by hutchwp

Film review – 刺客聶隱娘 / The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2016)

Set in 8th century China during the Tang Dynasty, the film revolves around assassin Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi) who has been ordered to murder a variety of government officials by her master Jiaxin (Fang-Yi Sheu). After taking mercy on those she has been ordered to kill, she is given a much greater task to take down Ti’an Jian (Chang Chen), her cousin to whom she was once betrothed and now a military governor in the Weibo district.

The story is, apparently, an essential tale in wuxia folklore, unique in that it featured a female heroine. It is clear why this is such an enduring tale in Chinese history, especially given its importance as an early example of women’s literature. In this sense it is perfect for a motion picture adaptation.

 

It would be a great success but for the director losing touch with the flow of the movie. In a recent Variety interview, director Hou Hsiao-hsien said “It’s not easy for people to grasp the film fully the first time around, but you can’t wait for the audience. I can’t help but make films the way I do.” I can’t subscribe to this kind of thinking. In my opinion, it is not outside a director’s job to challenge his or her audience, but this shouldn’t be at the deliberate expense of telling a succinct story.

At times, the film feels like an extended advertisement for the tourist board of the Hubei Province in which it was filmed. There are some truly beautiful shots in there that instantly transported me to thoughts of traditional Chinese paintings. It is a triumph of cinematography at its absolute best, courtesy of Mark Lee Ping Bin.

The way the camera lingers on some of the actors and actresses long after they’ve finished what they are saying is also striking and feels deliberately daring. For this reason it should be seen as a success, at least in terms of artistic beauty. 

However, the overarching feeling that the film itself didn’t really have much substance can’t be excused. It’s tricky. The source material is well-loved and recognisable and could hardly have been altered drastically, but it really needed it to achieve greatness. Most notably, the lead character Nie Yinniang, the eponymous assassin, doesn’t actually kill anyone. True, this is the whole point of the film and is central to the plot, but there’s something wholly unsatisfying about having a continuous string of disappointing battles where people get their clothes sliced a little or a couple of hairs trimmed, especially when each shot looks so stunning.

It’s almost a wonderful experience, but falls just short.

by hutchwp

Film review – Grimsby (Louis Letterier, 2016)

If you live outside the UK, it’s unlikely you have ever heard of Grimsby before. A middle-sized coastal town in East Lincolnshire, Grimsby was once famed for its fishing industry, though it is now in post-industrial decline. There are plenty of towns just like Grimsby dotted around the UK, though none of them have a huge blockbuster movie named after them. 

This tale involves two brothers.Sebastian (Mark Strong) is a top class secret agent who we get introduced to during an exilerating first-person opening scene. All action, no messing – a man set up as a lone wolf. In contrast, his older brother Nobby (Sacha Baren-Cohen) is living in a run-down area of Grimsby with his girlfriend Dawn (Rebel Wilson) and countless children whose names include Skeletor and Django Unchained. Fostered and split up at birth, it is true that they have lived entirely different lives. An incident at a charity event led by the suspicious Rhonda George (Penelope Cruz) brings them back together but also leads to a manhunt for Sebastian. The brothers must team up and go on the run to prove his innocence and save the world.

  
Critical response for this film has been mixed to negative, and I’d braced myself for the worst after an unrewarding time watching The Dictator. However, this was a unexpectedly rewarding experience.

The storyline is fairly generic but well executed, serving as a solid platform for some massively hilarious scenes involving the two leads. Strong makes for a surprisingly effective comedic straight man, when it would have been much easier to play the part for laughs.

Cohen yet again proves to have chameleonic abilities to perform as a character far removed from his real-life persona. Whilst the more disgusting scenes may be the most memorable (three spoiler-free words: poison, elephants, fireworks), the film does have some satirical messages it does well to sneak in. True, the climactic battle speech he delivers is a little too obvious, but elsewhere there’s a lot going on that shows it has more than just a tea-bagging gag to offer.

It is definitely going to feel dated due to the overuse of jokes relevant only to 2016, possibly only to the UK, but for now it’s worth a punt.

An unexpectedly good film with lots of laughs.

by hutchwp

Film review – Dad’s Army (Oliver Parker, 2016)

Dad’s Army is one of the best-regarded sitcoms to ever come out of Britain. A film would always have two almost certain outcomes: making a lot of money and not living up to the public’s fond memories of the original series. In this sense Oliver Parker’s 2016 effort doesn’t disappoint.

