Category: Reviews
Review – Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)
Directors: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dennis Haysbert, Rosario Dawson, Powers Booth, Bruce Willis
Released in 2005, Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City was a critical and popular hit, with its stylised violence and heightened neo-noir aesthetic. Pioneering in its use of green screen technology and digital settings, Sin City was among the first films which actively sought to reflect rather than disguise its graphic novel origins. Almost immediately there was talk of multiple sequels being in the pipeline with a number of big name stars supposedly attached. Yet somehow it has taken nine years for a follow up, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, to hit the screens. Unfortunately, it has not been worth the wait.
As with the first film, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is made up of interwoven but unconnected episodes. Entering into the shady world of Basin City, we jump from one protagonist to another. In “Just Another Saturday Night,” Marv struggles to remember a violent encounter with a group of frat boys which has, unsurprisingly, ended in carnage. “The Long, Bad Night” sees a cocky young gambler arriving in town to play some poker, with a view to taking down the big fish, Senator Rourke. In “A Dame to Kill For,” private investigator Dwight is manipulated by an old flame, Ava Lord, into committing a murder. While “Nancy’s Last Dance” reintroduces stripper Nancy Callahan, wallowing in grief and despair four years after the suicide of her saviour John Hartigan and determined to have her revenge.
Like its predecessor, the strength of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For lies in its visuals. The aesthetic, featuring high contrast black and white with splashes of colour, is still very striking and the incorporation of 3D only helps to immerse you into this comic book world. That said, striking visuals can only carry a film so far. They have to be in support of an engaging story and characters, and that is where Sin City: A Dame to Kill For falls short. Despite the new narratives and the introduction of new characters the film doesn’t manage to go anywhere new. It feels like a movie made up of deleted scenes from the original. So where the first Sin City felt exciting and fresh, this sequel gets old very quickly. When a movie feels longer than its 100 minute runtime, it is never a good sign.
As funny as it sounds given its aesthetic, Rodriguez and Miller’s film is crying out for some light and shade. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For entirely one note. There is no modulation of tone. Eventually the brutal violence and misogyny blurs together into an indeterminate mess. Bruce Willis’s character, Hartigan, served an important function in the first film. He was its hero and evidence of hope and morality in an immoral world. While Willis appears sporadically in the sequel as a ghost watching over Nancy, no character takes up this function. So we are presented with a world devoid of any sort of hope. Without even a glimmer of hope, we don’t engage as fully with the despair.
Returning to this world after nine years, it is challenging to draw connections between the original film and the sequel. This is partly the result of a number of roles being recast – Josh Brolin replaces Clive Owen, Dennis Haysbert replaces the late Michael Clarke Duncan, Jeremy Piven replaces Michael Madsen – but also the result of some confusing chronology. Some of the episodes obviously follow on from the events of the first film while others are prequels and there is no clear differentiation between them.
Frank Miller imagined Basin City as a man’s world and as a result the representation of women in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is at best questionable, at worst downright misogynistic. Every female character is either a prostitute or a stripper, a femme fatale or a temptress. The filmmakers argue that they present strong female characters, assumedly on the grounds that some of them commit acts of violence rather than just being victims, but even these warrior women are presented as male fantasies for consumption by a male audience. You will lose count of the number of times a female character is introduced into a scene with a leering close up of her backside. The only female character with any real agency in the story is Ava Lord, who is brilliantly portrayed as the classic noir femme fatale by Eva Green (though more frequently nude than a classical Hollywood character would ever have been). But even in this case her power comes from her ability to manipulate men to do things for her rather than her ability to do anything for herself.
Nowhere is the film’s failure to match the nuance and subtlety of classic film noir as evident as in its faux-hard-boiled narration. First person narration, one of the hallmarks of film noir, is stretched to breaking point here. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For descends into a competition between gruff and growly men trying to out-husky-voice each other. The characters seemingly narrating every thought that goes through their head, leaving no room for subtext. Thankfully it eventually passes through being insufferable and just becomes white noise. It also serves as evidence that just because a line might work on the comic book page doesn’t mean it will translate to the screen.
With nothing new to say, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is little more than a pale imitation of its predecessor and were it not for an engaging performance from Eva Green it would hardly have been worth returning to after nine years.
Rating: ★★
Review by Duncan McLean
Have you seen Sin City: A Dame to Kill For? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
Review – Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Simon McBurney, Hamish Linklater, Marcia Gay Harden, Eileen Atkins, Jacki Weaver
After being the most New York-centric of filmmakers for the first few decades of his career, Woody Allen continues his recent fascination with Europe by taking us to the French Riviera for Magic in the Moonlight.
Stanley Crawford is Europe’s most celebrated stage magician. As the Chinese mystic Wei Ling Soo he wows audiences all over the continent. But Stanley’s real passion is using his knowledge of the tricks of the trade to debunk phoney mediums and spiritualists. So when old friend and fellow magician Howard asks for his help exposing a young medium that has enchanted a wealthy widower and her son, he is only too happy to get involved. But in spending time with the lovely young Sophie, who catches Stanley’s eye as much as she confounds his intellect, this strict rationalist and vehement sceptic finds his worldview rocked by the notion that perhaps there is more to the world than meets the eye.
Like the incredibly successful Midnight in Paris, this light-hearted romantic comedy takes us back to the 1920s, a favourite era of Allen’s. But rather than just showing us a past world, the film actually feels like a movie from the 1920s. Magic in the Moonlight plays like an old screwball comedy; the kind made by Preston Sturges or Ernst Lubitsch. The characters are larger than life. Their emotional changes are sudden and drastic. Their banter is sharp and witty. The situations are wonderfully silly.
While the storyline is not overly taxing or complex – I successfully picked the ending quite early on – it does allow for some surprisingly heartfelt thematic explorations. The possibility that Sophie might be the real deal opens up the possibility that there is more to this life than meets the eye. The film explores the important role that faith plays as a source of comfort and in helping people get by. While Allen is himself openly agnostic, he seems to encourage us to pity Stanley for his closed view of the world which cannot accept the presence of anything unknowable or unexplainable.
Colin Firth and Emma Stone are not an obvious romantic pairing, and theirs is not a natural chemistry (perhaps because we imagine Sophie’s mother to be a more age appropriate partner for Stanley), but it does seem to work. The butting of heads between this mismatched pair is fun to watch. Firth is full of arrogant bluster and pomposity as a protagonist who is, for once, not an obvious Allen-surrogate, but much more indebted to Rex Harrison’s Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Stone is as enchanting and likeable as ever, and while she may not get the lines and zingers that Firth does, her comedic talents are still very much on display.
Woody Allen’s films tend to be broken down into either major- or minor-Allen – there are 44 of them after all – and there is no doubting that Magic in the Moonlight definitely falls in the minor-Allen category. It is never going to be part of a discussion of his most significant films. That said, it is none the less well performed, beautiful to look at and a nice piece of whimsical fun.
Rating: ★★★☆
Review by Duncan McLean
Have you seen Magic in the Moonlight? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
Review – The Little Death (2014)
Director: Josh Lawson
Starring: Josh Lawson, Bojana Novakovic, Damon Herriman, Kate Mulvany, Kate Box, Patrick Brammall, Alan Dukes, Lisa McCune, Erin James, TJ Power, Kim Gyngell, Lachy Hulme
The little death, la petit mort, is a French euphemism for an orgasm. Actor Josh Lawson’s directorial debut, The Little Death, a romantic comedy about sexual fetishes, explores some of the weird and wonderful ways people get to that point.
We follow four ordinary couples living in a Sydney neighbourhood, each dealing with their own sexual issue. For Paul and Maeve, it is sexual masochism. She reveals her fantasy about being forced into sex by a stranger, leaving mild mannered Paul to try and fabricate a situation in which he can surprise his wife with an attack. For Evie and Dan, their therapist has suggested role-playing may help them get in touch with their emotions, but the scenarios get side-tracked as Dan catches the acting bug. For Phil and Maureen it is somnophilia. Their marriage is on the rocks, but when Maureen accidentally takes one of Phil’s extra strong sleeping pills, he sees his wife still and silent and falls in love with her all over again, starting an evening affair. For Rowena and Richard it is dacryphilia. Their efforts to get pregnant has taken the passion out of sex, but when Richard receives some bad news, Rowena finds herself strangely aroused by his tears so must continually find ways to make him cry. These stories are all tied together by a man, new to the neighbourhood, who goes door to door, using homemade nostalgic biscuits to distract his new neighbours from his legally required pronouncement that he is a registered sex offender.
