Review: The Revenant (UK Cert 15)

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's follow-up to the Oscar-winning Birdman puts him squarely back into awards territory with Western thriller drama The Revenant.

It's 1820s America. Frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his half-Native American son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) are working on a fur trapping expedition under the command of Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson). When Glass is savagely mauled by a bear, Henry asks for two men to stay behind to tend to him. John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and Jim Bridger (Will Poulter) stay with him, but Fitzgerald betrays them, killing Hawk and burying the severely injured Glass alive. Glass hauls himself out of the shallow grave and sets on a trek to find the man who betrayed him and killed his son.

The film is 'inspired by true events' and 'based in part' on a book by Michael Punke- the 'in part' bit no doubt being that a) there once lived a fur trapper called Hugh Glass, b) Glass did get mauled by a bear and was left for dead and c) Glass then went to find the men who left him for dead. Everything else- the son, the revenge plot- seems to be completely fabricated. For information on the historical accuracy (or otherwise), this is a good article to start with.

I'll be honest, when I saw the first trailer, I was kinda underwhelmed and thought 'looks alright-ish, might give it a punt if there's nothing else on'. And then the awards praise started coming which sealed the deal. So I sat through it. Whilst I thought it was better than The Hateful Eight (which isn't saying much), it shares a lot of the same problems. Lots of shots that take too long. Script issues. A preponderence of overindulgent extraneous bilge that detracts from what is, at heart, a strong and intriguing narrative which a damn good edit could bring to the fore.

A lot of column inches has been devoted to the relentless masculinity and brutality of the film, being severally described as 'gut-churningly brutal' and 'meaningless pain porn', which led one American critic to ham-fistedly and narrow-mindedly suggest that this was not a film for the ladies. Is it brutal? Yes, in places, but- in my opinion- not relentlessly so (this is no Saw or Hostel). There are several main 'action' sequences- the opening attack, the bear attack, the final fight- which are apt to induce winces as flesh is shredded, fingers are lopped off and skulls are caved in. The bear attack is not massively prolonged but is tough to watch (even though you can tell the bear is CGI). 

There's a lot of metaphor about the strength of trees and breath ('while you breathe, you fight') which is fine but Inarritu overeggs it with constant shots of both- DiCaprio's breath even misting the camera lens at a few points just in case you really haven't got it- and there are constant references back to both. It's heavy-handed and unnecessary. Give your audience some credit. And, whilst we're on the subject of unnecessary, the final shot of DiCaprio giving a thousand-yard stare right into the camera? Give me a break!

Much of the awards hype has been focusing on DiCaprio's performance and the fact that he's likely to finally win his Oscar; he's got the Golden Globe and Critics' Choice awards already. His performance as Glass is decent enough, hardly groundbreaking or revolutionary though. In my opinion, he's given better performances (and even been nominated for an Oscar for those performances; Howard Hughes in The Aviator, for instance). Being completely honest, of the Best Actor nominated performances I've seen so far this year, I was more impressed with the performances of Michael Fassbender and Eddie Redmayne than DiCaprio's. 

I think my main issue is less to do with his performance- which, as I said, is decent- and more to do with the fact that there isn't much of a character to start with (a direct fault of the script). Glass is a good trapper; he loves his son and loved his wife. That's it. There's not much to get behind there. There's also only so much crawling and grunting he can do before it really starts to test your patience. You also have the issue that, no matter what peril Glass is placed in on his trek for vengeance, you know he's not actually in any real danger because the final pay-off has to be a confrontation between Glass and Fitzgerald. So you can have him fall over a waterfall, have to hide from rampaging Native Americans or chuck him off a cliff and have him shelter in the gutted out remains of a horse, he's always going to survive (despite severe and almost life-ending injuries from the bear attack). 

Tom Hardy is Fitzgerald, the primary human antagonist, but confuses wide eyes and a mangled and wandering Texas accent for menace. Plus, he's written so paper thinly as an out-and-out bad guy from the very get-go that there's no nuance, no shade. He's a racist, self-centred bully. You're just waiting for him to strike. Plus he gets to deliver the most trite and platitudinous message at the end: revenge won't bring your son back. Well, no shit, Sherlock. Once again, the script lets the actors down. 

So, what's good? Well, once again, Emmanuel Lubezski's sublime cinematography serves the grandeur of the great outdoors to good effect. The supporting performances by Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter are strong, both good men stuck in a bad situation. The opening battle- where the trapper party is attacked by a band of maurauding Native Americans- is slickly handled and well choreographed. 

