Can't you just be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?
Spidey's back! I know - he's never really been away, but this time around there's a youthful twist to the character. Yes, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were young, but they weren't such a believably gawky high-school kind of young. Here it's the UK's Tom Holland who wriggles into the iconic costume, combining noble intentions with teenage folly. The results are crowd-pleasing from first to last.
Holland's Spider-Man made his inaugural appearance in last year's splendid Captain America: Civil War, the events of which act as something of a prologue to this film. Enlisted by billionaire entrepreneur Tony Stark (aka Ironman) to take sides in said civil war, Peter Parker now views himself as an apprentice Avenger - a Stark 'intern' who now has to prove himself so he can become a fully fledged member of the team. This he must do while keeping his grades up along with his place on the school quiz team, and trying to impress the girl he likes (naturally well out of his league). Oh, and he must keep his super-alias a secret of course, from all but his best buddy Ned.
Stark exhorts him to keep his crime-fighting activities modest rather than punching above his limited weight. But sinister events are afoot in Peter's native New York borough of Queens, and he can't resist taking on some heavyweight bad-guys, whatever his mentor's advice.
The joy of this new incarnation is that Spider-Man is a superhero in the making - more boy than man, with a sometimes flailing lack of control over his recently acquired powers. Holland is hugely winning as the student, despite an over-enthusiasm that can create more trouble than it prevents. There's an endearing clumsiness to even his best efforts. This is a school movie too, and anyone who enjoyed the John Hughes films of the '80s will feel more than a little nostalgic here. (Think Duckie in Pretty in Pink if he could shoot webbing and climb walls.)
Spider-Man: Homecoming contains multiple other pleasures. The rapport between Peter and his awestruck pal Ned (Jacob Batalon) produces some snappily entertaining exchanges, while his relationship with mentor Stark - Robert Downey Jnr coasting in the role he's made his own - is possibly even funnier. Michael Keaton brings conviction and menace to a much more grounded supervillain than we're used to (ironic, since he can fly). The action sequences play out on a well-utilised backdrop of iconic New York (and in one case Washington) landmarks, and the whole thing has a comic-book vitality to it. It's fast-paced and full of primary colours to match Spidey's suit.
If there's one flaw it's that the whole enterprise is just too fast and crammed with incident; sometimes it would do well to catch its breath. Also the cross-over elements from the Marvel shared universe will bewilder casual viewers, although Tony Stark's innovations to Spidey's costume provide a fun new aspect to proceedings.
Overall it's great family-friendly summer fun - shrugging itself free of all darker elements in a fit of youthful zest. This Spider-Man does whatever a spider can, albeit with hilarious ineptitude.
Gut Reaction: Considerable laughter, mildly accelerated vital signs and one satisfying moment of 'Did not see that coming.'
Ed's Verdict: 7.5/10. A welcome light-spirited and joke-filled addition to the Marvel Universe canon. Tom Holland is the likeable fresh face of Spider-Man.
Your driver will be ready as soon as he puts on his pants.
The Big Sick is based on a true story from the life of stand-up comedian and comedy actor Kumail Nanjiani. That Nanjiani co-wrote and stars as himself in the film, only adds to the poignancy of that story's telling. Romantic comedy drama is a difficult combination to pull off. Here all the elements are present in great spadefuls, and they combine to wonderful effect.
Kumail, from a Pakistani immigrant family, is plying his trade at a Chicago comedy club when he meets psychology student Emily. The romantic sparks are instant and hot, and while both of them have reasons to tread carefully - she's been burned from past experience, he's burdened by familial pressure to marry a Pakistani girl - they go where passion leads. The immediate results are funny and affecting, but inevitably their burgeoning relationship runs into crisis. Not any old crisis - a bizarre double-whammy of a crisis that might be too much for an audience to swallow, if it hadn't actually happened. Kumail finds himself tangling with Emily's parents in unique circumstances, while trying to deal with the expectations of his own family.
The Big Sick is produced by Judd Apatow and achieves the same believable quality that he brought to films like Knocked Up and This is Forty. The chemistry between Kumail and Emily is off the chart from the moment they meet - awkward, witty and charming, the pair of them stumble and banter their way into love. The script is beautifully judged and the two leads play it perfectly - Nanjiani likeably vulnerable and Zoe Kazan playing Emily with just the right degree of clued-in eccentricity. For romantic comedy to work you have to tumble into love with the couple, and here they make it happen effortlessly. (Which makes what follows all the more of a roller coaster.)
Hats off too to the support cast. The members of Kumail's family manage to be endearing and infuriating in equal measure, while his fellow stand-ups are given enough space to act as a dysfunctional comedy family in their own right. Special praise has to go, however, to Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as Emily's parents. If she's more renowned for her dramatic roles and he for his comic ones (Everybody Loves Raymond/the voice of Manny the Mammoth in endless Ice Age films), here they combine to nail both aspects, never less than when they tangle with a racist heckler at Kumail's comedy gig. The bond they forge with Kumail is one of the film's several moving story threads and the source of its biggest laughs.
How much of The Big Sick is straight from Kumail and Emily's real life experience and how much is artistic embellishment I couldn't rightly say. The heart of the film, though, is all real - the romance beautiful, the drama painful and the comedy often hilarious. It's a sublime melding of the three and simply demands to be seen. In a summer of noise and spectacle, how refreshing to get back to something intimate, funny and touching.
Gut Reaction: Regular chuckling with several laugh-out-louds and one disabling comedy gut-punch. Welled up at least three times, once to spillage. Not ashamed to say so.
Ed's Verdict: Romance/comedy/drama - triple knock-out. No schmaltz, nothing phony - just real, deep-seated emotion fused with the laughter. Book your ticket now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