The Little Death is not your typical sex comedy. It manages to be frank and explicit without being gratuitous or childish. These are suburban middle-class folk in committed relationships, not randy frat boys, and while the film does get some big laughs out of its exploration of different fetishes, it also explores themes of morals, normality, and communication within a relationship. We see characters who are so ashamed of their fetish that they create elaborate lies and even admit to far worse accusations in order to hide the truth.
Lawson’s screenplay does walk a very fine line. There are some divisive elements which will leave some audiences conflicted. The most obvious of these is the inclusion of a woman’s rape fantasy. While Lawson treads carefully in this area, it is a controversial and confronting concept, and at the very least it would seem a misstep that this is the first couple, and thus first fetish, that is introduced.
As is common in these types of films, some of the storylines work better than others. Despite some beautiful and very funny moments, The Little Death does struggle a bit for rhythm in tying those scenes together. Lawson possibly tries a bit too hard to connect the different storylines together into a neat Love Actually package, with the attempts to intertwine the stories becoming messy when the thematic connection on its own is sufficient.
With so much effort having gone into weaving these four storylines together, it is then a surprise to find one scene, concerning a fifth pairing, which stands alone at the end of the film. Monica works as a translator at a service that makes phone calls for deaf people. Sam, a deaf-mute, Skypes in and requests that Monica call a phone sex line for him. While usually a scene that struggles to find its place would be destined for the cutting room floor, this scene ends up being hands down the best of the film. Riotously funny, the scene strangely becomes a genuinely touching and lovely moment of connection between two people. It is my favourite singular movie moment of the year.
While some audiences will struggle to get on board with the concept, and the film has peaks and troughs, when The Little Death is good it is very good, and there is more than enough in The Little Death to suggest that Josh Lawson could be an interesting comedic voice in the future.
Rating: ★★★
Review by Duncan McLean
Have you seen The Little Death? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
Review – Belle (2013)
Director: Amma Asante
Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson, Sarah Gadon, Emily Watson, Sam Reid, Miranda Richardson, Matthew Goode
In Scone Palace in Scotland there hangs a very unique painting. It shows a pair of late 18th century society women, Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay and Elizabeth Murray. What makes it unique is that one of them, Dido, is black. It is believed to be the first painting to show a black and white person as equals. This painting inspired filmmaker Amma Asante to tell the story of this little known mixed-race aristocrat.
Dido is the illegitimate daughter of naval officer Sir John Lindsay and an African slave woman. While Lindsay loves his daughter, he must return to the sea, so he pleads with his uncle, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, to honour Dido’s birthright and allow her to live under his roof. So Dido and her half-cousin Elizabeth grow up as surrogate daughters to Lord and Lady Mansfield. But Dido is caught between two worlds. She is too high in standing to dine with the servants, but too low to dine with her family and their guests. And what is to happen when she comes of age to marry?
With little detail being known of the historical Dido’s life, screenwriter Misan Sagay has applied a fair amount of poetic license in Belle. The result is a film that is part society costume drama, and part historical courtroom drama. Alongside the Austen-like narrative of young women seeking husbands, is a secondary narrative which sees Lord Mansfield presiding over an important court case concerning the slave ship Zong. The Zong’s crew had been forced by a shortage of water to throw over 100 African slaves overboard on their way back to England, and are now seeking to recoup from their insurer for their lost ‘cargo.’ The case – an amalgamation of two separate cases Mansfield presided over – has potentially great consequences for a nation taking its first steps towards the abolition of slavery, and it provides a dramatic parallel to Dido’s own experiences. Lord Mansfield is a man who interprets the rules, lives by the rules and tries to do what is right within the framework of those rules. Dido challenges him to move beyond the rules in search of true justice.
While issues of race are obviously foregrounded, one of Belle’s strengths as a film is that it explores oppression on a number of levels – race, class, gender. Upon the death of her father, Dido finds herself an heiress, an independently wealthy woman. On the other hand, Elizabeth, also illegitimate and not the Mansfields’ heir, has no money of her own. At a time where societal rules dictated that money should marry money, both girls have an advantage and a disadvantage. What is more important, bloodline or colour? What prejudice are people more willing to overlook? Belle explores this maze of societal conventions and hierarchies that Dido challenges on so many levels.
