I knew almost nothing about Take Shelter before I saw it – I knew it was about a man building a storm shelter, and that it was quite intense. That was all. So I expected a film about surviving the worst nature can throw at you. What Take Shelter actually is, quite surprisingly, is a film about coping with the onset of paranoid schitzophrenia in the American Midwest when everything about your upbringing and community makes you want to cope with it yourself.
The technical aspects of Take Shelter are great – superb and believable performances, nice imagery (slightly better CG for its sparse use would have been an improvement), some excellent shot composition and a lovely contrast between the wide open landscape and skies and the tight, tight spaces, both of them in turns threatening and safe.
A man begins to have vivid dreams that affect him in his waking life. He dreams his dog bites him, and never trusts the poor thing again. He dreams there are people out to get him. And he dreams a great storm is coming. His actions lead to disaster for his family and his friendships – and eventually it all comes pouring out in a brief and stark psychotic episode.
Most of the film is build-up to the point where main character Curtis has his fears vindicated and eventually he has to face his problems. The trouble is that this puts too much weight on some rather hollow ideas for the ending of the film. There are three: first, Curtis has to confront the fact that the storm is inside his head. Perhaps it’s because I hear Mum and Dad talking about the paranoid schizophrenics they have to deal with, but part of me was really annoyed when the wife told Curtis he has to face up to his fears to bring about a change in himself. As if a paranoid schizophrenic will be cured by one revelation that a delusion was hallucinated. But it was something the character would believably do – I just would have rather it was made clearer her actions could have doomed her to a much worse result. Next, there was a scene where Curtis finally gets proper help and is told he will need institutionalising and a lot of treatment to be able to carry on, which was much more believable and logical after what had happened. And then finally, in what felt like a completely hollow insertion by a studio’s writer just to have what seems to be an ambiguous twist, we see a storm that may or may not be hallucinated.
It’s all just somewhat false. The film was very strong and while mental health issues are always a very easy way for an actor to be acclaimed, this one was performed superbly, with a character who could have been easy to dislike being very sympathetic. There just could have been a snappier pace and the ending could have said much more than it did.
Saturday 26 November 2011
Friday 25 November 2011
My Week With Marilyn
We went to see the chilling true story Snowtown, but annoyingly it has ended its run yesterday and the cinema website obviously didn’t update to ‘today’ after midnight, but sometimes towards morning. As we’re seeing Take Shelter tomorrow, we opted for another (purportedly) true story – My Week With Marilyn. Which I was happy to see mostly for lovely Emma Watson, who had a minor role she was billed fairly highly for.
It’s pretty fanciful, and paints its characters in a very one-dimensional way, Marilyn aside. Telling the story of a young posh ex-Etonian who gets involved with showbiz through his family’s connections, manages to get on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, and through being generally sweet and harmless captures the attention of Monroe herself and begins an illicit affair.
The trouble is, nobody at all is likeable here. Colin, the protagonist, is awkward and dull – and though he’s a black sheep of sorts, nepotism is never going to endear a young man to an audience, and nor does it give him much depth. He shuts out the fact he’s just being used a little too much, and after all he cheats on his girlfriend (the gorgeous Emma Watson, who I certainly wouldn’t have left for Monroe – in fact, I think they ought to have cast someone plainer) with a woman he knows to be married already, which for all her iconic status is not a very romantic tale. Monroe herself is a whole spectrum of things – wide-eyed and winsome ingénue, clear-headed seductress, drug-frazzled trainwreck, spoilt idiotic brat and savvy businesswoman…but never does she seem all of them at once, a complete, complex human being. It’s not just the tension between Marilyn and Norma Jean, it’s fragmentation. It’s not the fault of Michelle Williams, who does an excellent and believable job in a challenging role, but it doesn’t hang together: Colin still sees her as a ‘Greek Goddess’ when she’s supposed to be humanised (to her dismay) and while Olivier gives his grudging respect for her lasting in Hollywood, it’s not clear why, or how this freewheeling spirit who never grew up and lives only by finding ephemeral comfort in the arms of a series of men also has that sort of savvy. The conclusion is thus strained and emotionally hollow.
