Review: Doctor Strange (UK Cert 12A)

So after giving us Norse gods, cryogenically frozen super-soldiers, talking raccoons, and a man who can communicate with ants, the Marvel Cinematic Universe now add magic and mysticism to the mix with Doctor Strange.

Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a brilliant but arrogant neurosurgeon whose life is irrevocably changed when a car accident ruins his hands. Determined to heal, he tracks down a man (Benjamin Bratt) who was able to walk again after being paralysed. The man tells Strange of a place- Kamar-Taj - where, through study of magic, he was able to walk again. Initially dismissing this as nonsense, Strange eventually travels to Kathmandu in search of Kamar-Taj... and finds it. Under the tutelage of The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), Strange discovers a whole new plane of existence... but also faces the forces of darkness who threaten to destroy it.

I was intrigued that- just as they did with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians Of The Galaxy- Marvel would follow Captain America: Civil War by introducing a completely new character into the fold. However, this has proven to be a canny move (especially given the wide-reaching ramifications of Civil War on the MCU).

Performances are really strong: Cumberbatch is brilliant as the haughty Strange, coming to terms with a new reality and grudgingly coming to realise that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in his philosophy. He also gets some wonderfully snarky one-liners, giving Robert Downey Jr a run for his money. Chiwetel Ejiofor gives a dignified, stoic performance as Mordo, another of The Ancient One's disciples who helps Strange in his training. Rachel McAdams provides heart as Dr. Christine Palmer, Strange's colleague and ex-lover who stands by him after his accident- and provides support in more ways than one. Mads Mikkelsen provides a suitable amount of menacing zealotry as the villainous Kaecillius.

There was some dissent amongst commentators at the casting of Tilda Swinton- a white British woman- as The Ancient One (typically an old Tibetan man), with accusations of whitewashing being levelled at the production. Despite this, Swinton's performance is one of the high points. She's powerful, endlessly watchable and surprisingly funny. She eschews any stereotypes of the 'wise old mentor' whilst still fulfilling that role. Similarly, there was initially some criticism when it was announced that the character of Wong- who has been Strange's tea-making manservant- was going to be included in the film. However, the role has been revamped- he is now a fighter and the librarian of Kamar-Taj- and is played wonderfully by the deadpan Benedict Wong.

There are some absolutely mind-blowing visual effects which are just a delight for the eyes and the mind. Especially good are the Inception-style bending of reality, making buildings turn in on themselves in a stylishly Escher-like kaleidoscope. There's also a brilliant fight sequence- done in reverse as scaffolding reassembles itself and bits of building reattach- when Strange defends the Hong Kong sanctum from attack. The effects of the astral plane and projection are great and there's some amazing work done on Strange's Cloak Of Levitation (almost a character in its own right) which provides some of the film's funniest moments. I'd hazard to say this might actually be worth seeing in 3D.

As usual with Marvel films, stay til the very end- there's a mid-credits scene which gives a tantalising set-up for a future Marvel movie and an end-credits scenes which promises some interesting times ahead for the good Doctor.

I've enjoyed all of the Marvel movies to a greater or lesser degree. With Doctor Strange, I think I've found my new favourite. Definitely worth two hours of your time.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Tez

Review: Hail, Caesar! (UK Cert 12A)

Twenty-five years after Barton Fink, the Coen Brothers return to the world of the movies for their latest film Hail, Caesar!

Hollywood in the 1950s. Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is a fixer for Capitol Pictures studios, keeping any scandalous stories about the stars out of the press. However, when Baird Whitlock (George Clooney)- star of Capitol's latest prestige picture Hail, Caesar! A Tale Of The Christ- is kidnapped, Mannix must try and get the actor back before the press find out. 

There are a lot of competing storylines throughout the film- as well as trying to find a kidnapped star, Mannix has to deal with an unmarried pregnant ingenue (Scarlett Johannson), an actor best known for Western pictures suddenly placed in a period drama (Alden Ehrenreich) as well as fielding off twin gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker (Tilda Swinton) whilst on the hunt for Whitlock. He also has to deal with a job offer from aerospace company Lockheed which would give stability but take him away from the movie business. 

Because there's so much going on, several of the roles amount to little more than glorified cameos, with Jonah Hill and frequent Coen collaborator Frances McDormand particularly shortchanged. That said, performances are generally solid across the board, with a strong and stoic performance by Brolin in the lead. Mannix is a tough guy, determined to keep his stars in line and not afraid to let them know their place and their responsibilities, but there's more to him than that and Brolin gives an affable and very real performance. Interestingly, Mannix was a real-life person, who worked as a fixer for MGM. This is a heavily fictionalised version of his life and career.

Clooney is great as Whitlock, a bit of a lunkheaded star who starts to come round to his kidnappers' way of thinking. Ehrenreich is incredibly likeable as young Western star Hobie, struggling with his new role in a period drama and who becomes involved in the kidnapping plot. Johannson is wonderfully spiky as the pregnant ingenue, whilst Swinton gives brilliantly broad performances as the rival gossip columnists. I particularly liked Ralph Fiennes as the effete director of the period drama and Michael Gambon who adds an air of arch knowingness as an omniscient narrator. 

