Film Review - The Secret Life of Pets 2 (U)

But I don't have a behavioural disorder.

The Secret Life of Pets was a 2016 release from Illumination Pictures, who most famously gifted us with Despicable Me and Minions. It proved to be very much a retread of Toy Story, and not just in the basic premise of 'what domestic critters get up to when their owners aren't looking'. There was established dog Max, who found his position in owner Katie's home threatened by shaggy mongrel interloper Duke. His attempt to sabotage Duke landed them both in a heap of trouble, and they bonded to get themselves out, while an assortment of furry companions sought to help them. See? Toy Story with pets. It had cutely observed characters and typically superb animation, but the story suffered from being plain derivative. (Not that its main target audience would care a jot.)

Pets 2 is a more confident film all round in story terms, the characters having been solidly established, so that they can be sent off in original and fun directions. Max is dealing with the arrival of baby Liam into Katie's life - a positive development, but one that also underscores the jack russell terrier's sense of danger, causing him acute anxiety. This is exacerbated when he and Duke accompany the family to a working farm with all its manifold terrors. Back home fluff-ball pomeranian Gidget watches helplessly as the toy with which Max has entrusted her rolls into the home of a crazy cat-lady; then with help from pampered and cynical moggie Chloe, she tries to pass herself off as a cat to get it back. And in the most left-field of the plot lines, one-time street bunny Snowball teams up with sassy shih tzu Daisy to rescue an illegally imprisoned snow tiger from a dastardly circus owner. There's a whole lot going on here.

 

The plot-lines are disparate, although there's a vague thematic link of facing your fears and they all tie together in the final act. Where they do succeed is in being fast-paced and engaging, providing opportunity for character development; these fuzzy protagonists really do start to grow on you in this second chapter. Tough-guy Snowball spars with attitude-laden newcomer Daisy, this voice reunion for Night School's Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish spicing up the repartee. (The script is better than Night School's too.) The Chloe how-to-be-feline masterclass is wonderfully astute comedy, Lake Bell's performance as the overweight, complacent cat a high-point of these films. And self-doubting Max (Patton Oswald) has the good fortune to play opposite Harrison Ford's throaty growl as grizzled working-dog Rooster. It makes for some truly lovely interactions. 

Pets 2 is at its best when capturing the minutiae of animal behaviour, something it does quite brilliantly throughout (even if cat-owners may take umbrage at how felines are portrayed). It also lovingly recreates its New York locations, the animation's sheer attention to detail smacking your retinas during the quieter moments. This movie mightn't have Pixar-level imagination or even scale the heights of Gru and the Minions, but it's made by some of the best creatives in the business nonetheless and will win you over through its irrepressible sense of fun. Max and his fuzzy companions are back with more bark and more miaow than last time. This Pet Story has found its own voice. 

Gut Reaction: Subverted expectations. Lots of chuckles along the way, a bit of tension at one point and I was actively loving that animation. 

Memorable Moment(s): Chloe's 'How To Be a Cat' tutorial is ace. So is Max's turkey encounter.

Ed's Verdict: 7/10. Quality kids' entertainment, but anyone who's ever shared living-space with a four-legged friend will find lots to enjoy here.

Film Review - Rocketman (15)

I've been a **** since 1975.

How to do a music biopic. The debate is - well, if not exactly raging, certainly rumbling quite loudly. Last year's Bohemian Rhapsody took a clear 'greatest hits' route, as did Walk the Line before it, but got lambasted from some quarters for glossing over the grimier truths of Freddy Mercury's life. (I really enjoyed it for the pure celebration it was meant to be.) Rocketman, an exploration of the rocket-like trajectory into fame taken by Elton John, discovers a way of avoiding all genre pitfalls. In doing so, it becomes one of the year's most original and thrilling films to date. 

The tale begins with the utmost theatricality - a devilishly attired Elton (Kingsman's Taron Egerton) dragging his knackered self into a rehab facility at the lowest point in his life. The self-help session in which he finds himself acts as a handy narrative stratagem. Via his AA confession the story flashes back to his less-than-idyllic childhood in Middlesex, England, when he was still Reginald Dwight. From there it takes us through the London Academy of music, his serendipitous encounter with lyricist Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) and the song-writing duo's seemingly unstoppable rise to showbiz glory. That's when his insecurities and the excesses of the rock-and-roll lifestyle begin to take their horrible toll.

 

True, that all sounds what you'd expect in terms of storytelling framework. Where the film finds its own voice is in the telling. Rocketman is an all-out musical fantasy, the back catalogue of Elton's songs reworked to present his story on a vivid, sometimes surreal backdrop. He's singing his songs in concert for sure, but also out of it, with family and friends often grabbing some of the verses, and cartloads of extras bursting into Broadway-style song and dance. The style is hugely freeing, delivering the narrative in the form of Elton's loud, proud and sometimes acutely painful recollections. This is the emotional truth of his experience (like the moment when he and his entire audience defy gravity at a gig), rather than an attempt to recreate what literally happened in any given moment.

At the movie's core is a truly stellar performance from Egerton. There's a youthful zest to it, encapsulating both the vulnerability and the brash showmanship of a young Elton John. It helps that the boy can sing - not a spot-on impersonation, but rather an admirable approximation with a personality of its own. He struts like a cockerel on stage, but is equally convincing off, whether partying, throwing tantrums or sliding into tragedy.

He's got great support too, chief among it Bell's terrifically likeable turn as Taupin. There's a sense of kinship between them from the start, as they banter like kids over their shared love of creating song. Their brotherly love provides the through-line and most moving element of the film. Richard Madden (Game of Thrones, Bodyguard) reveals a side we haven't seen before as Elton's suave but egocentric lover-manager John Reid, the depiction of their relationship frank and fearless in mainstream cinema terms. There's also solid work from Steven Mackintosh and Bryce Dallas Howard as Elton's parents, even if the latter's accent takes a mini-tour around England. Oh, and credit to Merseyside legend Stephen Graham, for his scene-stealing performance as plain-dealing manager Dick James - delivering a handful of the movie's most laugh-out-loud moments.

And transforming Elton's life into this whirling jukebox extravaganza is Dexter Fletcher. He rushed to Bohemian Rhapsody's rescue when original director Bryan Singer was dismissed, but this time the vision is all his. Working with Billy Elliot scribe Lee Hall's script, he brings a remarkable fluidity and sense of forward motion to the project, not least in one turbulent, joyous sequence set to Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, where young Reggie is pitched dramatically into adulthood. Such visually imaginative moments exist throughout, playing merrily with time and reality, before revisiting the rehab touchstone. There are moments when it all slows into something more standard - like the one when Elton matches piano to one of Bernie's early lyrics and forges a future classic - but overall this film is about freshness of approach.

To some extent Rocketman feels like extended therapy for the real Elton John, so closely involved was the singer with the movie's creation. That's certainly how you're left feeling in the closing moments. Criticisms regarding Bohemian Rhapsody's sanitisation of its subject-matter certainly can't similarly be levelled here. The story is all about a unique talent, but also about the accompanying insecurity and arrogance, the selfishness and tendency towards self-destruction. This is warts-and-all stuff. Thankfully, due to its great cast and that rather brilliant reworking of the template, it also brims with life, colour and passion. The music's pretty damn good too.     

Gut Reaction: Your actual singing along and some moved-to-tearsness. Plus it's often more than a little bit funny. 

Memorable Moment: Which to choose... I'll opt for Dick James' initial response to Elton and Bernie's songs. Utterly priceless.

Ed's Verdict: 8.5/10. With Disney soundtracks and royal tributes Elton seems so establishment in 2019. This is a raucous reminder of his true (if troubled) genius.  

Film Review - John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (15)

Sit. Stay. Good dog.

Just so you're aware, I binge-watched John Wick Chapters 1 and 2 to be fully prepped for Parabellum. Seriously, the work I put in for my readers... Anyway, it turns out that the slam-session was a good plan, as watching these three films back to back provides the sense of one rapidly expanding and increasingly volatile universe. Not for nothing are the series' scores IMDb scores increasing - 7.3, 7.5 and 8.2 respectively - with each installment. 

Allow me to explain the universe expansion thing. (Wick virgins should go get popped at this stage before returning to read.) The first film established a familiar premise - the retired assassin who ill-advisedly returns to the violent world he had left behind. It was a hard-edged but stylish kung-fuey shoot-em-up with an enigma at its core - John Wick (Keanu Reeves) was a suit-attired death angel, but with tenderness and love for puppies in his heart. Then came Chapter 2, rolling back the franchise boundaries both visually and conceptually. As hinted in movie one, the Wick world turned out to be a fantastical one full of licenced assassins bearing Russian mob-style tattoos. There was an international hotel chain - the Continental - acting as safe houses for the paid killers (an idea mirrored in last year's Hotel Artemis). There were protocols, blood pacts, a unique currency of gold coins - all manner of arcane detail. Oh, and there was something called the 'High Table', a council of crime lords in ultimate charge of worldwide criminal activity.

