non-review review | the m0vie blog

Non-Review Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Posted on November 16, 2016 by Darren

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a solid piece of popcorn entertainment.

It is, to be clear, just a little overstuffed. Its cast is so large that it borders on unwieldy. Its runtime is just a little bit bloated. It devotes far too much time and energy to setting up movies that will be released over the next couple of years. It is a surprisingly dark movie for a film that seems to set a whimsical tone. Its central metaphors get a little muddled. Its version of America feels like it has been stitched together by a collection of anthropologists who have access to well-worn copies of King Kong and Citizen Kane.

Suits you, sir!

Still, there is an undeniable charm to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a movie that luxuriates in the chance to explore a familiar universe through a different perspective. Given the success of the franchise in all media, it was inevitable that audiences would get “an American Harry Potter.” In fact, it could be argued that there have been any number of ill-fated attempts over the years including films like Mortal Instruments. If “an American Harry Potter” was to be inescapable, there are worse options than Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them never quite matches the height of its parent franchise, but occasionally manages to recapture some of the magic.

Wizzing around the world.

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Non-Review Review: La La Land

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Darren

La La Land is a beautiful piece of work, a film destined to leave the audience smiling and humming.

Damien Chazelle constructs an affectionate and old fashioned ode to Hollywood, to the magic of movies in particular and art in general. La La Land is a romance in just about every sense of the word, a tale of two young lovers chasing their dreams in the City of Angel with little more than the belief that they might one day find contentment and fulfilment. The result is a joyous celebration of film and music, a loving tribute to its emotive and transformative power that refuses to buckle beneath the demands of cynicism.

Song and dance about it.

La La Land is endearing in its optimism, its embrace of musical fantasia and its belief in Los Angeles as a place where everyone can chase their dreams… and sometimes, if they’re lucky, those dreams might come true. It is an unapologetically romantic look at Tinseltown, one that could easily be dismissed as trite. Indeed, the most stinging criticism of the film is the most obvious; that La La Land is a movie that runs the risk of cruising to a Best Picture win by virtue of being a film by Hollywood about the romance of Hollywood. Argo and The Artist redux.

La La Land is very much aware of that criticism. And it does not care. “You say romantic like it’s a bad word,” complains soulful jazz pianist Sebastian at one point early at the film. It seems like the characters in La La Land refuse to live in a world smothered by cynicism and suffocated by self-awareness. Luckily enough, La La Land has little time for such vice and commits wholeheartedly to its dreamscape. If romance is a bad word, La La Land doesn’t even blush.

All that jazz…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, la la land, Movie, non-review review, review | 10 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Doctor Strange

Posted on October 22, 2016 by Darren

Some Marvel films succeed by pushing against the house style to provide a clear and unique artistic sensibility, like Iron Man III and Guardians of the Galaxy, films that are undeniably informed by the stylistic sensibilities of their directors as much (if not more than) the concerns of the shared universe. Those films are never distinctive enough to compare to the work done by Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan, but they stand out from the rest of the Marvel production slate for their willingness to tell a different story in a different style.

Some Marvel films suffer from their adherence to the production company’s house style. Just about anything interesting was smothered out of Thor: The Dark World, which frequently seemed to have been written and edited by a computer algorithm designed to amplify the well-received elements of the first film and graft them on to a familiar structure. Even some of the relatively strong films on the slate are not immune, with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War unable to follow their bolder ideas to conclusion.

It’s a kind of magic…

However, there are also films that succeed through their understanding of the studio’s house style and sensibilities, working firmly within the structures and boundaries of what might be termed “the Marvel Cinematic Method.” These films do not just acknowledge the expectations imposed upon these blockbusters, they play towards them. In doing so, they embrace the stability and consistency that such a tried-and-tested approach affords, affording the production team the opportunity to craft enjoyable adventures starring likable actors doing fun things.

The original Thor is perhaps the best example of this approach. Often underrated and overlooked in assessments of Marvel’s cinematic output, Thor ranks among the very best of the company’s feature film slate by virtue of its willingness to embrace the stock superhero story at the heart of the script and focus upon making its cast likeable and its plot moving. There is a solid argument to be made that Thor is the purest solo superhero movie produced in quite some time, dating back to Richard Donner’s Superman. No irony or deconstruction in sight. Just simplicity.

Hair today…

Doctor Strange wisely opts for a similar approach. There are very few surprises to be found in the plotting and structuring of the film. The movie unfolds almost exactly as the audience expects. All the pieces are there, and they are assembled with the reliability of the very expensive watch that the title character chooses to carry around as a memento. The arrogant lead character humbled by tragedy. The nihilistic opponent who embraces the end of all things. The romantic co-lead. The stoic supporting character immune to our hero’s charm. The fallen mentor.

Doctor Strange is not particularly interested in subverting or twisting these stock elements. Instead, it focuses on honing them to a fine point, executing them with the help of a spectacular cast and a knowing grin. More than that, the relative simplicity of the plot framework allows director Scott Derrickson to hang some really impressive choreography and set pieces. The Marvel films have been (fairly) criticised for a certain textural “sameness”, and so the visual and aural stylings of Doctor Strange come as a breath of fresh air.

Strange fascination.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: disney, doctor strange, marvel, non-review review, review | 15 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Arrival

Posted on October 20, 2016 by Darren

Arrival has a number of great central ideas, and a fantastic central performance.

Those ideas get the film relatively far. Arrival is a film strong enough to stand on the basis of its high concepts and its leading performance. Arrival plays with a whole host of big and bold science-fiction ideas that hint at powerful philosophical questions about humankind’s place in the universe and their perception of their very existence. These ideas are clever and thought-provoking, capable of sparking many late-night conversations over pizza or refreshments in the way that great movies tend to do. Amy is simply wonderful as the movie’s primary character.

Going in circles.

Unfortunately, Arrival hits something of a wall once it fully maps out its big ideas and its bold premises. The film has these sometimes clever notions, but never expends the necessary energy to tie them into a coherent plot or a logical character arc. Arrival seems to think that these ideas are smart enough that there is no thought required in how best to use them. The result is a muddled film, one that seems as likely to conjure frustrated questioning of its underlying logic as much as of its big ideas

Ironically, Arrival charts an interesting course but never quite gets there.

Falling to Earth.

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Non-Review Review: The Light Between Oceans

Posted on October 19, 2016 by Darren

There are times when The Light Between Oceans almost makes sense.

At certain moments in the film’s two-hour-plus runtime, the clouds part and the sky clears. In these fleeting seconds, it becomes clear what The Light Between Oceans is trying to do and what it wants to be about. A beacon seems to shine through the film, reaching out to the audience and guiding them towards the heart of the film. There are moments when things seem to align and The Light Between Oceans almost gels into the melodramatic morality play to which it aspires, much like the withdrawing might reveal some hidden treasure.

All at sea.

Inevitably, the tide comes rushing back in. The Light Between Oceans becomes cluttered and clumsy. The film aspires to be a profound commentary on grand themes like loss and responsibility, a story about love and forgiveness. However, the narrative is clunky. The film strives for a moral weight that it never quite manages to attain, contorting its narrative and characters in strange directions that serve vague notions while undercutting a sense of coherence.

The Light Between Oceans might consider itself to be the stoic and restrained lighthouse keeper at its core, a character who tries his best to be the moral centre as the sea tosses and the heaven rages around him. Unfortunately, it feels more like the rowing boat discovered towards the end of the first act, one lost and adrift, driven not by purpose but contrivance.

Somewhere… beyond the sea…

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Non-Review Review: Jack Reacher – Never Go Back

Posted on October 19, 2016 by Darren

It is a strange experience, to watch one’s action hero icons grow up.

Tom Cruise is approaching fifty five years of age, although Jack Reacher: Never Go Back convincing places his character in his “mid-forties.” Watching the film, this feels entirely reasonable. Cruise is still a lean, mean, action-film-making machine with a dynamism that would put many younger stars to shame. If Tom Cruise isn’t in peak physical condition, he cannot be far off. Watching Never Go Back, it is not Cruise himself that gives the game away. The leading man is as limber as ever, energised at just the thought of another impressive stunt sequence.

You know where to Reacher me, if you have to.

It is the memory of Tom Cruise that gives the game away. Studies suggest that the peak age for cinema attendance is still somewhere between eighteen and forty. Tom Cruise would have been headlining films long before many modern movie-goers started attending the cinema with any real frequency. From Risky Business to Legend to Top Gun, Cruise has been a cinematic fixture for over three decades. That is a remarkable accomplishment, serving as something of a cultural constant.

For most of its runtime, Never Go Back feels very much like a middling demonstration of Cruise’s action movie bona fides. Like Jack Reacher, this is a standard actioner without the confident direction that has elevated Tom Cruise’s best work of the past few years. However, Never Go Back comes alive in those fleeting moments where it brushes against the idea of its leading man facing adulthood, positioning itself as a weird movie about a nineties action movie hero who inexplicably finds himself saddled with a makeshift family.

Literal life line.

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Non-Review Review: Queen of Katwe

Posted on October 19, 2016 by Darren

Early in Queen of Katwe, chess teacher Robert Katende notes that his young prodigy Phiona Mutesi can see eight moves ahead.

It is a remarkable visual, as Phiona halts their game in order to play out the next eight moves of their match culminating in the inevitable checkmate. There is an elegance to the movements, the choreography of the pieces moving across the board, and Mutesi intuitively understands not only where her pieces should go, but where her opponent’s pieces will go. This ability to predict the flow of a particular game, the narrative that it will chart, is the key to Phiona’s future and her best chance of getting out of the Katwe slums.

queenofkatwe1

In some ways, this sequence feels like something of a commentary on the film itself. The true story of Phiona Mutesi is truly remarkable, serving as an archetypal underdog story about a young girl from the Ugandan slums who went on to become one of the best chess players in the world. Queen of Katwe unfolds rather like that chess game, a series of moves and counter-moves that any savvy audience member will recognise beat-for-beat as the narrative of this sort of tale. Queen of Katwe holds very few surprises in terms of story.

And yet, in spite of that, there is something truly remarkable in watching that story play out, just as there is something striking in watching those pieces of wood move across the board. Queen of Katwe is a beautiful and joyous piece of film, a very old story that is very well-told, anchored in three fantastic central performances and some great direction from Mira Nair.

queenofkatwe

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Non-Review Review: Star Trek – First Contact

Posted on October 14, 2016 by Darren

Star Trek: First Contact caps off the thirtieth anniversary celebrations with one eye to the past and one eye to the future.

The second film to feature the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation is surprisingly nostalgic in places. The script makes several rather blatant nods towards Star Trek II: The Wrath of the Khan, perhaps the consensus pick for the best Star Trek feature film. It marks the return of a memorable antagonist from the parent series, serving as a direct sequel to a particular episode and pitting the lead character in a battle of wills against an old opponent. More than that, it builds upon a rich tradition of the franchise riffing upon Moby Dick.

“This scene is going to seem really ironic when they launch Star Trek: Enterprise.”

However, there are other major influences. Most notably, the film leans quite heavily upon Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In both films, the Enterprise crew film themselves sent back in time to save Earth from an alien threat, resulting in comedic misadventures as the characters interact with a supporting cast native to this time period. Most analysis of First Contact tends to focus on The Wrath of Khan parallels, as they dominate the primarily plot. Nevertheless, the secondary plot draws heavily from The Voyage Home.

More than that, the feature film draws heavily upon the existing Star Trek mythos. The movie is a direct sequel to The Best of Both Worlds, Part I and The Best of Both Worlds, Part II, recognising that two-parter as the moment that The Next Generation truly came into its own and stepped out from under the shadow of the original Star Trek series. Even beyond that acknowledgement of franchise history, First Contact does not take the crew back in time to the present day or a historical event. It takes the crew back to the point at which the future of Star Trek truly begins.

“Mister Worf, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Star Trek: Deep Space Nine out-badass me.”

Still, while the movie is constructed as a definite celebration of the past, it also serves to define the future of the franchise. The template for the remaining Rick Berman years can be found in this feature film. The success of the action and adventure beats in this instalment undoubtedly informed the emphasis on such elements in Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis. The final two films in this particular iteration of the franchise owe a lot more to this particular film than to Star Trek: Generations.

Even more, the impact of the film reached well beyond this set of characters. The other three television series were all heavily shaped and defined by this particular feature film. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine inherited a lot of the look and feel of this film, with the crew swapping out into these grey uniforms with Rapture. The Dominion War would use a lot of the ships designed for the combat sequence towards the opening of the scene. Some of the other production design also bled in, including the space suits in Empok Nor.

No time like the past.

Star Trek: Voyager would inherit some of that production design as well, including the space suits in episodes like Day of Honour or Demon. However, the film’s biggest impact on that particular series was the renovation of the Borg. Brannon Braga would seize upon the idea of the Borg as a recurring threat, setting them up in episodes like Blood Fever and Unity mere months after the release of the film. The Borg would serve as the basis of the big third and fourth season two-parter, Scorpion, Part I and Scorpion, Part II. Alice Krige would appear in Endgame.

In its own way, this film also signals the end of the Berman era. The arrival of the Vulcan ship in the closing minutes serves to set up the premise of Star Trek: Enterprise. James Cromwell would make the torch-passing cameo in Broken Bow, reprising his role as Zefram Cochrane. The idea of doing a prequel television series that charted the origin of the franchise feels very much rooted in the (critical and commercial) success of this iteration of the film franchise.

“Captain, when the Borg promised you a pound of flesh, it turns out that they meant it literally.”

On the audio commentary, writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore speak of the thirtieth anniversary as “the peak” of the franchise. After all, it seemed like the celebrations would last forever. First Contact was just one small part of a whole season of television that marked the best that the franchise had to offer. There was a wide selection of material, including episodes like Trials and Tribble-ations, Flashback, Future’s End, Part I and Future’s End, Part II. Following all of those, First Contact was really just the cherry on top of a very delicious cake.

However, the issue with First Contact as “the peak” is quite simple. From this vantage point, the audience can survey the entire Berman era. First Contact is positioned so that the audience can see the metaphorical beginnings of the Star Trek franchise, but also the makings of the end of this particular iteration. From the peak, there is only one direction.

“Just checked Rotten Tomatoes there. Still the best in the series. Don’t make me put on Nemesis, Mister Worf.”

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews, The Next Generation | Tagged: borg, borg queen, first contact, Jonathan Frakes, non-review review, review, star trek, star trek: first contact, star trek: the next generation | 26 Comments »

Non-Review Review: I, Daniel Blake

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Darren

I, Daniel Blake is seething with a righteous anger.

To be fair, this is very much what one might expect from Ken Loach. Loach is a very socially conscious filmmaker, with films like Cathy Come Home and The Riff-Raff exploring themes related to poverty and working class life in twentieth and twenty-first century Britain. I, Daniel Blake offers a timely and searing critique of the government policies that have left the working class tired and resentful. It is a searing portrayal of twenty-first century Britain, perhaps even more timely now than when it won the Palme d’Or in May.

Sign of the times.

I, Daniel Blake is anchored in two fantastic central performances. Dave Johns is mesmerising as the title character, a middle-aged widower facing a humiliating gauntlet of public sector bureaucracy in order to claim benefits to help him recover from a heart attack. Hayley Squires is impressive as Katie, a single mother moved to a strange town struggling to make ends meet anyway she can. Johns and Squires bring a humanity to I, Daniel Blake that balances well against Loach’s sheer unadulterated contempt for the status quo.

There are times at which I, Daniel Blake threatens to turn into a polemic, an angry rant more than a narrative. However, the performances keep the film grounded. More than that, Loach’s piping hot fury feels so necessary and so timely that any heavy-handedness can be excused.

Flat-out contempt.

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Non-Review Review: Inferno

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Darren

Inferno is not a good movie.

It is clunky and contrived, moving at so gentle a pace that even the character need to constantly remind each other that the fate of the human race lies in the balance. Its action sequences are clumsily staged, its twists are all entirely predictable and its impressive international cast strain to stretch their roles out to two dimensions. This is a film that has trouble generating tension despite the fact that there is an imminent threat to half of the world’s population. Inferno simply doesn’t work.

“It says… ‘one if by land, two if by sea’?”

And yet, in spite of all that, there is something strangely compelling about it. Inferno is amess of a film, but one that holds attention by virtue of how strikingly odd it is. Inferno feels very much like a James Bond film, if only they’d sanded down the rough edges of that nice old Roger Moore fellow, cast that quirky uncle who is really useful at table quizzes, and combined it with something like The Crystal Maze. The film plays like afternoon television on an epic scale, with Robert Langdon feeling like he could call in a favour from Perry Mason or R. Quincy at any moment.

Inferno is strange enough that it holds interest, feeling more unique than the recycled pseudo-histories of The DaVinci Code or Angels and Demons. There is an endearing eccentricity to the film, which might just be the gentlest apocalyptic thriller ever made. It is a weekday afternoon blockbuster.