A script is a blueprint and without a strong blueprint, the house is not fit to stand. Despite some strong performances and arresting visuals, the fundamentally flawed script (lacking in any kind of nuanced characterisation) renders this bland and the overextended, overindulgent run time renders it boring. Despite this, I'm sure that it will be lauded with awards (and, in all seriousness, it should win the Oscar for Best Cinematography) and DiCaprio will almost certainly get his Oscar, thus rendering an entire raft of Internet memes completely obsolete. 

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Tez

Review: Ex Machina (UK Cert: 15)

There’s a chance that Ex Machina could have passed me by – another science fiction film about artificial intelligence. What made me near enough hurl myself into the cinema seat was when I saw the film’s poster, which said, “Written and directed by Alex Garland.” If you’ve never heard of Garland, he’s an author and screenwriter, responsible for – in my opinion – one of the best films to ever come out of the UK, 28 Days Later, as well as writing screenplays for Sunshine, Never Let Me Go, and Dredd. To say Garland is talented is like saying the Arctic is a bit nippy.

The very best science fiction should make you think; not just about your life, but what it means to be alive. That’s not a rule written in stone, but it’s how I separate decent, watchable sci-fi from classic science fiction. Garland’s directorial debut falls into the latter.

Ex Machina will get you thinking, but its complexity has a sting in its tail. Oscar Isaac’s Nathan creates Ava’s (Alicia Vikander) mind, her thoughts, her interactions using popular results from Internet search engines, as well as hacking into the cameras and microphones of every phone on the planet. There are warning signs going off right there! When security agencies such as GCHQ are making the headlines, tracking our Google searches and social media interaction, you have to wonder how much of a personal profile are they building of you when you go online? Also, is a person ever really themselves when they talk down the phone to someone or have a conversation via Skype? This is only a couple of the many questions that Garland fires at you during Ex Machina’s hundred-odd minutes.

Garland’s scriptwriting tends to be claustrophobic, with only a small cast, and his latest work does not buck this trend. You have three characters here: Isaac’s egotistical, playing God, computer genius; Domhnall Gleeson’s shy, careful not to offend, gentle coder, Caleb; and Vikander’s machine, unnervingly swapping from compassionate to aloof with no warning, suggesting there is much more going on behind those eyes. For most of Ex Machina, you have mind games and paranoia going on between the three of them, wondering what the other person knows, all keeping closely guarded secrets. From the first time you meet Nathan you know he’s playing a game with Caleb, you’re just trying to work out what he’s up to. Ava, for the most part, is caring and innocent, a damsel needed rescuing from a glass box instead of a tower, until she turns the tables on Caleb, interrogating him, firing question after question like a computer might do in an online exam. You quickly realise Ava is not as childlike as she seems. Caught in the middle of it all is Gleeson’s Caleb. He’s attracted to Ava the second he meets her – Double Negative’s CGI is subtle and gorgeous to look at, Vikander’s torso a collection of tangled gold wiring encased in gel, her brain visible from the back of her head, giving a gentle blue glow, while Vikander herself is striking in an angelic, otherworldly sense – refusing to listen to Nathan’s warnings that Ava has the ability to flirt and seduce, instead trying to help her escape when she tells him Nathan is not to be trusted.

While Ex Machina is playing the three characters off against each other, it is tense, uncomfortable and wickedly clever. It’s not spoiling anything by saying that the last twenty minutes is standard monster-on-the-loose science fiction (the trailer gives this away) which, while entertaining, is nowhere near as satisfying. Alex Garland doesn’t ruin things, you just wish the whole film was never-saw-that-coming inventive and constantly had you thinking. This is a tiny flaw that can easily be forgiven. Ex Machina is old-school science fiction in the vein of Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov’s novels; it’s seductive, sinister, and thought-provoking, as well as being surprisingly feminist. Plus, any film that can throw in some spontaneous disco dancing to Oliver Cheatham’s Get Down Saturday Night gets huge thumbs up from me.

5 out of 5

Matt

Review: Unbroken (UK Cert 15)

Louis Zamperini, who passed away in July at the age of 97, had an incredible life. From tearaway child to track star, he competed in the 1936 Olympics before serving his country in the Second World War. He was downed at sea, surviving over 45 days in an inflatable dinghy, before being captured by the Japanese and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp. He survived that ordeal and returned to America, becoming involved with Billy Graham and becoming a man of God. His story is truly inspiring. 

