Review: Legend

This black comedy thriller follows the exploits of the Kray Twins, notorious London gangsters during the 1960s. It feels quite long, but Tom Hardy has a dynamite performance as both twins.

Ronald and Reginald Kray are living the comfortable life as gangsters on London’s east side, they are seemingly impervious to the police while running clubs and battling with rival gangs. But when Reginald Kray meets a young girl, his relationship with his psychotic brother Ronald becomes incredibly tense, risking to break their lives, and everything they’ve built, apart forever.

The Krays were notorious in their day so watching Legend can feel difficult; it does its best to glamourise their lifestyle and make the audience feel sympathy for them as characters. Reginald Kray is portrayed as a decent man in an indecent world, while his brother (though truly psychotic) is described by Reginald at one point as  having “a heart of gold”. It is a black comedy at its heart, its dialogue is harsh and aggressive with English gangland humour mixing with bursts of bloody aggression.

I just described to you Reginald and Ronald as two different people. Which they are. Only in Legend the twins are both played by Tom Hardy. This is surely the meat of the experience; whether you approve of the subject matter or not, Hardy is exceptional here as both twins through clever use of camerawork, body-doubles, split-screen and surely some CG work. It isn’t what I would call a gimmick either; Hardy really does become both characters superbly well, similar and yet extremely different with Ronald’s dour, dead-eyed simplicity and occasional spouting of prose, to Reginald’s well-rounded gangster and part-time romantic. Both are very complex characters, and Hardy delivers both and interacts with himself so well that you believe there are two of him!

The heart of the film, outside of its darkness, is Reginald’s lover Frances (played by Emily Browning) who delivers occasional narration and is the audience surrogate as an innocent quickly trapped in this world. But she does bring out the best, and worst, in the Krays, especially with Ron and as a result she is in the centre of a lot of the film's best scenes.
The film's secondary characters are also very well defined, making the 1960's British gangland feel all the more richer.

I will say against the film is that it feels slightly too long. Finishing at 130 minutes, it could have been just two hours or even less; the film takes its time getting to the point, padding the runtime with a lot of familiar scenes that borderline repetition. Even with Hardy's double performance carrying through these scenes, it ultimately feels drawn out. It is also something of a classic story: a man battling between his loyalty to a girl or his brother.

I would definitely recommend it for Tom Hardy's performances alone, this is some exceptional work from him and elevates it far above what would have been a well styled but average film. 

    

Review: Everest (3D)

Following true events of two teams of mountaineers making the climb up to the peak only for events to go terribly wrong, Everest is a great visual and emotional spectacle.

Since the first few teams conquered the life-or-death climb to the peak of Everest, modern climbers have established tours to train up adventurous spirits so they too can experience the thrill. But when several teams are jockeying for the safest time to climb, the time between fierce storms striking the mountain narrows too far, and the teams risk getting caught in the maelstrom.

First of all it has to be said that this film, directed by Baltasar Kormakur (director of such action thrillers as 2 Guns and Contraband) has a powerful cast at its behest: Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Kiera Knightley and Emily Watson, even the secondary characters deliver excellent work throughout.
And for Everest's advantage, the first half of the film is dedicated to establishing as many of these people's character as possible, their lives and their reasons for going on the adventure. Jason Clarke is centre stage as Rob; the expedition leader for his company "Adventure Consultants", Jake Gyllenhaal is a competitive team leader, and Josh Brolin is a man determined to climb the mountain. There are many characters in need of backstory, some with more to lose than others.
Yes, while this is a true story of course (and criticising it feels undesirable) there are the typical foreshadowing points as: He has a baby on the way and he's excited to come home or; he's tried many times to climb the mountain and has everything to prove. But while cynics will see this as a disadvantage, I felt the film was honest enough to be still thrilling. Perhaps even more backstory for other characters would have blurred the foreshadowing even further.

