictability, haste and slap-dash brashness.

There's a rumbling current in the series at the moment about two characters who are related, but who haven't quite worked that out yet. The longer the hints rumble on, the closer we get to having Basil Exposition (possibly in the form of Samwell Tarley and his newly acquired scrolls) pop up and reveal everything in roughly the most unsatisfying manner possible, just so the show can move to its next self-imposed phase of closure.

And that's just one of the plot threads Thrones has to wrap up. It's not hard to imagine one or two being closed in a similar way to sending Gendry off on a several hundred mile run.

And don't get me started on the second saving of Uncle Benjen.

Another opinion on the seven Dunkirk 'things', about which everyone else has an opinion

'Look ma! It's Justin Timberlake!'

Harry Styles

No matter how good or how bad Harry Styles is, he is still Harry Styles. The idea of casting largely unknowns for the band of British squaddies works... until you stick an exceptionally recognisable pop star in the middle of them. Even your Grandad has a chance of pointing out 'that bloke off of TV. Not Simon Cowell. The other one'.

Mrs Film Intel made a solid point on this on the way out of the cinema. Yes, it had distracted her too, but Styles' acting seemed OK and Justin Timberlake eventually overcame this sort of objection didn't he? Yes, he did, arguably when he got to The Social Network in 2010, having started with a few cameos, a few straight-to-video offerings and Alpha Dog in 2006. Did Dunkirk really need to provide Styles' Alpha Dog moment? Would it not have been better for Nolan to provide his Social Network moment in a few years time? The film would lose nothing from losing him.

'It's a suspense film'

Nolan has talked at length about the fact that he approached Dunkirk as a suspense film, in the mould of Hitchcock, rather than a War movie. He is successful in one of the three sections. Tom Hardy’s fighter pilot, early on, clocks his fuel gauge and checks his levels against those of Jack Lowden. With the inevitability of a loud Hans Zimmer score (we’ll get to that) the fuel gauge is soon broken and Hardy’s pilot has to make decisions not only on destination but on how involved he can get in the skirmishes below. It’s a simple and effective bit of plotting.

The 'Nolaness' of everything

Nolan is now such a looming figure in cinema that he is a having an almost meta impact on how I perceive his films. His decision not to use digital enhancements, for example, made it difficult to fully suspend disbelief during Dunkirk; the opposite effect the director aims for. Instead of thinking ‘oh look at those boats rescuing the sailors’, I found myself thinking ‘wow, those boats were all really there’. Nolan shouts so loudly about his lack of artifice that he creates this second layer of in-camera artifice for himself. ‘This is so real!’, you can almost hear him saying, as he presents something to you which is entirely fake.

One hour, one day, one week

The decision to split the timeline worked for me... apart from at the points where the three stories converged. Again, as with Nolan’s ardent claims of reality, these moments operated like Blofeld’s reveal in Spectre; tricks the film thinks are extremely clever, but in actuality are base expressions of coherence. Nolan is praised for treating his audience as intelligent beings, but these moments invite viewers to proclaim simple recognition and treat it as professorial revelation. They don’t recognise intelligence, or even require it; they’re cheap blockbuster tricks.

Private Ryan's guts

The cries of ‘where’s the blood’ are the Dunkirk criticism I understand the least. If you saw the soldiers drowning in upturned boats, those on the beach being thrown into the air by the neatly plotted line of bombs, the soldier walking into the sea to attempt to swim the channel and thought ‘this needs more blood!’ then my feeling is that the film isn't the main problem here. Yes, it eschews gore where others have pursued it and yes, I'm sure part of that was to earn a 12A rating. Is that a problem? Not one bit.

Zimmer's toy set

Shiny-headed music maestro Moby once said that as the music got faster and louder the quiet bits got more important. Apparently Moby and Hans Zimmer don't hang out much, to the surprise of nobody and disappointment of me. Zimmer's score, like a comedy tumbling dumpster that won't stop falling, occasionally finds a moment of music in a soundscape of drones, whines and tinkles. It's as much sound design as score and it does work in part. But it also relentlessly preaches at you to a degree that's distracting. Like the 'Nolaness' of the film, the 'Zimmerness' takes that incessant Inception drone and ups the ante. In Nolan's next, Zimmer is reportedly just going to shout at you for two hours.

Rylance and Hardy

Back to the youngsters on the beach. Whether it's Harry Styles or the 'unknowns', none of them are as good as Mark Rylance or Tom Hardy. Any time on the beach, particularly after a few people prove themselves to be a little unsavoury, is time away from the stiff upper lip of the more experienced hands, around which I would have liked to have seen this film built even more.

Doing David Grann justice: The Lost City Of Z, 2017's best film so far

Though you might not have heard of him, David Grann will soon be a film-making titan.

A New Yorker 'reporter at large', Grann writes non-fiction for the weekly publication with a panache and style you might expect from a fiction writer. His reportage typically focuses on thrilling (though never salacious) exposes; stories that leave you wondering why you have not heard of them previously. It's not far off the style of Capote; narrative non-fiction or the non-fiction novel, whichever way you like.

