Monthly Archives: May 2021

Film Review – Cruella

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Although in recent years, Disney has been particularly guilty of uninspired remakes and shameless mining of past glories, Cruella – an origin story for 101 Dalmatians villain Cruella De Vil – is surprisingly good fun. Featuring two of my favourite Emmas on top form, it kept me thoroughly entertained for much of the running time, despite ultimately outstaying its welcome by about twenty minutes.

Unsurprisingly, it transpires that the eponymous dalmatian skin coveting lunatic wasn’t christened Cruella, but Estella. Sunset Boulevard-style narration informing us she is already dead immediately raises intrigue levels. What follows is a brief bout of young Estella (Tipper Seifert-Cleveland) being bullied at school, retaliating, and being expelled. This leads to her mother saying they’ll start afresh in London, where Estella can follow her dream to be a fashion designer.

However, before driving to the capital, they make a pit stop at a big posh house on the edge of a seaside cliff, where her mother says she will ask a mysterious someone for help. Estella is told to remain in the car. She disobeys, leading to a farcical set of circumstances that culminate in dalmatians chasing her, and her mother’s tragic demise as she falls off a cliff. Blaming herself, Estella runs away to London, falls in with thieves Jaspar (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser), and spends the next several years honing her criminal skills.

Eventually, Estella (Emma Stone) acquires an entry-level position in the prestigious couture emporium Liberty. It doesn’t take long for her talent to catch the eye of Liberty’s owner, the Baroness (Emma Thompson), and soon we’re in hugely entertaining All About Eve by way of The Devil Wears Prada territory. As predictable revelations about the Baroness’s villainy ensue, Estella creates her Cruella alter-ego to upstage her fashion rival, with increasingly dangerous consequences.

Stone, with a convincing British accent, finds human nuances in Cruella’s persona that don’t detract from her dark villainy in later stories. For one thing, Estella has always been told she needs to fit in, wearing a wig to hide her famous half-white half-black hair. Really Cruella is her true persona, and Estella is the socially acceptable alter-ego. Her rise to the Baroness’s challenge – that she has the talent for her own label, but does she have the killer instinct? – is hugely satisfying to watch.

Emma Thompson is absolutely splendid, stealing every scene in which she appears. Whether reading aloud rave reviews of her work with narcissistic relish, using a straight razor to make dress alterations with no regard for health and safety, or the ongoing acid dismissals of her entourage, Thompson attitude and delivery is spot-on. She is as much mentor as villain to Estella, which given the status of Cruella as unrepentant dark force of diabolical evil in the original story, is entirely appropriate.

The 1970s punk era setting is a perfect background for Cruella’s flamboyant theatrics. I, Tonya director Craig Gillespie makes the most of this, channelling Martin Scorsese in pop soundtrack choices and directorial flourishes. One shot entering Liberty from overhead, following customers around the shop floor, and out into behind-the-scenes corridors, before finding Estella scrubbing floors in her new role, is particularly arresting, even if it is enhanced by CGI. It is worth adding special praise for Fiona Crombie’s eye-popping production design, and needless to say, the costumes, courtesy of Jenny Beavan and Tom Davis, look fabulous.

Roger (Kayvan Novak) and Anita (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) also appear in decent supporting performances, neatly dovetailing into the 101 Dalmatians narrative. Less neat is the screenplay, which contains at least one twist too many for my liking, and begins to feel a little laboured in the final act. It is also rather irksome that Disney wouldn’t relax their blanket no smoking policy for this film, as it meant Emma Stone didn’t get to wield Cruella’s iconic cigarette holder. As Stone astutely pointed out in an interview with the New York Times: “I don’t want to promote smoking, but I’m also not trying to promote skinning puppies.”

Overly censorious nonsense and over-egged screenplays aside, Cruella is still a blast for the most part, and a very entertaining night at the cinema.

UK Certificate: 12A

US Certificate: PG-13

Film Review – A Quiet Place Part II

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It seems unfairly dismissive to sum up A Quiet Place Part II as more of the same, but not quite as good. After all, the direction and performances are as strong as they were the first time around, and there are just as many suspenseful scares. However, because the concept is now familiar, the law of diminishing returns inevitably kicks in.

