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: Fury

An intensely bleak and frank look at five soldiers lives within the confines of a tank at the final moments of World War Two, Fury doesn't pull its punches and proves to be one solid war movie.

Brad Pitt heads the story as tank "Fury's" captain Don Collier during the conclusion of World War 2 and the allied forces merciless push deep into enemy territory in Germany. With the enemy more fraught and zealous than ever, Allied forces are being cut down in what is an exhausted, pointless phase of the war. His tank crew are one of the few survivors on the spearhead.

The film begins with one of their five man crew killed in action and a greenhorn rookie is recruited in to take his place. This recruit is little more than a typist, played by a fresh-faced Logan Lerman, and given the task of co-driver, so you can see immediately where our character development comes from. Lerman's character Norman is the audience surrogate and introduces us to not only the bleak reality around him but also how aggressively inhuman his crewmates have become over the months of war.
The acting here is superb. Director David Ayer apparently drove his actors hard here and you can see it. Pitt's recent career has been debatable but he is great here! Transformers star Shia LeBeouf is playing a very downplayed character role here, which is also impressive; he works well as one of the tank crew veterans.

The action and tank battles are also excellent; the film works in plenty of quiet and morose moments to exaggerate the moments of carnage in comparison. Most of Fury is quiet, bleak and consuming to watch, but the action is intense and fantastic to see. Tanks aren't often shown so completely in movies, and Fury shows quite how vulnerable humans are both outside and inside the vehicle! Whenever someone so much as pops their head out of the vehicle you start wincing, fearing some sudden shot will kill them at any moment!

It is a very effective character piece and a solid portrayal of wartime artillery in the guise of Hollywood action. It does suffer from fairly predictable story elements and progression, like I said, our surrogate is a rookie surrounded by veterans, and while you might not be surprised by the time the film ends, you should be moved enough by the acting on show that it more than makes up for these short comings.

I recommend it, it isn't rife with American propaganda, in fact it muddies what is right and what is wrong as war time so often does very well. Setting the story near the end of the war gives you a real vibe of how senseless and wasteful events truly became.

Review: Olympus has Fallen

Well I had always intended to watch this... but now that I have I have discovered some awful not-supposed-to-be-funny 'Murica trite.

When a terrorist attack on the American White House ends with the President and his aids taken hostage and the House turned into a fortress, only an ex-Secret Service agent (who was retired due to an earlier accident that caused the death of the President's wife) can save the day.

The 1990s were full of action political thrillers and Olympus has Fallen appears to be trying to rekindle that genre of film: grounded, realistic and most importantly contemporary stories based around sieges, hostages or conspiracies. But either Olympus has missed the point completely, or something has been lost over the last fifteen years.
First of all, this film (as someone from the UK) is so overwhelmingly America, just... in your face AMERICA. Okay, that's fine for a while. But when every single scene for the first twenty minutes is noble politicans striding boldly through corridors while the score blares with trumpets and warbles with drums, over and over again, I'm sorry but you lose any sense of nobility.
We then have the actual attack on the White House which is spectacular, there's no denying that the action in the film is well done (there's no obnoxious shaky-cam for a start, I generally knew where everything was!) but again the total lack of defense around Washington DC was outright laughable.
"Suspension of disbelief" is all well and good, but when a tone of a film is generally seen as realistic or gritty, behaving like an action thriller than a standard popcorn flick, these sorts of issues become targets for criticism. Sure, trumpet how awesome America is just before obliterating everything it stands for a moment later! ...
The film is a bloody sequence too: televised executions, beatings, stabbings, traitors, all shown through a lens of gritty hardship. I can't actually call this pro-America, it comes across more like self-defecation!

Then there is Gerald Butler... Oh boy. I don't dislike the man; I enjoyed Law Abiding Citizen (for example) but this film's script and acting is atrocious. I've already said this film is bringing the 1990s back, and that is right. I've seen all of these cliche sequences before. I had all of the emotional attachment for him and his wife/girlfriend/partner/person as I do for my toothbrush: every now and then, I am reminded that it's there.
Butler's character is, for want of a better analogy, The Terminator. We see these terrorists enter the story by massacring hundreds of civilians, and so naturally Butler can go on a bloody rampage executing any terrorist he sees with impunity. Imagine Die Hard, but without the sense of humour or self awareness. He just growls and murders his way to inevitable victory (oh, could that be a spoiler? You mean you weren't sure if the personification of America would survive this ordeal?)

Ugh. Suspension of disbelief can carry you so far, but after that you need to tone down the pretentiousness. It is a forgettable action film that doesn't know how to act. "We are realistic and contemporary: We... have hi-tech Hydra weapon platforms. We Stand for American integrity: We use a three-code nuclear activation system called Cerberus."

I need a good note to finish on... uhm... uhm... It is better than A Good Day to Die Hard?

Avoid, unless you want to have some noise in the background while you do something productive.
 

     

Review: Lincoln

Steven Spielberg is probably the only man who could take a subject matter as dry as politics and as well known as Lincoln's victory over the 13^th amendment and make it worth watching for over one-hundred and fifty minutes.

Daniel Day Lewis gives a powerhouse performance as the United States sixteenth President as he deals with the political minefield and personal sacrifices to push his new amendment to abolish slavery. This times difficulty with the persistent American Civil War which has claimed too many lives. Lincoln is in a losing battle; he wants the war ended and slavery abolished in the same stroke... whereas many of the critical voters wish only for the war to end with the compromise of retaining slavery.

As you can see from the lengthy synopsis there, Lincoln is a heavy, heavy film. The Civil War itself acts merely as a backdrop and persistent danger and drive for the President's actions, the majority of the film focuses on his personal battle of words with the men responsible for ending the war and bringing about a better future. The film demands your attention constantly, but Spielberg's deft hand allows for Lincoln's mannerisms and lighthearted stories to lighten the heavy dialogue frequently.

Day-Lewis is fantastic in the role. He is both wise and solid as a worn oak tree, yet human and determined as a man truly selfless and honest. A great sense of gravity is given and allows the audience to see a powerful idol in humanity's history. All supporting roles are substantially filled, as they should be in a Spielberg picture, and no one appears weak or unnecessary. The film moves at a slow but constant pace.

It is dry, it is extremely dialogue heavy along with self-assessing scenes that make sure the audience isn't left behind by the politics, but to stick with it is to learn a personal strife and struggle at a critical time in America's history.

Perhaps not worth a cinema visit per se, but definitely worth a watch!

Additional Marshmallows: Kudos to Spielberg too for making so many of his compositions alike to oil paintings; the lighting and use of shadows makes lounges and rooms murky and deeply solemn.