Viggo Mortensen
Home schools his kids really well
Until his wife dies
Author / hutchwp
Why Super Mario Run will be great for Nintendo
In case you missed it earlier this week, Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto made a surprise appearance at the Apple Special Event at San Fransisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. He was there to announce the first Super Mario game to be playable on smart phones. Indeed, it will launch as an iPhone exclusive, coming to Android at a later date.
Watch the trailer here.
The game looks simple enough. Mario runs from left to right, jumping depending on when the player presses the screen. The jumps vary in height depending on how long the screen is pressed for. This gives you a free hand with which you can do whatever you fancy, including eating an apple! Well played Miyamoto…
A familiar sight for fans of Super Mario
The news has had mixed reactions across the Internet, with many happy that the gaming giant is branching out whilst others bemoan the devaluing of the IP.
With the Wii U writhing to its gruesome end within the next six months and a serious slowdown in sales of the DS and 3DS families of consoles in recent times, Nintendo had to do something to experiment with the market and this is the perfect time to do something.
The much-discussed Nintendo NX will arrive in Spring 2017 and there hasn’t been much to get excited about on the Nintendo front this year, outside of the Pokémon Go phenomenon that Nintendo barely had anything to do with. Releasing a simple game that reminds players of the fun that can be had with the character without really going into the deep gameplay seen on the more advanced console-based games seems like the perfect move.
The game looks to have six worlds with four levels in each. Anyone familiar with the recent New Super Mario Bros. games – the visuals on which this game is sourced – will know that there are undoubtedly rewards in the form of bonus stages awaiting those completists amongst us. Miyamoto also indicated in his talk that the game will have a one-off charge but won’t have in-app payments. This is music to the ears of players around the world, tiring of necessary additional charges to get the most out of the games they enjoy.
Super Mario Run can be accessed on the App Store, though all you can do right now is set a notification for its release (currently expected for December).
Film review – Julieta (Pedro Almodóvar, 2016)
The latest film from Pedro Almodóvar, Julieta, is a stunning interwoven story of mystery and intrigue that the director takes great care in unraveling for our viewing pleasure.
Centred around the titular character, we are introduced to Julieta as she plans to move from central Madrid to Portugal with her boyfriend Lorenzo. However, a chance encounter with a friend of her daughter causes her to completely rethink her decision. Her daughter, Antía, has been missing for several years and moving will mean any chance of reconnecting with her will be lost. She opts to stay behind and rent an apartment in the last known address that her daughter could contact her. She fills her time hand writing her thoughts on the events that led to her daughter’s disappearance, which play out in the form of a long flashback that makes up the bulk of the film.
It is an adaptation of three stories by Alice Munro taken from her 2004 award winning book Runaway, which Almodóvar first hinted at in his brilliant 2011 horror thriller The Skin I Live In via a Spanish-language version of the book being prominently read by one of the central characters.
The music in Julieta plays a critical part in setting the tone, switching it from serious drama to something slightly more sinister. It borders on sounding like a horror film at times, with the implied effect of hinting that whatever story has been revealed thus far still has more secrets within.
The success of the film ultimately lies on the two actresses who portray Julieta at various times through it her life. Fortunately, both Emma Suarez and Adriana Ugarte provide brilliant turns as the older and younger incarnations of Julieta, respectively. They are very different takes, resting either side of a devastating incident in her life. It works perfectly well and the change is handled with a certain elegance that ensures buy in from the audience.
Some ardent Almodóvar fans have been disappointed with his recent output, with some pointing to airplane-disaster-comedy I’m So Excited as an indication that he’d lost his edge. Any doubts about how seriously he takes his work can be put to bed with Julieta – a beautiful work of art and a must see for anyone with a penchant for high quality cinema.
Julieta is available now on DVD.
Film review – Café Society (Woody Allen, 2016)
There is a moment in Café Society where the magic of 1950s Hollywood romance is really captured: a chance glance, an excited exchange, the promise of unfolding romance recognised instantly. That this exquisite one-shot involves not Kristen Stewart – the woman we need to believe is Jesse Eisenberg’s raison d’etre – but rather Blake Lively, reveals everything we need to know about why this Woody Allen effort fails to hit the heights of his more recent successes. That is, Kristen Stewart simply isn’t a believable love interest. At least not in this kind of film.
The 1930s-set story centres around Bobby (Eisenberg), a young Jewish man who has moved to Hollywood to pursue new career opportunities under the supervision of his uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a powerful and well-connected film talent agent. He instantly falls in love with Veronica (Stewart), an assistant at Phil’s office, unaware of the fact that his uncle is on the verge of breaking off his marriage to pursue his affair with Veronica.
The film hangs together on Jesse Eisenberg’s shoulders, as he starts off by doing his best Woody Allen impression and progresses towards his final position that is ever-so-slightly more alpha male than that. It is genuinely an excellent performance, bringing energy to the screen whenever he graces it.
