On Kong: Skull Island

What could go wrong? A film about King Kong set during the Vietnam War. It’s a match made in heaven and amazing that no one has tried this before. And, Kong: Skull Island is replete with Vietnam and 70s iconography, from the tape deck to the slow-mo shots of helicopters dropping bombs. It is hard to dislike. Yet, Skull Island is a film you should dislike, for despite the attention to detail, someone forgot to create characters or direct the actors. Aside from John C Reilly, the characters here are paper-thin: the crazy one, the photographer, the quiet tough guy, the young kid. All plucked from countless war films. All instantly forgettable. In an interview, the director said he considered opening with a little mockery at Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005) remake and could never understand why it took so long for them to reveal Kong. That remake may have been flawed, but this is a failed piece of work. A great idea, wasted and a bad sign of things to come if it is meant to signal the birth of a monster movie franchise. 

Kong looks great though.

On Jackie

Tales of the Kennedy family are infectious. That much is clear. America has been unable to move beyond the conspiracies surrounding the doomed family name for decades. JFK’s tale is one so well told that people born years later know his fate and can describe the infamous Dallas images as if they were there. In short, the man and his death are iconic. Sewn into and defining aspects of American culture. What could the country have been had the man they imagined he was been allowed to have lived and preside? It is hard to ignore or forget a man who holds such power posthumously, who continues to invite comparison and investigation over 50 years later.

It is hard too, for the filmmaker to take the Kennedy story and tell it again so that we see it with fresh eyes. Yet, Jackie achieves this and becomes an intoxicating tale of the family. It is stunningly layered and captivating performance from Natalie Portman, one deserving of all the recognition, but one perhaps too difficult to really love. Here, Jackie is more than a grieving widow, she is a woman obsessed with legacy, aware of infidelities, but unable to let her husband as anything other than great. This really is one of the more fascinating explorations of grief on screen. Pablo Larraín’s camera lingers closely, allowing us intimate access to the parts of Kennedy’s death that are not familiar, although it should be mentioned that this representation of the assassination is as realistic, intimate and artistic as any seen before. Portman sheds any signs of vanity and produces a performance of similar intensity to Black Swan (2010).

Write Noah Oppenheim smartly cushions this narrative within the one-week timeframe, from the death to the burial, with flashbacks to flesh out certain aspects. This means we never feel lost in the maze that is Kennedy conspiracy, nor do we ever feel unsure about where this story is going. A fate that can befall many a biography. The Kennedy family has been showing up in film, in one form or another, for decades. Jackie is one of the better insights into this beguiling family.

On the Maturity of Marvel with Logan

The Marvel behemoth produces many pieces of work that follow a familiar template in narrative, look and content. They are all family friendly and never too challenging. In the last month or so this model has been challenged itself by two texts that have separated themselves from the cinematic universe Marvel are creating while remaining under the Marvel umbrella, enjoying the budget freedoms that offers.

Legion on TV was eight episodes of pure joy. Created by Noah Hawley of Fargo (always the best thing on TV when it’s on), Legion was stylish and baffling and always enjoyable. The second is Logan, Hugh Jackman’s last time playing the X-Men hero Wolverine and the completion of the stand-alone Wolverine trilogy that has, unusually improved each time. Logan is a film bathed in a golden yellow, appropriate as it finds Wolverine in his autumn years; old, broken and tired of living.

Gone are the huge green screen action set pieces, replaced by America’s west. More than an action film, Logan borrows heavily from Western and road movie genre conventions, with Shane (1953) becoming an intertextual reference of Logan’s fate. It is a beautiful film to look at with the special effects it does use, being employed with subtlety rather than the usual overkill to disguise the lack of character. Instead, Logan is a character study and Jackman here pulls up the same kind of dilemmas we saw him capable of in Prisoners (2013).

The violence is questionable. Yes, this is the most accurate representation of the hurt that would be unleashed by a man with indestructible metal claws, but in certain moments it feels too much. Just because they have been allowed to be violent, does it mean they should push it as far as they can? It’s uncertain and the approach to violence walks a fine line. Either way, it makes this the most adult superhero film, or at least parallel with Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008). And honestly, it makes it refreshing too. Too often Marvel films placate adult audiences in favour of box office.

In a moment that must be a first for a superhero film death is handled with incredible gentleness and is both saddening and joyful as we feel Logan’s wish to be released from it all. As he whispers, “so this is what it feels like”, decades of pain disappear. There is a slightly more conventional final third, but by the time his death comes around, we are so invested in his character that we can forgive the more clichéd aspects, such as the mutant kids combining their powers, or the young Logan appearing. Fortunately, both are used sparingly.

Logan is a dark and adult film. One that is even perhaps too adult for its 15 rating. It does after all deal with the abuse and death of children and the redemption of a man who has committed questionable acts for many years. Despite stepping away from the Marvel connectivity, Logan is still held back by the name and one feels that were this a film that had appeared from nowhere, with a character we did not know, it could have been an even more special piece of cinema.

On Silence

Scorsese has enough credit in the bank to make whatever film he wishes and according to his BFI interview, making Silence has been a long and difficult road. And you can see why. There are countless Scorsese films where, if you were flicking TV channels and came upon them 30 minutes in, you'd stay and watch. Silence does not fall into that category. It is a film that demands the correct state of mind. A state that is prepared for an explicit ecclesiastical journey through 17th century Japan, where, despite the title, there is much dialogue often dealing with layered ethical questions. The silence refers only to that of god, of who the priests wish for a response.

It is a beautifully shot film rife with confidence that must come from knowing your craft as well as Scorsese does. His knowledge of how long to hold a shot is absolute and Silence really is a masterly example of camera work. The way into the story is confident also, making a film about a topic that for many is foreign, accessible. Scorsese said that Shutter Island (2010) would be his most successful film because people will have to see it twice. He was right. It would be incredibly surprising if Silence came close to such box office. Although this is not its intention. It is a film for film lovers. It also just lacks something to it stand out in an impressive winter season of cinema. Perhaps if seen at the right time, in the right frame of mind Silence could be special. It is, after all, made by a living master of film.

On Split

It is not untrue to say that Split is the best M. Night Shyamalan since The Sixth Sense (1999), although his vineyard is not full of rich pickings. Despite this, Split is a thoroughly entertaining and oddly thought provoking film. The idea is good and McAvoy is gripping in the lead roles. The scenes between him and Betty Buckley as his therapist are always fascinating. But, the issue with Split and the issue with all of Shyamalan's films is a complete lack of challenge to his audience. A film about a man with multiple and dangerous personalities that involves kidnapped girls should be creepy, scary and challenging. This is not. In Shyamalan's hands it is reduced to its basic oppositions. Sane versus insane; he lays it all out clearly, with well written metaphors to explain complex psychological problems. It is as if Disney made thrillers. We are given everything. No need to think and when the final scene is revealed (mistakingly referred to as a twist) we realise why. This is a fantastical world, a superhero world and superhero worlds take scary, complex real world issues and make them palatable for mainstream audiences.

On The Darkness of Hollywood in La La Land

It is easy to wonder why La La Land has been quite as hailed as it has been. The film starts hesitantly and slips easily into well-worn clichés. Apart from the musical numbers its narrative isn’t that different from the 200 romantic comedy The Break Up. Its leading lady is good, but a recognisable character and in short, apart from all the singing and dancing, many people would not separate it from many of the fun but forgettable rom-coms that litter cinema screens every year.

Yet, underneath the shimmering seediness of LA, La La Land prods at deeper themes, those of careerism versus familial, or masculinity in the 21^st century. And it is here that we find the reality in Damien Chazelle’s fantastical picture. Emma Stone’s want-to-be-actress-waitress appears to be a romantic; she gets lost in film sets and soliloquises about her childhood dreams of being an actor. Ryan Gosling’s jazz pianist, the more interesting character of the two, also has dreams, but roots them far more in reality; he knows life knocks you down and fighting back is not worth it and after overhearing Stone tell her mother he doesn’t work full time, he sets his dream aside in favour of regular, yet unfulfilling work.

When the film moves us forward five years, we find that our initial reading of these characters may have been misplaced. Stone’s conversation with her mother about job security, one we read as the mother’s beliefs are revealed as Stone’s. She is now the famous actor with the husband and child, but Chazelle’s framing of her family exposes it is she that is the careerist as her husband, shirt untucked, shoeless, playing with the child, endlessly passive, has no defining characteristic to speak of. It is to be assumed he has given way to whatever life he had to be her other half. A role the complicated, vibrant and creative Gosling never could have become.

As for Gosling, five years later he has opened the jazz club he always wanted, yet his life, unlike Stone’s carries reminders of their year together. The logo for his club is her design, initially dismissed by him. And, when she stumbles in there with her husband for a nightcap, he comes off worse, leaving the stage alone with a mournful smile. While she accepts this as acceptance of their separate lives and leaves with her husband.

Their romance was destined to fail from the start, as the film’s continuous state of reverie suggests. Gosling even offers the biggest clue of their fate when passionately describing jazz, a musical genre he makes her love through his own passion. It is, he decries, complicated, conflicting, confusing and improvised as it develops; it is hard work and everyone has to be individual and together at the same time. This it turns out, is their own relationship and in the end, the pull of being an individual was too great; they both needed someone to offer no conflict, no confusion and Stone found it in the passive, anonymous husband and Gosling doesn’t find it. La La Land, the title referring to the dream like world of Hollywood also refers to the attitudes of people who live there. Attitudes which are selfish and careerist and reveal this to be a far more interesting and darker film that initially imagined.

On the Top Ten of 2016

10. Everybody Wants Some! dir. Richard Linklater
9. The Revenant dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu
8. Son of Saul dir. László Nemes
7. American Honey dir. Andrea Arnold
6. Nocturnal Animals dir. Tom Ford
5. Before the Flood dir. Fisher Stevens
4. I, Daniel Blake dir. Ken Loach
3. Arrival dir. Denis Villeneuve
2. Spotlight dir. Tom McCarthy
1. 13th dir. Ava DuVernay