THE HATEFUL EIGHT

Say what you want about his handling of race1 or his cribbing from other filmmakers2, but one thing's certain about Quentin Tarantino: love him or hate him3, he’s one hell of a showman.

That’s perhaps never been clearer than with the recent hubbub surrounding the screening of The Hateful Eight.4 Not only is it not being shown at several notable UK cinema chains, including Cineworld5, but the Odeon Leicester Square6 is currently being dominated by an Ultra Panavision 70 “Roadshow” version of the film, which includes an interlude scored by illustrious film composer Ennio Morricone7, a twenty-minute intermission8, and a program.9

Running a potentially bum-numbing 187 minutes all in, the program puts this format of The Hateful Eight — apparently Tarantino’s preferred10 — in a pantheon that includes the likes of Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind, and Cleopatra.11 In any case, it’s the sort of film-going experience I've not seen in my lifetime and one perfectly suited to the grandiose theatrical style of the film at hand.

Opening amid the snow and sunlight of 1870s Wyoming12, The Hateful Eight takes its time in drawing together its characters. The natural beauty13 contrasts with the (exquisitely snappy) human ugliness that is to unfold. First, we have John Ruth AKA The Hangman (a wonderfully whiskery and belligerent Kurt Russell)14, and his prisoner, the leering, foul-mouthed Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh)15, making their way across the landscape in a stagecoach that John Wayne himself would have been proud to be shot at in.16

Shortly they are joined by one Major Marquis Warren (a sharp-dressed, sharp-eyed Samuel L. Jackson), a fellow bounty-hunter and former Union Officer with a bounty of his own to collect.17 If that weren’t enough they18 are also joined by Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins)19, a rambling, vaguely goofy ex-militiaman and supposed Sheriff of Red Rock, their shared destination. Desperate to get out of the encroaching blizzard, the coach’s occupants — and driver — seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, an isolated stopover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnRbXn4-Yis

It’s here we finally encounter20 the other four that make up the title group: Bob The Mexican (Demián Bichir channeling Eli Wallach)21; the impeccably mannered, improbably named Oswaldo Mowbray (Tim Roth, reunited with Tarantino after twenty-three years)22; “Cow Puncher” Joe Gage (Michael Madsen)23; and, last but not least, Confederate General Sanford “Sandy” Smithers (a wonderfully tetchy Bruce Dern).

Once the full bunch are neatly confined to the Haberdashery24 for the duration, The Hateful Eight begins smoothly switching gears, transitioning from a history-driven commentary on some classic Western subjects — namely the Civil War and atrocities committed during which25 — to a parlor-room murder mystery26 to a bloody climax that enjoyably apes much of Tarantino’s past work27; even if the whole thing never quite narratively pays off.28

Past glories and familiar pleasures these may be (including the ad absurdum bandying of a certain racial slur), but the film feels vitally alive. It’s just a shame when that the finely-tuned mechanism begins to wind down and character agendas come to fore the focus swings inexorably away from verbiage and towards violence.29 While the film’s title is obviously a homage to John Sturges’ iconic men-on-a-mission movie30, this is Tarantino at his broadest and most literary: Murder on the Orient Express meets Elmore Leonard with a healthy dose of Grand Guignol.31

Jackson continues to be the perfect cinematic embodiment of wily indignation — his hackles go up, nostrils flare, eyes widen, and you know someone is getting trampled.32 Warrens’ gleefully nasty monologue to the unrepentently bigoted Sanford about his outrageous33 treatment of a would-be headhunter is spellbinding; the camera pedestals up to crotch level as Dern’s eyes reflect dawning horror. “Starting to see pictures, ain't ya?”

Meanwhile, Russell’s interrogative, unexpectedly sentimental Ruth stirs the pot34 while Leigh adds a spiteful spice to the stew35, and the rest of the cast bubble along nicely, popping to the surface as the script demands. While it's become a cliche to say this of settings, Minnie’s Haberdashery is a character in its own right: wide, expansive, full of nooks, corners, and potential murder weapons36 — the sort of space, if you have to be indoors, that lends itself to the widescreen format.37

In the end, though, The Hateful Eight boils down to wit and blood (often in tandem)38 and a few under-cooked notions about racial relations in Reconstruction Era America.39 Self-indulgent? Certainly.40 Revisionist? Undoubtedly. But with apparently only two films left till self-imposed retirement, it’s hard to think how Tarantino will top this magnificently abominable spectacle.

The Hateful Eight gets an 8 out of 10


SPOILERS!

