2016

Blair Witch

Director:Adam Wingard  (2016) BBFC cert: 15

This third film in the surprisingly resilient supernatural franchise closely apes the narrative and storytelling techniques but not the invention of the low cost original.

Feeling like a knocked off VHS copy, we’re once again watching the discovered memory card recordings of a group of young people who headed into the Maryland woods to investigate the local legend of the Blair Witch.

They’re lead by James whose sister went missing during the course of the first film, The Blair Witch Project (1999). There are screams in the night as one by one they go missing.

The cast do their best but it’s an irritating experience which offers little excitement and nothing new to the found footage genre.

Poor choices lead to their climbing of trees, running in circles, crawling through tunnels and exploring an old house. A potentially interesting time paradox is introduced, unexplored and abandoned.

The real terror is the thought of the franchise continuing in the same bloodless vein. I’m perfectly happy for this series to get lost in the woods.

★☆☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Bridget Jones’ Baby

Director: Sharon Maguire (2016) BBFC cert: 15

Fans of the UK’s favourite singleton will cheer at this amiably entertaining and almost touching third entry in the romcom franchise.

Renee Zellweger returns as an older, wiser and sadder but still loveable Bridget. The Texan’s talent and charm give the uneven and scattershot script a depth it doesn’t deserve. Her assured underplaying is especially welcome in a restaurant scene of excruciating embarrassment.

Helen Fielding based her original Bridget Jones Diary newspaper column on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (pub. 1813). Books and films followed with great commercial success.

Having Fielding, Dan Mazar and Emma Thompson contributing conflicting styles of humour to the script causes unresolved tensions between scenes. Plus there is again a grating change of politics between those found in the source material and some of the broader gags.

It’s not one should expect Austen levels of wit from this generally light-hearted romp, but there is a huge departure from the author’s social concerns in order to land a few punchlines. Austen was highly critical of a society where the second class status of women made them financially reliant on men and forced them to seek a ‘good’ marriage. In Bridget’s world finding a rich man is one what does for sport, not necessity.

Fielding astutely includes her comic standbys of a Bridget film. There is a breathy voice over, an obsession with sex and alcohol, a grand resignation, swearing kids and eccentric OAPs. The famous diary has been replaced by a laptop. It’s all as cosy as one of Bridget’s famous Christmas jumpers, which also make an appearance.

Thompson won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for her adaption of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1995. Novel pub. 1811). Presumably she wrote her scene stealing role as Bridget’s maternity doctor, the only consistently Austen-like female character on show.

The brief moment when the tone threatens to take a dark almost Dickensian turn also suggests Thompson’s fingers in charge of the keyboard. This plays far better than Fielding’s indulgent, ill conceived and seemingly Richard Curtis inspired cameos, Italian stereotypes and pratfalls. Having said that, Thompson isn’t afraid to lift a joke popstar Robbie Williams used on Graham Norton’s chat show, during an edition on which she also appeared.

Thompson’s deftly drawn and waspish character is hugely at odds with the presumably Mazar scripted sequence featuring a distressed and suddenly helpless Bridget. Our heroine relies for rescue on a pair of men for transport, only to find their way blocked by a parade of breast baring radical feminists.

At this point all pretence of Bridget as a modern, independent woman is abandoned for cheap gags and a Cinderella subtext. This moment also sees the flowering of another subtext as Bridget’s vagina is reduced to a conduit for a closeted bromance.

In the film’s defence there is a strong if ham-fisted appeal for inclusivity. There is also a decent Margaret Thatcher joke, though not at the Iron Lady’s expense.

Having been nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for co-writing Baron Cohen’s Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), it’s easy to speculate which elements Mazar contributed. More recently he wrote the Zac Efron/Robert DeNiro gross out comedy Dirty Grandpa (2016).

The film opens in a reassuringly familiar fashion and will immediately win old fans over. Although now a successful if accident prone TV news producer, Bridget celebrates her 43rd birthday alone, drinking chardonnay and listening to her signature tune ‘All By Myself’,  by Eric Carmen.

After a couple of one night stands, the occasional wanton sex goddess finds herself pregnant and unsure whom the father is. One possible parent is Jack Qwant, a billionaire mathematician and internet dating guru at a music festival. American TV star Patrick Dempsey is vanilla at best.

The other is her former lover, the now married but still uptight human rights lawyer, Mark Darcy. Bridget and he bump into each other at a memorial service for his erstwhile and wonderfully louche love rival, Daniel Cleaver.

The absence of Hugh Grant’s Cleaver is keenly felt. Colin Firth’s grumpy and lacklustre performance as Darcy suggests he is pining for Grant’s light comic touch to rub up against.

Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones offer game support as Bridget’s parents alongside franchise favourites Celia Imrie, Shirley Henderson, James Callis and Sally Phillips.

It all ends in champagne as our heroine becomes the sort of person she once purported to despise. A late and predictable plot twist suggests a fourth film is not out of the question.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

Hell Or High Water

Director: David Mackenzie (2016) BBFC cert: 15

With scorching violence, bone dry humour and a social conscience, this hard baked heist movie is an extraordinary ride into the dark heart of the new wild west.

Jeff Bridges is magnificently grizzled as Marcus, a cantankerous Texas Ranger leading his Native American partner in pursuit of a pair of likeable bank robbers.

This finely balanced construction contains a timelessness and an immediacy as mythic archetypes canter across the cruel climes of current economic conditions. The four lead characters suggest reincarnations of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid being pursued by The Lone Ranger and Tonto. And the film is frequently and intentionally entertaining as that sounds.

This acidic exploration of the American Dream touches upon the ownership of oil, land, money and its effects on life chances and family legacy. It reaches deep into the history of the nation to bring forward a lament for the state of the Union.

The of setting of Hell Or High Water is the macho world of dirt poor West Texas. An irony free world of cowboy hats, casinos and cattle drives, where every male of age carries a gun and drives a 4X4. Long shadows are cast by absent mothers and wives.

The action sequences are fast slaps to your face and the morally complex script bites with the venom of a rattlesnake. The melancholy tone is layered with lyricism via the earthy soundtrack provided by Aussie songsmiths Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. The cinematography of Giles Nuttgens captures the rust and neglect of abandoned farm machinery, symbols of a poverty line existence.

Director David Mackenzie’s last offering was the vicious prison drama Starred Up (2014). Once again he demonstrates his keen ear for dialogue, sharp nose for a story and an astute eye for an image.

Mackenzie references the crime movies Touch Of Evil (1958) and Rififi (1955). He does it not to demonstrate his own knowledge, pad the film’s length or to distract the audience during a lull. There are no lulls in this film. The references are chosen for thematic sympathy and used sparingly and appropriately.

Bridges’ turn is also a modern day riff on Rooster Cogburn, the US Marshall from the remake of True Grit (2010) for which the actor was Oscar nominated. Plus the star’s presence recalls the actor’s early career where he sparred with in Clint Eastwood in Michael Cimino’s crime road trip Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). That film was based on Captain Lightfoot (1955) which also concerned a pair of highwaymen brothers.

The tremendous script by Sicario (2015) scribe Taylor Sheridan so acutely observes human behaviour  it could have been penned by the late great Elmore Leonard, the writer of novels from which sprung the films 3:10 To Yuma (1957 & 2007) Mr Majestyk (1974) and Out Of Sight (1998).

Marcus is partnered with Alberto, a native American officer played with a wearied reservation by Gil Birmingham. Knowing Marcus is days away from retirement, Alberto chooses to dismiss his casual racism as office banter.

Thieves Toby and Tanner are played by the film’s other excellent double act, Chris Pine and Ben Foster. They’re on a stealing spree from the very banks which are threatening to foreclose on their ranch. And they’ve only a couple of days to raise the cash. After every job they bury the getaway car, an exercise laden with grave portent.

Best known as Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, Pine’s leading man looks and easy on-screen charm often obscure his talent. He plays Toby, the younger, more bright and reflective of the siblings, an estranged father who owes months of child support.

Neither pair are abundantly blessed with great intelligence or skills and this ordinariness helps to incubate an empathy for all four protagonists.

Elegiac, bleak, funny  and always accessible and commercial, come hell or high water, you have to see this movie.

★★★★★

@ChrisHunneysett

 

Ben-Hur (2016)

Director: Timur Bekmambetov (2016) BBFC cert: 12A

A biblical bromance goes bad in this fourth big screen version of the epic tale set in Jesus-era Jerusalem.

Jack Huston and Toby Kebbell give career worst performances as the lifelong friends Ben and Messala, a Jewish prince and Roman officer.

When Ben is falsely accused of treachery, Messala arrests his family and sends his buddy into slavery. Ben’s quest for revenge involves a sea battle, a chariot race and a chance meeting with a luxuriously dreadlocked Morgan Freeman.

As the owner of a racing team, his character performs the same function as Oliver Reed did in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000). Occasionally we hear echoes of Hans Zimmer’s epic score from that film as well.

Filmed in unrelenting unsteadycam, this feels like a TV mini series chopped down to cinema length when a buyer couldn’t be found, and a quick theatrical release considered an appropriate method of recouping the investment.

Contempt for the audience is a regular motif. The heavy fist of Roman oppression would seem a doddle compared to suffering the base level direction, writing and CGI on show here.

Assuming the grace of a one wheeled chariot, the film rattles through episodes of leprosy, arranged marriage, a stoning and crucifixion. Much needed momentum is lost whenever anyone stops to speak or think.

The 1959 version starring Charlton Heston became the first and only the third film to win eleven Oscars. At half the length, this film can only point to brevity as the only possible are of improvement.

