2016

Mustang

Director: Deniz Gamze Erguvan (2016)

This Turkish coming of age tale is a bitter sweet challenge to the conservation of prejudice and ignorance.

Powered by astonishingly natural performances, it’s engaging, intelligent, wonderfully fresh and surprisingly moving.

Five teenage sisters have been raised by their grandmother. They’re bright, lively and openly devoted to one another.

We watch through the eyes of the youngest. Lale makes jokes about boobs and giving birth while the older ones discuss sex and virginity. The tiny Gunes Sensoy is joyously defiant in the role as she carries our hopes and fears.

Nihal Koldas scolds and instructs as their grandmother, always doing what she believes to be right. She wails she has given them too much freedom when they’re falsely accused of impropriety with a group of local boys.

Ayberk Pekcan is pitifully macho as their aggressive uncle Erol who consequently imposes a strict new domestic regime.

The house is barred, computers and phones are removed and education is denied them. A dress code is enforced and they’re taught to cook and sew in preparation for future lives of domestic servitude.

The sisters’ different reactions to their new circumstance propels the drama to a range of destinations.

The Paris based Girlhood (2015) covers similar thematic ground to Mustang but this is the far more successful film. The Mustang girls are more rigorously denied freedoms. Plus they’re much more likeable characters than their bullying and work shy Parisian counterparts.

Oscar winning musical Fiddler On The Roof (1971) also featured the tribulations of five sisters. However it was told from the point of view of the father and with a considerably more sympathetic view of the dominant male.

The canny script suggests incarceration creates or exacerbates the girls’ desire to not conform. It is careful not to demonise men as a gender but as individuals. Erol is offered moments of dignity. The girls’ suitors are a mixed bag of fortune cookies.

Neither is this an attack on the culture of Turkey or Islam. Mustang is eager to stress the importance of education for women. It is the end of the school term and the leaving of a beloved teacher that signals the turning of the girls’ lives ‘to shit’. Istanbul is portrayed as an aspirational seat of culture and learning.

Nominated for this years Oscar for best film in a foreign language, wild horses shouldn’t stop you from seeing Mustang.

★★★★☆

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Angry Birds Movie

Director: Clay Kaytis & Fergal Reilly (2016)

After a history of plundering plays, books, games and toys for inspiration, Hollywood has gone the whole hog and made a film based on a smartphone app.

And though The Lego Movie (2014) is a great example of how unpromising material can inspire awesome cinema, this animated effort featuring birds fighting pigs is a bird-brained bore.

It’s bright, colourful, busy and noisy but far less fun than the game ever was.

Scenes eke out their jokes with violent slapstick for the little ones and sneering sarcasm for the teens. Plus there’s snot, wee, a multitude of wriggling bums and a bizarre singing cowboy sequence.

Jason Sudeikis voices the charmless Red, a lonely bird who gets angry when his feathers are ruffled.

He lives in a colony of cute flightless birds on a tropical island.

After a disastrous attempt at delivering a birthday cake, Red is sent to anger management class.

Because kids always find therapy jokes funny.

One day a steampunk pirate ship arrives with a crew of green pigs offering the trotter of friendship.

Red is given the bird by his compatriots when he questions the pigs motives.

He is proved right when the pigs kidnap the islander’s precious unhatched eggs. The swines.

So Red must come up with a plan and save the eggs’ bacon, without making a pigs ear of it and before their goose is cooked.

The soft boiled script relies heavily on crashing action and a scrambled mix of rap, rock and disco to capture the pointless freneticism of playing the game, but the tone is aggressive point scoring rather than giddy silliness.

And it all feels underdeveloped, presumably a consequence of trying to rush the movie into cinemas before everyone moves onto the next must-have gaming app. Oh dear.

Josh Gad and Danny McBride voice Chuck and Bomb. The former has super speed and the latter explodes.

Maya Rudolph irritates as Matilda the hippy psychologist and Sean Penn growls as a menacing over sized bird involved in a weird romantic subplot.

These pigging awful birds can flock off.

★★☆☆☆

Bad Neighbours 2

Director: Nicholas Stoller (2016)

I strongly suspect this sequel to the successful 2014 frat boy comedy was only made so Zac Efron could be paid once again to oil his pecs and dance semi naked in front of a crowd of college girls.

Mind you, I’ve made worse career decisions myself.

However this proudly politically correct comedy is alarmingly enjoyable in its own undemanding bad taste way.

Efron returns as Teddy Sanders, now with a criminal record after event in the previous movie.

Wanting revenge on his former next door neighbours, Efron teams up with Chloe Grace Moretz who has rented his previous home to establish her own sorority.

Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne are again the family under siege while Selena Gomez, Lisa Kudrow and Kelsey Grammer cameo.

★★★☆☆

 

 

 

I Saw The Light

Director: Marc Abraham (2016)

This befuddled biopic sheds little light on the life of country music maestro Hank Williams.

It begins with a spine tingling rendition of his classic ‘Cold Cold Heart’, but it’s sadly all down hill from there.

Though the star of TV’s The Night Manager Tom Hiddleston sings his heart out, he chooses to hide his looks and charm under a cowboy hat. He does a decent of copy of Williams’ agitated crab stage gait.

By the time Williams died in 1953 at the tragically young age of 29, he had became one of the most influential singer songwriters of his time.

But you wouldn’t know that from the episodic and jumbled narrative given to us here.

We first meet Hank when he’s already enjoying a degree of success with his band and a regular slot on local radio. He has ambitions to appear on The Grand Ole Opry, the number one TV destination for country singers.

An impetuous, tempestuous, immoral, feckless,unreliable husband father and artist, the narrative is a familiar rock biography checklist of an alcohol fuelled career slide as he loses gigs, wives and friends.

But it’s presented full of leaps, detours and evasions, offering random snapshots of his life instead of a coherent story.

We’re spoon fed a brief resume of his success at the end, but it’s provided without context and leaves us with no greater understanding of his importance to country music or wider cultural impact or degree of success.

The classic songs Williams wrote such as ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ are short changed.

And so are the women. They’re presented as grasping and fertile while Hank takes no responsibility for his own behaviour.

Elizabeth Olsen is a determined presence as his wife Audrey, but is portrayed as a humourless self serving money grabber.

Except for Hiddleston the performers don’t seem to be enjoying themselves, and I didn’t either.

★★☆☆☆

Florence Foster Jenkins

Director: Stephen Frears (2016)

Big screen diva Meryl Streep launches a ferocious assault on your ears in this biopic of the worlds worst opera singer.

As the title character, her ignorance of a lack of talent is a punishing off note joke.

But if you can endure Streep’s cacophony of comic caterwauling, there’s a lot of enjoyment in the tender chemistry created with her on screen husband St. Clair Bayfield, played by Hugh Grant.

It’s New York 1944 and heiress Florence is an overly generous patron of the arts whose entourage exploits her good nature for cash.

Determined to aid the war effort, she books herself a gig at Carnegie Hall and gives a thousand servicemen free tickets.

This threatens St. Clair’s luxurious life as neither he, tutors or muscians dare tell Florence the painful truth about her lack of ability, for fear of being put out on their arias.

Director Stephen Frears’ lack of visual ambition is compensated by adhering to the narrative and focusing on character.

He’s rewarded with two marvellous performances as the leads stretch their throats in extraordinary ways.

Grant has never better. With the fading of his still considerable leading man looks, his tremendous talent shines ever brighter. He gave a light comic masterclass in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) and here he dances like a young James Stewart.

Streep was last seen singing on screen as a bar room rocker in the weak Ricki And The Flash (2015) and here gives a performance of grand neurotic eccentricity.

The stars essay a complex relationship while the script saves its mockery for the sycophants who surround them.

Rebecca Ferguson is under served as St. Clair’s lover but Nina Arianda is show stopping as a ticking blonde bombshell, threatening blow up the whole charade whenever she speaks her mind.

This is the second telling of the story this year, after the French language version Marguerite (2016) which won 4 prestigious Cesar awards.

This version is undemanding with broad appeal, and you don’t have to appreciate opera to enjoy it.

★★★☆☆

 

 

These Final Hours

Director: Zak Hilditch (2016)

With the end of the world only twelve hours away, society has descended into an orgy of sex, suicide, booze, drugs and violence.

And that’s just the first five minutes of this scorchingly apocalyptic Australian road movie.

A meteorite has caused Europe, Africa and the Americas to be engulfed in an rolling inferno, and Perth is last on the list.

Nathan Phillips is well cast as buff surfer dude James, desperately racing to a party to be with his girlfriend.

With it’s vehicle hopping, dry humour and brutal violence, this is arguably an unofficial and worthy prequel to George Miller’s magnificent Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). It offers an explanation of how society reached there from here.

The smart script by the director Hilditch offers James choices whose actions flesh out his character. Further bonus points are gained by never compromising the central premise.

Cinematographer Bonnie Elliot exploits the local light in extraordinary ways by saturating the screen in blistering red, orange and yellow.

Plaudits also to the production designer Nigel Davenport for stretching the budget and providing vehicles in a suitably searing shades of ochre.

Similarly to Max, James is defined by the relationships he has with the women in his life.