Visually Everest is stunning. I watched it on a regular 3D cinema screen but I can imagine an IMAX 3D showing would have been extraordinary. There are several shots early on that deliberately show off the dizzying heights involved with the characters' journey; watching people walk over extraordinarily high bridges, or traversing rickety makeshift walkways over icy chasms. These moments alone are worthy of admission. The sense of cold and horrendous freezing temperatures become unbearable towards the end, some moments feeling morbidly graphic and brutally real. 

There isn't much else to say about Everest. It is a straight-forward experience: men climb icy mountain and struggle to find their way down again. But I often say less is more, and the film enjoys setting up its characters, at least the ones that are deemed important enough (Sam Worthington's character Guy arrives too little too late) the rest of them do tend to blur into one another when the storm hits and identifying them becomes a struggle.

It is a visual spectacle with a decent human story behind it. I enjoyed it on the big screen (and in 3D!), though I'm unsure if I need to watch it again.

    
Additional Marshmallows: I was entertained to discover that Josh Brolin's character Beck's wife Peach was played by Robin Wright. I recognised her, but I didn't realise I recognised her from the 1987 classic The Princess Bride! 

Review: The Philadelphia Story

This comedy from 1940 still holds a lot of good chuckles today thanks to a great witty script and acting talent.

Katherine Hepburn leads this comedy as a rich woman on the eve of her wedding when her ex-husband arrives at her mansion with two reporters in tow looking for a potentially scandalous story for their demanding editor. What follows is probably the last thing she expected.

I am often proud that a film's age seldom bothers me, but it has happened before, and even with a 1940s film (A Brief Encounter, terribly stiff and un-relatable experience) but I am happy to say that The Philadelphia Story is not one of those exceptions! I very much enjoyed it.

A colossal cast for its time, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart (despite being before some of their biggest movies, African Queen, North by Northwest and It's a Wonderful Life respectively, they still each had a long list of films to their name by 1940s) it is probably a guarantee that this film would be a success in the acting front! Hepburn plays Tracy Lord, at the centre of the story she is an aloof Lady of the house, a huge mansion that our outsiders are promptly terrified of, yet she is hopelessly insecure. She's marrying George, a man who wants for nothing but to please her.
James Stewart plays Macaulay Connor, one of the two reporters who are quickly overwhelmed by Tracy's guile and cunning; spinning a false pretence to prevent them from scooping a story about her father. He steals the show by the end of the film, being at first coy and awkward to becoming one of the key players in the story.

I don't want to tell you too much of what happens.

As you can imagine, the story is fairly involved for what is a romantic comedy, with conflicts of passions and motivations playing against a ticking clock as the wedding looms. But unlike modern romantic comedies, The Philadelphia Story has a slick wit about its comedy, a constant state of inward chuckling that is personified by Cary Grant's Dexter, Tracy's ex-husband, who enjoys watching others fall over her whims while quietly holding all of the secrets for himself. Not in a devious way, just as an amused spectator.

So with Grant, Hepburn and Stewart delivering the crisp, witty dialogue without fault (another comparison with today's comedy: this film's lack of edits and cuts!) means once you get involved with these characters and their relations are all setup by the thirty minute mark, it is just an enjoyable afternoon watching them verbally scratch each other with intelligent retorts or terrific tirades. The comedy and the language is still relatable today and doesn't feel too dated, making it extremely accessible still! Plus, there's some great drunken acting. It isn't overblown and ridiculous like today's standards, it is honest and tipsy-drunk, very well written and acted!

Perhaps the only thing I could find nit-pick worthy was the character of George, played by John Howard; he felt side-lined, mostly used as a device to stir up the others more interesting developments. He doesn't have a chance to prove why he and Tracy are together; there is very little setup between the two, making it quite unbelievable and making the finale not terribly surprising (in some regards, at least). I suppose with such a powerhouse cast, one can stand out.

I definitely enjoyed it more than I thought I would, going into it more or less blind. It took a few minutes to become invested, but once I was on board with the characters I was happily sitting with my eyes glued to the screen. It was all in the script.

Additional Marshmallows: This film was suggested for review by Cinema Cocoa follower Isobel, who guessed my film related picture question correctly over Facebook and Twitter!

I will be holding more of these little challenges, posting through those channels, and the prize is always to have your say as to what gets reviewed next!
So please, follow Cinema Cocoa and see if you can guess the next challenge first!

Review: The Visit

Director M. Night Shyamalan funded this small and unique film himself to regain "creative control". Honestly, it isn't half bad!

To help their mother cope with a divorce and have fun with her life, two siblings go to spend a week living with their grandparents, the daughter attempting to film their experience to give their troubled mother some closure. But when they arrive, they find that their grandparents are... strange.

M. Night Shyamalan has perhaps the biggest career implosion in recent memory. His first major debut The Sixth Sense was a massive success, follow-ups Unbreakable, Signs and The Village are mostly successful, he was considered "The Next Spielberg".
But public and critics alike started to bore of his screenplays relying on twist gimmicks, and Lady in the Water and The Happening virtually destroyed his career; people began to view him as a egotistical hack.
He went onto more traditional genre films and even franchise movies with The Last Airbender and After Earth... Yeah, no one wanted to watch a film with Shyamalan's name attached after those.

The Visit feels like not so much a return-to-form for Shyamalan but in fact it is completely unique in his filmography. It is shot as a found-footage style film as the daughter Becca (something of a wannabe director) starts to make a documentary about her grandparents, but don't misunderstand, this isn't "A Shyamalan found-footage movie" in the bad sense, which would probably put most people off. It is probably the most legitimate found-footage film I've seen since REC or Paranormal Activity, due to its dedication to the genre; there's no music and things are filmed only within reason.
The choice of doing a found-footage film even offsets it from the director's other movies; there's no stiff, slow pans or tracking shots, no weirdly out of place monologues. It feels refreshing.
Plus, the acting is good. Most found-footage movies suffer from being cheap productions with a lack of talent in front of the screen, but somehow Shyamalan has got a good set of actors for this movie. All of whom are relative newcomers, though their grandfather, Pop Pop, is played by Peter McRobbie who featured prominently in the recent Marvel Daredevil Netflix show. All do exceptional jobs as excitable kids and strangely homely grandparents.

It is by far a perfect movie though. There's a moment when it strays too far into the sub-genre's well established cliches, the young boy's rapping is a little... unbearable (but I can totally see this as what a kid like him would do) and it is a terribly simple experience; it is only ninety minutes long. 
But it definitely benefits from its sly self-awareness and surprisingly good setup (again, a rare thing in the sub-genre) it has a good sense of humour throughout that really makes your question if there is actually anything wrong. After all, the film is from the perspective of children, they don't rightly know what they are experiencing. That said, there are some creepy moments and at least two scares that did actually get me.

But, you have to be in the mood for it. People will either like it or hate it, and others will dismiss it outright because of Shyamalan's body of work, unfairly. The Visit isn't setting the world on fire, but I had fun with it mostly because I got the humour, and it is nice to see Shyamalan rise above the crippling weight of past mistakes.

Review: Gone with the Wind

First time watching this.
Now I shall wait for you to stop hurling abuse at me, please begin reading the review when you have recovered your composure.

Set in the 1800s at the beginning of the American Civil War, Gone with the Wind follows the young, selfish daughter of a plantation owner in the South and her turmoil love interest in two men: a married man and a handsome rogue.

So there's one reason and one reason only that I hadn't actually seen this film before. It is four hours long. I know, I know: "Cinema Cocoa you've surely watched the Lord of the Rings Extended cuts multiple times by now!" but actually you'd be wrong, I've only watched each of them once.
It is also a romance epic, generally not a genre I tend to watch in my free time, especially when it requires a third of my day.

Apparently this is a troubled time to watch Gone with the Wind. Despite it making $1.6 billion in ticket sales (adjusted for inflation) upon release and being regarded as one of cinema's most crowning achievements, winning eight Academy Awards, there has been some recent dispute about the film, to the point of it needing to be banned. This came about the same time as recent debates over the representation of the Confederate flag...
There are some extreme views against Gone with the Wind as pro-slavery, what with its point of view glamorising and even (at times) humourising the upper class society found on the plantations.
Indeed, watching Gone with the Wind after the production of such films as 12 Years a Slave or even Django Unchained. It can feel quite... uncomfortable.

But I don't want to read too far into it; this controversy is completely unnecessary in my eyes. Audiences should appreciate that regardless of which side of a war, there are still people; and the film represents people suffering in events outside of their control.
Plus, I gotta say, if the character of Scarlett (Vivien Leigh) is supposed to be our heroine... let's just say the film isn't being kind in its representation of our "protagonists". Scarlett is completely insufferable!
The first act of Gone with the Wind (a film that is edited as a theatre production, with intermissions, an Overture and Exit Music) is aggravating and painful to sympathise with. Scarlett is prancing around, flirting with every man in the myriad of parties ignorant of other women's feelings, being a complete egomaniac born from luxury and riches. But as this act went on, I realised that I was supposed to feel this way towards her, and during the second act when the war begins and her life is broken, it was fully realised.

Perhaps my favourite aspect of this film was Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, the outsider who is completely aware of how lost and selfish Scarlett is, more than she knows herself, and who slowly becomes obsessed with her. He has this quizzical expression for every situation that befalls Scarlett, a shoulder-shrugging amusement at her inner plight that sarcastically screams: "Well, you deserve it".
It is a wonderfully shot and acted film with almost every scene in four hours of footage being beautifully composed and lit. It is sometimes hard to fathom the scale of it, such as when you see a massive wooden building burn to the ground, or a near endless field of dying men. No smoke or mirrors, no effects, just real film-making of the time.

Like a lot of drama epics, I found myself floundering towards the end. I guess after so much carnage and loss I felt beaten over the head by it all, and yet one character (yes, I am trying to not spoil a film that is seventy-five years old) apparently not feeling the same, and not learning anything! It was hard to comprehend and quite infuriating.
But again, perhaps that was the point.

It is hard to generalise such a huge film, and I am sorry that I must. It did not feel as laborious as I was dreading it would be; it is a packed film and keeps its pacing well, it never feels too much or too little in terms of content or drive. It has great performances, great music and great visuals and remains a classic piece of cinema regardless of (or perhaps more so with) its mildly controversial perspective.

The important thing is, I do feel bad having not watched it until now. It may not be my "type" of film, but I appreciate it now more than ever.

Review: Maggie

You'd have never thought a film with Arnold versus zombies would play out as a grieving father watching his daughter die.

Wade Vogel (Arnold Schwarzenegger) tracks down his daughter who had fled their home after becoming infected by a virus that slowly turns the victim into a mindless cannibal. He refuses to accept her fate, and wants only for her to live the rest of her days as a normal girl.

Maggie is a hard and bleak experience, and I must admit straight away that I was not in the frame of mind to watch it. While I of course knew this was strictly a drama rather than an Arnold action movie, I still wasn't ready for how depressing the experience really is.

It is sad that Maggie received so little praise from the public as well as a fatally limited release, making a film that actually stands out in Schwarzenegger's career as an acting role get a public 33% rating on RottenTomatoes.com while the travesty of creativity Terminator Genisys gets a depressing 61%. How exactly can Arnold prove he can do other things, if when he does just that the film isn't distributed anywhere so people can watch it?

Anyway, enough about numbers.
As a "zombie" film, Maggie is quite unique. Somewhere between The Walking Dead (season 2, specifically) and a cancer story-line, it is not your traditional zombie fare. There are no burning cities, no hordes of brain-chewing monsters, no chases, no invasions, no isolation, no chemical warfare, no military. Arnold doesn't even quip one liners or shoot any zombies. This is a very morose, sad story about what a family could go through if a "zombie" virus were to become a reality.
The film's cinematography makes everything look worn and drab, rustic brown and mellow grey, I don't think there was any vibrant colour throughout the story. We see a world suffering a long winter of famine; Wade and his family live in American farmland but crops have had to be burned to perhaps reduce the spread of infection. 
Arnold looks tired, an incredible transformation from him, to think there are brief moments here that the giant Austrian could vanish into a character. Although the economical script did feel like it was deliberately stopping him from speaking to any great extent, but it wasn't overly damaging; the film is a quiet, atmospheric piece already.

Genre fans will argue that these aren't in fact zombies Wade and his family are dealing with; that zombies are monsters that are born once someone dies. I don't remember the film ever mentioning the disease as "zombification", and really, when a zombie film has a maximum of two zombies on the screen at any one time (and only one time) and plays more like the genre's answer to My Sister's Keeper then you may want to refrain from nitpicking.

I cannot say I enjoyed the film, but I don't know if I was expected to... This is about as real and uncompromisingly human a story as zombie movies have ever been, and for that it is exceptional. Did it hold my interest throughout? No. It isn't a perfect movie by any stretch and characters feel a little too muted for how severe in tone the film attempts to be. 

But I can appreciate what it was trying to do with such a tired genre, and I can appreciate Arnold's huge step into dramatic acting. This is about as far removed from his typical roles as you can get!

Yes, it is better than Terminator Genisys.

Additional Marshmallows: This is director Henry Hobson's first film, having previously worked exclusively in art and graphic design department roles, for films such as Snow White and the Huntsman, video games including The Last of Us, and even the Academy Award Ceremonies for the last four years.

Review: Ex Machina

Wow, I am struggling to think of problems with this intelligent sci-fi thriller.

Caleb, a young computer specialist, is hired by a recluse multi-millionaire programmer to test groundbreaking artificial intelligence within a secret, isolated laboratory.

Ex Machina is the directorial debut of Alex Garland, writer of incredible science fiction screenplays such as Sunshine, Dredd and 28 Days Later. Three films I own and consider to be high class in their respective genres. Why then has it taken me over eight months to watch Ex Machina? The trailer and the promotional material.
Ex Machina is an awesome thriller, a very quiet and very subdued experience that speaks volumes without resorting to any action set pieces or Hollywood cliche. It is an intelligent, thinking-man's science fiction and unfortunately that is hard to market for wider audiences; I found the trailer to be very confused in tone, it wanted to make it look like an action thriller when it is certainly not.

It is hard to explain the film without spoiling it, but I will commend it for its narrow scope and intense focus on its three main characters. It is an analytical story, Oscar Issac's Nathan is a brilliant but recluse and socially weird genius who has created "true" AI, Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb, a young outsider who is asked to give a "Turing Test" to Nathan's creation and is oblivious to anything else that may or may not be going on. Alicia Vikander is our final piece of the triad as Ava, the seemingly flawless artificial intelligence.
It is a talking film, we get to see the logistics of the creation and the morality played off by all three characters in great depth and using this to slowly expose what is a very dark and repressed secret beneath. While the discussion of artificial intelligence is cliche nowadays (and the representation of said AI being a beautiful young woman) these characters and how they affiliate and treat one another is far from cliche.

There's a very modern take on the advent of artificial intelligence at work beneath Ex Machina. It isn't some military funded science division, or some laboratory accident or even a metaphysical internet conception of life. It is constructed by a man who understands how to ignore conventions and use all of the tools modern living gives us to harness what it is to be human. How people use the internet and cellphones for example.
There are no wars between man and machine, but rather a debate between two men about the machine. This film isn't so much about the bells and whistles of a CGI robot so much as it is about Humanity and how we are fundamentally flawed yet strive to create life.

Of course, like Sunshine and others of Garland's written work, things get dark, and while I may have spotted a few of the film's twists and turns early, others did catch me off guard. The characters are set up so well that you can never quite tell who is doing what to whom...

I honestly cannot say what I disliked about this film, except maybe the unavoidable cliches already mentioned and some leaps in the storytelling. Extremely minor things. As a science fiction fan Ex Machina delivered on so many levels and rose above my unfairly lowered expectations. A moody, intense thriller that makes you wonder and think about what will happen next.

Additional Marshmallows: Somebody get Alicia Vikander to school Kristanna Loken on how to act like a robot, good lord; Ava is incredibly well realised compared to the travesty that is the Terminatrix.