2016

Allied

Director: Robert Zemeckis (2016) BBFC cert: 15

Brad Pitt is torn between love and duty in this muddled Second World War spy drama.

It can’t decide if it wants to be a noirish thriller, a 007 action or an epic wartime romance. As a result some performances struggle, especially a ponderous Brad Pitt.

The Hollywood heavyweight plays Max, an undercover RAF airman who receives a very warm welcome when he parachutes into Nazi occupied French Morocco. Max has extraordinary skill with a deck of cards and can strangle you in all of two languages.

While on a deadly mission to execute a high ranking Nazi, Max falls in love with a glamorous French spy, Marianne. Well, its more romantic than Tinder at any rate. When she is accused of treason, Max has seventy two hours to prove her innocence, or execute her himself.

Marion Cotillard is fabulous as the beautiful secret agent, giving the script a life it doesn’t deserve and doing all the dramatic heavy lifting.

The problems of the poor script are exacerbated by the woefully miscasting of Pitt in a much younger man’s role. The 52 year old is playing an RAF wing commander. Real life wingco Guy Gibson was 24 when he lead his famous Dam Busters raid.

Max is part James Bond and part Rick Blaine, but Pit is too old for the former and lacks the wearied hinterland of the latter. As Pitt is too old then arguably so is Cotillard, though at 41 at least we have a leading man paired with an almost age appropriate co-star.

Pitt sports some well cut suits and a pained expression. He appears to be aiming for enigmatic but it suggests indigestion instead. Pitt executes his brief action moves with the conviction of Roger Moore in his later Bond films.

Pitt’s contemporary Hugh Grant has responded to being freed by age from the tyranny of physical perfection with a career best performance in Florence Foster Jenkins (2016). But Pitt lacks energy and enthusiasm.

There’s an ambassadors party where chocolates are definitely off the menu. Plus there’s plenty of period cars and planes to keep vintage vehicle enthusiasts happy. Plus there’s an ample supply of camels. Which is nice.

Allied skips between London and Casablanca without taking much humour, action, suspense or interest with it. Key moments are ramped up by environment to the point of parody. Eventually the whole exercise slowly sinks beneath the soggy sands of sentiment and leaves barely any trace of itself on your  memory.

Following the 1942 classic film, it’s a schoolboy error to set a Second World War romance in Casablanca. Even the best modern film struggles to compete with the magic of Bogart and Bergman at their imperious peak, and this is far from being the best film.

Don’t play this again, Sam.

★★☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

Indignation

Director: (2016) BBFC cert: 15

This head bangingly dull melodrama is a poor advert for author Phillip Roth from whose novel it’s adapted. The flat lead performances, self-obsessed characters and clunky direction make for a very testing experience.

As is so often the case in literary adaptions, the presence of a voice over is an early indicator of the ineffective transition from page to screen which follows.

Marcus is a working-class Jewish student who dodges the 1951 Korean war army draft by enrolling in a prestigious Ohio college. Refusing to socialise with his peers he obsesses over the beautiful Olivia, an outwardly confident soul from a wealthy family. Logan Lerman and Sarah Gadon are a handsome couple but can’t find a way to make their characters sympathetic.

The only memorable scene is a lengthy interrogation by the Dean. This is a character whom we’re supposed to reject for his persecution of Marcus, but instead embrace for his patience, charm and humour. It’s an enjoyably human performance by Tracy Letts.

The cyclical script explores how society  applies brutal punishments to those who challenge conformity. After enduring two hours of this wearying philosophising, I was was more than justified in my own indignation.

★★☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

Gimme Danger

Director: Jim Jarmusch (2016) BBFC cert: 15

This energetic, informative and even touching documentary is a raucous celebration the career of the wildly influential proto-punk band, The Stooges.

Fronted by drummer turned singer Iggy Pop, his provocative stage persona saw him perform semi-naked in silver marigold gloves and a red dog collar. They recorded three blistering albums in an unruly six year period before imploding in 1973.

The band invented stage diving, were banned from gigging by their own record company and suffered arrests, addictions and deaths.

A relaxed, chatty and surprisingly lucid Iggy regales us from a gold throne with a couple of human skulls in attendance. He discusses his trailer dwelling childhood, is sweet about his parents, realistic about his lyric writing ability and scathing of music industry management.

Director Jim Jarmusch keeps the energy levels up with footage, photos and animations and lots of great music.

It’s the bands story in their own words so there’s no one to offer an indictment of their behaviour. Which in the words of Iggy, was ‘pretty damn rocking’.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

 

We Are The Flesh

Director: Emiliano Rocha Minter (2016) BBFC cert: 18

There’s not a fetid fig leaf to be found in this apocalyptic riff on the Adam and Eve creation myth. When two siblings seek shelter in a ruined building, it leads to their eternal damnation via an orgy of murder, insanity, cannibalism and rape.

The serpent in their squalid industrial garden of Eden is represented by a gold lame wearing madman. He leads them into temptation with his home brewed moonshine.

With actors willing to crawl the hard yards for their craft, some effective production design and a creative soundtrack, We Are The Flesh contains some unearthly delights and takes  a dim view of humanity’s reliance to religion.

But while the mocking of Catholic symbolism and the singing of a national anthem hints at an overall satiric intent, it’s feebly provocative and leaves nothing to laugh at.

★★☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

Director: David Yates (2016) BBFC cert: 12A

Let the magic of J.K. Rowling cast you back in time for another fabulous fantasy adventure. This prequel to her astonishingly successful Harry Potter series is a visually rich, fully realised world full of warm characters, cute critters and exciting action.

Set a full 70 years before Harry’s story starts, the story is shifted from the UK to New York in 1926. Our hero is Newt Scamander, an English wizard with the air and appearance of a foppish Edwardian gentleman adventurer. He carries a magic wand and a battered brown suitcase of surprising capacity. There are elements of TV’s Dr Who to his character. These include being expelled from his home, picking up companions to help out and describing himself as ‘annoying’ to other people.

However actor Eddie Redmayne is far too endearing a screen presence to be the spiky mannered Timelord and no-one in this film finds Newt annoying. If there is one major fault in the film it is this disparity between the script and the performance. This is not to say Redmayne is poor, far from it. His boyish charm encourages empathy at every turn and he gently underplays his scenes to allow others to blossom.

While shopping for a birthday present in New York, some of Newt’s beasts escape and the tourist falls foul of the President of wizards. As he tracks them down he is pursued by Colin Farrell’s dapper Director of Magical Security and his trench coat-clad henchmen.

Meanwhile an invisible creature is terrorising the city and a dark wizard called Grindelwald is on the loose and threatening war. There are chases, potions, magical battles, a speakeasy full of house elves and a menageries worth of extraordinary creatures.

Katherine Waterston and Alison Sudol’s magical sisters provide the opportunity for romance. This is smart move by Rowling who recognises her key target demographic of longtime Potter fans are now adults. They may even have children of their own.

Redmayne’s generosity to Waterston, Sudol and Dan Fogler as a bumbling baker allow his co-stars to steal the heart of the film. We know we’ll meet Newt again, but we want to meet Jacob, Tina and Queenie again.

Samantha Morton, Ron Perlman and Jon Voigt add to the weight of acting talent and there’s a cameo by Johnny Depp. There are far fewer British actors in this film than in the Potter stories, possibly because those films attempted to exhaust our nations entire supply of thesps.

Rowling infuses her script with contemporary social commentary. She touches upon civil rights, the welfare of children, education and the conservation of endangered species. There are also asides on the demonisation of women in the media and their marginalisation in the workplace. The forces of darkness include a powerful newspaper magnate who are in cahoots with politicians, while an anti-witch cult is a barely concealed avatar for mainstream religion.