There are some real standout sequences - the aquatic ballet sequence where Johansson channels Esther Williams is particularly well done, as is a Gene Kelly style dance routine featuring Channing Tatum in a sailor outfit. One of the funniest sections comes when Mannix chairs a meeting with a rabbi, a Catholic priest, a Protestant priest and an Eastern Orthodox patrician over the representation of Christ in the Hail, Caesar! script. 

Hail, Caesar! is certainly more coherent than some other Coen Brothers movies, and whilst it is a lot of fun, it ultimately feels quite insubstantial.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tez

Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel (UK Cert: 15)

Having seven feature films to his name, director Wes Anderson is seen by some as a filmmaking God, a modern day auteur. You watch one of his films and you instantly know it’s Anderson behind the camera. There are others who would say that his films are a load of hot air, that there is very little substance underneath the inventive visuals and offbeat humour. Me, I’m somewhere in the middle. If you had asked me after seeing The Darjeeling Limited, I would have said that, while the film was a brilliantly eccentric watch, everything about it, the humour, the visuals, the shifts in tone, were nowhere near in the same league as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Then Fantastic Mr. Fox came along; not just, for me, Anderson’s best film, but the best family film and easily one of the best films of this century (that’s in no way an exaggeration). Since then, Anderson has been on top form, with 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom raising the bar both in production design, performances (Bruce Willis and Frances McDormand, especially) and script writing (the film swerves wildly between zany comedy and drama, and really shouldn’t work, but somehow does).

If you thought Anderson’s previous films were crammed with never before seen cinematography and gags, then his latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, sees the director firing on all cylinders. So many frames feel straight out of a Stanley Kubrick film, but if Kubrick concentrated on meticulous, striking images, less concerned about the beating hearts of his characters, then Anderson gets the balance just right.

When we first see the hotel of the title, during the sixties, it has been forgotten, falling apart. Set in the fictional Zubrowska, both fascism and communism have literally changed the country’s landscape, shown in how the hotel is almost empty, the decor pale and dull. This all changes when Mr Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) narrates how the hotel wound up this way. Going back to the thirties, the camera deliberately takes its time as it glides across production designer Adam Stockhausen’s extravagant interiors, filled with eye-catching colours (the colour pink almost everywhere); everything from the doors, the windows, the staff uniforms, even the lifts, are lavishly made.

There is no consistent visual style to The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson picking and choosing from various genres. Rooftops and landscapes that resemble the Georges Méliès 1902 short, A Trip to the Moon; Willem Dafoe chasing Jeff Goldblum through the dark corridors of an art gallery is a scene straight out of a film noir; a prison escape, tunneling underground and tip-toeing around the guards as they sleep, is a nod and a wink to every jailbreak film ever made.

The Grand Budapest Hotel’s gorgeous-looking cinematography is one reason to see the film, the performances throughout are just as attention grabbing. Ralph Fiennes has been consistently good in everything he has appeared in, yet he has not had a part that has given him much to do since Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges. Here, as the equally debonair and foul-mouthed Monsieur Gustave, Fiennes steals the show. You forget how gifted Fiennes is, his comic timing up there with the best comedy actors. One minute he is charming, a gentleman, the next he delivers a deadpan jibe, turning the air blue with every other word.

Fiennes and newcomer Tony Revolori make a fantastic double-act, Revolori playing the hotel’s newest lobby boy, Zero, who Gustave takes under his wing. While Fiennes clowns around, Revolori is straight-faced, unblinking, his words slow and monotone. Revolori is the Ernie Wise to Fiennes’s Eric Morecambe.

Just as in Anderson’s previous films, half the fun of The Grand Budapest Hotel is spotting another cameo from one of the director’s regulars. Tilda Swinton, as Gustave’s aging lover, Madame D., constantly makes you laugh in her brief scenes, hidden under a heap of make-up. Willem Dafoe, who can play villains on autopilot, is clearly having a hell of a lot of fun as Adrien Brody’s henchman.

The one thing that stops The Grand Budapest Hotel being Anderson’s best film is the last ten-to-fifteen minutes. We know things are going to end badly; we still don’t know how the hotel ended up being a ruin. Yet Anderson decides to rush his finale, wrap things up far too quickly. The whole film whizzes by at a hurtling pace, but the closing minutes oddly go up a gear. This could have been the director’s most thoughtful film: Europe’s twentieth century history done Wes Anderson-style. While the ending doesn’t exactly bring the train off the tracks, you get the sense that there should have been more of an impact here. Sadly it is far too heavy handed, nothing like the subtlety of Moonrise Kingdom.

This isn’t to say that The Grand Budapest Hotel is a disappointment, it’s anything but. It could have been Anderson’s very best, instead of being one of his best. Those who have never understood Anderson, who would rather see the latest mainstream Hollywood comedy, won’t be convinced by his newest offering. Yet for those who the mention of Rushmore or Fantastic Mr. Fox brings a smile to their face, then The Grand Budapest Hotel is Anderson at the height of his filmmaking powers.

