Film

The Conjuring 2

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18/06/16

James Wan has been at it again. After the twin successes of The Conjuring and Annabelle, comes the imaginatively titled Conjuring 2, in which paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) take on a couple of ‘real-life’cases with their customary mixture of guts and cheesiness. For the film’s pre-credit sequence, we’re in The Amityville House, (the Warren’s most famous case) where Lorraine encounters the unwelcome attentions of a grinning nun and where she has a premonition that something bad is going to happen to her hubby.

After the credits, we move swiftly on to merry England (Enfield to be more precise) where single Mum, Peggy Hodgson (Frances O’ Connor) and her four kids are getting some unwelcome attention of their own, particularly young Janet (Madison Wolfe) who is the recipient of some rather scary poltergeist phenomenon. (Interestingly, the story has been filmed as recently as 2015 in The Enfield Haunting, a TV mini series which offered a much more credible version of the story. It’s probably important to mention here that in real life, the Warrens had hardly any connection with the Enfield case whatsoever.) The story is set in  1977 but the Hodgsons appear to be suffering levels of squalor more reminiscent of the 1930s – peeling wallpaper, broken furniture and the like. Furthermore, down in their cellar, they have what must be the worst case of damp in history – you don’t need a spanner down there so much as a snorkel and flippers.

Despite the inaccuracies, these early scenes are surprisingly effective; Wan manages to kindle genuine tension in the telling and there are some cleverly handled set pieces that will have even the hardiest viewer grabbing for their neighbour’s hand. But somebody needs to tell him that less is more. After the first half hour or so, the story begins to kick in and as a consequence proceedings move increasingly into the realms of the risible. What could easily have been a four star movie, slips steadily down the ratings, and by the final half hour, you’re as likely to be hooting with laughter as cringing in terror. What’s more, the Warrens turn out to be the most terminally irritating duo of God botherers ever to visit a haunted house. A scene where Ed croons an Elvis song to the Hodgson kids seems to have wandered in from a different movie entirely, while Lorraine has an annoying habit of finding herself wandering about in an alternate world, where ghostly exposition keeps rearing its ugly head.

The film’s ultimate plot twist will have you gasping not in shock but in disbelief that anybody thought we’d swallow such an unlikely idea, even in a ghost story and by then, it’s way too late to rescue this nonsense, which is a shame. Wan clearly has a real talent for scare movies and if he would just exercise a little more self control, he could be creating films of real quality. As it stands this is a major disappointment.

3.2 stars

Philip Caveney

 

 

The Nice Guys

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12/06/16

Shane Black is an interesting fellow. A former screenwriter who’s status went meteoric after the runaway success of the Lethal Weapon franchise, his career went into the doldrums after later multi-million dollar scripts failed to put bums on seats in enough numbers to earn back the huge advances. But in 2005, his first film as  director, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang earned his some much-needed brownie points (at least from the critics, even if it didn’t pull in huge crowds)  and his subsequent helming of Iron Man 3 made him, once again, a bankable name, a big hitter.

So, he has the chance to start over and here’s The Nice Guys, which has all the classic Shane Black tropes: essentially a buddie movie, it features two mismatched characters bumbling their way through a complicated plot, milking some genuine big laughs along the way and pausing every so often for a insanely high-powered, ultra violent action sequence. Throw in the evocative 70s setting and this is everything that Inherent Vice could have been if it had bothered to incorporate a decent plot.

Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is a former cop, now fallen on hard times and reduced to beating up people for a living, something he does to the very best of his ability. One such person is Holland Marsh (Ryan Gosling) possibly the world’s most inept Private Detective, but when it transpires that both men are involved in looking for the same missing person, a young runaway who has recently been linked to the tragic death of infamous porn star, Misty Mountains, it seems expedient to join forces and pool their ‘expertise.’ Sadly, this is something that’s in rather short supply, but luckily Marsh’s precocious teenage daughter Holly (an appealing performance by Angourie Rice) has enough chutzpah to help them through. As the plot unfolds it transpires that there’s a conspiracy at the heart of the story that goes all the way to the top of the slippery pole.

Crowe and Gosling make an appealing double act. Gosling is particularly good, wringing every last drop out of his assured comic performance, (this is a man who can’t break a window without severing a major vein) while Crowe is, for once, actually rather likeable as a bluff, hard-hitting guy with anger management issues. While you could argue that the film is essentially a big piece of fluff, what fabulously accomplished fluff it is! It breezes effortlessly through its 116 minutes running time and actually leaves you wanting more. A coda suggests that there could be a second adventure for these two and on the form of this one, I’d say that’s a decent suggestion.

You’ll come out relishing some of Marsh’s more idiotic lines. A particular favourite? ‘Yeah, well you know who else was ‘just following orders?’ Hitler!’

Priceless.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Money Monster

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03/06/16

Some actors are happy to stay on their side of the lens and some, like Jodie Foster, occasionally like to swap positions and try their hands at directing. She’s done a pretty decent job of it here. Money Monster tells the story of Lee Gates (George Clooney) a cheesy corporate TV presenter who finds himself in jeopardy when ordinary Joe, Kyle Budwell (Jack O’ Connell) loses pretty much everything he owns on one of Lee’s ‘surefire’ investment tips and invades the studio with a gun and a belt stuffed with Semtex, intent on finding answers to some rather difficult questions. It’s left to Lee’s seasoned producer, Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) to talk her team through the resulting ordeal and to try to ensure that nobody gets killed in the process. In an attempt to preserve his own skin, Lee starts asking timely questions about how an investment  company called Ibis, could possibly have lost its investors $800,000,000  in one day. The answers all seem to lead towards the company’s head honcho, Walt Camby (Dominic West) and some dodgy dealings in South Africa…

Money Monster is a taut little thriller that asks some pertinent questions about the world of share dealing,  though perhaps it never delves quite as deeply into the subject as it might have. Still, it cooks up a fine head of steam as a straight ahead thriller and there’s plenty of good performances here – this might be Roberts’ best showing in quite a while. Rising star, O ‘Connell acquits himself well and gorgeous George handles his role with consummate ease. It’s not in the league of say, Dog Day Afternoon, but then, few films are and this makes for a decent hour and a half of entertainment.

The earth won’t move but if you’re looking to distract yourself, this is a decent investment.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Love & Friendship

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29/05/16

Cameo, Edinburgh

Love & Friendship is an amalgamation of two early novellas (Lady Susan and Love and Freindship [sic]), penned by the esteemed Jane Austen when she was still in her teens. It’s a witty, acerbic tale, and seems true to the spirit of this oft-misunderstood writer in a way that many screen adaptations of her work do not. Romance, here, is never really the point; we don’t really care who marries whom. Instead, this is a satire: a deliciously wry examination of how people manipulate social mores.

Kate Beckinsale, as Lady Susan, is superbly cast. She is undoubtedly a venal fiend, and yet we root for her because… well, why not? She’s attractively rebellious and unrepentant in her selfishness, and – if some men are idiotic enough to fall for her games – then really, more fool them.

Most engagingly foolish of all is Tom Bennett’s James Martin, an affable buffoon, whose lack of intelligence is more than compensated by the size of his estate. Bennett milks his role’s comic potential, clearly relishing the chance to ask, in all seriousness, which of the twelve commandments he is allowed to break.

Oh, it’s a slight film all right, like Austen’s books,”a little bit (two inches wide) of ivory” – but it’s crammed full with such verve and vivacity that it’s hard to think of a more engaging way to spend an afternoon. Especially when we’re in the delightful environs of Edinburgh’s oldest and most loved cinema, the superb Cameo, where we’ve recently become members.

4.1 stars

Susan Singfield

Son Of Saul

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23/05/16

Laszlo Nemes’s Auschwitz-based film has picked up several awards, since winning the Grand Prix at Cannes last year, including the best foreign language movie at the 2016 Oscars; and there’s no doubting the uncompromising, gut-wrenching nature of the film. But the bleak setting and barbaric behaviour exhibited throughout the story make this not so much a movie to enjoy as to endure.

Saul Auslander (Geza Rohrig) is a member of the notorious Sonderkommando, the unit of Jewish captives who worked alongside their Nazi jailers to help expedite the deaths of millions of their fellow prisoners. The reason they agreed to do this? To extend their own lives for a few more months, because they knew with a dread certainty that every so often, large numbers of them would be executed and fresh prisoners enlisted to their ranks. Going about this thankless business one day, Saul chances upon a dying boy, somebody he believes to be his own illegitimate son. Seized by the overpowering notion that the child must have a decent burial at all costs, Saul sets about finding a rabbi to perform the necessary ceremony, risking his life (and the lives of many of his closest friends, who are in the closing stages of mounting an escape plan and need Saul to help with their plans). In his desperate scramble to honour his dead son, Saul is flirting with disaster.

Son of Saul is a claustrophobic movie, shot in an almost square frame, the camera following Saul from scene to scene as he moves frantically through a series of hellish locations that could have emerged from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. The hideous daily grind of his work is depicted (thankfully) largely as a barely glimpsed blur, a pile of heaped bodies here, a roadside execution there – somehow not seeing it in detail makes it far worse than it already is. And it’s about as bad as it can get. This is immersive cinema at its most distressing and the very futility of what Saul is trying to achieve oppresses you, even as you sit there, wanting to look away, but somehow unable to do it. At a time when the world seems to be moving inexorably back  to the kind of conditions that nurtured the Nazi cause in the first place, these events are doubly distressing.

I cannot honestly say that I enjoyed it – but I can see exactly why it was made and why it should be seen by as many people as possible. Films like this remind us of the depths of depravity to which human beings can sink. If the journey is an unpleasant one, it nonetheless needs to be undertaken, in the vague hope that the human race might come to it’s collective senses and sure that such things are never allowed to happen again.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

Sing Street

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22/05/16

Films about pop music are notoriously hard to do; many directors have fallen by the wayside when trying to put such a concept together, but John Carney has already pulled it off twice, first with the delightful (and appropriately named), Once, and more recently with the criminally underrated Begin Again. So can he really hope to do it a third time?

The answer is, unreservedly, yes. Sing Street just might be his finest effort to date, even though the setting, theme (and one particular member of the cast) will inevitably draw comparisons with The Commitments.

In 1980s Dublin, troubled teenager Cosmo (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) finds himself withdrawn from his private school and thrown upon the tender mercies of the Christian Brothers, on nearby Synge Street, after his parents’ relationship begins to fall apart and the family fortunes are hit by the deepening recession. At the new school, Cosmo experiences bullying at the hands of some of the older kids and more upsettingly, by the obnoxious Brother Baxter (Don Wycherly) who rules the place with an iron cassock. However, a chance encounter with the enigmatic Raphina (Lucy Boynton) gives Cosmo some new purpose in life, when he impulsively invites her to appear in a video for ‘his band.’ One small problem there – he doesn’t actually have a band yet – so, without further ado, he seeks out interested parties from around the neighbourhood and they set about rehearsing the songs that Cosmo has written in his bedroom.

Anybody who has ever played in a teenage pop band is going to relate to this, but then again, so are a lot of people, because this is heart-warming stuff about youth and ambition that pretty much anybody can enjoy. What Carney does better than just about anyone else is to follow the creation of a song through from those first amateurish noodlings, to the finished product, making it all seem wholly credible and entirely uplifting. Even Cosmo’s imagined Back To The Future fantasy works an absolute treat.

There’s a fabulous running joke, which has Cosmo and his band listening to the latest pop sensation, only to end up dressing exactly like them in the following scene, while the original songs written by Carney, Gary Clark and Adam Levine are catchy, but simple enough to make you believe that they actually could have been written by a teenager. There’s also a wonderful relationship between Cosmo and his older brother, University dropout Brendan (Jack Reynor) which goes to the very heart of the story.

Whatever you do, find time to go and see this charming film – it’s an absolute corker.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Captain America: Civil War

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19/05/16

I’ve been going through a severe bout of spandex withdrawal recently, so I approached this film with extreme caution, despite having heard several favourable reports. The Marvel universe is becoming an out-of-control behemoth, which seems obliged to draw in more and more comic book characters as it trundles along, until there are so many costumed characters onscreen, it starts to overpower the story lines.

Having said that, Captain America: Civil War starts promisingly, roping in some surprisingly serious ideas that for once, do not seem aimed purely at its teenage fan boy audience. In Nigeria, to thwart an attempt by some bad guys to steal a dangerous chemical agent, Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) and three of the other Avengers get a little carried away with the general kick-assery and in a scene that put me in mind of Team America: World Police, a whole bunch of innocent civilians are killed in the crossfire.

The United Nations decides to issue an edict that the Avengers are not to act off their own bat any more but only if and when granted permission to go into action. Half of the team, headed by Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Junior) think this is a reasonable idea and elect to sign the necessary forms – but the other half, headed by Captain America, refuse to commit to it. And then, Bucky Barnes /The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) is roused from his slumbers to undertake a mission on behalf of his Soviet puppet masters and the Captain finds himself torn between helping his old friend or hunting him down…

Up to this point, it’s all nicely done, but then, inevitably, the opposing sides in the United Nations squabble square up for a battle, enlisting extra help from other Marvel characters and the story buckles under the weight of servicing the antics of so many costumed characters – Ant Man, Hawkeye, Black Panther, Black Widow, War Machine, Vision… even Spider-Man (Tom Holland) is brought back into the proceedings as an eager-to-please teenage recruit (a single fun idea in the midst of the mayhem, though it’s nowhere near enough to rescue the film from what’s coming.) The resulting airport-based punch-up seems to go on for ever in that cartoonish 12A way that Marvel have perfected over the years and any hope of coherence goes straight out of the nearest window. Of course its all skilfully done, but it’s somehow distressing to witness so much expertise (and dare I mention, so many millions of dollars) wasted on what amounts to a souped-up brawl.

I appreciate that I’m not in the target audience for films like this, but honestly, Marvel need to understand that less is more. This feels like a great big, bloated exercise in extreme tedium. An accompanying trailer for X-Men Apocalypse appeared to offer another indigestible helping of the same sort of pudding.

Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.

2.5 stars

Philip Caveney

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

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18/05/16

War and comedy can make uncomfortable bedfellows; it’s not very often that filmmakers get the mix right, but that’s hardly surprising when your potential laughs are inevitably punctuated by regular doses of death and devastation. Whiskey  Tango Foxtrot is co-written by former news reporter Kim Baker, based on her book The Taliban Shuffle and essentially, it’s used here as a vehicle for the comedy talents of Tina Fey. Though she has a likeable persona, this is a somewhat hit and miss affair, mostly falling short of real humour and failing to imbue the proceedings with any hint of real peril.

When we first meet Kim, she’s forging a safe but humdrum career as a copy editor at a TV news station in New York. The escalating tensions in Afghanistan, however, create opportunities for ‘the unmarried and childless’ to head out to the war zone and ‘raise their profiles.’ Despite being in a long term relationship, Baker accepts the offer and the next thing she knows, she’s based in Kabul (or as the news teams refer to it, the Ka-bubble) trying to make waves as a news presenter. Her main competition comes from the reckless and highly photogenic Tanya Vanderpoel (Margot Robbie) the only other woman reporter on the scene and someone who has flung herself headlong into the hedonistic lifestyle that reporters follow when they’re not out shooting footage.

Baker’s long-distance relationship soon goes belly-up, but she finds some consolation in the arms of veteran Scottish photographer, Iain McKelpie (Martin Freeman) and meanwhile she’s also come to the attention of Ali Massoud Sadiq (Alfred Molina), a powerful local politician with an eye for Western females. For the first year or so,  Kim does fine, but by the third year audiences back home are tiring of news from the war zone. Only the most dangerous and hair-rising assignments are going to keep her on the screens back in America… but how far is she prepared to go to ensure that happens?

It’s not a terrible film, but neither is it powerful enough or focused enough to hold the attention for very long. More damningly, I don’t feel I really learned anything new about Afghanistan, because everything on the screen was shown from the perspective of a privileged white American, and somehow that didn’t feel like enough. One of these days, Fey is going to find a role that’s worthy of her undoubted talents but this doesn’t really feel like the one to do it for her. This isn’t so much M.A.S.H, as lukewarm spuds.

Maybe the acrostic in the title – WTF – should have acted as a warning.

3.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Our Kind of Traitor

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17/05/16

The recent success of the BBC’s The Night Manager has put the work of John Le Carré back into the public eye, but Our Kind of Traitor (terrible title) isn’t likely to enjoy the same levels of success, despite the presence of Ewan McGregor in the lead role.It’s not an awful film, by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s a plodding, workmanlike feel to Susanna White’s direction which prevents it from ever really taking flight. And then there’s the plot… oh dear.

