The Phoenician Scheme

Phoenician Blind

The Phoenician Scheme
Directed by Wes Anderson
Germany/USA 2025
Indian Paintbrush
UK Cinema Release Print

Well, you know more or less what you are getting when you go to see a Wes Anderson movie and I’m very happy to report back that, yes, it’s yet another masterpiece which, in a few moments, actually had me laughing out loud... which I don’t usually do, even with comedies. It just happens that in this case, The Phoenician Scheme has a gradual build up where the absurdist situations and dead pan delivery of the various characters becomes suddenly joyful in the manner of the director’s previous movies.

Some of the usual suspects make up the cast (and some newcomers) with the main protagonists of this being the fantastic Benicio Del Toro as wealthy businessman Zsa-Zsa Korda (obviously derived from Zsa-Zsa Gabor and Alexander Korda, I would say), his almost a nun, possible daughter and heir Liesl (played brilliantly by Mia Threapleton) and new tutor Bjorn, played by Michael Cera. Other big names include Hope Davis, Jeffrey Wright, Willem Dafoe, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Benedict Cumberbatch and, in the role of God, Bill Murray.

Now, I probably didn’t completely understand the plot because I don’t have a financial brain but it involves Korda, Liesl and Bjorn globetrotting to procure funding for Korda’s latest series of profitable building investments while trying to escape industrial espionage and almost daily assassination attempts. Korda has a reputation for being killed a lot and, in the few minutes he spends dead between each horrendous injury, he goes into monochrome visions of a trial in heaven... where information is sometimes imparted to him.

The film probably shouldn’t work as well as it does and, I’m sure for those people who are not an admirer of the directors rigidly controlled compositions (in this movie they’re in pretty much a locked in 1.33:1 aspect ratio throughout) and comedic literal dialogue exchanges, this would probably seem like an interminable experience. I absolutely loved it though and people who are into this director’s meticulous take on the details and minutia of various characters should have a blast with this one too.

Backed up by Alexandre Desplat’s wonderful score (which is outrageously not on a CD soundtrack album at time of writing), the film is fast paced and starts off literally with a bang, during the first of many assassination attempts made throughout the movie. Indeed the incredibly violent thing which happens in the top right corner of the screen in a shot in an aircraft, deliberately signalled to the audience by a sound that seems to come from the left, is a great tool for future scenes set in an identical aircraft (of which there are many as the characters travel from country to country)... as the audience will no doubt be worrying about just what is about to happen every time they hear that first sound when the composition of the shot is, more or less, the same.

The film has a pretty good ending too... I’m not sure if it completely ties into the biblical imagery littered throughout the movie but there’s certainly a form of redemption for one of the characters in this, it seemed to me. But, either way, The Phoenician Scheme sings along at around 100 minutes and, frankly, I would have liked to have been watching it for another couple of hours more. I’ll certainly be scooping up the Blu Ray of this one as soon as it gets a release and would wholeheartedly recommend it to fans of cinema. Wes Anderson makes such good movies. Bring on the next one.

Nosferatu (2024)

Nos Quite Feratu

Nosferatu (2024)
Directed by Robert Eggers
UK/USA/Hungary 2024
Focus Features
UK Cinema Release Print.

Wow, okay then. Robert Eggers’ new remake of Nosferatu is actually a pretty good movie. Alas, it’s doesn’t quite fall far into the great category for me due to one specific creative decision but, yeah, it’s a wonderful study in ‘gothic horror’ in all senses and people who are drawn to that certain kind of atmosphere should find much to enjoy in it. Alas, it falls just a little short of the first of the many versions of Nosferatu, specifically the 1922 W. F. Murnau film Nosferatu - A Symphony Of Horror but, as a powerful and somewhat feral piece of modern cinema, I think it’s nothing short of spectacular.

Now I’ll mention this in my reviews of both the original and other remakes/influenced works later on at this blog (hopefully this year... I’ve been post-Christmas sales shopping so I can revisit some of the key works) but, a quick and dirty history of the story behind the original goes something like this. Murnau wanted to make an adaptation of Dracula and Bram Stoker’s widow was against it. So he went and adapted the story anyway, changing all of the names and locations and still, I suspect, basing a lot of it on Stoker’s stage adaptation of his own work. When the film was finished and released, Stoker’s widow sued and a court ordered that all prints of the film be destroyed. However, at least one print must have escaped this fate otherwise we wouldn’t still know of this celebrated film now and the various works influenced by it wouldn’t obviously exist either.

This new version stars Nicholas Hoult as Thomas, the Jonathan Harker substitute for the story. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of Hoult, to be sure but, the kind of timidity in which he infuses most of the roles I’ve seen him in is certainly a good bit of casting because in the silent version he was a bit of a pasty, overacting milquetoast and so Hoult is able to do an incredible job here. Lily-Rose Depp (daughter of Johnny) plays his wife Ellen (the equivalent of Mina Harker in the book) and she is a very powerful force in the movie... although, is it me or is there a trend in actresses this last year or so to try and outdo Isabelle Adjani's performance in Zuawski's Possession (reviewed by me here)? However, she's almost, I would say, more powerful than Bill Skarsgård, who gives an absolutely amazing performance as Count Orlock, the Nosferatu of the title... I’ll come back to him though because, as good as he is, he’s also the problem here to some small degree.

Backing up these actors are Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney and the always brilliant Willem Dafoe (playing a wonderfully enthusiastic version of the Van Helsing equivalent character). The film has a somewhat haunting atmosphere with some beautiful framing (check out the last shot of the film with Dafoe’s head highlighted in the mirror by the side of him) and some very pacey editing which, combined with the excellent sound design and a wonderful score by Robin Carolan, really gives a kind of adrenalin rush to the precedings, for sure.

I find Egger’s cinema a bit hit and miss but this is certainly my second favourite of his films (trailing slightly behind The VVitch, reviewed by me here). This is almost, as I said, a truly great movie but it doesn’t quite make it. Or rather, it is a great movie but it’s not the best adaptation in terms of visual interpretation and, okay, no holding it off any longer, this is where I get to what is, for me, the bloody, risen from the grave, elephant in the room...

The problem with doing a movie based on Nosferatu is... you really should keep the iconic look of the central monster. I mean, that original creature make-up has had a heavy influence on countless visual works based on vampire lore, just think of things like the TV mini-series of ‘Salem’s Lot (reviewed by me here) or the fairly recent film The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (reviewed by me here). The bald head and the double pronged, exaggerated incisors coming down from the top of the mouth but much closer together than in a traditional vampire story make the Nosferatu vampire instantly recognisable. However, although Skarsgård absolutely nails the ferocity and power of the creature here, the filmmakers have chosen to give him a big moustache, a bit more hair on his bonce and completely taken away the double prongs protuding from below his upper lip.

In short, they’ve completely changed the look. Now, I know the look they’ve gone for here is way closer to the original Dracula as described by Bram Stoker in his original novel (so that’s possibly a mitigating factor here because it’s rare anyone even comes close) but it’s a huge loss to this particular film, I reckon.

Now, the film-makers have done their best to hide their creature behind shadow for about three quarters of the movie and kept him, more or less, in silhouette throughout and, to be fair to them, that obscured vision of the creature does at least invoke the original creature design in memory. Alas, it only helps to increase the disappointment when you get a clear look at the creature later and realise that they’ve reimagined him... what a shame.

So, yeah, that’s heavily influenced my verdict of the new Nosferatu movie, truth be told. It’s fantastically well acted, brings the Sturm und Drang of the cinematic and literary sources and is a genuinely entertaining piece of cinema... shame about that creature design though. It doesn’t quite make it.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Every Which
Way But Juice

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Directed by Tim Burton
USA 2024
Warner Brothers
UK cinema release print

Warning: Spoilers about the fate of Jeffrey Jones’ character from the first movie here.

Well this was a pleasant surprise.

