Review – Inside Out (2015)

Directors: Pete Docter, Ronaldo Del Carmen

Starring: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan

Inside OutIn the last twenty years, no Hollywood studio has been as consistently original and imaginative as Pixar. In an era when kid’s movies are so often dumbed down and seem guided primarily by merchandising departments, John Lasseter and his brains trust at Pixar allow themselves to be guided first and foremost by ideas. Their latest offering, Pete Docter (Up, Monsters Inc) and Ronaldo Del Carmen’s Inside Out, arguably represents the zenith of Pixar’s bold originality, taking us inside the mind of a young girl.

Inside Out tells a very small scale story. Eleven-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) lives a happy life with her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) in Minnesota, only to have it unsettled when her father’s work requires the family has to relocate to San Francisco. With no friends, a different house and a new school, Riley starts to feel terribly homesick but doesn’t feel that she can talk about it with her parents. That is all that happens in the movie. At least, that is all that happens on the outside. For the key action in Inside Out actually takes place inside Riley’s mind. In the control room of her mind we meet anthropomorphised emotions, Continue reading →

Review – Listen to Me Marlon (2015)

Director: Stevan Riley

Starring: Marlon Brando

Listen to Me MarlonStevan Riley’s documentary Listen to Me Marlon starts with the voice of Marlon Brando explaining how in the 1980s he had his head digitised, scanned with a laser and captured in a computer. We then see this primitive 3D recreation of his face speaking the words we are hearing as Brando describes a future in which actors like himself will be replaced by these malleable recreations. In a way, this becomes a metaphor for the film we are about to watch. Riley uses old footage, photographs and recordings to recreate Brando in an intimate and personal way, in what almost amounts to a posthumous autobiography.

Marlon Brando is one of the most fascinating figures in film history. Regarded by many as the greatest actor in screen history, he cast a large shadow. But many of the attributes that made him such a special talent caused him to struggle greatly under such an intense spotlight. Always a reluctant star, he was reclusive later in life. Even in his youth when he was at his most charismatic, his engagement with the press always saw him playing a role, different roles depending on the situation and his mood, but always careful not to reveal himself. Continue reading →

Review – Jurassic World (2015)

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Vincent D’Onofrio, Irrfan Khan, Omar Sy, Jake Johnson, Lauren Lapkus, Judy Greer

Jurassic WorldThere is good news and bad news with Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World. The good news is that it is the best Jurassic Park movie since Steven Spielberg’s original, the blockbuster sensation that ushered in a new world of digital effects on its way to becoming the highest grossing film of all time. The bad news is that saying a film is better than The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3 is not saying a lot.

In Jurassic World we see the vision of Jurassic Park realised: a fully functioning theme park and resort island where twenty thousand visitors a day come to see genetically engineered living dinosaurs. It is SeaWorld on steroids. But the park has been open for a while now, and numbers are starting to plateau. As operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) explains. “People aren’t wowed by dinosaurs anymore. Twenty years ago, de-extinction was up there with magic. Now kids look at a stegosaurus like it’s an elephant at the zoo.” So in order to keep the crowds coming, Jurassic World’s team of scientists have moved into a new frontier of genetic innovation. Continue reading →

Review – She’s Funny That Way (2014)

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Starring: Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson, Kathryn Hahn, Rhys Ifans, Will Forte, Jennifer Aniston, Austin Pendleton

She's Funny That WayShe’s Funny That Way is the first feature film in 13 years from celebrated 1970s auteur Peter Bogdanovich. Bogdanovich is known for his love of classical Hollywood cinema, and as he did with his beloved 1972 comedy What’s Up Doc?, here he channels the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s – anarchic and irreverent social satires like The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story. He draws on filmmakers like Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges and Frank Capra with more than a little bit of Bogdanovich contemporary Woody Allen in creating this outrageous farce.

Call girl Izzy Finkelstein (Imogen Poots) has her life changed forever when one a client offers her $30,000 to give up her current line of work and pursue her dream. Izzy’s dream is to be an actress, and the very next day her agent sends her along to a Broadway audition for celebrated director Arnold Albertson (Owen Wilson). What Izzy doesn’t know until she gets on stage is that Arnold Albertson is the philanthropic john from the night before. She is so good that Arnold, despite his discomfort, has no choice but to give her the part. Continue reading →

Review – Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Director: George Miller

Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Zoe Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton

Mad Max Fury RoadIn the thirty years since Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome other franchises – chiefly the Fast and Furious ­– have laid claim to the car chase, but with Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller returns not only to show us that Max is still king of the road, but that a singular creative vision can elevate the action film to the level of high art.

Mad Max 2 (released in the US as The Road Warrior) is generally accepted as the high point of the original trilogy, and that is the film Fury Road uses as its departure point. Fury Road effectively takes the final third of Mad Max 2 (one of action cinema’s great sequences) and makes a whole movie out of it. And it is incredible. Having been captured by the Warboys, the fundamentalist followers of Imortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who actually played the antagonist, Toecutter, in the original Mad Max) Max finds himself caught up in a brazen escape plan as Imortan Joe’s most celebrated and trusted driver, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), uses one of his war rigs to liberate his harem of wives, leaving the Citadel and making a break for ‘the green place.’ Continue reading →

Review – Obvious Child (2014)

Director: Gillian Robespierre

Starring: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffman, Gabe Liedman, Richard Kind, Polly Draper

Obvious Child‘Abortion comedy’ is hardly a phrase that rolls off the tongue, ‘abortion romantic comedy’ even less so. It sounds like an oxymoron, or at least in questionable taste. But that is exactly what we get with Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, a brave debut feature unafraid to look honestly at this most divisive of issues.

Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) is a very frank, small-time stand up comedienne. Her material is highly confessional, consisting mainly of sharing her life experiences with her audience, with a generous smattering of bodily functions jokes. She has the rug pulled out from under her when her boyfriend breaks up with her, at least in part due to his discomfort with the details of their relationship being shared so openly with her audience. As part of her meltdown, she has a drunken one-night stand with a clean-cut business student, Max (Jake Lacy), and a couple of weeks later discovers, to her horror, that she is pregnant.

So far, this is nothing really new. Continue reading →

Review – Still Alice (2014)

Directors: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland

Starring: Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish, Stephen Kunken

Still AliceAlzheimer’s is the cruellest of diseases. You lose your memories, your personality, and ultimately yourself. Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s Still Alice does not shy away from challenging nature of this subject matter. Coming from a novel by neuroscientist Lisa Genova, and with Glatzer himself suffering from a neurodegenerative disorder (ALS), this is an honest and highly personal film.

Dr Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is a brilliant woman. An influential linguistics professor at Columbia University in New York, she is a powerful and confident intellectual. Shortly after her fiftieth birthday she starts to experience mental blanks, occasionally forgetting words or appointments. Suspecting something isn’t right, she visits a neurologist where, after some tests, she gets the diagnosis: early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Alice has a husband, John (Alec Baldwin), a medical researcher, and three children; Continue reading →

Review – Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Director: Joss Whedon

Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, James Spader, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Samuel L Jackson

Avengers Age of UltronThe 2012 superhero team up movie The Avengers, the culmination of Phase One of Marvel Studios plan for blockbuster world domination, was an enormous success taking $1.5 billion worldwide and becoming the third highest grossing film of all time. So naturally expectation is sky high for their next gathering, Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is still haunted by the events of New York which concluded The Avengers. Knowing what forces exist in the universe he is acutely aware of the limitations of the Avengers. They can only protect the world from so much. With the help of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) he has been secretly working at a plan he calls Ultron, which he imagines as “a suit of armour around the world.” After the Avengers reclaim Loki’s sceptre from a Hydra bunker, Stark and Banner try and harness its artificial intelligence and plant it in Ultron. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so sure enough this plan backfires. Designed to keep the peace, the sentient Ultron (James Spader) sees allowing the Earth to evolve through the elimination of the human race as key to achieving that peace. Continue reading →

Review – Annie (2014)

Director: Will Gluck

Starring: Quvenzhané Wallis, Jamie Foxx, Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale, Cameron Diaz

AnnieIt is the musical remake that nobody was asking for: a loose, modern retelling of Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin’s beloved stage musical Annie. Gone is the traditional red hair and chirpiness of Little Orphan Annie, which this film lampoons in its opening moments. This Annie, played by Quvenzhané Wallis (from Beasts of the Southern Wild), is no orphan, she’s a foster kid and a savvy one at that.

Annie’s life is changed when she is pulled from the path of a car by Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx) – our substitute Daddy Warbucks – a telecommunications mogul running for Mayor of New York. The incident is captured on video and goes viral, giving Stacks a much needed bump in the polls. With Annie seemingly his election trump card, Stacks’ cynical campaign manager arranges for him to foster her for the period of the campaign.

In seeking to modernise the story the filmmakers appear to have forgotten just how important historical context is to Annie’s tale. Continue reading →

Review – While We’re Young (2015)

Director: Noah Baumbach

Starring: Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Grodin

While We're YoungNew York auteur Noah Baumbach seems to make films about life stages. The Squid and the Whale, his 2005 calling card, was about a teenager dealing with the breakdown of his parents’ marriage. The critically acclaimed Frances Ha was about being in your twenties and trying to forge your identity. His newest film, While We’re Young, is about reaching middle age. It is about reaching that point where you no longer feel like a kid pretending to be an adult, about reaching that point when you realise that you no longer understand young people.

Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are a childless couple in their forties and have recently lost the last of their peers to babies. Cornelia is the producer daughter of celebrated documentarian Leslie Breitbart (Charles Grodin), while Josh is a documentary maker who, after initial acclaim, has spent the best part of the last decade working on an ambitious and intellectual film which in its current form is a six-and-a-half hour film that is seven hours too long. They meet a young, hipster couple, Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried). Continue reading →