RIP Tony Scott

The work by South Shields’ very own Scott brothers, Tony in particular, is what led me to notice style in cinema for the first time. In short, it led me to notice that there was something unique to look out for with every filmmaker. Tony’s work was so outrageously flashy, with its striking neon colours, filtered skies, smoke-filled rooms, and particular editing beats, that it was hard not to be woken up to what a director could leave as a trademark.

That is what I now take from cinema, and take with me into every film I watch. I look for a style and a visual pattern. I want to be seduced by framing and lighting in its simplest and showiest of forms. I don’t require them to be great philosophical works, or to try my patience, I just require them to do what film was invented to do: to show me something interesting.

In every film I watch, I look out for at least one shot that’s like no other, and which may reveal to me what a love of cinema the director has.

Tony Scott’s movies were an orgy of these moments. They were addictive and compulsive viewing, because every shot had some decadent design to it, and every scene had a nakedly joyful quality, much like a street carnival or kinky burlesque. But there was also a liberalist approach to Mr Scott’s contrasting characters. His heroes were often tortured, down on their luck, but intelligent, with an inner strength. Whereas his bad guys were simply bad, brutal, and greedy to the core.

This showed Tony’s sympathy for the lost souls and wayward spirits of this world, including a merciless aversion to corruption and privilege.

Although he has inspired many other directors over the years, his work has stood out amidst his lesser copyists, mostly due to his own work being that of a soul who just loved to capture images on film.

And loved to make them as bright and colourful and as entertaining as he could.

Tony Scott’s style and fingerprint will last in cinema for years to come, entertaining armchair critics such as myself and inspiring real filmmakers forever.

May he Rest in Peace.

Kingdom of Heaven: Director’s Cut – film review

I’d describe myself as an existential nihilist who finds comfort in the fact that the universe, our galaxy, the solar system, planet Earth and all the life found upon it is the product of a great cosmic accident that can or may never be replicated. I also (perhaps begrudgingly) appreciate the role that religion once held in our society before the formation of the welfare state which took education, health care, employment, financial welfare, social services and civic responsibility away from the educated holy minority and put it into the hands of the larger democratic community. Up until the twentieth century we would have found it hard to get by without religion and the superstitious belief in an all-seeing all-knowing deity that gives and takes life away without reason. In reality it’s the world around us that gives and takes life without reason… and that world is more callous than any vengeful god could ever be. There are so many factors that change our environment and atmosphere and effect our ecology and climate and these factors may change at random because of the way our planet and environment interacts with itself. I’m of the belief that there is a god of sorts, but it’s teachings are to be found in science books, not in religious texts.

But I don’t say this as a cynic out to offend, I’m far too open-minded and laid back for that.

If you take a casual walk around any significant religious building and breathe in it’s architectural magnificence you’ll realise that the people who built them really believed in God and in their religion. I mean they really believed. And so I admire that passion and truly respect that for many people religion isn’t just a fanciful notion and an easy answer to the mysteries that surround them, it’s something that drives their lives and pushes them to do great things.

Those great things can be good but unfortunately they can also be bad.

Kingdom Of Heaven is about when it drives us - all of us; of all faiths, even athiesm - to be bad. It’s a soap opera on an ambitious scale which sadly falls short of what it seemingly sets out to do: which is to create a possible final sobering word on misguided faith. It succeeds in it’s moral journey by presenting a thoughtful and balanced opinion on the positives and negatives of having a faith that may lead a person to take up arms, but it undeniably fails in it’s acting and storytelling aspects.

Ridley Scott believes that the secret to having a good relationship with your actors is in the casting – if you cast the right actor in the right role then their skill and talent will work for you and there will be little need for your interference and direction. The cast which Scott has assembled for Kingdom Of Heaven has let him down mortally and what needed to be a character driven film has become a pantomime skit more ridiculous than the type you’d have to sit through during the festive season. In fact it’s one Widow Twankey away from being comical.

Our heroes want to fight for innocent people, rather than for a god, but for the audience who rarely get to see these beloved people or get to know their plight the film becomes sort of a struggle. We only see the plight of royalty, of the privileged and of a band of self-righteous knights throughout which, as a group of protagonists, are hard to relate to and root for. Next to the unwise casting choices this is the film’s biggest failure.

But amongst the ridiculously dastardly villains, absentee heroes and the pompous speech-making provided by the eager-to-please screenplay there is a beautifully crafted film just aching to be rescued. It does well to recreate sprawling battle hordes that otherwise would be hard to imagine by just reading a history book. The terrifying sights and sounds of medieval wartime logistics are all here to marvel at on screen. Scott succeeds in not turning his effects laden scenes into CGI showreels and brings a sense of heart-stopping realism to key moments that would surely have been exploited by other filmmakers. There’s a restraint on show that’s worthy of great praise.

But Kingdom Of Heaven is let down in core places that unfortunately cannot be rescued. As mentioned above it’s failings began in the casting of it’s leaden, pantomime leads who seem to be in the wrong movie altogether. Jeremy Irons, who I usually love so dearly and often lament his poor career choices, seems bizarrely unable to convincingly portray a human being. He affects no accent that I can discern or any attitude that is particularly telling – he just growls about the place in a manner which is as stiff and wooden as a crucifix.

Kingdom Of Heaven wants to be emotional but lacks an invaluable investment in real people. There are all the surface signs of a story and of characters and of a narrative arc, but that unquantifiable magic of emotional attachment is missing. It may have all seemed right on the page but it’s execution is surprisingly lazy and presumptuous.

Basically, everybody should have tried harder.

This could have been so much more had the right pieces been in place from the start, but they weren’t and so we’re left only with something that could have been great like the hopes and dreams of a holy man waging war in a far off land thinking an intangible spirit will bring him glory.

This is a wounded victory.

3/5

Body of Lies (2008) – film review

Good film, terrible title.

I expected this to be a so-so surveillance thriller with lots of unconvincing satellite imagery, CCTV snoopery, shouting down mobile phones by sharp suited government agents trying to save the world and well worn suspense thriller clichés but, although it does have some of those elements, it actually has a lot more to offer.

Body Of Lies is more about what a Western intelligence agency tracking down a terrorist organisation has to do when modern surveillance methods fail to deliver any real results and their field agent has to rely on people, relationships and face-to-face dealings in order to get the job done.

That said, about two thirds of the way in the plot is sort of thrown away and our heroes just try something else instead, rendering everything that’s gone before it a bit redundant… or maybe what starts two thirds of the way in is actually the real plot but it just takes ages to get going. I’m not 100% sure.

Russell Crowe is fun as the film’s rotund exposition sponge and Mark Strong is nice and menacing as a very convincing Arab intelligence boss, but don’t let the posters and video covers’ promise of a double billing fool you, this is Leonardo DiCaprio’s film and he plays a man growing bitter at having to play dirty in order to fight for what’s right with great conviction. As always his manner and general persona lets his performance down in places, but his eagerness and commitment to the part ends up shining through and winning us over.

Ridley Scott keeps a sturdy hand over everything, perhaps wisely resisting setting the wrong tone with his usually poetic visual trademarks, although there are a few moments that remind us that he’s behind the camera. It’s also a great example of his mastery of production economics as, although the narrative takes us to five or six different countries, it was all shot on location in either Washington DC or Morocco.

There are a few clunky editing choices which offset the pace, in particular a moment where Scott and editor Pietro Scalia try to have their cake and eat it by showing us an explosion within the standard editing/camera format of the film and then, for no reason at all, shows us it again through the jumpy frame-skipping tape of a CCTV recording. The two could have been woven together in the editing room but, no, we’re just shown it happening twice instead. There are also some awkward cuts between scenes that are jarring with the previous scene’s dialogue and shots promising something in the next scene that’s not delivered. There’s also a light hearted moment where a character waves a napkin as a mock gesture of peace and surrender, but it’s not pulled off well by the actor and could have been saved by a reverse shot or some quick cutting.

But apart from a few speed bumps this is a smooth, sleek and exhilarating ride that was perhaps unfairly dismissed by some critics, a potentially larger audience (including me) and it's own marketing campaign at the time, but it’s definitely one that’s built to endure.

A rough diamond that’s worth dusting off and giving a go.

3/4

Samurai Cop (1989) - film review

Inspired by and indeed part of the 1980s trend of buddy cop movies but by no means as original nor as ordinary, Samurai Cop is fascinating in it’s filmmaking ineptitude and tedious in it’s formulaic presentation.

It is, in all ways, brilliant fun.

It’s greatest inspiration seems to be Lethal Weapon 2 in that it features a team of foreign bad guys (in this case Japanese instead of South African) who come up against a rebellious pair of Los Angeles cops (a long haired white guy in jeans and a black guy in a suit) who will stop at nothing to halt their evil plans… especially when the bad guys get personal and start killing our hero’s buddies in blue.

Samurai Cop features awkwardly gratuitous sex scenes sometimes sandwiched uncomfortably between violent torture scenes; a continuing stream of mild racism (or not so mild) against Asians and African Americans; sexual harassment by both men and women; homophobia; and a flippant disregard for police procedure.

None of the above is too offensive, mind you, and should be taken as the naïve attitudes of a decade that probably should have known better.

The most offensive thing on display in Samurai Cop, though, is it’s awful… and I mean awful… writing, “acting”, directing, editing, sound design, continuity, set design, costumes, special effects, stunts… well, everything. I’d even go so far as to say that this feels like it was made by a softcore porno company that tried to break away from it’s seedy roots and attempt something more mainstream… but ended up making a softcore porno movie with some extreme violence and a samurai cop who doesn’t seem to know much about being a samurai or being a cop.

Watch it with some beers and some friends and laugh non-stop for 90 minutes… it’s a mildly offensive blast!

1/5

Prometheus - film review

SPOILERS

“We were so wrong!” Exclaims Noomi Rapace as her character realises that she and her team of dangerously non-multitasking astronauts have travelled across the galaxy with high hopes of making first contact with an apparently benign alien race only to end up on a deadly bio-weapons storage facility.

We were so wrong, too, in turning up to see Prometheus with high hopes of seeing a decent entry into the dwindling Alien franchise only to realise it was a trap. Ridley Scott and his team, however, were right - this is not a prequel/sequel/reboot, in fact it feels more like the fruition of a brain-dead sci-fi body horror script that was laying around a production office for years that nobody wanted to touch, but after realizing they needed room in the script archive they took it out, dusted it off, slapped some explicit references to Alien on it and brought in Ridley Scott to direct.

That’s obviously not what happened. but I’m trying to paint a disgruntled picture here.

When I regrettably saw The Da Vinci Code in the cinema when it first came out I could tell even from the very first few shots that it was going to be bad; not because I’m particularly observant or a trained film theorist but because there seemed to be fundamental flaws in the way the film was laid out and constructed. It was illogical and amateurish. I had that same sinking feeling when Prometheus began and its placid opening credit sequence got under way and its unnecessary prologue started. Even the “Fanfare for the Common Man” flavoured main musical theme seemed cloyingly upbeat for such a movie as if it really belonged on a period war epic.

And that’s it. The film starts off on the wrong foot and never recovers, only to reveal more and more problems as it goes along.

If you’ve ever watched Paul WS Anderson’s Aliens Vs. Predator film, which is stunning in its mind-boggling stupidity but fun in a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way, then you’ll notice that Prometheus follows many of the same opening beats, even down to one character challenging another about why they need to take defence measures with them out on their risk-free scientific expedition. It’s a staggering series of oversights/coincidences that will surely end up as a fan-made mash-up video.

There are logical flaws strewn about the place in Prometheus that become irritating even if you only have half a brain that’s semi-functional. Unlike the work of Christopher Nolan – which just omits logic explaining exposition that can still be found and answered by the viewer if they think (or drink) hard enough – Prometheus and its characters just come across as dumb. For instance, why would you take almost twenty people out on a two year space mission (and why would they agree to go?) when you’re not going to tell them why they’re there until you’ve all arrived; wouldn’t you have done that back on Earth? Why would you enter a strange planet’s atmosphere without undertaking some sort of geographical survey first to find out where to land? Why would you bring booze? Why would you get a young(ish) actor to don old-man prosthetic makeup when you never show him as a young man?

The gaps in logic continue and never end, a list which I’m sure is catalogued in full elsewhere on the internet.

But the film somehow passes the blame for much of its stupidity onto its characters, which has become the source of much of my ire. In Alien the characters were blue-collar slobs with attitude problems, but you genuinely cared about them after a while and didn’t want to see them die. Nearly every character in Prometheus is so obnoxious, vulgar and dim-witted that you feel like cheering after each elaborate death sequence. Even our main character deserves a dispatch that sadly never comes. So for 124 minutes you find yourself following the adventures of a bunch of people you’d probably cross the street to avoid in real life. Yes, it’s basically Big Brother In Space.

The only film experience I’ve had recently which comes anywhere close to confusing my sense of compassion in such a way is Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, which I’m still half convinced was meant to be a slapstick comedy.

Oh well, maybe the only hope for a decent Alien film in the future is if David Fincher decides to go back and remake Alien 3 now that he has more clout in the industry… but then we’ll lose all those fine performances that made 3 more watchable than it should have been.

But I sincerely doubt he ever will.

Well, like Ridley Scott’s own noble Nottingham project which took a u-turn during development into being just a second rate Robin Hood movie, Prometheus might have been so much more had it been retooled into not being set in the Alien universe and its characters rewritten into being a little more likeable.

On the upside, though, Idris Elba is charming and charismatic as the ship’s captain and remains the only character in the entire film that you don’t want to slap; the film is beautifully crafted by the art department and visual effects team with background plates that would look nice framed as pictures on your wall; and there was a funny commercial that was shown before the film started in the cinema (but I think that constitutes “scraping the barrel” for compliments).

But that’s it.

Watch Prometheus just to satisfy your curiosity but be prepared to feel pretty miserable and annoyed by the time it finishes.

I did.

2/5

War Horse - film review

Steven Spielberg’s a sly one. He may very well go down in history as the inventor of the “review proof” movie. That’s not to say his films are without their individual flaws, but he certainly doesn’t make writing a few words about them the easiest of tasks. His films are often as rounded as you could possibly make a film with all the bases covered and all potential questions answered. They often go on slightly longer than a person would want them to but you can’t reach the end of what he eventually delivers to confidently declare that it was all a waste of your time. But this feeling of emotional and thematic finality in his work can sometimes be frustrating to the casual watcher and tends to lead to an excessively overwrought and draining viewing experience.

There are times when this emotional completism is perhaps not always necessary and comes up against criticism, especially with Spielberg’s more narrower genre pictures like Jurassic Park and Minority Report, where fairytale conclusions with “The End” (whether literal or metaphorical) branded firmly on their behinds tend to stick out like a, erm, branded bottom.

War Horse is not one of those pictures and it’s powerful emotional journey is as satisfying as it is required.

Your experience of the film may depend entirely on how you view it’s structure. It either has a perfectly straight forward narrative wherein the main protagonist is a horse who has no plainly translated communications with other animals or an internal monologue to connect itself directly with the audience; or it’s a running tableau of barely connected stories strung together using the passing ownership of an animal as it’s binding apparatus. Perhaps it’s a failing on my part that I saw it as the latter, as the original Michael Morpurgo children’s book on which this is based (along with the subsequent stage production) is most definitely written from a first person/equine perspective.

This running narrative which abandons and introduces characters at will can only have been a challenge for the film’s screenwriters Richard Curtis and Lee Hall, who make sure not to rely on just one connecting device to keep things together (although Joey The Horse is certainly the main one). It’s attention deficient narrative manages not to test our patience or become too experimental or showy, in fact it’s as much an exercise in carefully crafted call-backs as it is about moving forward and delivering new experiences. That’s where the screenplay’s success and moral centre lies I suppose - in remembrance.

In simpler terms War Horse is a constant stream of Act 1s that subtly slips you an Act 2 and an Act 3 without you noticing it.

Inevitably in a film such as this there are times where your attention might wander briefly. I think that happened to me about twice during the whole movie, but I was yanked back each time by a burst of poignancy or intense activity. Repeat viewings will reveal the importance of the more subtle and seemingly toilet-break friendly scenes that undoubtedly bring something crucial to the thematic collage of the film. You’re simply required to take in a lot of new information throughout, which isn’t what we’re used to from contemporary Hollywood cinema.

But aside from the complex rolling narrative of wars and horses the overriding theme of the film is an encouraging one. The moments when my emotions came to the surface and I found myself fighting hard to hold back the tears (I didn’t succeed) were not found in the sad and hopeless ones, although there are those for sure, but in the portrayal of the strength and stubbornness of the human spirit and the undefeated love, camaraderie and kindness that’s shared between all living creatures. It’s a novel concept in an art form devised to show us something we’re not accustomed to having shown to us, but War Horse bravely reminds us that the vast majority of people are essentially good and compromising and that the strength of will and charity can overpower all odds and survive even the most unimaginable of horrors.

In that respect it’s probably a good film to have in your collection for days when you feel like the whole world is against you and you find yourself at your lowest ebb.

Visually we’re seeing a new side to Spielberg here. Although he’s always dealt with stories on a large scale and entertained us with his unique visual motifs, War Horse takes a few steps back to paint it’s tale (no pun intended) on a larger canvass than we thought was possible from the director. After helming around twenty-seven visually arresting full length features this is the first one by Spielberg that can truly be described as an epic, whilst somehow remaining uniquely intimate. It’s strongest influence and guiding inspiration has to be one Sir David Lean, which you notice most of all in the bookend scenes set amongst the English countryside where Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski make the environment glow and shimmer as if illuminated by light bouncing off convenient bodies of water. You could argue negatively that in these sequences the reflectors run away from the filmmakers slightly and the light sources erroneously contradict each other, but the overall effect is quite magical, recalling Alex Thomson’s memorable work on Ridley Scott’s Legend.

I don’t think it’d be wrong of me to say that this is perhaps the prettiest film that Spielberg has made to date and is without a doubt lensman Kaminski’s show. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s quite a reservedly directed film that more often than not pauses to painstakingly add brushstrokes to it’s detailed lighting pallet as opposed to indulging in complicated moving concept shots. This reserved quality might also be largely due to the abundant use of animal actors on screen who probably don’t always work well with dancing camera setups, but I suppose that’s a given.

Performance wise War Horse has an impressively sturdy arsenal of character actors on it’s side who really get their day on the battlefield here (pun intended this time). It’s a film of faces you half recognise but might not always be able to put a name to (I think at one point I regrettably said to myself: “oh that’s what’s-his-name from thingy”), but we all know Peter Mullen, Emily Watson and David Thewlis and such stalwarts do well to give the film a very human voice and backbone (there’s a key close-up of Watson after her son receives some bad news in the post that’s possibly my favourite shot in the entire movie). One particular casting highlight for me was that of Tom Hiddleston as a kindly army captain, who’s gentle charisma and natural charm lightens some of the earlier scenes immensely - an appealing trait that’s surely to keep him in rewarding and steady work for quite some time.

At it’s heart War Horse is an old fashioned looking film and brings back to the screen the lost art of grand and operatic cinematic sweep in the vein of Gone With The Wind and the work of the aforementioned David Lean. It’s beautiful backdrops and very particular use of silhouettes, shading and emotive blusters of wind reminds us of just how remarkably beautiful the world is around us and how both fragile and resilient life can be.

It’s not a perfect film, but then again perfect films rarely are.

5/5

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol – film review

I’ve not watched any episodes of the original Mission: Impossible television series so I can’t make any judgements about which of the four motion picture adaptations is the most faithful. All I can say is which I think is the best and Ghost Protocol isn’t it. My guess is that Brian De Palma’s 1996 debut of this Tom Cruise controlled and starring film series is the least faithful, but it remains by far the best and one of the last great Hollywood suspense thrillers of the twentieth century. The tightness and slender form of that first Mission: Impossible outing with it’s conceptual Dutch-angles and claustrophobically minimal use of outdoor locations was so well crafted that I’d trust it’s makers to build me a plane to fly in or a bridge to walk across.

What’s come since hasn’t been so impressive.

Back in 1996 only two gunshots were fired on screen and those two shots really mattered. They were crucial. The whole film seemed to be assembled around the desire to not reduce itself to simple firearm balletics in an era where Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez ruled the land with bullets and brutality. Every frame was meticulously devised and constructed like a more contemporary Wachowski or Snyder film. You really got the feeling that what was on screen was all that was shot; you could feel the visual architecture of the storyboarding process; you could feel the carefully timed walkthroughs to block the shots precisely before even an inch of celluloid was used; you could feel an auteur crafting something that had no room for what it didn’t need. It was lean, it wasn’t mean and it thrilled me to bits.

What’s come since has had some fat on it; it’s been a little mean spirited in places; and it’s most certainly been quite, quite average.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (or M:I4 or M:I-GP or Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol or however you’re meant to phrase it) is made by people who still appreciate what De Palma did sixteen years ago to vastly underrated success and it pleasantly echoes the feel of those distant achievements. There are signs here and there that the soul of this new one is harkening back to 1996 and that it could very well turn out to be something just as special. But it doesn’t. Ironically it feels sort of like a ghost.

A few reviews I read about Ghost Protocol when it first came out declared that it was stylish. I didn’t find it to be that exactly. Even when watching the trailers (which are meant to be comprised of “greatest hits” moments) I just couldn’t see where this slickness was that all the critics were raving about. Maybe it was to be found in the cinema in glorious IMAX 3D, but on my small screen 2D DVD copy what style probably jumped out at viewers in the theatre has been flattened out totally on home media. I wonder if the music was in IMAX 3D too because that’s flat as well, eventually becoming possibly the most redundantly placid elevator-music take on what a film score should contribute to a film that I’ve ever heard. It was there and it came out of my speakers, but I never “heard it”. Maybe I should invest in an expensive surround sound system.

Brad Bird’s first time helming a live action feature after a successful career directing animation is an impressive start, but it’s undeniably flawed. Not in any distracting way, mind you, as it’s a very confidently shot and choreographed film, so Bird certainly doesn’t lose points for his overall control of the project. What he does fail to do is something that his predecessor J. J. Abrams (who stays on as a producer) also failed to do and continues to fail to do – and that’s construct a coherent action set piece. The more subtle scenes of quiet suspense are outstanding and genuinely gripping, revealing itself to be one of Bird’s greatest strengths (will the projected corridor sequence and the duplicate hotel room scene become the things of legend?), but there were times when I just tuned out altogether as the film failed to communicate visually what was happening during the more bombastic moments.

There are three sequences that may have worked better and felt more impressive on an IMAX screen, but down here on lowly DVD they’re baffling. The tall building climbing scene (after M:I-2’s leap from a tall building and M:I-3’s, erm, leap from a tall building) is nice but for some reason I didn’t feel a nail-biting sense of danger even though the stunt was done “for real” (albeit with safety cables) on the side of the tallest building in the world. The filmmakers bravely chose not to cheat the sequence with blue screens and CGI mattes and yet there’s still something oddly fake about how it looks, especially with the lack of significant air movement and the subconscious assumption that, well, why wouldn’t you fake it if the result of doing it for real looks just as phoney? The sound design of the dust storm chase sequence made it sound like it was exciting but visually it lost me completely (although my failing eyesight didn’t help). The high tech multi-storey car park fight (a futuristic concept actually borrowed from a Thunderbirds episode) is brilliantly conceived but sadly wasted by missing expositional shots informing us where the characters fit in amongst the chaos or what the dangers are within the cinematic space.

One important thing that most definitely works and manages to hold the film together is the first Impossible Mission Force team in sixteen years that actually feels right. Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Paula Patton make, along with “point man” Cruise, a delightful foursome who bounce off each other’s strengths and weakness with avid glee and humour. They do so well in fact that Cruise’s roll in the film, whilst still very much the lead, seems humbly set back amidst his supporting players who he himself often plays support to. Is this a sign that Cruise is ready to hand the baton onto somebody else? Renner perhaps? Stranger things have happened.

It would be nice if Henry Czerny and Vanessa Redgrave (who both had all the best lines in the first one) could make a long overdue return in number four (would Emmanuelle Beart be out of the question too? After all, Claire Phelps only looked dead, right?), but I won’t be holding my breath.

My final thoughts on Ghost Protocol are that it’s too long and treads too many paths we’ve seen too many times before, mostly in other Mission: Impossible movies. It’s plot is the half-arsed stuff of an old Bond film that you never watch anymore and it’s bad guys are as insignificant and forgettable as the featured product placements will be in about five years time. It’s still miles better than the second one and only just ahead of the third, but the first and best for now remains solitary in a mythical league of it’s own.

A genuinely nice try, though.

3/5

48fps and the death of cinema

There’s a problem with the preview footage shown recently of Peter Jackson’s upcoming film The Hobbit, which is due out this December… but it’s not a new problem, in fact it’s a problem that’s been growing for quite a few years.

It’s to do with the 48 frames per second that the film’s been shot in (which is twice as many as normal) and the look that it’s given it. Some people are saying that it’s a method that spoils the feel of what they’re watching; it takes away the stylistic sheen that we’re used to with movies and makes it look cheap, no matter how expensive and glamorous the production is.

Here’s a quote dated 24 April 2012 from the Ain’t It Cool News website about the “controversial” The Hobbit footage:

“…the big issue people walked out of the room this morning feeling is that the look of THE HOBBIT is not what they associate with filmic, or movie-like, or at all traditionally cinematic. The effect of watching 1970’s BBC television dramas as compared to US TV from the same era was mentioned by various people around me.”

Too much like a dated television show, you say?

Here’s my 19 December 2010 thoughts about Michael Mann’s film Public Enemies that addresses a very similar problem:

“I just can’t get to grips with Michael Mann’s choice and use of tv style digital film stock that makes you feel like you’re watching the behind the scenes documentary on the production.

I know he uses it for stylistic effect and to give his post The Insider output a grittier patina… but it just feels cheap and spoils the vast effort put into every other area of his recent films.

Plus the fly-on-the-wall documentary feel that his work now has doesn’t sit well with dramatic acting and the two art forms really do clash badly, making even the most earnest of performance seem strangely out of place and silly.

I tried watching Public Enemies, more than once, really I did, but I found the cinematography too detached, uninvolved and distracting.”

I hate to say “I told you so”, but… well.

This new digital 48fps filmmaking is taking away what people seem to love and cherish about cinema. It’s flattening out the illusion and taking away the magic.

I only hope that this new controversy will reminded people that just because you can do a thing it doesn’t always mean that you should do a thing.

The BBC also reports on the issue: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17836380

We Need to Talk About Kevin - film review

Perhaps unfairly I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin a month ago, absorbed it’s artistic darkness and obscurities, took it back to the video library and forgot about it. Yesterday I flipped open my laptop and started writing a review. I’m not sure whether taking that amount of time to come to a decision about a movie is wise, but it seems to have taken that long for my thoughts on the matter to finally become clear.

We Need To Talk About Kevin is a film about a mother trawling through her own biased and subjective memory to find an answer to why her first born child has grown up to be a mass murderer. We only see her side of the story and her take on events, therefore it seems that the film isn’t here to give it’s audience a balanced opinion, it’s here to be un-diplomatic, narrow minded and short sighted, just like many of it’s characters.

As a drama about an American high school shooting (this time with arrows instead of bullets… as if teenagers being brutally gunned down has become some sort of cinematic cliché) it’s not as haunting, mature or disturbing as Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant – which left me numb for days – and struggles to get to grips with what story it’s actually trying to tell. If it’s about a psychotic child/young man growing up to commit an unforgivable atrocity then it’s portrayal of the titular Kevin as an Omen style demon child, complete with high-angle shots of his dark and evil gazes, is ill conceived and borders on comical; if it’s about a woman being victimised by the tragedy’s survivors for bringing the perpetrator into the world then, once you see the key series of events from start to finish and realise that she’s just as much of a victim as the rest, you start to question why she’s so hated by the community; if it’s about a mother trying to work out where she went wrong with bringing up her offspring then there are great gaps in the film’s narrative that can only be described as plot holes which fail to explain important issues that desperately need explaining.

In the end We Need To Talk About Kevin is surprisingly mundane and, dare I say it, rather boring. We know what the film is inevitably building up to and what our thoughts/feelings are on the subject already, but in carefully structuring a narrative around these known quantities the filmmakers have steered clear of providing any answers, clear or otherwise, on the reasoning behind Kevin’s actions; it also refuses to find a satisfying emotional denouement which we mistakenly think this is all leading us to. In the end the film remains a nicely shot, elegantly arranged but slightly exploitative bore that tries to be deeper and more challenging than it actually is.

I recommend watching the aforementioned Elephant instead, or maybe even the more popcorn friendly The Omen, you’ll have a similar but more truthful and complete experience than if you try labouring through the tedium of We Need To Talk About Kevin, which simply has nothing to say.

2/5

Canoe Adventure!

Not a media review, but I thought this write-up about a sporting activity might be of some interest to somebody.

The most important lesson I learned yesterday, whilst undertaking professional canoe training, was: get reasonably fit beforehand, as you’ll feel like a twat if you can’t zip up your wetsuit, and you really do notice your weight as you’re rocking unsteadily about on the water.

Oh and your muscles will hurt like shit the next day, so stock up on ibuprofen!

I went for this water-based adventure with my girlfriend’s doctor friend and two 17-year-olds, which my friend-of-a-friend is acquainted with through their parents. Or something. The teens wanted to do the canoeing for their Duke of Edinburgh awards (fuck knows what that is, but I heard the term floating about when I was at school), whereas I was there just for fun. The teens were a pleasant pair of kids and not too teenager-ish, although the girl did get a bit squeaky in the afternoon. Sigh. We all got on though, and seemed to bond under the physical duress of the whole experience.

Oh and I found out that what I thought was a canoe AKA the long, thin banana you slide into and row about in using a double-ended lightsaber paddle, isn’t technically a canoe at all.

It’s a kayak.

I also found out that my claustrophobia doesn’t like kayaks, so I literally had to bail out of mine before I even went out onto the water. Fortunately for me, the other type of boat we were there to try out was a larger, and more open, Canadian canoe. I’ve been in one of these before many years ago, actually in Canada itself, and am very comfortable inside. You manoeuvre about in these using just a single-ended paddle. The Canadian canoe is, apparently, harder to use and was meant to constitute the latter part of the day, but the instructor was impressed with how much of an affinity I had with it. This will be my one brag of the day. He even recommended that I seriously consider taking it up in the future.

Perhaps it’s my Canadian heritage that enabled me to master this vessel better. It’s in my blood, baby!

Stupidly, I didn’t pack any snacks to feast on throughout the day, as I was so worried about everything else that it just didn’t seem like a priority. I worry about everything all the time, so some things get left out. I was relieved, therefore, that tubes of Pringles were in much abundance amongst the group, so I accepted generous donations with ease.

So there’s another lesson: pack loads of crap to stuff in your face!

The weather for the day was a mixed bag. I was warm enough with the clothing I’d taken, but had to borrow some gloves from the instructor when the rain and hail arrived to affect my paddling. You need to plan for all conditions when heading out on the water! The wind came and went in random bursts, which really messed-up the ease of navigating on the lake. The canoe I used was more prone to being pushed about and dominated by gales than the sleeker kayaks. This meant that, at one point, when we were way out on the far side of the lake, the instructor had to guide me back to shore with his kayak, as I just couldn’t navigate the canoe effectively. My poor eyesight also had a lot to do with this, unfortunately. It was nice when the sun came out intermittently and warmed us all up. I think, based on this, that it’d be a nicer experience later on in the year when the weather is more consistent.

In my opinion, I was right about the timetable for the day being too intensive. I’d have enjoyed just a morning/afternoon session, but a 9-to-5 ordeal was a bit too much for my schlubby body. I gave up an hour early, as my too-small-for-me wetsuit began digging into my shoulders and caused a lot of pain, plus my energy levels had dropped to the point where I just didn’t care anymore. This turned out to be a wise move, as I missed the diving-out-of-the-kayak-in-the-middle-of-the-fucking-lake-and-swimming-to-shore exercise, which generated some very unhappy and soggy teenagers.

Ha! Serves you right for being young and healthy.

By the end of the day, the instructor still gave me a certificate as, even though I refused to get inside the kayak and missed the dreaded sea-evacuation exercise, he felt I was competent enough to take the award. Yay! What a sweetie.

I’m now looking into local watersport centres, which are quite in abundance around South Yorkshire. There’s one in Rother Valley which looks perfect, with a 90-minute Canadian canoe rental being £12, so maybe I can try and make a fortnightly/monthly excursion out there.

We shall see.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!

The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn – film review

I wasn’t sure if I needed to be curious or concerned about whether Steven Spielberg’s visual style would successfully translate to an animated feature or whether The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn would turn out to be a flat but pretty looking trailer for a video game. How relieved I was, then, to have it confirmed that Spielberg’s prowess as a director is not only in his placement of the camera and the framing therein, but also in the manipulation of the three-dimensional (and I don’t mean in terms of 3D filmmaking) world before it. He treats his set, be it real or virtual, like a theatre stage and utilises the space he’s been given to maximum effect. To his credit, Spielberg has not let The Secret Of The Unicorn slip away from him into the hands of digital artists; his puppet master’s strings are pulling on every movement and detail throughout, never allowing you to forget who’s show this is.

When I sat down to watch Tintin after a long and tiring day of fruitless travelling I’d planned only to watch the first five minutes to give my excited little mind a taste of what I’d anxiously been waiting months and months for. About forty five minutes later I was still watching, unable to tear myself away from the stream-of-consciousness, runaway train of a storyline that hardly stops for a breath. The narrative mimics the ever calculating and deducing mind of it’s titular character, who’s always trying to find something positive and constructive in the moment, even when a trail goes dead. Tintin, who sometimes seems to be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder or a condition somewhere along the autism spectrum, needs to report on something, even if he only completes half the adventure; but often that acceptance of “failure” opens up his mind, and the film’s story, to new ideas and possibilities.

In some ways I was startled by the greediness of the plot to utilise every action-adventure mechanism it could without holding back with a profiteering eye for sequels and spin-offs. It guzzles joyous clichés like a big, erm, cliché guzzling machine. But within the non-stop spinning cogs of the plot is a balleticism and poetry to the way each set-piece hands the baton over to the next. It’s not bloated and cold, it’s just eager and full of energy like a young boy playing with his collection of action figures.

The skill apparent in Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish’s screenplay is it’s tendency to allow time for character’s (and our feelings for them) to develop amidst the chaos; in fact they write the intimate scenes as if they too were action scenes. We learn about our protagonists’ back stories and lives whilst they’re dangling from boats and biplanes and cranes. It’s all in there, you just don’t notice it half the time until you’re cheering characters on and rooting for them to escape danger.

Elsewhere the strong vocal talents are an essential weapon in the film’s arsenal, although you can hardly recognise Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the bickering Thompson twins, but I think there’s been a little tweaking going on in the studio to line the two very different sounding actors up. Daniel Craig flexes his vocal range as the dastardly villain and shows us he can do more than just play sombre, monotone secret agents. But at the core of the film is the charmingly destructive trapeze act of a relationship that’s shared between Tintin and Captain Haddock, played by Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis respectively, both of whom turn potentially one-dimension characters into many-faceted eccentrics; both aiding and antagonising the other as external forces constantly threaten to defeat them both.

Amazingly the film manages to make an important point about using or abusing alcohol to forget painful memories or to escape reality; in fact one scene in particular, a confrontation between Tintin and the alcohol dependant Haddock, reminded me of an exchange between me and my father a few years ago when I wasn’t coping with life very well. Yet somehow the tone of this underlining emotional message isn’t preachy or self-righteous (Haddock is endearingly back on the booze by the end once he’s stopped downing it for the wrong reasons), it simply implies that fun, adventure and the answers to a difficult riddle can emerge even when you’re completely sober.

Beyond the serious subtext that intermittently crops up, I found it a good sign that I exclaimed “WOW!!” more than once whilst watching the film. In a period where we’ve seen almost everything that cinema has to offer, Spielberg manages to take a format he himself has perfected in the past (particularly with Indiana Jones) and dazzles us with the novelty of his film’s unrelenting pace, helped greatly by the gravity defying “cartoon logic” that frees up the spirit of the action. And yet beyond the central goings-on there’s always something tinkering away on the periphery; whether it’s a slapstick aside or a layer of background crowd detail, you’ll find the mind-bogglingly complex vistas too much to take in and appreciate on just one viewing, so make sure you have a return visit.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn has the naïve, impatient and tempestuous drive of a child experiencing the world for the first time, and yet it’s harnessed with the experience and love for the motion of pictures that Spielberg has only gotten better at demonstrating over the years. The treasure for us isn’t the secret of the Unicorn, but that the film exists in the first place and the fact that Spielberg remains one of the few director’s of his generation still with the desire and ability to quench our thirst for cinematic spectacle, be it large or small.

5/5

The Rum Diary - film review

I wish I could write something worthwhile whilst on a drinking binge, it’d make my life a whole lot easier, but unfortunately I have to be in a period of sobriety, get up very early in the morning and quickly soak myself in bad coffee before my brain starts working and the words start drying up. No rum, wine or beer for me.

Then again, writing isn’t my livelihood, it’s currently just a hobby, but I can imagine that when you’ve got a writing deadline to keep to in order to earn money to buy food and you find yourself just not in the mood to type anything then, for some, alcohol might be the only way forward.

The Rum Diary is set in a world populated by men with furious writer’s block. They work for a newspaper they don’t read and have to write articles about stuff they don’t care about. One day they’ll get out, one day, but right now the editor’s holding their paycheques and nothing’s flowing, so they drink until something does flow. They have to write bullshit and so they get into the state where they talk bullshit.

The film’s a mixed bag of Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas hedonism and Withnail & I brotherly comradely. If it all feels like the work of a man who was drinking heavily whilst adapting it to the screen then, fear not, because writer/director Bruce Robinson was (after writer’s block ended a six year sober spell). Robinson is an avid researcher and, if you read the Smoking In Bed collection of interviews with him, a great raconteur; it’s just a shame he’s remembered most for his least researched (but personally experienced) film. The Rum Diary has a lot of background and depth to it, even though it rarely emerges on the surface, but you feel the weight of the thinking behind it, you can feel that there could be a million footnotes to each scene.

But the film struggles to juggle three plots at once: a romance, an insight into journalism and a drama about corruption. Each is paid off and tied up nicely, but none seem to be the driving force of the film or the energy behind it’s creators. The strongest aspect of the film is the world that these plots inhabit; Robinson has deftly carved a real universe for us to indulge in with it’s mix of sweaty alcoholics and sharp suited egomaniacs. We don’t feel like we’re on a set or behind a fenced off location, we’re in there with the characters taking notes and pictures for tomorrow’s paper and risking life and limb to find a bed for the night.

Johnny Depp “reprises” his Raoul Duke from Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, in spirit anyway. He plays frustrated novelist/journalist Paul Kemp on the cusp of inspiration and drug dependency. He’s young, handsome, idealistic and still chasing girls. The collection of layabouts he meets make him seem like the straight laced one, especially the marvellously vile but somehow loveable Moberg, who Giovanni Ribisi plays to terrifyingly brain-fried perfection.