4 out of 5

Matt

Review: Only Lovers Left Alive (Cert: 15)

For almost as long as film has been around, vampires have appeared onscreen in all sorts of guises, and treated with varying levels of respect. There have been evil bloodsucking bastard vampires (TV movie Salem’s Lot, Near Dark), pitied, misunderstood vampires (Let The Right One In, Interview With The Vampire), comedy vampires (Fright Night, From Dusk Till Dawn), vampires that aren’t really vampires (Martin), sexy, erotic vampires (all of Hammer’s Dracula films), and glossy haired, just walked out of a L’Oreal advert, vampires (every single Twilight film). It feels like you can’t go more than a couple of years without another undead bloodsucker gracing the big screen and in 2014 you have Jim Jarmusch’s latest offering, Only Lovers Left Alive.

Jarmusch is one of a small number of directors who only produces a film every three-or-four years, each one vastly different from the last. Whatever you think of Jarmusch and his films (Broken Flowers and Ghost Dog being his most well-known), you have to admire the man for having total creative control over his films. Pace be damned, Jarmusch has an A-list actor and he’s not afraid to keep the camera rolling and get every last drop of acting gold out of them!

Only Lovers Left Alive, as you might expect from Jarmusch, is no straightforward buckets of blood vampire film. You could barely place it in the horror genre. At no point are any necks chomped on and there is very little blood to be seen. If you’re expecting 30 Days of Night, you might want to go see that nice person at the till and get your money back. The best way to describe Only Lovers Left Alive is that it’s a romance where its two leads just happen to be dead.

Tom Hiddleston (of Loki in Thor and Avengers fame) is Adam, a centuries old vampire who is tired of his immortal life. He calls humans “zombies,” disheartened by their short-sightedness and determination to ruin the world around them. Hiddleston gives a first-rate performance, much of the film’s humour down to his droll one-liners. Another actor could have made Adam come across as petulant, but Hiddleston makes his protagonist a likeable misery.

Tilda Swinton, as Adam’s wife, Eve, is the opposite of Adam. She is a motherly figure who sees the beauty of even the smallest, most trivial things. She views people as flawed, that along with their mistakes they are also capable of doing good. Over the course of the film’s two hours, Eve tries to restore Adam back to life, to help him become the man he used to be. Swinton, despite her Oscar win for Michael Clayton, is an underrated actress, rarely mentioned in the same breath as her peers. She is one of the very best actresses working today (see her in We Need To Talk About Kevin, for one of her standout performances) and once again gives everything and more to her role.

One of the many reasons to see Only Lovers Left Alive is for Hiddleston and Swinton’s husband and wife duo, both beautiful to look at in an ageless, undead sort-of-way, they hold your attention throughout.

Mia Wasikowska deserves a mention as Eve’s “sister”, Ava. If Adam and Eve are world weary souls, then Ava is a babyish teenager trapped in a woman’s body. She takes her powers for granted, doing whatever she wants and never thinking of the consequences; Adam and Eve’s peaceful lives thrown into upheaval when she visits them. Wasikowska is genuinely unnerving, portraying Ava as this sweet princess who could snap at any moment and do something senseless and cruel.

John Hurt turns up in only a couple of scenes, yet he is wonderful and heart-breaking to watch as none other than an undead Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe is an old man, his body not as everlasting as he thought, yet he is still the infamous scoundrel who courted so much controversy, occasionally giving Swinton a mischievous smile.

All of the best vampire films take the well-known rules and bend them. In Only Lovers Left Alive, not only do vampires need to worry about sunlight or a stake through the heart, they can be killed by infected blood. Here, if a vampire drinks the blood of a drug addict or someone with a terminal illness, this will also kill them. Hiddleston and Swinton can walk into someone’s home uninvited; however they see this as bad luck, in much the same way as breaking a mirror or the number thirteen.

While Only Lovers Left Alive is no horror film, it has an eerie atmosphere thanks to Yorick Le Saux’s cinematography. Le Saux takes Detroit’s run down streets, that would look ugly during the daytime, and makes them look strangely beautiful at night. Even Adam’s house (the closest the film has to a Castle Dracula location) with its crumbling walls, filled with wires and machinery from decades back, manages to look like something from one of Grimm’s fairy tales. Tangier, Eve’s home, is a fine-looking setting, with boats lining the riverside and a labyrinth of passage ways and cobbled streets.

The only criticism you could have with Only Lovers Left Alive is the pace. I did occasionally find myself thinking that a couple of scenes could have been trimmed down, possibly even cut altogether. The film could easily lose ten minutes from its running time without being ruined.

Jarmusch’s latest won’t be for everyone; there are those out there that will loathe it, that it’s a waste of two hours. This is not your typical vampire film. If you’re looking for something at a breakneck speed with gallons of blood, you’re better off dusting off your copy of Blade. Though if you like a vampire film that plays around with convention, is intelligent, and dotted with wry, black humour, then Only Lovers Left Alive could end up being one of your favourite films of 2014. It isn’t flawless like Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In (very few films are!), but is easily up there with the best of the sub-genre.

4 out of 5

Matt