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Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
A Mix Up
I just watched the Last Jedi, here's my verdict:
PROS
Daisy Ridley - brilliant actress. Emotional and captivating.
Special Effects - Epic and stunning all the way.
Snoke - engaging and more enigmatic than TFA.
Characters seemed more embellished.
Cenamatography was great.
Soundtrack was great.
CONS
The scene with Rey and Kylo touching fingers should have continued with a romantic kissing scene instead of remaining in this banal platonic attitude.
Depiction of Luke Skywalker - not the L.S. from the original trilogy. Lacking in scope and charisma.
Misplaced humour. Sarcastic remarks kept muddling the tone of scenes.
The nun things on the island - a waste of time.
Pace - Uneven, choppy, cutting between things so fast you can't settle into it.
Uneven tone. Luke Skywalker is dark and moody, Chewbacca kicks his door in and Luke jolly and jokey. C3PO seemed to be ignored by everyone in the film, the theme of C3PO making precise calculations feels long-time redundant now. Luke Skywalker is climbing the sombre terrain of the island, drinks the green alien milk and pulls ridiculous jokey face.
Most of the dialogue is horrific.
On Canto Bight there was a stampede of horse-creatures. Rose delivers her dialogue so fast and with no articulation or intonation - it's just a blast of blurb with no full stops. So when she's explaining about the horse-creatures I couldnt understand a word of what she was saying and made no sense of why the creatures went on their rampage. How can a horse-creature crash through a solid wall in the casino? The scenes on Canto Bight looked more like the Great Gatsby than Star Wars. If the film is set in a Galaxy a long time ago why do the patrons of the casino look like they're from the 1930s?
Too many repetitive scenes - the spaceships being attacked, the spaceships emerging to a sudden stop after light speed. Swooping shots of the island etc.
Does the young boy at the end indicate that future Star Wars films are going to be kids films like Avatar? My God, I hope not!!
Limited story - cutting between 3 scenes - Skywalker, Rebellion and Canto - nothing else.
Ultimately felt like a cheat of the 70s originals. Comes nowhere close to the dark majesty of The Empire Strikes Back. Comparing the two films is a vain attempt at elevating The Last Jedi way beyond the cheap imitation it is.
SUMMARY:
Disney is trying hard to keep the original trilogy burning, they're succeeding but only just. It's patchy and lacks the freshness and charisma of the originals.
Rain Johnson is not the right director to pull this together. He is no Irvin Kershner. Kathleen Kennedy needs to find a new Irvin Kershner or Star Wars is gonna run out of steam within the next 2 or 3 films. The same story is being repeated in every film.
Final Score 6/10.
Justice League (2017)
Atrocious. An insult to human intelligence.
The worst, gormless, dumb film I've seen in years. Empty, pretentious, presumptious, childish, fake garbage. If you buy into this appalling rubbish you must be absolutely demented. DCs films - Suicide Squad etc - are so overwhelmingly removed from their compelling comic-book source material it's a crime. Zack Snyder needs to be removed from this franchise immediately and permanently, he has no grasp whatsoever of what made the comics so brilliant and fails each and every time in translating the electrifying vibe of the comics into great cinema. Marvel's films succeed in staying one step ahead. Marvel is clever, punchy, sassy, exciting, engaging. The freeway chase in Civil War was stunning. The fight scenes involving Black Panther re-invented fight scenes and pushed them to a new level. Justice League however is a tedious, mindless bunch of CGI puke. I'm not going to waste any more time on this abysmal mess of a film other than recommending the public avoid Justice League and DC abandon their cinema agenda and re-focus on writing comics. The DC Extended Universe is not an extended universe, it's a black hole, sucking dry the essence of humanity.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
A Shocking Disappointment
Watched in IMAX. Paid just under £50 for 2 tickets. Had to fight to stay awake. No story, no character development, no rhythm, no energy, no expressions on the charters' faces, no humour, no personality, no emotion, no impact, no surprises, no adventure, no reaction of any kind, no danger, no bad guy, no threat, no twist, no nothing, not a single stand-out memorable scene. Impossible to tell one character from the next. All the same blank-faced, nonspeaking, emotional retards scene after scene after scene. Everyone looking bored, tired and dozy like they've done too much sedatives. Pretentious, over-inflated themes that everyone is sick to death of. Ultra-predictable moments sold as huge reveals that we've seen 100 times in another 100 films going back 50 years. Incoherent, garbled dialogue mixed so badly you can't hear what they're saying. I couldn't understand 90% of what Jared Leto's said because he speaks in an inaudible whispering rasp with a stuttering tempo. Can't Villeneuve tell him to deliver his lines with more resonance and impact? What's wrong with them? What's the point of playing sound nobody can hear? Especially when you've paid £50 and waited 35 years for it. Men of 12 stone crashing through solid marble walls? Panoramic, aerial vistas of LA in the smog with only Gosling's flying car in shot, no other cars, vehicles, people, movement or activity across the entire city? Phony, lazy, implausible effects.
For a short time things looked promising, glowing reviews etc. But now it's evident that the Satanic hand of Hollywood has cursed everything good, everything noble. Star Wars, Alien, Tron, Ghostbusters and now poor old Blade Runner, that magnificent gem of classic sci-fi cinema.
Denis Villeneuve lacks impact, bite, ideas, imagination, a pulse and any facial expressions whatsoever. Why does he keep getting hired? His films are just TV-movies, so plain and dull. This one's like a 3-hour long designer kitchen commercial. His involvement on this film was a giant misstep. They should have got someone like Gaspar Noe, Takashi Miike or even Ridley Scott to direct it, someone with a bit of edge.
With Blade Runner 2049 Hollywood has once again looted our favourite classics and ruined them, reducing them to the realms of cheap, imagination-free, regurgitated, money- grabbing, formulaic horse-manure. I didn't want to have to ever type this but Blade Runner has now been cast atop that very manure heap, the foil of the origami unicorn just visible above the mountain of dung.
Avoid this film, it's not worth your time or money and it will ruin your memories of the strange and brilliant 1982 original. Don't encourage the scammers behind this lazy, complacent piece of trash to make more films like this because these people are killing cinema. Keep your time and money for something more constructive and rewarding.
Creed (2015)
Blistering
I'm a huge Stallone fan, he's an misunderstood genius, and it's great to see him back as Rocky, and noble of him to pass on the starring role to Michael B. Jordan and directing duties to Ryan Coogler who was just 29 when the film was released. Creed is a blistering movie and it gets my 8/10.
The characters are excellent, Rocky is at his humble best, Bianca is a credible, street-savvy girlfriend. Tony Bellew as Pretty Ricky Conlan is a superb, intense actor, I'm surprised he's not been in more stuff. Initially I thought Tony Bellew isn't menacing enough as the main opponent but then I saw how giving him a subtle nice-guy quality makes him more engaging and not just a cipher like how Drago from Rocky IV was just a cipher. It's a nice touch when he congratulates Adonis after the fight and informs him that he will be the future champ. Graham McTavish as Conlan's manager is excellent as always, I loved him in Rambo (2008), I think he'd make a great future Bond villain. Tessa Thompson's stage routines as Bianca are very nicely choreographed and provide a sensual contrast to the manly boxing scenes. Other stand- out performances include London actor Ritchi Coaster playing local boxing coach Pete Sporino. Initially I felt Michael B. Jordan in the title role didn't have enough attitude to play this iconic character. He seems to jump from a sadistic, violent child in the correctional facility to a mild-mannered investment broker or whatever that job is supposed to be. Prior to watching the film I was expecting the son of Apollo Creed to be the ultimate badass and I was expecting the film to be an epic emotional journey of how a broken child discovers his roots, finds his path, beats the odds and becomes a hero of the people. We kind of got that, just the safe, predictable, watered-down 2015 version of it. Gimme the 1976 version any day! As the film progressed I adjusted to the unexpected soft tone and became drawn- in by Jordan's emotive, considered performance, however Dolph Lundgren or Mr. T would have woken me up a bit!
Ryan Coogler's direction is reliable and by-the-book. The tone is always well measured and great attention is paid to the emotional integrity of a scene. Maryse Alberti's cinematography is crisp with the cold, early-morning shots of Philadelphia and the gritty shots of urban nightlife looking very nice. The city feels very contemporary, whereas the Philadelphia of the original Rocky film of 1976 belongs to Stallone, the Philadelphia of Creed belongs very much to Michael B. Jordan. There are some lovely stand-out scenes: the row between Adonis and Bianca's MC at the club is expertly managed. The romance between Adonis and Bianca is sweet and plausible but far too tame for my book - I guess we have to cope with current trends somehow. The scene where Rocky reads the newspaper by the gravesides of Adrian and Paulie is poignant. There's a bit where they all fall asleep while watching Skyfall that I thought was hilarious. Freeze-framing different fighters and displaying a graphics read-out of the fighter's credentials is a novel touch and succeeds in not becoming too Guy Ritchie. Tricky moments are handled well, like when, on a couple of occasions, the classic Rocky music swells up, music that's not meant for Creed but nevertheless seems to capture the overall spirit of the film's message - which is you must fight for what you believe in.