1 As two of the foremost debaters of race politics in modern cinema it’s a shame — if perhaps somewhat inevitable — that Tarantino and Spike Lee should be permanently at loggerheads. Maybe Samuel L. Jackson could arrange a sit-down.
2 Working my way through the Godard collection has reminded me just how much he owes to the likes of Vivre Sa Vie, from which Mia Wallace’s speech in Pulp Fiction about comfortable silences is lifted almost wholesale. There’s also, in the case of The Hateful Eight, Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence and Robert Altman’s Mr. & Mrs. Miller (as two other wintry Western); the latter of which I owe a debt to Rob Daniel at Electric Shadows (www.electric-shadows.com) for pointing out.
3 I kind of have mixed feelings about him personally. He’s a loudmouth and a braggart, but he’s generally pretty with it; the worst you could accuse him is being a purveyor of insensitive cine-literate schlock. I sorta comes down to what The Dude says about Walter in The Big Lebowski: “You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole.”
4 A troubled production from the off, The Hateful Eight was actually canned for a bit after the script leaked. Tarantino only decided to go ahead with it after a promising staged reading, though he did revise the ending a bit; more on which later.
5 After Cineworld put out a general statement to this effect — “"Sadly we haven't been able to come to an agreement with the distributor which means it won't be shown at Cineworld” — the distributors in question, Entertainment Film, actually released their own press statement, which put the blame squarely at Cineworld’s door and, in a hilariously ballsy move, apologized to Unlimited card-holders for the inconvenience.
6 The apparent bone of contention between the two was apparently that Cineworld wanted the roadshow version screened at Picturehouse Central — which seats 344 — instead of Odeon Leicester Square — which seats 1,680 and was packed out at the screening I attended. There’s may be more to the story than this, but, if not, way to through your toys out the pram, Cineworld.
7 Which includes unused excerpts from his score for John Carpenter’s The Thing (strangely appropriate given the parallels). In any case, it proves an inspired choice: the evocative use of strings creates a genuine sense of dread straight from the overture. Glad that Tarantino and Morricone were able to kiss and make up after the former swore never to work with the latter again. It couldn’t have hurt that The Hateful Eight is refreshingly light on the anachronistic soundtrack; only a touch of Roy Orbison and The White Stripes to leaven the mood.
8 Which was nice. I got ice cream.
9 And only £20 a ticket. Given going to any screening at the OLS will set you back £15, it’s well worth the few extra quid, if just for the augmented experience.
10 While I respect a filmmaker with strong ideas about how their films should be viewed, I’ll confess to having been tempted to write this review as though I’d only watched The Hateful Eight on my phone… as an illegal download… on the Tube… in vertical… and then Tweet it at him. I may yet.
11 Or, as the program puts it, “pays homage to and recreates the grand film exhibition style popularized in the 1950s and ‘60s and that brought audiences to theaters with the promise of a special event.”
12 The version of the screenplay that’s available online for Oscar consideration (http://twcguilds.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/H8_SCRIPT_CleanedUp_Final1.pdf) puts it “six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War”, which puts The Hateful Eight at least a decade and a bit after the events of Django Unchained; more on this later.
13 The opening shots — where the uneven snow drifts mirror the broken clouds overhead and snow piles up beneath a stone-hewn roadside crucifix — are breathtaking. Come Oscar time cinematographer Robert Richardson’s gonna likely find himself facing off against Emmanuel Lubezki for the similarly snowy The Revenant. Given Lubezki shot in twelve countries, freezing conditions, using all-natural light, while The Hateful Eight was shot largely in a slightly chilly cabin in Colorado, it could make for an awkward night if Richardson walks away with the trophy. Still, at least the venue will be heated.
14 Russell’s casting would seem to be another callback to The Thing, which, along with Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino cites the film’s key influences.
15 Along with her moving vocal performance as the painfully insecure Lisa in Anomalisa (Charlie Kauffman’s upcoming stop-motion animation), 2016 may be the year that Leigh starts getting the public recognition she deserves after years of sterling supporting roles.
16 The cinematic slaughtering of Native Americans may be the least problematic part of Wayne’s legacy. For more on exactly how Duke was a louse watch Trumbo. Watch Trumbo regardless. It's got Bryan Cranston as Dalton Trumbo via Foghorn Leghorn and is generally a lot of fun.
17 Major Marquis Warren is just the latest in the pantheon of great screen presences that have come about courtesy of Jackson-Tarantino. His first appearance here, sat sidesaddle astride a stack of three frozen corpses, is the stuff actor’s dreams are made of. Jackson even gets an obscure little callback (perhaps unintentional) to Pulp Fiction when, with Tim Roth present, he asks someone to be calm. The fact that Mr. Blonde from Reservoir Dogs is kicking around makes it all the more meta. Throw in the fact that Marquis’ sartorial choices — yellow lapels, red tie — vaguely recall Jamie Foxx’s powder blue suit in Django — which The Hateful Eight was initially conceived of as a sequel to — and that’s more or less “a bingo”.
18 “They” also includes the stage driver O.B. (James Parks). Given he’s not a member of the titular octet every time he ventures out into the snow I was sure he wasn’t coming back.
19 Who is finally starting to be recognised as a major player after years of first-grade work on TV; most recently as silver-tongued career criminal Boyd Crowder in Justified. Presumably the fact that Justified was inspired by Elmore Leonard who was a notable influence on Tarantino’s style gave Goggins some useful preparation.
20 After the better part of an hour of travel mainly given over to conversations ranging from Civil War atrocities to correspondence with the late President Lincoln.
21 Brilliantly/bizarrely, Bichir apparently taught himself to play piano in order to do justice to a scene where Bob painstakingly single-fingers out Silent Night on the piano. Admittedly it’s an important moment.
22 As a delightfully smarmy supposed hangman pontificating on the need for dispassion in dispensing justice, Roth is something of a scene-stealer; making the most of a supporting role clearly written for Christoph Waltz, who, one supposes, was busy making Spectre. Let’s hope the presumed difference in pay compensates for the definite artistic gulf.
23 Who, as time passes, increasingly resembles Mickey Rourke. All the more impressive, Madsen did it without decades of cumulative plastic surgery.
24 Having given us the lie of the land upon their arrival — and indeed, staked them out — it’s a shame that the film never returns to such exotic locales as “the outside privvy” and “the barn”.
25 While very much “on the side” of Warren, Tarantino’s script doesn’t dismisses his counterpoint— Lost Causer Mannix —outright. Burning black settlements in rejection of unconditional surrender is certainly an atrocity, but Marquis certainly isn’t on the side of the angels. Even Sandy Smithers gets some feeble pathos when he plaintively enquires about the fate of his lost son.
26 The Hateful Eight has been called Agatha Christie with guns, but the film never invests in its clues. Who dropped the jelly bean? Why is the door latch broken? When the answers do come about it’s neat, but that’s about it.
27 Let’s just say it’s not the first time someone has ever been gut-shot. Or the last that we're likely see Red Apple tobacco.
28 Returning from the interval to find Tarantino himself narrating another look at the previous scene is a touch disconcerting. Then again, elegance and simplicity have been falling on the list of Tarantino’s narrative concerns. They likely now sit somewhere below “chapter headings”.
29 The mistrust and tension that’s present straight from start means it was always likely that x or y might catch a bullet. I just occasionally found myself wishing it all meant a bit more. Then again, I didn’t complain when the eponymous beastie was chowing down indiscriminately in The Thing, so maybe it’s a human agency thing.
30 And true enough, each of the eight claims to be on a mission: Ruth is taking Domergue to hang; Warren is cashing in corpses; Mannix is en route to his signing in; Bob is manning the store till the owners return; Mowbray is returning to duty as the Red Rock hangman; Gage is heading to visit his mother on the other side of the mountain; and Smithers is going to commemorate his son. Their real agendas are quite another matter to unpick.
31 Heads detonate, blood is vomited (in gouts). Effects gurus Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero certainly earned their salt on this one.
32 As the film’s gun-toting sleuth — pistolero Poirot, Magnum-wielding Marple, etc., etc. — he’s definitely got no compunction about dealing justice before all the facts are in. As he says to Ruth the Hangman — so called ‘cause he always brings his bounty in alive — “Nobody said [the job’s] supposed to be that hard, either!”
33 Morally and just, you know, generally.
34 The other Western Russell’s in this year, Bone Tomahawk, promises to be even more explicitly gory. My review should be winging its way shortly to one site or another.
35 Tarantino revealed to Christopher Nolan (of all people) that he wrote a draft of the screenplay from Daisy’s POV alone, just to justify all the brutal shit he puts her through.
36 I kept waiting for someone to get spiked with that hammer they keep using to nail up the front door. Spoiler alert: no one does. :(
37 I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself the king of infinite space if I had Tarantino to film it. When he suddenly cuts to a tracking shot from above the ceiling, looking down at the characters through the loose boards, there’s a release of tension I didn’t realise was present.
38 I refer you to the previous footnote when I quote Ruth in saying, “Now, Daisy, I want us to work out a signal system of communication. When I elbow you real hard in the face, that means: shut up.” In this case, the punctuation came before the sentence.
39 There’s a half-baked commentary on racial harmony in there somewhere. With the bandits having already taken out Minnie’s idyllic Little House on the Prairie/United Colors of Benetton-style former occupants (including a cheery, if out-of-place Zoe Bell), black and white can only come together — notably while dying — to string up someone worse. Who that’s meant to be, though, who knows.
40 Much like this review you may think.