Back in 1988 I went to my local cinema (which was two minutes around the corner at the time... it’s now a Tesco) and saw Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (kinda fuming then that it wasn’t spelled Betelgeuse as in real life). It was the first movie I saw by Burton and I liked it fine. When Michael Keaton, who starred as Beetlejuice, was announced to be cast as Batman in Burton’s next film and there was a huge backlash against that decision, I was pretty sure both he and Burton could pull it off and, yeah, they really did.

The next time I saw Beetlejuice would have been a couple of years later when it came out as a sell through VHS cassette tape (yeah, sell thru, as it was known back in the day) and, yeah, I think that was about it for me and that film... I saw it only twice and not again, since I kinda stopped being enamoured with the cinematic mystique of Tim Burton. He’s made some fantastic films... Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow, Planet Of The Apes etc but, as creative as he is, I do find him a bit hit and miss these days. So, it’s perhaps no surprise that I didn’t relish the idea of, 36 years later, seeing his new sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (a title destined to give computer grammar checkers an annoying wake up call the world over). I thought it would be kinda dull and I really wasn’t looking forward to it at all. I thought it would be a good one to review for the blog though so, yeah, I figured I could get it out of the way for good in the first weekend. So I dragged myself along to it, and...

I’m happy to say that, well, Tim Burton really is on form with this movie. As are the returning actors/characters Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz and Catherine O'Hara as Delia Deetz (all of whom are really impressive here and look almost as young as they were the first time around). Along with some nice visual and musical references to the first movie, we also have a bunch of actors who are new to the franchise, who are all also excellent, including Jenny Ortega as Lydia’s daughter Astrid, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, Arthur Conti and even Danny DeVito in a small role.

And it’s wonderful. Once again Danny Elfman gives us a score reminiscent of the old one and utilising some of the same themes (although, alas, my favourite piece of leitmotif from the first film is, for some reason, sadly absent from the score this time around). However, once again the people at Watertower Records have not made the score available on CD at time of release (because why should they give people the actual music in proper physical form rather than just a garbage sounding streaming experience instead, eh?).

And, just like most of Burton’s work, it’s wonderfully inventive both on a visual and conceptual level. Lighting the fuse of a chalk drawing bomb to open a portal to the afterlife was a nicely executed idea. And I think people are going to like the Soul Train sequences too.

There’s also a treat for Italian genre fans because, when we get to see the back story of the person who turned into Beetlejuice, it goes full on Black and White, subtitles and does its best to resemble an early Mario Bava or Riccardo Freda movie. And Bava also gets a nice name check here too, since Lydia mentions she saw a Bava all nighter at the cinema when she was nine months pregnant with Astrid, including her father’s favourite Bava Kill, Baby Kill (review eventually coming when I revisit that one on Blu Ray).

Then there’s the elephant in the room. Lydia’s father is in this but, Burton’s regular actor Jeffrey Jones doesn’t play him, now that he’s a registered sex offender (young boys apparently) and has been somewhat cancelled. Instead, although he’s in this all the way through, his photo appears and he gets half eaten by a shark early on in the film... his plane crash and adventures at sea depicted as an animated story. For the rest of the film, as he wanders through the afterlife, the top half of his body is missing (when he speaks, blood spurts from his windpipe), the rest presumably still in the shark. I’m thinking he maybe got paid something for the use of his likeness here, though.

But, look, I wasn’t expecting much from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and was so surprised by just how good a movie it is. As I said earlier, Burton is back on form for sure and it’s a really impressive return from him and the cast in this one. I absolutely will be buying this when it comes out on Blu Ray (hopefully before Christmas) and I’ll probably reacquaint myself with the original around the same time. This one’s definitely worth seeing at the cinema so, if you liked the first one, make sure you don’t miss out on it.

The Northman

May The Norse
Be With You

The Northman
UK 2022
Directed by Robert Eggers
Universal

The Northman is director Robert Eggers third full length feature film and, as a big studio release, is also around ten times more the budget of his previous two movies put together (at least). Now, I really liked his feature debut The VVitch (reviewed here) but I had some problems appreciating his follow up feature, The Lighthouse, truth be told (reviewed here). Having now seen The Northman, which has been receiving a lot of good word of mouth as being this generation’s equivalent of Conan The Barbarian (no, it really isn’t), I can say that for me, this one pretty much lays somewhere in the middle of both of those. Like many Hollywood released movies of recent months, I’d have to say it isn’t a great movie and, again, it’s not a bad one either. It feels a little compromised somehow (which fits with some things the director himself has said about it) and it doesn’t feel quite epic enough in scope to be counted among many of the big fantasy films which have gone before (and it’s certainly a fantasy version of a tale rather than a straight historical one, for sure, despite much authenticity to certain scenes depicting historical customs).

Another thing I’d heard about it was that it has a very complex story... um... really? No it hasn’t. It’s a very basic revenge movie where a son witnesses his father’s death (in this case, the father is a king played by Ethan Hawke) and escapes to a distant land so he can return to avenge his father many years later.  And, yes, you’ve seen the story done a hundred times before by now on screen, I should think. The grown up son is played by Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth, his mother is played by Nicole Kidman, his favourite seer is played by Willem Dafoe (from Eggers previous film), his father’s killer is played by Claes Bang and Skarsgård’s quirky love interest is played by the always incredible Anya Taylor-Joy (another Eggers collaborator). They’re all very good, the story is very simple... in that Amleth has to track down a legendary sword with semi-mystical properties (think of it as a lightweight, Stormbringer wannabe from Moorcock’s Elric Of Melnibone stories) and slay his father’s killer. So he brands himself as a slave and makes himself useful in his enemy’s community, to hide himself in plain sight and keep close to his target.

There’s literally nothing much to say about the plot but the comments that it has similarities to Conan The Barbarian, are not completely unfounded in terms of some of the content and the occasional (I believe, deliberate) nod. For example, the son living a hard life away from his slaughtered kin to return to avenge his father is pretty much the same as the first movie version of Robert E Howard’s literary creation. The scene where Amleth comes across his magical sword is very much reminiscent of the short Conan story The Thing In The Crypt, written by  L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, it seems to me. Also, the pre-credits sequence starts off with the similar, low percussion element on the music followed by the growly tones of voice over narrative introducing the character, which is again very similar to the first Conan movie... although, stylistically and in most ways, this is where the similarity ends.

It’s an entertaining enough yarn, though and it looks very good. Eggers has used something almost black and white for many of the shots set in the moonlight (which is the only time the sword can be properly used to feed on opponents blood... in darkness). So some shots will be completely monotone while others, midst the grayness, will have things like coloured torch flames, very much reminiscent of the style of pitching the colour and monotone together as seen in the Sin City movies.

So, yeah, the film looks pretty spectacular, rattles along at a hasty pace and, you are pretty much rooting for Amleth the whole way through the movie. It doesn’t, as I said earlier, feel really epic but this is more to do with the scope of the story, I think... as I said, it looks pretty spectacular.

Despite the opening bars of the score, this doesn’t go the full on, rich epic Hollywood sound of the Basil Poledouris music for Conan The Barbarian either. If anything, it’s much more stripped back and ‘of its time’ in terms of the way the music is functioning in the film (and when I say ‘of it’s time’... I don’t necessarily mean that literally, I mean that it’s more transparent, uncomplicated writing with simple orchestration). So it surprised me somewhat... since it sounds just the kind of score Eggers’ previous collaborator on his first two features, Mark Korven, would have written for this... that it’s actually composed by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough. I need to hear this one again and, at time of writing, it’s been announced that there will be a CD release of this coming soon, so I may just get a chance if they stick to their guns on that.

And I’m sorry this is such a short review for this film but that’s me pretty much done with The Northman. Like The Lighthouse, I doubt I’ll be revisiting this one for a second watch but fans of this kind of stuff should have a strong liking for it, I would have thought. It’s an entertaining, bloody depiction of a familiar trope which people should lap up. I’ve certainly not given up on this director... and I’m happy to see what he comes up with next (I think the big studio experience has somewhat him soured to taking on something like this again, by the sound of it).

