Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor, for example). More legitimately, if you
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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) Far from yielding the disappointing box office some have suggested – it currently tallies at about half a billion less than the original movie – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s performance really ought to be regarded as quite impressive. Quite impressive that a movie as poor as this should nevertheless muster almost $800m worldwide. Whatever the faults of the year’s preceding MCU releases – and both Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder abound with issues – they were not, by and large, exercises in tedium. The shoddy pacing, pitiful
The Fabelmans (2022) Dead man directing. One might choose to appraise The Fabelmans in several different ways. The first is as quite a proficient movie, given the auteur it’s credited to is no longer with us. The second would be that whoever did direct it (presumably in a Berg clone suit) has doggedly followed the anaemic “autobiographical” model of many a moviemaker who mistakenly believed their formative experiences held some degree of wider fascination for audiences, not to mention dramatic import. Occasionally, just occasionally, such assumptions prove justified: Hope and Glory. More often, we get an aroma of Roma.
Amsterdam (2022) A critically lambasted box-office bomb, David O Russell’s latest falls victim to that most difficult of recipes to get right, unless you’re a natural (Wes Anderson): self-conscious quirk. It looks as if he’s going for a mixture in the vein of his earlier hit American Hustle, throwing a starry cast at a very loosely based-on-fact tale – “A lot of this really happened”, Christian Bale’s protagonist tell us at the outset – but where that movie, whatever its faults, maintained a degree of pace and purpose, Amsterdam is simply all over the shop. Even its nondescript, indifferent
Enola Holmes 2 (2022) What a wondrous multicultural haven nineteenth-century London was! Sure, women still have to fight the good fight (and then some! Stick it to those men. With fists and dynamite. They deserve it. Show them their place! What’s that? The writer and director are men? Never mind. We can change that for Part 3). Empire magazine, thoroughly suffused with woke-first garbage, was moderately positive on this picture, extolling its exploration of “themes of feminism and class disparity… a job well done”. Not so much, no. Rather, like its predecessor, Enola Holmes 2 manages to be quite
Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) So, in the space of a scant nine years, Obi-Wan Kenobi turns from a hopelessly guilt-wracked, emoting-all-over-the-place, not-really-all-that Jedi into Guinness’ zen master, having done zero work on himself during the prior Tatooine-based decade? And that’s probably the least nonsensical thing in Obi-Wan Kenobi. I resisted dipping into this, partly because The Book of Boba Fett was so atrocious. Partly because, while I didn’t mind Ewan McGregor’s performance – as these things went – the prospect of Disney compounding the extravagant deficiencies of the prequel trilogy with their woked-up formula held little allure. I’d been steeled
Dougal and the Blue Cat (1970) On the one hand, children’s fare simultaneously produced with an eye to its appeal to adults – or by adults with no business dabbling in that market – runs the risk of being outright unsuitable. Just look at the history of Disney animation, with its subliminal sex in clouds and nob-shaped heads. And that’s the Mouse House at its most innocuous. At its best though, you end up with filmmakers (or programme makers) who don’t feel there’s any need to talk down to the kidz; it needn’t simply mean masking something very rude.
Glory (1989) I tend to forget Ed Zwick was the mastermind behind thirtysomething, but it may go some way to explain his resolutely middlebrow, social-conscience-driven movies, the sort that lay a low-calorie morsel in front of an audience under the false pretences that it’s truly nutritious. This is your prerequisite Hollywood war movie; it’s a rotten deal, you know, the fighting, but look, there’s an important theme here, somewhere amid the resolutely clichéd characters and hackneyed tropes. Just forget about any of the personality of a Stone or the stylistic acumen of a Spielberg. Glory proved popular with critics
Nope (2022) Jordan Peele’s movies may ultimately fail to deliver, but he’s nevertheless a persuasively proficient, talented moviemaker, an expert in scene setting and pacing, mood and atmosphere. He also tends to mine intriguing territory conceptually. Indeed, his last movie Us was ALL ideas, replete not so much with soft disclosure as a resounding dump of the hard stuff that went largely unnoticed. Probably because – going back to the ultimately-failing-to-deliver part – as a whole, effective movie, it just wasn’t much cop. Nope is more successful in that regard, but still only really half successful. Once Peele reveals the contents of his box of
Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) As an aficionado of ’80s-90s action cinema, I naturally loved all things Joel Silver (except Joel himself, natch… except in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, natch), yet I was never entirely persuaded by the Lethal Weapon series. The first is a more than decent movie, and the chemistry between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover is uproarious and infectious, such that the series is undoubtedly very difficult to dislike. But as action cinema, as boosted as it is by Michael Kamen’s robust scoring, the movies are never more than serviceable, competent, respectable. Richard Donner was no John McTiernan at his
Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) There was so much behind-the-scenes turmoil between the second and third Die Hards, it’s little wonder Die Hard with a Vengeance took five years to arrive. That it bears very little resemblance to a Die Hard instalment – something its sequel more commonly gets called out for – is mostly down to the “Die Hard in an/on a…” concept having been thoroughly milked in the meantime, most singularly by Under Siege. The result is half of a good movie (if not, particularly, a good Die Hard movie), which still makes it better overall than the limp, snow-sprinkled lettuce that is Die Hard 2:
Enemy Mine (1985) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming
West Side Story (2021) Spielberg’s West Side Story remake isn’t merely redundant; it’s a lifeless, mechanical VR machine version of the original, the kind of soulless facsimile you’d expect to find discarded in some corner of his other recent, empty attempt at recapturing youthful brio, Ready Player One. The director previously dipped a toe in musical waters with the dance-hall tumble of 1941 and the opening number from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; both set pieces tantalised the prospect of his tackling an entire movie with such energy and aplomb. But they were forty-odd years ago, and he’s no longer the same eager geek.
Licorice Pizza (2021) Unlike everyone else, it seems, I didn’t take to the first few Paul Thomas Anderson pictures, particularly those San Fernando Valley, Altman-esque lurching sprawls Boogie Nights and (yeesh!) Magnolia. It was only with There Will Be Blood and a broadening yen for time, place and subject matter that he revealed himself as a filmmaker of merit. This could be why Licorice Pizza, in which he returns to his childhood milieu, left me persuasively unmoved. Or it could also just be the story he chose. A story that has generated a degree of controversy, understandably so. Fifteen-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) falls for
Alien Nation (1988) I’m not sure there was a way to make Alien Nation, coming as it did in the socio-politically conscious science-fiction lineage of Planet of the Apes, and not make its themes seem somewhat clunky, overbearing and even patronising. The alternative would just have been to make some slick nonsense like Bright. Of course, if Alien Nation worked as slick nonsense, that would be something. Instead, it has just enough going for it to see why it was quickly spun off as a (short-lived) TV show (with a subsequent long-lived string of TV movies), but not enough to see it clear of abundant
Driving Miss Daisy (1989) The meticulous slightness of Driving Miss Daisy is precisely the reason it proved so lauded, and also why it presented a prime Best Picture Oscar pick: a feel-good, social-conscience-led flick for audiences who might not normally spare your standard Hollywood dross a glance. One for those who appreciate the typical Judi Dench feature, basically. While I’m hesitant to get behind anything Spike Lee, as Hollywood’s self-appointed race-relations arbiter, spouts, this was a year when he actually did deliver the goods, a genuinely decent movie – definitely a rarity for Lee – addressing the issues head-on that Driving Miss Daisy approaches in
Midnight Mass (2021) Midnight Mass, Mike Flanagan’s “deeply personal” Netflix horror, at least comes to the party with something to say. The problem is that its discourse is neither terribly original nor insightful, and it proceeds to rehearse it again and again, to diminishing effect, in ever longer monologues throughout its characteristically luxuriant (some might say a little baggy) runtime. It’s probably more interesting, then, as a metaphor, albeit one that wasn’t Flanagan’s express intent. I’m unconvinced by Flanagan’s growing rep as the second coming of the horror auteur. He seems to veer closer to a more proficient Mick
The Harder They Fall (2021) The revisionist western is a broad church, at its best opening out the genre to new ideas or perspectives while preserving a prevailing verisimilitude. Conversely, it also runs the danger of offering window dressing, with the “serious” commentary of the shallowest and most obvious kind. For the most part, The Harder They Fall amounts to little more than posturing pastiche, taking in historical figures but making no attempt to integrate them intelligently – or intelligibly – with its fictional framework (in the manner of, say, Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid). The results are closer to something like Jake Scott’s Plunkett &
A Perfect World (1993) It’s easy to assume, retrospectively, that Clint’s career renaissance continued uninterrupted from Unforgiven to, pretty much, now, with his workhorse output ensuring he was never more than a movie away from another success. The nineties weren’t such a sure thing, though. Follow-up In the Line of Fire, a (by then) very rare actor-for-hire gig, made him seem like a new-found sexagenarian box-office draw, having last mustered a dependably keen audience response as far back as 1986 and Heartbreak Ridge. But at home, at least, only The Bridges of Madison County – which he took over as director at a late stage, having already
The Color Purple (1985) In which the ’berg attempts to prove he’s a grownup. In a sense, this is the equivalent of the fourteen-year-old taking up smoking cigarettes and drinking beer to impress the older kids. The New Republic reports the view expressed by Salamishah Tillet in In Search of The Color Purple that the protests and criticisms of the film furthering “an image of Black men as violent and sexually aggressive” ultimately scuppered its chances at the Oscars, where it received eleven nominations but won not a single statuette. That may well have been a factor, the Academy being nothing if not
The Ten Commandments (1956) Stodge of biblical proportions. Sometimes during The Ten Commandments, you’ll feel like you’re spending those forty interminable years in the wilderness yourself (luckily consisting of no more than a line of narration in this four-hour epic). The common response to Cecil B DeMille’s final grand spectacle is that it’s overblown, old-style entertainment, worthwhile in spite of its delusions of importance and reverence. Unfortunately, however, the movie is more often dramatically stolid, even to the extent of presenting actual tableaux, and sometimes with accompanying narration at that. The picture obviously did the trick – audiences flocked to
Doctor Who The Two Doctors Ah yes, The Two Doctors. It can’t catch a break. If it isn’t in gratuitous, disgusting and in appalling taste, then it’s incredibly, unforgivably racist. And terribly directed besides. Some of these things are fair comment. Having recently rewatched Warriors of the Deep, I can attest there are degrees to the field of bad direction; as uninspired as his work is, Peter Moffat isn’t nearly at the bottom of the heap in this case. Tat Wood even suggests Pennant Roberts could probably have made something of the story, which is illustrative of how incredibly off base his overall
Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) The demolition – at very least as a ratings/box office powerhouse – of the superhero genre now appears to be taking effect. If so, Martin Scorsese for one will be pleased. The studios that count – Disney and Warner Bros – are all aboard the woke train, such that past yardsticks like focus groups are spurned in favour of the forward momentum of agendas from above (so falling in step with the broader media initiative). The most obvious, some might say banal, evidence of this is the repurposing of established characters in race
Minari (2020) Minari is one of this year’s better Best Picture Oscar nominees. Which is rather damning it with faint praise, but there you go. A tale of noble immigrants (are there any other kind?) facing a hard time of it in rural Arkansas, Lee Isaac Chung’s film boasts the commendable virtue of modesty. It avoids leading the way with any announcement of its own importance, and in its own low-key way, it offers a degree of authenticity the other contenders largely lack. It doesn’t hurt matters either that it’s so perceptively performed. Perhaps the closest fellow nominee in terms
The Magic Christian (1969) As with Candy, also from the pen of Terry Southern, you instinctively want to give these star-studded, satirical ’60s counter-culture forays a bit of credit. Alas, it’s very difficult when they’re as bad as The Magic Christian. More often than not, projects Peter Sellers turned his attention to around this period turned to ashes, but the major problem here – aside from the source material – is one common to many an overblown disaster. Joseph McGrath may have been a darling of Beatles shorts, but he was not a film director. The Magic Christian’s path to screen
The Wind and the Lion (1975) John Milius called his second feature a boy’s-own adventure, on the basis of the not-so-terrified responses of one of those kidnapped by Sean Connery’s Arab Raisuli. Really, he could have been referring to himself, in all his cigar-chomping, gun-toting reactionary glory, dreaming of the days of real heroes. The Wind and the Lion rather had its thunder stolen by Jaws on release, and it’s easy to see why. As polished as the picture is, and simultaneously broad-stroke and self-aware in its politics, it’s very definitely a throwback to the pictures of yesteryear. Only without the finger-on-the-pulse contemporaneity
The Party (1968) Blake Edwards’ semi-improvisational reunion with Peter Sellers is now probably best known for – I was going to use an elephant-in-the-room gag, but at least one person already went there – Sellers’ “brown face”. And it isn’t a decision one can really defend, even by citing The Party’s influence on Bollywood. Satyajit Ray had reportedly been considering working with Sellers… and then he saw the film. One can only assume he’d missed similar performances in The Millionairess and The Road to Hong Kong; in the latter case, entirely understandable, if not advisable. Nevertheless, for all the flagrant stereotyping, Sellers’ bungling Hrundi V
Murder! (1930) To say the motivation for the titular (and exclamatory!) act in Hitchcock’s third film comes out of nowhere is an understatement. Or rather, the stated motivation. The subtext makes sense, but you have to be sufficiently informed to be able to read it as subtext. Without that, the explanation, which is transposed from the crime fiction Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson, is so distracting that my first response to Murder! was to wonder if I had missed something. The amateur detective protagonist Sir John (played by Herbert Marshall, who became a successful movie actor despite losing a
Falling Down (1993) Did Joel Schumacher, who died last month, ever make a classic movie? There are those who will go to bat for The Lost Boys, but “cult classic” is something of an eclectic beast (in that it doesn’t actually need to be a great movie, per se). I’m not convinced he did, but there was a spell there, for about a decade following Flatliners – yes, even after Batman & Robin – when I’d eagerly check out his latest picture, confident that his energised approach would at least offer something. Falling Down is a very flawed picture, but it’s also a highly entertaining and
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) The Best Picture Oscar nominee of 1967 dealing with racial tensions and starring Sidney Poitier that didn’twin, but had enough impact on the cultural lexicon that its title has taken on meaning beyond the film itself (and indeed, informed the recent Get Out). Most conversations regarding Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? are compelled to address that it hasn’t aged all that well, which in many respects it hasn’t, but it’s debatable that it appeared especially boundary pushing at the time; compared to fellow nominees Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, it seems like the product of a different era. The same
Lilies of the Field (1963) Watching a string of Best Picture nominees in succession, the proportion of sweetly good-natured films, ones designed to appeal to the Academy’s sentimental and nostalgic side – even if not necessarily nostalgic for a prior time period, but rather for an impossible-to-realise state of being – can be striking. While you couldn’t exactly accuse Lilies of the Field of being custom fitted for such a purpose, since director Ralph Nelson was forced to put up his house as collateral to get it made, taken on face value, it would be easy to assume otherwise. Lilies of
Schindler’s List (1993) Such is the status of Schindler’s List, it all but defies criticism; it’s the worthiest of all the many worthy Best Picture Oscar winners, a film noble of purpose and sensitive in the treatment and depiction of the Holocaust as the backdrop to one man’s redemption. There is much to appreciate in Steven Spielberg’s film. But it is still a Steven Spielberg film. From a director whose driving impulse is the manufacture of popcorn entertainments, not intellectual introspection. Which means it’s a film that, for all its “virtuous” features, is made to manipulate its audience in the manner of any of
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) Barry Jenkins’ follow up to Moonlight is the kind of fare usually lapped up by the awards circuit. Which isn’t to suggest Jenkins was necessarily setting out to make it a double on Oscar night, but rather that If Beale Street Could Talk is achingly self-conscious in its awareness of its worth and responsibility. You can tell, right from the off and the over explanation of the opening titles – of how James Baldwin intended Beale Street to represent the universality of the black American experience – that this is going to be a little-seen stodge, the
The Upside (2017) The list of US remakes of foreign-language films really ought to be considered a hiding to nothing, given the ratio of flops to unqualified successes. There’s always that chance, though, of a proven property (elsewhere) hitting the jackpot, and every exec hopes, in the case of French originals, for another The Birdcage, Three Men and a Baby, True Lies or Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Even a Nine Months, Sommersby or Unfaithful will do. Rather than EdTV. Or Sorcerer. Or Eye of the Beholder. Or Brick Mansions. Or Chloe. Or Intersection (Richard Gere is clearly a Francophile). Or Just Visiting. Or The Man with One Red Shoe. Or Mixed Nuts. Or Original Sin. Or Oscar. Or Point of No Return. Or Quick
Green Book (2018) It’s understandable that there’s been a backlash against the backlash against Green Book (most recently evidenced by its Producers Guild Awards win for best film). Whatever its broadcast failures in avoiding standard (decried) Hollywood tropes for addressing issues of race, its cardinal sin, when you drill down to its essence, is that it’s a good story well told. We can’t have that. Green Book would likely have a much easier ride if it weren’t getting this awards attention, such that there’d be less of a spotlight on the imperatives it’s failing to meet. And of that awards conversation, yes,
BlacKkKlansman (2018) If nothing else, BlacKkKlansman illustrates that Spike Lee is still entirely unable to judge when less is more. Only this time, his lack of discernment has come up roses, garnering him Best Picture and Director Oscar nominations. One can be cynical about this, crediting peer recognition to the picture’s socio-political currency rather than its quality, but then, wasn’t it ever thus with the Academy Awards? This really is a disappointing film, though, roundly failing to deliver on its you-couldn’t-make-it-up, must-see premise; one can only imagine how much more potent BlacKkKlansman might have been, had producer Jordan Peele opted to direct,
Black Panther (2018) Like last year’s Wonder Woman, the hype for what it represents has quickly become conflated with Black Panther’s perceived quality. Can 92 percent and 97 percet of critics respectively really not be wrong, per Rotten Tomatoes, or are they – Armond White aside – afraid that finding fault in either will make open them to charges of being politically regressive, insufficiently woke or all-round, ever-so-slightly objectionable? As with Wonder Woman, Black Panther’s very existence means something special, but little about the movie itself actually is. Not the acting, not the directing, and definitely not the over-emphatic, laboured screenplay. As such, the picture is a
The Shape of Water (2017) The faithful would have you believe it never went away, but it’s been a good decade since Guillermo del Toro’s mojo was in full effect, and his output since (or lack thereof: see the torturous wilderness years of At the Mountains of Madness and The Hobbit), reflected through the prism of his peak work Pan’s Labyrinth, bears the hallmarks of a serious qualitative tumble. He put his name to stinker TV show The Strain, returned to movies with the soulless Pacific Rim, and fashioned flashy but empty gothic romance Crimson Peak (together his weakest pictures, and I’m not forgetting Mimic). The Shape of Water only
Mudbound (2017) Mudbound had to make do with just the four Oscar nominations, all well-deserved (albeit, I’m not so fussed by the overly earnest song), and so failing to trouble the big four categories. It is however, a much better film than at least several of the nine selected for the top prize. Perhaps that’s a reflection of the Netflix factor, or that Academy members only feel inclined to given the nod to one movie about racism per year. Mudbound, set in and around Jim Crow Mississipi in the ’40s, isn’t just about racism, but it’s infused into its characters and
Altered Carbon Season One Well, it looks good, even if the visuals are absurdly indebted to Blade Runner. Ultimately, though, Altered Carbon is a disappointment. The adaption of Richard Morgan’s novel comes armed with a string of well-packaged concepts and futuristic vernacular (sleeves, stacks, cross-sleeves, slagged stacks, Neo-Cs), but there’s a void at its core. It singularly fails use the dependable detective story framework to explore the philosophical ramifications of its universe – except in lip service – a future where death is impermanent, and even botches the essential goal of creating interesting lead characters (the peripheral ones, however, are at least more fortunate).
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) One of the most interesting aspects of what can often be a rising level of tedious repetition over the extended awards season is the manner in which pictures are reappraised as the spotlight intensifies. A frontrunner can be reduced to tears as an accusatory critical challenge, usually political or (in historical or biographical cases) factual, begins to hold sway. Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri has been the recipient of the lion’s share of such flak this year, but I somehow doubt Martin McDonagh intended his picture to be held up to scrutiny as an exemplar
Lady Macbeth (2016) Not being familiar with the source material, I’d wondered if the title of this adaptation of Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was intended to be ironic in some way. Alas not. Alice Birch’s screenplay hits most of the main plot beats of the source material while embellishing Lady Macbeth with themes of class and race, but the material is so wretched, so squalid, and also at points so contrived, only Florence Pugh’s performance offers a reason to persevere. And even then, there’s an oddly contemporary flavour to Pugh’s Katherine that’s at odds with the attempts to
The Avengers 4.17: Small Game for Big Hunters I wonder if Death at Bargain Prices’ camping scene, suggestive of an exotic clime but based in a department store, was an inspiration for Small Game for Big Hunters’ more protracted excursion to the African country of Kalaya… in Hertfordshire. Gerry O’Hara, in his second of two episodes for the show again delivers on the atmosphere, making the most of Philip Levene’s teleplay. Steed: Had a spot of bother with the natives. A full-blown savage, with a very unfriendly disposition. Mrs Peel: Oh, come now, Steed. It’s also an episode big on the colonial critique,
Hidden Figures (2016) The second biggest hit (worldwide) out of this year’s Oscar nominees, Hidden Figures seems to have stuck around in theatres the longest, perhaps because of its “educational” content. This tale of NASA’s black female mathematicians is the kind of movie minds instantly go to when looking for an example of palatable Oscar fluff (see also A Beautiful Mind): socially progressive but entirely without a spine. The kind of movie you come away from thinking all is good with the world, as we’re all heading in the right direction. It’s banal, aspirational and inoffensive (unless you find its very inoffensiveness
Big Trouble in Little China (1986) Much as I’m okay with Dwayne Johnson, even if he gets a bit touchy about critics lambasting his shitty comedies (no one’s asking you to make them, Dwayne), I find it frankly impossible to believe he’s a huge fan of Big Trouble in Little China. If he were, he wouldn’t go near the prospect of remaking it with a Rock-sized barge pole. How are you going to replicate such unbridled lunacy and offbeat idiosyncrasy? Try really hard? It’s tantamount to redoing Hudson Hawk. Or, for that matter, scribe W D Richter’s other cult fave, The Adventures of Buckaroo
Jeeves and Wooster 2.5: Kidnapped! (aka The Mysterious Stranger) Kidnapped continues the saga of Chuffnell Hall. Having said of 2.4 that the best Wodehouse adaptations tend to stick closely to the text, this one is an exception that proves the rule, diverging significantly yet still scoring with its highly preposterous additions. Jeeves: Tis old boggy. He be abroad tonight. He be heading for the railway station. Gone are many of the imbroglios involving Stoker and Roderick Glossop (the estimable Roger Brierley), including the contesting of the former’s uncle’s will. Also gone, sadly, is the inebriated Brinkley throwing potatoes at Stoker, which surely
Get Out (2017) Movies, let alone horror movies, with a satirical edge are few and far between, so when one comes along and delivers on the thrills and scares, it’s nigh on a minor miracle. I purposefully stayed as spoiler-free as I could for Get Out, which is undoubtedly a key to its effectiveness – the trailer is shockingly remiss in that regard, and I’m glad I didn’t watch it first – but even more so is how deftly observed and layered debut director Jordan Peele’s screenplay is (as a director, meanwhile, he has the confidence of one who’s been doing this
O.J.: Made in America (2016) I watched O.J.: Made in America only a few weeks after finally catching up with FX’s dramatised The People v O.J. Simpson, so perhaps that was why I found the trial episode(s) perhaps the slightly less essential aspect Ezra Eldelman’s documentary, the salient facts of which were quite fresh in my memory. Nevertheless, it’s very easy to see why Made in America is 100 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and why it grabbed the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. Ezra Edelman has crafted a meticulously-researched piece of work, exploring how race and racism in America fed not only into to
Fences (2016) Well, that was a play. I’m not suggesting for a moment all movies need to be sweepingly cinematic to resonate, but I do think some semblance of screen parlance tends to be appropriate, to recognize that the mediums are two different beasts, if you’re to translate one to the other effectively. Fences may well be a great play, but it’s a far from superlative movie. What may be most interesting about it is how this echoes into the Best Actor Oscar win, and to a lesser extent the Best Supporting Actor one. Most odds put the race between Denzel and Casey, and both
War on Everyone (2016) John Michael McDonagh’s latest is all over the place, in much the same way his younger brother’s Seven Psychopaths was all over the place, only less coherently and satisfyingly in the end result. Which isn’t to say War on Everyone isn’t, for the most part, hugely enjoyable, in a gleefully provocative, disgracefully inappropriate and unruly manner, but that the most propitious milieu for the McDonaghs may not be Stateside, where the impulse to move towards – for want of a better word – Tarantino-esque crime storytelling may ultimately detract from all the other elements fighting for air. It also
Fruitvale Station (2013) Ryan Coogler’s debut is a laudably intentioned account of the events at Fruitvale BART station on New Year 2009, in which 22-year-old Oscar Grant III was fatally shot by a police officer while under restraint. The injustice was greeted with quite understandable outrage, leading to protests and rioting. The majority of Rylan Coogler’s film is a low-key affair, however, tracing Oscar’s final fateful day and sketching in his background, family, and pressing concerns. Fruitvale Station really comes into its dramatic own depicting the lead-up to his death (deemed manslaughter by the judge), in which the police’s customary lack of
The Last Wave (1977) Peter Weir’s perception- and reality-bending third feature may not hold quite the same level of foreboding or uncanny resonance as Picnic at Hanging Rock, but it is very much kindred. The Last Wave comes at a point when Weir’s cinematic explorations were neither bound nor fully-informed by the strictures of the traditional Hollywood narrative, at liberty to take his tales wherever he felt they needed to go. In terms of premise, you might be forgiven for regarding The Last Wave as one-part cautionary eco-parable and one-part white man’s guilt espoused over the treatment of Australian Aboriginals. Certainly, Pauline Kael tore the picture
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) It’s usually a clear warning sign when the Oscars embrace a heart-warming or uplifting tale of triumph over adversity. The results often tend to simplify issues, reduce themes to their most facile, and bang out notes that just don’t ring true. While it is always welcome to see independent movies get nominated, it can’t escape notice that when they do (Little Miss Sunshine), their trajectory is invariably one of punch-the-air uplifting overpowering sadness or misery. Which is no bad thing in theory; life-affirmatory sentiments are grand things. The downside is that, if these
Cloud Atlas (2012) Familiarity with source material can be a mixed blessing. It can provoke insights that enhance one’s appreciation of the adaptation. Alternatively, one can become distracted by the alterations made. I read David Mitchell’s novel some months before seeing Cloud Atlas, so it was quite fresh in my memory. As such, I found the film a dazzling but at times frustrating experience on first viewing. I wasn’t prepared for the restructuring or the divergent connections made by the directors. So I needed a second encounter to (more) fully immerse myself in it, as a separate entity in its
Chariots of Fire (1981) The problem with Chariot of Fire, a slight but likeable tale of overcoming hurdles (ahem) in order to bask in glory (your classic sports movie, basically), is not the film itself but its success. Garlanded with Oscars and hexed by the pronouncement “The British are coming!” (surely one of the most ill-advised acceptance speeches ever, perhaps topped by “I’m king of the world!”), Chariots became forever entwined with the Conservative nostalgia of Thatcher’s Britain. The juxtaposition of Vangelis’ sublime electronica with post-WWI period trappings was undeniably effective and evocative, but it lent itself all-too easily to artificially bolstered
Django Unchained (2012) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it
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