A parade of stars make appearances, including Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi in roles that inspire affection. The up-and-comers I’ve been looking out for lately, Dominic Cooper and Toby Jones, were both in attendance, and of course Emma Watson sparkles. Of all of them, though, Brannagh seems to be having the most fun – but also seems to be sending himself up rather than trying to capture Olivier, who really is nowhere to be seen here and who is painted as a past-it stage actor left behind by the world and performing in a rather laughable way, which just isn’t true.
This isn’t a film for truth. Unfortunately, it rather needed to be, for without it, there’s almost nothing of interest left.
It’s pretty fanciful, and paints its characters in a very one-dimensional way, Marilyn aside. Telling the story of a young posh ex-Etonian who gets involved with showbiz through his family’s connections, manages to get on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, and through being generally sweet and harmless captures the attention of Monroe herself and begins an illicit affair.
The trouble is, nobody at all is likeable here. Colin, the protagonist, is awkward and dull – and though he’s a black sheep of sorts, nepotism is never going to endear a young man to an audience, and nor does it give him much depth. He shuts out the fact he’s just being used a little too much, and after all he cheats on his girlfriend (the gorgeous Emma Watson, who I certainly wouldn’t have left for Monroe – in fact, I think they ought to have cast someone plainer) with a woman he knows to be married already, which for all her iconic status is not a very romantic tale. Monroe herself is a whole spectrum of things – wide-eyed and winsome ingénue, clear-headed seductress, drug-frazzled trainwreck, spoilt idiotic brat and savvy businesswoman…but never does she seem all of them at once, a complete, complex human being. It’s not just the tension between Marilyn and Norma Jean, it’s fragmentation. It’s not the fault of Michelle Williams, who does an excellent and believable job in a challenging role, but it doesn’t hang together: Colin still sees her as a ‘Greek Goddess’ when she’s supposed to be humanised (to her dismay) and while Olivier gives his grudging respect for her lasting in Hollywood, it’s not clear why, or how this freewheeling spirit who never grew up and lives only by finding ephemeral comfort in the arms of a series of men also has that sort of savvy. The conclusion is thus strained and emotionally hollow.
A parade of stars make appearances, including Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi in roles that inspire affection. The up-and-comers I’ve been looking out for lately, Dominic Cooper and Toby Jones, were both in attendance, and of course Emma Watson sparkles. Of all of them, though, Brannagh seems to be having the most fun – but also seems to be sending himself up rather than trying to capture Olivier, who really is nowhere to be seen here and who is painted as a past-it stage actor left behind by the world and performing in a rather laughable way, which just isn’t true.
This isn’t a film for truth. Unfortunately, it rather needed to be, for without it, there’s almost nothing of interest left.
Saturday 19 November 2011
Twilight: Breaking Dawn pt 1
I feel totally robbed. And it’s Harry Potter’s fault. Well, really, it’s the fault of the annoying movie producers, who saw the last Harry Potter book split into two films, realised – quite rightly – that the Twilight fanbase would not only spend double the money to see the same amount of story, but be grateful for it, and did the same here. Just as Stephanie Meyer makes the mediocre and clumsy J.K. Rowling look like an expert in prose and character, this made those two dull and turgid films look like masterworks.
I feel robbed. I don’t expect much from Twilight, but I do expect expensive and impressive visuals, silly but fun fights between supernatural beings and lots of absolute absurdity that isn’t meant to be funny, but really, really is. It was particularly bad because though I had otherwise avoided spoilers, I knew that the last book was centred on totally ridiculous nonsense – a vampire gets a human girl pregnant, the baby more or less bursts out of her and kills her, she has to be converted to being a vampire (which frankly should have happened partway through book 1 and only vague handwaving at immortal souls – and in this film, the joy of sex – put it off) and then the werewolf boy actually falls in love with the baby. Surely that’s going to be hilarious, right?
Well, in a unified film of the entire book, most likely it would have been. But the fact was this had to be horribly, horribly drawn-out so that those events were the big climax and cliffhanger here. And almost nothing else happens.
I say that almost nothing else happens, but actually, the book was chock-a-block with hilariously stupid things that would have kept me entertained, as I discovered by reading my favourite blog about Twilight on Sparknotes, always my post-movie treat. I felt robbed anew – cut from the film are such hilarious things as Jacob’s wolf friend Quil going on an date to the beach with his three-year-old girlfriend, the brilliant tale of little vampire infants having to be destroyed by the Volturi and Edward not only randomly giving Bella a Mercedes but hinting he’ll get her another, better car once she’s a vampire. Gloriously stupid, absurd and mercenary. If the filmmakers were really mocking the source material, as Film 2011 suggested they were, this is the stuff that would have stayed in. Instead, they tried to make it as palateable as they could, and the only big laughs were the lovely romantic shots between one muscular wolf-boy and his baby consort and the desperate attempts to make ‘We took René and Esme and put them together to make the lovely baby name Renesmee’ sound reasonable. Though I must say, when the girls who I’ll euphemistically say were very into their ghetto culture in the seats in front of us in the packed cinema said ‘That’s pretty’ [‘Vass pri’ee’] I wasn’t sure how serious they were. ‘Renesmee’ would fit right into that joke video of ‘ghetto names’ like ‘La’Shonte’ or ‘Sha’Tanya’. If Meyer hopes for her own Wendy Darling, I’m fairly sure she’ll fail. And if the next generation has a lot of Renesmees, well, I’ll weep for mankind.
I’ve never been averse to Twilight films, despite all the hatred. I quite liked the first one – not a lot happened, it’s hard to see how anyone but gluttons for punishment like Edward and there were stupid sparkling vampires (which seems all but forgotten in this film, with tropical climates and outdoor weddings, and don’t give me cloudiness totally negating the effect), but it was nice to look at and the story was paced about right. The second film was decent for most of its length until it shot itself in the foot at the end, the third was really dumb but at least not boring, but this? So very, very little happened. It made me long for Potter and Pals sitting about in a tent griping about their situation.
In the amount of time it would take to get the whole film’s plot out of the way, Bella and Edward get married. They go to their private island in Rio, where the obvious thought to have is ‘why don’t the vampires just live there instead of, y’know, right next to werewolf territory?’ as well as ‘Geez, don’t you know you’re going to get covered in mosquito bites if you leave the door open like that in Brazil?’ They have sex, which makes Edward moan because he bruised her a bit. Bella gets pregnant, they’re too far from home and safety for Edward to get Carlisle to turn her into a vampire, and the baby grows ridiculously fast. They go home, the werewolves decide they want to kill everyone now a baby’s on the way, as after all they were just waiting for the right time to attack the vampires anyway (ie when Bella is either dead or a vampire), there’s a total lack of drama or action, and then the baby is born (seducing Jacob with her eyes) and Bella has to be turned. That’s it. Oh, and the incredibly difficult procedure of turning Bella involved giving her an injection and biting her legs a few times.
I’m happy for a Twilight film to be dumb. I don’t mind bad writing or bad acting (though the actors get a bad rap for a pretty decent job and would be praised for equal performances in better-loved properties). I don’t mind total stupidity. But I expected hilarity as vampire babies burst out of bellies and all-out war. The one thing I can’t stand in Twilight is dullness.
I feel robbed. I don’t expect much from Twilight, but I do expect expensive and impressive visuals, silly but fun fights between supernatural beings and lots of absolute absurdity that isn’t meant to be funny, but really, really is. It was particularly bad because though I had otherwise avoided spoilers, I knew that the last book was centred on totally ridiculous nonsense – a vampire gets a human girl pregnant, the baby more or less bursts out of her and kills her, she has to be converted to being a vampire (which frankly should have happened partway through book 1 and only vague handwaving at immortal souls – and in this film, the joy of sex – put it off) and then the werewolf boy actually falls in love with the baby. Surely that’s going to be hilarious, right?