The French Dispatch

French Letters

The French Dispatch
USA/Germany 2021
Directed by Wes Anderson

Warning: Very mild spoilers.

A new Wes Anderson movie is always a cause for celebration. He’s a director who, in my humble opinion, has been consistently stunning since fairly early on in his career and when I sat down to watch this, I was fully expecting this to be my favourite film of the year... which it was for the first third of the movie but, although this is indeed another of Anderson’s amazing, cinematic spectacles which once again remind people that you can shoot an intensely personal artistic vision and still turn it into a glorious epic in this kind of medium, I’d have to say the film came up just a little short of being movie of the year for me. But, hey, this would surely be in anybody’s top ten last year once they’ve seen this amazing, visual feast.

The film starts off with the death of the founder of the news magazine The French Dispatch, played by Bill Murray and, in typical Anderson style, the film is presented to the audience as articles in that magazine. The magazine is an American publication but based in France, in the small fictional town of Ennui (Ha! I love that Anderson can boldly get away with ridiculous jokes like this without losing credibility for his elaborately concocted fictions) and, in addition to Bill Murray, includes a whole host of A list actors in all kinds of roles, large and small, such as Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Owen Wilson, Bob Balaban, Henry Winkler (yes, The Fonz is back in a movie and doing an unbelievably good job as a perfect, understated Anderson character), Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Saoirse Ronan and Elisabeth Moss.

So a star studded cast and all caught in little pockets of the story but, as I said, the structure is that for the main sections sandwiched between the obituary and the End Note - Declines and Deaths section, the film is actually four ‘articles’ told from the point of view of one of the main writers of the magazine. So we have The Cycling Reporter from the Travel section (the briefest of the four main ‘articles’ told by Owen Wilson’s character) followed by Tilda Swinton of the Art And Artists section telling us about The Concrete Masterpiece (my favourite section of the movie), Frances McDormand’s Revisions To A Manifesto for the Politics/Poetry section and Jeffrey Wright, who seems to be channeling the performance style of Orson Welles (unless I’m missing a more literary allusion to the basis of his line delivery) to captivate the audience with the tale of The Private Dining Room Of The Police Commissioner for the Tastes And Smells section.

So, what we actually have, rather than one consistent linear narrative, is a medley or showcase of Wes Anderson short films... which is alright by me. The only weakness of the film is the inherent one of taking this format as the break from a single arc, meaning the audience will naturally compare and rate the various sections, as they would do in any kind of portmanteau movie. The ‘hit and miss’ nature of the strength of each episode being part of the territory. That being said, with Anderson being such a master of his craft now, it’s more of a ‘hit and not quite as much of a hit’ affair in terms of quality. In other words... there are no misses.

I’m not sure when each article is set but the death of the editor comes in 1975, with the publication of the last issue of The French Dispatch, which is shut down as part of the provision of the will. Whether these articles are all put together for this final issue or are a selection from various years is not something I could quite make out but, certainly, the Revisions To A Manifesto felt more 1960s to me than some of the other articles.

And once again, Anderson is mixing it up in terms of the different formats of the picture... a lot of it is black and white, some of it is in colour, most of it is in a 4:3 ratio with other moments in widescreen and even split screen where additions to the 4:3 ratio can be added as an appendix or reference to the content of the main shot mixing both colour and monotone simultaneously in one, nice sequence. This is not a division between different sections, more that every section contains all these kinds of treatments within the boundaries of its own ‘magazine article’. He also, uses a couple of animated cartoons to illustrate parts of some of these sections and, as quirky as that is... and also considering his past works where live action and animated styles have co-existed in the same picture (such as The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou or The Grand Budapest Hotel)... I couldn’t help but think that in the second, cartoon animated car chase, the budgetary concerns of shooting such a section may also have come into play as to where best to unleash this technique.

The storytelling of each segment continues the style of the writer/director as sudden tangents to the storyline of each segment are often revealed to be Russian nesting dolls of ideas that ultimately grow from each other to add to the forward momentum of that particular arc.

There’s not much more for me to say on this one but I will reveal one delightful thing which, I suspect, would have had an audience composed of Jean Luc Godard and David Lynch howling with delight if such a situation were possible. When Tony Revolori (Zero from The Grand Budapest Hotel) is playing a young version of the imprisoned, psychotic, homicidal Moses Rosenthaler, he suddenly grows up into the later version of the artist, played by Benicio Del Toro. This is not done with a clever dissolve or other trickery but with the simple and ‘immersive defying’ moment of Revolori vacating his chair as Del Toro then sits in it, while taking his medallion off and putting it around Del Toros neck. One actor handing a character over to another, in fact. A truly nice touch and this one brought my personal house down, so to speak.

And that’s me done on this. If you like Anderson’s quirky, ‘catalogue and categorise’ style of narrative coupled by his squeaky clean shots, quirky physical space negotiations (such as when we track the progress of a character journeying up a tall building by his accelerated appearances at windows and balconies) and truly strong performances by actors investing in larger than life characters, then The French Dispatch should definitely top your list of ‘must see’ movies of 2021. And, of course, it’s all made more sweeter by the needledrop soundtrack selections punctuated by another of Alexandre Desplat’s masterpiece scores... this one very similar to his work on The Grand Budapest Hotel and yet another great triumph in this composer/director relationship. If not the best then, certainly, one of the best of last year.

The Lighthouse

Heavy Foundations

The Lighthouse
2019 Canada/USA
Directed by Robert Eggers
UK cinema release print.


Wow, okay. I really liked Robert Eggers debut feature, The VVitch (reviewed by me here) although, it has to be said, the film had the most kinetically violent audience reaction I’d ever been witness too (and the same thing happened to my cousin in Australia with the screening he went to, from what he’s told me). Eggers’ follow up feature, The Lighthouse, was certainly more sedate in terms of audience reaction but I did find it to be a little less scrutable and engaging than his first film.

What the film does have going for it, however, is two fairly strong lead performances from Willem Dafoe (always watchable) and Robert Pattinson (who I don’t usually get on well with as a performer but he holds his own against Dafoe fairly well here). More than that, though, is the extraordinary cinematography which is the one real thing which continues to hold the interest of the eye in a film which doesn’t give any easy answers as to what it’s actually about, even though the story is certainly pretty simplistic. If this movie is up for any awards then it certainly deserves to win for its astonishing camerawork and shot design. The film is shot in a very contrasty form of black and white (don’t ask me about the stock or the technology involved, I have no idea) and in a 1.19:1 aspect ratio, which is vertically thinner even than the old TV 4:3 ratio from decades gone past, making the full frame of this barely much wider than a square.

However, what Eggers does with this ‘almost square’ ratio is quite phenomenal in terms of the way the shots are composed and it’s a sobering reminder that, yes, while the widescreen format can make for some really interesting and dynamic compositions, you can also get some great results with older visual formats and, this is indeed a truly beautiful film to look at. For instance, there are quite a few shots where he’s run a big vertical split made from part of the set or people themselves, straight down the middle of the screen, splitting it in half to echo what a shot of the exterior of the lighthouse itself would do. Other times he’ll make use of the birds-eye view (or should that be gulls-eye view) to echo the  circle of the exterior by making use of things like a spiral staircase. It’s a rich feast which is easy on the eye, for sure.

Which is just as well because the content is not completely interesting on its own.

The tale of two lighthouse people, or wickies (a term that originated for people who’s job it was to trim the wick in a lighthouse), who are purportedly waiting for a relief boat that never comes is one of those old style ‘cabin fever’ type films where they bond, turn on each other intermittently and you’re never really sure how any scene is going to go down. On the surface there’s not really much going on if you count certain sequences and moments as hallucinogenic or as hypnagogic but if you do so, as I did, then you probably won’t find the film as rewarding as if you were reading the barrage of images on a different level. Alas, my classical training isn’t good so the fact that the film is a metaphor of certain classical mythologies makes sense but was lost on me... although I did actually think of the thing I was supposed to be thinking when it comes to the final shot of the movie, it turns out. Alas, I was also thinking a lot of other things, mostly questions, during this final scene so, for me, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees, so to speak.

But the film does look gorgeous and that was enough for me.

There’s an interesting thing going on in this. I’ve mentioned it before on here but in some Japanese movies, especially anime, I find the fight scenes between two major characters sometimes extremely problematic because they seem to take place in several locations at the same time. Like one minute somebody will punch someone in a cavern under the ocean and the other character might recoil from that punch while they’re both standing on top of the Eiffel Tower... that kind of thing. Over the years, since these fights seem to have no bearing in logic or the way in which they operate in these worlds, I’ve been forced to conclude that these kinds of conflicts are specific to Japanese cinema and are best seen as a metaphor, where the storytellers are trying to convey the ‘epic-ness’ of their battles by making them larger than life and spanning the globe in their importance in the plot. And that’s as far as I can decode those kinds of shenanigans... if anyone knows of anything that’s been written about this phenomenon, however, then please tag it in the comments section below or hit me up on Twitter... I’d like to know if I’m interpreting things correctly or not.

Anyway, the reason why I bring this up is that a couple of the ‘battles’ between Dafoe and Pattinson here do a very similar thing... but instead of changing location it’s the people themselves who seem to change or transform from shot to shot. I guess this dynamic kind of aggressive editing of the visuals in these action scenes should have tipped me off to the metaphorical nature of the film and lead me into decoding the rest of the narrative in less literal, what-you-see-is-what-you-get terms but I obviously didn’t and I was getting really sleepy at this point (although not as sleepy as the guy sitting next to me, it has to be said, who managed to spend three quarters of the movie soundly asleep... at least he didn’t snore).

The other thing which the director does here... and this is very similar to his previous film... is to use non-human actors to add a ‘layer of sinister’ to the proceedings. So in The VVitch we had the goat, Black Philip, who provided that feeling of the animal kingdom watching the world of humans... in The Lighthouse it’s a one eyed seagull and the gulls in general, who bring this malevolence into the film. It adds a little more interest to things and stops things from getting overly dull when added to the fine performances and the scintillating visual element.

Mark Korven’s score, because of the huge delay in releasing the film in the UK as opposed to other territories, is now extremely difficult for me to find on a proper CD so I can’t really add much here other than it works in the film but I’m not going to stoop to vinyl or even a crappy electronic approximation of the music in order to hear it away from the film. If I can somehow find someone who will ship the CD to the UK for me then all well and good... if not then I guess I won’t get to hear it away from the confines of the tale in which it is showcased (actually, in the few days since writing the first draft of this, I’ve ordered one to be sent to a friend who lives in New York as she’s paying me a visit in a few weeks... so I’m keeping my fingers crossed the right thing is sent to her address).

Other than that... nothing more to report on The Lighthouse. I left the cinema feeling a little disappointed by the film and I much preferred The VVitch out of the two films so far by this director... although The Lighthouse hands down wins out on a visual level, that’s for sure. Not something I would recommend to most of my friends other than those who are perhaps happy to feast purely on the shot compositions or those who are, perhaps, more in touch with Greek mythology and can recall the tales of Proteus and Prometheus but, yeah, this one probably won’t make my best movies of the year list, to be honest.

Vox Lux

A Vox Of Delights

Vox Lux
2018 USA
Directed by Brady Corbet
UK cinema release print.

Vox Lux is a film I wanted to see, primarily, because I’ve been following Natalie Portman’s career since I first saw her at the cinema back in 1994 in Luc Besson’s Leon (aka The Professional in the US). I remember singling her out as an astounding actress at the time, although I didn’t expect to see her in anything else because... you know... child actors. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw, years later, that she was given the part of Queen Amidala in Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace (one of the best of the Star Wars films made outside of the original trilogy) and its subsequent sequels and, since then I’ve seen her in a fair few things. And she tends to knock things out of the park as an actress and you only have to see her in films like Closer, V For Vendetta and Jackie to realise just how brilliant she is. Her role in Vox Lux as pop music diva Celeste is another of those roles that gives her an opportunity to shine and her performance in this has received a lot of praise and, rightly so.

The other reason I was keen to see this, originally, is that I’d heard a lot of word of mouth on Twitter saying that Vox Lux is the Citizen Kane of this generation and singling out writer/director Brady Corbet as ‘the new Orson Welles’ in some respects. However, since this was only showing in a very few cinemas in London I was beginning to doubt the veracity of that claim especially when I got to the cinema and found myself almost but, not quite, alone in the auditorium. By the time the film began to play there was maybe 8 people in the cinema but, still, not the size of audience I would expect from an opening weekend... especially not with ‘review buzz’ like that.

As it happens, the film is utterly brilliant and, although I do have some problems with parts of it, which I’ll get to in a minute, I have to say I’m very glad I took some time out of my usual routine to track this down and see it on a large screen at a cinema because, frankly, it’s got a kind of power to it which I suspect may be diminished on various home viewing media. That being said, it’s no Citizen Kane either, although I can see how people might want to draw on that comparison on a purely superficial level.

The films tells the story of a meteoric rise to pop stardom of the central character Celeste and of her relationship with her sister, played by Stacy Martin and manager, played by Jude Law. However, it’s split into four sections (or three sections and a prelude) and Natalie Portman plays the Celeste character in her 30s. Celeste in her teenage years, as covered in the first two segments and taking up a sizeable part of the film, is Raffey Cassidy (who you might remember as the robot girl from Tomorrowland, reviewed here). Now, as bright as Natalie Portman is in this film... and that’s very bright... I’d have to say that Raffey Cassidy absolutely steals the movie, in a dual role too since, when she’s not playing young Celeste, she’s playing Celeste’s daughter Albertine for the final two chapters.

Another fantastic performance is Willem Dafoe as the off screen narrator of the piece, lending the film a documentary aspect and giving the story a sense of foreshadowing in a similar manner to the way Wes Anderson might use a narrator to comment on what you are about to see. Added to his performance, though, is a mixture of different styles of camerawork, movement, film speeds and aspect ratios which, coupled with a foreboding and quite striking score by Scott Walker (sadly only available as a stupid download as opposed to a proper CD, so I am doomed never to hear it away from the images) lends the film a certain sense of both gravitas and a very sinister quality. After the prelude, which I’ll get to in a moment, this narrative and mise en scene takes away any form of comfort blanket from the audience, who is now primed that absolutely anything could happen. So it would be true to say that, in the words of a young Martin Scorcese, the film is ‘fraught with peril’.

Okay, so, the prelude. Something happens here which was somehow telegraphed, I feel. I suspect I wasn’t supposed to be expecting anything from it and the naturalistic style of the acting and lack of scoring at these points maintains the sense of cinéma vérité. However, I kind of knew what was coming a good minute or three before it happened and, well, I hope it’s not giving anything away by saying that part of the exploration of this Celeste character is a way of looking at how violence and tragedy can affect the course of a life and pull and tear at it from different directions (including as a catalyst for success and inspiration) as that life plays out.

However, just because I was expecting certain things to happen doesn’t mean to say that the prelude isn’t effective. It is and, even though we’ve seen these kinds of scenes played out before (no, really, I’m not going to tell you what happens here, go see it yourself) the director manages to render it in such a way that you still feel a certain amount of tension and suspense as to how things are going to play out. The opening credits sequence which leads us out of the scene after this also, in a single moving camera shot with a little twist in the middle, somehow, seems to exert a certain pressure on the audience that similar sequences in other movies have not been able to achieve. It also starts a series of almost morbid obsessions from the director with point of view camera shots speeding down tunnels and, I have to say, even though they’re nothing like as long or daring, I can’t help but wonder if Corbet was somehow influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky’s version of Solaris and also whether these shots are standing in for something else... perhaps a metaphor for growth points in Celeste’s life? Possibly not but... I can wonder.