That last bit is important, because our taciturn antihero ended Chapter 2 by bumping off a High Table member in the New York Continental - a double no-no - before its Manager, Winston (the debonair Ian McShane), branded him 'excommunicado'. Now Wick is literally on the run with only his canine companion - known as 'my dog' - for company and with no safe harbour anywhere on the globe. That's from all the other assassins seeking to claim the handsome and escalating price on his head. It's kill, a lot, or be killed.

There's a quite glorious insanity to the Wick movies that has built exponentially over the trilogy. The whole visual aesthetic - glistening neon, olde-worlde interiors meshed with serious tech and high art spliced with street grunge - screams the kind of modern-day iconography you normally get in graphic novel adaptations. But the John Wick screenplays are all original (another reason to love them), summoning up a sense of intriguing mythology and unspoken character back-story with every lovingly-detailed frame. However brutal the actions of their characters, these films are just damn beautiful, Chapter 3 more so than either of its predecessors. Its story goes properly international too, Casablanca and the Moroccan desert providing a stunning contrast to all that urban noir.

But I'm not successfully conveying the sheer ultra-violence of the Wick juggernaut here. This is multiple-head-shot/bone-shattering mayhem, yet somehow a world away from the grim brutality of say the Purge movies. It's hyper-stylised and magnificently choreographed stuff, with Reeves and his opponents engaged in a wildly entertaining dance of death. Guns blaze, knives hurtle, feet and fists fly, while Chapter 3 proves more than ever that in the right hands, i.e. those of Mr Wick, most objects can be weaponised. It's hyper-adrenalised, occasionally shocking and often openly funny, totally the vibe the movie is seeking. At bottom this is all tongue-in-cheek stuff. And however distasteful any of it sounds, the nature of the Wickian world makes the violence something that simply happens - a deal into which all of these people have bought and which plays out in a spirit of weird exuberance.

It helps too that the movies are so enjoyably populated. Reeves' protagonist provides a oddly sympathetic focal point - the killing machine who remains both emotionally and physically vulnerable. (His tendency to get run over becomes a running joke.) There are other welcome returns in Chapter 3. Along with the ever-genial McShane are Laurence Fishburne as droll rooftop guru and pigeon-fancier Bowery King and Lance Reddick (my personal favourite) as the NY Continental's charming concierge. Add to that a clutch of newcomers - Halle Berry is a Continental Manager who kicks ass backed up by two canine pals, Mark Dacascos a riotously funny Wick fan-boy/opponent and Asia Kate Dillon a ruthless High Table enforcer called The Adjudicator - and you have a shining cast. These aren't simply characters. Each of them serves to flesh out a unique and surreal fictional landscape.

With former stuntman Chad Stahelski at the helm of all three films and Danish cinematographer Dan Lausten (The Shape of Water) on board since Chapter 2, this is a fine-tuned thriller sensation with increasing scope and visual finesse. It's also one that evolves in its bizarre ideas, cranks up the audacity of its stunts and draws its audience ever deeper into a dark but vibrant reality. Parabellum transforms John Wick into a legit phenomenon - and one of the most compelling franchises of 21st Century cinema. Mass slaughter really shouldn't be this much fun. 

Gut Reaction: Sometimes I internalise my filmic responses. With John Wick: Chapter 3 the laughter, the flinching, the cheers were all right out there.

Memorable Moment: Punch-up in the big smashy room of glass. It's just really funny.

Ed's Verdict: 8.5/10. John Wick character now threatens the Matrix's Neo as most iconic Reeves character, while the movies in this trilogy keep getting better. There will no doubt be a Chapter 4, and it will probably be awesome.

Film Review - The Hustle (12A)

Men always underestimate us. And that is what we use.

Speaking of underestimation, I had no great hopes regarding The Hustle. This wannabe laughter-fest had already undergone critical crucifixion by the time I went to see it, so I was more or less settling in for a teatime snooze. Maybe it's those low expectations working their magic once again, but in reality this film simply isn't as bad as everyone else is claiming. I don't even mean to damn with faint praise here, it was passably entertaining. Yes I realise they'll hardly want to quote that on the DVD box cover, but still...

Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway star as feuding con-artists in a gender-reverse remake of 1988's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Wilson is Penny, a small-time scammer whose criminal behaviour sends her on the run as far as the French Riviera. There she crosses paths with Josephine Chesterfield (Hathaway), a high-class swindler with a swanky pad and actual staff. Faced with the inconvenience of a rival on her patch, Josephine reluctantly agrees to school Penny in the art of the high-class con. But their deal proves short-lived and the chalk-and-cheese grifters end up in a pitch battle - to see who can cheat a young tech billionaire out of his - well - billions.

See? It really is a remake, the Dirty Rotten writers coming out of apparent retirement and following their original plot beat for beat. Okay - Filmic Forays is big into equal female representation in cinema, but there has to be a better way than the Ghostbusters/Ocean's 8 reboot-with-women route. Scoundrels was funny but not that funny, and there are diminished returns here, with even the two standout sequences from the Steve Martin/Michael Caine comedy reworked in ways that simply don't match up. It feels like this particular source material has been rehashed as a Rebel Wilson vehicle. And while Wilson's improv shtick has entertained elsewhere (she gave a consistently amusing turn in the Pitch Perfect franchise), here it feels forced at points - a pale imitation of Martin's zany '88 antics.

Brought in to provide the classy counterpoint, Hathaway comes out of the whole thing better, and is the single best reason (as was the case in Ocean's 8) for watching. She's clearly having a blast with her multiple-character turn, whether playing dumb for one of her selected marks, sporting a faux English accent or adopting a more outrageous persona as the battle of wits accelerates. It's spirited comedic work at all points, not least in the slapstick sequences where her rapport with Wilson really shines through. Look out for a couple of neat character turns as well - Breaking Bad's Dean Norris as a hapless Texan mark, while Nicholas Woodeson supplies nuggets of deadpan gold as Josephine's butler Albert.

The 'girls-having-fun-at-the-guys'-expense' theme is undermined by the route that the story slavishly follows (think back to how the original turned out), and one element of the denouement feels entirely unconvincing. Still with its rich-playground settings and some decent direction from Brit comedian Chris Addison, this is better than many will tell you, and it's undeniable that the girls in question really did have fun. Just a shame that with their talents they couldn't have worked with something vibrant and truly original.

Gut Reaction: The opposite of that 'laughter dying in your throat' experience. Prepped to remain stony-faced and surprised to find myself lol-ing a few times. 

Memorable Moment: The con-school training montage.

Ed's Verdict: 6/10. It's a notch or two down from its Dirty Rotten predecessor, but Hathaway's fun performance lifts it to the level of disposable summer entertainment. Nope - that won't feature in the marketing either.

Film Review - Tolkien (12A)

Tell me a story, in any language you want.

It's nearly two decades since the first Lord of the Rings film exploded onto the cinematic landscape. Finally - inevitably - we have a biopic of the man on whose epic literary works that movie (and all its successors) was based. Having been thrilled in my time by both the written Tolkienian word and its big-screen adaptations, I was curiously unmoved by the prospect of this based-on-fact story; maybe the Hobbit trilogy had been ork overkill. That indifference lasted around ten minutes into Dome Karukoski's film - then I began to feel those deep-rooted Middle-Earth stirrings all over again.

On the Western Front in 1916, the movie's hero is weathering the Battle of the Somme. That conflict becomes a framing device, the action flashing back from Lieutenant Tolkien's desperate search for a missing comrade to his boyhood and teenage years. There's early childhood trauma, which sees young John Ronald Reuel and his younger brother uprooted from their idyllic rural English home and relocated to the industrial sprawl of Birmingham. There he forges both a bond and a secret literary society with three other lads at King Edward's School, plotting to 'change the world through the power of art' while drinking lots of tea. Halcyon times, but equally intoxicating is the company of Edith Bratt, a fellow-lodger at the boarding house where he lives. Through it all his love of languages - real and invented - bubbles up like a wellspring, along with his desire to create myth. That's until reality strikes, in the form of that devastating war...

By any standard Tolkien is a beautiful film, from the pastoral playgrounds of early childhood to Cambridge's stately towers. Even the battle-ruptured fields of France have a dark grandeur - perhaps too pretty for the grime and sludge of the trenches, though it's not inconceivable that Tolkien's exhausted mind would have viewed them as a kind of mystical apocalypse. There's a lot of magic around, in fact, this lad's imagination having been fuelled from boyhood by mystical tales of Saxon legend. The artistic endeavours he shares with his King Edward companions take on an epic quality (at least in the boys' own minds), while his courtship of Edith brims with the delight they share in language and music.

To say that the story is romanticised on every level isn't a criticism. This is, after all, the tale of a unique mind, one driven by a love of folklore and the beauty of the written word. Everything about the film sells that romance, not least the central pairing. Nicholas Hoult, so gleefully callous in The Favourite, is earnest and articulate as Tolkien, while star-in-the-happening Lily Collins illuminates every scene she's in - sparring with him idea for idea. At its most intense their connection achieves something best described as 'magical'. 

 

The comradeship between the schoolmates is affecting in its own way, particularly Tolkien's friendship with the sensitive and poetic Geoffrey Smith (a touching performance by young Belfast actor Anthony Boyle). Add to that some neat supporting turns from the likes of Colm Meaney and Derek Jacobi, that gorgeous cinematography and a typically plaintive score by The Shawshank Redemption's Thomas Newman and you have a cinematic experience that feels like a warm embrace. 

True this film has more for lovers of Tolkien's fiction, steeped as it is in the influences on which he would later draw. It includes a huge recognition element - 'Ahhh, there's where he got that idea'. In addition, however, is much to which the casual viewer can relate and by which they might well be moved. Depth of love and friendship, artistic striving, courage, heartbreak and regret - they're all woven into a screenplay as vivid and varied as an elfin tapestry. It's idealised, certainly. But does it succeed in conveying the inner life of this extraordinary literary icon? Oh yes. As sure as a hobbit lives in a hole in the ground. 

Gut Reaction: Nothing but deep affection for everything on screen. I got teary several times and thought 'Tell her you love her', repeatedly at one point.

Memorable Moment: Literary flirting in the Grand Hotel.

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. Tolkien is an intimate and nuanced study of the writer's formative years and the influences that forged his later work. A treat for fans, and for anyone who enjoy a good love story. It's several of those all at once.

Film Review - Long Shot (15)

What is the relationship exactly?

 

Long Shot would be an apt title for most romantic comedies. The genre has tropes so firmly established that they almost defy anyone breathing freshness into them. There are a number of ways in which this particular long shot defies those daunting odds. Drawing on the strengths of his writers and cast, director Jonathan Levine delivers plenty of com, while ultimately spiriting up more rom than you might ever have expected.

Seth Rogan is Fred Flarsky, a disheveled and provocative print journalist, whose progressive agenda puts him at odds with the new boss of his paper. One resignation later he's drowning his sorrows, an evening that throws him back into the orbit of his one-time nanny and boyhood crush Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron). Now the US Secretary of State, Charlotte is contemplating a run for the Presidency, using a global environmental initiative to launch her campaign. She hires Fred - much to the chagrin of her devoted PA Maggie - as a writer whose edgily humorous style can pep up her speeches. Their professional relationship proves a tight one, but when it starts to develop into something even closer, Maggie's disapproval proves only one of their worries.

Long Shot's success is due in no small part to its meshing of two distinct movie styles. Rogan, hands-on in his movies since the days with Judd Apatow and Knocked Up, brings that same semi-improv style to the whole project - rude and profane, but with an engaging man-child innocence. The world into which he steps, however, is much more West Wing this time around. Co-writer Liz Hannah (she worked on Spielberg's investigative journalism drama The Post) has helped to ground the more juvenile elements of comedy in the recognisably venal world of modern politics. The result has all the slapstick and cheerfully low-brow humour of other Rogan comedies, along with some real satirical bite. And somehow the romantic part bubbles up organically in the midst of it all.

Thank the leads for that latter success. The character of Fred is grist to Rogan's comedic mill - a proudly unkempt, pot-smoking maverick with a line in blunt honesty. Theron meanwhile continues to extend her can-do-anything CV. As Charlotte she has all the poise and dynamism of a career politician, while exhibiting the same comedy chops as she did in last year's Gringo. (Watch those back-to-back with Atomic Blonde and Tully - the woman's a dictionary definition of 'versatility'.) Together they have that rom-com Holy Grail of natural chemistry, actually convincing that this disparate twosome could click on a romantic level. It helps that they're written as having history - an instant basis of friendship that's allowed to evolve totally unforced into something else.

A handful of other quality turns help make good on the movie's laughter quotient. O'Shea Jackson is consistently funny as Fred's best pal and self-appointed life-coach Lance, while June Diane Raphael delivers precision put-downs as the steely Maggie. Particularly resonant in the present political era, however, is Better Call Saul's Bob Odenkirk as the sitting US President; a former TV actor who's found his way to the Oval Office, he sees being Commander in Chief as part of a larger career plan. It's a joke with good mileage - an arch commentary on current US politics, distanced just enough from real-life events to avoid crude parody.

 

Long Shot tells a similar tale to 1995's The American President, only with a crucial gender-reversal. It's in keeping with 2019 sensibilities, but sufficiently well-written that it doesn't pander to them too obviously. It also delivers a timely message - not just on the global climate issue, but on that of keeping your integrity in an era of establishment politics. And above all it hits its twin genre goals - bringing the feels and the funny.  

Gut Reaction: Numerous laughs and one spluttering guffaw at a particularly unexpected Theron remark.

Memorable Moment: Time-out at the climate conference.

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. Too foul-mouthed, raunchy and outrageous to suffer from schmaltz, this still manages to be both biting and sweet. Definitely a shot worth taking.