Julianne Moore

Maggie’s Plan

Director: Rebecca Miller (2016) BBFC cert. 15

The best laid plans of Greta Gerwig go awry in this New York comedy of manners.

As Maggie she is forever interfering in the lives of others and must learn restraint in order to find her own happiness.

She’s a sensible shoe wearing singleton who is ready to have a kid but lacks a boyfriend. Her scheme to inseminate herself via a sperm donor is interrupted by the appearance of John, a hunky academic.

This doesn’t endear Maggie to his wife Georgette and their kids. Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore enjoy themselves as the feckless, self pitying, dishonest man child and his ferociously poised Danish wife.

The script gives John the anthropologist a forensic examination and finds the behaviour of this modern man severely wanting. But it also has the heart to allow the him at least a small measure of self respect.

Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph offer Maggie an alternative view of life as home truth dispensing best friends and Travis Fimmel is sweet as a lyrical pickle entrepreneur.

As a director Miller is in love with the city and it’s full of therapy, hipster beards, wooly hats, street entertainers, health food, ice skating and outdoor markets, but keeps its quirky mannerisms to a thankful minimum.

And her script obeys the rules of a romcom while functioning as a commentary on our atomised society, one which is indifferent to reducing conception to a mechanical process involving a syringe and a smart phone app.

Maggie’s Plan plays as an updated version of Jane Austen’s Emma filtered through Woody Allen, and is an honest, sharp and very funny look at modern life.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

The Hunger Games. Mockingjay Part 2

Director: Francis Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence takes arms against the world for the fourth time as in this concluding chapter of the dystopian sci-fi series.

As freedom loving fighter Katniss Everdeen, Hollywood’s highest paid actress offers a typically excellent performance of weary intensity.

She is given far less opportunity to display her fighting skills in this sombre episode.

It’s handsome, well acted and thoughtful, yet the dialogue is often uninspiring and it’s a long march to the action.

By adding scenes with human shields and a trail of refugees the script plunders contemporary concerns but doesn’t offer comment.

Initially we’re forced to put in a few hard yards ourselves as we’re re-introduced to the motivations of the characters and it’s almost a relief when war starts whittling away their numbers.

As her comrades die in the cause of freedom, Katniss longs to fight.

But Julianne Moore’s scheming rebel commander Coin considers Katniss a useful propaganda tool and refuses to let her.

When the unified rebel army marches on the Capitol, Katniss is embedded in a media platoon which contains both points of her love triangle.

But there isn’t much tension between hunky warrior Liam Hemsworth Gale and Josh Hutcherson‘s brainwashed former turncoat Peeta.

Both are fairly dull characters but with Sam Claflin’s maverick warrior Finnick married off, she hasn’t much to choose from.

When her squad commander is killed, Katniss takes charge and leads her team on a suicide mission.

Her target is to assassinate Donald Sutherland’s evil despot President Snow who is holed up in an opulent and heavily guarded mansion.

As Katniss navigates the rubble strewn streets, she’s lumbered with a device which suspiciously resembles a game console.

It’s designed to detect Snow’s extraordinarily elaborate booby-traps.

The troops combat floods, flame, friendly fire and ferocious underground ghouls.

Friends and family are killed or captured as they trek through the terrain of the fallen city and Katniss has a suicide pill should her plan fail.

Though the foreboding tone is sensibly free of laughs, the regular supporting cast bring smiles of recognition.

Elizabeth Banks and Stanley Tucci don their fabulous costumes one last time and a shambling Woody Harrelson adds some welcome warmth.

The late Philip Seymour Hoffman has a surprisingly large amount of screen time in a final hurrah for his great talent.

Four years ago Lawrence was a little known actress.

Now due in no small part to The Hunger Games’ billion dollar success, she’s firmly and deservedly part of the A list.

By tackling the themes of war, freedom, suffering and sacrifice in a measured and occasionally spectacular fashion, this franchise has raised the bar for the Young Adult genre.

But as solid and satisfying as the Hunger Games are, I’ve had my fill and I couldn’t stomach another one.

★★★☆☆

Seventh Son

Director: Sergei Bodrov (2015)

A young pig farmer is taught to battle supernatural forces in this ploddingly derivative fantasy adventure.

A bombastic score can’t drown out laughable dialogue while eccentric and uneven performances wrestle with a dull script.

In an unspecified medieval country, seventh son of a seventh son Tom Ward (Ben Barnes) lives a humble life on a remote lakeside farm.

He suffers premonitions which give a glimpse of what the film holds for us but don’t benefit him in any way.

One day a Spook (witch-hunter) called John Gregory (Jeff Bridges) arrives to buy Tom from his family to serve as an apprentice. Before Tom leaves, his Mam (Olivia Williams) gives him a medallion.

In Gregory’s hideaway full of weapons and potions – like a medieval Bat-cave – Tom learns the names of a lot of useful sounding potions and how to throw a knife.

He also nicks a joke from James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven – which turns out to be the best joke in this film.

Tom discovers Gregory is the last in a line of an order of Knights called the Falcons – which makes them sound like a witch-hunting Rugby Club.

Meanwhile the evil shape-changing queen witch Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore) has escaped the pit Gregory had nailed her inside. She wants revenge and to rule the world.

In seven days there’s a one-in-a-hundred-years blood moon whose mystic powers will make Malkin unstoppable. I’m still not sure why.

Tom and Gregory are assisted by the indestructible and much maligned manservant Tusk (John DeSantis). This loyal and hard-working creature is the butt of a cruel running gag about his looks.

The only other humour comes from Bridges habitually boozing. There are only so many jokes you can steal from a classic Western after all.

En route to thwart Malkin they meet the comely Alice (Alicia Vikander) who is accused of being a witch. She looks fetching in leather trousers and makes a pretty pair with Barnes, even if they struggle to establish a rapport.

With a young apprentice called to adventure by a magi to rescue a princess, this is a sorry trudge through the familiar tropes of The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

The bones of the perfunctory plot are fleshed out with impressive CGI and weighty production design. ‘Legends and nightmares are real’ claims Gregory.

But due to the lack of rounded characters or careful crafting of a convincing universe, we never engage with the story.

It can’t be bothered to invent it’s own encompassing mythology. A ghast is called a level six creature as if this was a game of Dungeons and Dragons – but who knows what the other levels are.

There’s no attempt to fill in cultural details such as history, geography or language. Plus a lack of place names and no relationship between locations.

The major conurbation is ‘The Walled City’. It’s two days travel from somewhere but we’re never told where. There’s no coherent sense of distance or time. Everyone simply moves and arrives.

Bridges delivers a wildly eccentric performance, pitching his accent somewhere between Tom Hardy as Bane in the The Dark Knight Rises and Sean Connery in anything – though most likely The Name of the Rose.

Julianne Moore is distracted or possibly bored. When she and Bridges square off I giggled at the memory of their appearance in 1998’s The Big Lebowski – particularly the Gutterballs scene. It’s more fun and inspired than anything here.

Kit Harington wanders through as Gregory’s former apprentice Billy Bradley. He appears in a tavern scene which may or may not be inspired by Val Kilmer in Tombstone.

Assassins and inquisitors rub shoulders in the shabbily thought out mythology. There’s lots of sword fights and incinerations and people shapeshift into bears, leopards and dragons.

At different times Tom is attacked by a giant mole and a possessed suit of armour, but only because current Hollywood lore demands an action scene every ten minutes. Neither episode contribute to plot or character development in any meaningful way.

One four-armed swordsman recalls the work of the great Ray Harryhausen but this shambolic load of warlocks lacks the charm and narrative clarity of his brilliant work.

★☆☆☆☆

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

Director: Francis Lawrence (2014)

She’s scared and angry but Jennifer Lawrence fights on as reluctant warrior Katniss in this third, darker episode of the spectacular sci-fi series.

Mockingjay resumes the story with rebels led by President Coin (Julianne Moore) regrouped in a huge hidden bunker in the desolate District 13.

The Hunger Games arena, where children fought to the death, has been destroyed and a popular uprising was crushed by soldiers from the Capitol.

Coin, whose silver hair and two-faced nature mirror despotic leader President Snow (Donald Sutherland) wants Katniss to be the Mockingjay, a symbol of rebellion to inspire the repressed districts to rise against the Capitol.

Despite her fears, Katniss agrees. But only if her traitorous best friend Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is rescued and given a pardon.

As bombs and bodies start to fall, she and self-pitying soldier Gale (Liam Hemsworth) get closer and he volunteers to lead a daring mission.

Katniss is an expert archer and inspirational Games survivor yet, disappointingly, she barely fights because people are so protective. In the movie’s best sequence she is attacked when visiting a hospital.

There are speeches at the expense of action, the pace is thoughtful not thrilling and the story suffers as it is a bridge to the fourth and final film.

But the rebel base and splendid Capitol look excellent and Lawrence is so good that she makes ordinary actors like Hemsworth seem poor – and fabulous actors such as Sutherland and Moore look ordinary.

★★★☆☆