His published collection of stories, The Devil And Sherlock Holmes, was followed by two feature-length non-fictions; The Lost City Of Z and, earlier this year, Killers Of The Flower Moon. The latter is in pre-production with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. Several of his New Yorker stories are at various stages of adaptation; True Crimes, a US/Polish production, is due later this year. Old Man And The Gun, starring Robert Redford and Casey Affleck, will arrive next year. A Foreigner, based on a Grann highlight (A Murder Foretold), has bumped around various homes and currently sits with Oscar Isaac and Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.

The Lost City Of Z, the first of Grann's works to make it to the screen, holds not only promise but the title of the best film of 2017 so far.

Adapting Grann should in theory be simple, because he writes 'scenes', as a fiction writer predisposed to screenwriting might. But the nuance of why Grann's stories are so successful is in the detail. The above could be terrible, a fundamentally bankrupted version of events, told with a great degree of entertainment and perhaps little dedication to accuracy. But that's not how Grann reads. Instead, his prose makes the culprits more vivid, the heroes more flawed, the spot-on reportage more reliant on facts.

Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), the 'hero' of The Lost City Of Z is a case in point. As Grann tells it, Fawcett was not a fantastic family man, may well have been more interested in chasing fame and fortune than anything else and was, by the conclusion of things, quite possibly driven to some form of mania or madness.

Director James Gray tones Fawcett down a touch. He is, without a doubt, a heroic figure here. But Gray and star Charlie Hunnam stick the landing. There is more than a suggestion that Fawcett is at fault for some of the events of the history, even more than that that Fawcett does not do right by his family, as his father did not do right by him. Crucially, the finale of Fawcett's story, as told by Grann, is maintained by Gray. It might be the reason the film was not a large hit with audiences.

Gray is growing a reputation as an auteur director who can get more than expected out of actors, sometimes with mixed-quality material. He does his reputation no harm here. There's no doubt that this is Hunnam's best work and there's a very solid argument that The Lost City Of Z is the same for Robert Pattinson and Sienna Miller. Miller gets great writing from Gray, who refuses to allow her character to just be the 'stay at home wife'. Hunnam and Pattinson are occasionally unrecognisable; Pattinson - in beard, spectacles and drooping hat - literally so. Hunnam's 'gentleman's accent' is wonderful; the right level of false to make you question Fawcett, rather than Hunnam's performance.

He too is in-tune with Grann's narrative style; present the facts, thrillingly, and the reader can draw their own conclusions of character fortitude.

Half-cocked 'epicness' and unfulfilled ambition in Free State Of Jones

At one-hundred and thirty-nine minutes there is no danger of Free State Of Jones being called 'slight'. Gary Ross' film is on the 'long and weighty' side of things, conceived, perhaps, for Oscar contention.

It wasn't to be. The civil war Drama took just $20 million at the US box office ($25 million worldwide), against a production budget of $50 million. It joined a legion of films which, despite a popular historical subject and major star (Matthew McConaughey), failed to capture the imagination of cinemagoers.

The length of the film speaks to one of the reasons why, one of the many internal conflicts at the film's heart, which mean that it almost defies standard review logic. Good luck attempting to give Free State Of Jones a star rating. Some elements are superb. Others are borderline amateur. One-hundred and thirty-nine minutes, for example, speaks to a underlying commitment anxiety. This is an epic. The film's narrative spreads several years of the civil war and jumps forwards to the 1940s (by implication, the themes the film explicitly deal with go further than that). One-hundred and thirty-nine minutes isn't long enough to do that. Characters get completely lost. Many points of the narrative receive insubstantial examination.

There's no greater representation of the film's problems than Keri Russell's Serena, wife to McConaughey's Newton Knight. Russell is a recognisable face and, early on, a focus, personifying the problems faced by many of the film's female characters as their men are rounded up by the Confederates. There's what seems to be a key sequence for Newton and Serena, where their child falls ill, and then that's it; Serena disappears from the narrative and, in time, it becomes clear that the whole affair was a setup for Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who heals the child.

Until... Serena returns, completely out of the blue late on, with limited explanation of why she left to begin with, what she has been doing for, apparently, several years and why she is now back. If the film had committed to its own scope then perhaps we could have spent time with Serena's narrative as well and seen the period from her point of view. As it is, she is lost.

The film also occupies the uncomfortable sub-genre of liberal narratives which display their liberality by having a white protagonist recount to us what is largely African-American history. Whilst Newton Knight is undoubtedly an important character in his own time, he is important because he is documented and covered in the annals. Many others are not. Ross attempts to address this with a smattering of supporting characters who are again ill-served by the editing of the script (whether in pre or post production). In another world Mahershala Ali wins his Oscar for this film and not Moonlight. In fact, in another world Ali is the lead character, the story told from his perspective. Again, it wasn't to be and the balance is off.

The 1940s scenes will bear the brunt of most people's ire towards the film. They are odd. The syntax of how they are interwoven into the narrative is jarring, the lead in this section is not Matthew McConaughey and their real reason for existence isn't offered until the mid-way point, at best, and that's only for viewers who 'spot' where the court case on show is going.

Again though, you can see why they are there. Free State Of Jones, representative of its time though it is, is also out of time. It is our time and its own and the 1940s; representing and representative of civil liberties which still do not exist in anywhere near an adequate enough form. Unfortunately that straddling of time zones, that universal message, is too much for this film to bear. Frustratingly however, it does come close to taking the weight.

The role of doubt in My Cousin Rachel

The central question in My Cousin Rachel, which is less gothically intense than its promotional material would have you believe, is whether the titular character (Rachel Weisz) has killed her husband Ambrose and is in the process of murdering Philip (Sam Claflin), or whether happenstance is at play.

In recent episodes of Kermode and Mayo's film review podcast, the hosts have detailed how Weisz made a decision early in the creative process on whether or not Rachel was guilty and stuck with that assumption throughout filming. The actor did not tell the director, Roger Michell, which side she had come down on.

This suggests a fascinating dichotomy. Michell, unaware of whether his star thought her character evil or not, must have made his own decisions. Claflin his own also. And the rest of the cast. All the way back to Daphne Du Maurier, whose work this adaptation is based upon.

Where does that leave us, the audience, left to interpret a maelstrom of competing agendas, some of which were likely conceived at odds with others?

At first, it is tempting to conclude that the mixed messages of Michell's narrative have gotten the better of him. There seems very little actual doubt in My Cousin Rachel. A plant that may be poisonous and which Rachel may have had access to in both Ambrose and Philip's cases. The scribbled letters of Ambrose, clearly wracked by some illness. It's hardly a weight of evidence and you wonder whether there's really enough there to drive the doubt on offer, which in turn drives the narrative.

But maybe that's the point. We're offered scant little during the film and yet, at points, we must find ourselves siding with Philip and his suspicions. After all, we see things from his perspective. Rachel does not even get the right of reply until perhaps a third of the way into the film.

The doubt on offer, really, is towards Philip's muddled and ill-evidenced interpretation of events. The perspective though confuses this. We're invited to believe Philip, drawn into his assertions and growing abuse of Rachel. A scene of love-making in the wood near to Philip's house is a tough watch.

And so it should be. Philip is not, in any discernible way, a character to be liked or trusted, believed or followed. But Michell shows us what perspective can do. The discomfort come the conclusion of My Cousin Rachel is not because sufficient doubt has not been offered. It's internal doubt. Doubt around how we ever could have sympathised with Philip in the first place.

House Of Cards' big moments are now the same moments that are killing the show

Towards the end of House Of Cards Season 5, a key character from several seasons previous is killed off, on-screen, by another major character. It is undoubtedly the season's biggest moment.

It is not, however, the season's best moment and it finishes off a second half of this year's offering that pales in comparison to the first.

Having replaced showrunner Beau Willimon with writers Frank Pugliese and Melissa James Gibson, the season starts off strongly by finding new ways to excel at political drama in the context of a real-life America run by a fish-finger with hair.

Instead of a focus on the evils of Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), the show increasingly folds itself into constitutional minutiae. As Underwood continues to battle Conway (Joel Kinnaman), the type of millennial who thinks he's a millennial but isn't, Pugliese and Gibson successfully establish interest and investment in the smallest and most obscure of legislative pen spasms. It's thrilling, and tense, and with all of the skeletons in the cupboard continuing to wave occasionally, the first six episodes breeze by.

They are helped by the Conway character. Kinnaman still looks miscast, soporifically 'brah', as he Snapchats his way to obscurity. But that too is something Pugliese and Gibson turn to their advantage. Investigating masculinity through Frank and Claire is now dead, but in Conway the writers find life, questioning the American fascination with armed services heroism, and a lot more besides. Conway's wholesome exterior, shown as a sham from early on, crumbles in such a fratboy all-star way that he may as well be wearing polo and chinos. Perhaps it's obvious. It still works, and for a good while it works in a committed and sophisticated manner.

And then things change.

Already missing characters the show had dedicated multiple seasons to (Meechum, Danton - wow, Mahershala Ali is a big miss - Sharp, Dunbar - wow, Elizabeth Marvel is a big miss), Conway is suddenly marginalised. Hell, with apologies for a mild spoiler: he downright disappears from the halfway point. And House Of Cards goes back into distraction mode.

Because the big events in House Of Cards aren't what make the show matter. They drive narrative, but they are not, in themselves, strong story. What happens over the last two episodes of House Of Cards will thrill on initial face value. But it has no substance and those who have been with the series since the start are starting to learn that. The key character death is perhaps a little surprising in its presentation but many will reflect, with rolled eyes, that it was inevitable.

How long the show will take to play that death out is anyone's guess. Five seasons in, the show is still fixated on two deaths from the first season and a further from third, to the point where they now are the Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) character. His blandness passed for obsequiousness for a while. Now it is obvious that he is just the vehicle for those events. A walking skeleton in a closet. On current course Claire and Frank are headed in the same direction. The show will not be able to sustain that.