MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2017)

Kenneth Branagh's new adaptation of Agatha Christie's iconic murder mystery is sumptuous, dynamic, faithful and great fun.  Set on the luxurious trans-European steam-train in the 1930s, the film is a locked-room mystery.  The train is derailed into snow and the renowned detective Hercule Poirot has to solve the murder on one of the passengers before the train is dug out and the police arrive.  The tension builds as the passengers realise that one of them must have done it - but how can Poirot sift the truth out of the conflicting clues - a woman running through the carriage in a red kimono - a second railway guard with a missing button - charred blackmail notes - and so many frenzied stab wounds.....

Branagh's film is firmly in the tradition of the absurdly over-cast ensemble films of the past - Sidney Lumet's 1974 version starring Albert Finney and Lauren Bacall - and the 2010 David Suchet version with Jessica Chastain and Toby Jones.  This version stars Branagh with a quite magnificent moustache as Poirot; Jonny Depp well cast as a nasty criminal called Ratchett; Dame Judi Dench as the Princess Dragimirov; Daisy Ridley Penelope Cruz; Josh Gad and many others.  For me the two actors who really stood out were Willem Dafoe and Michelle Pfeiffer - but I can't tell you why without ruining character reveals and plot twists!

A UNITED KINGDOM - BFI LFF 2016 - Opening Night Gala - Day One

It's London, 1947.  The black King of an impoverished African country falls in love with a white working class girl and against opposition for his Uncle, the Regent, marries her.  They think their battle will be to win acceptance from his tribe, to be ruled by a white woman.  But in fact the greater battle is against the impersonal forces of Cold War foreign policy.  For the country is a British protectorate. And Britain is bankrupt and fearful of Stalin.  She needs Apartheid South Africa's uranium and gold, and so chooses to overlook her hateful racial policies, and her objections to a mixed marriage in a country on her border.  And so this poor star-crossed couple must fight not only the more petty everyday racism, but a larger, political racism, separation and exile, in order to finally stake a claim not only for love, but for independence.

This is a quite astonishing true story, and it's testament to British director Amma Asante's film that I want to learn even more about it. How is it that modern day Botswana (then Bechuanaland) somehow managed to chart a course of relatively stable democracy and affluence, eschewing its destiny to be a political pawn between Britain, Russia and South Africa?  I also wanted to learn more about the fascinating couple at the centre of the story - particularly the wife, Ruth.  How does a working class girl from London have the courage to go to a strange country and apparently, per the end credits, become a fierce political campaigner and advocate for AIDS victims? Actress Rosamund Pike hinted in a red carpet interview that Ruth's experience in World War Two was liberating and defining and I'd love to know more about that.

BRAVE

BRAVE reached our shores much maligned - a Pixar movie that was too Disney, too earnest, too mashed up in the re-writes, not funny enough, not adult enough..... And it's true, BRAVE isn't your standard issue Pixar fare.  The protagonist is female, the setting is medieval Scotland, and instead of male bonding and pop-culture references we get an earnest, emotional and frightening film about maternal love and maturity.  Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald) rebels against her arranged marriage to a clan heir, refusing to be a demure feminine wife like her mother Elinor (Emma Thompson).  Happening across a witch (Julie Walters) she unwittingly casts a spell that turns her mother into a bear - an animal her father Fergus (Billy Connolly) is most intent on killing. Moreover, if Merida can't undo the spell within two days her mother will remain a bear forever.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the film, and it even got a little dusty in the theatre by the end of the movie. Maybe that's because I am a female reviewer, or maybe it's because if you approach the film with an open-mind: while it's different from Pixar classics, it's still a good relatable movie.  I liked the voice work.  I really believed in the reconciliation between mother and daughter and that the stakes were real.  

Moreover, on a technical level, the film once again pushes the envelope.  Rural Scotland has never looked more lush. The scenes were Merida gallops through the countryside on her pony are just breathtaking.  And as for her wild, curly, red hair - I am just stunned by the movement, texture and detail that the animators were able to render.  I also loved the fact that the animation tips its hat to Studio Ghibli, with the witch-character and the will-o-the-wisps straight out of PRINCESS MONOKO or SPIRITED AWAY. Finally, let's not overlook the fact that for the first time ever we have a film with proper Scottish accents rather than Mike Myers painful imitation.

BRAVE was released in June in China, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia, Ukraine, Canada, India, Indonesia, Taiwan and the USA. It was released in July in Pakistan, Vietnam, Argentina, Chile, Israel, Paraguay,  Belgium, the Netherlands, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Japan. It was released earlier this August in France, the Philippines, Cambodia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Scotland, Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Croatia, Iceland, Lithuania, Spain and Venezuela. It opened earlier this week in the UK and opens this weekend in Portugal, Romania and the Czech Republic. It opens later in August in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It opens in September in Georgia, Italy, Serbia, Turkey, Panama, Slovenia and South Korea.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is, much like its iconic predecessor, a thoughtful, emotionally affecting film.  It feels much more like a character-driven drama than a generic summer blockbuster - which is not to underplay how good the final action set-piece is.

As the movie opens, Will Rodman is testing a potential cure for Alzheimers, ALZ-112, on chimps at the GenSys lab. When GenSys shuts down the trial, Will rescues a baby chimp called Caesar, not having the heart to put him down and unaware that Caesar has ALZ-112 in his genes.  Seeing the impressive impact of ALZ-112 on Caesar's brain, Will starts testing the drug on his father, who is miraculously cured.  

Flash forward a few years and Caesar is an older chimp, very clever, but straining at the leash of domestication.  After a misunderstanding turns nasty, Caesar is finally impounded in an animal shelter while Will appeals for his release. Worse still, Will's father Charles has fallen into remission - his body resisting the ALZ-112 and the Alzheimer's back with a vengeance. This prompts Will to create an even more virulent strain of the cure, ALZ-113, oblivious to its devastating side-effects on humans. And while Charles refuses to take it, