tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67023027583602132512024-03-13T13:14:29.323+00:0024 Frames Per SecondCinema. As I see it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1178125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-72386778868360772272022-07-02T19:35:00.004+01:002022-07-02T19:35:36.384+01:00Adventures of a new, old, gamer: Finishing (and not finishing) a game<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I’m not sure that I’ve ever finished a console game before. When I was playing as a kid and a teenager, I would always get hung up on a certain level, or a certain boss, that I just couldn’t pass. There weren’t enough lives, not enough continues, and inevitably I get frustrated and give in. Today, I finished my first PS4 game—<i>Detroit: Become Human</i>. Or did I?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/UjjXdn7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/UjjXdn7.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Connor in Detroit: Become Human</b></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;">Produced by French company Quantic Dream, and written and directed by David Cage, </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Detroit: Become Human</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> is about as far from what I would picture as a traditional video game as anything I have played. To a great degree (at least on the setting I played it at for my first run-through), it feels more like an interactive TV show, or a visual novel. The game takes place in 2038. The overarching story sees humanity in a place where ultra-realistic humanoid androids have become commonplace, many are home helps of some sort, while others do menial work and still others provide… more adult services. The narrative cuts between chapters in which you play as three androids (controlling one at a time). Connor (Bryan Dechart) is a detective, brought in to investigate the ‘deviants’, and partnered with an irascible detective (Clancy Brown), who doesn’t like androids. Kara (Valorie Curry) is a domestic model, who breaks her programming when the alcoholic father of the girl she looks after (Alice, played by Audrey Boustani) beats his daughter. Markus (Greys Anatomy’s Jesse Williams) looks after aging, disabled artist Carl (Lance Henriksen), and is prompted to break his programming when Carl’s adult son tries to bully his Dad for money. Within this setup, and the overarching story of an android uprising, there are a multitude of choices of actions that you can take with each character, driving the story in myriad different directions.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Besides setting the difficulty to ‘casual’, I made a few determinations early on. It was clear a lot of the choices the game asked you to make would be about situational morals, and I decided I would chart, where possible, a consistent path with each character on my first playthrough. This wasn’t always easy with Connor, as his arc within the story is often about his moral quandary between doing the job he was programmed to do and being swayed by the deviants. As an overarching principle, I decided that Kara would always try to do what was best for Alice, and that Markus would remain, again as far as he could, a peaceful revolutionary.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The first chapters are fairly simple, even a little dull. Connor has an investigation that introduces the game’s key mechanics, but then Kara has to do housework, and Markus runs an errand and serves Carl’s breakfast. It’s only quite slowly the key themes and action bleed into Kara and Markus’ stories. And yet, mundane as these openings were, they began to effectively ground the characters. This is aided by some exceptional graphical work. This game is four years old now, but as I’ve not seen the PS5 work, it’s probably the best-looking game I’ve ever played. The main characters are astonishing. The textures are lifelike; hair, clothing, and skin all look almost as if you could reach out and touch them, and the animation is nuanced. The facial animation on Connor is especially brilliant, with it and Bryan Dechart’s performance both giving the struggle of the ambiguity of ‘his’ existence real life. The supporting and incidental characters are understandably less detailed, but key ones are close to the same level of detail, and the world they inhabit, while maybe not as bustling as it could be, is well realised.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/fOjofUN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/fOjofUN.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Kara and Alice in Detroit: Become Human</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;">I don’t want to talk too much about how the story played out for me on this occasion, but even aside from the moment I mentioned in my last piece, where I realised I didn’t want to fulfill a game objective because I had grown attached to the characters, there were many more instances that put my heart in my mouth. Some of these happened because dialogue prompts can be a little vague. During a speech I had to give as Markus, I worried that one button press that ended up saying something other than I intended would undermine the way I’d been crafting the character. Similarly, almost every moment with Kara and Alice as they went on the run was nailbiting. All I wanted was to get them a happy ending, as I found myself ever more invested in that relationship, thanks to a standout performance from Valorie Curry, in one particularly great moment, she had me convinced that Kara was about to cry. At one point, I thought something I had failed to do had scuppered Kara and Alice's chances, and that felt genuinely terrible.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Markus’ section of the story is where David Cage leans hard on allegory, and it’s fair to say it’s not subtle. The civil rights parallels are clearly well-meant, and shockingly prescient at times, but the dialogue laying them out, despite a powerfully restrained performance from Jesse Williams, is often rather clanging and obvious. That said, this section is often the most engaging to play. It seems to give you the greatest chance to shape the direction, and tone, of the story. Let’s just say that there’s a much darker version I might see if I can pull off next time I play.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the end of each section, you view a decision tree of what you’ve just done and see the boxes indicating things you didn’t do, choices you didn’t make, and paths that are now locked off. It’s tantalising, and will draw me back for more goes at this story. I was always rather skeptical of the potential of computer games as vehicles for storytelling and especially for characters you could really care about. <i>Detroit: Become Human</i> makes me look a little foolish on that score. It’s not a difficult game, but then it’s not meant to be. Deaths, if and when they come, aren’t there to frustrate you and send you back, instead, they fold into the story (not everyone got out of the telling on this run for me), and a subsequent game will allow you the chance to experience the story, be it that element or potentially almost the whole thing, very differently. I elected to get a PS4 because I wanted to see if I could get involved in a game in this way. I’m very pleased I could. I look forward to diving in again, and to picking up the remasters of Quantic Dreams’ previous games, <i>Heavy Rain</i> and <i>Beyond: Two Souls</i>. </span></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-46192656496452401882022-06-29T07:58:00.000+01:002022-06-29T07:58:56.519+01:00Adventures of a new, old, gamer: Restarts and New Starts<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I am not particularly good at video games. This is hardly a revelation or a surprise. I wasn’t very good at them in the 8 and 16 bit era, and while they’re, in a lot of ways, more forgiving now, I’m out of practice and learning new controls and mechanics. Given that, it’s perhaps not a surprise that I’ve already had to restart a couple of games, after realising that I’ve been missing a lot of things.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/Qo1Vl12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/Qo1Vl12.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Scarlet Spider in Spider-Man PS4</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The city of New York is wide open to you in <i>Spider-Man</i> PS4, at least it is if you take the time to open it up. That’s where I’d gone wrong in my initial start of the game. I was completing missions but also marching through the story. I hadn’t taken the time to take down Kingpin’s bases, open up the towers that grant access to the city, or deal with that many low-level crimes. Restarting the game, I spent time on these things. I got further in my percentage completion while only about half as far into the story, I opened up the entire map, and I raised my level further than I had in my initial start. With more achievement points, I crafted extra gadgets and tried out the Scarlet Spider suit. I’m not sure if it’s my imagination, but with the Scarlet Spider suit I found the character a little harder to control; a bit more erratic, so I have, for now, gone back to the updated suit that Dr. Octavius builds early on.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Control is still my biggest enemy in <i>Spider-Man</i>. To a certain degree, I’ve got the fighting down at this point. It’s probably still not pretty, but I can beat most of the larger fights on the first or second go. Web swinging is still a bit more challenging. I’ve got the rhythm of it while swinging leisurely through the city, but chase missions are still a problem, and I have to figure that out before I get back to Shocker. On the whole, I’m still having an immense amount of fun with <i>Spider-Man</i>, and the thrill of the feeling of really inhabiting the character hasn’t gone away.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I also restarted <i>Persona 5 Royal</i>. After losing a fight pretty early on in Kamoshida’s Palace, I realised that, as with <i>Spider-Man</i>, I hadn’t done the right prep. I had also probably made my first foray into the palace too late in the game’s somewhat unforgiving timeline. There is a LOT to do, you have to study, do your part time job, investigate things and build relationships with characters around you, all while the timeline marches forwards, sometimes in big increments, while you’re going through the school day. Inside the Palace, there are tactics to figure out and Personas to find, use and combine, and working through the various options is a challenge. Do I spend my money on medicine (and therefore build up my relationship with the doctor), or weapons (servicing the relationship with the shopkeeper). Maybe I should abandon that and spend more time reading, or hanging out with my friends. Let’s just say I’ve looked at a few strategy guides for this one. The problem with restarting is that, great as <i>P5R </i>clearly is, it takes a long time to get going. The many cutscenes are well rendered and acted, but going through them a second time in as many weeks isn’t ideal, and neither is an 80/20 split of cutscenes vs play for the first few hours.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/yVWUWmh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/yVWUWmh.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Kara in Detroit: Become Human</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In fresh starts, the most notable is my newest pickup: <i>Detroit: Become Human</i>. After a couple of days, and maybe 3 hours play, on the Casual difficulty setting (Experienced felt, frankly, like a lie) it’s in some ways the least game-like of the things I’ve played. Interaction feels more like triggering the next thing most of the time, and yet it’s done something no other game has ever done. <i>Detroit</i> is a multi-stranded narrative in which you play one of three different characters, scene by scene. Connor, Kara and Markus are all androids. Connor is a cop of some sort, investigating deviant androids who rebel against their owners, sometimes violently. Markus and Kara are domestic models who each end up breaking their programs, Markus when his owner’s son shows up and threatens his father for money and Kara when her owner attacks his young daughter, Alice, who Kara is essentially the sole carer for. With Kara and Alice on the run, Connor and his human partner (an excellent performance from Clancy Brown) are sent to look for them. The object of this section, while playing as Connor, is to find Kara and Alice as they hide. I didn’t want to find them. I’d got wrapped up in their stories, and come to care about both characters, and I didn’t want Connor to catch them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The astonishing graphics draw you in, with exceptional facial animation that gives the characters real emotion, and the acting is very strong all round. I already know I’m going to play <i>Detroit </i>several more times after I finish this run, and that’s because of its system of choices, allowing you to take many different paths with both dialogue and action (should Kara shoplift, or hold up a convenience store?). At the end of each section the locked-off paths are displayed, along with the choices I made; tantalising hints of other ways the story could have gone, and the chance to correct choices I think I got wrong on a subsequent run. It’s a genuinely fascinating and involving way to tell a story. Is it strictly a ‘game’ on casual setting? Perhaps not, but as a proof of concept for an interactive movie, I think my reaction to having to search for Kara and Alice, and my relief at being able to choose for Connor to have to allow them to escape, speaks for itself.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-30851105353226579772022-06-12T19:38:00.002+01:002022-06-12T19:38:41.716+01:00Adventures of a new, old gamer<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><u>Level 1: Funstration. Days 3-6</u></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/QPEvzw9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://i.imgur.com/QPEvzw9.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>So, great, I’m a teenager again. I have to go to school, do homework, do chores, go to a part time job… Oh, and fight an evil teacher in a castle created in his mind so that he’ll admit to hitting the kids on the volleyball team he coaches. Just a normal few days in <i>Persona 5 Royal</i>. It’s fair to say this is an evolution from the ‘run right and shoot things’ games I used to play on consoles. There have been some major changes to how <i>P5R</i> plays. Finally, the vast swathes of exposition (engaging as they were) have slowed a little, and the game has become more interactive and player-led. I got my first mission about five hours in, with two weeks in which to build up strength and inventory so my team and I could infiltrate this ‘palace’ and fight our way through to steal a treasure that represents our teacher’s heart. It’s fair to say this is pretty dense.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Having looked up a few things, I wish I hadn’t overwritten the save point at which I got the mission, because if I hit a game over I’ll have to rush through those opening few hours again. Fingers crossed I can beat this palace, then use a smarter save strategy. The first thing I did on day 3, following some Twitter advice, was switch the dialogue in <i>Persona </i>into Japanese. It honestly hadn’t previously occurred to me that this would be an option, I’d just assumed that, given the game was fully translated, there would only be the English soundtrack. Tick off another way in which I’m an idiot when it comes to gaming.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Over these few days, <i>Persona 5 Royal</i> has become more and more of my PS4 diet. I keep getting (I assume) closer and closer to beating the first boss on <i>Spider-Man</i>. I’m trying to follow the on-screen prompts, but I just haven’t mastered the speed, nor the instinct for which button is where, and what combinations I need to execute. I get that the speed is part of both the challenge and the appeal, but if I could slow it by just 10-15%, I’m betting I’d be through this part already.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/LZLyqpx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/LZLyqpx.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><i>P5R</i>, even if I weren’t frustrated with <i>Spider-Man</i>, would still keep drawing me back though. Can we talk about the art style? I get a little irritated when, every time I see a reaction to a J Rock track, the first thing out of the person’s mouth is: ‘So, it sounds like an anime’ (and yes, many of the bands have done anime songs, but still, it’s such an unimaginative thing to say). THAT SAID… <i>P5R</i> feels like being given an anime series as a sandbox to play in. I love the 2D animated sequences that form some of the cut scenes, and the all out attack sequences you can trigger during fights. The colours and characters leap dynamically off the screen. The in-game look, which is used for a lot of the storytelling as well as fights and exploration, is equally beautiful. The 3D characters are a little stiffer than their 2D counterparts in dialogue sequences, but come into their own when you’re controlling them. New abilities and tactics are doled out on a regular basis, most usefully hiding and the ability to ambush, which help reduce the prevalence of enemies in the palace.