Review - Girls Trip (15)

Today is the last day that we will ever be this young.

Girls Trip does what it suggests on the poster (see directly above). The degree you enjoy it will, I'm guessing, be directly proportional to how much you want to cut loose with four BBFs on a alcohol and estrogen-fuelled festival weekend. I didn't want to, particularly, but tried to be open to the experience. Well you've got to keep an open mind, right?

The trip of the title involves four professional women, headed up by self-help writer Ryan (Regina Pierce), who travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence festival. It's a celebration of African-American music and culture inspired by the magazine of that title, and it provides a backdrop for Hangover-style antics, with the girls possibly surpassing the boys' bad behaviour in that movie. Ryan and gorgeous husband are on the verge of a TV contract with a live launch event at the festival, so it seems the perfect opportunity for her to reconnect with her college friends - collectively known as 'The Flossy Posse', in a protracted weekend of shameless shenanigans. 

Accompanying her are internet gossip queen Sasha (Queen Latifah), party-girl turned control-freak-mom Lisa (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and sex-obsessive-with-no-filter Dina (Tiffany Haddish). Of course the smiles and bravado of the girls belie tensions and personal crises, all of which surface during the trip to explosive effect, both dramatic and comic. And at one point the explosion is bodily and literal, in a scene surely inspired by Bridesmaids. Ryan's life it turns out (like we hadn't already guessed), is rather less perfect than it appears, and it will take her girlfriends to help her deal with the fallout.

Okay, stuff I liked in Girls Trip ... New Orleans, for starters. The film makes wonderful use of the city and the festival, capturing the vibrancy of both, and genuinely making me want to visit there. In addition to this the rapport between the four women is completely authentic, capturing the vibe of long-time friends reunited and cutting loose from work and responsibility. Pinkett-Smith is particularly endearing, as the staid suburban mother reconnecting with her younger fun self. Meanwhile Haddish is a kind of party rocket-fuel, with her lewd monologue-ing and - ehh - fruit-based demonstrations. Her motor-mouth shtick is almost too much at times.

Stuff I didn't... The story veers jarringly between soapy drama full of rather trite lessons-in-life and broad sex-comedy. The former aspect is heightened by an original score that's so syrupy it set my teeth on edge. Meanwhile much of the raunchy humour is primarily geared to be outrageous - not unlike Sasha Baron Cohen's most recent effort Grimsby - with the result that it misses the actual funny-mark. Crude can be funny, but they're not automatically the same thing! (I should add that nothing is so subjective as humour, and much of the rest of the cinema audience, my film-going companion included, clearly disagreed with me on this point. I'm truly glad they had more fun than I did.) 

Basically the entire experience struck me like an extended episode of Loose Women, if the producer had been shut out of the studio and all the panelists had attempted to sort each other's lives out, while getting speedily wrecked on tequila. I mean that less as a criticism and more as a genuine attempt to capture the spirit of the film, because trust me that is what you get.

In the end films about friendship, and how it stabilizes life in a way that relationships often fail to, are to be welcomed, whether the protagonists are male or female. It's also great to see these four actresses power the film along, with such euphoria. And if it didn't make me laugh nearly as much as the earlier-mentioned Bridesmaids did, that's probably just a matter of personal taste. 

But seriously, tone down the shmaltz. Please! Maybe I'm not within the film's demographic - but even so, there's never ever an excuse for that.

Ed's Verdict: Enjoyed the energy and embraced the overall sentiment, but seriously - don't make me watch it again. 

Feature - Another Blockbuster Summer Part 2 (The Curse of the Blockbuster)

I'll have a P please, Bob.

Jaws. E.T. Alien. Marvel's Avengers. Yes - I've been enjoying summer blockbuster films for most of my life. Hell, I even loved Independence Day. During the summer of '96 I was in a pretty dark place and that big stupid noisy movie lifted my spirits so much that I returned twice to the Iveagh Cinema, Banbridge, to see it again (even though the ending is balls). 

So let me say at the start - I have nothing against the blockbuster phenomenon per se. These films have their place and let's face it, they'll be with us as long as cinema exists. But I think movie-making as an art-form has paid a hefty price to accommodate big-budget crowd-pleasers. Let me try to explain.

Compare two movie-making decades - the '70s and '80s and the films that defined them. 

