movie review

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2

Director: Chad Stahelski (2017) BBFC cert: 15

Keanu Reeves’ career blasts back into black as the sharp suited assassin in this blistering thriller sequel.

It’s a super stylish, extraordinarily violent action spectacular which offers non stop ferocious thrills.

With little fanfare the first film tore through cinema back in 2014, shooting up the box office charts and killing the competition.

It delivered a much needed hit for the ever popular star who was once again in great need of a boost. Reeves has been quite since then but there’s no ignoring him here.

We pick up where the first finished. Having avenged his pet dog and recovered his car from the Russian gangsters who stole it, the multilingual hitman, Wick, is once again looking forward to a peaceful retirement.

But Riccardo Scamarcio’s powerful Italian crime lord makes Wick and offer he can’t refuse. As the villainous, ambitious and smooth talking Santino D’Antonio, he needs his own sister assassinated and Wick owes him a blood debt.

However if Wick succeeds, it will allow D’Antonio to takeover not just Rome, but Wick’s hometown of New York.

The relentless barrage of action sequences combine the sleek sophistication of the James Bond series, the elegant sumptuous design of vampire flicks and the dynamic violence of Asian martial arts movies.

Enabling the short fused Wick to burn the candle at both ends is an armoury of guns, the most cool car, a wardrobe of gorgeous suits, and residence at a chain of high end hotels.

The inventive violence takes place on subways, in catacombs and at parties, ending with a showdown in Central Park.

British actors Ian McShane and Peter Serafinowicz add a touch of class. Reeves’ co-star from The Matrix movies, Laurence Fishburne brings the menace.

The Hollywood union of stuntmen has long agitated for an Oscar to be established to honour their work. If one were to be awarded, the stunt team here would be a shoo in for the thorough shoe-ing their members receive here.

For what they accomplish, I hope their danger money was on double time.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

The Lego Batman Movie

Director: Chris McKay (2017) BBFC cert: U

The Caped Crusader returns in a dynamically entertaining spin-off from 2014s The Lego Movie.

Brightly coloured, rapid fire and full of jolly stupidity, I was laughing from the first word of dialogue. And by the end of the opening titles I was a giggling mess.

The fun is powered by state-of-the-art animation and the camp sensibility of the 1960s Batman TV show. It lovingly sends up Batman’s many screen portrayals and his bromance with his arch-enemy The Joker.

In order to prove he is Batman’s number one bad guy, The Joker unleashes a horde of villains from Hollywood history. To save Gotham City from Godzilla, King Kong and err, Daleks, Batman must confront his greatest fear.

The crime fighter is once again voiced by a gravel-throated Will Arnett, who brings the superhero to life with a deliciously angry delivery.

It’s stuffed with super-enjoyable cameos and revamped Bat-tunes, and the Bat-cave is a treasure trove of potential merchandise for your kids to drool over.

They will love this daft Bat-adventure, I definitely did.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

20th Century Women

Director: Mike Mills (2017) BBFC cert: 15

My heart sank when I read this drama described as a ‘poignant love letter to the people who raise us’. But it’s even more insuffrable and indulgent than I feared.

Set against the US energy crisis of 1979, this is a mawkishly nostalgic  semi-autobiographical riff on the teenage life of writer/director, Mike Mills.

The charm of Annette Bening alone isn’t enough to enertain us. She stars as bohemian single mum, Dorothea, who lives in a dilapidated mansion.It is strewn with the director’s favourite records, books and clothes of the era.

She rents spare rooms to a hippie handyman and a forthright photographer, while inviting complete strangers to her frequent parties. Meanwhile her son Jamie has an unrequited crush on sulky girl next door, Julie.

Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning, Lucas Jade Zumann and Billy Crudup play the unlikely cohabitees. Indulgent and under plotted, it feels like an actors workshop.

Everyone spends their time over analysing each other’s behaviour and fertility and feminism are much discussed. Little else happens and most of what does occur is dull.

★★☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

Fences

Director: Denzel Washington (2017) BBFC cert: 12A

Hollywood heavy hitter Denzel Washington steps up to the plate to try for an Oscar home run in this compelling family drama.

Given this powerhouse performance as a baseball loving binman, a record equalling third Oscar win is well within Washington’s striking distance.

Nominated for best actor, Washington stars as a middle-aged illiterate with a prison record. Troy is restless with frustration at his life and has an authoritarian streak when dealing with his wife and children.

Despite preaching responsibility, Troy is revealed as a hypocrite capable of monstrous behaviour towards those closest to him.

Though Washington also produces and directs, this is far from a one-man show. He is merely the leader of an exceptional yet small cast. Russell Hornsby and Jovan Adepo are terrific as Troy’s sons.