AN INSTITUTIONAL FAILINGS DOUBLE BILL (SPOTLIGHT & THE BIG SHORT)

Sorry it's been so long since I last published - it's been a busy couple of months. I'm trying out a new thing as part of this double bill. The first review has footnotes; the second does not. Let me know which style you prefer and I'll stick to it from hereon out.

 

REVIEW: Spotlight

As a drama about child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, Tom McCarthy’s latest, Spotlight, has a lot to do with second chances. For those involved in the story, namely the titular investigative at the Boston Globe, it’s a second chance to take on an injustice that had gone undiscussed for more than a quarter of a century.1 For McCarthy it’s also a chance to once more touch upon a grand modern theme — the decline of print journalism — that the fifth season of The Wire arguably shortchanged in favor of personal axe-grinding on the part of show-runner David Simon.2

While the cover-up would seem to have been something of an open secret for many years, it wasn’t until the arrival of new editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber)3 in 2001 that the Globe deigned to really look into the allegations. A New York Jew with no skin in the game, so to speak4, the soft-spoken Baron seizes upon a small column as catalyst for an in-depth Spotlight investigation. Against an organization that thinks in centuries, though, it’s understandably an uphill struggle.

Led by the shrewd, craggy veteran, Walter “Robbie” Robinson (Michael Keaton)5, the team is comprised of well-meaning pain-in-the-ass Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo)6, the tireless Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), family man Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James); and, off to one side, the sceptical, even oppositional supervisor Ben Bradlee (John Slattery). All lapsed Catholics to one degree or another,7 they’ve spent their lives in close proximity to the Church and its representatives. but even they aren’t prepared for the level of deliberate blindness they must confront.

This can be seen in the guise of two lawyers, litigators to be precise: the amiable Eric MacLeish (an engagingly slimy Billy Crudup), who seems to have made negotiating under-the-table settlements with the Church into something of a cottage industry8, and would-be ally Mitchell Garabedian (an intense, shout-y Stanley Tucci)9, who refuses to even let them take notes. In a city where the judge might well inquire what parish you belong to, he has every reason to be paranoid.



Within the broader scope of these systemic abuses, Spotlight also singles out heart-rending individual stories. There’s the hard-knocks former Southie kid, shortly to become father, who was abused when at his most vulnerable, and a bashful gay man who relates how a priest convinced him to play strip poker — “Of course I lost”, he says with a sad little smile. These are the stories that, up until the Boston Globe’s investigation, were largely ignored. “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one”, says Garabedian, and the paper bares some culpability in this.10

With its crisp yet faded cinematography from Masanobu "Masa" Takayanagi (Silver Linings Playbook, Warrior), Howard Score’s solemn piano score, and masterful performances, Spotlight deftly handles complex moral and social issues. The note that Carroll sticks on the fridge — a warning to his kids about the pedophile down the street — over time gets buried beneath layers of pictures, menus, shopping lists; all the detritus of everyday life. As images go, it’s a sober, considered one, utterly fitting with the film that surrounds it.

A lot of great cinema has leaped from the wellspring of investigative journalism. There is something inherently dramatic about the search for The Truth (or at least a truth), especially when it goes hand-in-hand with important real-world issues. The best of the genre manage to balance the scope and complexity of the case – case and point: All the President’s Men’s handling of the Watergate scandal in – with the more basic human element. Spotlight is just such a film.

Spotlight gets 9 out of 10

1 The film opens at a police station circa 1976 where representatives of the Church, in conjunction with an Assistant DA, are participating in hushing up one such incident. “I guess the Father was ‘helping out’”, a stocky old-timer wryly comments to a redheaded rookie as a likely sex offender is ushered into the back of a snow-frosted black sedan and away from prosecution. It's a scene whose cinematography and corruption would feel equally at home in Black Mass.
2 In it McCarthy, also an actor, played Scott Templeton, a self-righteous fabulist whose largely concocted stories earn him career advancement and even a Pulitzer Prize.
3 Wonderfully understated in mutton-chops and wire-frame specs.
4 As Spotlight team member Carroll says, “The new editor of the Boston Globe is an unmarried man of the Jewish faith who hates baseball” — and why shouldn’t he be?
5 A small but well-crafted character may seem like a step back after his extravagant leading man performance in Birdman — which I would argue deserved the Oscar over Eddie Redmayne’s technically brilliant but strangely unaffected Stephen Hawking — but it’s great just to see him acting again. Next up, Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian (or not, as one might hope).
6 Who continues to prove himself the most dependable character actor of his generation: Zodiac, The Kids Are All Right, Shutter Island, Foxcatcher, Infinitely Polar Bear. Twitchy and impassioned, and again sporting an unflattering barnet, nobody does relatably tortured humanity quite like him.
7 One of Spotlight’s most emotionally raw moments comes when Rezendes, angry and frustrated, reveals the hope he had held of eventually returning to the Church — a reminder that, for all its culpability and wrongdoing, of the comfort and security the institution represents to many people.
8 Though the film is wise enough to give these dealings another dimension.
9 Cagey and hostile, Garabedian would be immensely unlikable were it not for the plain-dealing bluntness Tucci helps to make borderline endearing. 
10 Truth, meanwhile, fails as a film about journalism precisely because it fails to hold its journalists to a higher standard. By taking investigatory shortcuts the 60 Minutes team blew their investigation into the allegations that President George Bush had gone AWOL from the Texas National Guard and, as such, essentially let him off the hook. The film prefers to focus on corporate interference and the half-baked notion they may have been set up, and can’t help but feel evasive for it.

REVIEW: The Big Short

You wouldn't think the recent global financial crisis would be the stuff of comedy, but, directed and co-written by frequent Will Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and with an all-star cast, including Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, and Ryan Gosling, The Big Short makes for a highly entertaining (and instructive) study of greed, fraud, and the three groups of people who sought to profit from the meltdown before it happened. 

When hedge fund manager and former medical doctor Michael Burry, Phd. (a yet-again transformed Bale) discovers that America’s booming housing market is built on a bedrock of bad loans, he decides to bet against it through a series of credit default swaps — a whole new type of deal that will compensate him if and when the number of mortgage owners defaulting hits critical mass and the whole thing collapses. Since no one else can foresee that happening, the banks are all-too eager to take his money.

As a result, shark-like investor Jared Vennett (a dark-eyed, oh-so-slick Gosling) can smell money in the water and, seeing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity get seriously rich, ropes in trader Mark Baum (a fuming Carrell) and his team into putting up the cash. Ignorance may be bliss, but they’re using the knowledge to beat the market while there’s still a market to beat.

From Gosling’s slick opening narration about the birth of modern banking — and frequent breaking of the fourth wall throughout the film’s two-hour-ten-minute run-time (“I never hung out with these guys. I had fashion friends” — to its use of of handy popup definitions for financial jargon and celebrity info-dumps (see: Margot Robbie explaining subprime mortgages from a bubble bath), The Big Short manages to convey the highly convoluted information necessary to tell it story in a form that’s not only bearable but fascinating.

It's all the more impressive that this mockumentary style doesn’t detract from the drama, but instead serves to heighten it, making it perfectly clear the exact stakes at play



It takes a guy with a glass eye and a Supercuts haircut to figure out that the bubble — which as Michael’s boss snarkily notes, as a bubble, no one can see — is about to burst. Characterized by distracted mutters and the occasional crooked smile, Michael may be superior and uncommunicative, but he’s also the only one checking the numbers, the only one who sees the situation can’t last.

Nobody that is except Carrell's Mark.

A cynical man made angry by tragedy, Mark interrupts a support meting to rant about the corruption he sees every day. A rogue element, work at a bank but not for a bank, his team — including comically dour Hamish Linklater, Jeremy Strong, and Rafe Spall as an optimistic foodie — initially think it sounds simultaneously too good to believe and too terrible to comprehend.

Cutaways to clouds moving over Wall Street and shake your money-maker music videos may seem like distractions, but they lend to the air of distraction that suffuses The Big Short. Mark realizes that the world economy might collapse over sushi with a smirking shit in an expensive suit — the red lighting and ambient Sweet Child of Mine only lending to the surreal nightmarishness of the situation. There’s a definite “final days of the Roman Empire” feel to the Securities Forum that takes place at Caesar’s Palace and, for all the technical jargon, the money, it seems, is definitely dumb.

Frat bro mortgage lenders who target cash rich strippers looking to invest in property and leave the income section blank; credit rating agencies scared to refuse to give the bank’s the credit ratings they desire; and finance journalists refusing to support on the situation for fear of what they might lose -  the whole system is rigged and the whole things about to come tumbling down.


There are no obvious heroes here. Even the “little guys” — two plucky young investors from Boulder, Jamie (Finn Witrock) and Charlie (John Magaro) — are ultimately out for a buck. The first guys to undercut the AA tranche — don’t worry, this will make a surprising amount of sense — their mentor, retired banker turned self-sufficient farmer farmer Ben Rickert (cameo-ing producer Brad Pitt) solemnly reminds them, it’s ordinary people who will pay the price here. The film offers up the sobering statistic that when employment goes up 1% 40,000 people die.

Making a recce down the Florida, the team find whole upmarket communities abandoned, floors littered with bills; the only ones left behind are those trying to scrape out a living amidst the devastation — like the guy who discovers his landlord is a) defaulting and b) possibly a literal dog.

The Big Short connects abstract financial issues to real lives, real stakes. It’s a very masculine world, one populated by absent husbands and fathers — Marisa Tomei appears briefly as Mark’s wife, Melissa Leo as an (ironically) near-blind ratings agency rep  — where everyone knows enough to think they’re smart, to think they’ve got it made, and no one can see that the sky is falling in.

At best willfully naive, worse negligent, or worst outright crooks — encouraging people to buy, buy, buy even as stock goes into free-fall — the film is a desperate plea for intelligence and awareness; that we listen to Chicken Little.

As the maxim  says, “The truth is like poetry, and most people fucking hate poetry”; The Big Short simply gives it a rhythm.  When it comes to turning a dry, stats-driven narrative into an A-Grade dramedy, this is Moneyball standard stuff. Btw, if you’re looking for a stock tip, Michael Burry is now investing exclusively in water — and if that doesn’t fill you with fear, you haven’t been paying attention.

