non-review review | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Manchester by the Sea

Posted on January 10, 2017 by Darren

What is most effective and affecting about Manchester by the Sea is what is not said.

It seems a strange thing to note of an Oscar-caliber drama, but one of the most striking aspect of Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by Sea is the sound design. Sound carries repeatedly in the film. A recurring motif of Manchester by the Sea is the thinness of the walls, as characters eavesdrop on one another and overhear conversations in adjoining rooms and spaces. However, it is more than that. When the characters retreat into silence, the world almost seems to swallow them whole.

“If Colin Farrell thinks he’s stealing my Best Actor trophy, he’s got another thing coming.”

As one character discusses funeral arrangements on the phone, other characters prepare breakfast around him; the sound of the bowl hitting the table, of the rice crackling in the milk, of the chair scraping off the ground, of the spoon hitting teeth. Attending the funeral, the eulogies are drowned out by the dull recurring buzz of a mobile phone on vibrate. When another character walks by a graveyard, he picks up a stick so that he might strum it against a fence to generate some ambient noise.

Sound designer Jacob Ribocoff does amazing work in bringing the environment to life around the film’s central characters. Manchester by the Sea is light on dialogue, with Casey Affleck conveying an incredible array of emotions through a carefully restrained performance. Affleck’s performance is not perfect, but one that exists in harmony with the sounds around him. Manchester by the Sea is not just a film that breaths. It is a film that sings in its own unique way.

Brother’s keeper.

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Non-Review Review: Assassin’s Creed

Posted on December 20, 2016 by Darren

“What the f%$k is going on?” asks Michael Fassbender about halfway through the film.

It is not the first time that Cal Lynch has asked this question. Earlier on, the character wondered out loud “what’s happening?” after waking up following his state-sanctioned execution and being hooked up to a gigantic robotic claw that yanking him into the air mid-sentence. The audience is probably asking the same questions as Assassin’s Creed bounces across time and space with mountains of exposition (occasionally helpfully subtitled) about rival societies conspiring to find an artefact that can harness (and eliminate) mankind’s free will.

The Fass and the Furious.

To be fair, incoherence is not the real problem with this disjointed video game adaptation. In fact, there is a certain weird charm to watching the amazing cast and the game director react to the crazed concepts that they have been dealt. For the first hour or so, the sheer weirdness of the film proves compelling, drawing in audience members willing to resist the tonal whiplash and laboured exposition as the film rockets along. What ultimately kills Assassin’s Creed is not its lack of sense, but the stubborn insistence that it must make sense.

Assassin’s Creed would be a stronger film were it willing to revel in its incoherence instead of trying to impose order upon it. The gonzo plotting and zany high concepts give the film a strange texture, but the problems do not really kick in until Assassin’s Creed starts awkwardly and painfully trying to construct a rational framework around this bizarre cavalcade. The result is to wed a visually hyper-kinetic and tonally unruly film to an incredibly tired generic plot that winds transforming the film into a plodding mess.

He’s so hot right now.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: assassin's creed, film, justin kurzel, Michael Fassbender, Movie, non-review review, review | 8 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Passengers

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Darren

Passengers is a super creepy tale of male entitlement.

The movie has an intriguing science-fiction premise. On a sleeper ship intended to ferry passengers to the colony world of Homestead II, a freak accident awakens James Preston. The only problem is that Preston awoke far too early. Preston awoke approximately thirty years into a one-hundred-and-twenty-year voyage. The engineer is now destined to spend the rest of his life as the only waking inhabitant of a gigantic city ship, living and dying completely alone. It is a horrifying thought.

“We need a little space.”

There are suggestions of a powerful science-fiction epic to be found in the film. Jim finds his every physical need has been anticipated. He can live a life of material luxury. He will never want for food or space or activity. He effectively has a gigantic space craft all to himself. And therein lies the rub. Feeling almost like a sadistic episode of The Twilight Zone, Jim grapples with the question of what he will or will not do in order to end his loneliness. In his desperation, Jim makes a horrifying (if entirely understandable) decision.

The biggest problem with Passengers is that it strains too hard to make that decision palatable instead of terrifying. It is a super creepy tale of male entitlement that brushes aside any of this issues in favour of a much more conventional action romance.

Peace in a pod.

Note: Very minor spoilers for Passengers follow. If you know the cast list, you can probably deduce where the movie is going from the opening ten minutes.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: chris pratt, film, Jennifer Lawrence, male entitlement, Movie, non-review review, passengers, review | 11 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Why Him?

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Darren

Why Him? is perhaps a little over-stretched.

Why Him? is built around a very stock comedy template. A hard-working old-fashioned father finds himself at odds with his daughter’s new boyfriend, leading to a clash of competing masculine egos. The most innovative aspect of Why Him? is the decision to filter this standard comedy plot through two more filters. Why Him? is simultaneously a raunchy R-rated comedy full of profanity and bodily-function jokes. It is also framed as a Christmas comedy, as much as a comedy set in and around Los Angeles can seem like a Christmas comedy.

Guess who’s coming to (Christmas) dinner.

These are hardly the boldest of innovations. Why Him? is a paper-thin comedy that is somehow stretched out to run over one hour and fifty minutes. There are any number of gags that work and a solid cast that never rises to exceptional, but the fact is that all of these elements overstay their welcome by at least a good twenty minutes. It is telling that one of the biggest issues with Why Him? is repetition, where the movie attempts to spin out slight jokes that prompt a knowing smile into running gags that exhaust all good will.

Ironically enough, given the title, Why Him? never makes a compelling case for its own scale and length.

Fists of fury.

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Non-Review Review: Silence

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Darren

Faith is a curious thing.

It is a fascinating concept, even (and perhaps especially) for those who lack it or wrestle with it. Pure and untempered faith in the face of a turbulent (and occasionally hostile) world is intriguing. It is something that many long to understand, even if it eludes them. Silence is very much a meditation (or an extended monologue) on the nature of religious belief playing out as a set of conversations and moral dilemmas. Characters wrestle with doubt and uncertainty, and particularly about what their faith means to them.

Easy pray.

Silence is not a masterpiece or an epic. It is not one of Martin Scorsese’s major works, despite the energy and conviction with which he invests it. It is the weakest film from the director in a very long time, although that sounds very much like praising with faint criticism. Silence is a little too invested in its own dialogue with itself, as delivered through a series of monologues and occasionally through conversation between characters. Silence looks beautiful, but it often feels a little bit like a stunning visual companion to a book on tape.

And yet, in spite of all of this, there is an endearing earnestness to the film. Silence feels like the product of a long and considered reflection on the nature of faith and its place in the world. It never lacks for ambition or vision, playing as a two-and-a-half hour parable about suffering and transcendence. Silence is more interesting than successful, but that is largely because it is so very interesting.

Gotta have faith.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: belief, faith, martin scorsese, non-review review, religion, review, silence | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Jackie

Posted on December 7, 2016 by Darren

… there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment, that was known as Camelot.

Towards the end of Jackie, the title character ruminates on her deceased husband. As a boy, he loved history. He especially loved the tales of Camelot. It does not matter that Camelot never existed, a figment of the collective imagination conjured into being through generations of myth and legend. People wanted to believe in Camelot, and so they invested it with a texture that seemed to manifest itself. Camelot was a story, but it was a story that was in many ways more appealing than the truth.

More like the Pastel House.

Jackie is a story about mythmaking. Arch and playful, self-aware and self-critical, Jackie tightens its focus on Jackie Onassis Kennedy to the days immediately following the death of her beloved husband. Using the iconic Time magazine interview as a framing device, Jackie follows its protagonist as she sets about building a legacy and a legend around John F. Kennedy. The lines between history and mythology blur, Jackie cleverly contrasting the title character’s restoration of the White House with her construction of her husband’s legend.

There are points at which Jackie seems a little too manner and a little too stage-managed, a little too perfect and a little too rehearsed. There are points at which Natalie Portman slips from being Jackie Onassis Kennedy playing the widow to a beloved legend to being Natalie Portman playing Jackie Onassis Kennedy playing the widow to a beloved legend. This sort of sly recursion is very much in fitting with the tone of the film, but it does occasionally feel a little too cold and a little too distant.

Mirrored in controversy.

