Only God Forgives (2013) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written May 2nd, 2016*

"Time to meet the devil"

I have a weird history when it comes to "art" films. They either rub me the wrong way and I see them as pretentious nonsense, which is what happened that first time I watched this, then I rewatch them and end up liking them more.

I still don't love Only God Forgives, but in terms of art-house films, this is still one of the more simple and accessible ones. Sure, compared to Drive, it's a complete shock in terms of difference, but a lot of elements that made Drive great are still here.

Taking place in the hazy neon lit streets of Bangkok, Only God Forgives is about a family that run Thai boxing club which fronts as a drug smuggling operation. One of the sons decides to kill a young girl and a cop with supernatural powers lets the father of the daughter to get revenge. The brother isn't too upset about the death, seeing as he deserved it, but their mother decides that revenge must be taken.

The story is mostly fuelled by imagery. The dialogue is kept to a minimum. The lead character played by Ryan Gosling only speaks "17 lines" according to the internet, which is probably accurate. His performance was fine though, a lot of his emotion is conveyed through facial expressions, which works most of time, although it can get a bit frustrating.

I will say Kristen Scott Thomas's performance was excellent as the terrifying crime mother of the piece. She gets given the most vicious and horrible lines to say.

There's a lot of background to these deplorable characters that we get hints of through odd throwaway line. It's implied Ryan Gosling's mother and his brother had an incestuous relationship that he was jealous of and something happened that led to him beating his father to death and fleeing to Bangkok.
It's all so strange. The story is very straight forward, but told through such an abstract way. There honestly is not a lot of development out of these characters. The closest we get to this is a change of heart Gosling's character has at the end.

This feels more of a mood piece than an actual story led experience. It terms of visuals, this film utterly shines, we get the red neon lit streets of Bangkok and the backrooms of the city. Honestly, this is reddest film you will ever see, half the budget must have gone on red bulbs. Cliff Martinez' ambient score also bought a lot to the mood, with an almost fairy tale and unsettling soundtrack.

 
The biggest problem is I feel the film thinks it is more deep than it actual is. If you've ever seen an interview with Nicolas Winding Refn, you see he is one of the most pretentious pricks ever to grace this Earth and his filmmaking here shows. He likes to add weird imagery that seem to have some "deep" and hidden meaning, but it's all just actually really simple, just strangely told.

Only God Forgives is what it is. Certainly not for everyone, but if you take it for what it is, an abstract mood piece with a simple story and gorgeous visuals, it's just a bit full of itself.

7/10 Dans

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Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written December 8th, 2016*

"Magic prequel"


I had my reservations going into this Harry Potter prequel series (Which is the first of a planned FIVE). I felt it might be a CGI heavy and soulless cash-in that would remind me of the enjoyable, but hollow Hobbit films. Luckily, this wasn't not the case, and while Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is far from perfect, it's an enjoyable ride and it feels great to be back in the Harry Potter universe.

It follows a new protagonist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) as he arrives in 1920's New York with a suitcase full of magical creatures, which break loose and he has to find them with the help of Tina (Katherine Waterson), a witch who works for the 'Magical Congress of the United Stares of America, and a muggle Jacob (Dan Fogler) who gets caught in the middle of all this. At the same time a new evil is rising in the form of Percival Graves (Colin Farrell).

What I am happy to say about Fantastic Beasts is that it is a lot of fun, if a little long, I'd say a good 20 minutes could have been trimmed for a more smooth run-time. Aside from that, this was one of the more enjoyable blockbusters I've seen this year. It has its moments of surprising darkness, but it is pretty lighthearted for the most part. It balances its tones fairly well.

Things are messiest in the story department. Fantastic Beasts is at its best when we're spending time with the creatures, which have a variety of cool and extremely cute designs. The CGI might have been a bit hit and miss, but the creativity is there. When we go to the parts with Colin Farrell, things get a bit muddy. Things aren't explained very well and the stories don't really connect until the final act, and I'm not entirely sure what was going on.

The casting at least is great for the most part. I'm not entirely sold on Eddie Redmayne's Newt, who in all honesty, is a non-character. We don't learn a thing about him, aside from the fact he's writing a book about the animals and is really awkward. His performance felt very similar to The Theory of Everything in the scenes before Stephen Hawking's disease got worst.

Redmayne is outshined by the supporting cast. Especially Dan Fogler as the muggle, who is the vessel for the audience. He is the heart and soul of the film. His character arc also had the biggest emotional impact. By the end of it, I really did love his character. I'm not entirely sure if we'll see him again in the series, but god, I hope so. Katherine Waterson as Tina was decent as was her Alison Sudol as her sister Queenie.

It's hard to say about Colin Farrell as the villain, because in all honesty, he isn't given a lot to work with. He just looks broody and miserable all the time. It doesn't really matter though because he won't be in any more of the films as he's replaced by Johnny Depp. Who manages to be the worst part of the film with only 10 seconds of screen time. It's easy to hate on Johnny Depp these days, but I burst out laughing when his character made it on screen. The design was ridiculous and only further shows he hasn't moved on from these laughable, zany and over the top characters that have become a parody of themselves.

David Yates is directing all 5 entries in this series, which I think I'm okay with (He's directed every Harry Potter from Order of the Phoenix onwards). I like his visual style and the look of 1920's New York is recreated extremely well. I just wish the film was a little lighter, I don't mean tonally, I mean literally. This was such a darkly lit film and I'm not entirely sure why.

I also appreciated the fan service, which didn't feel too obnoxious. There are a few name drops and mentions of Hogwarts, but it never feels like it was living in the shadow of Harry Potter and felt like it's own thing, which is a good thing. That said, this film really feel like set-up for a bigger picture a lot of the time, which is a problem I've had with a few of the Marvel films.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them isn't entirely succesful, but it's a lot of fun and a decent start to this new set of films set in the Harry Potter universe. Either way, it's just nice to revisit this world.

7/10 Dans

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
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Castlevania: Season 1 (2017) - TV Review

Review:

*Originally written July 8th, 2017*

"Bloodlines"

I have no really history with the Castlevania series. I played about 20 minutes of Lords of Shadow on the Xbox 360 about 6 years ago. So I went into this pretty blank, with not idea what it would be like and any familiarity with the characters. I was also pretty reluctant to watch this due to my general disdain for anime (Fuck anime). 

It was surprising to see I enjoyed this as much as I did. It benefits and suffers from only being around 90 minutes long with 4 short episodes. I felt like I barely had enough time to learn about these characters or even care about them. This is something that could be ammended with a much better second season (Which has been announced), but for the first season, things are pretty hollow, but easy watching.

The animation is pretty gorgeous, I loved the look of everything. There's a variety of grotesque looking creatures and some stylish and gory action. It's also pretty dark, with some really gruesome moments, including an implied baby death, which was pretty cool.

My biggest problem with the show was just how short it was, despite enjoying it far more than I thought I would. I'm not entirely sure why this was even a season of TV due to its short length, it would have easily fared better as a film. The story was pretty simple and straight forward, so it was a shame they really didn't spend much time to flesh out characters that much, making everyone some pretty blank. 

There is a decent musical score throughout, but the voice acting ranges from good to downright awful. Most of the main cast are fine, it's when we get to the minor characters that the vocal performances turn absolutely abhorrent.

I don't have anything else to say. Castlevania was a better videogame adaptation than most, but it suffers from its short length, despite its beautiful animation and stylized violence. Hoping the show will improve a lot more going forward.

6/10 Dans

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Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written July 23rd, 2016*

"The joke's on me"

I was very much looking forward to this. I haven't read the comic, but everyone talked about it like it was the second coming of Jesus. An R-rated Batman film. It had potential to be amazing.

Well, this is mostly just a horrible mess. The voice performances are great, Mark Hamill is incredible as expected as The Joker. The inclusion of both Hamill and Kevin Conroy makes me feel like it could be canon to the Arkham game series (Which I love).