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Now we arrive at Day 6, and I’ve hit my first game over on <i>Persona</i>. Ironically, it happened because I was trying to hide from an overpowered enemy, and it found me. It’s frustrating because I’ve lost a lot of items I’d collected. I’m now thinking (having also peeked at an online strategy guide in a couple of moments where I’d got stuck) I could have used my time prepping for the palace mission better. I wonder if starting a whole new game and changing a few tactics might be an idea, but wading through the first 3 hours in particular could be a bit of a snooze. I think I’ll give it one more go and see how badly the lost items impact me. I guess the theme of these days is fun and frustration. Funstration. That’s probably as it should be.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-36568016474080352282022-06-08T11:40:00.003+01:002022-06-08T12:04:39.344+01:00Adventures of a new, old gamer<div style="text-align: justify;"><u><span style="font-family: arial;">Tutorial: Days 1 and 2</span></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Before picking up the console, I was worried about hooking it up. I remember the many wires and switch boxes of the 8 and 16 bit era. Happily, this was as simple as just plugging in an HDMI cable and a power lead. The only surprise annoyance was discovering that PS4 games can’t simply be played direct from disc. <i>Spider-Man</i> took about 40 minutes to install itself, but the rest of the games I had for day 1 were much faster.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/ToKIB6R.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://i.imgur.com/ToKIB6R.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Maximum Carnage: The last Spider-Man game I played</b></td></tr></tbody></table>The first thing I tried was <i>Spider-Man</i>, and it seems to have been a great choice. I remember playing the <i>Maximum Carnage</i> game on our Megadrive. Looking at it again today (via an online emulator), it’s a pretty repetitive button masher, but fun for its day (1994). The graphics do a decent 16 Bit rendering of the comic and there’s at least some variety in Spidey’s moves: you can wall crawl, you can fight, you can use webs to swing, make a shield and draw enemies towards you. 24 years (the PS4 <i>Spider-Man</i> came out in 2018) is a long time in any art form, but in gaming it appears to be several lifetimes. I’m not far enough into the game yet to know how the story will develop, but immediately, this just feels like Spider-Man, and Yuri Lowenthal’s voice reminds me somewhat of the 90s cartoon version I grew up on. Already it’s clear that the script has Peter’s personality down and Lowenthal has the timing for it. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">One of the things that always annoyed me about the games I played as a kid was the life count. I was never great at games. I remember finding that having only so many lives and constantly going back either to the start of a level or even the start of the game meant I never got the trial and error down, almost always ending up stuck at a part I couldn’t beat. <i>PS4 Spider-Man</i> hasn’t, so far, had that issue. I used a PS1 controller a handful of times because a few friends had them when we were teenagers, but I’ve not touched one in 20+ years, so a part of this process has simply been familiarising myself with the layout. I actually had to google the location of the R3 button (you press the right hand stick down) because it wasn’t labeled. The fact that <i>Spider-Man</i> is very incremental, auto-saving after every fight, and allowing (seemingly) unlimited lives has meant that I’ve been able to make progress even as I’m still figuring out the controls and combos, and getting quicker at deploying them. I learn a bit each time I lose a fight, and I get closer to beating that part of the game each time round. It’s not pretty, you won’t be seeing me on Twitch anytime soon, but it does feel satisfying.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Even when I’m losing, <i>Spider-Man</i> is FUN. It does manage to give you the feeling of creating the motion the comics illustrate. Spidey flips and webs his way around, he can fight in the air, dive under opponents to throw them off, use his spider-sense to dodge, throw items at enemies. From the first moments, as the game teaches you to swing through a beautifully rendered New York to your first fight, it strikes a good balance between storytelling cut scenes, instruction on how to control Spider-Man and fast paced action. It’s infectious, and at least for me I think it was an ideal choice for a first game to load up and play. Even if I get frustrated in my progress, I want to come back and have the satisfaction of finding new things I can make Spidey do.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/H0MAUJ3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/H0MAUJ3.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">The characters of Persona 5 Royal</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;">After loading up the rest of my day one titles, though I knew I’d probably focus on just one or two to begin with, I wanted to make sure I sampled them all. The next thing I put in was </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Persona 5 Royal</i><span style="font-family: arial;">. As I said in my last piece, I set out to pick up some contrasting games, and this was one that I got for its reputation as an immersive piece of character-driven storytelling. It’s a reputation I’m already finding well-deserved. First of all, it looks incredible, from the 2D animation of the titles and cut scenes to the 3D engine that powers most of the game. It was, however, a slow starter. </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Persona 5 Royal</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> apparently adds a whole third semester of school (where much of the story, so far, unfolds) for its protagonist to go through and runs for roughly 120 hours. By the end of day 2, I had made it 4 ½ hours in. Much of that time, it has to be said, is spent clicking through dialogue boxes. The mechanics of the game are taught slowly, largely by a talking cat I encountered early on. There is a dense plot, and characters are introduced regularly, the game advancing their stories through a great deal of talking. Early on, some parts do feel long-winded</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: arial;">for instance, everyone restates how much trouble your character will be in if he violates his probation so often that it does get wearing. However, I was completely drawn in by the look of the game, the overarching story, and the approach to character development and interaction.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">If the interaction is minimal early on, what there is, is promising. The real-time combat of <i>Spider-Man</i> requires fast coordination of button combos, something I’m very much still developing. <i>P5R</i>, on the other hand, has turn-based combat that allows for time to consider your approach and tailor it to your enemy. It’s a different kind of rewarding, as you see your character level up and gain new attacks and other abilities, though it slightly lacks the punchy immediacy of getting to web up Kingpin and kick him in the face. It’s an incredibly promising game, assuming it continues to develop and become more player-led as it goes on.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/MjpAoKu.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://i.imgur.com/MjpAoKu.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>The Last of Us Remastered</b></td></tr></tbody></table>On the first day, I also sampled <i>Shadow of the Tomb Raider</i> and <i>The Last of Us Remastered</i>. Each, in its own way, has a very cinematic feel. Camilla Luddington provides the voice and model for this iteration of Lara Croft. She’s a far cry from the pyramidally boobed character I remember from the PS1, and even in the first few minutes, Luddington has given her some personality. In-game, I had some issues (entirely mine) controlling the character. I’m not sure if I headed in the wrong direction or if I just haven’t mastered the button combos, but an early jump and rappel sequence had me confused as to whether I was doing the right thing, as even when I seemed to get to a low drop-down, I kept dying. <i>The Last of Us</i> is also, again at least for me, not super intuitive, and also a bit tough to control. You have to bear in mind that I’m used to a D-Pad or a mouse, so using one of the sticks to move is still unfamiliar, never mind the way <i>TLOU</i> asks you to use two at once. I haven’t quite got my brain around it. This is why I decided to focus, initially, on <i>Spider-Man</i> and <i>P5R</i>. Both, even as dense as <i>Persona</i> clearly is, balance helping you navigate them with fun and challenge in a way that works as an introduction, and that’s what I need right now.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-90197484375072436652022-06-03T09:42:00.000+01:002022-06-03T09:42:07.760+01:00Level 1: Adventures of a new, old gamer<div style="text-align: justify;"><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><u>Introductory Cutscene</u></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I am quite decidedly not a gamer. I’m old, so I grew up in the 8 and 16 Bit era. When we were little, my brother and I had a Sega Master System, we then inherited our Uncle’s Megadrive. I only ever remember buying a handful of games for it, and renting a few more from our local video shop but I was too preoccupied, when we were there, to look at the games, as movies sucked me in more and more.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/w5e4QNp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="557" height="320" src="https://i.imgur.com/w5e4QNp.jpg" width="223" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Diablo: the last series of games <br />I spent significant time on.</b></td></tr></tbody></table>I think that what kept me from getting more into gaming, beyond a handful of PC games, mostly the <i>Diablo</i> series, was the fact that while they were a fun enough distraction, I never got sucked into them. Yes, they had basic stories, but I never felt invested in them, they were never emotional experiences in the way that cinema was at its best. My movie habit was becoming ever more dominant in terms of time and money, so I never had the requisite setup cost for a console, never mind the comparatively extremely expensive games, when I could just go to the cinema for my escape into other worlds. I fell off gaming almost entirely after the 16 bit era. I did play <i>Guitar Hero</i>. Once. I’m distinctly lacking in musical talent, but I never understood the point of pretending to play a guitar when, if that was something I really wanted to do, I could go out and buy one (probably for less than the console, at least initially) and just learn the real thing. This is, to be fair, probably thinking that’s somewhat reflective of my ASD, which tends towards making me see things in quite black and white ways...but that’s beside the point.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I also played a few classic 16 Bit games when my younger brother had them on his X Box. All told, it’s been the better part of a quarter of a century since I invested substantial time in a console game. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">All this said, for the last few years I have been aware of the move towards more immersive storytelling in gaming, and I keep hearing about games as narrative and as engaging, character driven, emotional storytelling. That interests me. I’ve often talked about how I feel, for lack of a better term, basic as a film critic. My first draw to cinema has never been visual or metaphorical. Don’t mistake me, I love and respect those things, and I can understand them, read them and break them down until the cows come home. BUT, my interest in doing that is almost always grounded first in story and in character. If you can’t hook me into an interesting story, if you can’t make me care about your characters then chances are I’m not going to care how beautiful your film is, or what you’re saying at a metaphorical level. If you fail in your first duty, I struggle to care about what surrounds it. With games now apparently evolved to the point that they can give people these experiences that I so deeply love in movies, I’m interested to see if that can work for me.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I asked a little advice and did some reading of my own. I knew that I would be choosing between two consoles, a Playstation 4 and a Nintendo Switch (a PS5 remains out of budget range, but PS4 still seems current enough to provide what I’m after, especially given the gap in my gaming experience). Looking at the libraries of games, it wasn’t a difficult choice. It seemed to me that the PS4, as well as having more games that appeared geared towards adults, placed greater emphasis on the sort of narrative and character components that I was looking to discover. That said, it also seemed to offer a good selection of what I’ll call pick up and play games: the sort of thing that might feel more familiar, even nostalgic, to me.</span></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/MrhvEzq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/MrhvEzq.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Shadow of the Tomb Raider: One of the titles I'm getting for day one of my PS4 gaming.</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">In this series, I’m hoping to give you some sense of how I’m progressing as a new, old gamer. I have already got my first couple of games. <i>Persona 5 Royal</i> sounds intriguing, I’ve been getting into Japanese music and making the first inroads into learning the language since the pandemic started, and this game feels like an extension of the exploration I’ve been making in Japanese culture, as well as the storyline suggesting the possibility of getting heavily immersed in both narrative and a shifting character. Much more familiar to me at first glance is <i>Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition</i>. The first game was also among the few I ever played on the original Playstation, but again this appears to have more going on narratively, as well as having the virtue of being something I imagine I can come into already having an idea about the mechanics of.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">I will be picking up my PS4 Pro at the beginning of next week, along with another pair of games, again designed to split the system’s more immersive, story driven, side (<i>The Last of Us Remastered</i>) with something that I hope to pick up and play, that appeals to me on a more basic level: the fact I’ve been a fan of the character since I was four (<i>Spider-Man</i>). So, here I go, plunging into what I hope is going to be a rewarding new world. I know these games don’t run at 24FPS, but this is the only outlet I have, and I thought it would be interesting to write a sort of diary of my first substantial forays into what is an almost entirely new type of media for me. I hope we’ll all have fun on the journey.</span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-79909414497536015842022-04-16T11:51:00.007+01:002022-04-17T10:55:17.823+01:00Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 4K [18]<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: John McNaughton </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><u>The Film</u></b> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/vaYnaGD.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="543" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/vaYnaGD.jpg" width="272" /></a></div>For years, <i>Henry</i> was whispered about. It began screening at film festivals in 1986, but went unreleased in the US until 1990, largely because its producers were upset that they hadn't been given a more classical slasher film. In fact, director John McNaughton’s second film, <i>The Borrower</i>, would have beaten it to cinemas by two years, had its original distributor not closed. The problem for <i>Henry</i> wasn’t that it was bad, it was well-received by festival audiences and critics, but its subject and matter of fact, disturbing, presentation led to problems finding distribution and with the MPAA (to say nothing of the fights with the BBFC when it came to the UK). Before release, the film was apparently passed around industry circles on VHS, and in a way that’s still how it feels like it should be seen: a grubby artifact passed under the table. The fact it’s getting a 4K release seems almost antithetical to the movie it is.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">McNaughton had made a couple of TV documentaries for producers Waleed and Malik Ali; profiles of gangsters composed of archive footage. When a planned series on wrestling fell apart, they simply offered him the same budget to make a film, stipulating only that it should be a horror movie. After being shown a segment of the TV show 20/20 about Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed to around 300 murders (few, if any, of which it is now thought he actually committed), McNaughton determined that this would be the subject for his film. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In many ways, though set and shot in Chicago, <i>Henry</i> is reminiscent of the New York set exploitation movies of the 70s. At a production level the circumstances are similar: it was shot on 16mm, without permits, for a shoestring budget, by a cast and crew who, almost to a man, were working on their first film. More than that though, it has a gritty street level feel that permeates the film. Everything, from the back alleys where Henry (Michael Rooker) and Otis (Tom Towles) kill their victims to the very walls of the apartment they share with Otis’s sister Becky (Tracy Arnold), seems streaked with the accumulated dirt of the city. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There are, intentionally, exploitation elements to the film that serve to lull us, as an audience, into a sense of security. The most classical of these is the murder when Henry and Otis go to buy a TV. The stolen goods dealer who is showing them their options is a slob, more than that he’s rude, abrasive, and insulting. Throughout the scene we know he’s going to get his ‘comeuppance’ (never mind that he’s a much lesser offender here; rude, rather than a serial murderer), we’re anticipating it, and when it comes it goes to almost silly lengths. It’s a very traditional death. What it sets up, however, is the central and most disturbing, sequence in the film. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Before the TV murder, <i>Henry</i> looks largely at the before and after of murder, whether it’s the series of tableaux of victims that opens the film, or Henry walking into the flat he shares with Otis with a very nice guitar. Asked where he got it he says “I picked it up”, but we’re privy to the context, we just haven’t seen the body of the hitch-hiker who was carrying it before. We see Henry stalk potential victims, spotting them in public and following in his car; locked in, but able to abandon any that don’t present an opportunity. Rooker’s nonchalance in these before and after moments is chilling. When we see killings play out, Henry is little more affected, at least by his own actions. Otis is another matter. If Henry is controlled and careful, picking his victims, varying his MO to avoid detection, Otis is all abandon, the two are equally destructive, but Henry has a line, a sexual one, that he won’t cross and is upset when Otis does. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is where the film’s most controversial, and most pivotal, scene comes in. Where Michael Haneke’s <i>Funny Games</i> (in either version) looks into camera and goads us to justify our relationship to the depiction of violence on screen, McNaughton does the same thing in a much more insidious way. As we see the terrorisation and killing of a whole family unfold on a TV screen, we understand that we’re watching back something Henry and Otis have filmed, but it’s only late in the sequence that McNaughton breaks and shows us that they too are watching, and that Otis then rewinds the sequence, and puts it in slow motion. The film doesn’t have to come out and say it, the implication is clear: you’re doing the same thing as these monsters. How do you feel about that? It’s a sequence that echoes through the audience’s relationship to not just this film, but the serial killer genre as a whole. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/22d7Y8W.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="800" height="250" src="https://i.imgur.com/22d7Y8W.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Between killings, <i>Henry</i>, both film and to some degree character, is almost banal. Rooker looks like every blue-collar guy, you believe the sense that the film puts across that he’s in no danger of getting caught not because he’s particularly smart (certainly he has no forensic awareness) but because he’s someone you wouldn’t look twice at. Until the moment, he doesn’t appear dangerous. In this way, Henry’s outward ordinariness becomes terrifying. It perhaps this, along with the fact that she seems to have been conditioned to expect and accept the very worst from men, that draws Becky to Henry. Through her eyes, Henry’s psychopathy isn’t as troubling as it should be, because she sees it directed at protecting her from Otis and his incestuous advances. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">These are difficult characters to play; all damaged, two of them irredeemably evil. Becky is the innocent of the group, naively looking past Henry’s nature, even after he disconnectedly tells her how he killed his mother. Tracy Arnold’s performance is the overlooked gem of this film; she gives us Becky’s innate decency, but also the damage that has resulted from her tough life and in her looking for someone to trust anywhere she can, even in a psychopath. Rooker and Towles dive deep into their reprehensible characters, giving horribly compelling performances. Towles’ Otis is a pathetic monster, emboldened by Henry to the worst of his violent impulses, but driven by his own urges to sexual crimes. If not exactly star-making, Rooker’s performance certainly gave him a career, and it remains his finest work. The only sense we get of acting is the fact that we sometimes sense Henry first trying to appear normal, and the mask slipping for a moment. This is most notable in the sequence when he’s playing cards with Becky, the distance in his eyes and his answers showing the blankness of the monster beneath his facade of normalcy. It’s a terrifying piece of work. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Henry</i> is the kind of film that could only have been made under the circumstances that it was: tiny budget, full creative freedom, and the luck of some incredibly talented people coming together. It’s among the bleakest and most pitiless films ever made, and even though the confessions it’s based on turned out to be fabricated, the reality is that somebody did these things (or things very like them) and it’s probable that the person was just as outwardly ordinary and often was just as free to go on with their life as Henry is by the end of this film. The film itself is a horror masterpiece, but what’s truly frightening about it is that we can be sure there were, and are, many, many Henrys out there. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;">★★★★★</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><u>The Disc and Extras</u></b> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/u0sWK1n.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="597" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/u0sWK1n.jpg" width="299" /></a></div><br />In this new edition, <i>Henry </i>looks outstanding. Presented in native 4K from a new restoration, the film almost certainly looks better than it ever has. The print is free of blemishes and, while grain is present, it doesn’t swarm the picture. The detail is excellent, accentuating the down and dirty feel of the film. It’s perhaps not up with the very best 4K presentations, but that's down to the limitations of the source format rather than the quality of the work here. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The extras package is beyond exhaustive. Two booklets collect several essays on the film and the complete storyboards. There are three commentaries, all featuring John McNaughton. I’ve not had time to listen to them yet, but based on his contributions elsewhere, I’m sure they’re all engaging, but I suspect there’s also going to be significant overlap. A collection of deleted scenes and outtakes is interesting. It’s a pity the sound has been lost, but McNaughton’s commentary fills in the gaps.
A 2005 documentary, running 50 minutes, is a useful overview and, happily, features all the key people, including Tracy Arnold, who doesn’t seem to have commented on the film that often outside of this feature. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Elsewhere are filmmakers appreciations of <i>Henry</i>, a documentary on killers with cameras in cinema, and video essays on the film’s history with both the MPAA and the BBFC. Interview features with McNaughton are provided from around the time of the film’s release in 1990 as well as in retrospect, from 1998 and 2016. Finally among the video extras is an interview with the designer of the film’s startling theatrical poster.
It will take you several full days to work through all the content here. Take into account the package: a hard case with new poster art, as well as a double-sided poster and 6 postcards, and this must qualify as one of 2022’s most comprehensive and best releases. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">★★★★★</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-80382349476217847922022-04-05T20:34:00.001+01:002022-04-05T20:34:19.370+01:00Spider-Man: No Way Home [12]<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Jon Watts </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/BMZ5xBG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/BMZ5xBG.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>There have been many tries at adapting <i>Spider-Man</i> to the screen. Most have strengths, but all have their weaknesses. Sam Raimi’s films got Peter entirely right, with Tobey Maguire perfectly cast, but Spider-Man’s wisecracking wit got left behind somewhat. While Kirsten Dunst was good, the screenplays sanded off Mary Jane’s edges, and often leaned into cheese. The second of Raimi’s trilogy remains a hugely entertaining blockbuster, but even that one suffers from the wider problems of its franchise. I hate the <i>Amazing Spider-Man</i> films. Andrew Garfield clearly earnestly wanted to do the character justice, but only a couple of scenes throughout his tenure capture the character properly, and the problems are legion (reviews <a href="https://24framez.blogspot.com/2012/07/amazing-spider-man-3d-12a.html" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a> and <a href="https://24framez.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-amazing-spider-man-2-2d-12a.html" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a>). </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Marvel Cinematic Universe initially couldn’t use Spider-Man but, with rights issues negotiated, he finally showed up, in the form of Tom Holland, for <i>Captain America: Civil War</i>, before the MCU embarked on what has become the Home trilogy of films. Like the other franchises centering on the character, it’s had its ups and downs. The first film, <i>Homecoming</i>, confirms what <i>Civil War</i> suggested: Tom Holland is a great choice, and this time not just as Peter Parker. For the first time, that film consistently nails down the persona of Peter’s Spider-Man; a witty kid who has a quip ready for every occasion. We get the sense here that the Spider-Man costume empowers him to that end, drawing a better-defined distinction between Peter in and out of costume than ever before. However, it’s not entirely a Spider-Man film. Far too much time is spent in service of the larger MCU, especially of featuring Iron Man. The film is at its best when Peter is doing his ‘friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man’ thing, and particularly when he’s in his own costume. The suit that Tony Stark made for him undermines Peter’s trademark intellect and ingenuity by, first of all, having to be something he got from another brilliant scientist, and secondly by doing too much for him. The sequel, <i>Far From Home</i>, doubles down on these problems while also stripping out much of Spidey’s wit. The use of Mysterio’s illusions is fantastic in a couple of late action scenes, but otherwise, it’s a weak film. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That brings us to <i>No Way Home</i>. The marketing had me worried, the reliance on Dr Strange, the use of the Multiverse, which suggested nothing so much as a desperate attempt to make a live action version of <i>Into The Spiderverse</i> (still, hands down, the greatest Spider-Man film). Happily, this is easily the best of the MCU’s Spider-Man series, and probably one of the best films to feature the character. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>No Way Home</i> picks up directly after the ending of <i>Far From Home</i>. Peter’s secret identity has been revealed to the world by J. Jonah Jameson (JK Simmons, reprising the role from the Raimi series, only this time as an Alex Jones style ranting commentator). This has major repercussions, as Spider-Man is thought by many to have murdered Mysterio, and the effects reverberate onto Peter’s friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), and his aunt May (Marisa Tomei). Most consequentially, the controversy means that Peter, Ned and MJ are all rejected from what should have been almost sure thing places at MIT. Wanting to set things right, Peter goes to Dr Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to ask him to cast a spell that will make people forget that he is Spider-Man. In his haste, he makes Strange change the spell so many times as it is in progress that it goes wrong, creating a crack in the multiverse that lets in anyone who knows, in any universe, that Peter is Spider-Man. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I’m sorry for that long introduction, but it was important to set the pieces here, because that crack in the Multiverse pulls in many of the villains from the earlier Spider-Man franchises. <i>No Way Home</i> is soaked in Spider-Man lore, both from the earlier films and from the comics (often drawing the earlier versions of the characters much closer to their source material). There is no way to cover this without spoilers, so if you’ve not seen the film yet, beware. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/F6JikHI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://i.imgur.com/F6JikHI.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>The first 40 minutes of <i>No Way Home</i> are MCU Spider-Man as we’ve come to expect, in both good and bad ways. I struggled with the point of Ned in the first film in the trilogy. The writers struggled with the point of him in the second, saddling him with a romance so prosaic they wrote it out at the end of the film. Here though, the dynamic between Peter, Ned and MJ feels much more balanced. They’re not well established as a trio in the first two films, but this film depicts them as much closer. It’s a little clumsy, but well played. There’s a sense that an offscreen friendship is bleeding into the film, and we do get a little invested in them all going to college together. The consequences of Peter’s identity being discovered could have been heavier (perhaps an alternate version would have leaned into a certain cameo and given us a trial of Spider-Man narrative), but what does weigh on Peter feels authentically life-altering for a teenager. I buy into the idea of Peter, used to fixing things with superpowers, looking first for that kind of solution. As ever, the points at which the film has to service the expansion of the MCU are its weakest. Worse, you can barely tell a difference in tone between the writing of Dr Strange (or many other characters) and Peter, when it comes to wisecracking, which is a perennial problem for the series. Overall, the first act is fine, but nothing new. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The bridge scene is when things kick into gear, with the appearance of Alfred Molina’s Dr. Octopus. Molina positively relishes the part, and Jon Watts stages an imaginative action scene, with the fact that Doc Ock’s tentacles are now fully CG giving them somewhat greater freedom. It’s also a well-written scene when it comes to Peter’s character; he’s curious about why this man has suddenly appeared and attacked him, but it also incorporates some of Spidey’s humour, especially in his delight when he discovers how the nanotech of the Iron Spider suit interacts with the tentacles. It’s a tremendously entertaining sequence that combines all the best qualities of Spider-Man. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Bringing the old villains in one by one allows Watts and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers the chance to do a soft reboot on them, fixing some issues that fans had with the original cinematic incarnations. Jamie Foxx still plays Electro, but he’s no longer the Edward Nygma knockoff of <i>Amazing Spider-Man 2</i>; his powers have given him a swagger that Foxx is much more comfortable with, while a late change in look gives hints of the original comic character’s lightning bolt mask, without going for the full silliness of that look. Similarly, the Green Goblin of the Raimi films is retconned a little. Willem Dafoe continues to play him with the same glee he had in 2002, but the Power Ranger mask is smashed early on, and Norman takes on a look much closer to the classic John Romita design, purple cowl intact. For someone who has always loved the character, it’s a near perfect mix of something credible within its world and preserving the comic book look. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What works best about the film though is that while the fanservice is present and correct, it’s not what the film is about. With great power, every Spidey series tells us, comes great responsibility, and even before that phrase has been uttered in this continuity, that’s what this film has Peter embracing. It’s also worth noting that the twist on how that maxim is delivered here works well. It hit me emotionally, both because of an affection for the characters its between and how it pays indirect tribute to the way it’s usually shown. The villains Peter encounters may have been teleported in from other dimensions, but he feels a responsibility to them and to the other people in those dimensions not to simply kill these people, but to cure them: to send them back as the decent people they once were. It’s a great encapsulation of the main lesson of Spider-Man and just one of the ways that this—finally—is an MCU movie about Spidey himself. Dr Strange may facilitate the mechanics of the plot here, but this isn’t about Peter’s relationship to him, or his place in The Avengers the way the other films in this series are. This is a film about finally becoming the hero that his powers make it possible to be, whatever the consequences. It’s also a film about connection: to friends who are essentially family, to a parent like May and, of course, to the only people Peter knows who share his experience. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/pnCnhK5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://i.imgur.com/pnCnhK5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Even though Andrew Garfield denied it repeatedly, it was always clear that he and Tobey Maguire would be reprising their roles, playing alternate Peter Parkers (Peters Parker?) What was a pleasing surprise to me was how substantial their roles are in terms of screentime and what they contribute. If the reclaiming of the old characters and the moving of them closer to the established lore is largely subtext, one scene with Garfield makes it supertext. In a pep talk the others comfort Garfield’s Parker as he does himself down—clearly a reference to the Amazing series' critical and fan reception. Garfield is great here, it seems that this is everything he ever wanted his Peter to be, and there are some lovely moments as he relates to older and younger versions of ‘himself’. His excitement at being along for this ride is both palpable and contagious. No, it doesn’t mean the <i> Amazing </i>series is suddenly good. Maguire seems a little less sure about being back, but that works for his older and more reflective Peter. It makes me wonder if he’s still doing the superhero thing in his part of the multiverse. The reference to his MJ is sweet, but I do wish we’d seen Kirsten Dunst reprise her role. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pulling three Spideys and something close to a full Sinister Six together for the final action sequence does mean the film’s ending is busy, but it’s also pretty exciting and surprisingly easy to follow. Watts and team break the sequence into a series of mini setpieces, and the costumes and styles are distinctive enough that it doesn’t get lost which Spider-Man we’re following at any given time. The theme of responsibility, and of the cost Peter was trying to avoid, comes full circle with the ending (which also has one image that nods poignantly to the ending of Raimi’s first film). It’s here that I really felt the point of spending so much time with Ned in the two previous films. While Homecoming was a teen movie, the ending makes this one feel like a true coming of age story for Holland’s Peter. There’s an innocence the character used to have that we’ll likely never see again. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>No Way Home </i>has many of the flaws familiar in MCU films. Ultimately it’s just as anonymous looking as any of them, and I don’t doubt that any of the Marvel directors could have delivered much the same movie, given the same second units. That said, this was never intended to be auteur cinema. If the MCU delivers films almost as a mechanical process, this one feels like it’s been delivered by a machine that has been tinkered with, retooled to work at its highest potential. It’s the MCU Spider-Man film I’d been hoping for, and while it’s not perfect (and hasn’t a single image as indelible as <i>Spiderverse</i>’s ‘falling upwards’ shot), that feels like as much as I could have asked of it. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">★★★★</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-68242981733110954722022-04-04T08:21:00.002+01:002022-04-04T08:26:50.327+01:00Much Ado about Much Ado: Interview with the Shakespeare sisters<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In this audio interview, I spoke to Hillary and Anna-Elizabeth Shakespeare, screenwriters and directors of <i>Soundtrack to Sixteen</i>, which I've been a big fan of since its premiere in 2019 about their new film, <i>Much Ado</i>: a British, teen movieesque take on Much Ado About Nothing.</span></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE__kq5OyNKj8x4mhAw1gRZb_GKGG8QuclnJJiQ0O4qexXwO3-D30YSbjmWMR7ll3I4jMNKAPTBFoc9zfzq6y63WyUjYTj_WMBjySKH51yDVx1cOS91Pg2gEiiBxukBNg_8kE4YC-_4rRqMXAGrHXjKq2j_bPEYrMnU1LjPIE62v-Ymj0Slaw9t1r0Vw/s1684/MuchAdo1.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1190" data-original-width="1684" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE__kq5OyNKj8x4mhAw1gRZb_GKGG8QuclnJJiQ0O4qexXwO3-D30YSbjmWMR7ll3I4jMNKAPTBFoc9zfzq6y63WyUjYTj_WMBjySKH51yDVx1cOS91Pg2gEiiBxukBNg_8kE4YC-_4rRqMXAGrHXjKq2j_bPEYrMnU1LjPIE62v-Ymj0Slaw9t1r0Vw/w640-h452/MuchAdo1.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Much Ado</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">We talked about adaptation, working as a directorial team, delivering 400 year old dialogue casually and much more. You can listen to our discussion below, and head over to Hey U Guys for my <a href="https://www.heyuguys.com/much-ado-review/" target="_blank"><b>review of the film</b></a>.</span></div><iframe frameborder="0" height="60" src="https://www.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?hide_cover=1&mini=1&light=1&feed=%2F24FPSUK%2Fshakespeare-sisters-interview%2F" width="100%"></iframe><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">If you want to know more about <i>Soundtrack to Sixteen</i>, <i>Much Ado</i>, or their upcoming projects, you'll find Hillary and Anna on <b><a href="https://twitter.com/ShaxperSisters" target="_blank">Twitter</a> </b>and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/shakespearesistersfilm/" target="_blank"><b>Facebook</b></a>.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-34140908995593762032022-02-21T15:24:00.001+00:002022-02-21T15:24:52.981+00:00The Worst of 2021<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I am in the middle, having finally locked the list down, of my last couple of rewatches to write the pieces that will cover the Best films of 2021 (look for that piece at the end of the week), but until then I figured we should address the... not so great achievements of the year that was. Not wanting to dwell too much in the negative, I've kept this to a bottom 5, though dishonorable mentions are also due to <i>Red Notice</i>, <i>Silent Night</i> and <i>Jolt</i>, all of which missed the cut by a hair's breadth.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b><u>The Worst of 2021: Bottom 5</u></b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">5: <b>He's All That</b> [Mark Waters]</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/NaCE5yj.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="800" height="427" src="https://i.imgur.com/NaCE5yj.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As someone who has made a habit, if not a career, out of writing about teen and coming of age movies, <i>She's All That</i> was never one I particularly liked. The warmed over <i>Pygmalion</i> tale of a popular guy taking a nerdy girl and making her prom queen felt reductive even in the 90s and, in a field then packed with better teen versions of literary classics, it never stood out.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This gender-swapped remake is worse. I'll admit to being out of touch with the social media themes (which means that star Addison Rae, making a terrible acting debut here, is an entirely new face to me), but it has many of the same problems; a weak screenplay, televisual direction and an 'outcast' who is obviously one of the hottest people in school, so it's hardly a shock when the protagonists get together. The film nods back to the original by casting its star, Rachel Leigh Cook, as Rae's mother, but inexplicably it doesn't have her play the same character she did in <i>She's All That</i>, which would have given some added punch to the otherwise bland mother/daughter scenes.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This might not be worst teen romcom Netflix has put out, but it's very possibly the blandest and most tedious.</span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">4: <b>Hinterland</b> [Stefan Ruzowitzky]</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/qn1HrhN.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/qn1HrhN.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Since his medical school set slasher <i>Anatomy</i> (starring a young Franka Potente), Stefan Ruzowitzky has had an up and down career, and sadly this initially promising serial killer thriller in the <i>Seven </i>mould is another major down.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The plot has a German soldier recently returned from the first world war recruited back into the police to investigate a series of grisly murders; fairly standard stuff, but interesting enough. The film though is irrevocably hobbled by Ruzowitzky's calamitous directorial choices, from dutch angles so prevalent that you worry the cast and sets are going to slide out of frame to the unspeakably ugly look of the film. The whole thing is shot on green screen, with CGI backgrounds in practically every shot. It's all incredibly artificial, which one could see as being the point early on, as the soldiers first arrive home, but it quickly becomes wearing because when nothing in the frame looks real, that undermines everything else about the film as well.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The cast often appears to be shoddily comped into shots that are frequently overlit, which only shows up the shortcomings of the CGI even more. Without the hideous stylistic choices this might have been a passable enough mystery thriller, with them it's an often out and out laughable disaster. </div></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">3: <b>For the Sake of Vicious</b> [Reese Eveneshen, Gabriel Carter] </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/9JcPNmZ.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="336" data-original-width="800" height="269" src="https://i.imgur.com/9JcPNmZ.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">It's fair to say I don't mind violence in movies, but <i>For the Sake of Vicious</i> essentially diagnoses its problems with its own title. This British home invasion horror in which a nurse finds her house taken over first by one seemingly crazed man and the person he's holding hostage and then by escalating waves of motorcycle-helmeted killers, establishes no purpose beyond its kills.</div></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Points, I guess, for doing what it says on the tin, but the film is so empty of anything else that you can't care about any of the violence that is happening. None of it's fun either, this isn't a movie going for or embracing absurdity, and so the violence is just deadening and dull.</span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">2: </span><b style="font-family: arial;">Crazy Samurai: 400 Vs 1</b><span style="font-family: arial;"> [Yuji Shimomura] </span></p></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; text-align: left;"></span></p><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/j7v5OPQ.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/j7v5OPQ.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Everything about this movie outward screams awesome. The title? Awesome. The premise? Awesome. The centrepiece? AWESOME. It all fails and fails hard. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">That centrepiece is the film's USP; a 70+ minute continuous take of the massed fight sequence that gives the film its title. For a fan of practical action, it's enough to set you drooling. Then you have to watch it. First, you'll see how low resolution it looks, in marked contrast to the brief, conventionally cut, prologue. Then you'll notice the drab colours, sparse set, and other indicators of a low budget. After that, and perhaps most damagingly, as the film gets to its second or third wave of fighters, you'll realise there were probably about 15 stuntmen on set. You'll spot them being killed and visibly rolling out of frame. You'll realise there's no progression, a tiny handful of mini-bosses but no sense of build. You'll also notice that the crowd of fighters always just attacks our 'hero' head-on, and that the choreography is both weak and lacking in variety.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div>Yes, this all sounded awesome, but within 10 minutes of the take starting, you'll realise that it was a terrible idea both to make and to watch it.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">1: <b>Run Hide Fight</b> [Kyle Rankin] </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/CPLZfkx.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/CPLZfkx.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The things I watch because I'm a Radha Mitchell fan. For the record, Mitchell is wasted here playing the deceased mother of the main character, who puts in ghostly appearances to give her daughter advice during her day as, essentially, John McClane in <i>Die Hard</i> during a school shooting. <i>Run Hide Fight</i> lays out its entire structure and action in its title, what the title doesn't tell you is how repellent the film is.</div></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Finally released in the US by Ben Shapiro's far right 'news' site The Daily Wire, this reactionary fantasy boils down all the misunderstandings about school shooters and their motives into a collection of abysmally written and acted characters, then proceeds to become, to all intents and purposes, pro guns in schools propaganda. Add to that the fact an animal was killed for real for the opening hunting scene and the coda's heroising of straight-up murder and you have a film that tops this list because it is as morally repugnant as it is ineptly made.</span></div></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-75150410684220382652022-02-20T13:13:00.002+00:002022-02-20T13:32:07.499+00:00Texas Chainsaw Massacre [2022]<div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Dir: David Blue Garcia</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/GBDgcue.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="533" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/GBDgcue.jpg" width="267" /></a></div>Like many things, horror franchises move in cycles. Occasionally, individual films start trends, but further franchise entries tend to be trying to catch up with them. The original <i>Texas Chain Saw Massacre</i> wasn’t so much a trendsetter as something that the films that came in its wake—very much including most of the eight various sequels, remakes and reboots—tried and failed to recapture the lightning in a bottle feel of. Tobe Hooper’s film was a nightmare to make; the set and costumes reeked, the set wasn’t especially harmonious, Hooper was a real taskmaster, and the dinner sequence was a more than 24 hour shooting day purgatory. As well as the grain conferred by a low-budget 16mm shoot, the film has an air of madness about it; a feeling of a waking nightmare that bleeds into every frame. <i>Texas Chainsaw Massacre</i> 2022, on the other hand, is a glossy-looking Netflix movie.</div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">TCM 2022 is also chasing a trend, for legacy sequels, and most prominently the template set by <i>Halloween</i> 2108. The plot isn’t well developed, but as far as I can figure out chefs/influencers Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore) have bought the entire, almost totally deserted, town of Harlowe, Texas, and are arriving there to set up (apparently with about seven minutes to spare) for a busload of investors to come in and lease space from them to turn it into a tourist hotspot. Along for the ride are Dante’s girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson) and Melody’s sister Lila (Elsie Fisher). Soon after arriving, they find the local orphanage is still occupied by an old woman and her adult ‘son’. No prizes for guessing who the son is. The only real background we get on any of the characters is that Lila is a survivor of a school shooting, and thus very uncomfortable when, stopping for gas, the group sees a man with a large gun strapped to his waist, Of course, he turns out to be their contractor in Harlowe, Richter (Moe Dunford). </div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite the lack of much story, <i>Texas Chainsaw Massacre</i> does seem to want to say something. It’s as confused here as in other areas. It seems to be against Melody and Dante coming in and buying up the town, perhaps trying to criticise gentrification, but if that’s what it wants to do the commentary might be more effective if they were turfing out more than the last two people from what is otherwise a ghost town. It mocks social media a little but doesn’t show that it knows anything about influencer culture. We never see anything of Melody and Dante’s content, nor is it really explained why that content makes Harlowe a place they think they could do something with. You have to wonder just how popular they are because I’d question whether even someone with as powerful a following as Kim Kardashian could pull off what they seem to be attempting here. </div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">What throughline there is to the film’s attempt at a message seems weirdly right-wing. The “You’re canceled” joke, which works no better here than in the trailer, is a lazy trope of right-leaning ‘wit’, but what is truly distasteful is the way the film plays Lila’s backstory. Lila’s journey is one of not just losing her fear of guns but re-embracing them in the wake of her traumatic experience. It leaves a horrible taste in the mouth and gives the whole film a reactionary feel that, while not quite as bad, recalls last year’s odious <i>Run Hide Fight</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Terrible and badly communicated as all this is, I do realise that suspect politics won’t be the main thing that people are coming to <i>Texas Chainsaw Massacre</i> either to see or to criticise. At just 73 minutes pre-credits, the saw has to rev up pretty quickly this time, dispensing with character beats to favour set pieces. On the plus side, at least there’s no messing about in getting to the meat of the film. On the other hand, this haste undermines its interest as a legacy sequel. For as much as it got wrong David Gordon Green’s <i>Halloween</i> did at least devote considerable time to re-establishing and letting us understand where Laurie Strode had ended up. If those beats were there for Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré, doing a decent enough job subbing for the late Marilyn Burns) they have hit the cutting room floor. There’s no insight into what she’s been doing for 45 years or more and less (beyond ‘the film’s not long enough’) into why she doesn’t take several chances she has. There is really no reason for both Sally and these random kids to be in this story. If it’s to be a legacy sequel, then there is something to be made of a weary Sally following one last lead to finally destroy this monster. If you want Leatherface to kill Gen Z Tik Tok users… fine, I guess, but I’m not sure that’s the same movie, especially at this running time.</div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/YUFfUwm.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; font-family: arial; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://i.imgur.com/YUFfUwm.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">To give director David Blue Garcia some credit, he came into a difficult situation with this film, replacing the original directors with a week of production already completed. I’m not a fan of the look of the film overall, especially the teal and yellow palette that he and cinematographer Ricardo Diaz arrive at for the entirety of the third act, but there are a few memorable images here, most strikingly Leatherface rising from a field of dead sunflowers. While the original film famously implies almost all of its gore, it’s fair to say that the rest of the franchise has been defined by excess in that area, and you have to hand it to this iteration; it goes for broke and doles out some memorably bloody carnage. While the way the bus sequence starts is a disaster, there are also some brilliantly gross moments as Leatherface chops his way through to the fleeing Melody and Lila, and the showdown with Sally is equally brutal (so much so that a later moment is total nonsense).</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Character, as mentioned, isn’t the film’s strong suit, and that’s a pity because with a more robust script I could imagine this cast working well. In the brief preamble, though the dialogue clunks, the dynamic is convincing enough, and Yarkin and Fisher both have strong Final Girl energy about them. The problem is that film lacks either the will or the space to develop them enough for that to be something we can really hang on to. </span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Like most of the other Chainsaw films, this one is never scary. In this respect the original works because the atmosphere simply drips with oppressive terror, while in Hooper’s sequel that’s gone, but I like and care about Stretch and, to a degree, Lou enough to be worried about what happens to them. Neither of those things is present here. The gloss of the way it’s shot strips away any real atmosphere, and there’s no opportunity to know the characters enough to care whether they live or die, so it’s not scary. For some, the simple thrill of the gore and the pace at which the film comes at you may be satisfying enough. That can be a lot of fun, but when you’re attempting, for at least the third time, to directly follow up one of the most uniquely terrorising films ever made, this just doesn’t… ahem… cut it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;">★½</span></div></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-59336723061983471252022-01-12T13:46:00.004+00:002022-01-12T13:46:46.670+00:00Eternals [12]<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Chloé Zhao </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/LJE9VlS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/LJE9VlS.jpg" width="270" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">On its face, <i>Eternals</i> is a big swing for Marvel Studios as the MCU begins the first phase of setup that will assuredly culminate in another Endgame style mega teamup. It’s based on a more obscure comic, with cosmic considerations and heroes with godlike lifespans (the story begins in 5000 BCE and covers periods all the way up to the present day) and powers. It also marks the entry of the MCU’s most identifiably auteurist filmmaker to date. Getting Chloé Zhao was always quite a coup, but it’s even more so given that her third film, <i>Nomadland</i>, swept up several major awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, at last year’s Oscars. Unfortunately, the most it does with the MCU formula is to tinker round the edges.</span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; text-align: left;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; text-align: left;">The Eternals of the title are presented as a group of ten human looking aliens sent to earth by the celestial being Arishem to protect humans from another race of aliens, the deviants. Wiping the deviants out in the 16th century, the group are nonetheless left on Earth. After centuries simply living as a human, Sersi (Gemma Chan) is attacked by a deviant, resulting in her bringing the Eternals back together, only to discover they are facing a different and larger threat. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The first major problem with <i>Eternals</i> announces itself from the poster. There are eleven names listed on it. All of these are characters we haven’t previously met in the MCU, and at least eight of them can essentially be considered co-leads. Even with a 155 minute running time to play with, that is quite simply too many characters. To their credit, Zhao and her co-writers (oddly, the director is credited twice as a writer, both solo and with Patrick Burleigh) largely dump the relentlessly quippy style that makes so much MCU dialogue entirely interchangeable between characters. Unfortunately, what replaces it is largely flat and lacking in personality. There’s a lot of world building to get through, and that means there’s little time for shading the characters before the middle of act two. Even then, there’s not a lot to choose between many of the characters and, criminally, the blandest of them all is Sersi, the closest thing the film has to a true protagonist. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The biggest problem with this lack of character is that it means that even as it’s heavily explained, the world of <i>Eternals</i> feels very bland and anonymous. Of all the Marvel films, given the way the story develops, this is the one that needs to make Earth and its people feel the richest, the most intriguing. We need to understand and appreciate why these godlike beings would be drawn into life on this planet and Kit Harrington, boring as ever as Sersi’s human boyfriend, doesn’t make a great argument for that. We do get a glimpse, much later, of something more meaningful, thanks to the MCU’s most fully depicted queer relationship to date (involving Brian Tyree Henry, who gives easily the film’s best performance), but the film needs something about Earth that has that kind of pull for most of its characters. On that level, it utterly fails, and that hollows out any attempt at raising the stakes because the characters investment in the outcome simply isn’t credible. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The MCU is hardly renowned for allowing directors to stamp their personalities on a film. In this respect, Zhao, outside of the action scenes, arguably gets away with more than most, but again, this doesn’t amount to much. Every ten minutes or so, a shot or two—often a landscape, sometimes with one or more of the characters seen in the distance—will remind us this director also did <i>Nomadland</i> and <i>The Rider</i>. It’s not much, but the film’s few memorable images are all among these moments. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">On the whole, <i>Eternals</i> starts badly. The first act is pure MCU by numbers, from the exposition to the dull first deviant attack in London. The depiction of the various powers is also underwhelming, as we’re left to mentally tick off the familiar elements. There’s Richard Madden’s Ikaris with his Cyclops-like eye beams, Angelina Jolie’s Thena comes across as a cross between Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, with her ability to conjure weapons. The Green Lantern aspect also comes across with Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos, as, later on, do visuals that recall the MCU’s previous film, <i>Shang Chi</i>. Don Lee’s Gilgamesh and Lauren Ridloff’s Makkari have the staggeringly original abilities of super strength and super speed respectively. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/3nxrkLY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="800" height="224" src="https://i.imgur.com/3nxrkLY.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">For as interesting a filmmaker as Zhao can be and for as big a swing as it might look at first glance, <i>Eternals</i> does nothing to shake up what we see in superhero battles. One in particular, a visually murky fight in a forest in the middle of the film, is an example of the very worst tendencies of the MCU. It also demonstrates that even with a respected arthouse signing, Marvel is going to heavily impose its house style. </span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Eternals</i> ought to be better than it is. It might have been had it been developed as a TV show. In this form it feels both overlong and undercooked. In a TV show, each flashback could be expanded to give time for character beats that would build on the exposition. There might also have been room for an episode to focus on how each character developed their relationship with Earth and humans in between the 16th century and now. As it is, we only really get that with Phastos, in one of several scenes that make Henry the cast’s MVP. In some ways, it’s curious that Zhao doesn’t hit the character beats better, but for me what <i>Nomadland</i> demonstrated is that she’s at her best working loosely, and draws the most real feeling work from non-actors. I’m amazed that she was interested in this, and the awkward fit of filmmaker to material is evident throughout, especially in the action, which is uninspired even when it’s more visible than in that forest scene. There are glimpses, a few moments in which you can see what <i>Eternals</i> wants to be, but it misses the mark on the grand themes it’s reaching for, and even by the end there’s little sense of who these characters are and why we should care to follow them into another adventure.</span> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">★½</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-22662868649798419982021-11-14T19:02:00.002+00:002021-11-14T19:02:30.962+00:00Home Sweet Home Alone<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Dan Mazer</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/S6Uym3G.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/S6Uym3G.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I hate to break it to you, but you’re not ten years old anymore. That’s why <i>Home Sweet Home Alone</i> isn’t much cop. I was nine, right in the demographic sweet spot, when the original film came out in 1990. It used to be a holiday perennial for me; a fun bit of seasonal slapstick, but it’s been almost 25 years since I last saw it, and let’s be honest, I’ve aged out of it. So, likely, have you. With that in mind, let's try to come at this ‘reimagining’ with some perspective rather than the cries of “my childhood is being destroyed” that greeted the trailer.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The bones of the story are the same as ever; harried parents (Aisling Bea and Andy Daly) go on holiday, accidentally leaving their 10-year-old son (<i>Jojo Rabbit</i>’s Archie Yates as Max Mercer) at home. While he’s there, two burglars attempt to break in and steal a valuable doll they believe is in the house, and Max has to defend the home.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There is an interesting idea here. Heaven forbid we overanalyse the sixth film in the <i>Home Alone</i> series, but the script electing to centre not so much on Max as on the burglars adds a thin veneer of class commentary. The usual things: Max over-indulging in sweets and doing all the things he can only do when he finds himself home alone (a fairly charming sequence, actually); Max fighting off the burglars with some extremely painful-looking slapstick (a pool ball gun...ouch) are present and correct, but it’s who the thieves are that makes this a bit different.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney play Pam and Jeff McKenzie, they’re not criminals, but a teacher and an unemployed tech support worker, who are having to sell the house they love because they can’t keep up with the mortgage. They discover that an ugly doll they own is worth more than $200,000 but they think Max has stolen it during an open house, hence their attempts to steal it back. This does contrast them with the obviously very financially comfortable Mercers (who have taken their extended family to a posh hotel in Tokyo over Christmas). It’s not exactly a scathing indictment of the inequities of the American economy, but at least some thought has gone into the backstory. Making Pam and Jeff first time criminals, as well as the film’s central figures, is an interesting change of focus and explains why they are so bad at crime. Kemper and Delaney are easily the film’s best asset, with Kemper’s generally friendly persona working nicely in a fun scene with a cameoing actor playing a cop she has to throw off the scent. The two also commit to the bit when it comes to the cartoon violence of the break in, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I chuckled a couple of times.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">On the downside, this focus on the burglars leaves Max’s story aneamic. We never really get to know him, beyond the fact he’s a 10-year-old kid, and Yates, who is a bit flat with the dialogue, only gets one short sequence of having fun by himself in the house. The mayhem of the third act is inventive enough, but it’s all over very quickly and the film races towards a treacly ending with quite unbelievable haste. The few sequences in Tokyo offer the usually very funny Aisling Bea very little to do other than fret in an English accent. She and Max’s family are barely in the film more than the one joke members Pam and Jeff’s extended family, and this unbalances things a bit.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">On the whole, if you’re coming at this as an eight to ten-year-old, I imagine you’ll have fun. It’s broad and silly, the slapstick is brief, but it works. Fans of the original will never give this the place the movie has in their hearts, but at least there is an interesting idea, and they might even get a laugh or two along with the kids.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">★★</span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-15060126413814110082021-11-03T15:37:00.000+00:002021-11-03T15:37:01.511+00:0024FPS @ Raindance: Where's Rose?<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: John Mathis</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/5w6OYCi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="486" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/5w6OYCi.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>After 8-year-old Rose (Skyler Elyse Philpot) goes missing, she is quickly found. Once she comes home though, it seems that only her brother Eric (Ty Simpkins) can see that she is not the same little girl who disappeared from her bed just hours before.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Where’s Rose?</i> doesn’t suffer from a lack of ideas. Combining domestic horror with shades of possession movies and folk horror elements, it’s covering a lot of bases in an 83 minute running time. John Mathis’ screenplay clearly sets its cards on the table from the start: Eric is the golden boy; handsome, off to college on a full athletic scholarship, close to his family, but things start to run off the rails as he becomes convinced that his sister is no longer what she appears. However, we see cracks in this perfect facade even before Rose goes missing, notably from the self-confidence audiobook he has on his headphones, and the frosty atmosphere between him and the girl next door, Jessica (Anneliese Judge).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">These broad hints, and the film’s rather unambiguous approach to Rose’s changed character, are a good indication of the issues with the film. Mathis tips his hand too much, letting us be ahead of the film at every turn. When one particular revelatory sequence comes, it feels almost purposeless, because the story elements have already been tied together with the one image that leads into it. This undermines a lot of the film’s impact, which is unfortunate because otherwise there is plenty here to admire.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The performances are strong all round, with former child actor Simpkins making a strong argument for himself as a leading man going forward. His compassionate big brother character credibly develops into something more complex and nuanced, always holding something back. Skyler Elyse Philpot has some cliché things to play as the film leans into the beats of the possessed child movie. That said, she grounds Rose as a sweet, fantasy-prone, little girl early on, and is heartbreaking when we find what lies behind that fantasy. Anneliese Judge has less to do, and her role being so small means that just about every moment she’s on screen has to clue us in to some backstory (through implication rather than exposition). She gives us huge amounts of resonant character detail with just body language and the occasional line. The fact she ends up letting us know rather too much is down to how her character is used, and a testament to rather than a problem with her performance.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">On a surely limited budget, Mathis sometimes makes the semi-rural setting seem almost idyllic to grow up in. However, the woods around the houses also feel menacing and oppressive as they come inside via prints on many of the fabrics in Eric and Rose’s parents’ home. He also gets some excellent practical effects in the film’s last sequence.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s frustrating that <i>Where’s Rose?</i> doesn’t quite come together. The ingredients are all there, and the ending will probably stick with you. If only it weren’t one you got to quite a while before the film does.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">★★★</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Where's Rose?</i> is available on <a href="https://homecinema.curzon.com/film/wheres-rose/" target="_blank"><b>Curzon Home Cinema</b></a> until Midnight on November 4th</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-25511170193607069572021-11-01T09:03:00.000+00:002021-11-01T09:03:00.582+00:0024FPS @ Raindance: Youth V Gov<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Christi Cooper</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/RLbyWZk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="800" height="359" src="https://i.imgur.com/RLbyWZk.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Even with COP26 happening right now, it doesn’t seem that enough focus is being put on the man made climate change that is already befalling our planet, and which all indications say is about to get catastrophically worse. Christi Cooper’s documentary takes a look at group of 21 young people in the US who have elected to try and do something radical about it, by suing the US government to claim that their action in supporting the fossil fuel industry, while knowing the effects it is having on the climate, infringes their right to life, liberty and property.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The film’s greatest asset is these young people, aged between 11 and 22 at the outset of the case. All of them are informed, charismatic advocates for the case. We see this both in events surrounding the various court dates during the case, and in some frankly ridiculous footage from depositions, where opposing lawyers badger them with questions that should be reserved for climate experts. We also get to see some of the details of how climate change is affecting the plaintiffs right now, from extended wildfire seasons threatening farmland, to hurricanes and floods all but destroying homes. In their downtime, we see how these young people become close, their bond among themselves and with their lead counsel seeming to strengthen their resolve when the case gets challenging.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As a film, <i>Youth V Gov</i> is resolutely standard in form, cutting between observed footage of trial prep, talking heads stuff be it with the kids or with experts, and laying out the history of the US government's knowledge of, and action to exacerbate, climate change. It’s informative, but the history aspect is rather dry in its presentation. Spending time with the plaintiffs is often engaging, but that gets repetitive, as do the arguments the film is making, important as they are. Cooper hammers home the point over and over again, which has the peculiar effect of making more than a few sequences feel like a pre-credits summing up. This is perhaps the influence of the case on the film; as much as the lawyers want to make their case in court, Youth V Gov ends up serving as that case in miniature, and there are several closing arguments made.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Juliana Vs United States has the potential to be a massively important case as well as (as we see during the credits) an inspiring one, but <i>Youth V Gov</i> gives it rather standard issue treatment.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">★★★</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Youth V Gov is available on Curzon Home Cinema until midnight on November 1st</b></span></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-3801979510261693702021-10-29T11:25:00.005+01:002021-10-29T11:25:43.226+01:0024FPS @ Raindance: Pause [2018]<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Tonia Mishiali<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/kXu6BVO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="573" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/kXu6BVO.jpg" width="287" /></a></div>Over the past few years, there has been a lot of coverage of coercive control relationships and marriages, with the behaviour finally being recognised as the form of abuse that it is. With <i>Pause</i>, her first feature, Tonia Mishali takes a stark look at Elpida (Stella Fyrogeni), a woman in her early 50s whose husband Costas (Andreas Vasileiou), while he goes out to work, controls just about every aspect of her life. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Mishiali begins by laying out the mundane reality of Elpida’s life. She sometimes looks after her friend’s baby granddaughter, but otherwise passes the days alone in her flat, cleaning and cooking. Repeated shots of her and her husband at the table, only ever speaking for functional reasons, and of them each watching their own TVs (Elpida’s an old CRT that she’s forced to use headphones to watch) hammer home the lack of any affection in the home. We also see that the purse strings are entirely held by Costas, who doles out small amounts day by for groceries. When Elpida asks for money for a haircut, he refuses (“Your hair is fine as it is”).</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Elpida’s few escapes from this reality are closed down as the film goes on; Costas taking more and more from her, and Elpida escapes into brief fantasies. In an interesting choice from Mishiali, these moments of fantasy are never cued for us, and as we see more of them even the exits from the fantasy sequences aren’t clear, so while it’s obvious when a handsome young neighbour turns and kisses Elpida in the hallway that it’s not real, a later encounter with a man painting the apartment building is more ambiguous.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />The depiction of coercive control feels very real, disturbingly so, and Stella Fyrogeni (also seen in the festival in a supporting role in <i>Patchwork</i>) is outstanding as she plays both Elpida’s near total detachment and her fleeting moments of hope—real or fantasised. While the screenplay has a few clunky moments throughout (the painter’s “Bye bye, Hope” to Elpida is painfully on the nose), there is one moment towards the end of the film that feels very out of place and wildly out of character for Elpida. It’s as if Mishiali decided that she needed one real shock sequence in the film, which is otherwise concerned with the way that implied threat can control someone’s life. It doesn’t work in the moment, but worse than that, for me it unravels some of the good work from before, because that’s the moment it’s building to.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Much of <i>Pause</i> is a hauntingly close up and credible portrait of an abusive relationship, it may stumble badly at its last hurdle, but Stella Fyrogeni’s performance is worth the running time by itself.<br /><span style="font-size: medium;">★★★</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><b>Pause screens at 6:20 on October 31st at the Curzon Hoxton, and online at Curzon Home Cinema from November 1st-3rd</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-35944590097623489992021-10-28T11:35:00.002+01:002021-10-28T11:35:24.729+01:0024FPS @ Raindance: Patchwork<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Petros Charalambous</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/j6QqM8i.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="800" height="359" src="https://i.imgur.com/j6QqM8i.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>As one of the leads in Yorgos Lanthimos’ <i>Dogtooth</i> and <i>Alps</i>, Angeliki Papoulia was one of the faces of the so-called Greek Weird Wave of cinema in the late 00’s and early 2010s. She followed Lanthimos into his English language debut, <i>The Lobster</i>, but otherwise has remained in the Greek (and here the Cypriot) film industry.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Papoulia plays Chara, a housewife in her 40s with a dull but comfortable job, a nice husband (Andreas C. Tselepos), and a six-year-old daughter. Outwardly, her life looks close to ideal, but Chara is depressed, worried she is a bad mother. Things get shaken up when Melina (Joy Rieger), the teenage daughter of a new colleague, asks to do work experience with Chara and the older woman begins to see herself as a surrogate mother.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Patchwork</i> rests pretty much entirely on Angeliki Papoulia’s performance, and in that respect, it’s a great success. Much of the work she has to do here is about things that are, for a long time, unspoken to the other characters—the doubts she has about having another child with her husband, her fractured relationship with her mother, and the way this plays into how she sees Melina. Papoulia is excellent at all this, indicating these elements to the audience while Chara is visibly trying to hide them from those around her. She gets to the meanings beneath the film’s often on-the-nose dialogue: long before she explains it to Melina, we can see in how she treats the younger woman that what she’s really doing when giving her advice is essentially talking to herself at Melina’s age.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is the weakness of the screenplay; as much as Papoulia is able to make them play, scenes later in the film often simply explain out loud everything we’ve been reading perfectly well from her performance. Melina isn’t written with quite the same depth, but Joy Reiger (though visibly older than her character), manages to give some life to her beyond the stereotype of an alienated 16-year-old. Melina’s interest in patchwork quilting gives the film its title, but there’s also a sense here that the title <i>Patchwork</i> is meant to be about the way people stitch their adult lives together; the parts don’t always match perfectly, and she doesn’t always like the way that some of them feel, but Chara pulls those pieces together into some kind of whole. That’s where the film is at its best, and Papoulia’s performance, as is so often the case, makes it worth seeing all by itself. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">★★★½</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Patchwork screens at 3:10 on October 31st at the Genesis Cinema, and online at Curzon Home Cinema from November 1st-3rd</b></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-86906708772347592742021-10-26T10:54:00.001+01:002021-10-26T12:09:19.155+01:0024FPS @ Raindance: Shadow<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Bruno Gascon</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/4aWa5h8.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/4aWa5h8.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>In March 1998, 11-year-old Rui Pedro Teixeira Mendonça disappeared from close to his home in Lousada, Portugal. Later that year, his picture was identified when an international child porn ring known as the Wonderland Club was shut down by Police in an operation that spanned 13 countries. He has never been found. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Shadow</i> changes a few names, but otherwise sticks close to the facts of the case, following Ana Moreira as Isabel, after her 11-year-old son Pedro goes missing and Police botch the initial investigation the film tracks both the devastating psychological effect on Isabel and her efforts to keep the case alive and find her son.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Shadow</i> is largely a performance piece. The cast that surround her, including Miguel Borges as her husband and Tomás Alves as the man she believes holds the key to what happened to Pedro, are effective, but this is Ana Moreira’s show. There is little in the way of grandstanding in her performance, instead we see the impact of Pedro’s absence reflected in her body. The film unfolds in chapters: 1998, 2004, 2011 and 2013. Across the first three we watch as Isabel slowly shrinks before our eyes; an already slender woman becoming anorexic and sunken as if the stress of Pedro’s absence and simply of not knowing is eating her from the inside. The dialogue can be a little blunt (at least based on the subtitles), but Moreira’s physical performance always cuts to the core of the emotion of her scenes.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Much of the film looks like a typical Netflix true-crime story: it communicates the story well enough, but Gascon doesn’t find many images that stand alone. The exception, and the film’s most interesting purely visual thread, is in the use of yellow. The portrait used on Pedro’s missing poster has him in a yellow short, and for almost the entire film, Isabel is either wearing or carrying something yellow. Most of the time it is her shirt, but when she travels to meet another mother of a missing child, it is her suitcase. When Gascon, at Isabel’s low point, strips yellow out of the frame it feels like a final signal that Isabel has, at least in the moment, truly lost hope. Interestingly, this isn’t noted in the dialogue, so it’s only late in the film that it feels entirely intentional on Isabel’s part, but the emotional impact of the choice is there throughout.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The problem with the film is that nothing that surrounds Isabel is particularly well developed. To a degree that’s because she tunnel visions just about everything else in her life away, but there’s a lack of much sense of the impact of that on her husband and especially on her daughter. The final chapter focuses on a court case that, important as it is to Isabel, never gives us a feel for the stakes of its outcome, nor the specific charges it is over and which is much more formulaic than the rest of the film. It’s a weak note to end the film on. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Of course, the problem that Gascon has is that there really isn’t an ending here. Nobody knows what happened to the real Rui Pedro, he was declared dead in 2019, but that’s an assumption, and the film never quite finds a way to deal with that beyond just stopping and dedicating itself to him and his family. The ending here ought to be lingering and haunting, instead, it just feels rather hollow. This is a tragic case, and Ana Moreira’s performance impressively articulates the impact of it on Pedro’s mother, but the rest of the film doesn’t land with quite the same impact.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">★★★</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Shadow screens at the Raindance Film Festival on October 30th at Curzon Hoxton and online on October 31st. Tickets are available <b><u><a href="https://raindance.org/festival-programme/shadow/" target="_blank">here</a></u></b>.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-484877469315102192021-10-16T10:31:00.002+01:002021-10-16T10:31:39.323+01:0024FPS @ LFF: Petite Maman<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Celine Sciamma</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/GiZTuxS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/GiZTuxS.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>“I came from the path behind you”, says 8-year-old Nelly (Josephine Sanz), just after telling her friend Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) that, in the future, Marion will be her mother. Like many of the lines in Celine Sciamma’s exquisite screenplay for her fifth film, it’s layered with meaning; Nelly literally comes from the path behind Marion, from her Grandmother’s house, which she and her parents are clearing out after her death. It’s also a line about how Nelly, and all children to some degree, follows a path cut for her by her mother.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Four of Sciamma’s five directorial films, and the two features she’s written for other directors, fall broadly into coming of age cinema. I’m not sure any modern filmmaker has managed such a consistent, varied and nuanced exploration of the genre. While it hasn’t got the spectacular effects and the high sci-fi concept, the film <i>Petite Maman</i> most recalls for me in spirit is, perhaps surprisingly, <i>Back to the Future</i>. That film, ultimately, is about meeting your own parents and realising that if you had just been a couple of guys at school, you probably wouldn’t have got on with your Dad. <i>Petite Maman</i> takes the same basic concept of meeting your parent at your own age, but in this case, Nelly and Marion become fast friends. While the film doesn’t have her state it in the moment, it’s clear from one subtle shot of a particular, almost talismanic, prop that Nelly figures out quickly what is going on. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Initially, Nelly and Young Marion are on totally equal footing, there’s an innocence and purity to their play together, spending much of their time in the woods, building a hut that Nelly had asked about earlier in the film. Later, when the relationship is clear, Sciamma uses the carefree feeling of these scenes to contrast with the older, clearly more fragile, Marion (Nina Meurisse), for instance, it doesn’t seem like the silly, playful, way that the girls make pancakes for Marion’s eighth birthday party is something Nelly will have done with the older version of her mother. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In the present day scenes, there are some beautiful observations of how much Nelly cares for her mother; feeding her crisps and hugging her from the back seat as they drive away from the home where Marion’s mother passed away. It’s something that, while present day Marion clearly loves her daughter, the younger version seems more able to express. There is so much to be said about how delicately and how beautifully Sciamma and her young stars paint this relationship, but perhaps the simplest moments are the most moving, like the image of 8-year-old Marion, blowing out her birthday candles as she looks between her mother and her future daughter. It’s a gorgeous, truly magical, family portrait that sums up the film's magical realism perfectly.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Celine Sciamma is one of the truly great filmmakers working today, and <i>Petite Maman</i> is another gem. Thanks to cinematographer Claire Mathon, who also shot <i>Portrait of a Lady on Fire</i> for Sciamma, this is a beautiful film. The scenes between the young Marion and Nelly have a golden autumn feel, while the scenes back at the present day house emphasise the emptiness, especially after present day Marion takes off, leaving Nelly with her Dad. The dialogue doesn’t always sound like 8-year-olds talking, but some of the most childlike moments are the film’s most indelible, like Nelly wanting to go to sleep “to get to tomorrow”, which leads immediately to one of my favourite cuts in any recent film, carrying that idea through directly. In 72 minutes, Sciamma manages to convey great depth and nuance, to fully explore this mother/daughter relationship, but do so with disarming simplicity. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I think I need to see it again (and again) to appreciate all of its layers properly, but this is clearly one of the very best films of 2021 and yet another landmark in Sciamma’s thus far flawless career.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">★★★★★</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-26001582562166228012021-10-12T18:20:00.000+01:002021-10-12T18:20:19.794+01:0024FPS @ LFF: Playground<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Laura Wandel</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/uR678Bw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/uR678Bw.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />For seven and nine-year-old siblings Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) and Abel (Günter Duret), the school playground isn’t the friendliest place. Bigger boys pick on Abel, and the association, as well as their closeness, blows back on both him and Nora, making things worse for both of them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Playground</i> is perhaps better served by its original title: <i>Une Monde</i> (<i>A World</i>). A child’s world is, in many ways, fundamentally different to that of an adult, and Laura Wandel goes out of her way to create that world and to bring us into it. The camera is always placed at Nora’s height. Adults are often seen as legs and have to bend down into the frame to interact with the children. This immediately places us with the children, having to remember what our perspective was like. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Visually, Wandel also uses close-ups a lot, making the backgrounds of shots blurry. This, I think, is a neat and effective way to suggest Nora’s development. At seven, she’s just arriving at the stage where she can see beyond herself, but the blurriness suggests there’s still a shallow focus there; she can empathise with her brother, but her reasoning (“You won’t stand up for yourself, so I told Dad”) is still simplistic, and initially, she can’t see how that might have unintended consequences. It’s telling that the adults we see in focus are the ones Nora feels closest to; her Dad, a stay at home parent, and her favourite teacher, through whom the script hits its only bump, perhaps leaning a little too hard on the saintly teacher trope à la Miss Honey.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">These interactions with the film’s few adults aside, <i>Playground</i> stays resolutely among its young cast, observing the day-to-day of primary school politics and interaction. The bullying we see doesn’t seem motivated by anything particular, just that the bigger boys sense some kind of weakness they can pick at in Abel, especially when his younger sister—again too naive to read the situation the way her brother can—tries to defend him. It’s even more affecting when, having gone to a teacher, we see Nora sitting in on a meeting as the boys are made to apologise to Abel. The whole scene plays on Maya Vanderbeque’s face, and we can see that Nora now understands that this is only going to make things worse.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The way this all affects Nora and Abel’s relationships with each other and with their own friends is incredibly realistically written, seldom more so than in a heartbreaking series of scenes as Nora tries to get invited to the birthday party of a girl who, until a few weeks ago, was her closest friend at school. This and the way Abel tries to get back in the good graces of the bigger kids by turning into one of them are so well observed by Wandel and her young stars that were it not for the purposeful stylisation of her camerawork you could confuse moments of the film for documentary.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For me, the filmmaker Wandel most recalls here is Nils Malmros, whose brilliant coming of age films are some of the best the genre has ever produced. In particular, this one seems to look to his debut, the autobiographical <i>Lars Ole, 5C</i>, for inspiration. There is little higher praise I can offer than to say that <i>Playground</i> can stand alongside that film and other classics about childhood and growing up. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is an outstanding debut. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">It's structurally excellent, with a beautiful rhyme to its opening and closing shots.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> More than that, it's also an incredibly articulate film that has a lot to say about children’s experiences at school and, through some of the things we hear them say that must be parroted or misinterpreted from their parents, at home as well. It's too unblinking and too serious to speak to the children it's about, but it feels like it comes from a place of deep understanding for and of them. It's one of the best films of 2021, and marks Wandel out as a huge talent to watch.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">★★★★½</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-10258425238345032712021-10-11T07:38:00.000+01:002021-10-11T07:38:01.131+01:0024FPS @ LFF: All About My Sisters<div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Wang Qiong</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/jqSR9Ho.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/jqSR9Ho.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Starting in 2015, 22-year-old Wang Qiong picked up her camera and began filming her family, focusing on her younger sister Jin. The story she tells across this nearly three hour canvas is about a family that, with two daughters and despite China’s one child policy desperate for a son, first tried to abort and then gave away Jin to one of her uncles, who raised her as his own. Just over 20 years later, Jin is a young mother herself and has an understandably difficult relationship with her parents (who she calls Auntie and Uncle). Qiong’s camera documents their relationship, as well as digging into a family history of abortion and abandonment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>All About My Sisters</i> is, from the start and frequently throughout, an uncomfortable watch. It begins with Jin asking her sister what the point of telling her story is, but as that story unfolds, whether Jin knows it or not, it becomes clear that the point is not only that it is fascinating a devastatingly emotional from a singular point of view, but that Qiong uses it to unfold a critique of how the one child policy drove many people to act. Perhaps the toughest scene to watch is an interview with Jin and Qiong’s uncle, who was one of the local administrators of the policy, and recalls leaving two babies that he and his wife attempted to abort at 8 months out to die. His regret and remorse are clear, as is the implication that this was a routine part of life at the time, but it remains an horrific moment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The film hammers home the results of the policy not just in moments like Qiong and her other sister Li’s memory of walking over a bridge to school and seeing the bodies of babies, all female, that had been abandoned to die but in a larger, and still prevalent, preference for male children, both at pregnancy and throughout their lives. What emerges is a picture of a society—or at least a section of society—that views women’s lives as almost purely transactional. There are discussions of how much the groom’s family should pay when Jin gets married, of how much families should gift when a woman gives birth to a male child rather than a female, and more besides. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/FbalcV8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://i.imgur.com/FbalcV8.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Watching Jin’s personal story is no easier. It seems clear that her abandonment has affected her both as a person generally and as a parent specifically (some of the scenes of her scolding her two-year-old son are very difficult to watch). Unsparing as Qiong’s camera is of her sister, it’s also sympathetic. She is consistently the family member noting, especially in a late conversation with their 13-year-old brother Sifan, that the situation isn’t Jin’s fault. Many of the questions she asks their brother seem a bit challenging for someone of his age to process, especially when she asks if he thinks Jin was abandoned so that he could be born; that’s a lot to put on him, but it’s a question that hangs heavy on the film and over that relationship, which despite that seems, for much of the film, the closest Jin has with any of her biological family.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For all the moments that Jin is unsympathetic, the film strives to understand the impact of how she grew up on her. She talks about the time she did spend living with her parents and her sisters as feeling “like I was a cleaner in your home”, and the way she is treated by her parents now seems defined more by financial support (an investment in a shop, which then ties her to them) than by anything emotional. Judgments and words are harsh, though to be fair this is not just towards her, at one point her father tells Sifan “you shouldn’t have been born” after he gets in trouble at school. Again though, everything that Jin’s parents are really invested in about her seems driven by money, little emotion comes through, even on her wedding day. The ending is tinged with both sadness at the fact Jin doesn’t seem to be able to find a way forward with her parents and at least a little hope at where it finds her going, and it would be nice to have an update on how she and her family are doing now.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All of Wang Qiong’s points are worthy and often devastatingly made, but it’s fair to say that all of them are made many, many times over and that by the third hour of the film it’s hard to see that she’s adding much new to the argument she’s making. This is an insightful film, and a promising debut for the young director / producer / cinematographer / editor. Next time, it might benefit her to take on fewer jobs herself, as another voice might have focused the film down a bit more, making its points land all the harder by concentrating them. There is much here that could be tightened, from reducing some of the repetitious nature of the sequences to simply trimming back some incidental shots that don’t add a lot to the narrative or the argument. I can see that there is a point to making this an exhausting watch, but after a while, it does dull the emotional punch. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;">★★★</span></div></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-32173205858391843912021-10-09T09:45:00.001+01:002021-10-09T09:45:29.505+01:0024FPS @ LFF: Les Enfants Terribles<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Ahmet Necdet Cupur</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/Ctfxblr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://i.imgur.com/Ctfxblr.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Back in 2015, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s <i>Mustang</i> dramatised life inside a Turkish family where the wishes of the parents for their daughters overrode (or at least attempted to override) just about any agency the girls could have had for themselves. Ahmet Necdet Cupur’s documentary has more than a few things in common with <i>Mustang</i>, with its director going home to capture family life with his parents and younger siblings, chiefly twenty-something Mahmut and teenager Zeynep.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Mahmut and Zeynep are each constantly at odds with their parents for different reasons. Mahmut wants to leave his arranged marriage to 17-year-old Nezahat, not because of any fault on either of their parts, he simply doesn’t love her. Zeynep, on the other hand, just wants to further her education, to go to university in the nearest city and to live life on her terms rather than be bound by her parents’ traditions. All this makes for a volatile atmosphere in the house, something we see from the very start when an innocuous joke sends the siblings father into a violent rage. Throughout the film, Ahmet observes in close-up detail, but without seeming to impose himself on what he’s filming. Given that this is his family, that balance must have been challenging to find, but it means that the end result feels fair, if never dispassionate, in how it depicts everyone.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Later sequences demonstrate just how ingrained tradition is in Mahmut and Zeynep’s parents, especially when it comes to seeing women as inferior. In one of the film’s most quietly shocking sequences, Zeynep first debates then more stridently argues with her mother about why she so desperately wants to be educated, trying to get through to her that women have just as much value and should have as much choice of what they do, as men. Frustrated, she finally says “Studies or death, I’ll die if I don’t”, only for her mother to come back with “Death then”. It’s so haunting, so sad, summing up in two words the seeming impossibility of squaring their points of view. The image that closes this scene; Zeynep resting her chin in her hands, looking away as her mother prays, strikes me as the defining one of the film.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Mahumut’s problems have more ramifications for others, chiefly Nezahat, divorced at barely 18. We do see that Mahmut cares about her to some degree, at least expressing concern about her family “giving her to an old man” because she has lost her value. This, as it was in another film at the festival, is a running theme; women being valued as commodities, and there is much discussion of what will have to be paid for Mahmut to go through with the divorce.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As dark as the film can be, chinks of hope come through by the end. “I think a person is like a tree, says Zeynep, so intelligent and expressive throughout the film. You can only hope that she and Mahmut both get to put their roots down where they want to, and grow from there.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">★★★★</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-31759285236565543942021-10-08T20:30:00.003+01:002021-10-08T20:30:23.571+01:0024FPS @ LFF: See For Me<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Randall Okita</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/wP1sOym.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="800" height="359" src="https://i.imgur.com/wP1sOym.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Having recently gone blind, former Olympic skier Sophie (visually impaired actor Skyler Davenport) has found herself taking jobs cat-sitting for wealthy homeowners. On the first night at her latest job, the house is broken in to and Sophie has to make it through the night, with the help of Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy), a desk-bound army veteran who sidelines as a helper on an app called See For Me.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">To begin with, <i>See For Me</i> plays like a pretty typical home invasion thriller, riffing on the likes of <i>Wait Until Dark</i> and <i>Panic Room</i>. The opening act capably sets out the space, even more vital here because, with Sophie unable to see, we need to understand the geography to appreciate the difficulties she’s going to face because of it. The first half-hour or so also deals with the character introductions, and in that respect, at least with Sophie herself, Adam Yorke, and Tommy Gushue’s screenplay (their first feature) distinguishes itself a little. Sophie is a more complex character than you might first expect, especially in her moral dimensions, and this leads to some pretty surprising twists, and one scene, involving a cop played by Emily Piggford, takes on much greater tension because of it. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The mix of characters among the three criminals in is pretty typical: the tech guy who doesn’t like violence, the controlled pro, and the loose cannon, and Kelly is also quite loosely established, though her sense of responsibility to Sophie comes through strongly and at least initially there’s some spark in the relationship between her and Sophie, though that is reduced as the film goes on, and she becomes a lot more purely functional as a character. Director Randall Okita does a decent job establishing and exploiting the geography of the location. Best in this respect is a series of shots early in the break-in that use first a wide exterior and then a more claustrophobic interior to show, in single frames, where Sophie and the robbers are in relation to each other.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Unfortunately, the whole film begins to lose its way in the third act. Up until this point, Davenport has given a performance that plays interestingly with our sympathies and challenges us on whether to root for her. The last half-hour, however, ends up letting in the only truly bad performance in the movie. The script piles on too many twists, and eventually loses credibility in story terms and, more damagingly, in terms of what we believe Sophie would be able to do with the level of visual impairment the film says she has. A tacked-on coda suggests something I simply don’t believe, before wrapping up on a twee note that doesn’t really fit the film, dragging it further down just before the credits roll. It’s a pity because there are things to enjoy here, but a solidly tense first hour ends up deflating by the end.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">★★½</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-83321279320261452021-10-07T16:59:00.005+01:002021-10-07T16:59:59.820+01:0024FPS @ LFF: Cop Secret<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/VTMU0ql.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="533" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/VTMU0ql.jpg" width="267" /></a></div>Dir: Hannes Thór Halldórsson</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Not all filmmakers have always been in cinema. Some come from visual art, others from criticism, still others from completely different areas, but I have to say, a film directed by the goalkeeper for the Icelandic national football team isn’t something I saw coming. Nor, if I’d thought about it, would I necessarily have expected that film to be a spoof of 80s and 90s buddy cop actioners.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Cop Secret</i> is, in the tradition of the best spoofs, a loving homage to the genre it’s riffing on. You’ve got the rival cops who have to become partners. In this case that’s loose canon Bussi (Auðunn Blöndal) and wealthy former model Hörður (Egill Einarsson). You’ve got the flamboyant villain with the diabolical plan; Björn Hlynur Haraldsson as Rikki and you’ve got supporting players like the boss who communicates almost entirely by shouting. The plot is drawn together from bits and pieces of earlier films, notably <i>Die Hard With a Vengeance</i> and <i>Lethal Weapon</i>, among others. The twist here, aside from the general absurdity, is that Bussi and Hörður are not just partners as cops, drawn together, they end up in a relationship. It’s important to note that, while Bussi has to come to terms with his sexuality, the fact of this relationship is never played for laughs. The film is absolutely sex-positive, embracing the sexuality of its characters without question. This isn’t to say that there isn’t fun to be had with their attraction, especially at the moment in the middle of a gunfight when the two brush hands; the first moment of electricity between them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The performances are all entertaining, the whole cast going for the tone, but Björn Hlynur Haraldsson has a wonderful time as Rikki. He speaks almost entirely in English, which gives his performance the feel of a slightly low rent direct to video bad guy, offset by the fact his attempts at menacing dialogue become ever more convoluted, to the point that even his henchmen barely know what he’s saying. He also plays on villain clichés. When he threatens one henchman another reminds him that he can’t just start killing people “oh, just this one?”, comes the reply.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The action scenes, despite some terrible CGI, are a lot of fun, especially the kinetic car chase that opens the film (and which has a great gag midway through) and the aforementioned bank shootout. Unfortunately, that comes midway through, and the third act doesn’t quite have anything to match it. The parody may keep the bad guy’s plot from mattering too much, but given that this isn’t quite pitched at <i>Naked Gun</i> levels of silliness, it’s a shame it doesn’t engage a bit more on that level. Still, <i>Cop Secret</i> is a knowingly and mostly winningly ridiculous good time.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">★★★½</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-37617227867763143522021-10-06T08:44:00.005+01:002021-10-06T08:44:40.214+01:0024FPS @ LFF: Martin and the Magical Forest<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Petr Oukropec</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/AVD1bjt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="564" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/AVD1bjt.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>10-year-old Martin (Sebastian Pöthe) is a town kid who is packed off to a forest-based summer camp that he’s less than excited to be going to. Uninterested in joining in with the team games, and constantly complaining, he soon alienates most of the other kids. However, the sprites that live in the forest need some of the items he’s brought with him to cast a spell that might save them from a drilling crew looking for minerals. Martin’s price is their help so his team can win the camp’s series of challenges.</div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">I sometimes worry that we’re not doing enough to grow the next generation of cinephiles, raising them on a limited diet when there is a world of kid’s cinema out there, and the LFF’s family strand is always a good way to throw the net a little wider. This Czech film is squarely pitched at an audience of its main character’s age, but it doesn’t talk down to them in terms of the environmental issues, nor by assuming that it needs fart jokes to keep a young crowd engaged. </div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The magical world of the forest is something the film highlights from the very start. We see it in the beauty of the setting, but more to the point in the creatures that appear from the very first time Martin steps foot in the forest. Initially the sprites like him about as much as he does them; pine cones throw themselves onto his head and vines trip him up, but we also see that they have a side that can come to people’s aid, flying Martin back to the campsite when he’s tried to leave or helping him win the various challenges.</div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The methods used to realise the creatures are a little tough to discern. There may be animatronics in use because the sprites are very present within the frame and have a slight staccato effect to their movement, but if they are CGI then it is exemplary work. The creatures are expressive and fun to look at, with several developing personalities. One moment, when a stick Martin has been trying to get an arrow back from gets run over and ‘bleeds’ sap is surprisingly affecting as an image, even though we’ve never seen that creature before. It’s an effective way to teach kids a healthy respect for nature, but it’s never cloying or overly preachy.</div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Most of the kids other than Martin and Foxie (a winning Josefína Krycnerová), a fairy-tale loving 8-year-old who believes in the sprites but has never seen one, aren’t especially well-defined. The adults fall into two categories: the counselors, only one of whom, who measures chemicals in the local water and talks about being ready for a catastrophic event, is particularly notable and the drillers, personified by a couple in their 30s. On the one hand, it’s refreshing that the drillers aren’t simply shown as monsters who can’t wait to destroy the forest (remember <i>Ferngully</i>’s smoke-belching bulldozers), but on the other hand, they don’t otherwise have a great deal of personality.</div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The stakes and morals are pretty simple, as is the solution of the ending, but <i>Martin and the Magical Forest</i> should be a fun time for its intended audience, and it’s hard to argue with any of what it's trying to teach them about respect for nature and finding common ground with other kids. For adults, there’s some lovely imagery and the chance to watch something a little different from the usual kids movie fare. It’s slight, but a charming and fun time.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: justify;">★★★</div></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6702302758360213251.post-61934088658004260282021-10-05T16:33:00.006+01:002021-10-05T16:33:50.557+01:0024FPS @ LFF 2021: Inexorable<div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dir: Fabrice Du Welz</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/ivvvE4z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://i.imgur.com/ivvvE4z.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>Adoration</i>, Fabrice Du Welz’ last film, which played at LFF in 2019, was basically Junior <i>Badlands</i>, with two twelve-year-olds on the run from a mental hospital. It’s still only had a digital release in the UK, and remains something of an underseen gem. If that film had a single obvious influence, then <i>Inexorable</i> is much more of a patchwork, drawing plot points and images from a lot of entries in the yuppies in peril subgenre, among others.</div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Marcel (Benoît Poelvoorde), his wife Jeanne (Mélanie Doutey), and their young daughter Lucie (Janaina Halloy) have just moved back into the massive estate owned by Jeanne’s family. When a young woman named Gloria (Alba Gaïa Bellugi) brings their daughter’s new dog back after he has run off, and offers to show Lucie how to train him, the family soon offers her a job as a nanny/maid. However, it quickly becomes clear that Gloria is not just a fan of Marcel’s successful novel, Inexorable, but that she may have a fixation on it and him, which begins to manifest in manipulative ways.</div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Like many of the films it draws on, much of <i>Inexorable</i> unfolds like a home invasion thriller in slow motion. Gloria’s assault on the family is not one of sudden violence, but of nurtured obsession and festering resentment. It’s a mix that Alba Gaïa Bellugi plays effectively. The first moment there is a flicker of a crack in her mask is especially good; it’s a tiny bit of nervousness that passes across her face when she’s asked about a bit of her background, visible enough for it to register for us, but fleeting enough that we buy Marcel and Jeanne failing to recognise it. The performance, driven by the necessity of the screenplay, gets broader throughout, but Bellugi comes up to meet the tone rather than overplaying.</div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Poelvoorde, Doutey and Halloy are all good too, and a believably imperfect family unit. Poelvoorde’s blocked author (an early drone shot has shades of <i>The Shining</i> as it tracks the car on the way to the dusty stately home they are moving into) is obviously at first intrigued by and perhaps too easy-going with the attractive young woman who is now in his home, but from his lies to cover an indiscretion to his hiding of parts of his life, it becomes clear that he’s largely driven by self-preservation. Doutey has perhaps the least rounded character here, too often she’s written a little overly spiky, and early on there’s a naïveté in the way she takes Gloria in (and especially her reaction to Gloria’s first real manipulation) that never seems especially credible from the rest of her performance, but these too are largely script issues.</div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Du Welz doesn’t just wear his influences out in the open, from Chabrol to Barbet Schroder and from Hitchcock to (if I didn’t misread a certain point) Park Chan-wook, he displays them proudly. Sometimes, as in a stylish shot of Marcel throwing Gloria out of his (stationary) car, one side bathed in blood-red light, the other in vivid blue, in what one could take for a fleeting giallo homage, it works in his favour. When his plot points bear if not direct then certainly considerable comparison to the likes of <i>La Ceremonie</i> and the criminally underrated <i>The Page Turner</i>, those influences hang heavy on the film. That said, Du Welz and the cast successfully draw out the tension. The single location where the bulk of the film takes place may be expansive, but the lighting and the blocking, particularly as Gloria begins to draw Marcel in, help to shrink that space and eventually make the dynamic between the three adult characters fairly claustrophobic.</div></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Inexorable</i> isn’t a bad film. The issue is more that it’s never as good as the sum of its influences promises. The performances are capable, it’s got some thrills and some tension, but you’ll always know where it's going, and you’ll know because you’ve seen its moves done better before. An engaging homage, then, but not one that can sit alongside the best of its predecessors.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;">★★★</span></div></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0