Well, in a unified film of the entire book, most likely it would have been. But the fact was this had to be horribly, horribly drawn-out so that those events were the big climax and cliffhanger here. And almost nothing else happens.
I say that almost nothing else happens, but actually, the book was chock-a-block with hilariously stupid things that would have kept me entertained, as I discovered by reading my favourite blog about Twilight on Sparknotes, always my post-movie treat. I felt robbed anew – cut from the film are such hilarious things as Jacob’s wolf friend Quil going on an date to the beach with his three-year-old girlfriend, the brilliant tale of little vampire infants having to be destroyed by the Volturi and Edward not only randomly giving Bella a Mercedes but hinting he’ll get her another, better car once she’s a vampire. Gloriously stupid, absurd and mercenary. If the filmmakers were really mocking the source material, as Film 2011 suggested they were, this is the stuff that would have stayed in. Instead, they tried to make it as palateable as they could, and the only big laughs were the lovely romantic shots between one muscular wolf-boy and his baby consort and the desperate attempts to make ‘We took René and Esme and put them together to make the lovely baby name Renesmee’ sound reasonable. Though I must say, when the girls who I’ll euphemistically say were very into their ghetto culture in the seats in front of us in the packed cinema said ‘That’s pretty’ [‘Vass pri’ee’] I wasn’t sure how serious they were. ‘Renesmee’ would fit right into that joke video of ‘ghetto names’ like ‘La’Shonte’ or ‘Sha’Tanya’. If Meyer hopes for her own Wendy Darling, I’m fairly sure she’ll fail. And if the next generation has a lot of Renesmees, well, I’ll weep for mankind.
I’ve never been averse to Twilight films, despite all the hatred. I quite liked the first one – not a lot happened, it’s hard to see how anyone but gluttons for punishment like Edward and there were stupid sparkling vampires (which seems all but forgotten in this film, with tropical climates and outdoor weddings, and don’t give me cloudiness totally negating the effect), but it was nice to look at and the story was paced about right. The second film was decent for most of its length until it shot itself in the foot at the end, the third was really dumb but at least not boring, but this? So very, very little happened. It made me long for Potter and Pals sitting about in a tent griping about their situation.
In the amount of time it would take to get the whole film’s plot out of the way, Bella and Edward get married. They go to their private island in Rio, where the obvious thought to have is ‘why don’t the vampires just live there instead of, y’know, right next to werewolf territory?’ as well as ‘Geez, don’t you know you’re going to get covered in mosquito bites if you leave the door open like that in Brazil?’ They have sex, which makes Edward moan because he bruised her a bit. Bella gets pregnant, they’re too far from home and safety for Edward to get Carlisle to turn her into a vampire, and the baby grows ridiculously fast. They go home, the werewolves decide they want to kill everyone now a baby’s on the way, as after all they were just waiting for the right time to attack the vampires anyway (ie when Bella is either dead or a vampire), there’s a total lack of drama or action, and then the baby is born (seducing Jacob with her eyes) and Bella has to be turned. That’s it. Oh, and the incredibly difficult procedure of turning Bella involved giving her an injection and biting her legs a few times.
I’m happy for a Twilight film to be dumb. I don’t mind bad writing or bad acting (though the actors get a bad rap for a pretty decent job and would be praised for equal performances in better-loved properties). I don’t mind total stupidity. But I expected hilarity as vampire babies burst out of bellies and all-out war. The one thing I can’t stand in Twilight is dullness.