He works best playing off against the plethora of supporting characters who never fail to exude the feel of the time and he’s clearly having fun under the supervision of one of the greatest living film directors. It’s a beautiful homage to the heyday of Hollywood, as Bobby develops into a socialite, bouncing from party to party first in Hollywood and then later on his return to New York.
Whenever Stewart appears on screen, she feels like a woman out of place in the era and unable to match the authentic performances of those around her. This goes against some excellent post-Twilight performances that have given her a route out of potential typecasting (American Ultra is a great example of this), but a classic Hollywood leading starlet she is not.
The film is not a complete failure. A hilariously delivered exchange between Bobby and a first-time prostitute is just one example of the smart comedic dialogue we’ve come to expect in Allen’s recent film. The jazz-centric score heightens the positioning in the era.
It’s just a shame that I was routing for he wrong girl.
Cafe Society is available now on DVD, along with the sumptuous Vince Giordano soundtrack.
Film review – Weiner (Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, 2016)
The worst thing about watching the political equivalent of a car crash is that politicians never seem to learn from their predecessors’ mistakes. Wars keep happening, smear campaigns take precedent over actual policies in the run up to elections, mayoral campaigners Tweet pictures of their erect penises to strangers.
Wait, what?!
Okay, that last one is a new one on the political landscape. Anthony Weiner is a great sport though. He lived up to his name whilst figuratively – though thankfully not literally – taking one for the team by playing out the lesson twice, first in 2011 and then again in 2013. That the second one happened during under the prying eyes of documentary filmmaking duo Kriegman and Steinberg, at the time trying to capture the rebuilding of a shattered political empire, makes it all the more fascinating.
The film left me a little split on my opinion of him. On the one hand, he is clearly a driven man who is good at his job, galvanising public opinion and canvassing support for what he truly believes is right for his city.
What I can’t deny though, and I think we can all agree on this, is that the mayor of New York shouldn’t have an alter ego on the dark web called Carlos Danger tweeting pictures of his dick to women behind his wife’s back.
His wife, Huma Abedin, leaves the film with her head left relatively high. She is a woman of unbelievable strength in the face of a continuously catastrophic husband who laughs in the face of public opinion, even though his livelihood depends on being popular with his public. The only question is why she sticks around when he is clearly a huge damage to her political career (she has been an aide to Hilary Clinton throughout the two scandals and leading into the presidential election later this year).
As a documentary, Weiner is about as good as it gets. It isn’t putting the pieces together after an event, instead getting lucky and being able to present a truly spectacular political scandal from the inside of the bubble. The characters are their interactions are as captivating as any fictional story.
It might not be a comfortable watch, but there’s something about Anthony Weiner that’s hard to not get addicted to. He’s an almost great political swamped by his own ability to ruin his own chances of achieving anything other than the total humiliation of himself and everyone associated with him.
Well worth 90 minutes of your time.
Film review – Captain Fantastic (Matt Ross, 2016)
Captain Fantastic is not the latest in the never-ending chain of Marbel superhero films. Nor is it a profile of former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard, who is fantastic for about half of Liverpool and few others.
No, despite the title, Captain Fantastic is the directorial debut full-length feature from Matt Ross, better known as Gavin Belson from Silicon Valley. Beyond the superficial veneer of a twee, heartwarming, quirky indie flick, there is something a little more substantial and special at work here.
Viggo Mortensen takes the lead role as Ben Cash, a father raising six children as an only parent after his wife is hospitalised with bipolar disease. Nurturing them off-grid in a sort of wilderness commune, he is forced to bring them back into society when he receives the news that his wife has committed suicide. The journey to New Mexico for the funeral forces him to re-evaluate his choices in bring up his children, exposing them all to a world they have shunned.
Many of the greatest films to grace our screens have us questioning are inner-most philosophies. Whilst this isn’t likely to be considered an all time great, it does push the right buttons in its ability to be thought-provoking. The six children are for the most part absolutely happy, well educated, physically fit individuals that seem to have had no ill-effects from the unique brand of homeschooling afforded by their father Ben. The portrayal from them is so convincing that I was left seething when their families began to interfere and bring them back into “normality”.
One thing that was very evident was the chemistry between the six children and Mortensen. George MacKay takes centre stage as eldest child Bo on the brink of leaving for college but struggling to find the best way to tell a father to whom he is completely devoted. Samantha Isler and Annalise Basso are great as the inseperable pair Kielyr and Vespyr. Charlie Shotwell, Nicholas Hamilton and Shree Crooks all have extremely bright futures in the industry, the latter of the three having a charismatic charm that brought an element of hilarity to everything she said.
It is this sense of comradery and unbreakable dedication that is essential to the success of the film and without it we’d be left with nothing. Thankfully it’s here in abundance.
The music from Alex Somers (Sigor Ros producer) plays into the mood perfectly, reflecting the subtle charm of the visuals on screen. It’s non-offensive but beautifully balanced.
A must-see, feel-great film.
Film review – Wiener-Dog (Todd Solondz, 2016)
Wiener-Dog is a 2016 portmanteau black comedy written and directed by Todd Solondz. The phrase “black comedy” in this sense is somewhat skewed, for whilst the comedy is sporadic, the blackness of the story is fairly consistent. There are four separate tales told, each with the tenuous common theme of the titular wiener-dog.
Of the four tales, only Danny DeVito’s Professor Schmerz ignites the script and leaves any sense of desire to expand on his story. This doesn’t mean the segment is too short – its length is spot on – it’s just that the character was interesting enough to warrant a follow-up story. Solondz, a film school lecturer himself, clearly drew on real life experiences to portray a wholly negative view of that world. There are several meaty laughs along the way (the clueless interviewee that failed to name a single film despite his enthusiasm sticks out), and the pay-off on the punchline is well worth investing in this captivating tale.
Sadly, the same cannot be said of the remaining three segments. Whilst there are moments in each that redeem them – a heartwarming brotherly chat, a wonderful moment of freedom with a pillow fight, a truly shocking hit and run accident – they are few and far between. The pairing of the painfully irritating Greta Gerwig and the uninspiring Kieran Culkin was inevitably enough to derail any movie just as it needed to get going.
It’s almost as if Solondz was deliberately trying to antagonise his audience, setting their expectations only to pull the rug out from underneath them. Even the layout of the stories does this, providing a minimal thread from segment one to segment two, only to punctuate the second with a bizarre intermission and start the third with an entirely unrelated tale.
Solondz is considered by many as one of the great modern social commentary filmmakers. On the evidence here, that’s not the case. Better examples of his work are out there.
Haiku film review #035 – Mars Attacks!
Sci-fi parody
Based on 60s trading cards
About Martian war
Haiku film review #024 – Beetlejuice
People don’t believe
That this afterlife asshole
Was Michael Keaton
Film review – Kollektivet / The Commune (Thomas Vinterberg, 2016)
Danish director Thomas Vinterberg returns with his latest film Kollektivet, known as ‘The Commune’ in English-speaking countries. Set in 1970s Copenhagen, it revolves around architecture professor Erik (Ulrich Thomsen) and his wife Anna (Trine Dyrholm), who have inherited Erik’s gigantic childhood family home. The building has prohibitively high living costs and the pair fear it would feel empty, so Anna suggests inviting some friends and acquaintances to share the space (and costs) with them. And so they end up with a total of ten people in the house, turning it into the titular commune.
Inevitably, the unusual way of living takes its toll on all those involved, be it their shy daughter Freja (Martha Hansen) sneaking out to see her new boyfriend, emotionally unstable Allon (Fares Fares), or Ditte (Anne Gry Henningsen) and Steffen (Magnus Millang) who have a son with an increasingly threatening heart condition. Every time these characters hit a low, the other people are there to ensure spirits don’t stay too low for too long.
Where the story avoids feeling slightly convenient, it is instead overly contrived. The setup of the commune concept is abrupt and simply has to be accepted by the viewers to avoid a complete disappointment. It never felt credible to me that Erik would have not only accepted the strangers into his home but also sign the ownership away to them. This could have been resolved by indicating that they were financially sound and using another means to justify their actions, but money is given as the primary purpose of bringing more people in.
Of the ten lead characters, at least five seem to be shallow to the point of superfluity. It felt to me that having ten people in close proximity would have been the perfect platform for friction that never truly surfaced. Perhaps Vinterberg, who based the story on his real-life experiences, was too rooted in sticking to reality to throw in something to spice the plot up. Or perhaps two hours isn’t enough time to successfully explore so many characters.
The real engine of the story is Anna, portrayed brilliantly by Dyrholm. When Erik starts having an affair with one of his students, we are taken on an emotional journey with Anna that serves as the driving force of the final third of the film. Her only support network is through the people in the commune, but being there means she has to live alongside her husband’s new lover. It is an uneasy watch, at times heartbreaking, as Dyrholm is allowed to flex her acting muscles with a powerhouse of a performance. The heartbreaking moment when her daughter takes matters into her own hands is as powerful as anything I’ve seen at the cinema this year.
It is a film fundamentally about family and community spirit and how effective that can be despite an unconventional setup. Vinterberg isn’t afraid of allowing the story to take bold turns, even if it doesn’t setup the happy ending many cinema-goers would hope for.
Matching up a strong storyline with a handful of top-level performances is always a recipe for success. A flawed but thoroughly gratifying film.
Cinema, etc. 