Film Review - The Current War (12A)

My boys and I caught in a jar what before now has only flashed across the night sky.

The Current War tells of the 19th Century battle between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse for supremacy in America's burgeoning electrical industry. The story has such epic scope and deals with cultural upheaval so vast that it's surprising no one has attempted to put it on screen before. But sadly while director Alfonsa Gomez-Rejon's effort gives off sparks of the situation's innate drama, it never shines with the kind of illumination promised by that core idea.

Michael Shannon plays Westinghouse, the entrepreneur who having devoted himself to gas distribution becomes fascinated by Edison's harnassing of electricity as a power source. Edison's refusal to meet with him and talk shop leads to a steadily intensifying competition between the two men, Westinghouse combating his rival's direct current system with the creation of alternative current lighting (it's AC versus DC, folks). Into the mix steps Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), the young immigrant scientist whose genius has the capability to give either man the edge. As America lights up state by state and the use of this new electical magic takes some ironically dark turns, the two men resort to dubious means in order to corner the rapidly expanding market.  

It's a wonder of its own that a film with so many bright individual aspects doesn't work as a whole. From its outset there are moments of cinematographic beauty that take you by surprise, of which the haunting gaslight of a passing train and Edison standing amid a forest of lightbulbs are but two. The dialogue has wit and insight, not least when the two vying entrepreneurs finally meet and acknowledge their shared fascination with the force of nature they're both trying to channel. Then there's Chan-wook Park's vital, pulsing score, one that would set your heart racing, were the drama really lighting up.

On top of that is the cast-to-die-for. Cumberbatch brings all his Doctor Strange drivenness and enigma, but with greater humanity. Shannon, so grimly magnetic in Nocturnal Animals and just plain grim in The Shape of Water, finds the warmth underlying Westinghouse's obsession, helped by the ever-radient Katherine Waterson (Fantastic Beasts) as his wife. As for Hoult, check out his performances in The Favourite and Tolkien to witness range and depth and then see how much he does with limited screen-time as the awkwardly brilliant Tesla. Plus it's got another bouyant likeable performance from Spider-Man himself, Tom Holland, as Edison's PA Samuel Insull. It takes a lot to screw up with that lot on board.

And yet screw up the film does, by failing to engage it audience, even if there's a clutch of moments where it threatens to do so. There are, I think, two reasons for this. First up is the screenplay - a frustratingly choppy affair that zips through history like current down a power-line, never pausing long enough to let us connect with the characters or grasp the mighty import of all they're trying to achieve. At under two hours this feels like a mini-series' worth of story crammed into a format that leaves you floundering to keep up. That problem is compounded by Gomez-Rejon's direction, possibly a hang-over from the work he's put into successive seasons of American Horror Story. What works in a stylised genre TV-show is a irritation here. Every shot is fisheye-lensed, Dutch-tilting or overhead swirl - artsy showing off that's impressive in itself, but ultimately distracting from a story that's travelling at breakneck pace already. It made me a bit nauseous at points, and even more detached from the story unfolding on-screen.

 

For a reviewer the mark of a good film is how fully you forget you're there to review it. The Current War had so many great ingrediants, starting with an epoch-changing subject and fascinating historical characters - men fired up with grand ideas, who helped to forge the modern world - that I should have been enthralled. The fact that I spent much of the running-time pinning down why I wasn't enjoying it more, suggests how far it felt flat. For all its thematic energy and star-power, this film never shocked me into awe and wonder like it should have done. The voltage was certainly high... but I'm afraid my interest blew a fuse.

Gut Reaction: Not boredom, it wasn't that. Just annoyance that something so potentially great didn't even achieve really good.

Memorable Moment: A very scary electrical invention.

Ed's Verdict: 6/10. Some impressive individual parts earn those points, but the sum of them doesn't add to anything more. The Current War is ambitious, but ultimately botched.

Film Review - The Lion King (PG)

Life's not fair - is it, my little friend?

