Whilst on the IMDB this morning checking the release year for Zombieland,
I noticed that the autocomplete box flashed up something called Zombeavers.
Maybe I'm jaded, but damned if I didn't feel a little thrill of wishful thinking that I'd watched that in bed last night instead. I wasn't in the mood to seek out something special yesterday, though, so I went with what was on TV because it meant I wouldn't have to leave my nice warm duvet coccoon.
Oftentimes, this is a good move. I've discovered a lot of really enjoyable mainstream stuff that way that I might otherwise have overlooked - the 2006 Hairspray remake, for example, and Blades of Glory, which surprised me in its general goodheartedness. On the other hand, I've seen Zombieland before (back to back with Adventureland because they both star Jesse Eisenberg and the titles match) so I possibly should have known better.
A lot of people love Zombieland, though, an offshoot of the zomcom subgenre that incorporates elements of the classic road trip movie. Its protagonist is Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a nervy, geeky formerly borderline agoraphobe who's adapted to life in the newly zombie-infested USA by making a detailed series of survival rules - they flash up onscreen whenever he mentions them in a style that's since been much copied.
Columbus is trying to get to his family in Columbus, Ohio when he runs into Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a bona-fide zombie asskicker with a craving for Twinkies and a highly innovative approach to violence. It's Tallahassee who insists on only knowing people by their hometowns, in order not to get attached. They decide to team up, at least for a while, but their plans are derailed by sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who succeed in disarming them in every sense of the word. The sisters are trying to get to Pacific Playland, a reportedly zombie-free theme park on the edge of LA. Eventually, they invite Columbus and Tallahassee to join them, but there's a lot of miles to cover and the undead don't need to sleep...
The good
First things first: this is a beautiful film, or at least a visually distinctive one. It's shot in vaguely sepia tones, lending it a vaguely dreamlike quality that sits well with the subject matter at hand. Editing is on the leisurely side even during the action sequences - the camera tends towards the unflinching, only cutting away at the absolute last minute. Frankly, it's fairly classy, at least as far as zombie horror goes.
There's a good cast, too, with Eisenberg tightly-wound as always and Harrelson playing one of his usual likeable assholes. Nobody's stretching themselves overly, leading to relaxed, naturalistic performances; in fact, this is possibly the most laid-back zombie movie I've ever seen, with a bonus Bill Murray cameo for extra indie cred.
So, plenty here for both genre fans and casual viewers to enjoy.
The bad
Unfortunately, this is another one of these movies that left me feeling in need of a bath; it did first time round, and a second viewing didn't do anything to change my opinion. I'd hoped for something with a lighter touch, I suppose - not subtlety, not exactly, but something where the laughs were derived exclusively from the violence.
Zombieland isn't a particularly scary movie, but that's part of the problem;
there's never any real sense of horror. Instead, our protagonists seem to actively revel in creatively destroying as many humanoid enemies as they possibly can - Tallahassee is the chief offender, but none of the others seem to be frightened by their situation as much as positively exhilarated. It taps into the whole survivalist mentality, I think - half raging paranoia but half barely-suppressed bloodlust; it's the desire to be able to maim and kill with impunity, and it makes me slightly queasy. This is highlighted midway through the second act, when the group stop off at a deserted shop selling Native American merchandise and Tallahassee suggests they blow off steam and have some fun - fun, in this case, apparently consists of destroying as much of the stock as they possibly can. Leaving aside the racial ramifications, I found it rather depressing that after however long spent killing almost every other living creature they encountered, relaxation would come in the form of yet more mayhem.
Short version: people suck.
Oh, and after creating two believably strong female characters in the first act, by the third, the film still has them as damsels in distress, requiring rescue just so the not-so-dashing Columbus can face his fears and be a hero after all.
The verdict
Polished and engaging, Zombieland conceals a rotting core that's putrid in all the wrong ways. Once again, I'm left wondering why so many modern filmmakers seem to take such a dim view of humanity.
I actually got quite excited when I checked the TV listings last night and found out Real Steel was on. I'm not a fan of giant robot movies in general, but I still have fond memories of the BBC series Robot Wars,
and besides, the reviews seemed to be generally positive. All in all, it sounded like a really enjoyable way to spend a Sunday night.
For those who don't know the story, it concerns retired boxer Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman), who makes something resembling a living training low-grade boxing robots to fight anywhere he thinks he can scrape a few hundred dollars from the prize money. He goes through a lot of robots, and given that the cost of these things runs into tens of thousands of dollars, he's perpetually broke.
His life changes, however, when his ex girlfriend dies and he's offered custody of his son, eleven-year-old Max (Dakota Goyo). He doesn't want this, but the boy's aunt and her rich husband definitely do, so he offers to take care of the boy for the summer and hand him over afterwards in exchange for a healthy sum of money to help him get back into the game. Charlie isn't really the paternal type, so he tries to hand the understandably miffed Max off to his friend, gym owner Bailey Tallet (Evangeline Lilly). However, a shared passion for robot boxing gradually thaws relations between the three of them.
And the rest? It's a classic underdog boxing story, complete with sneering nemesis (Ricky, played by Kevin Durand) and a couple of icy foreign high achievers to provide the climactic challenge. Will our heroes make it big? Will Max and Charlie learn to love one another? Will Charlie and Bailey have smokin' hot self-realization sex? Well, no, in the third case, because it's a family movie, but you probably guessed as much, and if you did, the answer to the other two questions shouldn't present much of a challenge, either.
The good
Real Steel is a solid, polished piece of family entertainment. The performances are convincing, the effects look great and while the soundtrack isn't restrained, it is at least restrained by Danny Elfman's usual standards. There's a nice clear linear narrative, with nothing to scare the kids or bore the adults. Objectively speaking, the good reviews are deserved and there's not a lot of way I can fault it. So...
The bad
...Why did I dislike this one so intensely?
Could it have been the way that Max was essentially the victim of human trafficking, with this being treated as a meet cute rather than a truly disgusting act on Charlie's part? Or could it have been Max' relentless cynicism? Charlie is a grown man, which makes it understandable in him, but in an eleven-year-old kid? He actually comes across as a bit of an asshole, albeit not so much so that he deserves a father like Charlie. But Charlie softens, of course, and they bond, so presumably that all makes everything okay.
I honestly believe that Real Steel was conceived as a way to make divorced dads feel better about themselves when they watch it with their sons on weekend custody visits. It's relentlessly masculine and incredibly sentimental, the father/son equivalent of a chick flick and equally hard to swallow if you don't buy into that sort of thing.
I think what depressed me the movie was its tremendously low expectations; the feeling that rather than being somebody's creative vision, it was made by committee to please as many people as possible, or at least, not to offend them.
Actually, no, what depressed me the most is quite how much people seemed to enjoy it and not to notice what looks to me like a masterclass in cinematic button-pushing. Also, it must be said, Real Steel fails the Bechdel Test possibly more comprehensively than any movie I can remember seeing, creating a fascinating character in Bailey Tallet and then turning her into nothing more than a glorified cheerleader.
I really, really hate that this is what the big studios think people want and need.
The verdict
Based on the law of averages, you'll probably like this. You'd be better off watching Speed Racer, though, which takes similar themes and tackles them with a whole lot more creativity and finesse.
One word: FINALLY. I'd been longing to watch Tucker and Dale vs. Evil for a long time - since before its 2010 release, even, but it wasn't particularly widely released, and by the time it became practical for me to obtain a copy, I'd been distracted by a dozen or more other things. Subsequently, I'd occasionally notice it on the TV listings and grumble at length about why they always showed the good stuff in the midnight slot and weren't morning people allowed to have nice things, too?
...It turns out that morning people are, in fact, allowed to have nice things, particularly if they point out to their nearest and dearest that, well, they haven't yet seen Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, and that's always a viable alternative, isn't it?
So, what's the initial appeal?
Tucker and Dale is a horror comedy, for one thing, and while the subgenre is notoriously hard to pull off, the best of them are an absolute delight. If watching the first half hour of the likes of Cockneys vs Zombies is the price I pay for finding treasures like Black Sheep, I consider it well worth the sacrifice. An additional incentive came in the form of the presence of Alan Tudyk, who might have voiced a surprisingly scary villain in Pixar's Wreck-It Ralph, but who I'll always remember chiefly for this scene from Joss Whedon's much-missed Firefly.
Finally, now I've wiped the big soppy grin from off my face, I just flat-out liked the sound of the storyline, which centres around the titular characters, a couple of backwoods types who take a trip deep into mountain country to renovate Tucker's newly-acquired holiday cabin. On the way, they run into a bunch of college students at a sinister-looking gas station. Dale (
Tyler Labine) is instantly smitten by the beautiful Allison (Katrina Bowden), but lacks the courage to talk to her, and when Tucker (Tudyk) pushes him to try, his nerves get the better of him. Dale is left disappointed and furious with himself, while the students are convinced they've walked into a real-life version of The Hills Have Eyes.
Chance throws the two groups again once they arrive at their destination, when the students decide to go skinnydipping at the same lake Tucker and Dale have chosen for a fishing expedition. Startled by an unexpected glimpse of a near-naked Allison perched on a rock, Dale cries out and startles her, causing her to hit her head and fall into the water. Tucker and Dale immediately go to her aid, but the rest of the students assume the worst, and scamper away in fear. The following morning, however, led by the suspiciously enthusiastic Chad (Jesse Moss), they decide they have to rescue their friend from the (perceived) psychotic killer rednecks, no matter what the cost to life and limb. With Tucker and Dale performing some major home and garden work and being none too careful about the kind of thing they leave lying around, some sort of accident is inevitable - before too long, the claret is spurting like the Bellagio fountains and our two heroes are sure they're at the mercy of a bizarre suicide cult.
Remember, kids, the back country is a dangerous place.
The good
Tucker and Dale is another one of those films I could rave about until I lose my voice and my fingers all dropped off. I started watching with perhaps unfeasibly high expectations, which it then proceeded to exceed. I watched bits of it, squeamishly, from behind a cushion; other parts made me laugh more than most films I've seen in the past five years.
Short version: I loved it.
Longer version: whoever would have thought that the classic theatrical farce and the equally classic teen slasher movie could make such wonderful bedfellows? Tucker and Dale is first and foremost a comedy of errors, but as a horror pastiche it's also pretty spot-on. It makes a point of ticking off all the teen horror clichés before neatly subverting them, and by the time the movie's over you'll be wondering if Deliverance didn't only tell one side of the story.
This brings me to my second point, which relates to social snobbery. The film has some important things to say about this, and about judging people based on appearances. It's not subtle, but I suspect a more discreet message might have been lost right around the time the chainsaws start whirring, or possibly at the point where the camera first lingers lovingly on a shiny, newly-hired woodchipper.
Tudyk, Labine and Bowden are all delightful, displaying a decent range and some excellent comic timing. Labine and Bowden both display a very genuine sweetness that left me with a case of the warm fuzzies whenever they were on screen together. The rest of the protagonists have less to do, but they do it gamely, running and screaming as required with little concern for their dignity. Camera work is serviceable to good; it's not a pretty film per se, but neither is it an ugly one, and at 89 minutes, the story holds together tightly enough not to require loving shots of the scenery as a distraction.
The bad
Very, very little. If I did have one small criticism it would be of the final act, where after over an hour of clever trope subversion, the writing team finally give in and pander to perceived audience prejudices. To say more would be a spoiler, but I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed at the way things finally turned out.
The verdict
One of the most solidly satisfying pieces of entertainment I've seen in a long while. Tucker and Dale is funny, scary and occasionally thoughtful, an absolutely top piece of popcorn that I'm sure I'll revisit time and time again.
I'm pretty sure I can remember when the word Lego brought nothing more to mind than plastic bricks, and perhaps a theme park in Denmark. I'm sure, even, that it wasn't that long ago. Oh, eventually they expanded, bringing out new ranges and taking over Windsor Safari Park, but it was basically all about the bricks.
Then, in 2005, the first Lego Star Wars game was released, and the goalposts gradually began to shift. Intended primarily for children, the simple but detailed gameplay and mischievous humour won over adult audiences, too. I watched most of this and some of the subsequent games from over Mr B's shoulder, charmed but not quite enough to give it a go myself.
It took a bored moment plus the first Lego Batman game for me to be ready to have a go, and the puzzle solving proved addictive; by the time Lego Marvel Superheroes was released, I was hooked. By this point, any family sci-fi or fantasy movie franchise worth its salt seemed to have its own Lego tie-in, and Lego Batman in particular was fast becoming an icon of his own accord.
I was intrigued and not a little excited, therefore, to hear about the release of The Lego Movie, which promised to apply the aesthetic sensibilities and fast-paced humour of the games to an entirely new story with original characters as well as a number of old favourites.
Our hero in this tale Emmett (voiced by Chris Pratt), a bog-standard Lego construction worker who lives in the city and spends his days following the rigid set of instructions issued to all citizens in order to help them live happy, productive lives. He's happy, too, secure in the knowledge that he's one of the guys just like everybody else, working under the benign dictatorship of President Business (Will Ferrell), whose company Octan seems to sponsor all activity within the city boundaries. Sure, independent thought is actively discouraged, but who needs it?
All this changes, however, one evening, when a random gust of wind blows a set of instructions out of Emmett's grasp just as he's about to head to the sports bar with the rest of the gang. He follows it down a mysterious hole, eventually landing up stuck to a mysterious red object that triggers a terrifying sequence of visions. Shortly afterwards he encounters the free-spirited Wyldstyle (not her real name), who informs him that he is the Special, the single most unique person in the universe, and the only one capable of saving it. Trapped between disbelief and some incredibly seductive stripy plastic hair, Emmett decides to do his best to live up to her expectations in a world that grows more baffling and dangerous by the second.
The good
Before watching this one, I couldn't shake the nagging worry that it might just be an extended toy commercial - after all, how couldn't it be? I'll give my opinion on this later on, but for the moment, it feels more important to point out all the positive messages the movie carries. It's arguably the most subversive family film since Wes Anderson's glorious Fantastic Mr. Fox, overtly encouraging its young audience to question authority and trust in their own instincts and abilities. It takes a cheerfully tolerant attitude to its protagonists and their foibles; each and every one of them are seen as deserving of love and gentle ribbing in equal measure.
With all that out of the way, though... is it funny? Hell, yes, with the sort of scattergun speed normally only seen in some of Aardman Animations' more recent efforts. Vocal work is great across the board, and everyone will have their favourites - mine was Alison Brie's Unikitty, who I thought the embodiment of the modern working woman, feverishly cheerful and determined to imbue the same attitude in everyone around her. Kudos, too, to Chris Pratt as Emmett, while Will Arnett, playing Batman, steals every scene he's in.
It looks great, too, an entire world constructed from CGI bricks that serve not only as houses and cities but great flowing oceans. Oh, and spaceships. It would be very, very hard to forget the spaceships. The movie didn't quite succeed in making me stop worrying, but it certainly made me love the spaceships.
Am I sounding like a fangirl here? Okay, yes, probably guilty.
The bad
Some people are going to argue about a movie made by a series of giant corporations featuring a villain who runs a giant corporation. This is possibly true, but it makes narrative sense; besides, multinational empires really are evil - this being the case, I'd much rather they were evil and self-aware.
I have more of an argument with the film's sheer relentlessness - it's colourful, it's loud and on the wrong day it could be considered a migraine in waiting. It's great for kids and the terminally short of attention span, but for a relaxing afternoon's entertainment? Perhaps not so much.
Finally, a live-action sequence at the end of the second act feels cloying and overly-sentimental; I was glad to note that despite featuring large amounts of film footage, the movie's video game tie-in largely omits this.
All of which brings us to the whole movie-as-toy-commercial gripe: there's only one real way I could know the information in the above paragraph. Just like there's only one real way I could know that the flower catapult in Unikitty's Cloud Cuckoo Land playset has a truly abysmal range.
The verdict
Cute, funny and (but?) undeniably marketable, I suspect this one's probably a classic in waiting. I certainly hope so, at any rate.
I should probably be writing about the Oscar nominations today, but honestly, I just don't have it in me. I haven't seen all of the films nominated in the major categories, but my gut reaction is that they're very much what you'd expect, without much space for anything that gives the mould a dirty look, never mind actually breaking it. I'm pinning such hopes as I have on Birdman and, especially, The Grand Budapest Hotel - Wes Anderson has finally been finding his feet in recent years and it'd be wonderful to see him rewarded for it.
Along with the higher-profile categories, I'm also always interested in seeing what makes the Best Animated Film shortlist. I was utterly appalled to see that the Lego Movie was omitted this year; I'm sure Big Hero 6 is perfectly adequate, but it does seem as though Disney Pixar get automatic free passes and, frequently, automatic free wins. Sure, there's nods to alternative styles of animation amidst the nominations - heck, I'm writing about one of them today as soon as I'm done blowing off steam - but my gut instinct is that the Academy has a problem with movies with an anti-corporate message, even if they're sponsored by one of the world's largest toy companies.
...Anyway, The Boxtrolls has a fantastic pedigree, coming as it does from Laika studios. These are the people behind critically-acclaimed kiddie horror Coraline, one of the most beautifully creepy pieces of entertainment in decades, and in my book anything with their involvement is worth a look. Like Aardman, they deal in stop-motion animation, but there the resemblance stops - their stock-in-trade is the macabre, with doll-like models and painterly backdrops, all seamlessly blended together by the magic of digital enhancement.
