Film Flare

84 - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey review

 

 

There were many things that made me dubious about this film. Firstly, the decision to split a modest novel over three films seemed silly. There was also a lot of focus on the 48 frames per second filming speed instead of the usual 24 fps which was supposed to give the film a 'cheap' appearance. The running time and the side by side comparison with the excellent Lord of the Rings films also meant that the reviews in general were mixed, not as impressive as people had hoped.

 

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was a great film which provided a lot of entertainment. I must admit to watching the film in 2D and the increased frame rate had no obvious impact on the film's look or feel. Certainly the sets, props and effects looked fantastic. Similar in tone and scope to The Fellowship of the Ring, the film certainly seems smaller than the epic scale battles of the last two LoTR films but everything looked fantastic.

The tone of the film is lighter than the LoTR films (because the stories had different tones too) so this is a much more light hearted film with the occasional song (not too many thankfully) and silly scene but overall there is still the hearty combat and fantasy violence you would expect from Middle Earth. Despite the difference in tone, the film remains emotionally powerful and filled with well drawn characters but lacks the immediate scenes of pure emotion such as the death of Boromir on LoTR: Fellowship. 

Certainly it is a joy seeing all the returning actors in their various roles, Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf always being watchable and Christopher Lee as Saruman the White is fantastic, as his character differs greatly from the LoTR films. Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett are always entertaining as elves and Andy Serkis remains as mesmerising as ever as Gollum. The new characters are equally as well cast: Martin Freeman has a helplessly endearing quality which really suits young Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves tend to blend into each other but certainly their leader, played by Richard Armitage, gives a performance which makes you believe in their plight. 

 

Now, the film is certainly long, there is no doubt about that. However, the film never felt like it was dragging, even with the extensive opening in the Shire before the party sets off on their quest. Well fleshed out backstories betray the film's desire to stretch the material as far as possible but at no point during watching the film was I bored. In fact, the scenes in the Shire are the charming and the adventure is gripping, all the various characters which have been fleshed out via back story have important and well placed roles in the film. 

 

All in all, the initial fears I had about the film were inflated by the mixed variety of the reviews but I am pleased to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the film and look forward to the next instalment.

 

Trailer:

 

 

 

83. Christmas

No Film Flare Diary today because it's Christmas eve and I'm busy wrapping etc etc etc.

 

"What is it mummy?"

 

Last week, however, I watched Seven Psychopaths (review here) and The Hobbit (review out later in the week).

 

Have a fun few days everyone!

 

 

82 - Seven Psychopaths review

 

 

Martin McDonagh's first feature length film In Bruges is a cult classic which mixes genuine emotion with great characters and pitch black humour. Seven Pyschopaths, McDonagh's second feature length film has many similarities to this and is as good as In Bruges.

 

First of all, whilst the film is called Seven Psychopaths, the main three the film focuses on are played by Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken. I'm going to mention each one individually in more detail as all three are fantastic.

 Colin Farrell. I've only really been impressed with his acting in Phone Booth and In Bruges and I can only assume that McDonagh is able to bring out of the best of Farrell's talent because he's really, really good. He is the least crazy of the characters and is the 'normal' man looking at the mad situations and as such, he is the entry point for the audience. However, his growing attachments to the characters around him is fantastic to watch and as the film moves on, his screenwriting character has some of the best moments of the film.

Sam Rockwell. Big fan of Sam's and have been for a while (even though I've not yet seen Moon). Rockwell's performance here is brilliant. As the best friend, Billy, the character is the most surprising and odd but he really drives the narrative forward. The performance is almost over the top but within the confines of the film, it makes perfect sense and is just restained enough.

Christopher Walken. Love. Love. LOVE THIS GUY. Always remembered best for his peripheral roles in films like Pulp Fiction and True Romance, Walken here is at his very best. Deadpan, perfectly times utterances means that he is the funniest person on the screen almost all of the time and most of the film's best moments involve Walken. He is also the emotional heart of the film, a treat to watch.

Woody Harrelson. Decided to mention Harrelson because he is perfect. Per-fect as the dangerous and slightly unhinged gangster, Charlie Costello. He is able to switch from 'too-far parody' to 'unhinged but genuinly dangerous' in a heartbeat.

 

The script crackles along at a fair old pace and even when the plotting slows briefly as it sets up the final act, the characters and script are top notch. The film is pretty violent in places but the overall tone is similar to the self-aware Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and whilst that film is steeped in noir, Seven Psychopaths is far more clever in its portrayal and undermining of tropes and cliches of film in general.