This film adaptation stars Toby Jones as Captain Mainwaring, the leader of a Home Guard [1] platoon the fictional Walmington-on-Sea in England during World War II. His platoon consists of Sergeant Wilson (Bill Nighy), Lance Corporal Jones (Tom Courtenay), Private Godferey (Michael Gambon), Private Pike (Blake Harrison), Private Walker (Daniel Mays) and Private Frazer (Bill Paterson). They are being visited by glamorous journalist Rose Winters (Catherine Zeta Jones), there to report on the Home Guard.

The authenticity of this film is, to the untrained eye, fantastic. The colour washes and costumes give it the feel that you genuinely are watching a Home Guard operation in 1944. There is a clear attention to detail that has gone into this and the film is much better for it.

The plot, generally, is enjoyable. It is pitched at the right level between the series and what is expected of a big-budget film. It puts the Home Guard into a potentially larger plot that is at the centre of the war efforts.

Where this film majorly falls down is the humour, or lack thereof. The writing was on the wall with the trailer, which felt a little flat. Unfortunately, most of the best material was featured in one or more of the trailers, and between these moments the humour was lightly sprinkled in a way that may bring a smile to the audience members’ faces but never succeeds in delivering a belly laugh. In this sense it has been a huge failure in comparison to the original series.

The actors do a wonderful job impersonating the original cast members, to scarily uncanny levels. This is perhaps the only time when all these stars will grace the screen together and it is a real letdown that the material they’ve been served is so underwhelming.

A massive disappointment.

[1] During World War II, those unable to serve on the front line provided a second line of defence on British home soil. Platoons were generally made up of those too old or too young to serve in battles, individuals with injuries or illnesses that prevented them from being on the front line and those with professional occupation that were exempt from joining the front line war effort. It was a significant operation, consisting of around 1.5m volunteers.

by hutchwp

Secret Cinema: 28 Days Later Preview

It’s back and it’s hungry for flesh!!

Secret Cinema have announced their next big event. It’s a good one! Read on for more details.

What is Secret Cinema?

Secret Cinema is a company that specialises in totally immersive cinema experiences. You spend an evening totally absorbed in surroundings typical of the film on which the night is based.

There are two types of event Secret Cinema organises. Both are highly similar but with subtle differences.

Secret Cinema: Tell No One (not this event)

The first is the kind they made their names doing – completely secret smaller events for films many would consider to be cult classics. Nobody knows the film until they show up, and from then on anything can happen. 

When they tackled The Shawshank Redemption, for example, people were snarled at by an angry police officer who informed them they were all convicts. He then walked them, single-file, through a busy shopping centre to their transport to a local high-security prison. It’s all good-spirited and great fun for those with an interest in surprises and adventure. The recent Tell No One event falls into this category (and is still going on so the name of the film won’t be revealed). 

Secret Cinema Presents (this event)

The second type tend to be larger in scale and the film is announced well in advance. This is the category last year’s Empire Strikes Back event falls into, along with the previous year’s Back to the Future. Both were excellently received and left people wanting more large-scale events.

The latter type is better for those unfamiliar with more obscure films who want to know that they’ll enjoy the night before they attend and pay for the tickets.

Either way, whatever they do the nights are always highly immersive experiences and well worth the money. They have carved out a massive area of the market that most people didn’t even think existed.

What’s the next event?

This next event in their calendar is Danny Boyle’s zombie survival horror 28 Days Later. It is a Secret Cinema Presents night, so the film is common knowledge. No surprises this time around!

What’s the film like?

28 Days Later revolutionised the popularity of zombie films as a genre. It was a shift in terms of the technology used. Boyle used Canon XL1 digital video cameras to allow the manoeuvrability to shoot the desolate London scenes, but they had a knock-on effect that gave the film a sort of CCTV-type feeling to it, like it was recovered footage. It starts with the lead character Jim (Cillian Murphy in his breakthrough role) waking up from a coma in a hospital with no knowledge of how he got there.

We learn what’s happening as he does, finding fellow survivors along the way and hoping to reach some kind of freedom. It captured the imagination of cinema-goers during its original release, instantly becoming a hit in both the UK and USA.

 

What can we expect?

It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that it is really just any excuse to do a zombie-themed event. Anyone who has experience of Secret Cinema will know that this is very unlikely.

The event will, inevitably, involve hoards of zombies. One way that the film kept us gripped is the constant use of impending terror. It was the first film to use running zombies, so expect these to be present at the event too. Better take your running shoes!

I imagine it will incorporate the military as a key element. In the film they weren’t necessarily to be trusted, and there’s a fantastic scene in a fortified mansion that could utilise the open-air quite well if that’s the path they choose to go down.

Whether or not we’ll be killing zombies or just avoiding them remains to be seen. If we are doing that, it will need to be reasonably safe or there could be some serious injuries. No head-shots people!

Clothing is always a key part of the events and advice on outfits will be sent out in advance. It’s possible that it will be one of the easiest Secret Cinema events to dress for. The film is set in the present day (or ten years ago at least) and presumably we won’t be asked to dress up as zombies. I’d imagine it will be a case of wearing anything for once rather than trying to get hold of any specific costumes. No desperate searches for tan and black scarves required this time! Perhaps a medical outfit will be required for some people.

It will be a great experience to witness a modern cult classic on a massive screen with an enthusiastic audience.

 

How do I buy tickets?

Tickets are on sale for the event right now and are selling fast. Head to the official webpage for more details.

by hutchwp

Film review – Hail, Caesar! (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2016)

Hail, Caesar!, the new film from the Coen Brothers, is a film heavy on nostalgia and authenticity but light on focus to moving along the central plot. It has so many fantastic elements that seeing the final product fall short is a huge disappointment.

The film tells the story of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), head of production at Capitol Pictures whose job involves firefighting the many problems created by the studio’s roster of stars who seem to have an uncanny ability to mix themselves up in controversy. The studio’s next big film will be Hail, Caesar!, a biblical epic in which Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) will star. However, when a prop wine goblet is spiked by an extra on the set, he is kidnapped by a group of communist scriptwriters called The Future and held to ransom for a then significant total of $100,000, putting pressure on Mannix at a time when he is considering a career change to join the aviation industry with the Lockheed Corporation.

  
It felt at times that the Coen Brothers were so hell bent on fitting in a plethora of big-star cameos that they didn’t care that each time they did so they completely derailed the focus of the story. Take, for example, Frances McDormant’s studio film editor CC Calhoun. Her hammed-up effort is a nice comedy turn introduced at a critical point of the film. She could have easily turned into a key character, but never reappeared and thus there didn’t really seem to be much point to her appearance.

A bigger offender comes in the form of a more significant subplot featuring pregnant star Dee-Anna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) and surety agent Joe Silverman (Jonah Hill). It’s a huge eater of time but in the end resolves itself with little input from Mannix at a time when he is deciding that he needs to stay in the film industry, presumably because he is so critical to it.

Similarly, Channing Tatum, who features as Burt Gurney, gets a great song and dance scene – a real highlight to the film – but is probably only in three scenes in total. The time spent with Johansson and Hill may have been better served with Tatum. Instead, none of the three characters really feel significant enough to elicit the response they could have achieved had more time been spent with them.

  
One character that does end up getting fully fleshed-out is the Western star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich). He is introduced as a big studio star that has got where he is by his ability to perform massive stunts rather than any of his acting qualities. There are some fun scenes with Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) as he tried to get the best out of his acting abilities or lack thereof. Near the end of the film there is some subtle symbolism involving him figuratively lassoing Baird Whitlock and taking him back to the studios from the communists, a nod to the cowboy as an upholder of traditional American values. Whether or not they needed to spend so long in the film emphasising his cowboy skills to set this up is another question, but at least this character takes us on a journey and proves to be critical to the resolution of the story.

At the heart of the story is Josh Brolin’s Mannix, a man who is essentially a fixer for the studio. It is an interesting character and, along with Clooney’s bumbling Whitlock, he carries the film. His climactic scene with Whitlock underlines why his decision was made – he sees the communist issues surrounding the film industry as a huge threat to America and something he can have a significant impact on from his position. He takes what he considers to be the harder option but in doing so gives his future life more worth. 

There is an underlying message about the wider issues facing Holllywood at the time this film is set (1951) and how easy it was for people like Whitlock to get involved with communist cells. The discussions on such topics is outside the intended remit of this review, though the recent film Trumbo is a good starting point.

Hail, Caesar! offers a lot to fans of the Coen Brothers, though it feels like a hugely missed opportunity due to failings of an over-complicated plot that could have been significantly trimmed to focus the story on the most relevant characters. Fun in parts but overall a disappointment.