Belle has all the trimmings of a well-made period drama. It has grand sets and intricate costumes, and they are all beautifully photographed. However, the Austen-like construct of its format does make it slightly predictable. There are no surprises to be had in the narrative here. But engaging performances from Gugu Mbatha-Raw and the always excellent Tom Wilkinson, and a well organised exploration of social issues makes Belle well worth a look.
Rating: ★★★★
Review by Duncan McLean
Have you seen Belle? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
Review – Wish I Was Here (2014)
Director: Zach Braff
Starring: Zach Braff, Kate Hudson, Joey King, Pierce Gagnon, Mandy Patinkin, Josh Gad
Ten years after his first film as a writer-director, the incredibly indie dramedy Garden State, former Scrubs star Zach Braff returns to cover similar territory in his second film, co-written with his brother Adam, Wish I Was Here.
Once again, Braff plays an aspiring actor. Aiden Bloom is 35, married with two children, and still struggling without success to achieve his acting dream. His wife Sarah works a horrible job to put food on the table and his father Gabe, with whom Gabe enjoys a uneasy relationship, pays for the children’s private Jewish school tuition. But when Gabe gets cancer and needs his money to pay for an experimental treatment, they have to pull the kids out of private school and the decision is made that Aiden will home school them.
Wish I Was Here sits comfortably as a companion piece to Garden State. Both tell stories of a young man – or in this case a man who is not as young as he used to be – who is drifting through life, ungrounded and uncertain. Both films share a similar existential angst, and awareness and fear of mortality.
Funding the film through Kickstarter – a controversial move which caused much debate about the appropriateness of well-paid stars using the crowd-sourcing website to fund their productions – meant that Braff enjoyed the freedom to make the film that he wanted. The result is obviously a very personal film, but at times it errs into self-indulgence. There are scenes in the film which only seem to be there out of a misguided belief that they are quite profound; two separate scenes in which a character recites poetry, and a repeated anecdote about Aiden and his brother’s childhood fantasies about being heroes who had to save the world. You get the feeling that the movie might have benefited from Braff having a bit more accountability as writer-director-star.
The film’s most jarring issue though is its protagonist. It is unclear how we are supposed to respond to Aiden, but he doesn’t come across as overly sympathetic. While his issues with his father play as authentic, the other problems he faces are very much of the “first-world” variety. They can’t afford to send their kids to a prestigious private school because Aiden won’t put his acting dream to one side to help provide for his family. Sarah even asks him at one point, “When did this relationship become solely about supporting your dream?” At best he comes across as oblivious, at worst, selfish.
One cannot doubt the earnest sincerity of the film, and despite its moments of pretention and its woe-is-me protagonist, there are some interesting thematic explorations in the movie. In his moment of personal crisis as he confronts his father’s mortality, we watch as Aiden struggles with what it means to be a man, to be a husband and to be a father.
Wish I Was Here is an uneven film, but there are enough laughs and touching moments to get it through.
Rating: ★★☆
Review by Duncan McLean
Have you seen Wish I Was Here? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
Review – Boyhood (2014)
Director: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater
There has never been a film quite like Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Wanting to make a coming of age film which truly captured the experience of childhood and adolescence, Linklater came up with a bold concept: he would cast a six year old boy, and over the next 12 years follow that character from the beginning of his school life to his leaving for college. While Michael Apted had done something similar with his Up series of documentaries, in which he has revisited the same subjects every seven years since 1964, no one had attempted to tell a fictional story in this fashion.
A unique concept required a unique approach. Shot in 39 days between 2002 and 2013, each year the cast and crew would gather together when their schedules permitted for three or four days of shooting. Rather than running from a set screenplay, they started with a basic structural blueprint, and then Linklater would write the film as they went, year by year, enabling it to grow organically as its cast did.
This approach to production meant that, in Linklater’s words, time became a collaborator on the film. Time brings with it change and uncertainty, not to mention risk. Changes in the young actors had to be taken into account as the screenplay evolved. Each year, Linklater would start the process by having a chat with his young lead, Ellar Coltrane, about where he was in his life, and that discussion would serve as inspiration for the character. Similarly, the world changed over the twelve years the film was in production, and the film navigates those cultural and political changes. So we see the Iraq War and the election of Barrack Obama, events which wouldn’t have been known at the commencement of the project, become a part of the story.