Perhaps a documentary about the man and his life would better serve his story than this muddled, messy, middle-of-the-road, by-the-numbers biopic. Unbroken has an over-reliance on trite movie cliches, which dilute the base story and turn it into a bunch of contrived vignettes instead of a gripping tale of survival and forgiveness.

Angelina Jolie's direction is workmanlike, solid but nothing special or spectacular. Some of the make-up and visual effects when Louis is adrift at sea look amateurish and cheap which undercuts the tension. That said, Roger Deakins' cinematography is- as usual- excellent.

As the adult Louis, Jack O'Connell ('71, Starred Up) makes a good fist of it. You empathise with Louis as he goes from one disaster to another and O'Connell's symapthetic portrayal is probably the best thing in the film. Other actors, such as Domhnall Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund, Jai Courtney and Finn Wittrock, are wasted; good actors in flimsily-written roles. The performance by Takamasa Ishihara as Mutsuhiro Watanabe, Zamperini's chief tormentor in the camps, lurches from trying-to-be-sinister-but-just-coming-off-as-creepy and wide-eyed foaming lunatic with very little in between. Frankly, it doesn't make for interesting viewing. 

My major bugbear with the film is the script. Joel and Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson have adapted Laura Hillenbrand's memoir but have comprehensively botched it. It's badly structured, jumping around to flashbacks at odd moments, rather than following the linear story of Zamperini's life. It also has the rare quality of turning what was no doubt stirring advice- 'if you can take it, you can make it' and 'One moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory'- into leaden platitudes which is a monumental insult. There's also a massive infodump at the end of the film, detailing Zamperini's life once he returned. Whilst it's edifying to read, the details provide an intriguing story which we're just told rather than shown. 

They say that life is often stranger than fiction and that you couldn't write what happens in some people's lives as nobody would believe it. This is very much true of Zamperini's life. His is an incredible story but Unbroken really doesn't do it justice. Read Hillenbrand's book instead. 

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Tez

Review: Calvary (UK Cert 15)

Brendan Gleeson is one of the most versatile character actors working in film at the moment. From Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potter films and other big budget blockbusters like Mission: Impossible II and Troy, to smaller films like In Bruges and Perrier's Bounty, he can play hero or villain with the same commitment and intensity. His last collaboration with writer-director John Michael McDonagh was The Guard (2011) where he played a crass, drink- and drug-addled police officer. Now, in Calvary, Gleeson plays a County Sligo parish priest facing a terrible situation.

Whilst hearing confession, Father James Lavelle talks to a parishioner about the horrific sexual abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of a Catholic priest. The perpetrator is long dead and cannot be brought to justice for his crimes. So, the parishioner gives Lavelle a week to get his affairs in order... and then Lavelle will die. Not because he is corrupt or bad, but because he is decent. He will die for the sins of others. 

This might sound like a wholly bleak and depressing watch and it's not a feel-good  film by any stretch of the imagination, but there's a rather pleasing streak of black humour that lightens things and the whole thing is led from the front by one of Gleeson's finest performances.

Lavelle is a fundamentally good man, a man of staunch faith even in the face of the darkness surrounding him. But he's not a saint or a martyr. There are a few rough edges: he has previously had a drinking problem and he's been a distant father to his daughter (conceived before he joined the priesthood). These aspects of the character are explored subtly- when pushed to the very limit by the killer's actions, Lavelle loses himself in drink- and there's a real chemistry between Gleeson and Kelly Reilly (who plays his daughter Fiona). Their scenes together are touching and well-performed, with years of unsaid things coming to the fore.

Other notable performances come from Aidan Gillen as an athiest doctor, full of snark and sarcasm; Chris O'Dowd is good as the local butcher, who is suspected of knocking his adulterous wife about, but seems very happy that his wife has a distraction, whilst Dylan Moran is on form as a dissolute banker having a crisis of conscience. There's a lovely comic turn by Killian Scott as Milo, a thoroughly strange young man, whilst there's a moving performance by Marie-Josee Croze as a young French woman who Lavelle meets when delivering the last rites to her partner. 

The film is not exactly a whodunit (or, more accurately, a who-will-do-it): in a conversation with his superior, Lavelle states that he knows who it is as he recognised the voice (although this wasn't obvious to me). It's more of a character study as Lavelle negotiates his relationships with his parishioners. There's a curiously stagey and knowing quality to the script which is a little jarring at times (things like Lavelle and his daughter talking about 'third-act revelations' and the doctor stating that he 'gets some of the best lines') and there's an unnecessary diversion where Lavelle goes to visit a prisoner (although inthat scene, you do get to see Gleeson act opposite his son Domhnall). 

