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Non-Review Review: Divergent

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Darren

As far as adaptations of popular young adult novels go, Divergent lacks the strong charismatic lead of The Hunger Games or even the campy pleasure of The Mortal Instruments. Working with a premise that feels like it would have made for a delightfully cheesy piece of sixties socially-conscious science-fiction, Divergent proceeds to take absolutely everything far too seriously. Cliché moments play to an over-the-top soundtrack, terrible dialogue is delivered with earnest profundity, the movie failing to take any joy in anything that it does.

There’s a sense of cynicism in Divergent, with the sequels already mapped out, and the studio committed to their release. The result is a movie that never feels compelled to rush, instead spending most of its runtime spinning its wheels, covering familiar ground. It’s over-long and poorly paced, with the first two acts often feeling like a hyper-extended training montage, meaning that by the time anything starts happening the audience can’t wait for it to end. The result is a heavy-handed and over-cooked attempt at social commentary, one reeking of anti-intellectualism and simplistic pandering.

Don’t worry, her training covers this…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: anti-intellectualism, books, Divergence, Divergent, film, kate winslet, Miles Teller, Movie, non-review review, review, science fiction, Shailene Woodley, Young Adult | 16 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Captain America – The Winter Soldier

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Darren

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a delightfully pulpy adventure. In many respects, it feels like the movie that Captain America: The First Avenger really should have been, a celebration of its lead character’s versatility and a demonstration of how easily the comic book character can cross genres. Part of the beauty of The Winter Soldier is in the way that it feints. It weaves in directions that are a little surprising at times, and even avoids taking the path of least resistance when offered.

With an opening act that teases the age old debate about liberty and security (“this isn’t freedom,” Steve Rogers solemnly states, “this is fear”), the movie deftly steps sideways to avoid getting too bogged down in familiar political discourse. Much like Iron Man 3, there’s a charm in how The Winter Soldier evades any particularly probing political commentary, cleverly swerving out of the way of anything that could become ham-fisted or heavy-handed.

The Captain and the Widow…

It tricks the audience into expecting a contemporary political thriller, only to become something a bit more unexpected – a strange hybrid of pulpy science-fiction, conspiratorial secret history and even seventies espionage thriller. It’s an exciting and engaging blend, one that never outstays its welcome. The only real problem is that it tries to do a bit too much and some of the smaller pieces get lost in the shuffle – which means the climax doesn’t resonate as well as it needs to.

Still, those are ultimately minor problems with a superior blockbuster.

Body of evidence…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: captain america, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, chris evans, comic book, marvel, Movie, non-review review, review, scarlett johansson, the winter soldier | 20 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Yves Saint Laurent

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Darren

Jalil Lespert’s Yves Saint Laurent feels more like a mood piece than a biography. Beautifully shot, wonderfully acted and sensuously performed, there’s no real sense of structure to Lespert’s account of one of the most influential fashion designers of the past half-century. While the movie trods familiar bio-pic ground, with betrayals and addictions and scandal and love, it works best as a snapshot of its subject in motion. It doesn’t offer any particular insight into the life and times of Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent, instead trying to capture some of the mood of the designer’s life.

Drawing back the curtain…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: bio-pic, biography, film, Jalil Lespert, Movie, non-review review, review, yves saint laurent | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Deceptive Practice – The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Darren

A veteran magic performer since his childhood, with a career stretching back over half a century, Ricky Jay is an absolutely fascinating subject. Jay is a master magician in his own right, but he’s also a writer, historian and actor. He is this gigantically important pop culture figure, having worked with directors like David Mamet or Paul Thomas Anderson – having appeared in film and television roles unconnected to his stage career. At one point, Jay even reads a poem written about him, The Game In The Windowless Room.

Jay has this incredible diversity of skills and interests, and it’s absolutely intriguing to delve into those interests. Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay suffers a bit from never really pinning down the man himself, but it does demonstrate his long and abiding affection for the artform of magic, as well as some insightful glimpses at the long history and pedigree of this most mysterious performance art.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: deception, deceptive practice, Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, film, magic, misdirection, molly bernstein, Movie, non-review review, review, ricky jay, The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Good Ol’ Freda

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

Freda Kelly was secretary to The Beatles, and the head of the official Beatles fan club. She managed letters and schedules and magazines and wages and all these different aspects of the lives of John, Paul, Ringo and George. However, she remains something of a peripheral figure in the grand tapestry of Beatles lore. According to most of the commentators in Good Ol’ Freda, there’s a very simple reason for this.

“My mother never played the fame game,” her daughter notes. Freda never published a tell-all book. She never betrayed confidence. Indeed, one of the stories in Good Ol’ Freda has her firing two assistants for one’s attempt to pass off the hair of a sibling for the hair of a Beatle. Integrity was very much the watchword of Freda Kelly, and it’s something that comes across in the documentary, as Freda rather pointedly refuses to be drawn on more personal or intimate questions.

As a result, there’s very little information here that won’t be familiar to fans of the Fab Four. There are some nice insights and an occasionally endearing anecdote – poor Ringo and his nine fan letters! – but Good Ol’ Freda never really pries too deeply into lives Freda managed for a decade at the peak of their popularity. Instead, Good Ol’ Freda works best as a character study of its subject, a glimpse of a woman who was caught up in a maelstrom and walked out almost completely unaffected.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Beatles, documentary, film, Freda Kelly, Good Ol' Freda, Good Old Freda, Movie, non-review review, review, The Beatles | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Borgman

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

Part of what is so fascinating about Borgman is just how little Alex van Warmerdam is willing to tell us about what is going on. There are points when van Warmerdam’s biting black comedy seems to veer from domestic drama into straight-up fantasy, with very little concession made to explaining the events seen on screen to the audience. Who (or what) is the eponymous drifter? What does he want? Why does he do whatever it is that he seems to be doing?

Van Warmerdam doesn’t feel obligated to provide any explicit answers, and Borgman feels much stronger for it.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: borgman, Dutch, faery folk, film, jameson dublin international film festival, jdiff, Movie, non-review review, review | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: Afternoon Delight

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

Middle class attitudes towards sex are weird. Middle class attitudes toward middle class attitudes toward sex are particularly weird. Afternoon Delight is a film about the complexities around those attitudes, but it’s written from a point of view very grounded in that middle class perspective. There’s a sense that Afternoon Delight isn’t anywhere near as cutting and subversive as it wants to be, working hard to develop the character of “sex worker” McKenna only to throw it all away for a biting climax. (No pun intended.)

There’s a suffocating heavy-handedness and profundity to Afternoon Delight, a movie that edits a casual afternoon surfing on the beach as if we’ve wandered into a life-and-death scenario. There are wonderful moments of levity and wit in Afternoon Delight, but the film works far too hard to keep them boxed off and contained.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: afternoon delight, film, jameson international film festival, jdiff, Jill Soloway, josh radnor, Kathryn Hahn, Movie, non-review review, review | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Wakolda (aka The German Doctor)

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014.

Wakolda is a good old-fashioned pulpy pot boiler. The latest film from writer and director Lucia Puenzo, adapted from her own novel, is set in Argentina in 1960. Given the title, it’s easy enough to predict which direction Puenzo’s piece of historical fiction will be going. The history of the Nazis who sought refuge in South America following the Second World War is pretty compelling stuff, and Puenzo skilfully builds off this basic premise.

As much as popular history likes to paint the Second World War as an epic conflict of good against evil that neatly tidied itself up, there were lots of lingering threads – lots of loose ends dangling from the edge of this historical tapestry. The flight from justice, the protection that these people were afforded, and the desperate desire to bring these criminals to justice makes for a gripping pulpy narrative – but there’s also something more unsettling at work.

After all, acknowledging that the history of Nazi war criminals does not end after the signing of the German surrender means confronting the reality that such beliefs and philosophies cannot be vanquished with the stroke of a pen. Darkness still lurks in the wider world.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Argentina, eugenics, film, germany, Guilt, Movie, nazis, non-review review, responsibility, review, second world war, the german doctor, wakolda | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Muppets Most Wanted

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Darren

“We’re doing a sequel,” the Muppets sing in the opening number of The Muppets Most Wanted. “That’s what they do in Hollywood. And everybody knows that the sequel’s never quite as good.”

That’s the sort of wry self-awareness we’ve come to expect from the gang, but there’s also a note of truth in the statement. The Muppets was a cinematic highlight of 2011, and the best movie musical of the past decade. It was light, it was fun, it was sweet and it was moving. There was – as with the best Muppets material – an endearing sincerity underpinning all the well-observed gags and broad comedy.

The Muppets Most Wanted falls into the traditional pattern of Muppet sequels. Like The Great Muppet Caper or Muppet Treasure Island before it, there’s a sense that The Muppets Most Wanted has been constructed as a lighter film. The film lacks the emotional resonance of The Muppets, instead opting for high-concept fun. The result is endearing and enjoyable, but doesn’t feel quite as satisfying.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, Movie, muppets, muppets most wanted, non-review review, review, the muppets | Leave a comment »

Stalker is Still Playing at Dundrum!

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Darren

Mark O’Connor got in touch and just asked me to mention that his Irish film Stalker is still playing at Dundrum, and will be playing until Thursday. So, if anybody wants to see it, now is the chance.