Disney's computer-animated remake of The Lion King has been on release for six days, to polarised opinion. The more you love the original, it seems, the more likely you are to find fault with this new version. For all its technical marvels - and they're unarguably marvellous - it lacks sufficient originality to provide it with any genuine merit, so say the detractors. Me, I've only ever seen the 1994 classic on one occasion, so perhaps I'm viewing it through less jaded eyes. At any rate I found the experience of watching it delightful, if initially rather bizarre.

There are certainly no narrative surprises for anyone acquainted with adventurous cub Simba, his father the noble king Mufasa and his envious uncle Scar. The initial set-up is reminiscent of Hamlet as many have pointed out, but in truth it's not that Hamlet-y once you get past the initial murder and usurping of the leonine throne. Little Simba never goes mad, he gets along with the friends with whom he teams up on being banished from the kingdom (they teach him a 'problem-free philosophy' that might have served the Prince of Denmark well) and he takes a long time to discover that he's not personally responsible for his father's tragic demise. But all the original plot beats - Shakespearian or otherwise - are present and correct, with none of the elaborations that we got earlier this year in the new Dumbo and Aladdin. Pick any iconic moment from the traditionally animated version - like the presentation of Simba, the buffalo stampede or the Hakuna Matata moonlight strut - and it's reproduced in photo-realistic form.

What's the point, then? many have asked. Well, so that a new generation of children could discover a wonderful story with nothing essential having been altered, was the response of director Jon Favreau (whose 2016 live-action Jungle Book was such a hit). And there you have it - The Lion King 2019 is the straightest of retellings, and can be taken or rejected on those terms. It's beautiful enough to make audiences gasp, that's for sure. The African savanna is digitally recreated to awe-inspiring effect and the cast of creatures - mammal, bird and insect - are brought to life in detail so minute it's remarkable. The tiger ingeniously conjured up in 2012's Life of Pi, it transpires, was just the beginning of what computer animation could achieve when recreating the natural realm.

That level of achievement alone makes the film worth watching, but it also threatened to be my personal stumbling block. Simba and his fellow-creatures are such faithful representations of living creatures in both appearance and behaviour that it's frankly bizarre when they start to speak, let alone burst into song. All the usual anthropomorphic Disney quirks are replaced with sheer naturalism - refreshingly so - until, that is, these very real lions, warthogs and meerkats start cutting loose with Tim Rice lyrics. It's an imaginative leap you either make or you don't within the first twenty minutes. If you succeed, then everything becomes fun and pure visual rapture.

As for those responsible for all the vocal emoting and singing, they're a diverse bunch of actors whose quality serves as a unifying factor. No one is coasting here. It's a fine thing to hear James Earl Jones' resonant tones once more as Mufasa, while Seth Rogan and Billy Eichner bring zestful (and frequently very funny) improvisation to the Timon/Pumbaa double-act. And while there's richness and warmth in many of the lion performances, for me it was Chiwetel Ejiofor who stood out voice-wise as Scar - less openly villainous than was Jeremy Irons back in the day, but more nuanced in his portrayal of insidious evil. By the way if anyone tells you that the 'real' animals on screen can't emote enough to match the fear, loss or adoration of the vocal acting, then maybe they don't know real animals very well. It's all there if you look.

Of course having lavished all that praise, it's totally legitimate to ask whether Disney shouldn't be focusing on wholly new creations, rather than on rehashing their legacy highlights. And I understand why some critics are casting a skeptical eye over the enterprise, comparing it to Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot homage to the original Psycho and similarly asking 'Why???' In this case the answer is valid - to retell a great story in a dazzling new form, where the tech exists to forge a virtual African landscape and then to direct an entire movie within in. Taken on its own terms 2019's Lion King will thrill youngsters and provide grown-ups with a warm glow - but only if they're willing to ditch their cynicism going in. 

Nants igonyama bagithi Baba, everyone. It means 'A lion is coming, father'. I checked.

Gut Reaction: A bit of a raised eyebrow at the actual singing critters - until the sheer visual glory of it all swept me away and made me okay with it all. The Timon/Pumbaa bits made me laugh a lot too.

Memorable Moment: Hakuna Matata 2019 makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. Not for originality, but for a lovely tale reproduced as sheer cinematic beauty. That said, time for Disney to find some new stories.

Film Review - The Dead Don't Die (15)

This is definitely going to end badly.

The Dead Don't Die is the new film from American auteur Jim Jarmusch and bears immediate comparison with Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead. Both are inspired by George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and its sequels, both are broadly comic and both treat the zombie concept as allegory for various social ills. But while Jarmusch's tale has its morbid pleasures, its chances of achieving the same adored cult status as Shaun strike me as an undead kind of slim.

Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and Officer Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) police the quiet mid-American town of Centerville, where the height of crime appears to be the theft of Farmer Frank Miller's chickens by local recluse Hermit Bob. But stories of the Earth having been knocked off its axis due to fracking activity are all over the news and the sun is going down way too late. There are more serious consequences too when darkness does fall - something very nasty is crawling from the local graveyard and the good townspeople are about to be besieged by undead horror. Cliff and Ronnie, along with fellow officer Mindy Morrison (Chloe Sevigny), have a hellish day ahead, but perhaps they'll have some support from the town's enigmatic new funeral director - Tilda Swinton as the kitana sword-wielding Zelda Winston. (Spot the anagram?)

Anyone expecting traditional levels of zombie-related mayhem here might do well to check out the director's back catalogue. Jarmusch is known for talk-heavy, leisurely paced screenplays, that eschew action for character development. While The Dead Don't Die has moments of vivid flesh-eating gore and a climactic kill-count as high as most movies in the genre, its heart lies elsewhere - in lengthy scenes laced with deadpan humour (no pun intended) and satire that's even more in your face than that of Romero's classic trilogy. Here Jarmusch takes the 'zombies as the ultimate comsumers' idea from 1978's Dawn of the Dead a step further, with the entire zombie hoard representing the ravishment of the Earth by Middle American shoppers. Meanwhile Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) provides a wry and growly commentary on the whole sorry mess, as the one character who has opted out of the modern consumer malaise.

It's an approach that provides intermittent fun. Parts of this film are genuinely hilarious - the Murray and Driver double-act is consistently poker-faced and droll, Danny Glover strikes up an endearing partnership with comic-book store clerk Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and Steve Buscemi produces a few real guffaws as the bigoted Farmer Frank. Overall, however, it's too concerned with being offbeat and odd to mesh effectively with the subject-matter. The lack of momentum becomes frustrating and not all the cast embrace Jarmusch's brand of weirdness with equal success. Also the screenplay's indulgence in self-referential humour and third-wall breaking (constant references to the movie's specially-commissioned theme song and its writer are only the start of it) amuse at first, before starting to irritate.

Don't get me wrong - I laughed more frequently and more heartily at this quirky indy take on the zombie apocalypse than at most mainstream comedies. It's just that the writer-director seems to be approaching the subject-matter as a diverson rather than anything more weighty. Even the satire is deliberately spread on thick, so you can't really take it seriously. The Dead Don't Die is worth your time, but ultimately when it comes to z-horror, Shaun's slacker Brit-comedy proved a much more natural fit.

Gut Reaction: Big laughs and awkwardness. A strange combination for a very strange film.

Memorable Moment: A famililar zombie face at the diner...

Ed's Verdict: 6/10. Jarmusch's love for Romero is clear and his zom-com has his moments. But it's not off-centre genre classic for which I'd hoped.

Film Review - Midsommar (18)

It's fine. It's Sweden.

Midsommar is the second feature by writer/director Ari Aster and an exercise in sustained ambient dread. His feature debut, Hereditary, was the most starkly divisive film of 2018 - a masterpiece of cerebral horror to some, while others found it laughable, literally so. My experience was of two thirds' creep-inducing domestic nightmare, followed by a final act that drowned all the painstakingly-crafted familial psychodrama in hysteria and supernatural lunacy. It simply didn't stick the landing - for me. Horror is deeply subjective after all, plus maybe Hereditary will satisfy more fully on a second viewing. As for Midsommar, it worked like a shuddering charm first time around.

Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor play Dani and Christian, a young couple in a foundering relationship, who travel to a Swedish commune, Harga, in order to experience the obscure folk festival that takes place there. For Christian and his college friends it's a fascinating anthropological adventure, for Dani an opportunity to flee the family tragedy that has recently overwhelmed her. But while the setting is idyllic and the locals welcoming, there is more lurking behind the community's pagan rituals than the visitors could ever imagine. The festivities within this unorthodox community become steadily more disconcerting, the sense of foreboding more acute.

I was on edge going in to Midsommar for two reasons. Firstly whatever the contention surrounding Hereditary, it demonstrated the uncompromising approach taken by Aster in both narrative and visual terms. I mean, this guy is willing to bring his audience some seriously uncomfortable places. Secondly the new film's publicity invited comparisons with The Wicker Man - not the oft-ridiculed remake with Nicholas Cage, but 1973's original, the ending of which scared me witless when I watched it as a teen. Small wonder I was pre-spooked.

While there's a lot of Wicker Man going on here, however, Midsommar starts off far from the cultic, portraying a whole different kind of horror in its harrowing domestic prologue. By the time Dani, Christian and friends arrive in Sweden the dysfunction in their characters - both personal and inter-relational - runs deep. And then surreal Nordic beauty takes over. All the shocking events that play out do so under sunlight so bright it threatens to bleach the movie's frames. Aster's striking achievement is to conjure menace from the broad daylight and flower-garlanded gorgeousness of a Swedish folk idyll, as effectively as if it were night. You'll honestly wish the sun would set.

The whole Harga culture is meticulously constructed - its costumes, architecture and vivid runic artwork reminiscent of existing traditions, yet with its own unique and vaguely unsettling flavour. The dance and music has genuine artistry to it - everything is exuberant, too exuberant. It's captivating and disturbing, like one of the hallucinogenic interludes taken by the characters, capable of switching to a very bad trip on any given instant. Aster's camera captures all to aerial or wide-angled perfection, hinting at what festers beneath the pristine, colour-corrected surface. Meanwhile Bobby Krilk's music shifts between shimmering orchestral beauty and atonal freakiness in a contender for most genius film score of the year.

All of this serves as a counterpoint to Pugh's astonishing performance as Dani, a portrayal of grief even more visceral that Toni Collette's in Hereditary. It's gut-wrenching stuff - pain way beyond words, from the girl who brought us the feel-good story of Paige in Fighting With My Family a few months back. The character's dark odyssey is truly mesmerising to witness. Reynor, so likeable in Sing Street, will provoke more ambivalent feelings as boyfriend Christian, though you'll maybe empathise with the sticky relationship territory in which he finds himself. And Will Poulter (Detroit), the obnoxious call-it-like-you-see-it member of the group, is a welcome source of dry humour.

 

There's a lot of humour in Midsommar, some of it excruciating, but all of it necessary to help you cope with the rising tide of apprehension. Not that the film is a conventional horror in any sense. Despite moments of pure shock, there's something much more insidious going on here. You suspect you know what's on the way, but have no idea how you'll get there, nor exactly how you'll feel once you arrive. This story unnerves, but it's also seductive - treacherously so. And it's not aimed at anyone who doesn't enjoy marinading in anxiety for over two hours, in a place where the prettiness can't distract from the sense that something is very wrong indeed. 

I do enjoy that feeling, apparently, but your experience might well be different. Think Scandi noir is unsettling? Welcome to Scandi blanc.

Gut Reaction: Harrowed, amused, moved, shocked, intrigued, dazzled, disturbed, freaked and appalled. Not necessarily in that or any coherent order. 

Memorable Moment: Look up. Keep looking up. It's not really happening, right? 

Ed's Verdict: 9/10. Integrating themes of toxic relationships and grief into its horror, Aster's follow-up feature is an unflinching day-mare, which leads somewhere completely expected, yet weirdly not. It's messed up like Hereditary, only this time I unreservedly love it.

Film Review - Spider-Man: Far From Home (12A)

You are just a scared little kid in a sweatsuit.  

(This review includes spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.) 

A grand total of eight standalone Spider-Man films - that's including last year's animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - have swung across our cinema screens this still-young century. It's a testament to multiple individuals, starting with Spidey's creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, that the web-slinger remains as fresh and entertaining as in his movie debut seventeen years ago. We love this high-school superhero's teen exuberance, never more so than right here in Spider-Man: Far From Home.

The new movie begins with its youthful characters coming to terms with the world post-'blip', their word for the chaos perpetrated by arch-villain Thanos in Endgame. Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is still feeling the loss of his mentor Tony Stark, and so embraces a school trip to Europe, intent on leaving spider-suit and alter-ego behind, while romantically pursuing classmate MJ. But ex-boss of SHIELD Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson of course) is pursuing him, so that the teenager might help counter new global threats. And the most imminent of these is a bevy of dimension-hopping elemental entities, being taken on single-handedly by caped newcomer 'Mysterio' (an impressively suited-and-booted Jake Gyllenhall). Peter's vacation, to quote best friend Ned, has been 'hi-jacked', and he must decide whether or not to shoulder the full weight of the super-hero burden.

Like it's predecessor Spider-Man: Homecoming, Far From Home must strike a fine balance between integrating itself into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole and telling its own tale. On the one hand it helps to know what the 'blip' stuff is all about and why the protagonist is so down in the mouth over Tony Stark (Ironman's checkered legacy looms over the whole story). On the other, the film takes off as a fast-paced and frequently hilarious high-school comedy in its own right, enhanced this time around by vividly coloured European locations. It's got a revitalised and joyous comic-book feed in contrast to the sombre stylings of Endgame, never more so than when Peter is tangling with elemental adversaries alongside his new pal Mysterio. And that's only the movie's first half, before a series of rug-pulling plot developments steer it into darker territory that make unexpectedly heavy demands on our hero.

For all its teen-based jokery and romantic complications, Far From Home has surprising dramatic depth. Fans of the Sam Raimi films have seen Tobey Maguire's Spidey go through all this 'power/responsibility' angst already, but here it's in the context of the turbulent post-Thanos world and has a consequent sense of - well - consequence. It's a challenge to which Holland rises. He's better than ever as Peter, whether zipping around Venice and Prague in hero-mode, fumbling his efforts at romance or facing up to loss and self-doubt as circumstances turn critical. Spider-Man has never been more fully human than this.

There's sterling support too from all sides. Zendaya (The Greatest Showman) comes into her own as a self-protecting emo version of MJ, while the other 'teens' and their incompetent teachers dependably raise smiles throughout. (There's a particularly funny subplot involving Jacob Batalon's lovable Ned.) Meanwhile Ironman fans will love how the relationship between Peter and Stark employee Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) is developed, supplying nicely judged moments of humour and sadness. And Jake brings the Gyllenhall magic like you'd expect, as the enigmatic and magnificently attired Mysterio.

Intricately constructed by the same directorial/writing team as Homecoming, Far From Home balances comic-book thrills and weightier moments with expertise, while switching up gears towards a suitably explosive conclusion. (If it does go a bit too CGI-mayhem at the end, the character drama sufficiently compensates.) Marvel fans have been expecting epic developments in this movie and they get them, though possibly not how they expected. Hang around for a end-credits double-whammy to knock your socks clean off. This movie isn't over till it's over, and Spidey's world - to say nothing of the MCU - might never be the same again.

Gut Reaction: Grins, laugh-out-louds, cheers and gasps - all that a Spider-Man movie should provide and lots of it. 

Memorable Moment: There were any number of those during the feature, but it has to be the first of the end-credits scenes. Cheer-inducing, then jaw-dropping. Nothing short of sensational.

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. A fun-packed ride for the casual viewer, with chewy delights for the dedicated MCU fan. In a perfect world all summer blockbusters would be this good.

Film Review - Yesterday (12A)

Sometimes it feels like someone else has written all the songs.

Some movie pitches just sound like gold. Yesterday taps into a notion many of us have considered - how the world would have differed without this or that cultural phenomenon. What if there'd been no Mozart, or Shakespeare, or (heaven forbid the thought) Doctor Who? How impoverished would we all have been? Danny Boyle's new film puts a Beatles-shaped hole in history and asks an unlikely hero to fill it. The results, while not the pure eighteen-carat I might have hoped, are shiny enough to light up a darkened cinema space this summer movie season. Here comes a considerable amount of sun.

Himesh Patel is Jack Malik, an aspiring singer-songwriter whose career is resolutely failing to launch, despite the encouragements of his manager/best friend Ellie (Lily James). Some bizarre cosmic fluctuation causes all the lights on Earth to blink off and on, during which time Jack sustains a traffic-related head injury. When he wakes, he is the only person who remembers The Beatles or any of their music. The band, it seems, has been erased from all of history, aside from Jack's mind. So when he begins to sing and play their songs, it opens up the possibility of that elusive music career - just so long as his conscience can cope with passing off John, Paul, George and Ringo's creativity as his own. 

Yesterday is almost destined to be divisive. Writer Richard Curtis is the doyen of the high-concept British rom-com, while director Boyle is chiefly known for the edgily propulsive feel he brings to challenging screenplays. Fans of the Trainspotting films, or even Slumdog Millionaire (which has a lot more grit than you may remember) may simply not be on board with Curtis' patented brand of romantic optimism. On the other hand those who found Love Actually a bit too sentimental may well appreciate the tempering of the writer's more sugary inclinations by some of Boyle's bite.

There's much that this duo's love-letter to the Fab Four gets right, not least the fun it has with that delicious central premise. Jack is burdened with a mission to re-introduce The Beatles to the world, while simultaneously indulging in an opportunism that will grant him the success he lacked. His first faltering steps with tunes he already knows to be great are mined productively for laughs, as is his wrestling with half-remembered lyrics. There are great moments too as the Beatles' songs clash with a 21st century music industry that in some cases doesn't know what to do with them. (Kate McKinnon has fun here as a grotesquely avaricious music executive.)

That the classic tunes work so well is due in no small part to Patel (Tamwar Masood in BBC soap Eastenders), who reinterprets them with a freshness and passion enhanced by their extraordinary context. Boyle meanwhile emphasises the growing sense of guilt and lostness the musician feels, as success and Malik-mania begin to escalate. James radiates her trademark earnestness as lovelorn Ellie (she makes everything better, Mamma Mia 2 included, just  by showing up), while Ed Sheeran proves willing to be the butt of the film's jokes as an understated version of himself. Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal are good comic value as Jack's genially clueless parents and Joel Fry nimbly steals a clutch of scenes as shambling roadie-pal Rocky, even if he the character is a clear rip-off of Notting Hill's Spike.

That ripping off of past Curtis movies is perhaps Yesterday's biggest issue. Jack and Ellie's unrequited love-plot is written in a way that can distract from the central vanished-Beatles idea, particularly in the final act. It's played with admirable conviction by the leads, but still has a tendency to drag things back into overly familiar Four Weddings and a Funeral territory, rather than dovetail unobtrusively into the story as a whole.

Thankfully the story sticks to its guns re its core premise, even if it does embrace classic Curtis rom-com tropes towards the end. What we're really interested in is Jack's whole non-existent Beatles dilemma and on that front the film follows through, avoiding any narrative cop-outs and refusing, Groundhog Day-style, to explain the weird glitch in reality. Admittedly the underlying notion is fundamentally daft and begs all kinds of knock-on time travel-ly issues that the film barely addresses, but brush all that aside. It's a neat conceit with which both writer and director have a lot of fun, more than enough to make the enterprise worthwhile. Plus it's great to hear all those magnificent songs reworked. In the circumstances what else could Jack have done?

Seriously, imagine there's no Beatles...

Gut Reaction: A pretty high laughter-to-joke percentage rate, while the music simply made me happy. One iconic song intro had we properly tearing up.

Memorable Moment: Jack endeavours to 'Let It Be'. 

Ed's Verdict: 7/10. The resorting to romantic cliche is too obvious, but as an exploration of Jack in a Beatle-less world this hits all the right Mersey beats.