The Big Short gets 8.5 out of 10

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

  
"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."

After the prequels more or less managed to strip the gloss off the franchise1, it seems apt that the opening lines of Star Wars: The Force Awakens refer to a sort of redemption.2 This long-awaited, almost mythical follow-up to the Holy Trilogy3 has the added advantage/burden of returning to the three characters we actually care about; namely Luke4, Han, and Leia. It’s smart, therefore, that writer-director/godfather J.J. Abrams5 front-loads the film with the new cast, about whom we will quickly have to feel the same way — and luckily we do.6

On the hero front, we have Finn (John Boyega, Attack the Block) as a conflicted former stormtrooper7, steely yet vulnerable scavenger Rey (newcomer Daisy Ridley)8, and ace pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis)9. As villains, The Force Awakens serves up prissy demagogue General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson, Ex Machina)10, the chrome-suited Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie, Game of Thrones)11, and, the best of the bunch, Sith Lord Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, While We're Young)— like Darth Vader with added temper tantrums.12

 

Even at 135-minutes long, The Force Awakens barely lets up: within twenty minutes of getting the show on the road, it’s already served up a a brutal massacre, a daring escape, a crash landing. Bringing state-of-the-art CGI to classic space adventure scenarios13, it gives us a world that feels at once new and familiar — and unlike George Lucas’ later tampering with Episodes IV-VI, it crucially feels busy rather than cluttered14. As with the best of the franchise it also boils down to what is essentially a mythic family-driven saga… in space!15

Striking a balance between breakneck action16 and moments of serenity17, The Force Awakens gets a lot right before even getting to the original cast. Harrison Ford’s Han is that bit more cantankerous18, his relationship with Leia has an element of sadness to it19, but when John Williams’ magnificent score rises up and rouses the soul all of a sudden its 1983 again20. The film isn’t without originality21, but it feels largely like a riff on what’s come before.22 This is encapsulated in the figure of new droid BB-8 — equal parts R2-D2, Sphero, and Wall-E.23

True, the film skips over more than one important plot beat24 and the second act could be accused of going through the motions25, but as a chance to see a somewhat more grizzled Corellian smuggler banter exasperatedly with a remarkably well-aged Wookie, The Force Awakens is mana from Bespin. Even if the plot is somewhat by-the-numbers26, the film gets the characters exactly right. No politics (for better or worse)27, just pure adventure cinema.28 It’s everything you might hope for, and profoundly satisfying for it, even if there’s nothing truly groundbreaking.29 

SUMMARY: Star Wars: The Force Awakens recaptures much of the old magic30, but leaves it to future installments to take the risks. On third viewing31, it gets an 8 out of 10.

MAJOR SPOILERS

1 As with The Two Jakes and The Godfather: Part III, Episodes I-III don’t necessarily taint their successors, but the universe is indefinably ever so slightly worse for their existence.
2 It’s always nice to see Max Von Sydow (The Seventh Seal, The Exorcist) in work and his presence here is less distracting than that of Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Kate Fleetwood (Lady Macbeth to Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth) as one-line extras at Starkiller Base.
3 Whether or not you’re a bonafide fan, it’s hard to argue against Star Wars and Indiana Jones as perhaps the definitive action-adventure series. The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, therefore, stands as testament to what can happen when your long-awaited, almost mythical follow-up goes wrong.
4 Though Luke is almost entirely absent from proceedings. Star Wars: Episode VII could equally have been subtitled “The Search for Luke”. When he does finally arrives, though, it’s a doozy.
5 Abrams’ involvement would seem to be akin to that of Joss Whedon’s figurehead role in the MCU. Call Disney unimaginative but they know a good recipe when they see it.
6 It’s to The Force Awakens’ benefit that they don’t simply fall into the archetypes established by their predecessors — hero, rogue, process — but are more like combinations. Boyega’s Finn, for instance, may be a heroic everyman but he’s also got a dark past. It’s a neat twist.
7 This is the closest that the franchise has come to anything resembling racial diversity (Oscar Isaac is Hispanic). Hopefully Finn won’t turn out to be the long-lost son of Lando Calrissian.
8 There’s a recurring theme here of lost family — Rey’s have inexplicably abandoned her on Jakku. Fingers crossed it doesn’t turn out to be Luke and, based on those cheekbones, possibly his mother’s decoy. The Star Wars universe is quite small enough without everyone being related.
9 A secondary character, he’s the closest thing The Force Awakens has to a new Han, albeit with a touch less attitude, a shade more intensity, and open commitment to a cause.
10 A Grand Moff Tarkin who’s upgraded to jackboots rather than carpet slippers.
11 Phasma has already been called the new Boba Fett. Like Fett, she has some cool armour and, like Fett, she doesn’t actually do very much here. Still, there’s always Episode VIII.
12 Driver is magnificent in the role, bringing a compelling undercurrent of anger and shame to a role that could, in other hands, have come across as a self-pitying emo with daddy issues. The film’s not entirely po-faced in its treatment of him either: when he breaks out his lightsaber and proceeds to make Julienne torture chair, two approaching stormtroopers casually do an about-turn. Driver is so convincing that when he and Oscar Isaac shared the screen I almost forgot about this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSwO-k-RqNA).
13 The film is essentially a gloss on A New Hope, right down to the accelerated tracking shot through a Mos Eisley-style tavern and a climactic trench run; a fact wryly acknowledged in Han’s line about blowing up what is essentially the Death Star turned up to 11 (“There's always a way to do that.”)
14 This is immersive detail as an element of storytelling as opposed to a sign of insecurity or an excuse for another line of toys.
15 Space… space… space…
16 A sequence where Finn, Rey, Han, Chewie, and two expendable gangs of smugglers are set upon by a trio of toothy, tentacled beasties is entirely surplus to the needs of the plot, but also highly inventive fun that recall the series roots in space adventure serials like Flash Gordon.
17 The little look that Han gives Rey upon her seeing an alien world for perhaps the first time — “I didn't think there was this much green in the whole galaxy” — is lovely.
18 As presumably is Ford himself. It looks like he really cares here, though; that his reprising the beloved role after thirty years was more than a matter of a rumoured $20-something million pay-check.
19 Carrie Fisher is also missing her coke nail from Return of the Jedi.
20 Seriously, has any piece of music better summed up a relationship than "Han and the Princess"?
21 The moment where Kylo Ren stops a blaster bolt and leaves it quivering in midair is very “Whoa”. The giant, cleave-headed Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) is more of a “What?” moment. Here’s hoping that, away from the projector, he’s secretly the size of Jiminy Cricket.
22 The film’s opening shot of a Star Destroyer eclipsing a luminous planet is entirely in the vein of A New Hope, but when it’s this luscious and loving it’s hard to grouse.
23 With R2-D2 almost entirely sidelined for proceedings, there’s no way that Anthony Daniels wasn’t kicking the blue-and-white can between takes. “Fuck you, Kenny Baker. I’m an actor!”
24 Four planets are destroyed here by Starkiller Base’s sometime scientifically inexplicable beam-splitter, including the Republic capital, and their passing barely merits a mention. “It’s as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were largely ignored.”
25 Rey’s flashbacks upon discovering Luke’s old lightsaber also feel a bit like a plot dump in a film otherwise devoid of exposition.
26 Or at least archetypal. Joseph Campbell, eat your heart out.
27 The exact distinction between the Resistance and the Republic, and their relationship to the First Order, is unclear, but at least we don’t get mired in any Trade Federation bollocks.
28 And cinema-literate adventure at that. The pull focus on three TIE fighters coming out of the sun is cribbed straight from Apocalypse Now. The Force Awakens rewards geekery on multiple levels.
29 Even — SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER — the tragic death of Han Solo at the hands of his own son, Kylo Ren, recalls both A New Hope (the death of a mentor figure*) and The Empire Strikes Back (only its the son who sends the father tumbling down an air shaft). Doesn’t make it any less affecting, though.
When Han calls out “Ben”, apparently Kylo’s real name, I muttered to myself, “No, you’re Ben (Kenobi).
30 The final battle between Ren and Rey on the wintry woodland surface of the Starkiller planet is haunting, even if it seems unlikely that a total novice like Rey could overcome a trained Sith. Something something chosen one, perhaps?
31 Addendum: Watching the film for a third time the foreshadowing seemed all the clearer. The vision Ren picks out of Rey's mind of an island in a sea of blue is obviously where she finds Luke at the film's epilogue. Having previously been totally against the idea, I'm now sorta okay if Rey turns out to be Luke's kid - after all, she has to come from somewhere, right? Her serenity also contrasts wonderfully with Ren's anger Anger may be a shortcut to power, but it's that much more volatile and harder to control. Also, a 12A, two-and-a-bit hour nostalgia trip is not a fit place to drag an disinterested five year old, random man, even if you are trying to force a bonding experience. My sympathy is all the more limited when you keep rattling your (presumably enormous) keys at random intervals. Still, the fact your kid decided to quietly have a moan at you in the buildup to Ren killing Han was vaguely hilarious. When he then has the freaking audacity to ask why Chewbacca is upset, though, that, that is when you really lose me.