The pop songs in this film are not too shabby either... which helps maintain a sense of artistry behind the main character. The songs are actually provided by pop music artist Sia, who I only really know from her end credits song on the Wonder Woman soundtrack (that movie is reviewed by me here) and, again, they’d be pretty good as a stand alone listen if only they would release this thing on CD instead of their cheaply mixed electronic shenanigans (see my review of The New Analog here for more details on modern practices in regard to finance over quality of the art in terms of sound mixing for downloads).

Now, I did have one problem with what was, it has to be said, a very powerful and gripping movie and it was this... it doesn’t have an ending. It just kind of stops. Now, I’m pretty sure I know how this was supposed to end or, rather, how I would have ended it. I have to say I felt the whole film had been building to a certain point and that this expected conclusion, and narrative aftermath, would have been the best way to end the film and use that final moment as a call of judgement of the main protagonist. In fact, if I was to bet money on it, I’d say that the film may have had a different ending which was probably even shot but, out of sheer bloody mindedness, Corbet deliberately went for a lack of closure and culmination of the story arc, probably because he didn’t want audiences second guessing him. However, I did feel like this was a kind of ‘cop out’ in this respect and that it does damage the picture somewhat and make everything we’ve seen come before feel a little hollow.

So, no, it’s no modern Citizen Kane, that’s for sure. Having said that, though... I would urge anyone with a love of film to go and seek this out while it’s playing on a big screen because, frankly, slightly flawed as it might at first appear, it is a bit of a masterpiece and it does feel like one is watching something put together by a cinematic genius. Whether this label is maintained throughout this writer/director’s career (he’s already acted in a number of films too) is something which remains to be seen but I can’t wait until we can get a Blu Ray release of this thing so I can study just why the film, in an entirely unrelated genre, unsettled me a lot more than most modern horror films do. Make no mistake, Vox Lux is a great work of art with some truly arresting sequences and a sense of ‘reading between the frames’ level mystery which makes you want to come back to it again. Absolutely spectacular and something which I think a lot of budding young film makers might find themselves quite inspired by.

Aquaman

Curry On Sea Men

Aquaman
2018 Australia/USA
Directed by James Wan
UK cinema release print.

Okay... so this was nothing like what I was expecting this movie to be. I was assuming this would be, like most of the other recent DC movies in this particular cinematic strand of continuity... something of a mess. As it is, this is easily one of the most engaging and entertaining of the DC universe films, second only to Wonder Woman (reviewed here). That being said, I can’t imagine any other superhero movie ever coming close to Wonder Woman in my lifetime so, yeah, I guess you can say I thought a lot of the new Aquaman movie, even though he really isn’t the Aquaman I used to love as a kid.

Aquaman stars Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry, the title character, reprising his role from Batman Vs Superman - Dawn Of Justice (reviewed here) and Justice League (reviewed here). He bookends the narrative with voice-over narrative telling a big story of political battles in the undersea kingdom which threaten all the non-ocean dwellers on the planet but, he comes at it through the eyes of his personal story and... this is something which hooked me in right from the start... he tells it from the angle of a love story. A love story between his dad, Tom, played by Temuera Morrison (who you might remember as Bobba Fett’s father Jango Fett, plus a bunch of clones of his character, in the prequel Star Wars movies) and his mother, Atlanna, played by Nicole Kidman.

And it’s quite charming and heart warming and from this simple, fish out of water start where Tom rescues Atlanna and cares for her in his lighthouse, I was completely hooked. There’s a wonderful action scene in said lighthouse where Nicole Kidman goes full-on warrior and bashes up a load of Atlanteans and then sacrifices her freedom to return to the oceans, leaving Tom to raise their child... who we soon see has lots of cool, undersea powers from his mother.

From then on we get two parts of the villainous plot introduced... as Black Manta, a modern pirate played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, is left hating Aquaman for reasons I won’t go into here while regular James Wan collaborator Patrick Wilson, as Aquaman’s half-brother King Orm, tries to persuade and manipulate wise King Nerreus, played by Dolph Lundgren, to raise up Atlantis, unite all the armies of the kingdoms of the oceans and wage war on the surface dwellers who have been polluting their oceans for centuries. Meanwhile, over the years, we have Orm’s advisor Vulko, played by Willem Dafoe, who has been secretly training Aquaman in his fishy ways over the years and Mera, played by Johnny Depp’s nemesis Amber Heard, reprising her role from Justice League, who wants Arthur Curry to find an ancient trident which will give him power to gain the kingship of the ocean and defeat Orm’s attempt to be Ocean Master.

So, basically, what we have is an action spectacular with a kind of road movie treasure hunt involving Aquaman and Mera, who are trying to gain the trident and avert disaster and... you know what? It’s a real fun ride.

James Wan is somebody I usually only associate with low budget, fairly high quality horror films but, it looks like he can really knock out a good, large scale action blockbuster if he’s given enough money to play with. Like Wonder Woman, the big action is matched by a very overt, emotional, beating heart which gives the audience something to invest in when the battle scenes come and this really took me by surprise since, frankly, the Aquaman character didn’t really get much of a chance to shine in Justice League. So the writers have really thought about this one and Wan has managed to pull it all together to make a very confident looking, big screen spectacle.

This is not the blond, short back and sides version of Aquaman I grew up with... reading him in his appearances in titles such as Justice League Of America and The Super Friends. I used to love the little Comic Action Heroes figure from Mego I had as a kid, despite the fact that my Uncle had squeezed it too hard one day and Aquaman’s leg would fall off whenever he went into action after that. So I was not very happy about the look of the character they’ve brought to the screen here but I really mellowed to it once I saw how well the film works. Also, there are a fair few throwbacks to those original Aquaman strips... including those little circles they used to draw to symbolise him talking to the creatures of the ocean and also, in the endgame of the picture, his old, colourful orange and ‘green gauntlets’ costume which I used to like so much.

Now, there are a couple of problems with the movie so let me just cover those here...

It’s been quoted many times over the years that ‘continuity is the hobgoblin of the small minded’. Well then call me small minded but I think story arc continuity is an important and much valued building block when fashioning a cinematic universe (or in any other kind of story medium, to be fair) and I got the feeling that if I were to sit down and re-watch Justice League right now, I’d find a couple of glaring mis-matches. However, there’s very little shout out to the former film, although it clearly takes place some time after that one and... they kind of get away with certain differences, I think.

The other problem is that it’s just too long... it kinda slumps about two thirds of the way through and the action scenes towards the end could have done with a fair amount of trimming it seems to me. Also, a more lengthy and personal fight between Orm and Aquaman may have been a little more satisfying. That being said, it didn’t detract form the sheer impact and brilliance of the film overall and I think this is definitely one of the DC films from this period which will be remembered in a positive light, providing audiences are willing to go and see it after the not so great Justice League.

But it also has a lot going for it... great acting, great story, some well choreographed action in the middle of the film and a beautiful score by Rupert Gregson-Williams, who also did such a great job on Wonder Woman. Also, it’s easily the most surreal of the contemporary DC movies, with characters riding armoured battle sharks, giant crabs and militarised crustacean people... it’s like if Salvador Dali was allowed to design the extended underwater battle from the James Bond film Thunderball (reviewed here) and did his own thing with it. Which is never going to be a bad thing.

Also, it’s got some amazing transition scenes in the movie including flashbacks which take you completely by surprise and a lovely transformation from a shot of a snow globe to the next narrative point in the story, fairly early on in the film. There’s some really nice stuff in here and I think James Wan has done a truly remarkable job cramming in all this great stuff in a compelling, visual way.

So yeah, that’s my take on Aquaman. There’s a mid post-credits scene which gives you some insight into where they might be going with a sequel and, if it does the numbers I’m hoping it does at the box office, then we should be seeing that at some point in the future (fingers crossed). If you’re, like me, wondering why the hell DC have been getting everything wrong lately other than Wonder Woman... well, wonder no more. If you decide to go and see Aquaman then you’re in for an aquatic treat. Thoroughly enjoyed this although, a quick ‘heads up’ to say that, since I saw this, I’ve found out it’s been cut under advice from the BBFC in this country... which means I’ll definitely be importing the Blu Ray from the US when it comes out, rather than buy the truncated, vandalised English version.

Murder On The Orient Express

Get Christie Love

Murder On The Orient Express
Malta/USA 2017 Directed by Kenneth Branagh
20th Century Fox Blu Ray Zone B

So here we go again with another movie version continuing the exploits of famed crime writer Agatha Christie’s “world’s greatest detective”... no, not Batman... Hercule Poirot. I remember seeing the old Albert Finney version of Murder On The Orient Express back in the mid 1970s (possibly on a re-release) and I kinda half liked it at the time. I remember the solution to the mystery being somewhat unexpected (well, I would only have been 6 or 7 years old, maybe) and it interested me enough that I went on to see the Peter Ustinov Poirot movies at my local cinema when they were released.

Kenneth Branagh is here with this new reboot and, honestly, it’s not a terrible film although it’s not quite as 'refreshed' as I was expecting it to be. There are, however, some brave attempts to liven things up throughout the film. To be honest, one of the reasons I didn’t bother with this one at the cinema last year is because I couldn’t imagine it translating that well for the younger generation of movie goers the film needed to set in its sights to guarantee a bankable interest. Especially since, once you know the final solution to the whodunnit at the heart of the story, you probably don’t need to see another version of it.

Branagh puts himself front and centre here as Christie’s much loved (except by her) character and, when I say ‘front and centre’, I really do mean it. It’s a film which seems to be top loaded with medium/long shots except for quite a number of close ups on the directing/acting force of nature who is top lining the film. To be fair, though, he does have quite entrancing blue eyes and it doesn’t seem too out of place to expect that kind of camera attention given to Poirot.

Like the 1974 version, Murder On The Orient Express boasts a star studded cast with the likes of Johnny Depp as the murder victim (who seems to have fallen out of favour with audiences at the moment, for some reason but allow me to still make that Poirots Of The Caribbean pun), Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe, Daisy Ridley and Derek Jacobi. However, as I said, a lot of the film is medium and long shots and though a few characters do get to shine for a few minutes at a time, the ensemble of these people sharing screen time is what’s more important here and Branagh doesn’t let himself be intimidated by the number of famous film stars who have climbed aboard for the journey.

There are a few attempts to liven up the story with a sense of dynamism... the opening ‘end of mission’ scene were Poirot’s perfectly placed walking stick ends up to be the undoing of the villain of the hour, the punch up after Poirot has been shot, the chase outside the train in the snow after it has been derailed by an avalanche... but these things don’t really make much difference to the general scheme of things, it has to be said.

What does make a huge difference to the tone and watchability of the film is the beautiful way in which Branagh, with his director’s head on, composes the shots with his cinematographer and there’s some truly stunning stuff here where he uses the 65mm format film to highlight some great designs (which is now making me regret not seeing this one at the cinema). He expertly uses various chunks of different texture such as the walls of a carriage against the glass windows, for instance, to section his actors off and highlight their place in the screen space. Indeed, he quite often replaces the naturally occurring verticals found in a variety of situations with various actors standing in front of them. So, for instance, the two vertical strips separating train carriage windows would have various characters standing or sitting in front of them with their positions on screen allowing the composition to still work without it jarring.

One of my favourite instances of these kinds of set ups in the film is where he has a shot of Branagh aligned against a vertical wall with the landscape to his right but with him firmly positioned in the vertical block. When the camera cuts to a closer shot of him from a different angle, he is still placed within the same vertical block (presumably he’s moved position slightly to accommodate this flow from one shot to the next) and I was impressed by this.

Another thing the director uses is a lot of those kind of Hitchcockian overhead shots where various characters can be seen from above and where you may, or may not, wish that some of the actors had a larger cleavage. Hitchcock used it maybe only once or twice in a film (if that) but Branagh really likes cutting to these kinds of views at various points in the story.

One other thing which was kind of interesting but possibly just a little distracting was the use of different glass planes next to each other to create a deliberately double image of this or that character. He does this fairly regularly (although I think Poirot himself is only seen as a single image) and I suspect it comes at points when the great detective realises that the particular person (or persons) are lying to him (although I’d have to check it again to see if I’m right). Thus, their duplicity is revealed on a less conscious level in the visual design of certain shots.

Not much more to say about this one, I think. A nice score by Branagh's regular collaborator Patrick Doyle in no way goes the same route as the famous Richard Rodney Bennet music for the 1974 version but it’s a nice one full of interesting orchestration and I might give this one a go as a stand alone listen if it’s available as a proper CD (rather than a stupid download).

Sure, there are some errors in the movie like the section of track where the train is derailed by an avalanche not actually having any mountains on it in real life but, on the whole, I quite enjoyed Branagh’s very self aware revitalisation of the character’s exploits. The end of this one kinda half contradicts Poirot’s original reason for being on the train in the first place, as he is met by someone who needs him to look into a murder on the Nile. So, yeah, the next movie along, if they get the green light to make one, will be Death On The Nile, I guess. I would quite like to see that if Branagh is still on board because I think what he’s done here is take a quite old school story and made it, not exactly relevant but certainly something which has a place in the pantheon of modern cinema. So maybe give Murder On The Orient Express a go if you’re not too precious about the way in which Christie’s famous character is handled.

The Great Wall

Absent Without
Official Leave in China

The Great Wall
China/USA 2016 Directed by Yimou Zhang
UK cinema release print.

The Great Wall is a Chinese/American co-production directed by the epic director Yimou Zhang, who brought some great looking films such as Hero (which I loved) and House Of Flying Daggers (which I didn’t but which still looked like some pretty impressive eye candy to me anyway) to the cinematic table. As such, I knew I would probably get around to seeing this movie, even though there was some pretty strong backlash at Matt Damon being cast in the lead role. I don’t, in all honesty, understand the backlash on this one as it’s not once implied that the character was, in any way, a foreigner supervising the construction of The Great Wall of China... it’s already well intact before his character and his companion arrive on the scene. Nor is he playing a Chinese character in this so... yeah, it’s strange what some of the bizarre things you see flying around on the internet are these days.

None of that stuff matters to me, though, to be honest. When I go to the cinema I want to see a great work of art and, preferably an entertaining one. Although The Great Wall is less stylistically rendered than I’d hoped, all in all this is a fairly amusing piece although, it has to be said, it’s pretty much bobbins.

The film tells of a couple of mercenaries who are after the secrets of the black powder (aka gun powder) and their expedition leads them smack into contact with an army at a secret base at part of the film's titular construction who not only hold the secrets of the explosive substance but who, more importantly, are defending China from a terror of which the Western world remains ignorant.

Originally treated as criminals for execution by Commander Lin Mae (played wonderfully by Tian Jing), Matt Damon’s character William and his companion Tovar (played by Pedro Pascal) join forces with the Nameless Order who are defending China against a foe that William and Tovar prove their worth against even before stumbling across their new allies at The Great Wall. So they collaborate although Ballard, another seeker of the black powder played by Willem Dafoe, convinces Tovar to help him steal the goods in a move which slightly fractures the clear narrative at one point but without doing too much harm to the film.

And, of course, it turns out that the common foe is a group of alien lizard creatures who landed on Earth centuries before on a yellow meteorite and who try to cleanse the land every sixty years. Personally I would have preferred dragons or something because I wasn’t a great fan of the design of these aliens and their weak spot eyes located in their shoulders. Nor was I impressed that the much talked about ‘Queen’ creature was really not that much different than any of her subordinate creatures and... yeah, that may be one of the reasons why I was suitably unimpressed by any element of perceived danger in the movie, to be honest. Whether these creatures were actually based on anything from Chinese legend is not something I can actually find out but, if they weren’t, then I think the creative forces behind the film could have been allowed to have done a much better job on the design of these creatures, in all honesty.

Now, I like this director’s style because his compositions are usually very tight and he often employs bright, saturated colours to create an almost hypnotic effect on the viewer. Well, he certainly did have his signature in moments during this film to be sure. There’s some impressive colour coding of the various clans of warriors fighting against the alien creatures in the story, with bright blue, red and yellow armour clad warriors all neatly aligned in different sections of the screen. For instance, the bungee jumping warriors of Commander Mae’s forces are all armoured in bright blue and this, to be honest, gives a certain order to the proceedings. There’s also a lovely moment towards the end of the film where Matt Damon and Tian Jing are ascending the inside of a thin, tall tower, the walls of which are regularly punctuated with stained glass windows which allows the director to throw in big, interpenetrating shafts of rainbow colours colliding on the screen at once. This is a great look and one almost wonders why the characters in the movie don’t stop and take stock of the opulence of their surroundings at some point.

That being said, I felt the movie seemed a lot less than ‘a Yimou Zhang movie’ than I’d hoped for and, though their were a lot of scenes with bright colours and somewhat interesting shot compositions, there seems to be a lot less of this stuff at play here than in any of his other works I’ve seen and it almost felt like it was being deliberately dialled down in some places for the US producers. Most of the time the film just felt like a big, pulpy, standard American action movie instead of the graceful, kinetic art that I associate with both the director and his country so... I don’t know, it all seemed a bit less than what it could have been, truth be told. I don’t know if this was because there were so many hordes of dullish CGI lizard creatures for the cast and crew to wrangle but it somehow seemed tired and yawn inducing when, really, what I was expecting from the director and cinematographer was for them to bring the ‘bright and shiny’.

However, the film is entertaining enough in a pulpy fashion and, although Ramin Djawadi’s capable and appropriate score made me think of Pacific Rim (reviewed here) a little too much, it reminded me of recent films like Victor Frankenstein (reviewed here) and The Last Witch Hunter (reviewed here) in that I felt they were the kinds of films the old Hammer Studios might have chosen to be franchises back in the early 1970s cycle of their studio. Added to this you had the principal actors plus a load of, somehow, familiar faces (including one of the director’s regular actors, Andy Lau) and everyone, including Matt Damon (who I would expect this of anyway, given his indisputably good track record), does a fantastic job in this. Willem Dafoe seems a bit wasted and could have done with a larger and better written role but I suspect, like a few of the actors (I’m guessing here) he only took on the role because he wanted to work with this great, almost legendary, director.

Yes, it’s bobbins but it’s hugely entertaining bobbins and, while I was less enthusiastic about it than I imagined I would be, it’s not a wasted trip to the cinema and I would certainly recommend it to lovers of period set fantasy epics. It’s no Ray Harryhausen movie but it’s certainly in the same cinematic ball park and, while I wouldn’t say the screenplay is any better than any of those early monster fests from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, it certainly feels like it could have been written then and has that hokey, slightly toothless feel that a certain generation of cinema-goers might love. Although, like most of these kinds of fantasy films, this one could have been improved with the addition of Caroline Munro, to be sure. The movie even finishes up with an animated end credit sequence which is not a million miles away from some of those beloved, old Spaghetti Western opening title sequences like The Big Gundown (reviewed here). So, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things to watch out for. It’s not for everyone but you won’t know until you give it a try, I guess.

John Wick

Wicked Game

John Wick
2014  USA
Directed by Chad Stahelski & David Leitch (uncredited) 
UK cinema release print.

Okay. So I find it kinda strange and irritating that a relatively high profile action movie like John Wick has had such a delayed release in this country, especially when the language it’s been shot in is a derivative of the language we speak here in the UK. My cousin lives in Australia and I remember him recommending this film to me when we had a Skype conversation in early November. Why did we have to wait so long for it in this country? Especially since, as is my understanding, there were no censorship issues with it. Note to studios: If I really had wanted to see this film badly enough, I would have just legally bought the US DVD or Blu Ray edition which came out a little while ago over there and had it shipped... pretty much anyone who is a lover of film in the UK has to have at least one multi-region player of some kind laying around because there is so much trouble with censorship and availability in the UK. People less scrupulous than I would, and I’m sure many did, just download it illegally from the internet... personally I don’t do that, for a variety of reasons, but many people do. So you are really hurting your box office take by not releasing these movies more or less simultaneously.

John Wick is a pretty good, broad stroke revenge movie, fuelled very much by comic book style attitude towards the action and violence but shot with a certain amount of care and detail to the point that it is like the close kin of another movie I saw at the cinema recently, the Liam Neeson action flick Run All Night (reviewed by me here). Of course, in every other country, John Wick was the first horse to bolt out of the stable door but, obviously, I’ve had to wait until after the Neeson flick had already been playing for a while before I had an opportunity to see this one.

The similarities between both are quite marked.

Both films start off by showing a central protagonist in a very bad way and then flashback to how he got into this state for the majority of the running time. They are both films which involve an anti-hero ex-killer (Wick’s nickname is Baba Yaga in this) who has a history with the villain of the piece. Wick, by the way, is played by the highly competent actor Keanu Reeves and his ex-villainous connection is played by Michael Nyqvist, who most UK audiences will recognise best from his role as Mikael Blomkvist in the original adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and its subsequent sequels, collectively known as The Millennium Trilogy. Both John Wick and Run All Night have a central protagonist who is forced to go on a rampage of some kind due to the misguided exploits of the young, hot-head son of the film’s principal antagonist and, in each case, that antagonist is only going after the protagonist, very reluctantly, because he has been backed into a corner due to the consequences of those actions of his offspring.

Both films also feature very long action and chase sequences but the way both films go about trying to achieve their adrenalin fuelled, emotional goals are very different. The two have nicely composed and designed shots but, where Run All Night has a kind of modus operandi to the sequences which keeps them cut like an MTV pop generation video on acid - extremely short shots making up all the scenes - Wick uses much longer, fluid shots with a lot of moving camera to capture the more flamboyant scenes of violence. Both films have their pros and cons and are trying to be gritty but with Run All Night, the speed of the shots slightly detracts somewhat. John Wick, on the other hand, is a little more light in tone when it comes to the raw edge of the character and, as I said, much more comic book in its treatment of the choreography of the action sequences. It prefers to use moving master shots to keep you pulled in and focused.

Neither film is wrong in their approach but I find the idea of two films with similar themes being the flip side of the coin to each other, when it comes to the technique used to illustrate those themes, extremely interesting. The fight choreography in John Wick is certainly impressive and it does look like Keanu Reeves is doing a lot of his own “rough n’ tumble” in this one... quite convincingly, I might add. In terms of comparing the two films... I’d consider watching John Wick again because the action sequences seem to be a lot more entertaining, it has to be said.

The main difference to this movie is that John Wick is very much a revenge thriller and it takes a fair bit of the early screen time pulling very hard at the audience’s emotions to establish the connection between Wick and his new puppy dog, sent from his recently deceased wife to bond with Wick after her death. Everyone loves a puppy and so the inevitable scene where John is beaten up, his dog killed* (which is in the trailer, so I’m not spoiling anything here, people) and car stolen, is very calculated but, obviously, it works pretty well and you'll get quite fuelled up to see Keanu Reeves’ character leap into action and punish the bad guys. Strangely though, and this is where the art of film comes into play, the amount of time between John Wick losing his wife, gaining a puppy and then having it killed, forcing him out of his self-imposed “kill them all” retirement, can actually be only a week in terms of the events in the character’s chronology. However, the director is skilled, or at least tricksy enough, to give those elements a sense of gravitas even though they take up a pretty insignificantly small amount of time in the principal character’s life. And, of course, Keanu Reeves’ on screen performance is sturdy and assured enough to convince the audience that his personal stake in this is enough motivation for his actions throughout the rest of the film. So, as usual, good work from him.

He’s ably supported by some great actors and actresses in this too, with some good little turns from Willem Dafoe, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, Adrianne Palicki and Bridget Moynahan (although, seriously people, 8 seconds of screen time is really not enough for this wonderful actress). He’s also well supported by some striking shots, cool lighting changes (there’s a scene where he goes from neutral whites and beiges to a “full on Bava” of greens and reds at one point), neat editing and... a nice enough score by Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard. Although regarding this last element it seems, on first listen in the context of the movie, to be a killer baseline missing a central theme which might have given the film a little more lift in places, I felt. Great action coupled with a strong sense of a, kind of, moral heart for the character (despite killing 77 people on screen, most of whom are innocent of any crime against him other than trying to stop him from killing someone else) round out a movie which is actually quite entertaining.

Talk of good box office and a sequel is something which surprises me in the case of John Wick, given that it took so long to get the film out over here. However, it deserves a shot at a franchise, I think... although I’m not sure where they can go with the character after this since the motivation for his misadventures seems to be all used up by the time he’s done with his rampage in this one. Time will tell I guess but, in the meantime, if you like well oiled action movies with lots of loud noise and all the usual punching, shooting and chasing in them, then John Wick should probably satisfy your appetite for destruction for a while. Locked, loaded and ready for traction.

*Just a thought but, if you’re going to take a car ride with your dog and then spin the car around in some death defying, high speed spins and such like, your dog will seriously be looking half dead, at the very least, way before the villains of the piece come into play. That sequence is not very plausible.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Hotel Recall

The Grand Budapest Hotel
2014 UK/Germany
Directed by Wes Anderson
Playing at UK cinemas now.

There’s something about a Wes Anderson movie that creeps up behind you and just grabs you right from the start, pulling you into the realm of the story and providing a totally immersive experience for their “always too short” running times.

I was trying to pinpoint, after leaving a screening of his latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, just what makes the majority of his movies, as far as I’m concerned, just so perfect. In the end I’m forced to confess that there’s no “one” real signature element of his style which can take the full responsibility for the absolute joy one gets from watching his stories play out in front of you. It’s a terminally infectious combination of all round stylish movie-making infused with an absolute perfection of execution, even at the points where he deliberately dumbs down on the technical expectations to feed the whimsy of his pieces (think the various stop-motion sea life in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou or the high speed ski chase in this movie, by way of example), that feeds your mind and allows you to switch off to all concerns other than the shadows and light playing out in front of you in a darkened cinema, that allows for such a fantastic marriage of small scale stories made epic.

I usually hate doing lists but the elements in and of themselves are easy to identify, of course:

1. The clean, sometimes sweeping and sometimes static, but always simplistic movements of the camera through an artifical environment which leaves you in no confusion as to where you are.

2. The matter of fact neatness of the sets which are always easy to understand, with the director often giving you an overview far more detailed than any mere establishing shot, which perhaps mirrors the agenda of Kurosawa to give the audience a very clear map of where the action is transpiring before fully spinning his narrative web.

3. The level of detail in those sets. They are always quite neat, which lends an air of art versus reality, and they are always filled to the brim with little insights into the characters that inhabit them.

4. Perfect casting, employing actors who are some of the best in their field and who are not just playing to type. They are being used in a movie which, you can tell, they want to be in rather than just pick up another pay cheque. This film includes cameos and extended cameos from a large number of Anderson’s back catalogue of actors and actresses and it’s a joy to watch each one pop up, one completely uncredited one (even on the IMDB) for literally about one or two seconds of footage. I’d do a list but it would go on forever.

5. A musical undercurrent which is usually quite diverse in its style and sourcing, although The Grand Budapest Hotel is slightly different in this respect and I’ll get to that a little later.

6. The quirky and fun writing which is always witty and more often than not takes what, to another writer/director, would be a fairly small scale story, and then imbuing it with a sense of grandeur which allows it to shine at its own pace... which is rarely slow or boring.

7. A constant and stable pacing, presumably arrived at through the editing, which allows the brisk intermissions of action... random fleeing, window jumping, cat throwing etc... to come alive as startling little highlights, enhanced by their throwaway treatment, rather than muffled by this artistic attitude.

I could go on, but those are the main ones.

And, of course, The Grand Budapest Hotel has all this in spades... apart from, to a certain extent, the musical element... but the treatment and use of that here shows a trust perhaps lacking in the director’s previous work and, like I said, I’ll get to that soon enough.

The Grand Budapest Hotel tells the story of the titular hotel’s concierge through the eyes of his lobby boy. We have a Russian nesting doll format for the story within a story within a story structure, but the main narrative is told through the eyes of the lobby boy from his old age as the rich owner of the hotel (I’m not giving anything away here... you’ll know this much within the first 10 minutes of the movie). Anderson uses shifting aspect ratios to differentiate between the “narrative stacks”, with most of the movie being screened in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, and it works pretty well, with the shifts from one ratio to another being mostly noticeable on purely a subconscious level once he’s done it a couple of times.

The performances, as you would expect, are astonishing. Ralph Fiennes has finally got my attention and possibly respect as an actor and he is an absolutely joy to watch in this as a slightly camp womaniser who appreciates the finer things in life. His lobby boy, played by relative newcomer Tony Revolori, is an absolute wonder and, as I said, this is all the norm in a film directed by Mr. Wes Anderson. And, honestly, Tilda Swinton's old age make-up is absolutely amazing. I rarely find “ageing” make up in any way convincing but this time it’s really impressive. I didn’t at first realise I wasn’t watching an 80-something actress unknown to me.

And Willem Dafoe’s caricature of an evil henchman is at once thoroughly sinister and over-the-top funny. It’s not got the depth of the role which Dafoe played for Anderson in The Life Aquatic, but it’s not supposed to. Conversely, Edward Norton’s character is really just an extension, albeit in a different profession, of the character he plays in the wonderful Anderson movie Moonrise Kingdom (reviewed here). And it’s just as poe-faced and funny.

But don’t get me started on Harvey Kietel. You may find yourself bursting out with laughter just at his appearance in this one. He's always so good in this stuff.

And then there’s the music.

Wes Anderson tends to employ a lot of “found” needle-drop style music in his films, although this is often supported at times with an actual composed score to give certain moments the kind of unity which music can easily create to glue different parts of a movie together with a leitmotif or atmospheric approach. Mark Mothersbaugh’s music for The Life Aquatic, for example, utilises a melody in different orchestrations... from something that deliberately sounds like it’s being played on a cheap, 1980s Cassio synthesiser through to a full-blooded action cue representation of the theme... to bring together the elements as a unified “Team Zissou” force within the film. Similarly, a more subtle but similarly progressive set of orchestrations is employed by the always brilliant Alexandre Desplat with his “Heroic Weather” theme in Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, to further enhance the sense of unity and harmony with the various characters.

In The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson pretty much throws the needle-drop element, cat-like (no don’t ask), out of the window and instead has hired Desplat to provide a full score and, while it does tonally go through a needledrop like quality in terms of the style in places, it finally feels like an Anderson film has a full and cohesive musical direction and, given that it’s composed by Desplat, of course, it’s an absolutely marvellous piece of scoring. The CD should hopefully be arriving through my door for a closer listen sometime this week, I hope.

And that’s about it. I could go on and on about how wonderful a movie this is but I think you’ve probably got the idea by now... at least if you’ve read this far. What I will add though, is this...

I’ve seen most of this director’s work now and I would rank this movie as fourth within his oeuvre. But it’s an absolutely brilliant and joyful experience and I plan on seeing this movie several times more in my life. I may rank it fourth in his movies but it’s fourth out of four absolute masterpieces he’s made. If that isn’t enough of a recommendation for you to rush out and see this truly splendid artefact of cinematic wonder then I don’t know what is. Run, don’t walk*, to your nearest cinema and see this fabulous creation for yourself.

*Please note, this writer takes no responsibility for any accidents, injury or death resulting in the investment of this advice.