Movie Review: The Death of Stalin

Director: Armando Iannucci

Writers: Armando Iannucci, David Schneifolloder, Ian Martin, Peter Fellows, Fabien Nury, Thierry Robin

Stars: Jason Isaacs, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurylenko, Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Rupert Friend, Paddy Considine, Michael Palin, Simon Russell Beale

Verdict: Hella funny

Hello Jason Isaacs. 

The plot of The Death of Stalin follows the farcical power struggle in the fallout of the death of Stalin, (Spoilers, but I think the title gives that away). 

It’s sometimes hard to review comedies because there are only so many ways to say either, “it’s really funny”, or, “it’s just not funny”. That being said, The Death of Stalin is really, really funny. With Iannucci, I’ve always seen the opportunity for his work to completely blow me away although they have consistently failed to do so, whenever I go into a new Iannucci project I’ve consistently been let down. That so, so, didn’t happen with The Death of Stalin, I really, really liked it. I was concerned that it would just be one joke stretched out into 100 minutes, that joke being the grovelling and back-breaking limbo moves pulled off to maintain the party line but the way they get around that is by taking that joke at many different angles, looks, and infections, and by working in that really jet black humour about the offhand way that the executioners and torturers deal with their work. The tone of The Death of Stalin can best be summed up, in my opinion, in one of many jokes in the film, in which Stalin’s cabinet are moving is prone body and Jeffery Tambor, (Transparent, Arrested Development), complains, “I have a bad back” to the retort, “too much social climbing”. The tone is very much that sense of bickering, the kind of humour one might exchange over drinks, given this absolutely horrific sense of pitch black, gallows humour merely by its juxtaposition with the constant threat of death faced under Soviet Socialism. The Death of Stalin is the new black comedy from Armando Iannucci, (Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, In the Loop, Veep), which follows the power struggle in Soviet Russia in the fallout of Stalin’s death, (spoilers, although I think the title does that). 

It has an all-star cast, all of whom give really awards courting performances. Michael Palin, (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Brazil), is in it and is fabulous as he always is. Jason Isaacs, (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Star Trek: Discovery), plays a character who is completely counter to the world that’s set up and my god does it work when you wouldn’t expect it to and does this outrageous Yorkshire accent and has many of the best lines. Andrea Riseborough, (Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Oblivion, Nocturnal Animals), provides a really valuable female presence in a film that does seem a tad overwhelmed by the male bravado and toxic masculinity which it so deftly skewers, just, a bit too much of it all. In a film like, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the idea is that that’s a film about the way that old men interact with other old men, whereas The Death of Stalin doesn’t go far enough into that subtext to really justify its overwhelming sausage fest. 

There are moments of farce, (many moments of farce actually), moments of pitch-black humour, of tragedy, and of absolutely abject horror, it’s quite a spectacular achievement but the overwhelming irritatingness of its characters’ misogyny prevents it from being more than the sum of its parts. I was laughing like an idiot, I was the only one who was, I kind of get it not clicking with you, but it really clicked with me. Also, I feel in the end, maybe comedy is the more effective mode in which to deliver some messages because otherwise people just sort of become numb to never-ending misery, this film is really easy to engage with and the populous can engage with it and get its message really easily y’know. 

Movie Review: La La Land

Director: Damien Chazelle

Writer: Damien Chazelle

Stars: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone

Verdict: A Joy

Y’know just before going into this movie I was like “I had a load of horror films in my top list for 2016, wouldn’t it be funny if La La Land was my favourite of the year for 2017?”. I mean all the peices were in place, I loved Chazelle’s last film Whiplash, (my dad said, ‘a film about a jazz drummer, what was the point?’ would it be too obvious to say that’s kind of missing the point of it?), Ryan Gosling is one of my favourite actors working at the moment and I’ve always felt Emma Stone, (The Help, Easy A, Birdman) has had the potential to do great things, and I’ve been looking for a really great musical to fall in love with. I will say though, I saw this on the 8th at a preview screening, (I know how luxurious, little old me), 8 days into the year and I feel it’s pretty safe to say this might well be my favourite film of 2017. Then again I havn’t seen 20th Century Women, yet which just seems geared towards me. 

La La Land is, at it’s core, a fairly standard romance, it’s essentially a twist on Singin’ in the Rain only, better, and less sexist. A lonesome jazz pianist meets a struggling actress and at first they hate eachother but, y’know what, very quickly the ice begins to melt. The premise may be conventional but how the story unfolds from then on is not, and the plot is really just an excuse to have dazzling set peices and musical numbers. 

Not since I think Mad Max: Fury Road have I seen a film as dedicated to purely entertainng you as this one. It begins with one of the best cinematic traffic jams since Sicario, and one of a very different sort. Instead becomming one of the tensest shootouts I’ve seen for quite some time, it turns into one of the most dazzling, colourful, and best choreographed dance routines I’ve seen for quite some time. It’s all filmed in long takes to sell the routines, and the routines are great. No one fucks up, it’s all synchronised and just looks dazzling. The cinematography on display is truly astounding. It was done by Linus Sandgren, who most recently did Joy, which I recently reviewed, (here), and the cinematography was actually probably the best thing about that film. Actually to hear him talk about the difference in approach for those two films is very intersting. 

The performances are lovely. Who knew how funny Ryan Gosling was? He’s turning into a proper Ryan Goose, but I feel like that joke’s been done to death at much earlier stages of his career but there aren’t many adult gosling puns you can make. He’s had three movies out in last year and this year; this film, The Nice Guys, and The Big Short. This role combines the wit of The Big Short, which was actually the film that made me stop and go ‘wow Ryan Gosling knows exactly how to do comedy on a technical level well done him’; with the physical comedy of The Nice Guys; with the melancholia of Drive. There’s a face that Ryan Gosling does at the end of that iconic lift scene in Drive of just utter sadness and longing and regret and it’s a great face, and he’s really good at it, and he does it a lot in this film. He is really, really good, and he sings and dances and plays the piano and it’s lovely. Emma Stone I have never before seen at this level of good. She has a way of talking that makes it sound like it’s coming out of an actual person. She looks like she’s improvising in the sense that it doesn’t look like she’s saying lines that she’s rehearsed, she looks like someone having a conversation in real life. She is such an individual screen presence that it’s almost incongruous but I’m really glad she’s there because I love that manner of acting and I wish more people were doing it. 

If I was to nitpick I would say that it is a bit contrived, there’s one particular scene where Ryan Gosling makes a point about Emma Stone’s heels so she immediately gets tap shoes out of her bag and you go ‘oh right it’s this kind of musical’ but that’s not really representative of the rest of the film because in general, La La Land does make an effort to seem natural. Chazelle has talked in interviews about wanting to make it feel like you were ‘falling into’ the songs and for the most part I think he manages it.

If you go out onto the street and ask people to name a director, they’ll probably say, Steven Spielburg, (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial), Stanely Kubrick, (The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey), Martin Scorcese, (Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street), maybe George Lucas, (Star Wars), and probably Micheael Bay, (Transformers). If Damien Chazelle keeps this up, this already quite extraordinary winning streak after only two big films and co-writing credits on 10 Cloverfield Lane, he might well join that linneage. You see the poster and it’s incredible that any film could get that many five star reviews and they wouldn’t have to scrape the bottom of the barrel of publications to get them. I tell you now, if I did stars, they could have included me. It’s wonderful!

Year Round Up Part 2 – Films That Should Have Been Better

Just remember, these aren’t necessarily bad films, just ones we really deserve better from. So don’t get your knickers in a twist please. Anyway if you did it’s not like I’d change my opinion is it?

Oh poor DC. They just can’t get it right can they? First they hire Zack Snyder of all people for the mess that was Batman Vs Superman, then they actually hire a proper director with David Ayer for Suicide Squad, and they completely screw him around! They really need to take a long, hard look at themselves. Do better!

On the subject of leaving well alone, despite the merit that Rogue One undoubtedly has, I have many friends for whom this is topping their movie of the year lists and for me it probably wouldn’t crack the top half if I ordered all the movies I watched all year. I like you Gareth Edwards but you have severely let yourself down.

There were a swathe of critically aclaimed movies this year that, upon reflection, really werent as good as critics made out, as good as they may be. After the best picture sucess of Birdman, which I have abounding fondness for, for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s next film The Revenant, a long gestating passion project, I expected more than just a beautifully shot endurance test. If I’d known putting yourself through as much pain as possible could win you a best actor oscar I’d have started starring in Micheal Bay films a long time ago. I fell asleep in the cinema. 

After the breakout sucess of What We Do In The Shadows, and the great reviews for Hunt For The Wilderpeople, I really think I’m justified in feeling a bit dissapointed. I mean, it’s good, really good, but it feels like a minor note in what will probably go on to be an astronomical career from Taika Waititi.

We also saw films like The Jungle Book, and Things to Come, two very different films that both got rave reviews and are making a lot of films of the year lists, but for me were just, kind of fine? Things to Come actually infuriated me for about half of it. Solid 3 and a half star movies, but from near 100% Rotten Tomatoes ratings, I expect more.

On the same theme of critically acclaimed movies that I felt let down by, I love horror films, and Under The Shadow sounded so interesting, and despite the fact it had good moments, and good ideas, it didn’t nearly utilise them to actually scare me, a horror film, whatever else it may do, needs to scare you.

Also I, Daniel Blake made me angry, but definitely not in the way Ken Loach would want it to.

Finally, QUENTIN TARANTINO LEARN TO EDIT YOUR FUCKING MOVIES

AGH

Stay tuned for a top list of the year, and a look ahead to UK cinema releases for 2017

Movie Review: Don’t Breathe

Director: Fede Alvarez

Writers: Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues

Stars: Stephen Lang, Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto

Verdict: Really, really, fucking good

Have you every watched a movie and actually been distracted by just how good it is? Like not on a Birdman, ‘oh that’s so good’ level, I mean on a ‘that’s a really clever artistic choice, well done you’ level. That’s the experience I had with Don’t Breathe. I won’t win Oscars, but it should. 

Don’t Breathe is an exploitation thriller b movie where three low life theives try to rob a blind veteran of his life savings and things go south pretty fast, it doesn’t sound very engaging, or that you’d like the characters, but the movie pulls it off. It’s essentially the type of movie I’d watch with my Dad when my mum and my sister weren’t around, sleazy horror films like The Corridor, and Se7en, but done with such a clever eye for film making that it stands out from the crowd. 

The key to Don’t Breathe is this; Danny Boyle said something of Trainspotting, a film I have abounding affection for, when he made it, that these characters may be junkies, but that’s not all they are, they’re funny, and complex and they have they’re own dimensions. There is an absolutely fabulous line in Trainspotting that has always captured this for me, it’s when Renton says of his mother, “she was, in her own, socially acceptable way, also a drug addict”. In Don’t Breathe, our characters are low life thieves, but that’s not all they are, they have dimensions and hopes and dreams and motivations that makes you care for them, and without that, all the stylish film making in the world couldn’t help you. 

The film does have style, and a lot of it. It’s directed by Fede Alverez, best known for the remake Evil Dead, and he’s set up to tackle the next English language ‘Tattoo’ film, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, and taking over film David Fincher’s, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is no stylistic mean feat. In this film Alverez uses style how it should be used, for really economical story telling. There is one long take that puts one in mind of David Fincher’s Panic Room, a very underrated film, that like that Panic Room long take builds tention, whilst simulatenously setting up things that will pay off later. So it will show you object X and then later a set peice will take place around object X and you’ll go OMG NO THAT’S GONNA HAPPEN! But the film still finds ways to subvert your expectations; it’s really great. Because of the nature of the film, there’s a lot of silence so visual communication is a must and it does that really well, a lot of other stuff is done in the soundtrack. Now the film I think has Oscar worthy sound design and sound mixing, (to a layman there’s little difference so just, the sound is really well done), and it’s not just a There Will Be Blood thing, which incedetally also has great sound design in other areas, where “look, he’d deaf or they’re being quiet so we’re going to cut the sound!!!!” it’s done so that you can hear every little sound. I mean it won’t get Oscar nominated because it has a turkey baster full of human semen in it, but it should. I mean seriously there were moments in Don’t Breathe where I was like, ‘oh no, OH NO, oh fuck that’. In the same way The Neon Demon deserves oscars for score and cinematography but it has lesbian necrophilia and the academy is like 90% white men, then again maybe they’re perverted white men who knows…

Anyway…

Technicaly brilliance aside, what it leads to is a tense film full of some really gripping set peices, there’s one in a car, another with some night vision that’re some of the most gripping sequences I’ve seen in maybe any film of this year, in fact Don’t Breathe is definitely in the running for my favourite of the year, but I havn’t really been keeping track. It’s incredibly cineliterate, you can see references, as we’ve already said, to Panic Room, but at one point to Fight Club, and Fight Club references can often run you into trouble but this film does it right I think, and most obviously it references I think The Silence of the Lambs or maybe Sicario, depending which you prefer to call. It might be a bit riduclous at times, but it’s a compliment to the film that that didn’t bother me. I watched it pretty late at night, and it just left me feeling completely wired, it’s great, and actually at the end has some political bite. 

For me, 5 stars, and I don’t really do star ratings so, y’know, it’s good innit. 

Also Stephen Lang, (Avatar, The Men Who Stare at Goats) is great with very few words. 

Movie Review: Nocturnal Animals

Director: Tom Ford

Writers: Tom Ford, Austin Wright

Stars: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon

Verdict: Decent

I really like Nocturnal Animals, it’s weird, it’s a film that I don’t love but it’s very very hard to find any specific fault with. 

There’s a lot to love about Nocturnal Animals. It follows, nominally, Amy Adams’ character, (Man of Steel, American Hustle, Arrival, Big Eyes), who lives this very aesthetically orientated life in the Los Angeles art world. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that it’s set in the art world for two reasons. The first being that her art is all about aesthetics and the twisting of beauty into something sordid purely on a visual level and that does reflect the themes of the film, (that’s not explicitly stated, it’s just my interpretation of her art), and in fact her own opinion of her art becomes a major plot point. The second reason is that director Tom Ford, (A Single Man), used to be a fashion designer, and despite the fact that he has a rule never to place his own products in his films, setting a film in the high sheen art world I feel just gives him an excuse to have the film so meticulously designed, I mean the premise really allows Ford to indulge himself, but not in a Tarantino way in which The Hateful Eight becomes Reservoir Dogs but twice the length and half the quality. Although what it does mean, is that for most of the film I felt really detached, I wanted the film to cut deeper, I felt like I didn’t know these characters in a way I wanted to. That does change, but only really in the last act and all at once and it can be quite frustrating for the rest of the film, although it does mean the actual pay off itself is really significant and striking. Amy Adams gets a draft of a book from her ex-husband played by Jake Gylenhaal, (Donnie Darko, Zodiac, Source Code), and to quote Adams, “it’s violent, and sad, and he dedicated it to me”. 

The film has what one would definitely call a star studded cast. Not really big names but all very very talented character actors. Aside from Amy Adams and Jake Gylenhaal, the later of whom I really like because he just seems to be a really dedicated character actor who also happens to be a big star; we have Andrea Riseborough, (Birdman, Oblivion), and Micheal Sheen, (Kingdom of Heaven, Frost/Nixon), both quite unrecognisable in their roles, who exist to, in a way counterbalance Adams’ empty relationships with something that has a real emotional connection but also have all the materialistic decadence; we have Armie Hammer, (The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Social Network), as Adams’ husband, who seems to be very changeable in his roles and works best when he doesn’t play a particularly likable character but in a way that’s very self effacing, unlike this role where he seems to take himself far too seriously and I don’t think he really works; for the bulk of the story-in-a-story we have Micheal Shannon, (Boardwalk Empire, Midnight Special, Man of Steel), who I’m a rather large fan of, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, (Kick-Ass, Godzilla, Avengers: Age of Ultron), both chewing a whole hunk of scenery and doing it very well; we have Jana Malone and Karl Glusman, who were both so good in The Neon Demon, making small but very good and very well acted and very relevant appearances; I could go on.

The real benefit of this film is two-fold though. The first is that this film is a real achievement in narrative story-telling. Normally a framed narrative acts as a sort of alienation device, if it divides the author from the story you can not only have more freedom to talk about political ideas because well, these things are being said by someone else not the author, being the defense. It also prevents you getting emotionally involved in the characters, sort of forcing you to engage with the story on an intellectual not emotional level. The genius of the framed narrative in Nocturnal Animals is kind of hard to describe though. Our main character is Amy Adams, however the story that forms the meat of the movie is in the book she reads during the story, the trailer cuts it all together to make it look like something completely different though. The book is so intricately linked into the story of our main character than the line between them becomes blurred, the direction shows this very obviously with some very well placed match cuts. The fact is that despite the book being the story you’re engaged with most, the fact is that the book is Gylenhaal saying to Adams ‘this is what you did to me, this is how you made me feel’, so very soon the relevance of the story becomes how much it reveals about Adams, not just to us but to herself about what she did to her ex husband. It’s quite brilliant. The second joy is Gylenhaal himself. He was robbed of even an Oscar nomination for Nightcrawler but he is more than deserving of the Oscar itself in this film because he is quite incredible. 

Nocturnal Animals is an engaging psycho-sexual/noir/western/thriller with an incredible cast who for the most part do very well and it has a really meaningful message, i.e. “when you love somebody you hold onto it, you might never get that again”, which is a really warm message to break though the darkness of the narrative, which is really bleak. The ending was slightly unsatisfying but appropriate, I feel it would have worked better in the original novel this is based on, I wanted more emotional involvement despite the fact it does come eventually, but Nocturnal Animals is definitely worth your time, and Tom Ford is a writer/director who deserves for you to vote for him with your dollars more than fucking Michael Bay, (Transformers, Armageddon). It’s one of three big Amy Adams movies this year, and whilst I haven’t seen Arrival this is head and shoulders better than her other entry, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Nocturnal Animals pulls no punches.