Fifty Shades Of Grey – Already clearly dominating the box
office, this adaptation of E.L. James’ controversial bodice ripper may delight
some of the book’s amorous fans, but for people outside of the devoted fanbase,
it is an absolute torture. Embarrassingly bad dialogue covers a film in which
leads Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan have absolutely no chemistry in a plot
that strives for some sort of erotic fantasy and instead just comes off as
unnervingly worshiping of Dornan’s young
billionaire, Christian Grey; one of the most sinister characters I’ve ever seen
in a film. Despite the film being centred around BDSM (very inaccurately
portrayed, even so) the film lacks the gall to go even beyond vanilla expectations,
so it’s somehow both disturbing whilst lacking in actual power. The slightly
cheeky kinkiness and sexuality of it might have some appeal, but this is
overall, a very poor effort. *
Focus – Con artist thriller meets romance when veteran grifter
Will Smith takes Margot Robbie under his wing as both protégé and lover. Whilst
the balance between crime caper and love affair is an uneasy one, it’s an entertaining
watch largely because of the infamously abundant charm and charisma that Will
Smith brings to his role. Margot Robbie also gives a rather powerful
performance, more-so than might be expected from a film as potentially
throwaway as it is. *** (Opens in the UK and the US on the 27th of
February)
Project Almanac – Having started in the domain of horror
films, the current wave of “found footage” movies has moved towards family
sci-fi, first with Earth To Echo (2014) and now with this Michael Bay-produced
movie about a group of teens who happen upon a homemade time machine. Whilst
the Bay association may spell trouble for a lot of people, this is one of the
stronger efforts to be associated with the current Hollywood king of noise. At
times, almost like a teenage version of Shane Carruth’s time machine
mind-bender Primer (2004), it has some intelligence and fairly likable
characters. The only real problems are the wholly unnecessary “found footage”
angle and the adolescent attitude that the film has. Yes, these are teenage
characters, but the concerns seem so petty in a film that is also at times too
heavy-handed. A nice middle ground would probably have served this film a lot
better. ***
The Interview: How many movies can claim to be a major
player in an international conflict? That’s the infamy that comes with The
Interview, where James Franco plays a TV presenter signed up to interview and assassinate
North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un (Randall Park) with the aid of his producer
played by co-director Seth Rogen. The result is a lame duck of a low-brow
comedy that despite some decent production values, is mired in tasteless racist
and sexist “humour”. Doubtlessly inferior to Team America: World Police (that
had its finger much more on the satirical “button”), The Interview’s notoriety
is giving the film way too much credit as it’s pretty toothless. **
Selma: Oscar-bait may not be a term that comes with much
assurance, but just because something seems custom-made to tick the boxes of
the Academy at award season (politicised story, biopic, the financial losing
end of a box-office battle, in this case against American Sniper), doesn’t mean
it isn’t any good. Selma is, for the most part, an engrossing account of a very
well-documented part of modern American history. An account of the marches
around Selma, Alabama that brought attention to the Civil Rights movement for
African-Americans. Despite the somewhat risky nature of a significantly British
cast (David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr., Tom Wilkinson as President
Lyndon Johnson, Tim Roth as Governor George Wallace), the film covers the
unfolding events with gravitas but also a fairly detailed approach. The ending
is perhaps over-simplified (there are some important occurrences that happened
to the involved people after the events depicted that are pretty significant)
and falls dangerously towards schmaltz, but mostly the film packs a lot of
power. ****
Shaun The Sheep Movie
Aardman have an enviable track record to
maintain with their movies and Shaun The Sheep comes up to scratch. Barely. Or
should that be “baaaaaaarely”? (sorry). Shaun (Justin Fletcher) and his fellow wooly
buddies are off to Big City to find their farmer (John Sparkes) after an
attempt to have fun goes awry. Mostly devoid of dialogue, the Shaun The Sheep
Movie mostly relies on slapstick and silliness for its laughs, but that’s not
exactly a bad thing. Catering to slightly younger kids than most of Aardman’s
work (considering that Aardman have always made things with a young demographic
in mind) but with frequent enough jokes thrown in for mum and dad, it’s an
agreeable ninety minutes and surprisingly effective, even though some of it
seems lifted from Chicken Run. ***
The whole spy parody subgenre has had a troubled history and
as of late there are two rival films on general release that are seemingly
competing to win out at the box office. One is Kingsman: The Secret Service
(2014), Matthew Vaughan’s Bond-influenced spies-in-training blockbuster that combines
traits of two of Vaughan’s earlier films (you can sort of look at this film as
Kick-Ass (2010) meets X-Men: First Class (2011) albeit with spies replacing
superheroes) and the other new film by screenwriter/director David Koepp (Jurassic
Park (1993) is probably his most beloved screenplay), Mortdecai, is an film
adaptation for the character created by writer Kyril Bonfiglioli. Kingsman is a
decent film. Decent not great. It also seems set to be a big hit. Mortdecai…well…
As I mentioned at the start, spy parodies haven’t always
worked. Most of them, in my experience, are rather poor. Even the Austin Powers
films, whilst having some value, eventually outstayed their welcome and whether
it’s the 1967 version of Casino Royale with David Niven, Spy Hard (1996) or the
more recent Johnny English films, parodies of spy films…well, they just don’t
work very well a great deal of the time. You could attribute this to a few
reasons. One being that spy films have, in the past, stretched things to
unbelievable proportions that playing them off for laughs seems completely
redundant, such as with Moonraker (1979) which was probably never meant to be
taken seriously in the first place. Another problem is the lack of imagination
that’s often involved. Everyone knows the tropes. You usually have a suave,
sophisticated and attractive hero, ostensibly a James Bond figure. There’s the
colourful, charismatic and megalomaniacal villain. There’s the glamorous love
interest, often a dangerous femme fatale. Most spy parodies check these off in
some fashion and it understandably becomes tiresome very quickly. Then there’s
the simplest explanation. That they’re just not funny enough.
Mortdecai sort of hits all three of those problems. Charlie
Mortdecai is no James Bond. Bond doesn’t really figure into it when you compare
the two characters, save for Niven’s take on the role. But he’s a parody of the
other gentleman spies that belong to an older world. Johnny Depp’s performance
is itself a collage of caricatures of many other performers. A dash of David
Niven, a touch of Terry Thomas, a pinch of Peter Sellers, a rinse of Rowan
Atkinson and so on. One of Johnny Depp’s greatest facilities as an actor is his
charisma and that he can also be a very transformative actor, able to turn his
own unique style to a number of guises. Here, he does that, but it’s not
original and his cod accent seems to call to mind Captain Jack Sparrow if he
was a country lord. Fellow American Gwyneth Paltrow also turns on the British
accent as Mortdecai’s wife and she fares better for it but there’s a feeling
that she’s not giving it her all.
Ewan McGregor, who has a capacity to incorporate the styles
of different actors into his own style (his turn as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels did have a rather faithful
touch of Alec Guinness to it) but as Charlie’s superior, who also carries a
torch for Gwyneth Paltrow, he sometimes lunges into a complete Roger Moore impersonation
and not letting his own abilities shine through as he has done in earlier films
such as Haywire (2011) whilst Olivia Munn doesn’t make much of an impact (admittedly
more a fault of the fact that she doesn’t have much screen time) but is effectively
a re-tread of Tia Carrere’s role in True Lies (1994). In fact, the only actor
in the entire film that I felt rather drawn to was Paul Bettany as Mortdecai’s
manservant, Jock which Bettany imbues with a nice mix of stone-faced
seriousness and comic ability.
For whatever reason you can give to the performances, it
must be stated that it doesn’t work as a comedy because it’s simply not that
funny. Thankfully, it doesn’t resort to the worst of toilet humour but the main
problem of the film is that it keeps running with the same old gag that wasn’t
even funny at the start. The principal runner is Mortdecai’s obsessive enthusiasm
for his newly-grown moustache, which everyone despises, especially Mrs.
Mortdecai who gags at trying to kiss her husband because of it (in turn he then
gags due to a sympathetic reflex). This joke is used a lot. Some small chuckles
may be had from some of the gags but this far from the best possible material.
Given the popularity of the original Mortdecai books, you
could be forgiven for thinking that this had potential. A sort of spy story
enthused with very British class-based comedy of P.G Wodehouse for example
probably would have the potential for something enjoyable. The issue is not so
much the concept (even if it’s not very original) but more its execution. With
some better gags and better performances, Mortdecai could’ve been a better
film, even a very good film. There’s just a feeling that what’s there simply
isn’t good enough.
Larry “Doc” Sportello (Phoenix) is a stoner, beach bum,
private investigator and doctor living in California at the beginning of the
1970’s, concerned over the disappearance of his girlfriend, Shasta (Katherine
Waterston). Delving deeper into the mystery, Doc investigates a local land
developer, Larry Wolfmann (Eric Roberts) who has similarly disappeared and the
path that leads him to solve these two mysteries takes him into bizarre
territory.
Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel is the basis for the latest film
by director Paul Thomas Anderson. His second feature without his mainstay,
Philip Seymour Hoffman (given Hoffman’s tragic death), this time Anderson seems
to have clung onto Hoffman’s co-star in Anderson’s The Master (2012), Joaquin
Phoenix pulling out a memorable leading role that allows the mercurial Phoenix
to have a good amount to work with. This is also a favourable environment for
Paul Thomas Anderson but less akin to his more recent darker films such as The
Master or There Will Be Blood (2007) and more reminiscent of his earlier films,
combining the eccentric comic-mystery of Punch-Drunk Love (2002) with the
hedonistic 1970’s stylings of Anderson’s breakthrough, Boogie Nights (1997).
For all the comforting promise that provides however, Inherent Vice comes off
as a little disappointing.
Although he’s one of America’s most prominent modern writers
(a fame that admittedly is somewhat linked in with his notoriously reclusive
personal life) Inherent Vice marks the first film adaptation of a work by
writer, Thomas Pynchon and is said to be very close to the source material as a
film adaptation. Therein lies the film’s central problem. For as long as there
has been narrative cinema there have been literary adaptations to film, many of
them classics with the great Stanley Kubrick practically making a career of
them but there are clear differences in execution between film and literature.
Literature is, by its nature, a medium of words. A medium of description, of
dialogue and what can be read. Film is probably more than anything else, a
visual medium. What is presented visually is placed as more important by and
large than what is said or what is read. Pynchon’s writing style (and
Anderson’s adaptation of said style) is wonderful. It’s vivid, humorous and
full of abstract hippie turns of phrase. It’s fun to listen to, but there is a
lot of it about. A LOT. Given the film’s intentionally convolute plot, its
attempts to bamboozle an audience are also clearly intentional but after a
while it numbs to the point of just being noise. At a certain point, the brain
freezes up and is unable to keep up with the plot as you drown in a sea of “far
out” slang.
To a certain end, there are definite comparisons to The Big
Lebowski (1998). A film somewhat literary in its ideas (though not one specific
book, Lebowski owes more to the collective style of Elmore Leonard) mixing
together mystery and comedy with an eccentric So Cal noir vibe and a
drugged-out protagonist, even though Phoenix’s Doc seems more together to Jeff
Bridges’ Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski. The Big Lebowski wasn’t a huge success
when it came out and critical response was rather muted (Lebowski was a
follow-up to Fargo (1996), widely held up as the masterpiece for film-makers
Ethan and Joel Coen and so there was some disappointment) but has endured as a
very popular and critically acclaimed film. Pynchon’s prose is a heavy pill to
swallow at first and there are some moments which simply are too eccentric for
their own good (Martin Short’s brief appearance quickly wears out its welcome for
how intense it all is) but after a few tries to wrap your head around just what
the devil is going on, we might just see something to Inherent Vice that isn’t
quite clear yet.
