Sunday 10 May 2020

Feature - Ed's Lockdown Movie Double-Bills Part 2

It'll be an adventure. Janet Armstrong - First Man
You see that's what you can do with your socially isolated evenings, whether you're doing this solo, with a friend or partner or trying to keep sane as an entire family. Launch yourself into adventure, if only for a few brief hours of lockdown-busting escapism. In my first Movie Double Bills feature I suggested various filmic matches that might transport you somewhere a bit thematic (rather than purely random). Well maybe you've watched your way through all of those, or picked out the ideas that worked for you, in which case here are a few more. You know, to see you through... however long. Ready? Three - two - one - we have lift-off. 

1. The Moon Landing Double-Bill
Where better to start than with last year's stunning documentary that marked the 50-year anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, and matching it with Damien Chazelle's beautiful, moving Neil Armstrong drama First Man? If you didn't catch Apollo 11 at your local IMAX cinema (I didn't and I still regret it), it's available on Netflix in all its restored-footage glory. Everything including the take-off is rendered so sharply that it looks like the rocket is taking off in 2019 rather than 1969. With both Johnny Carson and one President Richard Nixon putting in cameos on the ground, it serves as a fascinating and inspiring historical document. Meanwhile First Man contemplates the inner-space of human experience in its Armstrong portrait, even as he sets his sights on the more outer kind. I found it gorgeous and contemplative, and now in the documentary it has its perfect companion piece. Two films about an astonishing adventure, even if the adventurers in question were dealing with social isolation issues of their own.

2. The Laika Double-Bill
Sorry - who? Here in the UK Aardman Studios are lauded (rightfully so) for their ingenious and hugely funny stop-motion features and shorts. Laika, based in Portland, Oregon, are another excellent stop-motion production company, best known for 2009's Neil Gaiman adaptation Coraline and 2014's The Boxtrolls. For this double-bill, however, I'm opting for two of their more recent projects. Kubo and the Two Strings is a magical action-adventure set in Japan, involving a quest with a sword-wielding snow monkey and a giant anthropomorphised beetle. Meanwhile Missing Link is a tale of Victorian era exploration, in which the Hugh Jackman-voiced Sir Lionel Frost meets your actual Sasquatch aka Bigfoot aka Mister Link and helps him search for his snowbound relatives in the legendary Shangri La. Both films are based on original pieces of writing. Both are crammed with boundless visual invention (the stop-motion process blended with CGI to create a planet's worth of eye-ravishing locations). Both combine clever humour and exhilarating action to create marvellous family entertainment. Laika is way too much of a secret, so now is the perfect time to discover them.

3. Ye Olde Worlde Magician Double-Bill
Here's a movie combo I've had up my sleeve for a while. (Not just a rubbish pun, it occurred to me years ago what a splendid twosome these films would make.) The Illusionist stars Edward Norton as a one-time humble village lad whose aptitude for stage magic has transformed him into the legendary Eisenheim. It also provides him the opportunity to woo his childhood sweetheart, who's on the verge of being married off to the villainous Crown Prince Leopold. Spectacular conjuring tangles both with a romance that bridges the class divide and with dark political machinations. It's quite the neat trick and one saving up a great final reveal (or prestige in the vernacular). Speaking of which, Christopher Nolan's much neglected The Prestige exhibits even more sleight of hand. Boasting twice the magicians in Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, an escalating rivalry full of potentially deadly sabotage, David Bowie as real-life scientific conjurer Nikola Tesla and Nolan playing all his usual time structure games, it's up there creatively with the director's best. If anything it's an even deeper dive into the arcane history of stage magic than The Illusionist, so dip your toe in the shallows with Ed Norton and then take the plunge (specifically into a large and scary escapology tank) with Christian and Hugh. Abra-flipping-cadabra.

4. The Locked Down Double-Bill
How about spending some time with characters who might empathise with the whole stuck-indoors thing, taking in a couple of stone cold classics as you do it? 12 Angry Men (I've already written about it here) is an ensemble drama tour de force to beat them all and an exercise in emotional claustrophobia. True these murder-trial jurors only have to spend a single day in isolation, but with the temperature rising in more ways than one, it falls to Henry Fonda (Juror 8) to cool everyone down and make them rethink their knee-jerk 'guilty' verdict. In terms of storytelling power it scores the full 12 out of 12. Socially distanced on a longer-term basis is Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window (one of my interchangeable Hitchcock top two). With his leg in a plaster cast, photographer L.B. Jeffreys fills the time with the use of telescopic lens and a less than healthy interest in his neighbours opposite. But this voyeuristic pursuit turns his lockdown into an obsessive exercise in amateur detective work, with creepy neighbour Raymond Burr as a potential killer. Like 12 Angry Men it virtually all takes place in one room and is nothing short of sensational. Both films creep up slowly. You won't recall the point at which they seize you with both fists, just that they did it and never let go.

5. The Animated Anderson Double-Bill
You could argue that Wes Anderson, of The Grand Budapest Hotel fame, was born to create stop-motion animation. His 'real people' films are crafted with similar attention to detail - it's all about the design and the colour palettes and the exquisite framing. Not forgetting that arch humour. His first foray into the stop-motion world was an adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox - a film so witty and cunning that it found its natural audience in established Anderson fans rather than the children at whom the marketing was aimed. That's not to say kids won't enjoy the brush-tailed protagonist's heroic efforts to stave off a band of evil developers from destroying his family den. But with Clooney and Streep voicing the Mr. and Mrs., with all of Wes's visual and verbal comedy cranked up to a poker-faced ten, there's arguably more here for the grown-ups. The same could be said for 2018's Isle of Dogs, one of my favourite films of that year and an even more abundant source of delights than its foxy companion piece. Set on a toxic archipelago off the coast of Japan, it's nonetheless an uplifting and frequently hilarious canine escapade with eye-goggling attention to detail. Basically - if you love dogs, you'll love Isle of Dogs. And if you love Wes Anderson, or quality hand-made animation (or both), you'll love this pair of films to pieces.

6. The 'Shine' Double-Bill
For fans of classic horror or of Stephen King, or for those who possess even a passing interest in the art of book-to-film adaptation, this is a must-see duo. Stanley Kubrick's 1980 take of The Shining is undeniably a piece of cinematic art, but it departs significantly from the book on which it's based. Last year's Doctor Sleep, written and directed by serial SK-adapter Mike Flanagan, holds a much closer course to its source material - King's Shining sequel no less - but manages to tie itself into Kubrick's movie before the end. Hence it's both a commendably faithful version of the novel and a successor to a much-lauded film. That alone is a commendable achievement. Watch them together and you get two very different pieces of cinema - one a multi-layered arthouse chiller and the other a significantly warmer (but still intermittently disturbing) character piece - that still combine to tell one coherent cross-generational story. The casting of Jack Nicholson and Ewan McGregor as the respective protagonists sums up the difference between the films perfectly. (Now that I think of it, The Shining contains the lockdown theme in great snow-drifting spades. An additional if slightly twisted reason to watch it.)

7. The Frozen Double-Bill
Wait - you've already done that one? How many times? Seriously??? In that case I'll let it go.

Happy Double-Billing. Stay safe - this craziness will pass and may we all watch some great films to help it do so.