Wednesday 16 November 2011
Contagion
Saw Contagion, and it is a mystery to me why reviews have been so positive. A dull scare-tactics film presenting what would happen if an extremely deadly virus spread from Hong Kong around the world, it paraded famous faces in front of the camera in a turgid miasma of unsatisfying stories. From Kate Winslet to Matt Damon, from Gwyneth Paltrow agreeing to be in about three scenes, including one where her head is opened to Jude Law doing an increasingly iffy Australian accent, from the girl who was Lizzie Bennett in the old Pride and Prejudice series now looking oddly like Sigourney Weaver at the right angles to the odd appearances of two famous sitcom dads in jarringly serious roles (Elliott Gould, the Gellers’ father in Friends and Bryan Cranston from Malcolm in the Middle), we get fed multiple stories with excellent research and science behind them, almost all ultimately undermined by mawkishness and sensationalism. It’s interesting to see a researcher taken captive in China to cover up the epidemic’s origins; it’s not interesting to see her with Stockholm Syndrome. It’s interesting to see the husband of the first US victim; it’s not interesting to see refugee camp situations coupled with a horrible climactic ‘prom’ scene. It’s interesting to see a researcher working on a vaccine; seeing her heroically become the first human test subject is incredibly cheesy. It’s interesting to see a blogger cause a stir by faking a recovery on a herb and causing riots; police sting operations and bail donated online is going too far. And none of it manages to hold the attention.
Saturday 12 November 2011
Immortals
It would have been so easy to make Immortals fun. It just needed to be brainless action strung on a shoestring plot with amazing visuals. The trailer led me to believe it would be just that, directly descended from 300. But a screenwriting committee-approved story killed this film. How could they make a brainless action flick so horribly, horribly boring?
All they needed to do was have this sort of plot: -
CONQUEROR ANTAGONIST [not Hyperion, cuz, y’know, he’s a Titan]: Hahaha, I am conquering! I kill your momma!
THESEUS: NOOO!
CONQUEROR: I also enslave you.
PROPHETESS: I help you escape! We go to a big city and rally an army!
CONQUEROR: Let battle commence. BTW I set free the Titans mwahahaa
ZEUS: Yeah well that means we can join the battle
[Rest of film is a huge epic fight full of eye candy and individually-characterised gods and titans!
Instead, we got long-winded quests after a McGuffin bow, different factions barely connected to one another, a hero who never seems like he genuinely ought to be a major character, a horribly shoehorned-in attempt to refer to the Theseus and the Minotaur story, lame titans and a very, very awkward love scene. And it all just went on and on and on. No strong characters, no moments of eye candy that actually raised a smile, and some extremely awkward extras placed right in the middle of the shot, once a guy failing to find someone to fight against and once someone really milking falling over after a gate exploded.
This should have been stripped down to the absolute basics and made silly, campy fun. Instead, the campy moments were way too camp and the rest was just dull, dull box-ticking which did not make anything remotely close to a good story. And whose idea was it to just abandon the battlefield to focus on two very small-scale fights was a master of building up expectations only to let an audience down. Nothing like it promised and nothing like what it could have been.
All they needed to do was have this sort of plot: -
CONQUEROR ANTAGONIST [not Hyperion, cuz, y’know, he’s a Titan]: Hahaha, I am conquering! I kill your momma!
THESEUS: NOOO!
CONQUEROR: I also enslave you.
PROPHETESS: I help you escape! We go to a big city and rally an army!
CONQUEROR: Let battle commence. BTW I set free the Titans mwahahaa
ZEUS: Yeah well that means we can join the battle
[Rest of film is a huge epic fight full of eye candy and individually-characterised gods and titans!
Instead, we got long-winded quests after a McGuffin bow, different factions barely connected to one another, a hero who never seems like he genuinely ought to be a major character, a horribly shoehorned-in attempt to refer to the Theseus and the Minotaur story, lame titans and a very, very awkward love scene. And it all just went on and on and on. No strong characters, no moments of eye candy that actually raised a smile, and some extremely awkward extras placed right in the middle of the shot, once a guy failing to find someone to fight against and once someone really milking falling over after a gate exploded.
This should have been stripped down to the absolute basics and made silly, campy fun. Instead, the campy moments were way too camp and the rest was just dull, dull box-ticking which did not make anything remotely close to a good story. And whose idea was it to just abandon the battlefield to focus on two very small-scale fights was a master of building up expectations only to let an audience down. Nothing like it promised and nothing like what it could have been.
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