Sunday 28 October 2012

Coraline (Outside Screening in City Park, Bradford)

Having watched the new James Bond film ‘Skyfall’ in the warmth of Cineworld and then warmed up with some pizza with friends, it was time to wrap up warm and head to the outside showing of Coraline in the City Park. A huge inflatable screen – one that came down very quickly as we warmed up after in the Turl’s Green – looked impressive in the park and there was a good turnout considering the cold of the night. Thankfully, there was a stall selling hot chocolate and sweets and was, surprisingly, reasonably priced, though it would be nice if they did it again in summer (contrast of the screen depending) to be able to enjoy a pint with the film, if park regulations allow it.

After several animated shorts (we were late to the party but only saw one, a funny and touching tale about a tiger and its cub in a circus) we got the main film, and it was an experience to watch it live outside even in the temperature. I always forget how weird the film is, especially for a kids film, and wondered how many would be retiring home that night a little bit creeped out by the weird characters, monstrous other-mother and the general surreal feel to the piece. It’s an enjoyable film, though, just rather wacky but fitting in with the hallowe’en theme.

The experience of watching it was good. There could have been more seats to sit on in the park – we had to resort to sitting on the edge of the mirror pool – and the sound was perhaps a little too low, but it was a great experience and one I’m glad I went to and, following on from the garden of light, shows that Bradford Council are doing some interesting things with their new park and I hope this will continue. All they need to do now is convert the Odeon into the entertainments venue proposed and then we’ll truly have a thriving entertainment hub in the form of the park, theatres and food and drink venues.

On the night there was security around to keep the place under control, but there were few distractions considering it was a Saturday night, and there was a good mix of Bradfordians of all ages come to see the film.

Here’s hoping for a repeat at Christmas with a festive film – but perhaps with some more patio heaters!

Skyfall [Review]

Having missed out on watching ‘Quantum of Solace’ I felt I needed to see the new James Bond film having really enjoyed the 007 reboot ‘Casino Royale’ and finding the new trailer for the latest film one of the best and promising I’ve seen a while, coupled with the positive praise the film is receiving.

And I’m glad I did, as ‘Skyfall’ is one of the best films I’ve seen this year.

The first thing you have to get over when seeing the film is how much of an industry the Bond series has become. Sure, product placement has always been common in the films to help finance all the car chases, explosions and drinks but I’ve never noticed that many of them in the films itself, but ahead of the 143-minute long movie were more adverts featuring Daniel Craig or Bond look-a-likes selling spin-off merchandise for cars, perfume and mobile phones than you would believe, so much so that my friends and I expected Craig to appear in every other advert not themed around the film, like a tuxedo-wearing Samuel L Jackson coming to recruit more customers to the Avengers Initiative of flogging 007 tat or the Blues Brothers telling the cinema audience ‘we’re getting the brand back together – here, buy some stuff’. They did spare us any less high end products like the James Bond oven mit or the 007 wok (“for when you want your Chinese food shaken and stir-fried”) but we could drive like Bond, smell like Bond and even drink bottled beer like Bond, something he avoids in the commercial but does in the film. What next in the franchise? Bond downs some WKD and gets a male vajazzle?

Anyway, forgetting the adverts and we get into the film itself. Opening with a moody blurred shot of Bond in silhouette – a camera technique used throughout the film with lots of battles happening Matrix-esque in silhouette, representing the shadowy forces at work in this film – we see him on the hunt for a missing laptop hard drive containing all the locations of UN agents undercover, naturally something MI6 doesn’t want going walkabouts. What we get is a high-adrenaline pre-credits sequence that really starts the film off well, with an on-form Craig chasing on foot, in a van, on bike and then on a train, with lots of small, inventive sections that really build up the pace, supported by his as-yet un-named assistant and M, played again by Judi Dench, over intercom back in London. The chase is gruelling and Bond proves himself not to be immune from mistakes, but it’s a spectacle to watch especially when it involves a train and a JCB and then a junior assistant who makes a bad mistake and sends Bond to what we assume is a watery grave. Assume, that is, if we thought the film would be over now with the lead man dead.

The opening credits sequence is back to the brilliance of the Casino Royale style opening with elements of Monty Python animation thrown in, fitting Adele’s soundtrack song perfectly and slipping in Bond conventions old and new into the piece with lots of hints of what to come.

I’m going to leave describing the plot there as I don’t want to spoil it for you but, if you’ve seen the trailer you’ll know what key plot points are. ‘Skyfall’ focusses much more on an invisible threat and covers cyberterrorism, two terrorist attacks in London and M’s past coming back to haunt her, with passing references to internet culture. I’m going to say now that you should see the film and if you want to go into the film clean then don’t read any more here as I may cover some mild spoilers.

Still with me? Then let’s look at the keys points of the film. The plot is very involving with many exciting set pieces. It feels, at times, more like M’s film that Bond’s, and she gets a well employed arc through the film. The attack on the MI6 building is short but impacting and Bond’s life away from MI6 summed up neatly, and there is a constant downbeat feel that keeps coming back, how Britain is no longer the power and force it was. There are lots of elements to ‘Skyfall’ and each brings something else to the table and move about so much there is no opportunity to get bored. We get a court-room-esque scene analysing M’s reputation and decision making; Bond’s inability to get back into shape and the effect this has on his role; a casino-based deviation; a thrilling chase sequence through the London Underground, even if the denouement of this is a little abrupt and lacking in impact considering what happens – just let’s say it involves a subway train and I half expected Ken Barlow to appear and go ‘Oh, not again’; and a new underground base for MI6.

There are also plenty of nods to previous instalments in celebrating of the fifty years, including the return of two long-standing characters played by new actors, one of which is Ben Whishaw’s Q, a marvellous interpretation and a character who adds a new element to the Bond formula and plays a key part in the plot, and proves not to be totally infallible. Played a little like a more conventional Sherlock Holmes, he’s a good balance against the brawn of Bond. Plus he has a great tea mug. We also get a retro Bond car, the return of a couple of gadgets (plus a witty line from Q about them) and a return to the one-liners that the series is known for, but they’re not too cheesy as in previous ones. In fact, this film does feel more Bond than the previous Bourne-inspired entries, and they seem to have got the balance right this time.

As the plot progresses the action shifts up to Scotland to the Skyfall estate for the final third of the film, which is quite a tonal shift for a Bond movie and doesn’t quite fit in with the feel, but offers something a little different, leading to a very dark and threatening ending as Bond aims to protect himself and M from the oncoming threat.

One character I haven’t mentioned yet is Javier Bardem as Silva, the main villain of the piece. An expert in cybercrime and a blast from M’s past, his appearance in the film is actually quite late, about half way through, and is a mixed bag. There are moments in the film where his part is played to perfection, in particular the chase through the underground and the reveal of what M’s actions did to him physically in what is quite a gruesome reveal, and he certainly has the menace of Heath Ledger’s Joker, especially in the final third, but he seemed at the start too comical even for a Bond villain, coming across as a mix between Sacha Baron Cohen and Pascale Sauvage from the first ‘Johnny English’ film and knocked back the realism of the film for me a little.

The cast was supported by great turns from Albert Finney as Skyfall gamekeeper Kincade and Ralph Fiennes as Gareth Mallory and as an overall piece was very enjoyable to watch and didn’t feel its lengthy two-and-a-half hours. The plot unfolded well, the new characters – especially Q and Naomie Harris’ Eve – were essential parts to the story and Craig felt much more comfortable in the skin of Bond. The set-pieces, in particular the opening train sequence, the Underground part and the siege of Skyfall, were as epic as we expect from a Bond film and there is an emotional climax, but one that I expected from seeing the trailer. The one thing the film doesn’t have is many surprises. The ending is obvious from the trailer and the outcome seems a waste considering everything they went through in the film, and the wake short and rushed, even if it is punctuated with a neat joke and a couple of revelations.

With its mix of exotic locales and international missions, but with a much larger focus on home soil which makes the threat much closer, and a more realistic threat with computers replacing nuclear warheads and other clichéd Bond villain territory, a theme covered both inside and outside MI6, the shift in locale ticks the box and, like The Joker from the Dark Knight, the threat seems more real for being more grounded.

Overall, ‘Skyfall’ is the best Bond film I’ve seen for sheer adventure, set-pieces and tension and rounds off fifty years of Bond, James Bond, perfectly.

(8.5/10)

Sunday 7 October 2012

Looper [Movie Review]

Labelled on the posters as this decade’s answer to ‘The Matrix’, ‘Looper’ stars ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Joseph Gordon-Levitt and action man Bruce Willis as two generations of the same character. Thirty years in the future Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is a looper, a person hired to assassinate people sent back from the future another thirty years ahead when time travel has been invented and bodies hard to dispose of. A looper’s job is to receive the hooded and clocked person, shoot them with their blunderbuss gun, and dispose of the body, getting rewarded for their work with silver bars that can be converted in a bureau-de-change into real cash.

However, eventually in the life of a looper, their future self is sent back to cover up their crimes with a golden payout but the knowledge that in thirty years they will be dead. This happens to Joe as his future self comes back but he fails to kill him and thus begins a cat and mouse game as both are on the run from the organisation.

‘Looper’ is full of fantastic concepts, not least the one outlined above. There is a sub-plot about telekinesis that works well, and the futuristic environment is well created in CGI, from the buildings, to vehicles to the sci-fi conventions of screens and adverts etc. Sure, I don’t think cities will have so much new construction in thirty years but it feels right. The whole world is well created with a gritty, realistic feel and a big sense of them and us, from the high-flying drug-taking life of the wealthy loopers, to the poorer end of the community with patched-up cars, living lives out of trolleys. Gun crime is rife in this world, a world that looks futuristic but without being unrealistically futuristic.

The first half of the film is where it excels. Gordon-Levitt is captivating on screen as Joe, with make-up and prosthetics on to bridge the gap between him and an older Bruce Willis. Some have commented on the distracting nature of these effects but, to be honest, I didn’t notice them, other than they had a neat similarity between them. The time-lapse, though quick, where the two actors change from one to the other is well done. Willis has lots of fun as Joe’s older self and, alongside Jeff Daniels as Abe – my favourite in the film – there is a lot of humour employed amongst the darker side of the story, from a great scene involving a looper and a spinning gun to one where the loopers chase Willis with Gordon-Levitt, only to turn on the latter when they realise what’s happening, to many scenes shared between Gordon-Levitt and Willis that highlight their similar personalities separated by thirty years.

And the humour does compliment the darkness well. We have a looper that fails to kill his victim and is thus is slowly surgically worked on, removing his fingers and legs, nose and more, changes that immediately reflect on his future self, a grotesque but well realised transformation. There are characters working in strip joints; characters addicted to drugs; and characters that are willing to shoot somebody with a click of the fingers.

You may be thinking from reading this so far that I agree with the reviews, that the film is brilliantly. However, though there are some great concepts and the first half of the film is great, establishing the world, characters and concepts with precision, the second half goes awry. There is a scene half-way through where two new characters are introduced, characters that set the direction of the film, that feels in the cinema like they’ve just missed out something, like the jump cut is too major and it is really disorientating and takes about fifteen minutes to get back on track. It is where we are introduced to a character in the future who is destroying the world and how he can be stopped, which is the direction the film takes from now on. Here we find concepts introduced earlier, such as the telekinesis returning, but the way they are used, to me, felt confusing, rushed and appearing out of the blue, and not gelling with the rest of the film. After establishing Willis as a credible older Joe, with emotional reasons why he is how he is, his character flips to a killing machine and one that doesn’t sit right with what we’ve learnt, as well as a character who seems to be able to brush off bullets and avoid gunfire whilst killing everyone else, a cliché that is often employed but sits awkwardly in this film after what it has established and so much realism set up.

The ending also feels rushed. Emily Blunt as Sara encounters a young Joe and is very wary of him but within a couple of days suddenly changes from a hard-faced country-living woman used to living on her own who has seen a lot of things to someone who, in a shoe-horned in section, invites young Joe in for sex rather than, er, doing the job herself as is implied. The ending plot line and twist makes sense but seems forced and comes to quickly and we don’t see enough about how Joe old and Joe young react to it.

‘Looper’ is an interesting film and establishes some fantastic, involving concepts in a future that looks realistic but also well set up with its CGI and landscapes. The first hour is a delight to watch with much humour, darkness and great sci-fi scenes that all blend well, brought to life by the characters. But then, in the second half, it’s as if they got bored and it goes all too rushed, unrealistic and losing the focus, throwing the audience in a bad way out of the universe it created. It felt like two different films accidentally glued together by an uninterested projectionist. The same film that establishes the character name of Beatrix which is used in a neat twist and loads of other great and exciting concepts doesn’t seem the same one that introduces a character straight out of the Exorcist and turning Joe into some sort of impenetrable fighter.

Not a bad film and I’m glad it saw it, but certainly not a strong film as ‘The Matrix’ that it’s being compared to. (5/10)