It just falls apart in its horribly sadistic and pointless feeling story that borders on torture porn with its treatment of the only female character. Barbara Gordon is so sexualized in this, it is disgusting, it felt like Michael Bay directed an animation at some points. What they do in a scene with her and Batman just felt wrong and a little disturbing.

We spend the first 30 minutes utterly destroying what could have been a really strong female character and reducing her to a immature school girl with a crush on Batman that takes things to a place that had no right to be there. They even shoehorn in an awfully offensive and stereotypically camp gay character that just left me thinking "Wow". The writers must have never interacted with a real gay person and based this character on over the top parodies.

The whole thing about Joker's backstory sucked. What makes The Joker great is his mysterious past. By telling us what happened to him in increasingly uninteresting flashbacks really takes away from his character. i'm really, really confused by what the purpose was to that whole entire subplot.
While I really didn't like this. I will admit they were some inspired moments. The Joker's funhouse ride was effectively disturbing and his musical number was awesome. Aside from that and the animation, everything else sucked.

It did at least earn its much talked about 'R' rating due to its content. There's some bloody shootouts, beatings, an implied rape and someone gets beaten to a pulp. I would have liked to have seen this kind of content in a better written Batman film, but instead we're stuck with this.

The script was just awful. Filled with cringeworthy lines and terrible dialogue that was almost laughable. And at 70 minutes this still felt too long. The first 20 minutes are such a drag too. I don't know how big the comic is, but by the looks of it, they really struggled to get this thing up to feature length.

I really have no idea what they were going for with this. If I hear people say "Oh, but that was in the comic". Well, then the comic sucked too, or it translated better on paper. This was just horrible.

If this truly is one of the best Batman stories ever, then this adaptation of The Killing Joke is a complete failure on all levels. I can only imagine how much better this could have been had it had a real budget and been bought to lice-action with a much better crew behind it. One of my biggest disappointments of the year.

2/10 Dans

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Jason Bourne (2016) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written August 3rd, 2016*

"Bourne again"

Director Paul Greengrass joked that a new film in the Bourne franchise should be called 'The Bourne Redundency', which is ironic, considering he just directed a film which would have suited that title a lot better than 'Jason Bourne'. Jason Bourne isn't a bad film per-se, it's actually a very entertaining one. It's just, at the end of the day, this whole thing felt very pointless and I'm not sure why they bothered. I'm a big fan of this series, I like them all (even Legacy), but I agree with most when they say Bourne Ultimatum was a perfect ending for the CIA assassin with amnesia.

After a 9 year absence, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is drawn out of hiding by Nikki Parsons (Julia Stiles) after she uncovers some hacked information from the CIA that involves Bourne's deceased father. Bourne is then hunted by a CIA operative Heather (Alicia Vikander), the director of the CIA Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) and an assassin (Vincent Cassel)

Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon both said they wouldn't come back unless they had a "perfect script", which makes this return to the franchise for both of them since 2007 a very strange affair. Although the script itself was penned by Greengrass, I have a very hard time believing anyone involved thought that what they worked with was even close to the original trilogy. In many ways it feels like a greatest hits collection from the Bourne series. Just not as fresh as it was nearly 10 years ago.

This is a Bourne film through and through. There's no denying that. We have people in control rooms watching Bourne on monitors, a rent-an-assassin trying to kill Bourne, a dead love interest and of course... the awful shakey-cam that tries its hardest to derail every single action scene. I'm so confused at what Paul Greengrass is thinking. Why does he think good action is framing a scene so it's borderline impossible to follow what's going on? Someone needs to stop him. He's a good director and can tell some truly compelling stories, but he just can't film action at all.

There is some decent action though. The finale through the Las Vegas strip is really decent and did some cool stuff. I even managed to follow most of it, which is a godsend when it comes to Greengrass. The first act ending set-piece in Greece good too, although the shakey-cam nearly did ruin it. I honestly had no idea what was happening in a few shots. It's surprising at how little action there was in Jason Bourne actually, aside from the Greece and Vegas scenes, I'm having a hard time recalling any other action.

As fun as the few action scenes are, the story feels like a rehash of what's come before it with nothing new brought to the table. Jason Bourne really has a hard time justifying its existence as a film. While this is a more watchable film than The Bourne Legacy, I will at least admit that Legacy at the very least went in a different direction, Jason Bourne on the other hand is just a remix of stuff we've seen before. Just with new actors and a time jump. Aside from Matt Damon, the only other returning actor was Julia Stiles, who is given such a disservice considering she's been in the series since Identity. I won't spoil it, but based on the trailers, you can take a pretty good guess at what they do with her character and be right.

The biggest problem is that ultimately, nothing really happens. While we go through the motions of the story and its brisk and entertaining runtime, once that Moby song plays as we cut to credits, Bourne is back where he was at the start and all the audience and Bourne has learned a few new things about his past. It all just didn't seem worth it. I will obviously watch more Bourne films, but I just don't think there is any more story to tell. The script wasn't great either, there's a few lame and heavy handed references to Snowden that made me laugh out loud.

I'm sounding very negative, I still did really enjoy it for the most part, it just has a lot of problems, but there a some more positives on top of the action scenes. Matt Damon is reliable and good as ever as Bourne, he's much more quiet this time, but no less badass than he's ever been. Tommy Lee Jones brought things to life as the villain, although he was pretty much Brian Cox from the previous films.

Vincent Cassel was wasted as the hitman with a grudge against Bourne, we get his motivation, but there's no more depth other than that he's a complete pyschopath that kills a lot of random civilians. Lastly there was Alicia Vikander, who was a confusing character to say the least. Vikander plays the role with zero emotion, a singular facial expression and her motives are far from clear, even by the end.

It did look really nice too. The cinematography was all fine and I liked the lighting, especially in the control rooms, they all had this pretty looking blue glow. As a globe-trotting film they showed of the countries they filmed in pretty well.

Jason Bourne doesn't live up the heights of the original trilogy and it does nothing new, but its still an entertaining ride and fun to see Matt Damon back and badass as ever as Bourne.

7/10 Dans

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Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written July 6th, 2017*

"The Almost Amazing Spider-Man"

I was pretty on the fence about Spider-Man: Homecoming before its release (Can you blame me?), the trailers have been uninspired, the posters sucked and Sony have fucked up Spider-Man more times than they've done it right. So I was actually pretty surprised that I liked Homecoming as much as I did.

Spidey joining the MCU is a big deal, they used him effectively in Captain America: Civil War, and this takes place mere moments after that in the form of a video log during Peter's time in Berlin with Stark. It also takes place 8 years after the events of The Avengers, as it still deals with the after effects of the Battle of Manhattan.

I'll say the stuff I liked first. Tom Holland is excellent as Peter Parker and Spider-Man. It was so refreshing to see a different take on the character as a young and naive kid, but still already Spider-Men (No origin story again, thank fuck. No mention of Uncle Ben either). It doesn't cover ground with seen before, although it does pay homage to a few moments from Sam Raimi's trilogy. Holland isn't an actor I'm very familiar with, but he really carried the film and was far better than Andrew Garfield's mentally challenged Marty McFly Peter Parker.

The stuff I loved the most was all the high-school stuff. This feels like a love letter to John Hughes' films. It's a coming of age tale as Peter has to balance his double life as a student and Spider-Man. There are some wonderful homages to Ferris Bueller's day off and other general cliches of these sort of '80s high school comedies, and that's where Homecoming really shines.

There's a decent supporting cast. Michael Keaton is far more memorable than most Marvel villains as The Vulture, although he's a little underused. His character had genuine motivation, charm and real intimidation, especially during an hilarious scene towards the end as he's forced into a situation by pure coincidence and has to deal with Peter Parker, rather than Spider-Man. I loved Zendaya as Michelle, who delivers some really dead-pan humour while still remaining cool and I hope to see her expanded for further films. I really did not like Jacob Batalon as Ned, he was a purely lame attempt at humour and felt like he was directly from the worst of Marvel.

It is seriously funny at times too. I usually find Marvel films to be horrifically childish and cringe-worthy with their humour (Age of Ultron and Thor 2 being the biggest offenders), but it really helps that the humour doesn't really feel like a marvel film and does actually pull out some decent gags, including one that was surprisingly dark for a kids film. Captain America's brief appearances also make for some of the funniest stuff in the MCU to date. Homecoming easily has the best closing 3 seconds of a Marvel film so far and best post credits scene.

Where I found fault in Homecoming however was the pacing and action. I found myself really bored in moments during the action, which were very forgettable (And spoiled in the trailers). It should have been trimmed down to around 2 hours. The only action I really liked was the montage of Spider-Man just being a "Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man". The finale was a complete trainwreck. It wasn't a bombastic, city-destroying end, but it was far too dark to see what was happening, so I was so taken out of the film and I just wanted it to end by this point.

The CGI was pretty solid for the most part, but I really don't like the look of Spider-Man's suit, it just looks really fake and distracting, but I did like variety of gadgets and settings it had. His homemade suit is better though.

They made a huge deal of Robert Downey Jr. returning as Iron Man here and Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan. Thanfully, they did not steal the spotlight at all and it was all about Peter. Iron Man did add a genuinely sweet touch of being Peter's father figure in the film. Again, something I hope is explored in the future. Assuming, Iron Man dies in the next Avengers film, that could make for an interesting character arc for Peter.

Spider-Man: Homecoming has its faults like a lack of any interesting action or visual style (It is very "Marvelized"), I still had a lot of fun with it and it's easily the best Spider-Man film in 13 years now. Here's to more good Spidey films.

7/10 Dans

Spider-Man: Homecoming is out now in cinemas in the UK
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Jackie (2016) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written January 20th, 2017*

"When something is written down, does that make it true?"

I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I felt about Jackie. It's a strange beast of a film and a bit hard to get through, but it is thoroughly fascinating and features an amazing performance from Natalie Portman. It's also worth pointing out the release of this film in the UK was on Trump's inauguration day, which was either a strange coincidence or intentional.

A lot has been said about Natalie Portman's performance here as Jackie Kennedy following her week after her husband's assassination. As expected, she was great. While her accent was a little hard to get behind at first (I had no idea what Jackie Kennedy actually sounds like), she really captures that broken grief of suffering such a traumatic event and worrying about her husband's legacy in the process. Maybe it was just my hearing, but I did have a little trouble hearing what she was saying at times. Towards the end I thought she said "There won't be another Candyland".

Where Jackie also exceeds is its period design and costumes, this is a gorgeous film with a look I can't quite put my finger on. The aspect ratio was also a little jarring to me. There was some great use of historical footage mixed in with real scenes showing just how perfectly they captured some of these moments. As a fan of films with long vacant stares with close ups of characters, there was no shortage of this in Jackie. It didn't linger as much as say Refn, but it felt more interesting than your usual biopic.

While I was definitely interested to see Jackie for Natalie Portman's performance, I would be lying if I wasn't more interested in Mica Levi's score for this. This is only her second score, the first being the amazing Under the Skin, she's also from Guildford, where I'm from, which is cool. While not as strong as her Under the Skin score, I did love her score for Jackie, another hypnotic and beautiful orchestral soundtrack that elevated most of the scenes. I will say, while I loved what I was hearing, the music did feel out of place sometimes, making scenes feel really unsettling and foreboding rather than what I think they were going for. It might have tampered with some of the more emotional moments.

My biggest problem I found with Jackie was easily its editing. Like I said, this was a hard film to get through, it has no real sense of pace. The scenes are really short and it jumps around a lot, I just wish they lingered on some of these moments more. This really could have done with an extra 20 minutes or so. It all does feel very contained at least, it all takes place within a week or so, which was interesting. It's just a shame it didn't feel more coherent. It's not an abomniation of editing in the same way Suicide Squad was for example, but it was a bit messy and stopped a good film from being a great one.

Jackie was a very interesting and different biopic led by Portman's potentially Oscar winning performance, beautiful design and Mica Levi's gorgeous score.

7/10 Dans

Jackie is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
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