Lyons is a broke musician, the result of a youthful relationship. Teenage Cory is an aspiring sportsman and the product of Troy’s marriage to Rose. Clinging to her hard earned dignity as Troy’s wife, the magnificently moving Viola Davis is deservedly favourite for the best supporting actress Oscar.

Young Saniyya Sidney appears briefly as Troy’s daughter Raynell. She raises a smile with her every word.

Washington directs with sensitive economy, barely moving from the main location of the backyard where Troy is erecting a fence. A lack of visual flair is more than compensated for by the actors’ ability and the virtuosity of the writing.

The script has been Oscar nominated for best Adapted Screenplay, and is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway play of the same name.

The setting is very specific to the African-American experience of 1950s Pittsburgh. However the story explores universal ideas of masculinity, marriage and fatherhood. This means it reaches across the fences of time, location and race to speak to the widest possible audience.

To paraphrase the famous baseball commentary, it’s a story that can be heard round the world.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

Director: Paul W. S. Anderson (2017) BBFC cert: 15

Brace yourself for a ferocious return to the apocalyptic wonderland of Alice and the Red Queen.

The sixth in this zombie action franchise of variable quality, this demented trip improves on all but the brilliant first Resident Evil, which came out way back in 2002. It follows on directly from 2012’s Resident Evil: Retribution.

As Alice, Milla Jovovich once again teams up with her favourite writer and director, Paul W. S. Anderson. The talented Geordie is also the star’s husband and their daughter Ever Gabo Anderson, plays the scheming Red Queen.

So Alice sets off to the giant underground bunker, the Hive, where her adventures first began. Among the many threats facing Alice, are mutant pterodactyls and an army of rabid zombies.

With a love of the material feeding his down to earth showmanship, Anderson fills the screen with many inventive action sequences, all set to a thunderous soundtrack.

Refusing to worry about what he clearly considers to be silly and inconsequential things, such as plot holes, Anderson powers over them at a frantic pace, dragging us along behind him.

It’s not hard to detect the positive influence of British cult comic 2000AD in the sardonic response to the gleeful showers of ultra-violence.

The principal creatives claim this will be the series finale. However Sigourney Weaver starred in the Alien series at forty eight years old, and this year Kate Beckinsale starred in the latest of her Underworld films at forty three. Jovovich is only forty one, so age is very much on her side.

And with this degree of adrenalin fuelled entertainment, I hope this isn’t the final chapter.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Loving

Director: Jeff Nichols (2017) BBFC cert: 12A

There’s no beginning to the drama in this earnest portrait of the lives at the centre a constitutional storm.

It concerns the 1967 US Supreme Court decision to invalidate the prohibition of interracial marriage.

Sadly there’s an over emphasis on the extreme ordinariness of Richard and Mildred Loving. Joel Edgerton is strong and silent. Ruth Negga is quietly dignified.

It’s a wonder why Negga has been Oscar nominated for the performance, as it seems to owe as much to the directors instruction as to her interpretation of the character.

Marrying legally in Washington DC, they’re arrested at home in Virginia where the law doesn’t recognise their mixed-race union.

A civil rights liberties group employs an ambitious lawyer to appeal their case. Years pass, the case grinds on and the finely crafted realism of writer/director Jeff Nichols leaves no domestic detail unturned.

I understand the point of the film is to offer a portrait of the private couple at the centre of – and yet removed from – a constitutional crisis. But the absence of clever courtroom wrangling, or sensationalist scenes of violence leaves us aching for some creative licence. Who needs to go to the cinema to be told how dull real life can be?

Loving is an eloquent plea for tolerance and equality. They have my sympathy, admiration and sometimes my interest, but I was far from loving it.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Gold

Director: Stephen Gaghan (2017) BBFC cert: 15

 

Hollywood golden boy Matthew McConaughey was clearly mining for an Oscar when he signed up for this knockabout adventure about a gold prospector.

Dressing down his leading man looks helped him nab a statuette in 2014 for Dallas Buyers Club, but the trick isn’t going to work this time.

As badly dressed Kenny Wells, he sports bad teeth, a balding pate, and a very proud paunch.

Kenny teams up with Michael, an enigmatic geologist, played by the dashing Edgar Ramirez.

Risking bankruptcy, malaria and a serious bromance to look for gold in Borneo, the pair strike it rich but back home they discover no one can be trusted.

Sadly the film can’t decide if it wants to be a jolly heist caper, an indictment of Wall Street greed or a celebration of the American pioneering spirit.

Gold has failed to find an audience in the US, so its prospects for turning a profit are low.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Christine

Director: Antonio Campos (2017) BBFC cert: 15

 

Astonishingly overlooked by the awards season, Brit acting royalty Rebecca Hall gives a superb performance in this serious and sensitive portrait of a real life suicide.

Christine Chubbuck was a highly intelligent twenty nine year old American television news reporter, who had a history of depression. She shocked the nation by ending her own life, live on air, on July 15, 1974.

We see how a collision of domestic and career disappointments prompt the desperate and provocative act. Hall is tremendous at suggesting how uneasy Chubbuck is in her own skin, her life is full of prickly relations and social misjudgements.

The balanced script raises many issues relevant today, including how women best pursue a family life and a career, attitudes in the workplace, the access to appropriate health care, and much more.

Fashions are unflattering, the off-screen office politics convincing, and the attention to period detail of the analog electronics are a treat for technology nerds.

Chubbuck’s demeanour creates a barrier between herself and her acquaintances, but also between herself and the audience. So while she retains our sympathy, we remain distant to her, preventing us from engaging fully with her plight.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Hacksaw Ridge

Director: Mel Gibson (2017) BBFC cert: 15

Disgraced star Mel Gibson battles his way back to career success with this storming Second World War drama which has been nominated for six Oscars.

Gibson’s well publicised personal problems seemed to have shot his Hollywood popularity to pieces. But having spent time out of the firing line of bad publicity, this is a rollicking return to the filmmaking frontline for the devout Catholic.

The Oscar winning director of 1995’s Braveheart takes a barely believable story of real life heroism and transforms it into an apocalyptic account of faith under fire.

In the first half Gibson provides a treacle coated view small town America, and in the second he blasts us with the brimstone of battle.

Brit actor Andrew Garfield carries the film with open faced charm and innocence as Desmond Doss. Despite being a pacifist Christian, the conscientious objector won the US Medal of Honour in the war against the Japanese.

After a Tom Sawyer-ish upbringing in rural Virginia, Desmond becomes engaged to a pretty nurse called Dorothy. Teresa Palmer and Garfield share a sweet rapport in sentimental scenes which seem to last too long. But the astute Gibson is simply softening us up for the fireworks to follow.

Desmond signs up as a combat medic but he refuses to learn how to shoot. On the Pacific island of Okinawa, the platoon buckle under a blistering barrage. The combat rivals the famous ferocity of the opening scene in Spielberg’s war classic, Saving Private Ryan (1998).

With Desmond’s suffering persecution for his beliefs, his air of martyrdom and determination to succeed in an overwhelmingly hostile environment, it’s hard not to read his journey as an allegory for Gibson’s personal tribulations.

And rather than being a plea by the director for absolution for his misdemeanours, this is Gibson forgiving Hollywood for casting him out. And he does it with a superbly crafted, finely acted and tremendously entertaining film.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Denial

Director: Mick Jackson (2016) BBFC cert: 12A

Book yourself a grandstand seat at the Old Bailey for this courtroom drama of international importance. Smartly crafted from a real case, it provides plenty of evidence that great writing, performance and direction make for gripping cinema.

Brit actress Rachel Weisz sports red hair and a US accent as forthright Jewish university lecturer, Deborah Lipstadt. It’s an impassioned performance fuelled by an unbending sense of moral certainty, full of  sharp intelligence, wit and determination.

There’s a very American feel to proceedings, with an emphasis on the sanctity of free speech and the virtues of jogging. Lawyers of course, are celebrated.

Deborah is forced to to come to London to defend herself when she is sued for libel by British historian and holocaust denier, David Irving.

Timothy Spall is magnificent as the self-taught and social climbing bigot on the make. Endowing him with charm, dignity and sincerity, Spall makes Irving’s reprehensible  arguments appear dangerously and falsely reasonable and seductive.

The case hinges on Irving’s denial of  the true purpose of Auschwitz. He claims the death camp in Nazi occupied Poland during the Second World War wasn’t geared for industrial genocide. The cost of Deborah losing will be Holocaust denial being legitimised by a court of law, potentially allowing for a legally backed downgrading of Nazi atrocities.

Various Characters are denied their voice in court, not least the vociferous Deborah who is frustrated at having to allow her barrister, Richard, to speak on her behalf. Tom Wilkinson is wry, irrascible and fond of red wine as her much experienced advocate.

There’s a strong supporting cast throughout, even if the presence of Andrew Scott and Mark Gatiss from TV’s Sherlock occasionally lend the air of superior Sunday evening TV fare.

However a winter visit to Auschwitz offers some welcome visual gravitas and underlines the utter importance of the case. And when the verdict comes in, there’s no denying the audience is the winner.

★★★★☆