The moment where Adonis gets knocked out and has flashbacks is done beautifully, with clever use of sound editing, although there could have been more flashbacks of Carl Weathers - and what would have been ultra-cool is at least a glimpse of Drago, who was after all the catalyst behind all of Adonis' issues.
I have a handful of minor criticisms and here they are: Bianca's hearing loss seems an affliction too far. It was like everyone else has an affliction – Rocky with his cancer, Adonis with his father issues, Ricky Conlan's troubles with the law – what can we do with singer Bianca? – hey let's give her progressive hearing loss, that's that box ticked! Background characters need to be fleshed out more thoroughly, like Stitch and the other members of the training team - like how Mickey, Paulie and Adrian were fleshed out in the originals. What was happening with the shorts? Did it say "Johnson" on one side and "Creed" on the other or did I imagine that? Surely making the decisive choice of his name as a fighter should be a clear motive – including both names on the shorts seems majorly half-baked. It should be one or the other. Adonis' rich step-mom seemed totally out-of-place in the movie. Why didn't she intervene in getting him out of the brutal correctional facility when he was a kid sooner? If she had done that he might not have wanted to become a boxer which is what she didn't want him to do. She seemed to be in the movie only for exposition reasons. There isn't much character development; by the end of the film everybody is pretty much the same as they were at the start. Also there's not much variety between the characters; everybody is the same nonchalant, shrugging victim of tough lives.
It will be interesting to see what direction they take with the sequel and how they replace Rocky, Adrian, Paulie and Mickey with a new boxing family. And hopefully in the next one Adonis will get to drink the raw eggs.
The Jungle Book (2016)
Perfect Movie
I give this movie 10/10.
I am unfamiliar with the Rudyard Kipling books (which my Gujarati wife tells me we're copied from older Indian books of the same story) and I hadn't seen the famous animated version.
I recently watched the very dour and over-rated The Revenant and this is like a fun version of the Revenant in that it's to do with surviving with animals in the wild.
The CGI in this film is mindblowing. I think the whole thing was CGId from start to finish except the live action performance of Neel Sethi who plays the main role of Mowgli.
I'm guessing this is a scarier version of previous versions but in this movie everything fits absolutely perfectly. I can't think of one bum note in this movie. The scene with Christopher Walken playing King Louie was the best scene - surreal, hilarious, scary, bizarre, atmospheric. All the characters seemed to perfectly compliment each other. The humour is both genuinely funny, perfectly timed and not forced - for example the scene where Baloo persuades Mowgli to climb up to the bee hives to collect the honey.
The CGI jungle was impeccable. I remember watching Avatar and thinking how fake and contrived it all looked. This is on another level. I thought the CGI wolves, Buffaloes, bears and elks in The Revenant were incredible. But the Jungle Book soars way above that. Even though the animals in the Jungle Book talk, which initially takes some adjusting to, you are nevertheless fully emotionally engaged and you very quickly buy into the narrative of the various conflicts between the animals. In the hands of a lesser director this film could have seemed goofy and dumb - yet nothing here seems ridiculous, it seems compelling and engrossing from start to finish.
There is a decaying monkey temple where King Louie (Christopher Walken) rules. This is a truly stunning sequence. The level of detail to the jungle and the various epic backdrops are so beautifully rendered, the jungle is depicted with such heart-felt effort. Every shot is perfectly crafted - every shot is 100% perfectly executed.
The standout performances are Christopher Walken playing King Louie and of course Idris Elba voicing Shere Khan - both are brilliant. Some of the scenes with Shere Khan are beautifully dark and deadly. Ben Kingsley voicing Bagheera is very powerful. Scarlett Johansen voicing Kaa the snake is very mesmerising and creepy.
The Jungle Book has got the same sense of mysticism and awe as Raiders of the lost Ark or Temple of Doom. It's far, far better than The Force Awakens as an immersive fantasy adventure.
The Director Jon Favreau who made the Iron Man movies which I didn't like, is an exceptionally talented director. I wasn't expecting this from him. Aside from the mindblowing production values the pitch and tone hit just the right notes throughout the film. Nothing feels wasted, nothing feels superfluous, all the characters fulfill a necessary role.
I was lucky enough to watch this with my wife in IMAX in Waterloo and it was an incredible experience.
The Jungle Book is pure movie magic. It's really worth seeing in the cinema - in IMAX if possible. Of all the films I've watched recently - Fury Road, The Revenant, Spectre, The Force Awakens - only The Jungle Book and Mad Max truly stand out as being truly great films.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
David Lynch's Darkest Fable - A Cryptic, Sublime Masterpiece
Mulholland Drive isn't a movie - it's a psychic experience. In order to appreciate and understand David Lynch's cryptic, sublime masterpiece your mind must first shift into an alternative mode of consciousness. If you do that then you'll be attuned to this divine puzzle.
Mulholland Drive is a masterful and hypnotic portrait of both the horror and beauty of being human and contains Lynch's sharpest observations so far. For me Mulholland rises way above Inland Empire which I felt was a bit self-indulgent. Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway are his best films, Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart follow close behind but these two have a certain dark vibe that I've never felt while watching any other film. David Lynch does EVIL very, very well, and he does it best in Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, but especially well in Mulholland Drive. David Lynch is a practitioner of transcendental meditation and clearly presents within this film a deep understanding of Eastern concepts regarding states of consciousness, desire, ego, greed, love and death.
This is what it's about: It is about IDENTITY. We follow the adventure of a woman submerged in Western ignorance, pursuing a dream that is in fact a nightmare. She wants to be an actress. "Mulholland Drive" itself refers to the winding road on the outskirts of L.A., like the life of the protagonist, winding, unpredictable, with steep cliffs, what's around the corner? The tagline, "A love story in the City of Dreams," presents the ultimate in human weakness; ego, desire, greed. For as long as she is pursuing ego, desire and greed, she is moving further away from her real identity. When she dies we see images of the supportive elderly couple who initially wished her luck on her starry-eyed adventure in film-land and we also see the demonic vagrant guy who lives out the back of the diner - all reminders of the emotional ups and downs of pursuing the film dream in Hollywood.
The cowboy, the fifties dancing at the beginning, the film director, the hit-man; these are all stereotypes of Hollywood Movies; artifice. At the midnight theatre, we are reminded, "It's a tape, it's a tape;" artifice. Her perceived love for Rita / Camilla; artifice, dazzled by surface charm and fake smiles. For as long as she pursues the life of an actress she is living artificially, she is not her own IDENTITY. The amnesia: she forgets who she is! The film ends where it begins, yet she can't figure out how to escape this CYCLE - like Saṃsāra - get it..? The hit-man shoots the cleaner, the vacuum cleaner sets off the fire alarm... a chain of events a bit like karmic cause and effect, no?
Surrounding her is the private nightmare she herself created, in the pursuit of desire and ego. At the end - the miniature elderly couple, so admiring initially in the car, now so deranged and small, that elderly couple represents her ego. She is driven over the line. Where is happiness? In this City of Dreams? Mulholland drive is a modern day, very intelligent Dharma from David Lynch, a very wise man.
Przesluchanie (1989)
Bold and Brilliant
I first saw "Przesluchanie" ("Interrogation") in the late 'eighties on Channel 4. It is an incomparable, original work of brilliance which has since been mimicked (Kieslowski's "Decalogue" and "Schindler's List" among others) but never bettered. This is REAL filmmaking. See it, if and when you can. It's a riveting, visceral film that pulls you into its story from the moment it starts and it never lets you go.
Krystyna Janda's acting is the best screen performance I've ever seen on screen. She is TOTAL in her focus and commitment. When she's frightened - I felt frightened, when she was happy - I felt happy. Her command over that performance of Antonina Dziwisz is truly exemplary. This is brutal, hardcore, East-European realism at it's unnerving best. A full spectrum of emotions is on display from Krystyna Janda and she delivers to maximum effect. The switch between casual, carefree Tonia the cabaret singer to terrified prisoner is simply incredible to watch.
Przesluchanie is a bold, brilliant film that delves deep inside the human condition and explores themes of duty, loyalty, conformity, love, trust, friendship, betrayal, cruelty, desire, truth and justice. I can still hear Antonina's whimpering, frightened voice in my head - 25 years after watching it - the way she pleads with the guards and asks in confused desperation the reasons behind her detention. This is a film that will never stop resonating. Anyone who cares about cinema, acting or theatre needs to watch this searing, compelling work of genius filmmaking.
The Revenant (2015)
Unoriginal, Derivative Rehash Of Multiple Similar Films
PROS
1. The film is technically brilliant. There are numerous stunning, very complex sequences that made me wonder how they pulled it off, with ambitious use of cranes and jibs. Much of the camera-work is mindblowing. There's a Native Indian attack on the hunting party near the start that appears to be shot in one long take without any edits and it's incredible to watch, Indians are shot and fall from trees, arrows are shot through people's necks, people fall from horses, there are knife-fights, gun-fights, and it's all shot in one long take that goes on for ten minutes. Of course there ARE edits, but they are cleverly masked, I think during the various whip pans. This sequence - for it's ambition, scale and scope - is almost on a par with the opening of Saving Private Ryan. The grizzly bear attack on DiCaprio is technically amazing too. Incredibly realistic.
2. The Native Indians are portrayed in an interesting and fresh way. They are shown to be intelligent, dynamic people. The performance by the elderly Arikara chief is especially powerful.
3. There's an interesting interplay between the various ethnic groups in this film. The French are portrayed as drunken, racist, corrupt rapists. The American frontiersmen are a strange assortment of Irish-American looking people with ginger hair, a few black people and a cockney - similar to the type of demographic mixture you see on a pirate ship, or the crew of an old sailing ship - or like the ship in King Kong for example - it's almost the exact same demographic mixture as those guys on the ship in King Kong, And Prometheus. And The Force Awakens. And Spectre. I guess it's a demographic reflection of the film's intended audience.
CONS
1. The film becomes more contrived as it goes along. The film is about DiCaprio overcoming one implausible challenge after another. He's attacked by Indians - but survives, he's mauled by a grizzly bear for 5 minutes - but survives, the French find and hang from a tree DiCaprio's Pawnee companion but fail to spot DiCaprio - who's camping in a big tent just a few meters away. He falls over a cliff on his horse - but survives (the horse dies), he's washed downriver in the rapids and is heading towards a 300M drop but at the last moment inexplicably steers himself into a tranquil off-shoot river and survives. He also nearly freezes, starves and bleeds to death but always pulls-through at the very last moment. DiCaprio faces death every 10 minutes yet survives the most ludicrous injuries and accidents - meanwhile everyone around him dies in a flash.
2. There are annoying and pretentious dream-sequences depicting DiCaprio's Native Indian wife and son before they get killed. DiCaprio experiences continual dream-sequences / flashbacks depicting his loving wife watching over him from the afterworld which are impossible to relate to because his wife and son are just ciphers who have very little screen-time so we never get the opportunity to develop feelings for them like we do for DiCaprio and to a lesser extent with some of the other characters such as the friendly Pawnee Indian and the elderly Arikara chief.
3. Much more could have been made of Native Indian mysticism. The imagery in the film tried so hard to be mystical and profound but it just came across as hackneyed and derivative.
4. Tom Hardy keeps letting people go - he's on the verge of killing someone then he let's them go for no reason other than to allow the story to continue. So he's got loads of witnesses to his crimes running around the wilderness and he goes back to the fort where he can get arrested and be testified against by the multiple witnesses he allowed to go free. This is one of the more blatant flaws that ruins the film.
5. Tom Hardy is horribly miscast in this film - he's not menacing or depraved enough for the role, he delivers his dialogue in a mumbling Texan drawl that's barely understandable - you can't understand 95% of what he says. His performance is comical, cartoonish and overacted. I would have cast an actor 10-15 years older than Tom Hardy - Tom Hardy is too similar in looks and demeanour to DiCaprio to provide an engaging foil.
6. Bizarrely - whilst much care and attention has been paid to the outstanding cinematography and direction (the blocking in some of the long, complex one-take scenes is jaw-dropping) there appears to be massive technical errors on the soundtrack. I noticed Tom Hardy's dialogue was out of sync a couple of times.
IN SUMMARY
The director - Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu - pulls off massive technical ambition perfectly, but maybe because of this, the film feels artificial and contrived. As the movie progressed I started to get the terrible feeling that I had seen it all before - and I had! He's copied the story - I've seen this story so many times before: Badlands, Deliverance, Southern Comfort, The Proposition, the recent film about wolves with Liam Neeson - all remarkably similar in theme, tone. The Proposition seared itself into my memory because it dared to be different and dared to be new and it succeeded in doing that. These qualities are missing in The Revenant, it's a rehash of a rehash. There's no substance to it, and absolutely no soul. Everything is pinned on the fancy camera-work and clever digital effects - but beyond that - there's nothing there. I'm sorry to say this - but I can only give The Revenant 3/10.