The best thing in the film is the exceptional prologue. It flashes back to just before the nasty sound-sensitive monsters decided they were going to 1) invade our planet (an assumption based on a big explosion in the sky that looks like something falling to Earth), and 2) behave like deranged school exam moderators demanding silence, on penalty of disqualification from life. Here we briefly see the genesis of how Evelyn Abbot (Emily Blunt), and her children Regan (Millicent Simmonds), and Marcus (Noah Jupe) ended up playing a lethal game of family values versus the apocalypse. We also get a brief cameo from Lee Abbot (John Krasinski), who bit the dust in the previous film.

Of course, Krasinski also directs, as before, and this he does to great effect. His skills are particularly evident in a set piece on a train, showing just how dangerous it is to miss the monsters when shooting, even if you do have a handy hearing-aid to fend them off (the high-pitched hearing-aid as sonic weapon being a newly discovered weapon against the nasties, as per the finale of the previous film). There are one or two other agreeably stressful moments, particularly in the last stretch, which features cross-cutting perils in two locations.

Cillian Murphy is a significant addition to the cast list, and his performance matches that of Blunt, Simmonds, and Jupe. It all has a nicely apocalyptic vibe that feels eerily resonant given recent quarantines, and there is a case to be made that this film stands shoulder to shoulder with the original. But that isn’t a case I’d make. For all its undoubted prowess, A Quiet Place Part II adds little to what came before and has the disadvantage of familiarity with the premise.

The first film worked brilliantly as a stripped-down, high-concept sci-fi horror suspense thriller, in which the monsters were gradually revealed. Here they are already revealed, so that part of the suspense is gone. At least Part II wisely avoids explanations as to how or why the monsters arrived, give or take the implied extra-terrestrial implications of the prologue. On the other hand, the finale is a blatant set-up for another sequel that I’m not really sure I have the patience for.

All things considered, A Quiet Place Part II is perfectly fine. I’m just not convinced it was necessary, or that it adds anything of great significance to the excellent original.

UK Certificate: 15

US Certificate: PG-13

Content Warnings: Sustained threat, violence, bloody images.

Papercut Returns

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My short story Papercut was recently removed from the Short Stories section of this blog, but it has now returned. The reason for the removal was that I submitted a screenplay version to the BBC Writers Room. It didn’t win, but I did make it to the second round (the top 10 percent of five thousand odd submissions). I received an encouraging note from the BBC saying this was no small feat considering the competition. They also encouraged me to send further screenplays, which was nice.

Papercut was originally published in the Dragon Soul Press romantic fantasy anthology First Love. The story concerns a lonely teenage boy living with his ultra-strict Jehovah’s Witness mother. In his dreams, he is visited by a mysterious girl made entirely of paper, leading to a fantastical journey into… Well, click here to download the story for yourself.

If you’re curious, you can also download the screenplay version which streamlines and reinvents one or two areas of the story, particularly in the first act. Translating from one medium to another is a challenging task, especially when trying to find visual equivalents for inner monologue.

In case you were wondering, the above images, from classic fantasy adventure movie Jason and the Argonauts, and the iconic music video to A-ha’s 1985 hit Take on Me, were a visual and tonal influence on Papercut.

Film Review – The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

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A hat-wearing priest carrying a bag steps out of a car and approaches a house at night during the opening of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. This blatant homage to The Exorcist immediately makes me wish I’m watching that instead. Or Psycho. Or The Shining. The opening sequence contains transparent references to all three cinematic sacred texts of horror. Dangling such iconic visual carrots in front of a cineaste like me is likely to result in impatient huffing and puffing. Unless you intend to make a spoof (and even then, it had better be a very funny one), stop reminding me of the classics and impress me by doing your own thing.

Thankfully, the Conjuring franchise has enough of its own style to banish such irritants from my mind relatively quickly. An arresting, stomach-in-knots exorcism gone pear-shaped to ludicrously overblown Hollywood effect opens this latest instalment and reintroduces us to Lorraine and Ed Warren (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson), the real-life paranormal investigators on whose case files many of the Conjuring films are based. These lead performances are terrific. The Warrens loving commitment to one another has always been at the heart of these films, amid all the sinister shenanigans and jump scares, and thanks to Farmiga and Wilson, that commitment is depicted more powerfully than ever.

In 1981 Brookfield, Connecticut, the tumultuous exorcism of young David Glatzel resulted in the demon leaving the boy but entering his older sister’s fiancée, Arne Cheyenne Johnson. Or at least, that is what the Warrens claimed, as they telephoned the Brookfield police to warn them the situation was becoming dangerous. Subsequently, Arne murdered his landlord after a heated argument. In court, Arne’s lawyer argued he had been demonically possessed. As a result, the case became notorious in the media, inspiring a number of documentaries and adaptations on page and screen of which this is the latest.

All this is depicted in the film, with the expected overblown dramatic licence. However, as Sir Humphrey Appleby may have put it, claiming this is based on a true story lays upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear. Yes, the opening section does draw on facts, but after that, an entirely fictional hunt-the-Satanist narrative forms the bulk of the plot. It’s absolutely ridiculous stuff, but it cracks along at a fair pace with plenty of scares, and benefits from a strong supporting cast including Julian Hilliard, Ruairi O’Connor, Sarah Catherine Hook, and a brilliant but underused John Noble. When not irritating me with homages, Michael Chaves does a decent job as director (taking over from James Wan), and the end credits feature the nicely unsettling touch of audio recordings of the real exorcism.

Unlike The Exorcist, it is impossible to take the film too seriously, but given my own Christian beliefs, I have always credited the Conjuring films with at least providing an interesting means of starting conversations about faith. The Devil Made Me Do It isn’t as good as the two previous entries, or even the second Annabelle spin-off, but despite the narrative lunacy, it is an entertaining and satisfying piece of work for genre fans.

UK Certificate: 15 (slightly cut to avoid an 18 certificate)

US Certificate: R

Content Warnings: Violence, disturbing scenes.

Film Review – Godzilla vs Kong

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Here’s yet another film I refused to watch on streaming that I’ve just caught up with in the cinema. Let’s face it: If you’re going to watch a Godzilla film, it needs a big, preferably huge screen, with deafening sound. For Godzilla vs Kong, I opted for IMAX. Is it any good? Well, it’s a lot better than the previous instalment Godzilla: King of the Monsters, but it still falls short of the best of the recent “Monster-verse” pictures, the brilliantly bonkers Kong: Skull Island.

Kong looks a little longer in the tooth in this film, but at least he has a nice Truman Show-style enclosure and a young girl who can communicate with him in sign language. Isn’t that a health and safety nightmare? Shouldn’t she be in school? If you can’t swallow such baffling improbability, this probably isn’t the film for you, as we’re not even at the opening credits yet. Suspension of disbelief isn’t enough. You need to expel it entirely, consigning it to everlasting exile at the centre of the Earth.

Speaking of which, the plot concerns not just complicated machinations of exactly how the title smackdown between giant ape and giant lizard comes about, but also a Journey to the Centre of the Earth-style narrative, along with an AI conspiracy. These disparate threads mesh together in an illogical and clumsy way, but when experiencing visual effects as impressive as these, on a huge screen, it hardly matters. There are two big fights between Godzilla and Kong, and director Adam Wingard ensures both deliver to very satisfying effect on the action front. Yes, towards the end it’s all a bit numbing, but you certainly won’t feel short-changed.

Other action scenes and spectacular visuals occur between titan dust-ups, with more monsters, more bizarre undiscovered worlds, and a plethora of overqualified cast members – including Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Lance Reddick, Eliza Gonzalez, Julian Dennison, and Kyle Chandler – wasted on running around avoiding falling debris. The level of destruction in this film is biblical. Again, my suggestion is don’t even try to consider the collateral damage. Just sit back and surrender to the wow factor.

In short, Godzilla vs Kong isn’t a film to tax the intellect, nor is it what I’d call a genuinely great monster movie. But it is a giddy, entertaining, satisfying spectacle deserving of the supersized cinematic treatment. I for one was perfectly happy to turn off my brain and be clobbered into submission.

UK Certificate: 12A

US Certificate: PG-13

Film Review – Nomadland

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Here’s another film I’ve deliberately waited to see in the cinema rather than on streaming: This year’s Best Picture Winner, Nomadland. Is it better in the cinema? Undoubtedly. Is it a good film? Yes, but it isn’t going to be for everyone.

To be fair, Nomadland has a lot going for it. For a start, there’s a first-rate, Oscar-winning central performance from the excellent Frances McDormand (her third win after Fargo and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). The subject matter is also fascinating. Empire, Nevada is a town that all but disappeared off the map, following the closure of the town’s Gypsum plant in the wake of the 2008 economic crash. McDormand’s character Fern, a woman in her sixties, lost her house as a result, and with her husband now dead too, she has no choice but to take to the road in her camper van, with it becoming her home.

Fern travels around, working part-time jobs where she can, including an Amazon warehouse, a campsite, and fast-food restaurants. She meets various other people in similar predicaments, mostly older people, who help her adapt to this way of life. It is here that Nomadland becomes particularly interesting. Writer/director/editor Chloe Zhao took a very improvised approach in adapting Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction book, casting genuine nomads living this kind of lifestyle on the road in America. As such, the film is authentic, realistic, and completely immersive, but at the same time, there’s a lyrical, almost magical realist quality. This is partly due to cinematographer Joshua James Richards’s bleak but beautiful images, including snowy landscapes, deserts at sunset, and raging waves crashing on rocky coasts.

The film doesn’t only feature non-actors in the supporting cast. For instance, there’s a key role for David Strathairn as a not-quite love interest for McDormand. However, the film has a free-flowing structure that eschews a three-act arch-plot, which may frustrate some viewers. Performances are all subtlety and nuance. Those expecting dramatic fireworks would be better off looking elsewhere.

That isn’t to say there isn’t an undercurrent of anger in the film. Although Zhao doesn’t introduce us to a single remotely unpleasant person, and despite the way the film shows a certain liberation and joy in such an untethered lifestyle, we are left in no doubt that this isn’t a life anyone would have deliberately chosen. There is nothing glamorous about having to go to the toilet in a bucket, being unable to buy spare parts when your vehicle breaks down, or finding yourself ill without the means to obtain medical help.

Yes, the film is at pains to show the warm community spirit and humane decency of these people. But at the same time, just occasionally, there’s a barbed comment about bankers that lend money to those they know can’t pay it back. Or there’s a reference to the way these older folks are unable to afford retirement, despite having paid taxes and worked hard all their lives. Through no fault of their own, they find themselves in a situation they couldn’t possibly have foreseen. Editorialising about America’s rampant immoral capitalism, lack of proper healthcare, and so on, is unnecessary, as the situations speak for themselves.

All things considered, Nomadland is a good, well-made film with engaging performances, beautiful visuals, and important subject matter. However, I must confess I don’t think it deserved to beat Judas and the Black Messiah to Best Picture, which in truth, as a piece of outstanding cinema, I was a lot more impressed with.

UK Certificate: 12A

US Certificate: R

Film Review – Judas and the Black Messiah

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Last night I finally caught up with Judas and the Black Messiah at the cinema. I knew it would end up with a big-screen release, so I decided to forego streaming and see it properly. I’m extremely glad I did, and I’m going to take a moment to bathe in that wonderfully smug, elite cineaste afterglow.

Actually, the real reason I feel smug is because at the cinema, the film’s slow-burn emotionally claustrophobic tension simmers so much more effectively. It tells the fact-based story of William O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield), a young man who in 1968 was blackmailed by the FBI into going undercover inside the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers, targeting its charismatic leader Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya).

Director Shaka King and co-writer Will Berson’s screenplay may contain a certain amount of dramatic licence, but it does not come at the expense of realism, believability, or the essence of what actually took place. This gritty tone is perfectly captured in Sean Bobbit’s cinematography, transporting audiences into the broiling racial tensions of the time.

In conjunction with LaKeith Stanfield’s excellent lead performance, King generates an increasingly unbearable dread of the inevitable. This suspense doesn’t so much come from O’Neal fearing he will be found out (though there are moments of that), but more through his escalating guilt and remorse over betraying a cause in which he has come to believe, despite being an FBI informer.

Supporting performances are superb, especially from the Oscar-winning Kaluuya. He chews scenery to splendid effect but also demonstrates an understated vulnerability in key scenes, especially those with his girlfriend Deborah Johnson (Dominque Fishback). Speaking of Fishback, there’s a brilliantly acted close-up of her face during a crucial dramatic moment in the climax that again made me profoundly grateful I saw the film in the cinema. Much is said about film as spectacle, but not enough about how immersive close-ups can cause the viewer to be completely captivated by the drama. Close-up shots like this simply don’t have the same impact on television.

Make no mistake, this film pulls no punches in depicting the institutional racism of the police and FBI. It does this quite cleverly, in that at first, O’Neal’s FBI handler Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) tries to convince him that the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan are two sides of the same coin. However, whilst the film doesn’t airbrush the more incendiary oratory or actions of the Black Panthers, it does depict, without axe-grinding editorialising, the fallacy of this comparison. For one thing, the Black Panthers had supporters from other racial groups, including disaffected impoverished whites from southern states. This alone disproves Mitchell’s claim, and in a later scene with J Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen), his own racist hypocrisy is glaringly exposed.

The resultant seething rage and contemporary resonance inherent in Judas and the Black Messiah is stunningly powerful, leaving the viewer feeling genuinely outraged rather than preached at. Films that provoke anger in this organic way are to be cherished, as that is proof of their outstanding cinematic credentials.

UK Certificate: 15

US Certificate: R

Content Warnings: Strong language, violence, distressing scenes depicting racism.

Medium Update

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This month my Medium output has been as prolific as ever. Here are some articles that you might have missed, in various publications. Check them out by following the links below. Please “clap” generously by clicking your mouse on the “clap” icon, as that is a huge help to me, trying to get the Algorithmic Overlords to distribute my work further. Thank you.

Frame Rated

How Many ‘Best Picture’ Academy Award Winners Deserved to Win?

My ongoing issues with Oscar.

Westerns: Social Commentary Disguised as Frontier Mythology

How Hollywood’s greatest genre has always reflected contemporary American concerns.

The Writing Cooperative

How and Why to Write Gothic Mysteries

The principles for penning a passionate, sinister, satisfying page-turner.

Are You Genre Promiscuous?

An argument for and against sticking to a fiction niche.

Not Suitable for Grown-ups?

Writing books that empower children but alarm adults isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Cinemania

How I’d Have Written the Star Wars Prequels

My version of Episodes I, II, and III.

The Innocents: 60 Years On

Still the best version of The Turn of the Screw on film.

Will There Ever Be a Great Film of Dune?

Lynch couldn’t crack it. Can Villeneuve?

Happy 50th Birthday to Six Classic Thrillers from 1971

From New York drug busts to brutal revenge in Newcastle, these thrillers look better than ever fifty years on.

David Lean’s Great Expectations: One of the Greatest Films Ever Made

The Dickens adaptation yardstick by which all others must be judged.

Carlito’s Way: A Neglected Gem

Brian De Palma’s massively underrated gangster thriller deserves rediscovery.

Twelve Classic Shots and Transitions

My favourite wide angle, cut, dissolve, close-up, and more.

DISCLAIMER: The Writing Cooperative submission guidelines require I use “US English”. I apologise to my fellow Brits for any retina burning side-effects caused by reading American spellings in said articles. I never mind Americans using American spellings, but using them as a Brit just feels wrong, so rest assured I do know better. I’m just selling out, for the sake of having a freelance writing career.

Film Review – Those Who Wish Me Dead

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I should preface this review with a caveat that I am likely to be more generous than usual, purely because it was so wonderful to be back in the cinema after another lengthy (and I hope final) closure period. Under normal circumstances, I’d probably report that Those Who Wish Me Dead is a solidly entertaining action thriller. Under these circumstances, it felt like a long cold drink of water after a blistering crawl across a burning desert.

Based on a novel by Michael Koryta, and directed by Taylor Sheridan, the plot concerns an adolescent boy caught up in a murderous conspiracy, with only Angelina Jolie’s forest firefighter with a traumatic past between him and certain death. Actually, that’s not quite true, because Jolie’s ex, a policeman, and his pregnant wife, also get caught up in the crossfire, as the result of plot convolutions I won’t spoil.

There are plenty of cliches here, but they are offset by a few unexpected turns, as well as a strong performance from Jolie, still a great action lead. She is well supported by Finn Little, Jon Bernthal, Medina Senghore, Aiden Gillan, and Nicholas Hoult. It’s great to see the latter in villain mode for a change. In addition, there’s some splendid location scenery, with gorgeous Montana vistas, and plenty of violent action, deftly helmed by Sheridan.

Said action dominates, and the bigger conspiratorial machinations of the plot are largely ignored, which gives the film focus and punch. Despite the enjoyable spectacle, I can’t really claim it’s doing anything particularly original or ground-breaking, but after a long cinematic dry spell, it certainly hits the spectacle spot in suitably satisfying fashion, particularly during the forest fire sequences.

UK Certificate: 15

US Certificate: R

Content Warnings: Strong language, violence.