Hail, Caesar!

Here's the fist thoughts on a year of cinema. I've signed up for a year long pass at the Odeon which basically lets me go to the cinema as much as I want, so I figure I'll kept notes and thought on what I've seen during the year (will be fun for me to least to look back on)

So up first is the Coen brothers' "Hail, Ceaser!".

The film follows a fictionalised version of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) a notorious 'Head of Production' aka fixer for MGM whose job was to kept the contracted stars in line and out of the papers. Here we have trying to track down a kidnapped star amongst other things.

It's packed with a great cast including George Clooney as the kidnapped Kirk Douglas style star, Scarlett Johannsson a aquatic pictures star who's not as innocent as her reputation, Channing Tatum a musical performer, Johan Hill, Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton and more, The problem is they all feel underused giving the impression that a lot of material must of have been left on the cutting room floor.

Johannsson's story in particular feel's truncated and like it was originally intended to be a bigger part of the film. Indeed one of Mannix's most notable (and nasty) stories concerned having a female star "adopt" her own baby to hide the shame of single motherhood, a story clearly the basis for this part of the film.

It's only really Brolin's Mannix that has much screen time out of the case and I'd say he's not given much interesting to do beyond the centre of swirling almost farce. The one aspect that gives a bit of insight into Mannix is brace of scenes of him considering a new job offer.

Overall the film is something which never quite gets going, for it's whole run time it feels like it's going to start picking up speed but never quite does. If it had the energy of the likes of "Raising Arizona" I think it would have worked much better. There are strange choices like the pause to show a song & dance number being filmed for of the fictional films in full with no clear indication why. It just slows things down.

It illustrates the issues here, some scenes really work. Fiennes' director struggling getting a rodeo star newly assigned to his film to get the lines right. The 'study group' of Communists. (The old school Hollywood studio as analogy for the evils of capitalism appealed to the sociologist and film nerd in me!) A visit to a professional legal stand-in.

But amongst these are scenes that drift like the fore mentioned song and dance, scenes the feel like they've been dropped in from a more manic film (those with Tilda Swinton's duel cameo) or Mannix speaking with Christopher Lambert's director which seems to fill no purpose.

Being the Coens there is meticulous attention paid to details such as the period setting, the difference aspect ratios used for each of the different faux films so they appear as they would have in their day.

Overall it's largely enjoyable but very much a lesser effort from the Coen brothers. The good news is last time they made a farce that didn't quite work with "Burn After Reading" the came back with "A Serious Man" and "True Grit"

Continuing adventures of riker Archer...

Commander William Sterling Archer Riker.

Deadpool

Time for some longer thoughts on Deadpool.  Currently the film is performing very well and has already it's taken four times it's relatively modest $56m-ish budget.

It is being suggested that this shows there is an appetite for comic book adaptations that are aimed at an adult audience instead of the typical 12A/PG-13 bracket. I'm not so sure, I think it more suggests there is a market for filthy, crude and violent comedies that have good marketing.

I wouldn't expect a 'straight-laced' X-Men film pitched at an 'R' to perform as well, although admittedly Blade did well enough to produce a couple of sequels but tellingly it was marketed as a horror-action picture rather than a comic book property at time of it's release.

Anyway as for the film itself, Deadpool starts with energy and a high level of imagination with in particularly amusing credit sequence. Although as soon as this sequence ends there is the first signal that the film might not be able to keep up the level of creativity.

This is because the first major sequence is a retread of the test footage that infamously lead to the film being green lit in the first place. It still a fairly striking sequence but you do wonder about why after a few years it's still being re-used.

From here we get the perfunctory entrance of two other X-Men characters who serve to be butt of a few jokes and the disappear again until the final reel showdown before we flash back to how Wade became Deadpool.

Its a standard approach of a desperate man making a bad choice to trust someone dodgy, the issue for me being though that nature of the constant smirking, smutty script doesn't really allow any kind of drama to breathe and in particular it's hard to sense any sincerity in the central relationship when it's basically a string of sex jokes and not a lot else.

Indeed the female characters are very poorly served. Wade's girlfriend is established into the story as a hooker, is kidnapped working in a strip joint and not given much else to do then offer sex or look a bad sad when required. Apart from that we have a teenage 'goth' girl cliché and strong woman who Colossus doesn't want to fight because she's a woman. Neither of which grows at all beyond those very basic outlines.

So when we get to the inevitable "I'm too ugly to face my love" cliché it feels hollow but then I despite being constantly told otherwise I didn't think Wade's scarred face was all that bad.

Meanwhile as the films on it falls into a standard three pattern building to the final reel showdown with an undeveloped villain with very vaguely sketched powers. In that way the film actually matches Marvel Studios own origin story films by having a forgettable antagonist.

In terms of how he plays it, if you seen Reynolds in Blade : Trinity, you know how he plays it. Which is fun for a bit but does start to wear thin the longer it goes on as sadly whilst in comic form Deadpool's ISP of breaking fourth wall is not taken advantage of fully. There are a few fourth wall breaking moments (including a good gag about breaking the fourth wall side a fourth wall break) but I felt so much more could have been made of it. The chance was there to not only deliver a few pop culture gags but really work in some satire on the nature of super-heroes and movie genres.