SPECTRE

I’m a bit torn on this one. The last Bond film, Skyfall, was my inaugural review on this site, so a big part of me wants to do a real in-depth analysis on this. The other part of me remembers that brevity is the soul of wit and is also tired. I’ll compromise: the review itself will be pretty brief — 300-ish words — but there’s an essay in the footnotes if you want to read on.

 

The evocatively titled Spectre, 24th installment of the Bond franchise, is a film steeped in continuity but light on originality.

While capitalizing on the back-story laid down for Daniel Craig’s super-spy in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall,1 it finds the time, over the course of 138 minutes2 to riff on nearly every previous episode from the series’ 53 year history.3 Road to Perdition’s Sam Mendes is back on directing duties and returning screenwriters John Logan/Neal Wade & Robert Purvis are joined by Jez Butterworth.4 From the opening shot of Spectre's Day of the Dead pre-credit sequence, though, it’s clear that Roger Deakins is no longer on cinematography duties. Interstellar’s Hoyte van Hoytema's work here is impressively layered and textured, primarily with dust, but there’s a lack of the vibrant compositions that made Skyfall so impressive.5

Despite his very public reservations about the role,6 Craig has lost none of his wry, chiseled gravitas7 – even if he’s beginning to show his age,8 just barely. Spectre gives us Bond at his most vulnerable and exposed – Sam Smith’s controversially quavery theme song, "Writing’s on the Wall", really works in this contextl.9 On the home front, Ralph Fiennes’ M10 is facing down a new threat to the service11 in the form of Andrew Scott’s smug, slimy C,12 who wants to scrap the 00 program in favor of a mysterious new surveillance system.13 Abroad,14 Bond finds himself in pursuit15 of a figure from his distant past,16 with a bit of help from Q17 and Moneypenny.18 

Spectre is full of figures from Bond’s past, the dead19 and the soon-to-die,20 plus two Bond girls – Monica Bellucci21 and Lea Seydoux22 – and the first attempt at a classic henchman we’ve had since Die Another Day.23 Amidst all these elements, though, what should be the center-piece – Bond’s traumatic connection to lead villain Franz Oberhauser24 (a reliably urbane Christoph Waltz) – kind of gets lost in the mix.25 Having mined all it can from its protagonist’s troubled personal life, and arguably hit dramatic bedrock,26 Spectre provides a thrilling but deeply flawed conclusion in what seems likely to Craig’s final appearance as Bond.27 With some occasionally perfunctory action28 and a hint of weary absurdity,29 the franchise is in need of a break.30

Give it five years or so and, with perhaps less focus on arcs and more on the traditional standalone missions,31 Chris Nolan in the director’s chair and Tom Hardy in the tux,32 there might just be life in the sexagenarian secret agent yet. 

Spectre gets a 6 out of 10 

SPOILERS (AND GENERALLY SWEARY)! 

1 Craig’s Bond is the first, of course, to have any real continuity in his films. The closest the series came before this was in recurring characters, like Jaws or Valentin Zukovsky.
2 Spectre is the longest Bond film at about three minutes longer than Casino Royale. Subjectively, though, that might as well be an eternity.
3 Wingless plane bursts through a snow-covered building full of logs? Check, The Living Daylights (sort of). Oblivious Italian driver ends up on the receiving end of the DB10’s front bumper? Check, every Roger Moore film, more or less. Boat pursuit along the Thames? Check, The World Is Not Enough. Even the villain’s control center seems to be an exact replica of Drax's base in Moonraker, and the car he sends to pick the hero up seems like a definite Goldfinger callback.
4 Butterworth is a fantastic writer — his play Jerusalem features one of the all-time great characters for the stage, Rooster Byron (unforgettably played by Mark Rylance). Given Butterworth’s burgeoning reputation as a script fixer, his work on Spectre doesn’t bode well.

5 Bond’s listening in on that conversation via sniper rifle from a rooftop definitely recalls Skyfall (sans that lovely blue neon jellyfish). It’s also nice to see Bond in a proper disguise for once — even if that “proper disguise” is a masked skeleton at a Day of the Dead celebration.

6 Spectre is Craig’s first acting role in three years and given the amazing pressures attached — the time commitment, staying in shape — it seems increasingly likely he won’t be coming back.
7 Daniel Craig is still perfect in the role (see: the minute double take after the building blows up as if to say, “Did I…? Oh, okay.”).
8 Unlike Moore, though, who managed an as-yet unbeaten seven films before getting booted from the franchise at age 57, Craig seems ready to leave in the fullness of time. At least Lazenby had that going for him, too.
9 Vis-a-vis a naked Daniel Craig being touched by flaming women — he’s been burned, dammit! —while surrounded by ghosts of the past: Silva leering; Vesper drowning; Le Chiffre doing whatever. Seriously, Mads Mikkelsen is an incredibly talented actor, but has anyone thought at all about Le Chiffre since the end of Casino Royale?
10 Ralph Fiennes’ M is in a word: “starchy”. He is good, though. “At least now we know what C stands for: careless”. Let’s just say, no one is thinking that.
11 Well, the same threat as in the previous film. That whole “spies are irrelevant” bit is beginning to ring true, though. Even Bourne is looking a touch outdated.
12 Andrew Scott (C) is pretty reliable at playing smug and slimy. His character went to school with the Home Secretary, don’t you know? It’s sorta satisfying when he goes the way of Sherlock.
13 This whole surveillance network, “Nine Eyes”, bit feels topical. I wonder if it’ll play into the plot in some meaningful way — no, wait. It doesn’t.
14 There’s a lot of globe-hopping even by Bond’s cosmopolitan standards: from a Day of the Dead festival in Mexico to a car chase through the windy backstreets of Rome to a clinic in the Swiss Alps (a la On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, though Bond’s aversion to health drinks seems more Never Say Never Again), a base in the deserts of Morocco, and the ruins of MI6. It’s amazing Bond can bear to be around so much snow given what happened to his mother and father, and surrogate father, and half-brother…
15 Oh, look, Bond’s gone (semi-)rogue, again. I think MI5 would panic if he didn’t.
16 This cutting between Bond’s face and the back of Christoph Waltz’s head certainly seems to imply some sort of connection between them. Hmm, I wonder if he might the other boy from that burned photo… I hope not. That would be an incredible fucking coincidence. Still, Waltz looks great seated in the shadow, whispering over that microphone. Very Max Von Sydow, right down to that Nehru suit he dons later in the film. And that white Persian cat. Wait… KHAN!!!
17 Q seems specially impish here, showing off the DB10 to Bond and *only* giving him a watch. And that whole “hands on hips” bit is very Desmond Llewellyn. He even gets in some field work.
18 And Moneypenny’s making house calls now. Don’t sleep with him, Moneypenny! If you sleep with him the franchise dies!
19 Aw, it’s nice to see Judi Dench again, if only on a computer screen and only for two seconds.
20 Poor, beleaguered Mr. White, hiding out in that crumbling manse. That “kite dancing in a hurricane” line sounds good, but what does it actually mean?
21 And so continues Bond’s long, uncomfortable history of semi-non-consensual sex, which only isn’t rape because he’s James Bond. There’s a line in London Boulevard about Monica Bellucci that’s looking particularly prescient about now. It’s an especial shame in light of the otherwise vaguely progressive fact that Bellucci is the oldest Bond girl, four years older than Craig even.
22 Unlike Lea Seydoux, who is seventeen years younger. But, ooh, is she actually going to properly reject Bond? Could she be a platonic Bond girl? That would be genuinely interesting. I mean, imagine it, Bond gets to show a bit of emotional maturity, character development even, while redeeming himself for failing to save Vesper, which has always been a chip on his shoulder. She even gets to deliver barbs at him aboard a train; all very Eva Green. No, wait, they’re going at it. Shit.
23 And Dave Bautista promises to be the first classic henchman we’ve had in a while. That neat little smile. That eye business was very Game of Thrones, too, albeit done on a 12A certificate. Shame he’s so underused. That train fight was very Red Grant/Teehee/Jaws, and Bond really got the hell beaten out of him for once
24 So apparently Blofeld is Bond’s half-brother. Yep, that’s a thing. I wonder if they’ll ever seriously address it in a way that will make up for the sheer level of serendipity involved. It’s as if Return of the Jedi had tried to pretend Darth Vader being Luke’s father was no biggie. The film underplays it, preferring to get down to “Pleasencetries”, but it might have been more convincing if developed just a bit.
25 He may be the first villain ever to threaten a hero with face blindness, though. “Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?” “No, Mr. Bond. I expect to give you prosopagnosia.” Given the complete lack of payoff to Oberhauser’s promises about the effects of his drilling into Bond’s head, you can probably cue a slew of conspiracy theories that Bond never made it out of the chair and the whole third act was all a hallucination — you can imagine a sort of Brazil-like post-credit scene with Bond humming the theme distractedly to himself: "Dum de de dum dum", "I think we've lost him, Madeleine...". In which case our never seeing Craig’s Bond again would make a certain morbid sense.
26 There’s a definite sense that this is it, everyone pack up and go home — we’re done. It’s the closest Bond’s ever got to riding off into the sunset. Q’s final line, “I thought you’d gone”, is a lovely grace-note.
27 As indifferent as this film is overall, it feels so conclusive it would almost be a shame for Craig to do another — especially if he really hates playing the role as much as it seems.
28 That square in Mexico, packed with thousands of panicking festival-goers, the helicopter brawl overhead threatening to spill out into open air: Slash Film were write when in a recent podcast on the new Mission: Impossible they said the Bond film’s occasionally suffered from putting their best set-piece out front. Also, the film definitely squanders the eponymous organization that Sony fought to hard to reclaim the rights to. Spectre is essentially just Quantum re-branded, a generic if threatening criminal UN. Still, that wasn’t all that came with the package…
29 Bond interrogating a rat is a cute moment of self-awareness about the absurdity of all this. The fact the rat’s hole leads him to a secret room is ludicrously Scooby Doo.
30 Sony might not even have the rights for much longer: they’ve held onto them since the new Casino Royale, but their deal with MGM expires this year.
31 Even if, yes, they can be a bit hit and miss.
32 At 43, Idris Elba is sadly too old to really be taking on the commitment and, much as I love a fellow ginger, Damian Lewis is even older. Hardy is gruff and buff, but he can definitely pull off suave — plus he and Nolan already worked together on Inception. Failing that, maybe we'll finally get the Tarantino version we've all kinda sorta been waiting for.

