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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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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: daniel blake, film, i daniel blake, non-review review, review | 5 Comments »

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.

“I belong in a museum!”

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, Movie, non-review review, review, robert langdon | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Girl on the Train

Posted on October 3, 2016 by Darren

What would you get if you tried to produce Gone Girl without David Fincher?

It is a tough question to answer, given Fincher’s style is an integral part of the film. It is impossible to divorce Gone Girl from Fincher’s steady cam shots and clinical framing. However, The Girl on the Train still makes a valiant attempt to answer. Whatever about the source material, the adaptation of The Girl on the Train is monomaniacally fixated upon that pulpy breakout psychological thriller, constructing another gaslighting murder investigation in desaturated terms to an electronic score that cannot help but evoke the work of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

A pale reflection.

However, director Tate Taylor is no David Fincher. Fincher keenly understood the pulpy absurdity of his source material, playing into the ridiculousness of layered twists and double-bluffs that reimagined marriage as some sort of long-form psychological warfare. Taylor fundamentally misunderstands the tone of his film, pitching the forced coincidences and crazy revelations of The Girl on the Train as something to be taken entirely seriously. Gone is the irony that made Gone Girl so effective, replaced with an ill-advised earnestness that refuses to blink.

The problem is not that The Girl on the Train comes off the rails as the overly elaborate details of its storytelling world come into focus. The problem is that it doesn’t nearly enough momentum to reach its destination.

A trained observer.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: david fincher, Emily Blunt, gone girl, non-review review, review, the girl on the train | 2 Comments »

Netflix and Marvel’s Luke Cage – Season 1 (Review)

Posted on September 30, 2016 by Darren

Luke Cage is an exceptional black superhero show.

Those twin concepts cannot be divorced from one another. The thrill of Luke Cage is how skilfully and how cleverly executive producer Cheo Hodari Coker interweaves those two strands. Luke Cage is not simply a story about Harlem that happens to feature superpowers, nor is just a superhero story that happens to feature African American characters. Coker carefully crafts the show that those two parts of itself become inseparable and indivisible. Luke Cage relishes its superhero storybeats, and bringing them together in service of a different kind of protagonist.

lukecage-nowyourmine29

It feels entirely appropriate that Luke Cage should be the focus of this series, the first superhero story of the franchise age to focus on a black protagonist. (There are a number of earlier examples from Blade to Catwoman to Steel, but those largely predate the current shared-universe-driven popular consciousness.) Luke Cage was the first black comic book hero to have his own on-going monthly title, and one of the earliest high-profile examples of a black superhero character not to incorporate “black” into his name, like the Black Panther or Black Lightning.

Of course, it feels shameful that it took this long. Hawkeye has somehow managed to appear in four blockbuster feature films before Marvel Studios produced a franchise film with a black lead actor. Spider-Man has been rebooted three separate times, but Black Panther will not open until 2018. Guardians of the Galaxy came out of nowhere long before Marvel Studios or Warner Brothers opened a summer tentpole superhero film with a minority or female lead. Meanwhile, Marvel has an influx of blonde white guys named Chris.

lukecage-dwyck2a

As such, Luke Cage is definitely overdue. And it keenly understands this. Every aspect of Luke Cage is filtered through an African American perspective that helps to give it a vibrance and energy that revitalises the format. In terms of plotting and structure, Luke Cage is perhaps the most traditional superhero story since Thor. However, the true beauty of the thirteen-episode miniseries lies in the improvisation around those beats and how the production team choose to hit the requisite notes. Luke Cage feels like an extended jazz album riffing on old standards.

However, as delayed as this appearance might be, it still feels perfectly attuned to the climate of late 2016. As Method Man reflects in and interview with the Sway Universe podcast in Soliloquy of Chaos, a great example of how keenly Luke Cage engages with black culture, “You know, here’s something powerful about seeing a black man that’s bulletproof, and not afraid.” That has never been more true.

lukecage-dwyck9a

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: luke cage, marvel, netflix, non-review review, review, Television | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Darren

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children works best when it serves as a vehicle for Tim Burton’s imagination, exploring a world where tall tales seem to be real and monsters manifest themselves literally, where trauma and loss are explained through escape into fantasy, and where shadows distort and bend into uncanny shapes as if to suggest that there is so much more to this world than it might first appear. This is all stock Burton imagery, but the director approaches it with an endearing energy.

Unfortunately, there is more to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. The film is not content to play as broad Burton fantasy of childhood mythmaking and coming of age. Despite an opening act that hints at something of a young adult follow-up to Big Fish, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children inevitably gets bogged down in the finer trappings of its young adult source material. Exposition is ladled on, rival orders are established, sequels are set up, familiar plot beats are not so much hit as hammered.

Movie night.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: eva green, film, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Movie, non-review review, review, tim burton | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Free State of Jones

Posted on September 24, 2016 by Darren

Free State of Jones does a decent job approximating the feel of a prestige picture.

Free State of Jones feels almost like writer and director Gary Ross is running through a checklist of all the elements expected from a successful prestige picture. It deals with heavy subject matter, unfolding primarily during the Civil War and touching upon Reconstruction. It is paced indulgently, never rising to more the a sitting trot. It is anchored in performance by a critically-acclaimed Oscar-winning actor who dominates the film. Its cinematography is uncomplicated and stately. It is laboured with a framing device that offers the illusion of depth.

When the dust settles…

Free State of Jones plays as an imitation of a much bolder and provocative film. There are points at which the film brushes up against potentially brilliant ideas, only to back away. For a film about slavery, Free State of Jones finds itself unable to look beyond its white leading character. The framing and scene composition is clearly intended to seem dignified, but instead feels lifeless. The film’s perspective is limited, in both a literal and figurative sense. There are a lot of interesting ideas inside Free State of Jones, but none of them are allowed to grow.

There is a heavy earnestness to Free State of Jones, but it suffocates the story.

Riding shotgun on secession.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Civil War, film, free state of jones, Movie, newton knight, non-review review, reconstruction, review | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Girl With All the Gifts

Posted on September 19, 2016 by Darren

The Girl With All the Gifts is brilliant and uncompromising.

Elevated by a smart script drawing from a clever book, and fantastically tense direction from Colm McCarthy, The Girl With All the Gifts is at once a brilliant example of the classic zombie movie tropes and a sly subversion of them. The Girl With All the Gifts was originally published in 2014, but it feels strangely of this cultural moment. It is very much a young adult science-fiction commentary on the world as it exists today, perfectly capturing the anxiety simmering beneath Brexit and Trumpism.

Gifted.

The Girl With All the Gifts in an exception piece of work, Carey’s script understanding the myriad of genre conventions that it is navigating while McCarthy pushes the material just a little bit further. It is unsettling and palpable in the ways that a post-apocalyptic zombie film needs to be, but it also goes that bit further. The strongest aspect of The Girl With All the Gifts is a willingness to follow its strands through to their logical conclusion, as unrelenting and confrontational as they might be.

The Girl With All the Gifts reimagines the zombie movie for a new generation.

Putting her neck on the line.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, Mike Carey, Movie, non-review review, review, the girl with all the gifts, zombie movie | 7 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Blair Witch

Posted on September 9, 2016 by Darren

Blair Witch is more clever than scary, which is at once the best and worst thing about it.

Reteaming veteran collaborators director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett, the film is nominally a long-delayed sequel to the classic 1999 found footage horror. The Blair Witch Project was something of a game-changer when it arrived. At a point in time when movies like The Matrix and The Truman Show (not to mention eXistenz and The Thirteenth Floor) teased out the idea of characters trapped in unreal surroundings, The Blair Witch Project applied that aesthetic to a horror movie in the style of Cannibal Holocaust.

Any witch way but loose…

The Blair Witch Project kickstarted an entire genre of contemporary horror framed as documentary footage of horrible happenings; Cloverfield, [rec], Diary of the Dead, The Last Exorcism, Paranormal Activity. Such films appealed to studios because they were cheap to make, relying on no-name casts and minimal special effects as part of the premise. They also resonated with audiences, perhaps because they spoke to the postmodern anxieties at the cusp of the twenty-first century, perhaps because they mirrored the use of amateur footage in news and online.

Blair Witch marks a return to that premise, perhaps a fond farewell to a genre that has been in decline for the past few years. At their best, Wingard and Barrett push the premise of found footage horror to its limit. This is a film that wallows in its self-awareness and referential integrity, one that feels postmodern and cheeky, one that draws attention to its own status as a sequel by pointedly trapping its characters within a sequel. It is all very clever, and Blair Witch works best when it plays with these ideas. Unfortunately, its scares are nowhere near as clever.

Branching out.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: blair witch, film, non-review review, review, the blair witch project | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Ben Hur (2016)

Posted on September 7, 2016 by Darren

What does a biblical blockbuster look like in the twenty-first century?

Hollywood has wrestled with the question of how best to resurrect old genres. The past couple of years have seen a resurgence in revisionist westerns like The Hateful Eight or Bone Tomahawk or The Revenant. There have even been a smaller number of contemporary swords-and-sandals epics like The Eagle or Centurion or Pompeii. These genre were once a staple of Hollywood production, but they fell by the wayside in the intervening years. Barring an occasional breakout success, they are considered dead genres.

Chariots of fire!

Biblical epics are very much an example of such a genre, to the point that Hail, Caesar! focused on the production of such a film as a celebration of the Golden Age of Hollywood. More people can probably point to the iconic version of Ben-Hur starring Charleton Heston as the eponymous chariot rider than can name Lew Wallace as the author of the book upon which it was based. When Hollywood attempted a blockbuster adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, they did so by stripping out a lot of the more overt Christian themes.

Ben-Hur is part of a mini modern revival of these classic biblical epics for a new age, alongside films like Exodus: Gods and Kings or Noah or Risen. It is a film which struggles with the question of what a biblical epic needs to look like in this day and age, but is primarily useful as a counter-example. Whatever a successful modern biblical epic might look like, it is not this.

“Is Game of Thrones hiring, by any chance?”

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: ben-hur, film, Movie, non-review review, review | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Hell or High Water

Posted on September 6, 2016 by Darren

Hell or High Water is a modern western, a tale of the land and the people shaped by it.

Hell or High Water revels in the old cowboy tropes. Repeatedly over the course of the film’s runtime, eye witnesses liken the outlaw pair at the centre of the story to “cowboys” or “cowpokes.” Set in West Texas, the film unfolds in a world of cowboy hats and rattlesnakes. This is a story about lonely men in the desert, land and self-determination. At one point, a half-Native American half-Mexican character pauses to reflect upon the idea that this is essentially the foundational myth of the frontier playing out again. The actors might change, but the roles remain the same.

No Country for Young Men.

Hell or High Water is bitter and cynical reflection on the concept of land and ownership, and the importance that it plays to the American identity. Towards the end of the film, bank robber Toby Howard justifies his actions by reference to generations of struggle; the generations that came before and the generations that will follow, and the land that has either condemned or sustained them. Toby is quite literally building his own future out there on the frontier, his bank robberies motivated by the urge to wrest back his family’s land so he might wrest a profit from it.

Like its lead characters, and like the land that drives them to this desperate course of action, Taylor Sheridan’s script is reserved and restrained. There is an economy to it, a sparseness and a leanness that suits this tale and the people inhabiting it. However, Sheridan’s script implicitly trusts director David Mackenzie, who manages to find a striking beauty and a stunning brutality in this rugged landscape inhabited by these rugged men.