The result is a film which manages to be both epic in scope and incredibly intimate at the same time. With no strict narrative to speak of, Boyhood simply recounts an ordinary life. Mason’s family goes through their fair share of changes and trials, but these events are all presented devoid of any melodrama. Even without a central narrative thread to hook us in, the characters are so well formed that we care about what happens to them. Mason is a dreamer, a curious boy with a thoughtful, artistic temperament. We watch him shape himself into a young man, no doubt in opposition to the string of abusive, alpha-male types that his mother has coupled with since his parents’ divorce. The film is called Boyhood, so obviously is centred around Mason’s experience, but it has just as much to say about girlhood through his sister Samantha, and parenthood through the journeys of his mother and father.
Ultimately, the film works because there is something strangely fascinating about watching these characters actually grow up before your eyes. This ageing process is often subtle. Linklater opts not to telegraph the progress through time with captions letting us know when we have leapt forward a year, instead trusting his audience to work it out for themselves through the little details: changes in haircuts, music styles and personal electronics.
Incredibly ambitious and effectively executed, Boyhood is a unique and at times quite profound cinematic experience.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review by Duncan McLean
Have you seen Boyhood? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
Review – Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Director: James Gunn
Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel
Do you want to know just how hot a streak Marvel Studios are on at the moment? They have taken a minor comic book series about a motley crew of space adventurers that includes, among others, a green woman, a talking raccoon and a walking tree and they’ve turned it into possibly the best sci-fi adventure movie in decades.
Having been abducted from Earth as a child, Peter ‘Star Lord’ Quill travels the galaxy as a treasure hunter (read thief). Quill steals a mysterious orb, which turns out to be significantly more valuable, and dangerous, than he imagined. So he teams up with an assassin, Gamora, a pair of bounty hunters, Rocket and Groot, and the physically imposing Drax the Destroyer to sell it to the highest bidder. However, it just so happens that the orb contains one of the powerful Infinity Stones, and when it falls into the hands of the evil Ronan who plans to use it to destroy the galaxy, it falls to Quill and his rag tag bunch of misfits to save the day.
Despite being around since 1969, the Guardians of the Galaxy comic book series is not exactly a household name. This means there are a lot of new characters, places and concepts that need to be introduced to the viewer in the first act of the movie. Amazingly, though, it doesn’t become exposition heavy. Refreshingly, the film doesn’t bother giving us complete backstories and origins for all of the characters. It doesn’t seek to answer all of our questions, but rather just to give us as much information as we need. As a result, Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t take a while to warm up; it gets rolling at the beginning and keeps going until the end.
Director James Gunn and his team have succeeded in making Guardians of the Galaxy completely different to The Avengers. After that first franchise was so successful, the temptation would have been there to copy that blueprint and import new characters and stories. But while there are minor narrative elements which connect Guardians of the Galaxy to the Avengers universe, and we will no doubt see a crossover film at some point in the future, Guardians of the Galaxy has a completely different style and tone.
For starters, it is not a superhero movie. It is a 1980s-style science-fiction adventure movie much more akin to Star Wars. This eighties resonance comes from within the narrative. Quill was abducted from Earth as a child in 1988, and as such all his points of reference are from the eighties. Similarly, the film cleverly uses music from that era to set the tone. The only memento Quill has from his life on Earth is a Walkman with a mix-tape of seventies hits his mother made for him. That mix-tape – including tracks from 10CC, Blue Swede and David Bowie – serves as the soundtrack to the movie, and from the outset of the film it is really successful in creating a very different, fun vibe.
Guardians of the Galaxy is also far and away Marvel’s funniest film. The Avengers, and in particular Iron Man, have always had that wise-cracking element of humour, but this film takes it to the next level and is legitimately comedic. Gunn and Nicole Pearlman’s screenplay is so sharp. They have given each of the characters a unique voice and can therefore draw different types of humour from each of them.
Chris Pratt is perfectly cast as Quill, bringing an irreverence to this mash up of Han Solo and Indiana Jones. It has potential to be a real star-making performance for Pratt, which could propel him from TV star to legit movie leading man. The CGI pairing of Rocket Raccoon and Groot, voiced by Cooper and Diesel respectively, were among the movie’s biggest question marks. But Rocket turns out to be a scene stealer and Groot, despite only being able to say “I am Groot” in different inflections, is used well to both comic and emotional effect.
With Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Studios have given us the most exciting, fun and fresh blockbuster movie in years, maybe even decades. For those of us not old enough to have been there, this could be as close as we will get to knowing what it felt like to experience Star Wars for the first time back in 1977.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review by Duncan McLean
Have you seen Guardians of the Galaxy? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
Review – The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)
Director: Lasse Hallström
Starring: Manish Dayal, Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Charlotte Le Bon
Lasse Hallström’s The Hundred-Foot Journey is based on Richard C. Morais’ bestselling novel about rival restaurants in rural France. But for a seemingly quaint little movie, The Hundred-Foot Journey has some heavy hitters behind it, with Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey acting as producers (Morais’ novel had previously featured in Oprah’s magazine as a “favourite summer read”).
The Kadam family, having fled political violence in India, ruffle some feathers upon their arrival in a provincial French town by opening an Indian restaurant directly across the road from Madame Mallory’s Le Saul Pleurer. While Le Saul Pleurer may have a Michelin star, Papa Kadam has no fear, because Madame Mallory’s restaurant does not have his son, Hassan, whom he believes is the best Indian cook in Europe. What starts out as a bitter rivalry becomes a close friendship as Mallory takes Hassan under her wing, turning him from a great cook into a great chef.
Exploring the soul of food, and the connection of food and family, there is not a lot of new ground being covered here. Hallström himself has previously explored the prejudices of a small French town being broken down with food in Chocolat, and the last couple of years have seen British films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Slumdog Millionaire taking an interest in Indian culture. But while The Hundred-Foot Journey may not overly original, it is charmingly executed.
The story is very reliant on racial stereotypes, albeit endearingly portrayed racial stereotypes. The French are uptight and culturally elitist. The Indians are loud and colourful. The Hundred-Foot Journey is about a clash of cultures. The journey of the title refers to the hundred feet from the Kadam’s restaurant to Mallory’s, and just as Hassan’s cooking crosses the divide between these seemingly incompatible cultures, so too do the friendships that are forged.
While this is technically a film about Hassan, it is the rivalry and then friendship between Papa and Madame Mallory that is most endearing, with Helen Mirren and Om Puri sharing wonderful on-screen chemistry. Unfortunately, the film loses its trajectory at the 90 minute mark, as the third act puts the other characters to one side in favour of pursuing Hassan’s journey as a celebrity chef in Paris. This section of the film lacks the sweet tone of the first two acts and starts to drag a bit before it is pulled back into line.
With not quite as many gratuitous, mouth-watering images of Indian and French cuisine as the food-porn addicts might have been hoping for, The Hundred-Foot Journey is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel meets Chocolat, but losing its steam a bit towards the end means it doesn’t end up being quite as good as either.
Rating: ★★★☆
Review by Duncan McLean
Have you seen The Hundred-Foot Journey? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
Review – Sunshine on Leith (2013)
Director: Dexter Fletcher
Starring: George Mackay, Peter Mullan, Jane Horrocks, Kevin Guthrie, Antonia Thomas, Freya Mavor
Following in the footsteps of mega-bands like ABBA and Queen, the latest, somewhat unlikely group to be given the jukebox musical treatment is the Scottish duo The Proclaimers, with Sunshine on Leith.
The film uses the music of the bespectacled Reid brothers to tell the story of two best friends, Davy and Ally, who return home to Edinburgh after a tour of duty in Afghanistan keen to get on with their lives. Ally rekindles a romance, Davy finds a new one, and Davy’s parents, Rab and Jean, prepare to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. But this trio of relationships all hit rocks on the night of Rab and Jean’s big party.
Jukebox musicals by nature have highly contrived narratives – a lot of work has to go into making these pre-existing songs fit together in a logical way to tell a story – and this film is no exception. Early on you can sense there is a lot of setup being done, entire subplots are introduced in order for single lines in a song to make sense, and there are moments when things turn quite quickly. But unlike other films which have chosen to make fun of the contrived nature of their narratives by going over the top, Sunshine on Leith retains a down to earth honesty. These are still real characters telling a largely relatable story.
To most people the Proclaimers are one-hit, or at most two-hit, wonders. They don’t have the long back catalogue of well-known hits that other bands given the jukebox musical treatment have. But while the lack of familiarity means you don’t get that little spark of recognition with each song, it does allow the songs to fit into the story less obtrusively. It also ends up being the lesser known tunes rather than the hits which provide the film’s best numbers: ‘Over and Done With’ and ‘Oh Jean’ are great highlights, and the title track ‘Sunshine on Leith’ is sung beautifully by Jane Horrocks.
While all of the cast can hold a tune, none of them are amazingly polished singers. But this adds to the charm of the film. The ordinariness of their voices really fits with both the music of The Proclaimers (and I mean that as a compliment) and the overall tone of the film. This is not a glamorous, sparkling musical. It is a musical about ordinary people, performed by ordinary people.
Keep your eyes peeled early in the film for a quick cameo from Charlie and Craig Reid walking out of a pub during ‘I’m on My Way.’
Sunshine on Leith is an unpretentious and exuberant film, a joyful smile of a movie.
Rating: ★★★★
Review by Duncan McLean
Have you seen Sunshine on Leith? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
Review – Lucy (2014)
Director: Luc Besson
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-sik Choi, Amr Waked
It is a commonly believed myth that humans only engage 10% of their brain’s capacity. It is a favourite of science fiction speculation; just imagine what could be achieved if we could tap into that dormant 90%. The latest and most outrageous film to ponder this question is Luc Besson’s Lucy.
Lucy is an American student living in Taiwan who, thanks to her new loser boyfriend, falls in with the wrong crowd. Abducted by a Korean drug cartel, they surgically implant a pouch of their new super-drug CPH4 into her stomach for her to smuggle into America. But the pouch springs a leak, and as the synthetic drug floods into her body it starts to unlock the full potential of her mind.
While a number of films have previously toyed with the 10% idea, Lucy must be the most far-fetched exploration we have seen. As Lucy’s brain function increases, rather than becoming an ultra-high functioning human, she becomes almost godlike. She can read minds, manipulate time and space, and defy gravity. This is quite a leap to take, and the film does not offer adequate justification for what we are seeing. Usually a movie like this would engage some sort of pseudo-science (i.e. the DeLorean can travel through time because it has a ‘flux-capacitor’), but even Morgan Freeman’s character Prof. Norman, whose lecture on the potential of a fully functioning human brain is intercut with Lucy’s experiences, admits his theories are just hypotheses with no actual scientific proof supporting them.
The silliness of this premise wouldn’t be such a problem if the film didn’t take itself so seriously. Lucy seems to believe it is making profound philosophical points about the very nature of existence, but it is not. There are moments of humour in Lucy, and it is surprisingly simple humour. Were the rest of the film delivered in the same tone, embracing its silliness, it could be quite a fun movie. But because the majority of the time it takes its premise so seriously, it is hard to enjoy.
The other problem Lucy’s godlike powers create is that with every action sequence there is less at stake. The more powerful she becomes the less legitimate tension can be created by the illusion that she is in danger.
Despite all this, one cannot deny that Besson certainly had a clear vision. For all its faults, Lucy is a bold and interestingly executed film. Besson employs an almost impressionist montage style to bring his themes to the fore. When we first meet Lucy, as her boyfriend is trying to convince her to deliver a suitcase to the mysterious Mr. Jang for him, we momentarily cut away to an image of a mouse carefully approaching a sprung trap. As Lucy enters the hotel with the case, the scene is intercut with footage of a gazelle on the savannah being circled by cheetahs. This stylistic approach – far and away the most interesting thing about the film – continues throughout, being used to illustrate Prof. Norman’s theories, and results in film which feels like Tree of Life spliced with Salt.
Misrepresented in advertising so as to look like an all-out action movie with a butt-kicking heroine, this will undoubtedly help its box office takings but result in a number of miffed customers. Part science fiction, part action movie, part philosophical rumination, Lucy does not really satisfy as any of them, and for a film about unlocking the potential of the human brain, it manages to be quite dumb.
Rating: ★★
Review by Duncan McLean
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