CRIMSON PEAK

With Crimson Peak beloved horror director Guillermo Del Toro sets about creating another period ghost story, one that takes its cues more from classic Gothic melodrama.1

The film follows Edith (Mia Wasikowska), the bookish only child2 of self-made New York industrialist Carter Cushing (Jim Beaver).3 When  Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a Baronet, arrives from England, Edith is quick to write him off, sight unseen, as a Bourgeois parasite. When the two do meet, however, she finds herself charmed by the dashing, Byronic figure and things quickly go the way of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.4

Their fairy-tale romance, however, is impinged upon by a sudden and brutal tragedy5, and Edith solemnly returns with Thomas to his ancestral home, the foreboding Allerdale Hall. A vast, decaying pile with battered turrets stretching towards the skies and red clay oozing up from the earth below, a definite fixer-upper to which the Sharpes — Thomas and his pale, suspicious sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) — seem preternaturally attached.6



While Thomas struggles to devise and build the machinery that will allow him to mine the clay and restore family’s squandered fortune, and Lucille drifts around the hall in high-collared black dresses like some tea-obsessed Big Bad Wolf, Edith finds herself the focus of a terrifying red-boned apparition.7 Edith, it seems, is sensitive to certain forces in a way that the close-knit Sharpes are not,8 and she soon finds herself investigating the secrets of so-called Crimson Peak9.

With its baroque furnishings and dingy William Morris wallpaper10, the house, like its inhabitants, is all about the silken interplay between light and shadow.11 All the familiar touches are there — the portrait of the stern, long-deceased matriarch, the atmospheric iris wipes, and the moans and groans of ancient fireplaces —but the film’s sumptuous squalor transcends these genre trappings with a twisty-turny finale with just a touch of Kubrick .12 

Offering a tale of phantasmagoric thrills and chills, Crimson Peak shows that, in an exploration of love and madness, style can sometimes become substance.

Crimson Peak gets a 7 out of 10

1 His previous work of course including The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, both of which are set in and around the Spanish Civil War.
2 As an aspiring writer, she claims to prefer Mary Shelley to Jane Austen, though Hiddleston is definitely more in the Mr. Rochester mold.
3 Beaver has a history of playing benign, if surly, prospectors (see: Deadwood).
4 Not least in that Lucille, as the black-clad keeper of the keys, bears a striking resemblance to the
sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers.
5 A particularly gory tragedy involving a shattered skull and lacerated scalp, lovingly rendered by some of the same team behind Del Toro’s The Strain.
6 The central turret over the main lobby is caved in, allowing in a steady stream of leaves or snow, depending on the season and/or required mood.
7 An apparition apparently portrayed by none other than long-time Del Toro collaborator Douglas Jones (The Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth, Abe Sapien in Hellboy).
8 According to a theory laid out by Conan Doyle enthusiast Doctor McMichael (Charlie Hunnam) through the now debunked medium of spirit photography.
9 The means of their conveyance — via prerecorded wax cylinder — are somewhat convenient, but
a necessary evil of storytelling.
10 Edith’s costumes grow increasingly pale and diaphanous as she herself communes with the dead. Her Goldilocks hair reinforces her as a symbol of purity.
11 Her bedroom has these strange inverted cupolas on the ceiling, as in the ’99 remake of The Haunting, though in this case the architecture leaves the menacing up to the spooks.
12 Fernando Velazquez’s score, meanwhile, is most effective when at its most minimal, like a single off-key piano note reverberating through dark hallways.

THE BEST OF THE 2015 BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

I've just finished a write-up of the London Film Festival with my friend Rob Daniel of Electric Shadows, but Blogger, the site on which this is hosted, is being resolutely uncooperative about formatting. As such, I'll have to make do with posting a link.

http://www.electric-shadows.com/the-best-films-of-the-2015-bfi-london-film-festival/

AN A-Z OF THE 2015 BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL

Apologies for not posting more often of late. I've been covering the London Film Festival for The Metropolist and it's subsumed more or less my every waking hour.

With that in mind, here's a rundown of all 26 films I was able to see over the course of the Festival.

Enjoy!

#
11 Minutes
 
A
Assassination

B
Black Mass 

C
Carol

D
Desierto
Don't Grow Up

G
Green Room 

H
High Rise 

J
James White

L
The Lady in the Van
Listen To Me Marlon
The Lobster
Love & Peace 

O
Office

Q
The Quay Brothers in 35MM  

R
Remainder

Ryūzō and His Seven Henchmen

S
Son of Saul
Steve Jobs
Suffragette

T
Trumbo
Truth

V
Victoria

W
The Wave (2015)

Y
Yakuza Apocalypse
Youth