This film is really good.

Please watch it.

 

Trailer:

  

81 (Film Diary 43: 10/12/2012 - 16/12/2012)

Evening there blog readers.

Another monday comes and so another FFFD is born.

 

Apocalypse Now (1979) (I watched the Redux version)

 

 

The long overdue and troubled production is the stuff of film legend. The main actor portraying Willard changed from Harvey Keitel to Martin Sheen, Brando turned up to set hugely overweight and not having done any reading of the script or core material. The film was meant to take six weeks to shoot but eventually went for nearly sixteen months and the budget just went up and up due to natural disasters, heart attacks (Martin Sheen had one) and the editing that took nearly three years.

 

However, despite all this, the film is an utter masterpiece. The Redux edition adds nearly 50 minutes of new material to increase of overall running time to about three hours but the film itself is incredible.

It remains one of the few films that actually has a real effect on me. It is an experience to watch, and I don't often say that. The film is long, the pacing varies hugely and yet, getting through the whole thing is an event of immense power. The film's start gives hints to the psychotic and philosophical nature of the film, starting with incredible use of The Door's song The End to soundtrack a wall of napalm exploding. However, as the film goes on, the characters start to warp and change and suddenly Willard's mission to assassinate Kurtz is obviously taking a huge toll on everyone as people, as humans.

 

The casting is inspired. Martin Sheen's Captain Willard is the perfect observer, the introvert man who merely experiences what he sees from an emotional distance. His longing for a mission is seen as an end to his boredom and his desire to be out in the war, his actions throughout the film change as he starts to research Kurtz (who is presumed insane) and his character is the perfect lens to see the crazy events of the film through. The only direct actions he takes in the film are violent. 

Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz is one of the best places to see why Brando is the best actor of all time. He's overweight, mumbling and ad-libbing and yet every movement he makes is mesmerising, every utterance perfectly pitched and balanced to educate, unsettle and disturb. It is a massive performance from very little screen time. His character is the unsettling truth of the film, an understanding of war as madness and insanity and choosing to extend that to every aspect of his life.

 

Like all the best war films, Apocalypse Now is not about a war (Vietnam in this case), but about the phenomenon of war. The effect that war has on people is the central point here and it is so depressing and yet powerful. Almost every character that Willard comes across on his journey has a level of morality and justice and is just as capable of kind actions amongst the horror. However, the 'insane' Kurtz sees only immorality and madness in human nature and has chosen to remove himself from moral judgements because what place does morality have in war? He knows that the only escape from what he refers to as 'the horror' is his death and yet he needs someone like him to impart his wisdom to. In that respect, Willard and Kurtz need each other.

 

The film is one of the few films that I would call a work of art. On a sensory level, the colours, sounds, voices, framing and locales are all so beautiful. Many of the scenes and speeches of the film are now stuff of culture but below all of this aesthetic grandeur is a powerful and real look at people. This is a film which almost always brings me to tears because once it ends, you feel so drained but every minute is a worthwhile one and I would argue that the extra 49 minutes the Redux version introduces may not be necessary to the plot of the film, but it does shape the world more completely.

 

Trailer:

 

 

 

80 - Pacific Rim trailer

Oh hello!

It seems that trailer season has gone into overdrive, showing us tasty morsels of what looks to be quite a good year for films. Now, to add to Star Trek into Darkness and Man of Steel we have Guillermo Del Toro's epic looking film, Pacific Rim.

 

79 - Man of Steel trailer

Oh my sweet lordy lord!

After the first trailer gave us a taste of the direction and tone that the new Superman project, Man of Steel, was going in, the optimism over the release of the second trailer has risen greatly. 

The trailer is going to be attached to showings of The Hobbit in most cinemas but the trailer is here online, just in case.

It's sick! (in the good use of the word way)

Enjoy.

 

78 (Film Diary 42: 03/12/2012 - 09/12/2012)

A good evening to you all and welcome to my resolution busting 78th Film Flare entry. 

If you are as excited and as happy as I am, then you shouldn't be. But you should be happy and excited, no doubt.

Tonight's entry is a stone cold kung fu classic from 1972, starring the seminal Bruce Lee, in a film which helped to initiate the 'Golden era of Kung Fu cinema' (a phrase which simply rocks my world). Other classic films from this 'era' includes the wonderful The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and the educational (and widely copied) Five Deadly Venoms.

 

Fist of Fury (1972)

Directed by Lo Wei, the influencial Hong Kong director of New Fist of Fury (starring Jackie Chan), this film is the simply told tale of revenge and honour. Bruce Lee's character, Chen, returns to a kung fu school to marry his fiance but instead finds his master murdered with poison. Some Japanese martial arts students from a rival dojo turn up and insult the dead master, and Chen takes it upon himself to exact revenge and to find the killers of his master.

 

Bruce Lee has undeniable charisma and charm but it is a performance far from his best work of Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon. He shakes violently, twitches and stares into the distance as a man who defies the wish of his martial arts brothers and desires more to commit violent and vengeanful acts which causes more trouble for the martial arts school. However, his martial arts scenes are poetic and stunning in their skill and ferocity. Unlike later films where his fights seem a lot more measured (apart from the fight with Bob Hope from Enter the Dragon), in this film, Bruce is pretty hardcore. He ends up beating several people to death with his fist of fury and in some cases, hanging the bodies up as warnings. 

But there is nothing but joy felt when you see Lee walk into an enemies dojo and just take them all on. He picks up the nunchuka and you almost feel giddy when he starts using it. I found many similarities between this one fight and the fight in the House of the Blue Leaves in Kill Bill Vol. 1 with Uma vs the Crazy 88. It is in places like this where you suddenly are aware of the influence this film has, not only on further kung fu films but on culture itself. So many cliches of the badly dubbed yet entertaining script, the zoom shots on Lee's eyes and skilfully directed fight scenes which the genre is famous for. 

 

The other cast do perfectly well, certainly the other chinese martial artists and police are pretty well portrayed. The Japanese villains and the turncoat translator character are pretty comical in their portrayal but several of them give Lee good fight scenes, which is their ultimate purpose I suppose. Certainly the police chief (played by Lo Wei himself) is played well and really makes you feel the situation this character is in and how he wants his allegiances to go. 

 

But certainly the acting and the story are not the main draws of the film. That is Lee himself. The producers knew it when they were making the film and if you want to see Bruce Lee do amazing martial arts, then this film will hit every spot you could hope for. It does lack a lot of the philosophical and intellectual teachings Lee tried to apply in Enter the Dragon, which if you want to see the best of Bruce Lee, is the film you should be starting off with. But this film is a wonderful piece of cinema which amply showcases Lee's exceptional talent and charisma.

 

Trailer:

 

 

Oh ho!

And speaking of trailers. Here is Benedict Cumberbatch's sexy-ass villain voice dominating an otherwise generic looking sci-fi/action trailer! Star Trek into Darkness.

 

  

 

Also, just as a side note, I'm sick and tired of every saying that every blockbuster film with a dark tone is now 'ripping off' The Dark Knight Rises. That film didn't have a goddam monopoly on dark trailers people.....

 

Until next week. Keep watching the stars. (R.I.P Patrick Moore.)

 

 

77 (Film Diary 41: 26/11/2012 - 02/12/2012)

Good evening one and all.

 

Welcome to episode seventy seven of Film Flare. Time for a true fact, my New Year's resolution this year was to write seventy eight episodes of Film Flare in one year because the total number of Audio Flare blog entries was seventy seven. Now I am smash bang on target to beat that but fret not, gentle readers, for Film Flare will not end, oh no! Film Flare cannot die.

 

Unless I get got, but I have no plans for that anytime soon.

 

Watchmen (2009)

Oh yes! Zack Snyder's almost frame-by-frame recreation of one of the most seminal graphic novels of all time is a pretty divisive piece of cinema. Those who had not read the graphic novel found it confusing, pretentious, long and all of that, but those who liked the film, liked it alot. The reason for this almost certainly being the fact that almost everyone thought the film was going to mess up the story and were glad for its faithful reproduction.

 

However, this film is certainly a powerful, colourful affair which places 'superheroes' in a position that no other film really has done and in my eyes is a powerful piece of work which owes almost all of its power to the original graphic novel, seeing as how it pretty much acts as a story board for the film and a script that needs only slight modification. 