The nihilistic viewpoint won't be to everyone's taste and in places it's a hard watch but overall it's a gripping drama with some knockout performances that will stay with you once the film has ended.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Tez

Review: Frank (UK Cert: 15)

Whatever you’re expecting from Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank, chances are you’re completely wrong. The poster suggests it’s a quirky comedy along the lines of Being John Malkovich or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s not. Frank is about a band of misfit, eccentric musicians slowly imploding, the results being funny, uncomfortable and tragic to watch.

Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) is a keyboard player who is taken under the wing of Frank (Michael Fassbender), lead singer of experimental band, the Soronprfbs. Frank wears a Frank Sidebottom papier-mâché head, which he refuses to take off, while the rest of the band are all kinds of dysfunctional. What is supposed to be a weekend touring across Ireland ends up with Jon and the rest of the Soronprfbs shacked up in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere, not leaving until Frank’s masterpiece album has been recorded.

Abrahamson’s film is a smart depiction of bands and artists suffering from illusions of grandeur, the fine line between inventiveness and pretentiousness. The problem is that Jon Ronson (who toured with the late Chris Sievey’s comic creation, Frank Sidebottom) and Peter Straughan’s script is a mess, with jarring shifts in tone. There are plenty of bright ideas here, but when they’re mashed together into one ninety-minute film, these ideas don’t come across as well as they should.

Frank has some truly funny moments: Jon’s reaction as he watches Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Clara and Frank take one of his catchy melodies and turn it into something genuinely offensive to the ears; Jon fighting with Frank as he tries removing the man’s oversized head; best of the bunch, Frank trying to write what he calls a “likeable song”. The script also throws in brutally honest observations about suicide. Music has been a way for many artists to confront their demons, yet what happens when being in a band becomes stifling? The Soronprfbs have no audience; their fourteen hour days writing music is going nowhere and the band are struggling to cope. The only band member who seems fine with the way things are is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s theremin player, Clara. Despite her hostile, violent personality, she acts as a mother to Frank, feeling responsible for him. Clara knows Frank can’t cope with commercial success, hence why she goes out of her way to ensure no one hears the band’s music. As well as all this you have Domhnall Gleeson’s Jon, who has his own ideas as to which direction the band should be heading; one where he gets fame, fortune, and thousands of Twitter followers.

These are all strong ideas, the problem is you can have one scene where you’re snorting with laughter, followed by the next scene, which throws themes of suicide and mental illness full pelt at the viewer. Very often, Frank is awkward to sit through as you occasionally find yourself wondering just what the hell you’re watching.

What definitely works here is the acting. Fassbender is nothing short of incredible, spending the majority of the film with his face hidden. Wearing a papier-mâché head and coming up with all sorts of zany ideas to create music, it would be all too tempting to portray Frank as larger-than-life, but Fassbender gives a gentle, subtle performance, making you care about a man who struggles to convey what is going on inside his real, flesh and blood head. Domhall Gleeson is, once again, brilliant. He’s a great character actor, whether it’s child-like and sinister (the Black Mirror episode, Be Right Back) or clumsy and socially awkward (About Time). Here Gleeson has a naïve charm about him as Jon, while also being far from whiter-than-white. He manipulates Frank into helping him on the road to success, getting the band a gig at the South by Southwest festival. It’s only when the inevitable damage has been done that Jon ends up feeling guilty, trying his best to fix things. Maggie Gyllenhaal gets the balance between being venom-spittingly anti-social, but hiding a tender, vulnerable side absolutely spot on. She’s not over-the-top, as several reviews have suggested, she is wholly believable whenever she is onscreen (the funny as hell sex scene in a hot tub where, during her ferocious, animal-like rutting Gyllenhaal very nearly drowns Gleeson, is another priceless moment).

The best film I’ve seen centred around the music industry is Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, a bonkers mix of irreverent comedy and Icarus fall from grace drama. Whether it’s down to the genius of Frank Cottrell Boyce’s script, Michael Winterbottom’s direction, or sheer blind luck, the pace and tone goes all over the place, yet the film absolutely, one-hundred-percent works. Sadly the same can’t be said for Frank. Lenny Abrahamson deserves praise for being so straight-talking about mental illness – it’s touching, heart-breaking stuff at times – but the whole thing doesn’t sit well. Abrahamson expects us to laugh at the Soronprfbs’ barmy behaviour, then punch us in the gut with powerful insights into mental illness, and then follows this up with even more offbeat humour. There’s no reason why a film with this structure can’t work, but it feels like Abrahamson and screenwriters Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan decided to throw everything at the wall and if it doesn’t stick, it doesn’t matter.

Frank has some well thought-out, eye-openingly original laughs, whilst also making you well up because of how honest it is. You get the sense that Abrahamson wants people to be comfortable talking about mental illness, that it’s not something we should be shy or coy about; occasionally we should even laugh about it. The problem is that the way Abrahamson has translated this onscreen, most of the time, doesn’t work. Frank deserves points for being one-of-a-kind, but it’s not the eccentric masterpiece that the film’s poster suggests.

3 out of 5

Matt

Review: About Time (UK cert 12A)

What would you do if you could time travel? Win the lottery? Sleep with some ridiculously good looking person from the history books? In Richard Curtis’s latest, About Time, he focuses on the smaller, but no less important things: re-living a favourite day all over again, or telling someone you love them when you should have said it first time round.

Richard Curtis is a writer and filmmaker who has had a lot of stick thrown his way over the years. “His work is sickly sweet, lovey-dovey, and a pop song gets played every five minutes!” Personally, while I don’t worship at the altar of Working Title films, even his downright average work has the odd well-timed laugh and funny-because-it’s-true observation.

About Time is one of Curtis’s best films, maybe even his best, and another lesson for Hollywood on how comedies today should be done.

One of the many reasons the film works so well is down to its cast. In the two series of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, the stand-out episode for me is Be Right Back, primarily because of Domhnall Gleeson’s childlike and chilling performance. In About Time, Gleeson is given so much to do, and he does everything absolutely right; he makes comic expressions and the delivery of Curtis’s Stephen Hawking-smart script look barely-lift-a-finger easy.

Rachel McAdams is the Andie MacDowell/Julia Roberts role, but she has so much more to do than previous Curtis female leads. She’s quirky, but believable; sweet, but not annoying. Like Gleeson, she also has her fair share of one-liners and moments of embarrassing physical comedy, which she handles with ease. McAdams is an underrated actress, having sleepwalked through far too many average rom-coms and weepies in her career. In About Time she proves that, when given a script that allows her to do something other than smile and look pretty, she deserves to be near the top of the list for leading actresses.

Special mention has to go to Bill Nighy. There are films where you can’t imagine anyone else playing a certain role, and in About Time, the film would definitely not have worked if someone other than Nighy played Gleeson’s father. Here, Nighy is given free reign; he is quietly eccentric, delivering his occasionally barking dialogue in an understated way, with a glint in his eye that Nighy does so well.  Here he is everyone’s favourite memory of a father, grandfather or uncle. Nighy and Gleeson provide the majority of the film’s funniest and upsetting moments. The scene where Nighy explains to Gleeson that he can time travel is a faultless mix of uncomfortable silence and odd looks. Later, when Gleeson realises, due to time travel jiggery pokery, that he can no longer see his father is, honest to God, heart-breaking.

One final mention acting-wise has to go to Rev’s Tom Hollander as Gleeson’s miserable as sin uncle with an acid tongued answer to everything. He may not appear in the film much, but there are plenty of belly laughs when he does.

All the finest acting in the world isn’t much use if the script doesn’t even make decent toilet paper. The problem I have with Love, Actually is that Curtis turned the sweetness and lovey-dovey shtick all the way up to eleven. It was the film equivalent of a Starbucks Frappuccino; so sugary sweet it will rot your teeth. All the dialogue and touching moments drowned in the sickliness of it all.

About Time’s sickly-sweet scenes are few and far between. The film isn’t about action packed time travel adventures in a police phone box or a DeLorean, and it avoids the big questions around time travel, but what it does is highlight the more human things we would do if we were able to travel back in time: spend more time with our children, get to know our loved ones better, and have the most amazing sex possible.

Richard Curtis can’t completely avoid the sunshine candyfloss sweetness. A scene involving Gleeson and McAdams running around the Underground, all touchy feely and big wide smiles, could have been cut. Also, where the couple’s wedding reception in a marquee gets ruined due to the rubbish British weather, but they’re not bothered as they stare into each other’s eyes, felt more like an advert for some chocolates.

This is a minor niggle. About Time is another British comedy great. Expect to be thinking a lot during its two hours; not how you would change the world or use and abuse your time travelling powers, but how would you use your gift on the people that really matter to you. Make sure you bring a hanky or some tissues along, not only will you be laughing, but you’ll be pretending your hay fever’s playing up again.

4 out of 5 stars

Matt