Their subject matter this time is Alan Snow's children's book Here be Monsters, with the monsters being the film's titular Boxtrolls. The setting is the quasi-Dickensian city of Cheesebridge, where sharp class divisions exist between the rich, who wear white hats and eat cheese, and the poor, who are condemned to wear red hats - what they eat is unspecified, but presumably non-dairy-based. The Boxtrolls themselves, meanwhile, are small blue creatures who wear cardboard boxes as portable hiding places, living underground and repurposing the things that the everyday folks leave behind.
Generally seen as vermin, the Boxtrolls' life takes a turn for the worse when would-be social climber Archibald Snatcher (voiced by Ben Kingsley) warns the city leader Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris) that they have not only murdered the inventor Herbert Trubshaw but kidnapped and devoured his infant son. Portley-Rind is relatively unconcerned, but when Snatcher points out that they might also harbour designs on his precious cheese collection, he is spurred to action, promising Snatcher his white hat if he can eliminate every single Boxtroll from Cheesebridge.
Ten years on, meanwhile, and Portley-Rind's daughter Winifred (voice: Elle Fanning), a strong-willed young girl of a distinctly Gothic turn of mind, bitterly resents her father neglecting her in favour of his all-consuming cheese obsession. One particularly dismissive comment leads to her impulsively hurling his hat from a high window, a gesture she immediately regrets. When she descends to the city streets to fetch it, she makes the first of a series of discoveries that ensure that life in Cheesebridge will never be the same again...
The good
It's been a long time since I've seen a childrens' film with such a strong message - Boxtrolls is all about social division, and it practically counts as incitement. While the real villain of the piece is always Snatcher, it eventually becomes apparent that his chief flaw is his relentless obsession with class and social climbing. This leads him to consume such cheese as he can obtain despite it being so toxic to him that it causes his face to swell to grotesque proportions, and while his loathsomeness is never in doubt, he remains a victim of a broader societal malaise. He's one of the most complex villains in recent cinematic memory, with his repellent physical design complemented beautifully by Kingsley's vocal stylings.
Voicework is good all round, really, with the possible exception of Elle Fanning's Winnie of the wavery accent - Isaac Hempstead Wright is lovely as Eggs, the boy raised by Boxtrolls, and Jared Harris is suitably irritating as Lord Portley-Rind. My personal favourites, however, were Snatcher's trio of henchmen Mr. Trout, Mr. Pickles and Mr. Gristle, played by Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade and 30 Rock's Tracy Morgan respectively. Pickles in particular is something of a philosopher, leading to my new favourite-ever piece of post-credits tomfoolery.
The film is every bit as visually spectacular as we've come to expect from Laika - faces look like watercolour paintings, and backgrounds are so detailed that I suspect only a large-screen viewing could do them justice. The effects work is seamless, and I can't even begin to imagine the amount of effort involved.
Finally, extra PC-points for the fact that Eggs' babyhood carers are clearly both male; it's a lovely positive message delivered in a really low-key way so as not to distract from the main topic at hand.
The bad
A lot of critics seem to have really disliked this one; they weren't keen on the grubbiness or ugliness of it. I'd refute this as being a function of the setting - it deals in an ugly setting, and some very ugly truths indeed.
I saw a lot of accusations of childishness, too, and gross-out humour. These are probably true, but on the other hand, it's clearly a kids' film, and probably one aimed at a more mainstream audience than Coraline (I can't comment yet on Laika's other effort, ParaNorman as I haven't seen it, although I hope to remedy this soon) - certainly, I didn't ever find myself feeling particularly revolted.
Harder to dismiss, however, are claims that the storytelling is messy and overly busy - there's a lot going on in the course of the film's 96-minute runtime and things occasionally feel rushed. It's exacerbated by the obligatory overly-long action climax, which almost feels episodic in and of itself.
My main criticism, though, is the lack of female roles, which are limited to Winnie, plus her mother, who has maybe three lines in the entire movie. I've heard that a major female character was cut in the transition from book to film and replaced with a Simon Pegg cameo, which sounds like the opening line to a joke I can't be bothered to make. It's a shame, as Winnie herself is fairly compelling, and I can see this one being of equal appeal to both genders.
The verdict
It's kid-friendly social commentary, and we need more of that. Also, the ending has some really, really scary bits. I'm more than prepared to overlook the flaws in this one, and it may just find its way onto my rewatch list. If you have any interest at all in family movies, animation or social upheaval, it's probably worth a punt.
Okay, you're right, my movie detox didn't last very long. Yesterday's TV listings contained any number of top-quality trash, though - three or four were on my mental list of titles I'd wanted to revisit and write about, and one I'd written about already. Seriously, what would you have done?
Charlie's Angels is one of those TV series that was just a shade before my time. It finished in 1981, and while I don't doubt that repeats were shown for a while afterwards, I have no real memory of watching them. Even the iconic opening credits and theme tune aren't something I recall except as material for parody.
I actually don't remember much about the initial release of the 2000 movie, possibly because I was up to my eyeballs in university work, but possibly because it just didn't appeal all that much. I could say it was because the fundamental premise was sexist and just a little bit creepy, but honestly? This was a point in time when my self-esteem was shot, and all the bounding about and hair-flicking seemed like nothing so much as a personal insult and a reminder of all the wonderful things my life didn't hold and never would.
Time passed, however, and my world filled up with a lot of other great stuff, and so when it showed up on TV and Mr. B expressed the desire to watch, I reluctantly agreed.
In case you're unfamiliar with the central premise, just like the TV series, the film centres around three super-hot super-agents working for the mysterious Charlie, an ex-army man whose motives are mysterious but apparently largely benevolent. Here, our angels are ditzy Natalie (Cameron Diaz), overachiever Alex (Lucy Liu) and rock chick Dylan (Drew Barrymore). The plot - such as it is - involves them trying to protect a talented software engineer (Sam Rockwell) and his latest invention from the attentions of Tim Curry's shady millionaire Roger Corwin whilst dealing with the relationship troubles that inevitably arise when you lead a double life as an ass-kicking crimefighter.
The good
This is actually a really well-judged piece that nimbly walks the tightrope between homage and parody. Oh, it's ludicrous, but affectionately so, with a genuine sense of mischief and a playfully angel-themed soundtrack (that thankfully doesn't include any Robbie Williams). Everything is done with a nod and a wink and a hairflick to camera, and there's plenty of explosions for the girls to escape from in slow motion.
Oh, and there's outfits! So very many outfits! Roughly one per girl per scene, I think, with a few more for Bill Murray's Bosley. His selection for the role was one of a number of really good casting decisions; Barrymore, Diaz and Liu also all have great comedy pedigrees, while Sam Rockwell was already displaying a singular talent for playing the slimeball. Matt LeBlanc has great fun playing a dim, self-absorbed actor, while an early role for Steve Carell sees him playing it straight whilst displaying genuine charm.
Everything is a little bit pantomime, of course, but then that's how it should be; it's all larger than life, including the action scenes, where the wirework is definitely played for laughs. I did laugh, too, or at least I giggled, eventually succumbing entirely to the film's relentless, candy-coloured good humour.
The bad
Watching Charlie's Angels with my critic's head on, however, I did notice a few things I wished I hadn't. The use of blackface, for instance, which occurs twice - once, arguably more acceptably, with the use of a black actor and a CGI trick with a rubber mask, but once when one of the actresses uses dark makeup to imitate a waitress at a belly-dancing club. No matter how nudge-nudge-wink-wink it was played, I still think this was a really dubious decision.
My other problem is with the film's central premise - three gifted females who not only take orders from an older man they know nothing about, but squeal and giggle with joy whenever they hear his voice. It demonstrates a rather creepy level of infantilisation, and I found myself cringing whenever the girls (definitely girls, not women) and Charlie interacted. For a movie that ostensibly espouses female empowerment, that's some pretty hefty sexism right there.
The verdict
There's no denying that this is a glorious piece of fluff, visually attractive and genuinely funny with great performances from a talented cast. Some disturbing subtext didn't entirely prevent me enjoying either this or the 2003 sequel.
My period of abstention from the Hollywood blockbuster machine continues, and I'm feeling rather proud of myself. I weakened, once - snuck into the spare room for a crafty re-watch of Avengers Assemble - but all that happened was that I emerged half an hour later feeling guilty and slightly sick. It's like any diet, I suppose; on the plus side, it makes you feel pleasantly virtuous, but on the other hand, it does require a certain level of planning and forethought. No more idle browsing of the weekend listings, for instance, because the chances of finding anything suitable before the small hours are as close to nothing as makes no odds.
Fortunately, I'd been meaning to watch Calvary for quite some time, so this was the perfect excuse. I'm a huge fan of director John Michael McDonagh's The Guard, so when I heard he was doing a new piece that also starred Brendan Gleason, I couldn't help but be excited.
Despite the avid insistence of my subconscious, the word Calvary doesn't actually mean That Canadian City Where They Held The Winter Olympics In 1988. It's actually another name for Golgotha, the site of Jesus' crucifixion, and is sometimes used as a shorthand to represent great emotional torment. That's certainly the case here, where our protagonist Father James (Gleason), a Catholic priest from the Irish town of Sligo, is informed during the film's opening moments that in one week's time, he will be murdered. He hears this via the relative anonymity of the confessional booth, as one of his parishioners relates recollections of childhood sexual abuse - the would-be murderer knows James is a good priest, but this, he insists, is precisely the point. Who, after all, would really care if a paedophile dies?
James knows the identity of the man on the other side of the screen, although he declines to share it; instead, Calvary tracks his progress during the week that ensues, as he goes about his day-to-day business in a town that isn't sure whether it truly has a need any more for him or for what he represents.
The good
The very first thing I noticed about Calvary was the pacing. It's not slow, not exactly, but McDonagh isn't in any huge hurry, either, always giving us plenty of time to work out what's going on and absorb the atmosphere of any given moment. After the nonstop sensory onslaught of the big-budget blockbusters of the holiday period, this felt like a genuine relief. It's a film to be savoured and pondered upon, with performances, in general, thoroughly deserving of this more measured approach.
As might be expected, Gleason is magnificent as that rarest of creatures - a thoroughly decent movie priest. He imbues James with an easygoing good nature that reminded me of The Dude, happy to spend time with anybody and slow to pass judgement. With his sports car and his golden retriever, Bruno, he presents a figure to arouse goodwill in even the most ardent atheist. It's his film, completely, but able support is provided by the likes of Aidan Gillen as the atheist doctor, and Dylan Moran as the local millionaire.
The Irish landscape, too, has a vital role to play, remote, beautiful and ultimately unknowable. McDonagh acknowledges this, providing long, sweeping shots that practically enable the viewer to feel the slicing coastal winds. Sligo might be a part of civilisation, it suggests, but it's definitely on the outer edges, and its inhabitants are never too far from savagery. I'm probably not offering too much in the way of spoilers when I suggest that James' flock all have their dark secrets - this is a small rural town in a film, after all - and there are times when the setting feels like nothing so much as a remote outpost beyond the reach of the law.
The bad
A lot of critics seem not to have had a negative word to say about this one, and I can see why - it's the sort of movie critics tend to like. I liked it, too, after a fashion, but after the gorgeous modern mythology of The Guard, I still felt slightly disappointed. Calvary didn't quite satisfy me as either allegory or straight drama; it was too subtle for the former and too bold for the latter. Instead, I felt it occupied a slightly awkward middle ground where certain players overdid it in a faintly embarrassing fashion; as Leo the rent boy, Owen Sharpe was one of them, and Chris O'Dowd's boorish butcher was another.
All in all, for a film that dealt in such weighty matters as child sex abuse and loss of faith, I felt it was a little, well, slender, with characters drawn in broad brush strokes held together by a relatively flimsy narrative line. As sometimes happens in these cases, I find myself wondering what might have been left on the cutting room floor; 100 minutes isn't a long time, and I feel the subject matter and the style could both have supported a longer runtime.
The verdict
An enjoyably thoughtful piece, with Gleason on top form. Might not be all it's cracked up to be, but it remains well worth a look nevertheless.
I honestly didn't mean for it to become Unconventional Vampire Movie Week on the blog, it's just that both this one and Only Lovers Left Alive had been on my must-watch list for a while and by the time New Year rolls around, I've always gorged myself on traditional family films to the point where if I see one more flicker of brightly-coloured CGI, I might just puke all over the carpet.
What We Do in the Shadows is something of an antidote to all the Disney-sponsored conventionality - in a nutshell, it's a mockumentary in the classic Christopher Guest mould, about a coven of vampires living in downtown Wellington, New Zealand. Viago (Taika Waititi), a former 18th century dandy, is our gatekeeper, introducing us to his flatmates Vladislav (Jemaine Clements), once the scourge of the Middle Ages, Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), one of Hitler's elite brigade of Nazi vampires, and Petyr, (Ben Fransham) who's been around for so many thousands of years that nobody quite knows what he's thinking, or if he's thinking at all.
We follow them in the run-up to the Unholy Masquerade, the biggest event in the undead social calendar. Viago and Deacon are both anxious to look their best, while Vladislav, as one of the senior vamps in the vicinity, is hoping to be named guest of honour over and above his old adversary, The Beast. Newly-turned Nick, meanwhile, just wants to hang out with his old human pal, Stu. Will their wishes be realized? Will their age-old enmity with the local werewolves be resolved? Just how do you make sure you're looking your best when you're unable to see your own reflection, anyway? The film provides the answers to these vital questions and many, many more.
The good
Not even going to pretend to take an unbiased stance on this one. I've loved it since the first time I saw the trailer, and in the week since I laid hands on the entire movie I've watched it twice, enjoying it immensely on both occasions.
I've always been a huge fan of the mockumentary format; up until now, there's been nobody to touch Christopher Guest, but Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement have really given him a run for his money here. This is the sweetest comedy I've seen in years, not so much a comedy of embarrassment as one of empathy, where we're constantly charmed by our protagonists even as we laugh at their pretensions and, frequently, their crashing ineptitude. It's there in the script and the performances; singling any one player out would be criminal. Waititi, Clement and Brugh have the most screentime, though, and they're all delightful, with Deacon's tough guy persona only slightly undermined by his addiction to knitting.
Visually things are solid, if not spectacular - exactly the sort of thing you'd expect of a low-budget documentary about a bunch of people who only go out at night. The effects are a little on the ramshackle side, but in some ways that only adds to the general charm.
The bad
If I listen to the voices in my head and watch this one until I know the script by heart, it may have a negative impact on my marriage
The verdict
If you do not enjoy this film immensely, it can only be because you are an irredeemably bad person. Just sayin'.
Been watching a lot of vampire movies this week, for some reason - almost certainly more than I've seen over the course of the rest of the year. I'm not normally a huge fan of the genre, for various reasons - I'm not a horror buff, and while vampire movies aren't necessarily gorefests, the ones that aren't tend to be overly-romantic nonsense of the kind peddled by Anne Rice or Stephanie Meyer, and I was lucky enough to have grown out of that guff long before it became a genre staple. This week, however, the intersection of what I felt like watching and what was easily available happened to be smack dab in the middle of Transylvania.
Except that vampires don't tend to live in Transylvania any more, do they? At least, the modern ones don't. They inhabit fashionably down-at-heel districts of faded cities where the urban decay echoes their own status of tragic undeath, possibly because Disney have bought out all the gothic-style castles for their live-action fairytale retellings... but I digress.
Only Lovers Left Alive is Jim Jarmusch's take on the vampire myth. It tells the story of... well, no, it doesn't really tell any story at all. It features, however, lovers and spouses Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton), trying to make sense of their immortal lives amidst the human "zombies". Currently living as a reclusive rock god, Tom finds himself growing increasingly depressed, eventually summoning Eva away from her bookish life in Tangiers to join him in Detroit. Over the film's two-hour run-time we learn about their past and witness the lengths they go to to obtain blood, which they consume with all the ritual of the dedicated absinthomane. Their fragile happiness is disturbed, however, by the arrival of Eve's young sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska), whose outlook on life might politely be described as slightly more, well, unreconstructed...
The good
As might be expected from Jarmusch, this is a beautiful, unconventional piece of filmmaking, languid and lyrical, with a sort of aching sadness offset with flashes of dark, dry humour. At its heart are a series of fantastic performances, with Hiddleston in particular a revelation. He and Swinton make for an utterly convincing and oddly touching couple whose centuries-long relationship negates the need for personal space. They're heartbreakingly beautiful, of course, but so are all the vampires, including John Hurt , whose Christopher Marlowe (yes, that one) stole my heart even more than the two leads. Wasikowska, meanwhile, as the bratty younger sister, is occasionally in danger of walking off with the entire movie, providing it with an injection of energy that some might argue is badly needed.
The locations look great, too - more than that, they look distinctive, which is no mean feat for a film that takes place entirely in low light conditions. Detroit is used as a metaphor for Adam's declining mental state, while Tangiers is every bit as mysterious and exotic as Eve herself. The strong sense of place lends the film atmosphere, and is only enhanced by a soundtrack created in part by Jarmusch himself.
The bad
I couldn't quite escape the nagging feeling I was watching Twilight for intellectuals. Only Lovers Left Alive still felt quite a lot like wish fulfilment, just for people with slightly loftier wishes. Don't get me wrong, I was swept away by this beautiful, tragic tale of the beautiful, tragic undead. I wanted to be with the lead characters. I wanted to be the lead characters. I'm not. I'm a short, fat part-time librarian.
This may just be the greatest tragedy of all.
The verdict
No verdict available, sorry. Too busy bemoaning my own crashing ordinariness. I enjoyed the film, though, and if you think you're above this sort of nonsense, chances are you will, too.