Hunky carpenter Jesus keeps popping up to offer his message of forgiveness. But it’s hard to believe anyone involved in this shoddy level of craftsmanship is deserving of any.

★☆☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Anthropoid

Director: Sean Ellis (2016) BBFC cert: 15

This agonising account of espionage and assassination makes for a gut wrenching watch.

It’s a handsome dramatisation of Operation Anthropoid, the real life mission to the eliminate Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler’s third in command and architect of the Final Solution.

As well as being a ferocious entertainment, Anthropoid is a moving testament to the astonishing defiance and sacrifice of the country’s citizens under the rule of the Nazi known as the Butcher of Prague.

Sean Ellis produces, directs and co-writes with confidence and authority. Filming on location, the autumnal palette weathers the lovingly crafted period detail with a sepia tone. It’s use heralds a ferocious finale and recalls the final moments of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969).

Betrayal is a recurring idea, perpetrated on the country and its citizens on an international, local and individual level. The British government is not spared admonishment.

Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan are terrific as patriots Jozef and Jan who risk torture and execution when they return by parachute to their homeland, Czechoslovakia.

Making contact with the pitiful remnants of the resistance, they discover Prague in the winter of 1941 is caught in a blizzard of suspicion and paranoia. There’s little safety in this turbulent world of coded conversations, cyanide capsules and clandestine meetings on park benches.

Anna Geislerova and Charlotte Le Bon are local ladies who soften the boys’ demeanour and raise their personal investment. One soldier becomes less fatalistic and the other learns to lead.

This intimate investment in the characters allows for fleeting humour and desperate romance. We fear the repercussions of the attack on those on the periphery of the plotting as much as for the main conspirators.

Among the remainder of the strong supporting cast, stalwart character actor Toby Jones offers dignified concern.

The sometimes graphic but always purposeful and excellently staged action culminates in the Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius, where the bullet holes sustained in the actual fight can still be seen.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

Captain Fantastic

Director: Matt Ross (2016) BBFC cert: 15

Book yourself a seat on an anarchic bus ride as Viggo Mortensen puts himself in the driving seat for an Oscar.

The magnificent performance from The Lord Of The Rings (2001-03) star is the irresistible emotional engine powering the quirky narrative.

He plays Ben Cash, an uncompromising father of six whose values and unique parenting style are tested on a road trip of self discovery.

Having rejected consumer society, Ben lives with his home schooled children in a secluded mountain yurt, living off the land in a survivalist fashion.

The kids are well educated and versed in the arts, philosophy and science, as well as being in tip top physical shape due to diet and rigorous exercise regime.

Following the death of his beloved wife in hospital, Ben has five days to travel across the USA for the funeral. But Ben is threatened with arrest by his estranged wealthy father-in-law if he attends the service.

A ferocious Frank Langella deserves a second Oscar nomination to go with the one he earned for political drama Frost/Nixon (2008).

Travelling in a battered old school bus, the kids’ see the US is an alien world full of fat, consumer driven, screen addicted idiots. Perceived as strange for their non-comformist views, their attempts to engage with the outside world flags up the flaws in Ben’s approach.

The tremendous young cast burn through their scenes with energy and charm, working from the director’s smart script, rich with character, humour and sadness.

Brit actor George MacKay is endearingly gawky as Ben’s rebellious eldest son, Bodevan. While scene stealing poppet Shree Crooks is the smallest child who gifts us the biggest laughs.

Despite the low budget the film looks fabulous, capturing the majestic expanse of the US with an admiring eye.

As the family cross the US the recalls Little Miss Sunshine (2006), but where that beauty pageant road trip dissected US culture from within, this one does so from the outside looking in.

This is less sentimental and more moving. Back then the Sundance festival hit Little Miss Sunshine ram-raided it’s way to two Oscar wins from four nods and it’s easy to imagine Captain Fantastic doing something similar.

Mortensen is a physical actor with a great ability to suggest internal angst. As far back as Tony Scott’s submarine thriller Crimson Tide (1995), he excelled at portraying self doubt.

What could be a depressing grind through grief and regret goes off-roading to become a  joyous celebration of family life. It’s a first class journey all the way.

★★★★★

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

 

Cafe Society

Director: Woody Allen (2016) BBFC cert: 12A

In his latest comedy drama, writer/director Woody Allen serves up his hallmark witty lines and jazz soundtrack with a sumptuous 1930’s glamour.

Flitting between LA and the Big Apple, the plot turns on a love letter written by legendary Hollywood lover, Rudolph Valentino.

A multitude of deftly sketched characters breeze through a revolving door of family dinners, weekend brunches, pool parties and nightclub cocktails.

Between the name dropping, back stabbing and infidelity, several murders occur and there’s an entertaining encounter with a prostitute.

Kristen Stewart stars as Veronica, a down to earth secretary involved in a love triangle with her boss and his young gopher. Steve Carell plays Phil, a powerful Hollywood agent while Jesse Eisenberg is his neurotic New York nephew, Bobby.

The latter essays the role Allen would once have played himself. Wisely the veteran filmmaker remains behind the camera and engineers a nice turn of mood from breezy romance to poignant longing.

Cafe Society is a pleasant place to while away a quiet afternoon but it’s extreme familiarity may not encourage you to return in a hurry.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

Sausage Party

Director: Conrad Vernon, Greg Tiernan (2016) BBFC cert: 15

Supermarket foodstuffs come to life and take on a mind of their own in this saucy animated comedy.

The  cheerfully offensive stoner humour is stuffed with racial and religious stereotypes indulging in an orgy of sex, booze and drugs. It’s an acquired taste and bound to offend many, but once it gets cooking on gas it offers some bite-sized satisfaction.

Each evening the products sing to celebrate the day they’ll be picked from the shelves and taken out to ‘the great beyond’ by the gods of the aisles, the customers.

However when a hot dog sausage and his bun discover their real purpose in life, they struggle to convince their friends of the truth.

They’re also being chased by the Douche, a feminine hygiene product who wants revenge for the thwarting of his plan to reach the afterlife.

Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, James Franco and Michael Cera provide the voices with Salma Hayek plays a tacos looking to spice up her life.

Defiantly and unapologetically rude from the off, this is an adult treat and definitely not one for the kids.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

Morgan

Director: Luke Scott (2016) BBFC cert: 15

Kate Mara gives a blank performance as a corporate investigator in this wearingly predictable sci-fi thriller.

It’s a curious choice of material for a directorial debut by Luke Scott, who presumably would enjoy being recognised for more than being the son of industry titan, Ridley.

Grappling but never getting to grips with sci-fi’s key theme of sentience, Scott Jnr’s film desperately clings  to the coat tails of his father masterpiece, Blade Runner (1982). For long stretches Morgan feels like an unofficial fan fiction prequel. It is produced by Scott Snr’s production house.

Alex Garland’s debut Ex Machina (2015) covered much of the same ground and is a far superior model.

As the immaculately presented Lee Weathers, Mara arrives at a remote research facility to assess the viability of Morgan as a potential product stream in light of a violent episode.

Morgan is the result of synthetic DNA and nano-bot technology being subjected to an accelerated growth programme. It/she appears to be a teenager yet is really only five years old.

Anya Taylor-Joy endows her dead-eyed and hoodie-wearing character with a suitably sullen teenage malice and is capable of defending herself.

Toby Jones and Michelle Yeoh furrow their brows as scientists while Paul Giamatti arrives to administer a psyche evaluation which is definitely not a Voigt-Kampff test. The scientists regard Morgan as their child and are suspicious of Lee’s motives.

The evil corporate angle is over emphasised and under developed, humourless characters leave us cold and there’s a forgettable soundtrack. Though we’re presented with the occasional arresting visual composition, there’s a lack of ambition in the camera movement.

Despite nicely executed bloodshed and decent stunt work, this is a functional and uninspiring creation lacking the necessary heart and soul.

★★☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

The Purge: Election Year

Director: James DeMonaco (2016) BBFC cert:

In these turbulent post-Brexit political times, I’m casting my vote in favour of this gleefully violent satirical action thriller.

This third in the low budget and highly succcessful US series is set in the year 2022.

Frank Grillo returns as the bullish and brutal cop with a conscience, Leo Barnes. He is now head of security to Elizabeth Mitchell‘s Senator, Charlie Roan.

She’s standing for President to abolish the Purge, the annual night of chaos where for one night all law is suspended and murder is legal.

The event makes the ruling far-right wing party a lot of money. As such the New Founding Fathers see the Purge as the ideal opportunity to have Roan permanently removed from the ballot paper.

They suspend the rules protecting political figures, a short sighted decision which seems destined to backfire.

A betrayal by one of the senator’s team leaves Roan and Barnes on the streets of Washington D.C. at the height of The Purge.

Citizens are tortured, burnt, shot, hung and guillotined. No one stops to eat, drink or sleep and the tension rises with the body count.

Costumed crazies rampage through the neon lit streets like a garish halloween party with chainsaws and machine pistols.

As Roan battles to survive, she finds allies in shotgun wielding shopkeepers and veteran Purge night players. They’re motivated from a desire to see the senator win the election.

But as the night progresses they discover they’re not the only group trying to smash the system.

There’s manic rhetoric, an asset stripping government exploiting religion for politic gain and state sanctioned slaughter on the streets.

The satirical intent is somewhat neutered by the astonishing real life US Presidential electoral race taking place. But as an action movie The Purge: Election Year is the candidate that ticks the right boxes.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett