The Third Man Rerelease Review

The Third Man is reappearing in twelve cinemas across the UK this week, including Bristol’s very own Watershed cinema, as part of the BFI’s Orson Welles season, to celebrate a century since the famed auteur’s birth.

In this film, we follow pulp-western author Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) into post-war Vienna, who has been promised work by his old school friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Yet, as Martins arrives in the Austrian capital, he is informed that Lime has recently perished in a car accident, where two of Lime’s friends were witnesses. Understandable shock shifts to unsurprising cynicism, when Martins learns of contrasting stories regarding Lime’s death, one of which recalls an unidentified third man at the scene of the tragedy. It all becomes apocryphal, thus, aided by his deceased friend’s actress girlfriend, Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), and whilst ignoring the warnings of Major Calloway of the British Army Police (Trevor Howard), Martins attempts to demystify the mystery around the arcane demise of his old chum, Harry Lime.

Studio interference almost irreparably maimed this picture, with heavyweight producer David O. Selznick requesting that the film be made on studio lots rather than on location. Other potential alterations included Noel Coward being cast as the enigmatic Harry Lime, rather than Welles, and that the film should have an upbeat score, rather than the unforgettable, note-perfect zither sound performed by Anton Karas. Roger Ebert aptly described it as ‘jaunty but without joy, like whistling in the dark’. Luckily, for the legacy of The Third Man, Carol Reed, the director, stood up to O. Selznick, and declined his, shall we say, suggestions. With his creative licence unrevoked, Reed went on to make one of the greatest films ever made, with some of the most famous sequences in the history of cinema.

Perfection is supposedly unattainable, though The Third Man resists this claim. How can it be bettered? Graham Green’s script, of which the dialogue is channelled flawlessly by the actors, is brilliantly written, the words chime corruption and, in Holly Martins case, uncertainty. Robert Krasker’s black and white expressionistic cinematography, which won the film’s only Academy Award, nourishes the mise-en-scene and forebodes the ominous events ahead. The Third Man does not paint itself with an oneiric brush, which is conventional to most film noirs. Instead the bleak reality is refulgent, even in Krasker’s unlikeliest shot of a cat circling round the shoe of a stranger nestled in the shadows; the revenant Lime. The ‘sewer chase’ climax is a riveting sequence, superbly edited by Oswald Hafenrichter. Many of the performers appear in their finest roles, with a never better Cotton proving that the ‘lead’ suited him. The sardonic Howard would in normal circumstances steal the limelight, had the light not shown Welles as Lime. I am sure that was purposeful. He, along with his self-scribed monologue that satirises Switzerland, which acts as his justification of his own insouciance toward his shady crimes, is THE THIRD MAN. Not just the character, but the film. That is not to discredit the other key players, who I have credited profusely throughout this review. Welles, who meets the camera for barely twenty minutes, is iconic. Arguably, this trumps Kane as his most popular onscreen appearance. It might also trump hearing him voice Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie.   

The 4K makeover will embellish its look and sharpen each and every frame. Its resolution will exemplify its status as a classic. Well worth seeing at the cinema. Catch it if you can, from today.

Jurassic World Review (RAWWWWWR and all that jazz)

Let’s get this out of the way; Jurassic World has Indominus Rex sized flaws. However, it rectifies the mistakes of the previous sequels, as it harks back to the Jurassic Park of 1993. It roars for the original, yet it hatches its own originality. This summer we walk with (and run away from) the extinct once more, and it is mighty fun.

                                                

The Indominus Rex is our genetically modified dinotagonist. That’s right, I present to you a hybrid of ‘dinosaur’ and ‘protagonist’. If they can mix up science over on Isla Nublar then I can mix up language in this review. It is a seriously ‘clever girl’ with rather unfortunate abilities, bequeathed to it by scientists, who were delegated the Frankenstein experiment as dinosaurs alone just ‘aren’t that exciting anymore’. It has not yet been revealed to the tourists of Jurassic World, a twenty-first century prehistoric theme park, built on the remnants of Jurassic Park.

This blend of animal traits, which includes a capacity to alter blood temperature, allows the film’s threat to coax itself out of solitary confinement. The Indominus Rex kills ‘for sport’, and as it rages through the restricted area of the island, on towards Jurassic World, danger is afoot, and the action starts to speak much louder than words.

I haven’t even mentioned our cast yet, led by Chris Pratt, as Owen Grady, who in this role tries on the shoes that he’ll surely fill in a soon-to-be-announced Indiana Jones franchise. Allegedly. He has a totemic relationship with Velociraptors and rides a Triumph Scrambler. Pratt’s charisma is crisper than high-definition. The actor is armed with charm, which translates in his flirtation with Jurassic World’s operation manager, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas-Howard). His belittling of her is refuted by her actions amidst the action, especially when the film reaches its climax. Dearing’s nephews, Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins), are treated with a VIP visit to the island, and almost treat themselves to the roaming science project.

Dallas-Howard is fine as Dearing, not quite endearing, but fine. She does not stumble in her high heel athleticism and proves a match for Grady, which is no mean feat. And she is NOT Jessica Chastain, for your information. Both Robinson and Simpkins portray their sibling dynamic very well indeed; bicker, attitude, bicker again, more attitude, then a rush of loyalty. Simpkins rips off the ‘annoying kid’ tag he wore in Iron Man 3, and Robinson faultlessly authenticates the late teen phase. If Jurassic World continues to fly high at the Box Office, it will live up to the title of Robinson’s previous film, Kings of Summer. The blockbuster is alive with characters, well, some perish of course, but many are introduced, though aren’t fully realised in the script. Vincent D’Onofrio, Omar Sy, Irrfan Khan, the returning BD Wong, Judy Greer and Jake Johnson, are arguably all surface with little substance. 

The flaws are as palpable as the product placements (I’ll get to that). They all trickle down from the biggest of all which is, after everything that has happened in the last twenty-three years, how is a park like this still running? At least Alan Grant has finally got the picture, and declined a ticket this time around.

Jurassic World is a haven for product placement; Beats by Dre, Starbucks and Mercedes are three of about three hundred advertisements that the camera gamely points at. In fact, I would place a wager that product placement made more of a killing out of this movie than the Indominus and Mosasaurus combined (the Mosasaurus was the big sea creature, which isn’t technically a dinosaur, another flaw). Nonetheless, is the product placement a bit tongue-in-cheek? A Washington Post article explains:

“The dinosaur park is strapped for funding and takes on corporate sponsors: Its star dinosaur exhibit becomes ‘Verizon Wireless Presents The Indominus Rex.’ A side character jokes they should have gone even further, naming a dinosaur ‘Pepsi-saurus.’”

The theory makes sense, and it also quashes my point about the biggest flaw of all (although there are still minor and major details that make more noise than a Velociraptor mating call). But my final argument is: who really cares? Colin Trevorrow, the director of Jurassic World whose prior picture, Safety Not Guaranteed, was a darling of Sundance not so long ago, teases us and enthrals us. He maps the screen with Spielberg DNA and scatters it with a touch of Trevorrow class. The humans make us laugh and the genuinely terrifying monster makes us scared. These subjective reactions were much more important to me than a perforated script and an advertisement flooding.

 

There was one scene I had a problem with, when Claire’s British assistant was torn apart by Pterodactyls and ravaged by the Mosasaurus, a silly segment that echoed Piranha 3D. Still, Jurassic World may have closed for now, but I am sure sequels will force it into re-opening. Biting entertainment.  

Freaks Re-release Review

Oh horror. Horror, horror, horror. It’s a conflicted genre. Many of the scariest films of all time aren’t really horror films at all. The Exorcist is a mystery/thriller, Psycho too, Alien a sci-fi, The Blair Witch Project a mock-doc and as for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, well, that’s a family indie dramedy isn’t it? Ok so maybe the horror machine does produce some effective horror labels. And yes I do admit that films can grow up in a family of genres.

So then, what is Freaks? Tod Browning’s deformed dystopia of a particular family of sideshow acts travels back into cinemas this week, and still shocks with its insidious direction, eighty-three years after its initial release. Freaks is a sexually charged love story, a fantasy that weeps in its nightmarish reality and above all else, a genuinely horrifying experience. On my inaugural viewing of it (I was twelve and malleable to an extreme reaction), the infamous dénouement resulted in a face spasm, which left me looking like Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’. On what must be my seventh or eighth viewing of it now, I perceive it as an uneasy watch, hauntingly authentic, and an unmistakable masterpiece.

The film is gleeful in its aesthetic of the macabre. It bathes in its odd, darkly comic presentation of fear and loathing in a carnival space. Browning paints his picture from a personal palette. He spent a period of his teenage years attached to a travelling carnival. Perhaps the memorable outbreak of ‘one of us, one of us’ around the half-way mark, is an ode to the director, even if it is also a precursor to a rather unfortunate ending.

Browning does nudge the audience with his dalliance in exploitation; he wants his voyeurs to respect the “freaks”, but he hardly makes them look respectable. This has often been aired as a criticism, yet it is almost certain that some sideshow acts of the period were mistreated, thus, the plot’s vengeance tale is understandable.

Freaks captured the horror beat. The film’s writer, Clarence Aaron Robbins knew when to tread carefully, and when to inject trauma. He was a harbinger of great horror story-telling, and he managed to pour the correct dosage of fear and fright into the narrative. The film offered and continues to offer a profound influence to film-makers emblazoned with the horror crest. David Lynch, a distinctive and stylised director, owes more credit to Freaks as an inspiration than any other film committed to celluloid.

Freaks left an indelible mark on me, one that cannot be removed. It confidently stomps into the horror paddock and it is truly, one of the most iconic films of the genre, ever made.

San Andreas Review

Dwayne Johnson wrestles with an earthquake that rocks the West coast.
 

California is the soon-to-be shaken setting for San Andreas, where anyone adverse to suntan has a lot more to worry about than the prickly heat. As helicopter pilot Ray Gaines, an appropriate name for The Rock’s character, who seems to surpass only himself in size as each of his films sweep by, the former pro wrestler turned heavy-set movie star throws thrills, as well as himself, into the tide of this silly disaster flick.

San Andreas’s waves of quality undulate on the Richter scale. Any sign of a strong story-line falls to the ground with the first of many skyscrapers. The unstoppable force of CGI takes control, and threatens Johnson’s top billing as the star of the movie. However, just as Johnny Depp is the new face of Dior, The Rock is the new face of the (sometimes 3D) action genre. I would not say he captivates as Ray, though he is rather watchable as a much-more-than-capable rescue pilot intent on finding his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario), who is sitting pretty high up in one of those vulnerable skyscrapers, that is until disaster deals a tsunami. Ray, assisted by his ex-wife Emma (Carla Gugino), who he saves from the devastation of Los Angeles and whom he is still enamoured by, races into risky tectonic territory to locate his estranged daughter. This, whilst avoiding emphatic aftershocks.

I am usually unshaken by this particular film template; the format is prosaic and it is prone to containing an airless plot. Having said this, I cannot ridicule San Andreas too much (it’s had enough aftershocks as it is). The ridiculousness is refined by good performances from Gugino and Paul Giamatti, who plays a seismologist armed with a fistful of clichés such as, ‘you need to get out, if you can’t, god be with you’. Giammati’s speech and gestures tremor even more than the earthquakes, though he doesn’t quite cause as much damage. He is consistently a likable figure on film, his awful cameo in the The Amazing Spiderman 2 being the exemption. Yet, there is no one more likable here than The Rock. His oeuvre lacks a masterpiece, and San Andreas isn’t one. Though, his presence is enough. It wasn’t enough for The Tooth Fairy or Race to Witch Mountain, but here he steadies what could have been a sinkable ship.   

San Andreas does hark back to 70’s blockbuster fare like Earthquake (of course) and The Towering Inferno. There was a pleasurable trashiness to 1974’s Earthquake in particular, and this is certainly true of this film too. The spectacularly realised CGI is where the comparability with these 70’s disaster movies ends. The impressive special effects blitz is more ominous than the inclination that what we are viewing could actually happen in reality. Due to this, it has similarities also with more recent films that dine with natural disaster, like The Day After Tomorrow and Deep Impact.    

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has muscled into the top of the Box Office, and deservedly so. Dumb and fun, just don’t take it too seriously. 

Top Five Review

It’s a high-five for Top Five, Chris Rock’s self-referential, day-in-the-life account of former alcoholic comic, Andre Allen, who cannot catch a break in being taken seriously. Rock writes, directs and stars as Allen, whose pursuit to be a respected and relevant actor has put some stand-up talent to bed.

In 2001, Chris Rock was labelled by Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly, as ‘the funniest man in America’. Since then he has gone on to film projects that have hardly been critical darlings, the likes of Grown Ups and Head of State spring to mind. One might say then that Top Five’s protagonist mirrors Rock himself, someone who has never quite had the prolificacy in film as he has had in comedy. With this entry into his filmography however, he produces an authentic and, at times, hilarious depiction of the deformed, dysfunctional, deranged world of celebrity. Rock integrates his trademark gusto and high-pitched delivery, peppered with profanity, into the performance. Oh, and he jettisons in the N-word wherever possible, a predominant feature of his stand-up routines. Rosario Dawson, as a New York Times reporter who interviews Andre Allen for the entirety of the feature, grabs herself some good-ish material. Rock also over-indulges us with an array of cameos, including Adam Sandler, Whoopi Goldberg and Jerry Seinfeld, who bring the funny late on.

Certain critics might be repelled by some gross-out sequences, yet these will appeal to a broader audience, graduates of such films like American Pie and There’s Something About Mary. Also, there may be a sprinkling of the derogatory, but the substance and satire of Top Five will engage with the cultured crowd too. The wondering around the city and sporadically intelligent musings reminisce Linklater’s ‘Before’ movies, as well as Rock’s own picture with Julie Delpy, Two Days in New York. Although not all the jokes induce a laugh-out-loud reaction, some are quite middling in fact, this is Rock’s best cinematic outing to date. And like I said, it merges intellect with the, well, disgusting stuff. Think French New Wave meets the Farrelly brothers.

Far From The Madding Crowd Review

This irresistible love story, which follows Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan), an attractive and independent young woman who is courted by a triumvirate of imperfect men, has charmed many for generations. The novel has been adapted before of course, most famously in 1967 by John Schlesinger, with Julie Christie in the lead role. That particular version is known to be one of the great literary adaptations of British cinema or to put it another way, difficult to surpass.

Nonetheless, Thomas Vinterberg’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s fourth novel is a luscious revival that sweeps across the Dorset country side, with each frame indulging us in such bucolic beauty. His magisterially directed update resembles a finely acted and sharply paced period romance. It shaves fifty minutes off of the running time of Schlesinger’s classic, and the film feels sufficient in substance, not at all flabby. David Nichols screenplay, the novelist behind Starter For 10 and One Day, laces authentic characters into the boot of the narrative, rightly shunning the melodrama that exists in the original source material.

 

Carey Mulligan is excellent as Bathsheba Everdene; the character’s resilience and integrity are effortlessly distributed through Mulligan’s steely gaze and confident poise. She exhibits flourishes of playfulness too, offering the role a fresh and fun dynamic.

In regarding the somewhat unsuitable suitors, both Matthias Schoenaerts, as the stolid Gabriel Oak, and Michael Sheen, as the lonely William Baldwood, give terrific performances. Schoenaerts echoes Brando with his quiet, rumbling intensity, and Sheen rallies audience empathy for his tremulous tone and unshakable longing for Bathsheba. Tom Sturridge succeeds in being unlikeable as the supercilious Captain Francis Troy, though stumbles in being anywhere near as captivating as Terrence Stamp was in Schlesinger’s picture.

This in no way harms the film, which is, as I have mentioned, a luscious revival. Many will say it lacks an earthiness to it, but what we have here is a tonal palette of nature and class. Far From the Madding Crowd does not abscond from its roots, but it does extend its reach out into the modern world, where it conveys a plucky and grounded heroine atop of the hierarchy, not adverse to getting dirt under her fingernails. This is the best British period piece since Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice. Seek it out. 

The Good Lie Review

‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’ This African proverb surfaces as the final frame of The Good Lie, directed by Phillipe Falardeau, fades. It is a saying that can transcend through all walks of life, yet it is most poignant in this film, as it encapsulates a walk for life.

We follow a band of young Sudanese refugees, who trek from their homeland towards Kenya, across stretches of mostly dry terrain, in search of asylum. These are fictional characters embedded into a factual crisis. In 1983, political unrest fomented a Second Civil War in Sudan. The spine of the nation was ruptured, and this resulted in a long and violent conflict that saw many people perish, around two million. Amidst this horror, we observe a diminished tribe who trudge onwards to survive, a hope that preserves, despite numbers being clipped by rebel militia and incessant sickness.

Thirteen years after their arrival in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, the four who evaded capture, disease and starvation, Mamere (Arnold Oceng), Jeremiah (Ger Duany), Paul (Emmanuel Jal) and Abital (Kuoth Wiel), are granted a passport to the United States. However, as they fly into the Land of Liberty, the three men are forced into an emotional farewell, as they are separated from their ‘sister’, Abital.

The three ‘brothers’ are then homed in Kansas City, Missouri, which is when Employment Agent, Carrie Davis (Reese Witherspoon), carrying an air of insouciance, enters their lives. From hereon in, although attempts to adjust are made, the ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’ find themselves in maintaining their own culture and values on foreign soil.

The first third of The Good Lie is terrific. South Africa doubles for Sudan and its expansive aestheticism is strikingly realised through the lens. The irony of the landscape’s beauty is that it plays host to brutality, terror and threat, always suggested and never explicit. The African Queen is nodded to early on, with the militia take-over of the Sudanese village, reminiscent of the German infiltration of the mission village in John Huston’s seminal classic. A sequence involving dead bodies floating in a stream, along with a Nyatiti, a Kenyan instrument traditionally played at funerals, is the most harrowing. The opening half hour is gripping and taut in its exhibition of innocence ambushed by chaos.

The trouble is as soon as Mamere and friends arrive in America, the grip slackens. Of course it is interesting to see their adaptation to a First World country, and the humour derived from such experiences as their reaction to McDonald’s. It is also wonderful to see Jeremiah’s alienation towards food wastage, a concept we can all agree with. Witherspoon’s Carrie and the underused Corey Stoll as Jack, too play a vital part in developing an understanding of the social milieu of the three former children of war. There is just a slight tonal imbalance that provokes certain parts of the American section to stumble. Having said this, at least the film drives in a natural direction, avoiding potholes of mawkish sentimentality.

The Good Lie is an authentic account, propelled by three appealing male leads, two of whom, Ger Duany and Emmanuel Jal, were born into the infliction of the Sudanese Civil War. It is a heart-warming tale of a terrible crisis, translated into a good film that loses its stride in periods, but regains its pace soon after. Well worth a cinema ticket.