However Rowling’s tone is rarely preachy and she offers optimism, gentleness and nurturing. Building is emphasised over destruction and craftsmanship over mass production. The focus is kept firmly on entertaining the multiplex hordes.

There is a lot of detailed world building. We’re introduced to a city full of new characters, organisations and locations, many who will undoubtedly take centre stage in the next four films. We learn Newt has an older brother of some repute. I wonder if Benedict Cumberbatch’s agent is waiting by the phone.

Warner Bros are taking no chances with the continuation of their franchise phenomenon. They put the trusted director of the last four Potter films in charge and have backed him with all their creative, financial and marketing muscle. The opening moments are careful to include familiar images such as Hogwarts school to reassure us of their good intentions.

Though shot at Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden, UK, the tremendous sets and faultless CGI never suggest we’re not in the US. Several scenes were also shot on location in London and Liverpool. There are nods to the Men In Black franchise (1997-2012) and a particular work of Terry Gilliam.

There’s no sex, drugs, booze or blood to scare the kids and you don’t have to be a Potter fan to thoroughly enjoy this as a stand alone story. But if you are a fan of Rowling’s fantastical world, you’ll love it.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

 

 

American Pastoral

Director: Ewan McGregor (2016) BBFC cert: 15

The directorial debut of Ewan McGregor is an overwrought and underpowered adaption of Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Condensing the heavy weight tome to a thankfully brief running time of under two hours reduces the characters to transparent ciphers of key ideas.

While the dialogue retains its bite and humour, the handsome cinematography is at odds with the bleak allegorical tale about the destruction of social innocence and failure of the American dream.

The Scots actor mistakenly casts himself as the lead, a blonde former high school super star athlete known to everyone as ‘Swede’. He’s a now a pillar of the community but one who is singularly unequipped to cope with the fractures in his seemingly perfect life.

The Swede’s troubles are fermented by and reflect the social upheaval of the turbulent 1960s. Jennifer Connelly plays his beauty queen wife, who pointedly swaps breeding livestock for a a life devoted to real estate development. Dakota Fanning is Merry, their stammering daughter who becomes a political terrorist.

There’s madness, seduction, violence and duplicity, but the biggest betrayal is the jarringly imposed suggestion of redemption.

★★☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

Francofonia

Director: Alexander Sokurov (2016) BBFC cert: 12A

Russian director Sokurov follows up his masterful film Russian Ark (2002) with this intriguing documentary about the Louvre during the Nazi occupation.

For most of the war the galleries were empty with priceless art squirrelled away from the pilfering fingers of the German high command. So instead of a traditional narrative of dates, famous works and the artists responsible, we are presented with a meandering, opaque and strangely captivating confusion of scenes.

Dramatised meetings of real people are mixed with historical fact, war footage, family photographs and images of a modern day container ship, sinking. Conversations between the Emperor Napoleon and the French national symbol Marianne are used to explore the relationship between art, war, the state and its citizens.

Like many a museum visit it may take a sudden downpour to convince you to drop in, but once inside it is full of unexpected treasures.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Dog Eat Dog

Director: Paul Schrader (2016) BBFC cert: 18

Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe play a pitiful pair of ex cons in this vicious crime thriller. A kidnapping job offers a big pay day but life for the dim crims goes south when the wrong guy gets shot.

An agitated colour scheme, fractured editing and spiralling camerawork create a paranoid bad trip of a mood. Cage’s droll delivery and riffs on Humphrey Bogart add black comic notes to the confidently trashy and nihilistic sleazefest.

Strippers, swearing, shoot outs, drugs and dead bodies feature heavily as the script skewers the myth of the heroic American outlaw.

Adapted by Matthew Wilder, it’s based on book by Edward Bunker, a real life jailbird turned novelist who played Mr Blue in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992).