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Non-Review Review: Office Christmas Party

Posted on December 7, 2016 by Darren

Office Christmas Party is a mess. Far from a carefully orchestrated festive frivolity, it feels more like it was quickly cobbled together from whatever happened to be lying around the staff canteen.

Office Christmas Party plays like a seasonal-themed pot luck; a combination of weird flavours that might work well in other contexts or on their own, only to clash awkwardly when thrown together. There is a mix-tape quality to the film, as is probably to be expected in a movie with a cast this expansive. However, Office Christmas Party never finds a centre around which it might arrange this particular tale. Instead, it feels like a half-hearted collection of mad-libs that have been shamelessly borrowed from other and better films.

No escape Claus…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, Movie, non-review review, office christmas party, review | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Moana

Posted on November 27, 2016 by Darren

Moana is a fantastic demonstration of the timeless appeal of the long-standing Disney formula.

At first glance, Moana seems very much like an archetypal animated Disney film. It is the story of a young woman who is forced to adventure outside of her comfort zone, surrounded by adorable animal sidekicks and trickster mentors on an archetypal hero’s journey that is set to a toe-tapping soundtrack. It is a template that has served Disney very well, producing any number of beloved family classics over the year. Moana is very much a celebration of that template, and an example of why it works so well.

Islands in the Pacific…
That is what we are…

At the same time, there is a faint layer of self-awareness to the script that serves it well. Moana might appear to be an archetypal Disney fairytale story, but that is largely down to its central character. Moana is a celebration of its title character, to the point that it frequently seems like she is propping up the narrative. This is not to suggest that Moana is a deconstruction or subversion in anyway. Instead, the movie almost as a distillation of the appeal of the classic “princess” narrative. It is a story that trusts its lead character to hold a disorganised story together.

Surrounded by dysfunction and chaos, Moana is an affectionate tribute to these sorts of stories.

Good (demi-)god, man!

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Non-Review Review: Allied

Posted on November 22, 2016 by Darren

There is something of the uncanny about Allied, a pervading sense of “not-quite-right-ness” that pervades the film.

In some ways, that vague feeling of uncanniness recalls director Robert Zemeckis’ work in stop-motion computer animation in the earlier years of the century. There was something deeply uncomfortable about the director’s work on films like The Polar Express or A Christmas Carol, a sense of strange lifelessness beneath meticulously and painstakingly crafted exteriors. Zemickis’ computer-generated experiments often felt like they were trying too hard to mimic something organic and spontaneous.

Marryin’ Marion

There is a similar sentiment to Allied, which plays very much as a love letter to classic Hollywood cinema. Indeed, the opening forty minutes of the film are dedicated to a very stylish couple operating out of “French Morocco.” Inevitably, their clandestine dealings bring them to a version of Casablanca that seems rooted more in Hollywood history than in reality. Unfolding against the backdrop of the Second World War, dealing with themes of love and betrayal, and starring a bona fides movies star, Allied feels very much like an approximation of a classic movie.

However, it never quite gets there.

Casa closed.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: allied, brad pitt, film, marion collitard, non-review review, review, robert zemeckis | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Edge of Seventeen

Posted on November 21, 2016 by Darren

The Edge of Seventeen is a fantastic coming of age film from writer and director Kelly Fremon Craig.

The script sparkles, the casting is spot-on, the humour is well-observed. Like so many great coming of age comedies, The Edge of Seventeen understands that familiar teenage angst where the entire world seems to have been constructed as a sadistic (and highly targetted) Rube Goldberg machine for the sole purpose of torturing one single individual. The Edge of Seventeen balances this all very deftly, creating a set of circumstances that understandably feel like the end of the world to the lead character, but which seem comical to a more matured detached audience.

Teenage wildlife.

However, the true strength of any coming of age film lies in the casting. Easy A was a fantastic film, but it was cleverly elevated by the shrewd casting of Emma Stone as its wry protagonist. The Edge of Seventeen places Hailee Steinfeld at the centre of its teenage universe. Steinfeld delivers a pitch-perfect performance that meticulously walks the line between sardonic and vulnerable. The Edge of Seventeen has the luxury of a well-crafted and well-observed script, but it lives or dies by its central performance.

Steinfeld is phenomenal.