The '70s gave us One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, All the President's Men, Taxi Driver and the first two Godfather installments. It was a time of cinema for grown-ups (you could argue grown-up men, but that's a whole other issue) and screens were taken up by films bristling with difficult political and psychological ideas. Mainstream cinema was edgy and confrontational, and even genre films had bite. The French Connection was as grimy and morally knotted a cop movie as has ever been made and The Exorcist is as much a complex character piece as a supernatural horror.

Fast-forward to the '80s (the decade in which fast-forwarding became a popular term). Messrs Spielberg and Lucas had already reset the course in the latter part of the '70s with the New Jersey shark attack and the Skywalker crew respectively, and that's how it continued. Back to the Future, Beverly Hills Cop, Die Hard - big glossy genre entertainments - were the order of the decade. They were entertaining for sure, but they marginalized the gritty cerebral films that had headlined ten years before. 

Cinema-going demographics altered hugely over that period. Movies, in America at least (and the US is the dominant cultural force in global cinema), were now being made with a family/teen audience primarily in mind. The advent of the John Hughes high school movie (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, etc) is evidence enough of that. Yes - grown-up, dramatically chewy films could still be found if you looked for them, but they were no longer the driving force in mainstream cinema. It's a phenomenon that's stayed true to this day. Despite a resurgence in the late '90s of thinky cinema, year-round blockbusters are claiming most of the box-office and taking up most of the screens in both the US and UK.

It's a matter of pure economics. The movie industry is just that, an industry, primarily based on commerce, however many genuine artists are working within it. A Star Wars or Harry Potter title can make insane amounts of money for a major studio, with the result that such films have become staples rather than say twice-yearly events. The knock-on effect is that fewer films with a mid-range budget and more mature content make it into production. In 2017 it's all about those big tent-pole movies, whose success can swell a studio's profits like little else. 

Another gloomy truth is that blockbusters have become steadily less innovative in their own right. Films costing upwards of $100 million to produce let alone market are clearly massive investments for studios, so as far as is possible risk-taking is avoided. Result - the predominance of ever-extending franchises, remakes and adaptations of popular fiction, in other words films that hopefully have a locked-in audience before they're even released. Some of these are quality no doubt, but they leave little room for screenplays that are original in every sense. And that only adds insult to the injury of clever, challenging movies being displaced on our screens, so that many cinema-goers have no opportunity to see them.

It's a sad, sad situation (as Elton John once said about something completely unrelated), and it's not likely to change much anytime soon. Great grown-up cinema is out there if you look hard enough, and I'll endeavour to keep covering it along with the fun, pulpy blockbusters.

For lovers of quality adult drama and no variety at their local multiplex, salvation lies elsewhere. Television. It's something that would have seemed hugely unlikely even 20 years ago, and it's deserving of a blog entry all its own. 

Film Review - War for the Planet of the Apes (12A)

Apes together strong!

The new Planet of the Apes trilogy has been one of the most welcome blockbuster surprises of recent years. When Rise of came out, I was asking 'Why?', but the film stomped on my question with its intelligent storytelling and sheer craft. Then Dawn of broadened the canvas and upped the stakes to magnificent effect. As often with film trilogies the question then became 'Will the final part (War for) let the whole thing down?' 

The answer, happily, is no. In fact it cements the trilogy's stature. Breathe out and relax.

War for the Planet of the Apes completes the story of noble ape Caesar and his efforts to establish a safe haven for his band of newly evolved primates. The remnants of humanity are now reeling from their self-inflicted wounds and lashing out militarily at ape-kind. Woody Harrelson plays an army Colonel on a very personal mission to deal with what he perceives as the ape threat. The consequences of his actions set Caesar on an uncharacteristically vengeful quest, one which threatens to put everything for which the apes have struggled at risk. The tale that unfolds is powerful and dark, full of resonances with the modern era and recent history, and with a strong nod to Apocalypse Now.

War is not the full-on ape-versus-human combat story you might expect. While there are superbly realised action sequences, they by no means dominate what is ultimately a moving (if not always very subtle) character piece. The genius of this trilogy is to make the ape leader our protagonist, so that our sympathies rest squarely with Caesar and his extended primate family. Yes the movies have a scattering of likeable human characters and not all the apes are paragons of nobility, but as a trio these films serve to critique the darker aspects of human behaviour. To act with cruelty as an ape, as Caesar's orangutan mentor Maurice might point out, is to mirror humanity at its worst.

As ever it's the story's stunning visuals that really sell it. Each of these films tops the previous in spectacle, but it's the sheer photo-realism of the ape community that impresses most. Actor is rendered into ape via the ever more precise art of motion capture, the bodily and facial performances reproduced in formidable detail. Just look at Andy Serkis (very possibly my all-time acting hero) as Caesar. He's played this character from baby to mature ape over three films and in War every flicker of conflicting emotion plays out in his eyes as surely as if it were a non-animated human on camera. 

There's excellent work too from Karin Konoval as the empathetic Maurice and Steve Zahn as a wide-eyed and lovably funny chimp called Bad Ape. (And well done also to little Amiah Miller, the human child in one very touching subplot.) This is Serkis' show, however, and it's a testament to both him and the animators that Caesar is the most 'human' character in the series.

Congratulations are due then to director Matt Reeves and a superb production team for a gloriously realised final chapter in the modern Apes saga. It has the scope of a David Lean epic and in its central performance the weight of a Shakespearean tragedy. They brought it home - not necessarily as I'd expected, but in a way that's almost perfect.

Ed's Verdict: They could have dropped the ball on this one, but instead - touchdown! War is full of terrible beauty and stands as a fitting end to a magnificent trilogy.

Film Review - Dunkirk (12A)

You can practically see it from here... Home.

Dunkirk - the name is synonymous here in the UK with communal spirit in the face of terrible adversity. A whole generation still vividly recalls the events of May-June 1940, when over 300,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated from the beach of the French coastal resort, largely by civilian vessels enlisted in Operation Dynamo. It was a watershed historical event, dealt with in film before (see my April review of Their Finest for a recent example), but never so viscerally as in Christopher Nolan's new feature. 

Nolan has described his own movie as 'not a war film', but rather 'a survival story' and 'suspense film'. It's fair comment. Hemmed in by approaching German tanks and threatened by a skyfull of Messerschmitt bombers, the young soldiers are done with warring for now. Their offensive into mainland Europe has failed and all they can do is await rescue, with no assurance that it will ever come. The enemy is faceless throughout, coming only in the form of a torpedo, sniper bullet or aerial bombardment.

Dunkirk charts three lads' week-long struggle to survive on the beaches. Their travails are inter-cut with the day-long voyage across the English Channel by one of the many tiny rescue boats, and with an hour-long dogfight between British and German pilots - an intricate triple time-structure in a film all about time running out. It's a sustained exercise in tension, building steadily to the point at which events on land, sea and air converge. By the time they do, you'll have been both terrified and enthralled.

Nolan is one of the most distinctive voices in modern cinema and all his trademark film-making preferences are brought to bear here. Dunkirk is shot with IMAX cameras, producing panoramic vistas of sky, sea and beaches. Computer-generated images are rejected at every turn in favour of real warships and the genuine piloting of real period fighter planes. The soundscape is breathtaking in its own right, from the thrum of ships' engines to the dreadful overhead whine of approaching enemy aircraft, all of it backed up by Hans Zimmer's relentless ticking-clock score. 

The result is a deep sense of authenticity, as immersive a piece of cinema as your could hope to experience. You spend time - proper nail-chewing time - among these scared and desperate young men, along with those rushing to their aid. Dialogue is sparse. There's no time spent spent swapping stories about family and girlfriends and whether the boys will get to see City play again - just solidarity born of fear and ebbing hope. Or the fighter-pilots' steely-eyed concentration. Or the rescuers' determination to do a little bit of good in a continent gone stark mad. 

There are fine performances too, however shorn of speech. Kenneth Branagh and James D'Arcy get to say the most as terse, preoccupied military officers. Mark Rylance has understated dignity as the pleasure-boat captain progressing doggedly across the Channel. Previously unknown Fionn Whitehead and pop superstar Harry Styles are level on the Dunkirk sand-flats, both quietly impressive as British army Privates trying to stay alive. 

You don't get to know any of these men well and frankly there's no need. Writer/director Nolan understands that from the beginning. These characters could be any out of thousands caught up in an extraordinary event of history. It's enough that they're human - painfully so - and that the events depicted in Dunkirk really did happen.

Ed's Verdict: 9.5/10. Technically masterful, gripping throughout and profoundly affecting, Dunkirk is Nolan at the height of his powers. Film of the summer and a contender for film of the year. See it - on the biggest screen possible.

Film Review - Baby Driver (15)

One more job and I'm done.

Here's a handgun-blast of originality in the middle of the Blockbuster Summer 2017. Edgar Wright, best known for his 'Cornetto Trilogy' (including the now classic Shaun of the Dead), brings us Baby Driver. It's a labour of love, five years in gestation and now birthed onto the screen in vibrant colour with a roaring soundtrack to match. Yes it's got cars and guns and sweet rocking tunes, but it's also got a big beating heart and a central character you'll root for to the end. His name's Baby - and yes, he's the driver in question.

That's a getaway driver to be specific (played by rising star Ansel Elgort), one reluctantly in the employ of Kevin Spacey's criminal mastermind Doc. He's young and introverted, and superb at what he does, insistent that each retreat from a heist be backed by the right 'killer track' on his earphones. The reasons for this, and for how such a clean-cut youngster became embroiled in crime, are all neatly sketched by the screenplay. Baby's music is more necessity than choice. What this gives us is a film where the protagonist's personal soundtrack serves as a tight rhythmic accompaniment to most of the action, whether fast-paced or quiet. It's music as fuel, more intimately connected to that drama than anything you've experienced outside of an actual musical.

There's a girl too (well of course there is) - the UK's Lily James as a waitress called Debora, who shares Baby's passion for music, but knows nothing of his dubious profession. Baby is counting down the jobs till he has paid off his obligations to Doc, and can drive instead into a sunset with his new love - but getting out is never that easy, least of all in the movies.

If this all sounds familiar, it's good to remember that Wright, like his pal Quentin Tarantino, has built a career on retooling genre films with fresh ideas and whip-smart direction. As well as the central conceit of Baby's reliance on music, Baby Driver brings all of Wright's directorial finesse to bear on the story. Car chases and shoot-outs, as well as more intimate scenes between Baby and his girl or his foster-dad, are crafted with painstaking shot-by-shot attention that we saw in Hot Fuzz and The World's End. The action provides an adrenalising rush, while the quieter moments sustain their hold on the audience at every moment. And if the opening sequence doesn't make you smile - then I imagine you're having a pretty bad day.

A shout-out is deserved too for a clutch of excellent performances. Elgort and James provide a satisfying emotional centre for the film, and they're backed up with sheer class by the rest of the criminal gang. Spacey brings gravity and understated menace to the role of Doc, while Jamie Foxx is both funny and unnerving as aptly-named psychopath Bats. Mad Men's Jon Hamm and Eliza Gonzales round out the group as Buddy and Darling, a couple reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde in their reckless passion. A team to die for, or possibly amongst.

With its lollipop-red sports-cars, visual panache and flashes of violence, Baby Driver is reminiscent of Tarantino, yet ultimately it has more sweetness and a stronger moral compass. It's also a standalone big-budget film in a franchise-heavy summer and deserving of its success. Let its hot soundtrack and carburettor roar thrill you to the bone. 

Ed's Verdict: While it takes its inspiration from car chase movies of old, Baby Driver is so much more. Beneath its chrome exterior is a lot of heart and soul.

Feature - Another Blockbuster Summer - Part 1

Does anyone know the way... There's got to be a way to Blockbuster!!! (The Sweet - Blockbuster, 1976)

Here's a quick lesson in etymology. The word 'blockbuster' was originally a militaristic term coined during the Second World War regarding any bomb powerful enough to obliterate an entire street (or block). Then in subsequent decades it was adopted by the American movie industry to describe films such as Gone With the Wind or Ben Hur - features that made a huge box office explosion, as it were.

It was the 1975 advent of Stephen Spielberg's Jaws, however, that popularised the term. To some extent it also redefined it. 'Blockbuster' now came to signify a big event-movie aimed at a mass market. Here's the interesting thing... Whereas blockbusters were originally defined as films that had made a lot of money, post-Jaws they became those that cost a lot to make, with the aim of earning a lot more. But as we now know, for every Captain America there's a Jupiter Ascending, or even a Gods of Egypt. And if you haven't heard of the latter two, there's a simple reason. Yes - there now ironically exists such a thing as the 'blockbuster flop'. (Think of it in terms of a huge entertainment bomb that failed to explode.)

Jaws set a precedent in US cinema - one reinforced by further early Spielberg works and by George Lucas' original Star Wars films - of big-budget crowd-pleasers with vast marketing campaigns, which acted as studio mid-year centerpieces. Yes - the 'summer blockbuster' rapidly became a thing, along with a resultant sea of merchandising. By the '80s (and it's been the same ever since) a clutch of lavishly-produced American films fill up UK cinema screens, as studios vie to produce that year's definitive summer hit. No longer is there a single Jaws-type one-off that routs the competition. Now you get a good half-dozen-plus movies jostling for screen space, with several generally elbowing their way to predominance. 

More than that, the blockbuster phenomenon has spilled over, so that the entire calendar year is marked out in great splashy Hollywood spectacles. Christmas, Easter, Labor Day, Thanksgiving - all the big US holidays are accompanied by huge blockbuster openings, to the extent that studios have to negotiate so that they're not pitting their big titles against each other on the same initial weekend. 

But set that aside and just focus on summer 2017. In your local multiplex right now Wonder Woman is still cutting down competitors with her broadsword several weeks after release. Meanwhile franchise juggernauts Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean are both successfully fighting their ground (or sea areas), with Tom Cruise's resurrection of The Mummy likely to be prematurely re-tombed as a result. Then July will chuck Despicable Me 3, Cars 3, Spiderman: Homecoming and War for the Planet of the Apes into the colourful melee. 

Now I'm no grump when it comes to flashy effects-heavy entertainment. I mean my tickets are as good as printed for both Peter Parker and those battling apes. And if you check back through my recent reviews you'll see how much I enjoyed Fantastic Beasts, Doctor Strange and Rogue One. I like event movies. But, I'm also irritated and saddened by a variety of aspects of blockbuster culture. Sufficiently irritated and saddened to write a whole follow-up blog entry about it. It's going to take that much space.

Suffice to say for now that innovations entertainment can be as double-edged in entertainment as in the rest of life. And while big, loud computer-generated mayhem can enliven a muggy Saturday afternoon, it's surely not everything that cinema was meant to be.

But I'll get back to that later...

Film Review - My Cousin Rachel (12A)

She has done for me at last - Rachel, my torment.

Such are the words written to Philip, the hapless hero of this story, by the older male cousin who raised him into adulthood. Philip's cousin Ambrose has travelled to Italy from England on his doctor's advice, where he fell in love with and married his mysterious cousin Rachel. In the final correspondence of his life, however, he claims she is trying to kill him. The delusion of a dying man, or a terrifying reality? Philip has to decide, when Ambrose's widow arrives on the Cornish coast, desirous to meet her younger relative.

My Cousin Rachel is a lesser-known novel by Daphne du Maurier, best remembered for her mystery romances Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and short stories Don't Look Now and The Birds. A previous version of the film was released in 1952 - and no, I hadn't heard of it, despite its starring Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland as the eponymous Rachel. 

This time around the role is taken on - superbly so - by the character's namesake Rachel Weisz. The Rachel of the film is demure and flirtatious by turns - socially and sexually liberated by the standards of her day. Either she's a grieving widow or she's playing the part flawlessly, but whatever the truth she's also alluring enough to draw in both the audience and callow young Philip. The latter's initial hostility towards his possibly murderous cousin gives way inevitably to a whole other kind of feeling. Weisz's role demands sustained ambiguity and she plays it to a tee.

Meanwhile Philip, played by Sam Claflin (check my recent review of Their Finest), is headstrong and immature. He's still very much a boy despite his adult appearance, one who struggles not to be submerged in the emotional wave brought by his older cousin. He is backed up by Game of Thrones' ever-steady Iain Glen, the wary godfather who counsels caution, and by Holliday Granger as Glen's daughter, the sweet, patient girl with whom Philip should be in love. (How often is life that simple?)

The whole film has a strong Gothic feel to it - beautifully shot and rich in 19th century period detail. This is one good-looking feature. If it begins with bright Cornish vistas, it gradually descends into candlelit murk as doubt and paranoia start to grip. The camerawork is beautifully judged, particularly when Philip's hold on reality starts to slip. If there's one flaw, it's that director Roger Michell is too much in love with the world he's creating (or with Rachel), at the expense of the story's pacing. The movie could pick up its heels at points, like one of the many horses seen galloping along the Cornish cliffs. Maybe I'm too much in love with the concise storytelling of last month's Lady Macbeth, complete with its own femme fatale.

The movie is still largely a success, however, due in no small part to Weisz. You're likely to be swept along by her spirited independence, willing her to be better than portrayed in those early letters, but suffering the same confusion as poor Philip. If you're a fan of the enigmatic, you're going to love cousin Rachel.

Ed's Verdict: Atmospheric film-making with a stately pace and an inscrutable central performance. Rachel rocks Rachel.