But having said that I did laugh a number of times and there is cracking joke about our very own David Beckham. I just fell it could have been funnier if they'd stepped back from the crudity a little and approached things a bit smarter.

Oh, the post credits scene is nicely done as is the post post credit one.

David Fincher : American dark

David Fincher has worked his way up from the first rung to become one of Hollywood's leading directors. Starting as a film loader he progressed to ILM and then into the world of commercials followed by a stint creating music videos for some of the world's biggest names.
These videos and adverts showcased a strong talent for evocative framing and a vein of often dark and edgy imagery and humour. L.A. took notice and in 1992 Fincher was bought on board to lens the third in the Alien franchise.

Alien3
To say Fincher's first film was a smooth ride without complication would be a lie. Coming onboard a project that was already a distance down the line he fought almost constantly with the studio at Fox; both over budgetary considerations and the shape the story of the film was taking.
After Cameron's wham bang military actioner Fincher's Alien film moves back to much darker territory; literally as well as thematically.
Set on a penal colony the film is a dark and brooding one, it looks at the nature of redemption, the darkness inside of us all and pitches Ripley up against her greatest fear and pulls no punches when we realise what exactly is growing inside.
Hampered by poorly implemented effects the film (like Scott's first instalment) works much better when the titular Alien is just the a presence lurking in the background as the stranded human characters battle to keep their faith and control their darker instincts. It perhaps receives a colder reception than it deserves overall, but the signs are here. From the dark wit of inter-cutting a funeral with the birth of the Alien to the audacious closing sequence.
Fincher still feels he was not supported on the project (even after release in the US the studio was trying to market the film as something almost totally different in other parts of the globe) and the antagonism caused him to go back to his work in music videos for a few years. But when he returned, it was quite the return…
　
Se7en
Fincher's signature film, Se7en is a police procedural thriller built upon the concept of a killer recreating the seven deadly sins. As we start out we appear to have all the clichés in place; the detective on one last case before retirement is asked to look after the new guy in town who's just moved to the big city and a race for time as they try to stop the killer before he complete his set.
What could have been something as bland as Kiss The Girls becomes something of a twisted fairy tale under Fincher's hand. We are thrown into world where it is always dark or raining (or both), where the killer outwits the heroes until he turns himself in, where the city becomes a gothic hinterland and where we are allowed to realise the true nature of events just the detectives piece it together themselves.
The crime scenes are inventive pieces of both design and staging (still a thousand times more effective than the likes of Saw), who can forget the sudden waking of 'Sloth'?
Crucially Morgan Freeman's Det Somerset and Brad Pitt's Det Mills are allowed to breath as characters and are fleshed out as people rather than just as badges of the law. So when that gut wrenching end comes we feel it as much as they do, even if by this point at least part of us is rooting for the mysterious John Doe.
Sight & Sound proclaimed "Seven has the scariest ending since George Sluizer's original The Vanishing...and stands as the most complex and disturbing entry in the serial killer genre since Manhunter".

The Game
Se7en was followed two years later by the game and with Michael Douglas amongst the cast Fincher was playing with the big boys now. Taking the thriller genre and pushing it to explore the comfortable capitalist lives we can fall into and what it takes to make us feel alive again Fincher uses a tortuous narrative packed with twists and turns to keep the audience on it's it toes.
Once again we are taken along the darker side of life as Douglas' Van Orton is driven to despair and suicide by a series of events that he can't understand and at the end can't be sure if they are even real. Fincher here's tackles much of the ground as Cronenberg's eXistenz but without the need for sci-fi loop holes and in much more satisfying manner. It's the trickery of Loki brought to modern America.
The Game remains Fincher's least recognised film but his next effort would go far from unnoticed…

Fight Club
A blistering examination of modern masculinity and searing assault on consumerism, coming from the 'unfilmable' novel by Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club was a divider of audiences. Today it is increasingly scene as one of the most daring films to ever come out of the Hollywood studio's but at the time it was reviled by many critics as being a pro-fascism propaganda piece dressed up in ultra violence. To say these people missed the message is understatement. Much of the film comments on how many men in modern society have found dissatisfaction with the state of masculinity as it currently exists. The characters of the novel lament the fact that many of them were raised by their mothers because their fathers either abandoned their family or divorced their mothers. As a result, they see themselves as being "a generation of men raised by women," being without a male role model in their lives to help shape their masculinity. This ties in with the anti-consumer culture theme, as the men in the film see their "IKEA nesting instinct" as resulting from the feminization of men in a matriarchal culture.
Fight Club mixes and matches from the get go, mixed films stokes, exposures, speeds, tones and graphics to intoxicating effect and then just as you thing you've got the hang of it the film drops its false bottom and the world falls away.
All along the director's dark humour and eye for a shot shine through, it is no mistake Tyler 'appears' several times before he actually appears. Once again working with Pitt, Fincher mould his screen persona to perfectly match him to the idealised version of a man we all wish we were; stylish, cool, witty, unafraid, smart and good in a fight.
It is unlikely a film of this type will ever escape unaltered out of the studios again.

Panic Room
Fincher followed up with the technically outstanding Panic Room, whilst the story and themes of the film are not as developed as his previous work (it revolves around one night inside a New York brownstone as a mother and daughter fight off intruders and seek refuge in the titular panic room) the film is something of a technical playground for the director.
This is best illustrated in the unbroken shot that takes us from outside the house, inside and through the rooms and out the other side, passing through a kettle handle and the way. Pushing his camera set-ups to new heights throughout the purposefully constructed full house set.
Thematically what we do have returning is the idea of those abandoned by or without father figure and a struggle to unleash and control our darker instincts to protect what we hold dear and those around us. The film may be relatively straight forward and lightweight but the skills learned here allowed Fincher to dive deeply into the subject of his next film and retain that striking ability to use images to haunt, unsettle and inspire.

Zodiac
For me Zodiac is (to this date) Fincher's biggest achievement. It is a detailed look into one of America's most discussed criminal cases, the Zodiac killer. Tracking the investigation and it's effects on the men around it (form the police detectives working the case to the newspaper writer and journalist who become fascinated by the case) the film is a study in the power of obsession and the drive to solve the mysteries in front of us. It is not about the case, it is about who the case swallows up and spits out the other side. (The Zodiac killer has never been caught).
A meticulous recreation of the period the films draws together a trio of strong performances to let us into the world of the detectives, the reporters and what it is to be frustrated, intrigued and led along. Meanwhile we occasionally get first hand views of the killer at work and one sequence by the lakeside in particular makes for uncomfortable watching fat more unsettling than many outright horror films. Empire's Kim Newman sums it up well "You'll need patience with the film's approach, which follows its main characters by poring over details, and be prepared to put up with a couple of rote family arguments and weary cop conversations, but this gripping character study becomes more agonisingly suspenseful as it gets closer to an answer that can't be confirmed"
If you have the patience to let it draw you in Zodiac is the best crime thriller of a generation.

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
After all the dark and death, Fincher finally goes all out to retell a modern fairytale. Benjamin Button ages backwards and we follow him through a life of adventure, love and loss.
Fincher's photography here gives the film an otherworldly glow as we follow Ben through his life so it always feels just across the line from reality and after a few minutes we no longer question the strangeness of his condition.
Flowing like a typical bio-pic albeit with the occasional stop for broad humour and a meditation on the nature of fate the film rolls along from one stage of life to the next through a leisurely running time. Once again issues of father figures rears head but the first time we have Fincher musing on relationships, those that fit the moment and time in which they exist and those which stay with us forever.

Note : This was originally written before the release of The Social Network, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo & Gone Girl. I'm working a piece covering them which I'll put up soon. For now I'll leave you with the awesome trailer for Fincher's first part of the Millennium trilogy.

Trailer of the Day : The Bourne Legacy

With the upcoming new entry that has director Paul Greengrass back onboard and will see Matt Damon's Bourne cross paths with Jeremey Renner's Cross I am actually quite excited.

Legacy is actually a in my view a good action thriller despite it's lackluster reception on release. Smartly exploring an expanded history of the black ops programs with a different angle as the main character know fully who he is and is just looking to survive. It does have a unsatisfying ending which leaves things very much open for the continuing story. But hopefully that can be forgive now a new entry has been confirmed.

Quote Quiz

Ok, some thoughts still forming for a next proper post (and I may write a Recommends later) but in the interests of keeping up the pace after a week off (Superbowl awesomeness) it's quote quiz time.

You pretty much know the score, 15 quotes below simply guess where they come from. I'd say there some really easy ones here and maybe a couple that'll throw people....

1. "Dear diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count" Heathers

2. "I take no pleasure in taking a life if it's from a person who doesn't care about it" Leon

3. "The only skater to win four national championships and an adult film award" Blades Of Glory

4. "It is strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing" Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

5. "When I was growing up they would say you could become cops or criminals. But what I'm saying is this; when you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?" The Departed

6. "You're US government property. You're a malfunctioning thirty million dollar weapon" The Bourne Identity

7. "Do you buy all these books retail or do you send away for, like, a shrink kit that comes with all these volumes?" Good Will Hunting

8. "I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection." Fight Club

9. "Hermione just stole all of our shit." This Is The End

10. "So what, "It's better than eleven percent"! What the hell does that have to do with anything?" Guardians Of The Galaxy

11. "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling." Inception

12. "Somewhere along the way I lost a step. I got sloppy. Dulled my edge. Maybe I went and did the worst crime of all. I got civilised."

13. "This is the best bad idea we have, sir. By far."

14. "All those years wasted fighting each other, Charles. To have a precious few of them back." X-Men : Days Of Future Past

15. "I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work there, Lou." Fargo

So off you go, I'll cross off the answers as people get them.