The Big Short – big fun
The Big Short unashamedly dumbs things down, to the point where Selena Gomez explains to the camera how collateralized debt obligations work. It’s silly and sometimes a bit too stupid, but fair play to the filmmakers for trying to make people understand something that we all really should understand for our own good.
In 2005 fund manager and market genius Michael Burry (Christian Bale) has a hunch the housing market is going to collapse despite being called an idiot. No one bets against property, until now. Soon he’s followed by a group of other traders including Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt who realise how fickle the system is and bet on it all falling down. They stand to make a lot of money if right, but al at the expense of people’s homes and jobs.
There’s nothing here you want learn from a documentary but let’s be honest, a lot of people couldn’t be bothered watching a documentary. The Big Short gives Alex Gibney the Family Guy treatment resulting in a film that even the biggest idiot will come out of a better person due to learning something. It’s a fun watch with fun characters, with director Adam McKay doing a good job finding the right tone.
It moves fast, is never dull, and when it does all fall down McKay deals with the shift in tone brilliantly. Hopefully this sees the director embark on a new genre of comedies with serious subjects.
3 out of 5
The Revenant – failed Terence Malick tribute
Somewhere in The Revenant is a great revenge thriller but director Alejandro G. Iñárritu drowns that film in his own ego. The film meanders from brutal action to emotional dream sequence/flashback without ever really making us feel anything. Terence Malick he is not, despite how much he tries.
Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is part of a 19th century expedition into the wilderness of America led by Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson). It’s rugged and cold with the locals as harsh as the landscape. Glass is left on the brink of death after being attacked by a bear and soon finds himself abandoned by the two men left to nurse him, including John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). After a miraculous recovery Glass embarks on an epic journey to get back to civilisation and have his revenge.
That’s really all there is. Iñárritu hints at emotions with rousing music and over lit dreams but cowers before ever committing to them hoping the audience will feel some connection to the music video extracts. We don’t, leaving us with a film slight on story but thick with fat. It’s too long, too indulgent and never as entertaining as it thinks it is. Yes it’s shot brilliantly, even if the CG is often too obvious. Iñárritu has mastered camerawork we know that from Birdman but he still seems determined to push his new tricks in our face.
Hardy is bad, real bad. The character is paper thin and his mumbling dialogue leaves us with a one dimensional dick head, nothing more to him. DiCaprio probably deserves to win an Oscar and sure why not he’s waited long enough. It’s a shame he didn’t get it for something more deserving like The Wolf of Wall Street instead of this though. His role is reduced to shivering for most of the films way too long two and a half hours.
For a film that prides itself on its nightmare shoot in the depths of winter it takes a lot of conveniences. Glass pretty much ‘walks off’ an ankle twisted 180 degrees in a matter of days. He sleeps in soaking wet freezing clothes but barely gets a sniffle. It’s based on a true story that didn’t need any exaggeration but Hollywood doesn’t care.
It looks great and the set pieces are fantastic, but that’s it. It fails completely to connect emotionally leaving us with a very dull and overlong film.
2 out of 5
Room – worthy Oscar contender
I’ve seen every Lenny Abrahamson film in the cinema and I can remember twelve years ago sitting in a cinema in Dublin watching Adam & Paul and thinking “take note – this man is no flash in the pan.” After the excellent Garage, a film that deserves to be listed among the greatest of all time, it was confirmed. Abrahamson never got ahead of himself though, even 2015’s Frank was still quite an independent film, much the same as Room, which although an Oscar-contender it feels more like an exceptionally well made and acted indie film that anything Hollywood could possibly make.
Based somewhat on the Fritzl case, Ma (Brie Larson) is trapped in a soundproofed shed where she is visited nightly by her captor Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) to give her supplies and rape her before leaving and locking the door behind him. She’s not alone though, she has a five-year-old son named Jack (Jacob Tremblay) by Old Nick and despite their bleak situation she is determined to shelter him from their harsh reality. Jack has never seen outside and is perfectly content in “Room”, watching the magic people on TV unaware of anything else. Ma is getting concerned though and needs to get her and Jack out before their mental and physical health is damaged. She hatches a plan, but will it work? And if it does how will Jack cope outside of “Room”?
It’s all excellent. The acting, the music, the lighting, everything. There is nothing to fault here. Abrahamson knows how to get amazing performances out of his cast and Room is him doing that on an Oscar scale. A lot of well-deserved attention has been put on Brie and rightly so, that Oscar should be hers. Tremblay is excellent too, with one of the best child performances seen on screen. For me the real exception was Joan Allen as Ma’s mother. It’s short and subtle but she makes a massive impact in a film already overridden with great performances.
It’s a technical challenge to convey a film as claustrophobic as Room, giving both happy and sad emotions, as well as terror, into one small area. Abrahamson uses excellent camera work and music to tackle this and really succeeds. We understand Ma’s terror of Room but also Jack’s feelings of safeness.
It’s never horrific, which some people may think is Abrahamson cowering away from the reality of the situation. There is no brutal rape scenes, no beating, only silhouettes seen through a wardrobe. This isn’t a story about that, this is a story about Jack, and we see everything through his eyes. Like Ma protects Jack from the true horrors so we don’t see them, but being an audience we are aware, our brains connect, Abrhamason respects they will.
Absolutely excellent, more Abrahamson films please, right now.
5 out of 5
The Hateful Eight – semi-successful experiment from Tarantino
Tarantino taking his time can be both a beautiful but sometimes boring thing. Fair play to the man for stepping back from the kinetic energy of dialogue and camera cuts he’s known for and giving us what is essentially a well-shot play. It is something we don’t always see in cinema and given how often challenging it can be on our patience it’s a good job that Tarantino is the man making it, but not long after seeing The Hateful Eight I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed he hadn’t made something else instead.
It’s cold in 19th century Wyoming, and its plastered all over The Hateful Eight. Bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) waits on a snowy mountain pass with three dead bodies, looking to hitch a ride to Red Rock to claim his bounty. Soon he is picked up by the enigmatic John Ruth (Kurt Russell) another bounty hunter transporting fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) again to Red Rock to claim the bounty. Ruth could easily kill Domergue, but given he likes to “keep the hangman in business” he makes a deal with Warren to help him protect her until she’s ready to be hung. Eventually the pair and a few other colourful characters are forced to take shelter in Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach lodge, where several other curious types have taken refuge. Before long mistrust is high and a rat is detected in the group, leading to the Tarantino staple of bloodshed and foul language.
Despite being very slow the first half of the film is when Tarantino shows great maturity in his work, letting the dialogue and build-up breathe, really taking the audience in to the place and time. Everything from the excellent score to the beautiful cinematography gets a chance to overwhelm us. As the characters are introduced it slowly lets them take over which is fine at first, but when the second half shenanigans of shoot outs and vomiting begins we still haven’t really learnt that much about them to really care, despite the fact it’s taken almost two hours to get to this point.
I rarely say these words but Samuel L. Jackson is excellent in this film. He’s an actor I’m usually bored of but in The Hateful Eight he managed to surprise me, hopefully more of this from him. Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh also do great jobs but for the most part most of the other minor players never make too much of an impression. The Hateful Five may have allowed a more memorable cast.
It’s still Tarantino and it’s still impressive, just not what you might hope he might have spent his time and talent on.
3 out of 5
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – fails to create, only remix
You may hate George Lucas but at least the man created a universe. Even the much loathed (now but not at the time conveniently) prequels had new characters with some stand out sequences, but we were all delighted when JJ Abrams took over the Star Wars reigns. Why? JJ is a talented man no doubt, but he doesn’t create, he reboots, remakes and rethinks, and that is exactly what The Force Awakens does. It’s a badly made remake and when the hype dies it will end up in the prequel pile.
The galaxy is in chaos, as everything our heroes solved in the original trilogy is conveniently back again in the form of the First Order, an evil fascist militant movement intent on taking power using the Death Star 2.0. The solution lies with Luke Skywalker, who has been missing for some time, but a map found by a Luke Skywalker pre-Jedi-esque girl may give hope.
It really is that much of a similar story-line, with everything a remake (not an ode to) of something we’ve already seen. This works well with Darth Vader impersonator Kylo Ren because he actually get’s some drama to play with plus he’s one of the few good actors (Adam Driver) in the film but with the rest it is chaos.
Female Luke Skywalker (yes she is) Ren (Daisy Ridley) is a dull character with no personality. It doesn’t help that Ridley struggles to act, with every scene she’s in feeling like actors standing on set due to what seems to be limitations on how much she can do before the camera cuts. John Boyega fairs better as stormtrooper deserter Finn, but not by much. There’s still any real moments of acting lacking from these new characters.
Luckily Han Solo saves the day, with Harrison Ford obviously having fun reuniting with Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and giving the film it’s best moments. When the old characters take center stage and the new are out of focus in the background the film works best.
Given all that Abrams said about not overusing CG the film still looks like a computer game. Yes there’s real sets here and there but when the action starts it’s back to the usual CG we’re all used to by now. It looks fine but there’s no stand out set piece. Less fine is the new CG characters, looking awful and lacking any expression.
A dodgy cast and CG I could forgive, but where the film really disappoints is in the directing. Structure, pace, drama, it’s all over the shop. The atmosphere we all saw in that first trailer over a year ago is completely absent, leaving us with a muddled array of scenes. At one point a major character walks right by another after a tragic moment, seemingly unaware of them. The internet has erupted with theories but the truest one is probably poor direction.
It’s not a complete disaster, hopefully the acting can be sorted out by the next film and the next director Rian Johnson is a much stronger director than Abrams so there is hope. And someone kick John Williams up the arse too, was there even a score to this film?
After such a long wait and such good trailers this really is disappointing. Maybe time will help deliver stronger sequels, we’ll see.
2 out of 5
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 – they threw it all away
Where did it all go wrong? The Hunger Games got off to a brilliant start with two of the best films you could hope for in a franchise. Unfortunately last year’s Mockingjay was a problem with what we can only assume to be greedy studio heads splitting the film into two despite it being based on by far the weakest book of the trilogy. Alas it wasn’t very good, and unfortunately the finale is even worse, ruining what could have been an exceptional film series.
Following on from Part 1, Part 2 picks up exactly where we left off with the rebels from the poor districts edging closer to the Capitol in the hope of bringing an end to the tyranny of President Snow (Donald Sutherland). Our hero Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is marketed in propaganda videos by rebel leader Coin (Julianne Moore) who has hopes for leadership of the new world when the war is over. Katniss just wants to get on with it though and put an arrow in Snow’s heart, taking her and a team of soldiers on a mission to a booby trapped Capitol.
It’s awful, no other words to describe it. Once this series left the arenas of the first two films it collapsed. They had a tougher challenge with a less solid book to build upon but they didn’t try too hard judging by Part 2, in which a lot of characters we spent time with pop up for a sentence here and there without ever really adding to the story or making an emotional impact. People walk around tunnels for half the film waiting for a set-piece we know is coming, speeches are made that are just awful, it’s just terribly ill-paced badly structured filmmaking. Acting wise its fine but as the quality of film is so insulting the performances are lost on us.
The only part of the film that is unique and interesting is rushed over. Bad as the third book was it still made some interesting observations about war and the lack of black and white good guys and bad guys. The film should have built on this but it doesn’t, instead giving us dumb conversations about our hero who we don’t really care about anymore, instead of something meaty to get thinking about.
I liked the first film, loved the second, but they are ruined now by awful closing chapters. Avoid and pretend it didn’t happen.
1 out of 5
Spectre – Even Bond looks bored
I’m not a fan of Bond, never have been and unfortunately now it looks like I never will be. I was hoping Spectre would change that with the rave reviews (mostly from the UK *cough*) and a decent cast, but unfortunately just like Skyfall its manufactured hype with little substance. When it premiered in the UK last week only invited film critics, i.e. friends, were allowed to review it, allowing the film to be praised in early press and setting off a ripple effect that will hopefully be broken. Spectre isn’t terrible, at its worst it’s still watchable, but did this really cost $300 million to make? The script can’t have cost more than 20 quid so where’d the rest go? If you liked Skyfall you’ll like Spectre, but if you liked Sykfall good cinema is wasted on you.
James Bond (Daniel Craig) has gone rogue in Mexico much to the disapproval of his peers in London who demand he be tracked at all times. As we’d expect Bond has a few moves up his sleeve and manages to elude them in order to traverse the globe in pursuit of the mysterious Franz Oberhauser (Christopher Waltz) the mastermind behind evil organisation Spectre, intent on dictating a new world order. On the way he encounters women, as Bond does, has a few drinks and gets in a couple of fights.
The action is ok, with some promising set pieces, particularly one on-board a train being entertaining enough, but others are wasted opportunities such as the excellently setup Day of the Dead pursuit in Mexico which culminates in a disappointingly dull way. Director Sam Mendes makes the film look lovely but it can’t hide the clunky script which basically brings Bond from one location, finds a clue to bring him to another location, repeat. Also in 2015 can Bond girls still legally be so bad? Monica Belluci does what she can with a small role but Léa Seydoux is absolutely awful as a former nemesis’s daughter. Her dialogue is bad to begin with, but her acting doesn’t help it either.
There’s not a lot to save this film, even Craig has expressed discontent with playing the character who is just plain dull. The credit sequences just look silly too, evolve Mr Bond. The series needs a new writer and a new director, but given their profitability the hype machine is working so maybe the budget is going into PR.
2 out of 5
Sicario – Zero Dark Mexico
Thanks to Breaking Bad even the crazy old man on the street knows the Mexico side of the US border is no place to live a peaceful life. Cities like Juárez have received an almost celebrity like status for their death count, but as always nothing gets better. In both cinema and real-life more people get killed each year caught in a brutal cartel turf war. Sicario is nothing new, it’s a story we’ve all seen before, but at least it tries to add some commentary to the guilty entertainment of watching a horrific way of life we are all so safely distanced from.
FBI Agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) makes a horrific discovery during a kidnapping raid in Arizona. Left shook but somewhat brave she is enlisted by a sketchy CIA officer Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) to a special operation to take down some very scary Mexican cartel members alongside Alejandro Gillick (Benico del Toro). Out of her comfort zone with both the situations and morals at play, Kate may not be the hero she hoped to be.
Director Denis Villeneuve handles a fairly patchy script excellently, gives some form of rhythm and flow to a story that on paper doesn’t really have any. He manages to get some great performances from the cast even when they descend into some clichéd moments. A set piece during a traffic jam is as tense and interesting as cinema gets, with the director expertly keeping the action low key.
Blunt does well, considering she’s basically there to make sure the audience keeps up. Much has been made of del Toro’s excellent turn as the mysterious man with the past but in my books Brolin steals the show, giving the spoilt but crafty Graver a curiosity we want to know more about.
It delves into some overdone clichés and the dialogue is at times poor, but overall this is a great film about a horrific situation that does not shy from the intricacies involved.
4 out of 5
The Martian – the red planet in all its entertaining glory
Ridley Scott may be playing it safe with The Martian but that might not be a bad thing. After an erratic array of films over the past decade he appears to be sitting back and not trying too hard to say too much and instead just making good old fashioned popcorn entertainment. It’s all surface, and in no way an Oscar contender but The Martian is as entertaining as cinema gets.
In the near future man is finally on Mars, just about. This isn’t Star Trek with warp speed it’s still a hell of a long journey to get there with technology that’s always at risk of breaking. After a storm hits them unexpectedly, the Ares III manned mission, led by Commander Lewis (Jessica Chastain) makes an early departure from the planet. Unfortunately botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has been struck by debris and presumed dead by Commander Lewis, reluctant to search for his body given the risks involved to her crew. As they set off on their home voyage the injured but very alive Wateny embarks on a mission to keep himself fed and heated until help can be sent to rescue him.
It is Gravity mixed with 127 Hours, but without the in depth psychology of either, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The film keeps moving and its insistence on not dwelling on things like weight loss or family are a reflection of Damon’s Watney, a man who pushes himself into a fix and move on routine in order to keep sane and get home. Dwelling just isn’t in his nature. After the clunky dialogue in Gravity where characters explain their own backstory in space it’s refreshing that this is barely a factor in The Martian. Again it reflects on the attitude of Watney and even if it means we don’t care for him as much as we could it keeps the film moving and never bogged down by a man looking at himself in the mirror and crying for five minutes.
Issues arise back in Earth, where the rescue teams at NASA and further afield are fleshed out even if they have little to do. Sean Bean and Donald Glover are perfectly fine as a mission director and astronomer respectively, but do they both need to be in the film? Surely their minor additions to the plot could have been given to someone else and kept the film ten minutes shorter. It’s excess without addition but fortunately we’re never there too long and the excellent Benedict Wong as a spacecraft designer is one of the films highlights.
As for the crew floating back to Earth in the middle of all this, they get their five minutes of fame but not much else, which again is fine it means the film never slows down as we go from Mars to Earth to space.
A perfectly entertaining piece of cinema, worth seeing it on a big screen for all the glory of Mars. Fun and exciting, you can’t go wrong with The Martian.
4 out of 5
Inside Out – Indie Pixar absolutely brilliant
It’s a miracle this got made. Barely a sellable figure in sight and a plot that for the most part will probably go over a lot of young children’s heads, but yet it somehow got made with the help of none other than the kings of marketing Disney. Luckily it did, as Inside Out is Pixar paving a new path for themselves and showing that not only are they masters of animation but also of storytelling. And it made a hell of a lot of money since its release so Disney can rest easy.
Taking place almost entirely inside the head of young girl Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) we see her very own ‘headquarters’ where all her emotions take form and work alongside each other in the busy office of her mind. Joy (Amy Poehler) likes to take charge and ensure Riley always wears a smile and reacts positively, but lately she’s been growing increasingly frustrated with sadness (Phyllis Smith) who can’t keep her curiosity at bay and accidentally turns Riley’s happy memories into sad ones. When cataloguing ‘core’ memories Joy and Sadness accidentally get sucked out of Riley’s ‘headquarters’ and find themselves on a journey through her memory banks to return home, as until then Riley is without their emotions.
There’s a lot going on in the concept, and one could spend hours explaining but Pixar as always manage to make it coherent and accessible to those that pay attention. To say anymore would be to ruin the plot as the plot is in the themes and how they unfold, its brilliant storytelling from a brilliant team.
All the voice work is great, particularly Smith as sadness who has found a role she was born for. The animation is a bit more limited than other Pixar outings due to the story and setting, it sometimes feels like Pixar have gone indie, but as always it looks amazing and it’s refreshing to not spend as long on the visuals as most animated outings and just roll on with the brilliant plot.
Lots of fun and made with an artistic quality animation deserves. Go see.
4 out of 5
Colm2305 