There are a few bumpy rides in the script. Some characters seem to share something we’re not seeing on screen and by the end there are tearful goodbyes from people who don’t seem capable of tearful goodbyes. Have they all really shared so much? They had a few adventures and nearly got sent to prison, but I don’t recall seeing them bonding on an intimate level.

Never mind, I’m sure it all makes sense if you’re drinking.

I recommend The Rum Diary as a ship-in-a-bottle representation of a time, a place and a way of life that few would genuinely want to experience for themselves. The only glamour in this world is found amongst the people who fence themselves off from it and live inside a bubble with no real connection to the outside world. The film shows you the difference between simply existing and experiencing life and all it’s joys and horrors.

Savour it.

Oh and I wrote this review whilst drinking a bottle of red wine… any good?

4/5

Edge of Darkness (2010) - film review

There’s a grittiness that’s missing from Edge Of Darkness that undermines it’s poignant centre. It’s a crime thriller about revenge and corruption but it’s central preoccupation is in the disruption of domestic quietness by the corruption and greed of absolute power. The film is glossy and elegant where it perhaps should have been murky and rough around the edges. Director Martin Campbell, who also helmed the original British television series with Bob Peck that this is based on, goes through great lengths to be faithful to his original work, but by keeping a steady hand on his camera and composing his frames with a an artist’s eye he lets the soul of the piece drift away from him slightly.

The film also suffers from the now fading paranoia that First World countries murder their own people to cover up conspiracies. It might happen, I don’t have any facts in front of me, but the way these films portray officials and their footsoldiers as mass murdering psychopaths is unconvincing in a contemporary world where information travels too fast for devils such as these to stop it. I may sound naïve, but I just don’t think these people are out there hiding behind their titles and credentials. The greatest corruption comes from laziness and cowardice, not from malevolence.

Mel Gibson has trod the territory of a gnarled, unstoppable vigilante before, only here he’s meant to begin as a placid, unexcitable policeman with no enemies hiding in the woodwork. I didn’t believe it. With great respect to Gibson, who does a fine job, the film needed an actor without such solid action credentials who would surprise us with their sudden turn to violence and frenzied behaviour.

The mood of the film sometimes reminded me of Blade Runner in it’s pace, it’s lighting and it’s switching to quiet scenes of contemplation not only with it’s main protagonist, but also with it’s secondary characters who you wouldn’t be expecting to follow “off camera”. These are nice elements which build on the film’s gripping layers and make it an enduring work that might have risen to the status of a masterpiece had the big budget sheen of Hollywood not polished over a very tragic series of events.

Edge Of Darkness takes it’s time and, like Ray Winstone does at one point in the film, savours it’s 117 minute life with, and like, a fine wine. It’s just a shame Edge Of Darkness’ many conclusions and confrontations have to be so run-of-the mill and familiar.

The biggest surprise in Edge Of Darkness is that it has a genuine heart and it makes you feel something. That the production values try so hard to numb you with their beauty is unfortunate, but you will walk away moved and satisfied and believing that good will prevail, and that’s a nice feeling.

3/5

The Inbetweeners Movie - film review

Sort of beyond criticism in a way, but I’ll give it a go.

All you basically need to know is that if you enjoyed the series like I did then you’ll enjoy this. The film’s meant to provide a grand finale to the series (that won’t be coming back for a fourth season) and it does just that.

As always the central characters are self-absorbed, charmless, awkward, desperate, ignorant and frustrating in a way that teenagers generally are, but deep within their adolescent cocoon grows an adult that can be sensitive, patient, understanding and articulate. Maturity comes from experience and the four boys in The Inbetweeners Movie receive experience by the bucket load.

Amazingly and to it’s credit the film does well to keep on track and hold the attention throughout, steering clear of any “zany” sub-plots that other comedy films resort to when the writers run out of things for their characters to do. It’s just about four boys (I think the actors are actually in their mid-twenties) going on a lads holiday and making idiots of themselves but eventually finding… well, that’ll be giving the game away :)

I laughed, I cried, I hid behind my hands with embarrassment, I cringed at the bad acting and I wished Greg Davies (the headteacher) was in it more (although his final pay-off over the closing credits is delicious).

This should stand as a model for all sitcom-to-movie efforts out there currently in the works as this is how it’s meant to be done.

4/5

X-Men: First Class – film review

It’s not all good, but, mercifully, it’s not all bad.

X-Men: First Class suffers from being a potential masterpiece of a trilogy crammed into one big mess of a single volume. It’s script is leaden with speech after speech after speech each more wearyingly poignant than the last and it’s characters seem robbed of pivotal bridges that end up opening holes in the film’s plot and logic. Narrative turns aren’t properly earned by what’s gone before it and characters fail to connect with one another due to great wads of dialogue seemingly left on the writing/editing room floor. In place of genuine emotion is an endless wave of two dimensional physical balletics and facial expressions that get carpet bombed by an exhaustingly overbearing musical score.

You’d probably get more nuance and feeling from a comic book, ironically.

Where First Class works is when it’s characters work. Meaning, when they stop making speeches and start doing things constructively like training each other to put their mutant skills to greater use or defending themselves against the bad/good guys. It works when it settles down after it’s busy first two thirds and starts telling a coherent story rather than throwing one character/plot introduction after another at it’s audience which gradually becomes torturous. It also works when it’s actors don’t trip over their clunky dialogue which would have benefited from a polish here and there.

The special effects are sturdy and impressive enough, however it’s the actors that are meant to be harnessing them that seem awkward when flailing their hands about in the air or striking a pose to concentrate their powers. It’s the Ministry Of Silly Stretches through and through, I’m afraid.

Elsewhere secondary actors are poorly choreographed (in place of actual acting) and can’t seem to annunciate the simplest of lines properly, often grinding key scenes of exposition to a halt and tearing a gaping hole in the reality of the film, such as it is.

There are a few surprises to enjoy though: James McAvoy is charming and seduces even me (a long-time detractor of his) with his natural warmth and charisma… he gives the film a sturdier base and keeps it from drifting off into space where it would otherwise have ended up; Kevin Bacon is cast wonderfully against type (I didn’t recognise him at first) as the single-minded ex-Nazi doctor out to throw the human world into chaos whilst still managing to maintain that groovy swagger of his; and Nicholas Hoult shows us that, should Matt Damon ever break, we have a spare ready and waiting.

I’d like to see a 3-4 hour Special Edition/Director’s Cut of this that feels more confidently paced and coherent, but for now it remains a pretty looking mess with steady but cheesy thrills.

3/5

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) - film review

A riveting “nuts and bolts” espionage thriller that enjoyably wallows in it’s many layers of finely written detail and plot, generating a haunting atmosphere of paranoia in a world where even the simplest of gestures could get you retired/”retired” - never has being called in to speak to the boss in his (soundproof) office been so terrifying.

I just wish the whole thing had been directed by somebody with more experience who had a stronger idea of what type of film they were making, as all too often the film veers off-mark and wavers uncomfortably between having a docu-drama feel and the sleekness of a more mainstream thriller. The result of this fairly pedestrian handling is a distracting sense of imminent collapse under the weight of it’s own material and heavyweight cast. By the end it made me wonder why they’d bothered making the whole thing look as plain and ordinary as a television adaptation when there’s already a perfectly good television adaptation out there.

Worth a watch, though, if only to admire Benedict Cumberbatch’s fringe throughout, which seems to get more attention than anything else on screen.

3/5

Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory Health & Safety Risk Assessment

Dear Mr Wonka

Please find enclosed a copy of the Health & Safety Risk Assessment as compiled and completed by this department following our lengthy visit to your Wonka Bars confectionary processing plant.

I have highlighted numerous instances of glaring and severe safety failings that the management and general staff at your facility seem to be aware but ignorant of and I have therefore made appropriate recommendations that should be implemented immediately.

Yours sincerely

Food Standards Agency

HEALTH & SAFETY RISK ASSESSMENT – WONKA BARS CHOCOLATE FACTORY – FINAL DRAFT

1. A railing should be installed around the Chocolate River to prevent slips, trips and falls and a minimum approach line should be clearly marked and adhered to in order to avoid contamination from any un-authorised personnel.

2. A guard or grill surrounding the opening to the chocolate extraction pipe (which leads to the Fudge Room) should be installed to ensure that no foreign objects are able to pass through the opening and move up into the pipe.

3. Operating staff and accompanying visitors should be warned of potentially harmful flashing images and strobe lighting during the Chocolate River boat ride. Passengers should also be made aware of the disturbing nature of some of the images shown during the ride and a British Board of Film Classification age restriction certificate should be sought.

4. The Three-Course-Dinner Gum should not be deemed suitable for human consumption and distributed to staff or visitors until a separate report is completed by the Food Standards Agency. Until this report is complete and the necessary actions taken based on the findings no further production of this product should be allowed to continue.

5. There should be easily accessible emergency stop switches and entry/exit panels along the vertical length of the ventilation shaft in the Bubble Room. This is to ensure that, should any members of the Wonka Bars staff or visitors be unnaturally elevated after consuming the company’s own Fizzy Lifting Drink, they have appropriate means of escape and/or shutting down the rotary blades that are to be found at the top end of the shaft.

6. Clear and visible warning signs should be displayed in the Chocolate Golden Egg Sorting Room advising visitors not to approach or climb onto any of the equipment, including weighing scale-like structures, without proper supervision. Particular attention is to be paid to the hazardous and un-guarded garbage disposal chute hatch/bay which leads directly down to a regularly-fired incinerator.

7. Under no circumstances should any visitors be allowed entry to the Wonkavision studio and to gain access to the input stage or transmission array. Any and all future transmissions made within the Wonkavision studio should be supervised and countersigned by the factory’s Health & Safety Officer and the factory duty manager.

8. The Great Glass Elevator is to be grounded immediately until an inspection by the Civil Aviation Authority is completed and the aircraft is deemed airworthy. After inspection of your plant this department was unable to find a dedicated exit point for the elevator and I strenuously recommend that one is opened forthwith so that future launches do not interfere with or damage the plant’s superstructure.

9. All factory staff including, but not restricted to, the team of Oompa-Loompas should be subject to a full and extensive Criminal Records Bureau check before commencing employment at the Wonka Bars confectionary processing plant. Care should be taken not to allow any staff to be put in a position where they are left alone and unsupervised with any children or vulnerable adults who may visit the plant on open days.

END OF REPORT

The Tree Of Life – film review

Experiencing this film is like watching a Catherine Cookson drama on mute whilst drinking heavily… although, to the best of my knowledge, Catherine Cookson dramas haven’t got quite so many dinosaurs in them.

The reclusive Terrence Malick returns with a much less direct and linear cinematic piece about, well, I’m not quite sure. If you break it down it’s a simple coming-of-age story about a boy who grows up with a short-tempered authoritarian father and eventually begins to rebel against his very ridged, buzz-cut upbringing. But the opening half-hour or so where we learn one of the boy’s brothers will eventually die (aged 19, long after the childhood events that provide the load-bearing centre of the film) and are then treated to an astonishingly well imagined and visualised version of how the universe and Earth began serve to unbalance the delicate story that’s being set up… if indeed there’s a story at all. Malick’s ever-moving and often un-obtrusive camera makes the viewer feel like the eye of God peering at events from the sidelines and we feel moved to intervene at times. It’s an exhaustingly sombre and lyrical film and will test the patience of most viewers, especially as there’s no real conclusion of sorts or explanation as to what’s just happened. It just sort of… happens.

My theory about the film is thus (warning: I’ve had to use brackets within brackets to properly annotate my explanations, so prepare yourself for lots of “(this (this))”:

We see a young man’s parents being informed of his death and their initial attempts to come to terms with their loss. From here we see the young man’s brother, who is already dead after drowning as a child, as an adult man (Sean Penn) in heaven (which is represented as a modern day busy skyscraper and hinted at by the man’s lighting of a blue candle in remembrance (I think “blue” represents heaven and goodness)) who’s living out his father’s dream of seeing his sons achieving a successful and wealthy life, even though he’s doing it in heaven. The young man’s brother then tries to reconcile things with his family and father by viewing his and his family’s life, and the universe as a whole, from the start (we even see his father lighting a red candle at one point, assumedly to hint at the fact that the path his father is taking in life (with his family in tow) is leading him to hell and/or damnation) and trying to understand what went wrong, if it went wrong at all. By the end he realises his father was only trying to do right by his family and his aggressive outbursts were only because of his frustration and desire to protect them. Once the man feels reconciled he meets his family as they enter heaven (which is represented by a sun-drenched beach) and a happy, loving reunion takes place.

There, that’s it, that’s what I think.

To me it was never particularly clear which of the three boys dies at the start and it’s never explained how he dies, so I’m guessing it’s all open to interpretation. I think Sean Penn’s character dies when the family are at a lake swimming and the references he makes in heaven to his dead brother are misleading… I think he’s mourning the other members of his family (including his recently deceased 19 year old brother) who are, one by one, dying and joining him in heaven. So basically when the film begins we’re witnessing the second child death and when the grandmother attempts to console the mother by saying “you still have the other two” she’s actually referring to the last boy and the father (Brad Pitt).

Give it a go… you’ll either feel empty or fulfilled by the end.

I also recommend watching it alone without distraction.

3/5