Jessica De Gouw and Kathryn Beck offer bikini clad support as James’ girlfriends Zoe and Vicky. Lynette Curran steals a scene as his mother.

En route to see Vicky, James’ rescues a young school girl from a pair of paedophiles.

Angourie Rice gives a remarkable performance as the sweet and straight talking Rose, who insists on being taken to her waiting father.

These reluctant fellow travellers offer each other the possibility of redemption as they work out what is really important in the short time they have left.

★★★★☆

 

 

 

 

 

Ratchet And Clank

Director: Kevin Munroe (2016)

From Super Mario Bros. (1993) to Street Fighter (1995), Hollywood has a low scoring rate when trying to turn video games into cinema hits.

Never threatening the high score of soon to be remade Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) or Resident Evil (2002), Ratchet And Clank features a defective robot and an alien mechanic teaming up to save the universe.

Based on the game of the same name, this is a poorly assembled and malfunctioning sci-fi animated adventure.

More a sugar fuelled distraction than a coherent movie, it’s written for and possibly by attention deficit kids wide eyed on popcorn and fizzy drinks.

David Kaye voices Crank, a defective War-bot. Unlike his monstrously armoured production line robot siblings, he’s petite, prissy and pacifist.

Clank is scheduled for demolition by Paul Giamatti’s Chairman Drek. He’s employed Armin Shimerman’s evil scientist Doctor Nefarious to build an army of robot assassins to annihilate the Galactic Rangers.

The Rangers are a dim and trigger happy team of celebrity loving law enforcers, lead by the square jawed and muscle bound buffoon Captain Qwark, voiced by Jim Ward.

Crash landing on a distant world, Clank is rescued by Ratchet. Energetically voiced by James Arnold Taylor, he’s some sort of orange space fox.

A small mechanic with big dreams, Ratchet whisks his new friend away to warn the Rangers.

With the least possible attention to detail in the animation, character, plot or dialogue, it’s a manic, mirthless mash up of movie spare parts, many borrowed from the Star Wars films.

But sadly not just the good ones. There’s a planet destroying weapon and pod racing. Architecture is republican era Alderaan.

The script throws in jokes about selfies and hashtags in a futile bid to be relevant. At one point a robot henchmen chews up a smartphone as punishment.

For the intended audience it’s probably the most terrifying moment in the whole film.

The release date is presumably to capitalise on the UK Bank holiday, pitching itself at all the kids too young to see Captain America: Civil War (2016) or have already seen The Jungle Book (2016) and Zootropolis (2016).

Sylvester Stallone, Rosario Dawson and John Goodman offer recognisable names to tempt unwary parents with a mirage of quality.

It’s game over already for this wannabee franchise.

★★☆☆☆

Golden Years

Director: John Miller (2016)

With grand designs on Hollywood, TV presenter and star of DIY SOS Nick Knowles has knocked out this very British comedy.

His workmanlike script is an off the shelf construction of stately homes, incompetent cops, cups of tea and bare arses.

As mild mannered retiree Arthur, Bernard Hill leads a solid cast that includes Una Stubbs, Alun Armstrong, Simon Callow and Virginia McKenna.

They give this gentle crime caper a dash of colour and a veneer of respectability.

Accidentally discovering an aptitude for bank robbery, Arthur plans to save the local bowling club from closure and sets about raising the funds in a Robin Hood stylee.

The story highlights the contemporary issue of OAP’s being fleeced of their pensions by robber banks, and makes a point of the invisibility of the elderly in society.

It bestows vitality on its characters and respect to its audience by wisely saving its mockery for the media attention seeking copper in charge of the robbery investigation.

Brad Moore as Detective Stringer channels his inner David Brent in a perma-tanned performance.

Although it offers mild entertainment and is difficult to object to, it all feels like the movie version of a never seen 1970s TV sitcom.

Breaking the golden rule of cinema finance, Knowles has used his own cash to fund the project.

There’s definitely a screw loose somewhere.

★★☆☆☆

Heaven Knows What

Director: Ben & Joshua Safdie (2016)

This raw tale of homeless heroin addicts refuses to offer easy solutions or heavy handed homilies.

It’s a loosely plotted account of dependancy, desperation and destitution, told with a blessed lack of sentiment or backstory. Events are given an immediacy through cold location work, shot guerrilla-style with handheld cameras.

New York is presented as an overcrowded, dirty, concrete conurbation where the state uses medicine to control the population. The internet exists but technology intermittently fails.

Adding an astonishing synth soundtrack to the opening scenes of dystopia and isolation, it feels like a 1970s sci-fi prophesy of the 21st century. And it’s set in the present day.

Framing the drama in this way affords us a degree of separation from events, necessary for us to endure watching them.

Based on her own memoir of life on New York streets, Arielle Holmes is compellingly aggressive and agitated performance as Harley.

She rebounds between sadistic addict Ilya and drug dealer Mike, leading to a running battle between the abusive pair. Caleb Landry Jones and Buddy Duress are grubbily convincing.

Littered among the mental illness, overdoses, shoplifting, fighting and begging are small random acts of kindness. They fuel a shambling camaraderie among the down and very nearly outs.

What seems to be dangerous, threatening and unhinged behaviour to bystanders, we recognise as being an understandable reaction to Harley’s extreme circumstance and limited options.

Heaven knows how she survived, not all her acquaintances are so fortunate.

★★★☆☆

 

Captain America: Civil War

Director: Anthony & Joe Russo (2016)

Hard on the heels of the showdown between Batman and Superman in Dawn of Justice  (2016) comes another super-powered spandex smack down.

This time it’s Chris Evans and Robert Downey, Jr. facing off as Captain America and Iron Man.

Although nominally the third stand alone Captain America film, it plays like a third Avengers movie and deals with the fall out of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015).

But Civil War lacks writer/director Joss Whedon’s ability to build a strong narrative and offer a spotlight for each major character.

Although the Russo’s bring a harder edge to the action, they haven’t Whedon’s grasp of group dynamics or comedy. They seem unable or unwilling to nurture interesting female characters, which is Whedon’s absolute stock in trade.

Here the blunt banter and sparse stabs of humour seem forced rather than growing organically out of character.

Many jokes seem parachuted in by executives and there are more than a few about gags about ageing. They lend the movie the stale air of a spandex version of Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables franchise.

The ferocious and superbly choreographed opening action scenes are at the very top end of Civil War‘s 12A certificate.

But the story is cluttered with too many minor characters. New ones are introduced to flag up their own stand alone solo movie and there’s a much herald appearance of a rebooted favourite.

Anthony Mackie and Don Cheadle return respectively as sidekicks War Machine and The Falcon. The Hulk and Thor are noticeably absent.

Young Brit Tom Holland steals the film with his wide eyed chatterbox take on Peter Parker.

It’s a shame his Spider-Man CGI alter-ego is so poorly rendered, all the more puzzling as the generally the film looks fantastic in its IMAX 3D version.

A great deal of time is set up the Black Panther (2018) movie. Marvel seem so eager to involve and so self pleased at promoting a black character they haven’t looked too closely at how he’s presented.

Removed of the cowl and claws of Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman is fine in the undemanding role as the urbane and irony free African prince T’Challa.

However he’s prone to beginning sentences with ‘in my culture..’. Maybe people do speak like this but it reminded me of Ron Ely era Tarzan. His dialogue and demeanour seem freshly minted from the preconceptions of the white New Yorkers who created him back in 1966.

William Hurt and Martin Freeman are introduced as part of the Black Panther thread.

While Jeremy Renner gives the most lacklustre performance of his career as Hawkeye, Paul Bettany does some lovely work as the Vision.

The script can’t work out what to do with him or his ill defined powers, so opts for ignoring him whenever it can. Notably during the fighting.

Dragged down into the melee and still without a film to call their own, the only two female heroes are Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch.

At heart Civil War wants to be a hard hitting action thriller. The tone is suitably subdued as the script deals with politically compromised ideals, murdered parents and revenge.

Then it remembers the audience and bursts into blasts of candy coloured action.

Remorseful at collateral deaths of civilians during an Avengers mission, the once independent Iron Man is ready to accept UN oversight of The Avengers team.

Bizarrely for a soldier, Captain America doesn’t agree with operating under a hierarchal command system.

A UN conclave are about to sign an accord to will curtail superhero activity when they suffer a terrorist attack.

Number one suspect is Captain America’s friend turned terrorist agent Bucky Barnes. AKA The Winter Soldier.

Despite being played by the physically impressive Sebastian Stan, he remains an irritatingly anonymous figure.

Captain America is convinced Bucky is innocent and sets off to find him before the CIA do.

This puts him at odds with Iron Man, leaving the rest of The Avengers team to decide with whom they stand.

As allegiances shift and romance blooms across the barricades, loyalties are stretched and snapped.

Meanwhile there’s a sinister plot involving Daniel Bruhl’s shady scientist and a super enhanced elite death squad.

Easily the best part of Civil War is the promised punch up between the host of heroes.

It’s an imaginatively conceived and entertaining executed bout which leaves the heroes damaged and divided.

Unfortunately it happens about half way through the running time, so the rest of the film feels very anti-climactic.

And after two and a half hours of spandex clad action, I was beginning to chafe.

★★★☆☆