McGregor plays Perry Makepeace, a university lecturer, who we first meet on holiday in Morrocco with his barrister partner, Gail Perkins (Naomi Harris). Mind you, they’re not having a lot of fun as they’ve gone there to try and get over Perry’s recent fling with one of his students. One night, on his own in the hotel bar, Perry encounters Dima (Stellan Skarsgard) and recklessly accepts an invitation to go clubbing with him and his pals. Dima, it turns out, is a high-ranking member of the Russian mafia, a money launderer, who is about to sign over millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains to a fellow gangster, ‘The Prince’, who is planning to open a bank in the UK. (Well, he’s a mafioso, he’s surely allowed some hobbies?) Dima is painfully aware that the last person who signed over money to this charmer ended up dead, along with all his family – so he enlists Perry to take a flash drive back to London for him and asks him to it over to MI6. Perry being the thoughtful sort, doesn’t even bother mentioning any of this to Gail. (No wonder their relationship is in trouble!) The first she knows about it is when they’re detained at passport control.

Perry promptly comes to the attention of Hector (Damien Lewis) a spy who (like most Le Carré characters) has his own personal agenda and wants to get even with other MI6 operatives who have done him down in the past. He’s keen to enlist Dima’s help to expose those MPs who have been dealing with the Russians on the quiet – but there’s a problem. His employers are reluctant to sanction such a move and will only allow him three agents.  Almost before you can say ‘that seems highly unlikely’, Hector has recruited Perry and Gail to help his team bring Dima and his family safely to the UK. Whereupon all kinds of adventures ensue in a variety of eye-catching locations…

Whether or not you can accept such a risible idea will greatly influence your ability to enjoy this film. I’m afraid I simply couldn’t. The ensuing chase does manage to kindle the occasional bit of tension, but the ultimate overview – that everyone is basically corrupt and nobody can be trusted, soon becomes a little wearing; furthermore, the notion that MI6 can’t afford to enlist enough operatives to handle such a mission successfully is faintly ridiculous. McGregor gives it a go but looks uncertain of himself all the way through, Harris doesn’t really have much to do except stand around looking worried and even the usually dependable Skarsgard has to shout and bluster his way through the proceedings, in order to generate some momentum.

Oh yes, and like most Le Carré stories, there’s a rather downbeat ending, that does nobody any favours. There will doubtless be plenty of people queuing up to tell me I’m wrong, but if this film has a flavour, to me it’s basic vanilla.

3.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Florence Foster Jenkins

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16/05/16

The last time we saw the chameleon that is Meryl Streep in a musical role it was in Rikki and the Flash, where she managed to utterly convince as an ageing rocker with a troublesome daughter. The titular Florence Foster Jenkins is something else entirely. Streep plays a genuine historical character who lived only for music and who enacted a whole series of infamous concerts during the 1940s.

She was remarkable for a variety of reasons. As a teenager, she’d been a musical prodigy but an unwelcome dose of syphilis, passed on to her by her first husband when she was eighteen, had left her incapable of playing the piano. Her only other option was to sing and luckily for her, she had inherited her father’s fortune and was able to fund a series of private concerts. The reviews were generally favourable, largely because of the sterling efforts of her second husband, former actor St Clare Bayfield (played here with great charm by Hugh Grant) who smoothed his wife’s path by bribing reviewers and ensuring that she never ever witnessed people laughing at her – something they were likely to do, because of course, she couldn’t carry a tune to save her life.

The film opens with her auditioning for an accompanist and she soon settles on Cosme McMoon (a beautifully understated turn by Simon Helberg) who finds himself conflicted by his desire to play good music and his understandable horror at the noises he hears coming from the mouth of Ms Jenkins. The situation is manageable when the concerts are kept small and intimate but when on a whim, Jenkins books herself a performance at Carnegie Hall in front of an audience of 3000, it’s clear that Bayfield and McMoon are going to have a more difficult job on their hands. And to compound matters, she’s only gone and made a blooming record!

This is a slight but perfectly judged film, skilfully directed by Stephen Frears and built around a wonderful comic performance from Streep. If you think there’s not much humour to be milked from such a tragic premise, don’t be fooled – you’ll laugh your way through much of this and towards the end, you’ll almost certainly be close to tears. The script, by Nicholas Martin, is adept at confounding your expectations. Bayfield, who at first appears to be an unspeakable cad (he led a double life, living with a young woman, Kathleen (Rebecca Ferguson)) clearly did love his wife and lavished great care and attention on her at every turn, unlike musical virtuosos such as Arturo Toscanini and Carlo Edwards, who happily took a series of cheques from her but never once turned up to show their support.

In an age where the likes of The X Factor and BGT have elevated the championing of musical mediocrity to an art form, Jenkins’ story seems a particularly prescient one – and for Streep’s performance alone, this is worth seeking out.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney