British romantic comedy Man Up has an unfortunate title in both evoking an all-too tired phrase and being quite misleading, as it’s not some man-child tale and is virtually all framed from the point of view of a female character. That lead is the bumbling Nancy, played by the charismatic Lake Bell, who finds herself mistaken for a stranger’s blind date at Waterloo Station and, due to a recent motivation to take chances, decides to go along and pretend to be “Jessica”…
Archive for May, 2015
Man Up (Ben Palmer, 2015)
May 29, 2015Cat People (Paul Schrader, 1982)
May 25, 2015
Made between his milestones American Gigolo and Mishima, Paul Schrader’s Cat People is a blend of the more commercially minded concerns of the former and the stylistically experimental features of the latter. Like The Thing, its Universal stablemate from 1982, Schrader’s film is a very loose remake of a beloved thriller, and one that’s only become more interesting with age…
Poltergeist (Gil Kenan, 2015)
May 23, 2015
As sacrilegious as a Poltergeist remake may seem to some, there are a number of smart creative choices behind 20th Century Fox’s update on the 1982 Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg horror. For one thing, director Gil Kenan has established his own genre skills based around digital trickery, courtesy of his 2006 CGI animation release, Monster House. Secondly, screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire is a Pulitzer Prize winner for his play Rabbit Hole, which he also helped adapt for the screen in 2010, suggesting some flair for domestic turmoil material. Finally, the remake’s leads are Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt; two actors who almost always do good work even in disappointing projects, and the two are reliably strong as the parents in Poltergeist.
So, it’s not like this film was immediately starting off on the wrong foot, and the final result generally doesn’t make too many glaring missteps. The issue is that there’s not a lot of weight to those steps…
Tomorrowland: A World Beyond (Brad Bird, 2015)
May 21, 2015
With The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, director Brad Bird demonstrated a keen interest in retrofuturism, a creative trend in which futuristic technology is blended with dashes of old-fashioned ‘retro’ styles. As such, Tomorrowland: A World Beyond (his second live-action feature after Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) is right in his wheelhouse, in that it continues that aesthetic interest alongside actively exploring the concept of changing notions of the future…
Tokyo Tribe (Sion Sono, 2014)
May 20, 2015
Bringing “slammin’ beats from the ass-end of hell,”, Sion Sono’s manga adaptation Tokyo Tribe is a hysterical hybrid of The Warriors, Yakuza movies and Escape from New York, spliced with video games Jet Set Radio and Streets of Rage, and a dash of Scott Pilgrim. Also, it’s a candy-coloured rap-battle musical where maybe 15% of the dialogue isn’t sung or grunted to some kind of beat. So in that sense it’s like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg but with added beatboxing, tanks, Clockwork Orange-riffing human furniture and virgin sacrifices to Satan. Fun for all the family…
Love at First Fight (Thomas Cailley, 2014)
May 19, 2015
A multiple award winner at the Director’s Fortnight sidebar of Cannes last year, Les combattants, the charming feature debut of director Thomas Cailley, finally arrives in North America under the name Love at First Fight, an unfortunate pun that does a disservice to a romantic comedy that’s much more interesting than its new title may suggest…
Programme Notes: Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014)
May 15, 2015
I was commissioned to write a programme note for Glasgow Film Theatre for their screenings of Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria during May. You can find an online copy of what I produced for them here.
Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
May 12, 2015
In a cinematic landscape where every movie series of notable mainstream or cult popularity is being resurrected instead of left for dead, one figure has emerged as a shining light amid the darkness of Ridley Scott reboots and kingdoms of crystal skulls. His name is George Miller, his character is Mad Max, and his world is fire and blood.
Against all odds, Miller’s return to the post-apocalyptic universe that made his directorial name (he helmed and co-wrote all three of the prior Mel Gibson films) arrives as an invigorating jolt of demented originality despite its predecessors’ influential legacy. It makes the other Mad Max films seem, in retrospect, like demo reels for the kinetic rush of this chase epic…
Bad Land: Road to Fury (Jake Paltrow, 2014)
May 9, 2015
Originally titled Young Ones for its US release, Bad Land: Road to Fury has seemingly received a name change in an attempt to capitalise on the hype surrounding the forthcoming Mad Max: Fury Road. Despite the presence of that film’s co-star Nicholas Hoult, plus desert vistas and a post-apocalyptic setting where a fleeting water supply is a key plot point, Jake Paltrow’s sci-fi Western has little in common with the Mad Max series. It actually resembles, of all things, the sprawling 1956 land epic Giant….
Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014)
May 2, 2015
Director Olivier Assayas has a penchant of late for companion piece films. His 2012 feature Something in the Air, a film loosely based on his own coming of age in an era of widespread disillusion, was concerned with youth rebellion in early 1970s France. He mined some similar territory beforehand in his 1994 effort Cold Water, however that film only alluded to the political concerns that Something in the Air puts closer to the forefront. Cold Water and Something share some character names, similar visual cues and thematic motifs. In a way, it’s as though Assayas is using the newer film to comment on the older one, and considering Cold Water’s own supposedly autobiographical elements, one can argue that Something works as an artist looking back on how he previously looked back on his past.
This elaborate self-reflexive approach is maintained for Assayas’ latest extraordinary film, Clouds of Sils Maria, which can be viewed as a companion piece to his 1996 work Irma Vep. Both concern a veteran actress coming to terms with their place in a cinematic landscape they find increasingly baffling, and each offers a unique meta-commentary on contemporary filmmaking. Clouds of Sils Maria takes some major swings at Hollywood’s current crop of samey sci-fi and fantasy franchises along with star stories told through social media and gossip sites…
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