Director Paul Schrader’s 1970s heyday saw him write the Martin Scorsese classics Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. He also directed the Richard Gere starring critique of Hollywood, American Gigolo (1980). This never hits those exalted heights but it suggest there’s life in the old dog yet.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

Arrival

Director: Denis Villeneuve (2016) BBFC cert: 12A

Prepare yourself for an epic close encounter in this cerebral sci-fi creature feature. It’s an astonishingly involving, wonderfully acted, technically dazzling and breathtakingly beautiful paean to the pain of existence.

Superb in every department, the intelligent design and gorgeous cinematography are graced by sympathetic editing which reflects the themes of the film. The storytelling of this masterful work constantly wrong foots our expectations to provide this years most profound emotional kick.

I staggered from the screening, aping exactly the stunned expressions of stars Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner after their first contact with alien lifeforms. I was not quite believing of the intensity or meaning of my experience, but I knew it was somehow glorious.

The arrival of an alien fleet on Earth causes global panic and the US government calls a state of emergency. Adams is tremendous as Dr. Louise Banks, a gifted linguist who is recruited by the US military and represents humanity’s best hope. Her mission is to communicate with the extra-terrestrial visitors and ascertain their purpose on our planet. She is aided by Renner’s theoretical physicist, Ian.

The lengthy first view of the monumental alien craft has a gobsmacking power. Humans are pitifully fragile before the enormous alien shell-like ship which gently hovers yards above the ground. This is merely a light jab to soften our senses before the hefty emotional punches Villeneuve lands on us later.

Inside the grey giant egg of a craft, the aliens appear through a shroud of mist,separated from their guests by an invisible wall. The giant squid-like beings have an elephantine hide, and their seven fingered form has echoes of some of the startling imagery in director Villeneuve’s Enemy (2013). They communicate through a sign language composed of inkblots, reminiscent of rorschach tests.

However time is running out as the Chinese and Russians rattle their sabres in the face of the perceived threat. Plus the anxious trigger fingers of the US military are ready with radiation suits, rifles, helicopters and high explosives.

The relatively few action moments are given power by a sharp script which touches upon our understanding of love, language, memory and time. There are elements of the Cold War stand-off and biblical allusions to the tower of Babel and Moses ascending Mount Sinai.

Along with her lead in Tom Ford’s masterful thriller Nocturnal Animals (2016), Adams has two of the plum lead roles of the year, a singular achievement for a forty-something actress in a notoriously youth-orientated Hollywood.

As her scientist sidekick, Renner demonstrates why he’s Hollywoods finest second fiddle. Forest Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg offer strong, understated support as a US Colonel and an FBI Agent.

With communication and time key ideas, Arrival appropriately conducts its own dialogue with cinema. Combining the majesty of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) with the humour and humanity of Spielberg’s Close Encounter Of The Third Kind (1977), Arrival is a far more successful blend of the two masters than Spielberg’s own mesmerisingly flawed A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). As well as his own films, Villeneuve includes a call back to the cult sci-fi Cold War thriller War Games (1983). This is the film Christopher Nolan can only dream of making.

The next film by Villeneuve is a sequel to Ridley Scott’s classic Blade Runner (1982), and it’s good to know it’s in the safest possible pair of hands.

But first you absolutely must see this one.

★★★★★

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

You’ve Been Trumped Too

Director: Anthony Baxter (2016) BBFC cert: PG

This random, repetitive and hastily made documentary to attempts to give the US presidential election a Scottish accent.

A sequel to his investigation into Donald Trump’s executive golf course in Aberdeenshire, Anthony Baxter struggles to move the story on.

The golf club is still there, the many promised jobs aren’t and 92 year old Molly Forbes still hasn’t had a regular water supply since her pipeline was cut during its construction in 2011. Her son Michael is taken to the US to meet Trump supporters and describe his experiences.

In its best moments this raises important questions about who the local authorities relationship with Trump’s business. There’s plenty of anger and forthright Scots opinion, but no clear narrative and never a clear idea of what is hoped to be achieved.

★★☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett