BRIMSTONE - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 10

BRIMSTONE is a beautifully photographed and designed western thriller that features Dakota Fanning and Guy Pearce in fiercely committed performances.  However, it falls into the trap of seeking to portray and condemn sexual violence against women by basically showing us a lot of sexual violence against women, in such a manner and style that it almost seems to be enjoying it.  The result is a film that looks beautiful and is certainly fiercely focussed on what it wants to achieve, but which jumps the shark at several key moments, and left me wondering whether it was good with occasional misjudgments, or just plain objectionable.

The film is set in the American midwest in the mid 1800s and focusses on a young mute woman (Dakota Fanning) who is a wife and mother to two small children.  In the first of four chapters we see her incite the vengeance of a mean-spiritied judgmental preacher (Guy Pearce) out of all proportion to her apparent crime of having chosen to save a mother over her baby in a troubled delivery.  But still, in this chapter I was convinced this film was going to be a well-acted, tense, taut thriller. That is until a final act of violence so absurd it pulled me out of the film.  But that was ok, because we then moved into the second chapter, and an apparent re-set of the film, as we met a young runaway girl being picked up by Chinese travellers and sold to a brothel keeper.  This was by far the most interesting and successful segment of the film but once again utterly jumped the shark with violence by the end.  And it was notable that at both of these points in the film, a number of people walked out.  Bu the film got really problematic in its third and fourth segment, where the true nature of the relationship between the preacher and the girl is revealed in all its melodramatic, exploitative detail.

What can I say? If this movie had just exercised a little restraint and thought deeply about how to depict violence against women it might have been a really fascinating, genre-bending movie.  But the director, Martin Koolhoven, seems to have zero instinct about what's provocative and what's just offensive.  It's an enormous shame because Guy Pearce and Dakota Fanning are clearly going for something high quality here, but there's let down by a director with a tin ear. 

BRIMSTONE is rated R and has a running time of 148 minutes.  BRIMSTONE played Venice, London and Toronto 2016. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE is even more arse-numbingly dull than last year's MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. - another action movie remake that not un-coincidentally starred The Tudor's Henry Cavill.  Cavill, just like his UNCLE co-star Armie Hammer, is an actor of beauty but little charisma.  In fact, it's a sad testament to the lack of star power at the centre of this movie, that the two most charismatic and shaggable men in it are Jeremy Irons (as Batman's butler) and Kevin Costner as Superman's dad.  Jesse Eisenberg plays Lex Luthor like a milder version of Jim Carrey's Riddler.  And what can we say of Ben Affleck's BATMAN?  All our worst fears, carried over from DAREDEVIL, are realised here.  He's the Ben Affleck of SOUTH PARK pastiches, square jaw, Blue-Steel troubled intense gaze, humourless anti-acting.  I'd go so far as to say that the only interesting thing about Batfleck's portrayal is his suit, which looks a bit like someone took an Iron Man outfit and spray-painted it black.  Apparently this is to imitate Frank Miller's graphic novel Dark Knight but it just looked laughably clunky, much like the screenplay.

DEADPOOL

DEADPOOL is the most knowing and self-aware comic book movie to date. It satirises the conventions of the genre, breaks the fourth wall, and has its characters refer to actors in other comic book movies in media res.  This is meta-film-making beyond anything WATCHMEN or KICK-ASS have attempted.  The result is a movie that is hilariously laugh-out loud funny, but much much darker than the typical Marvel fare. Because Deadpool/Wade is NOT a superhero. He starts off as a mercenary who's suckered into trying a weird experimental treatment to cure his cancer.  But it turns out an evil villain called Francis aka Ajax is going to torture Wade to the point where his genes mutate and then sell him as an evil super-soldier.  Wade does mutate and assume awesome healing powers and ninja skills but his whole body also gets fried.  He escapes, becomes Deadpool, and goes on an epic vigilante killing spree to find Francis, in the hope that he will reverse the pizza-face side-effects so that Wade can be reunited with his fiancee.  

Throughout all of this, Wade/Deadpool chats to us directly and gives us a witty commentary on all his actions. He continuously declares that he isn't a superhero and refuses to become an X-Man despite being an artificially created mutant.  And the comedy is crude to say the least.  What's really amazing - and kudos to the writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (ZOMBIELAND) - is that despite all this meta-comedy the movie still has heart.  Despite all the rude jokes, I absolutely cared about Wade, and felt sympathy for his predicament and believed in the love story that motivates him. 

So kudos to all involved. Most especially the writers, but also director Tim Miller in his debut feature for pulling off some fantastic action set-pieces but also committing to the gonzo dark comedy in the first place.  But ultimately this is a Ryan Reynolds movie.  And just like Robert Downey Junior in IRON MAN one can't imagine this movie without his Van Wilder patter.  The supporting cast is also very able including a number of unknowns - from the original Daario Naharis Ed Skrein as Ajax, to Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead.   I can't wait to see the film again and catch up on all the jokes I missed on the first viewing.

DEADPOOL has a running time of 108 minutes and is rated R. The movie is on global release.

BLACK MASS - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Six

BLACK MASS reminds me a lot of THE PROGRAM. Both are big glossy biopics on topics I am fascinated by, whose source books I have read, and whose cast and crew I admire. I found both to be well-made but ultimately rather dull linear paint-by-numbers narratives.  And in both cases, the real reason to watch are the outstanding acting performances.  In the case of BLACK MASS, that's Johnny Depp as the infamous South Boston gangster Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger and Joel Edgerton as his childhood friend FBI Agent John Connolly.

The story of BLACK MASS is so messed up you couldn't make it up, and speaks volumes about the incestuous corrupt politics of Boston in the 70s and 80s.  In what other universe of normality could Billy Bulger rise to be State Senator while at the same time openly consorting with his elder brother, a known felon?  And what kind of messed up world does their mutual childhood friend decide to co-opt Jimmy as an informant, so that while he and the FBI take down the mafia in a Rico case, Jimmy can move in on their territory?

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

In a post-apocalyptic future, petrol and water are scarce. Daddy controls the water in Citadel and so controls the people. The young woman are Breeders to be used at will, the old women provide mother's milk, the men are turned into fanatical warriors bewitched by a cultish vision of glorious death and Valhalla.  Into this world steps a hero. Not Mad Max but Imperatur Furiosa - Charlize Theron as a kind of Ripley - riding the War Rig to Gastown across the Badlands until she hangs a right and goes off-road to the Green Place, carrying Daddy's Breeders.  So begins a two hour car-chase of epic and gonzo proportions. The war-rig, guarded by its henchman, gone rogue.  Daddy following with all the martial glory of the Citadel - chopped up bikes and cars teeming with war-boys & a fire-breathing guitar not to mention all the gangsters roaming the sand-dunes.  But Furiosa is better than them all, and this is her story, her journey and her redemption.  Max? Well, Max is just a blood-bag, strapped to the front axle of a war-buggy with a blood transfusion feeding a war-boy called Nux.  He's not peripheral. But he's not central either.