 

To be fair, they could have messed it up badly. The casting is almost uniformly excellent, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a particular highlight as the Comedian. Jackie Earle Haley goes all gruff and violent as Rorschach, whose character goes from being entirely unlikable to the only morally honest character in the film. Patrick Wilson dresses down as Dan Drieberg (aka. Nite Owl 2), although his huge frame can only be hidden so well under badly fitting clothes. Billy Crudup's Dr. Manhattan is the only true superhero of the whole film and his character is frustratingly distant and cold, handled brilliantly with his speech patterns and facial capturing technology. Malin Akerman handles herself well as the only current female superhero of the group but the character is much less interesting than many of the others because so much of her backstory was removed from the graphic novel. Finally, Matthew Goode excels (rather frighteningly) as the brilliant Oxymandias. 

 

The tone of the film is pretty unrelenting but there is a pretty complex psychological core at the each character that makes each one interesting, vulnerable and distinctive. Certainly, some of the film's touches don't really work. There is a dubious choice of song during a sex scene which didn't work for me although the soundtrack is excellent overall.

 

With a story that spans several decades in an alternative universe, the production design of the film is excellent. Each decade or different country is vivid and great to look at. In fact, the entire film is a beauty to watch, fantastic individual shots, greats effects, lovely colours and framing. Again, using the talented Dave Gibbons and his artwork in the graphic novel as a starting point is no bad thing.

 

I guess the entire point of the film is to destroy the idea of a superhero and instead realise that without being godlike creatures (like Superman) who in reality would distance themselves from humanity beneath them, masked vigilantes are all these characters are and their flaws, emotions and characters are as damaged as you would expect from people who dress up to fight crime.

A grim, complex look at the mythos of the superhero which in my eyes, is a great success.

 

Trailer:

 

76 - End of Watch review

 

David Ayer certainly likes his films involving the police. Being the writer of Training Day and the director of Harsh Times, both set within Los Angeles as well, means that he isn't stepping hugely out of his comfort zone with this film either. However, this film provides a much more realistic interpretation of the LAPD as well as shrugging off several cliches of the genre. All this whilst using a style of filming that is simultaneously very intense but also provides the film's biggest problems.

 

So let us start with the casting. The two principal actors, Jake Gyllenhaal (Brian Taylor) and Michael Pena  (Mike Zavala) shoulder almost all of the film's running time between the pair of them, although Anna Kendrick appears as Taylor's girlfriend, Janet. Since the whole draw of the film is the two officers the film follows, it is really good that Gyllenhaal and Pena have an incredible chemistry between them that makes the two officers they portray not only good friends, but fierce and loyal colleagues. They irritate each other just by having so much time spent together but they are extremely close and extend their friendship outside of LAPD patrols. Both officers and their significant others are acquainted with each other and much of the time outside of the patrol car is still spent in each others company.

In contrast with many other police films, it is refreshing to see that the relationships that the officers have are not broken. Quite the opposite, Zavala's home life is perfectly functional and Taylor's relationships with woman are functional too. 

 

 The fly-on-the-wall documentry style of the film is both a great asset and a cause for criticism. Whilst Taylor's filming, along with police car cameras give thrilling footage you'll never see on Police, Camera, Action, there are times when you will have to suspend your disbelief that these group of nasty cartel members are discussing their plans in front of a recording mobile phone. There are also some points in the film when it is obvious that there is no readily available lens around but the camera still continues in the same style. An example of this is during a love scene where there isn't really a guy hanging around the pair of them (well, you'd hope not) and yet the camera remains 'handheld'. It doesn't break the illusion if you're caught up in the events on the screen but after the film it's something that suddenly makes sense.

At its best though, the handheld style of filming in this case makes good sense and allows a fascinating insight into what seems a very real and very plausible LAPD. It also allows for thrilling, intense footage, genuinly powerful and scary. They are not huge war-zone style fights, but instead little skirmishes and gunfights, made powerful by the in-the-action filming and the sense of real danger the well developed characters find themselves in.

 

Before watching this film, I knew that the two main actors had undergone rigerous police training and had even spent five months out on patrols with LAPD cars. It is something that shows in the film, the feel of the film is deeply realistic. The narrative structure of the film is one that spans a length of time and the main story arc benefits from taking place among everyday occurances rather than being a solid block of narrative, which would undermine the nature of the job these jobs are doing.

 

The film isn't perfect of course, but it is one of the best police film I've seen for a long, long time. The chemistry between the two main characters is palpable, real and moving. It almost single handedly propels the film from gimmicky hand held film status to genuinly powerful, intense piece of cinema. A worthwhile watch.

 

Trailer: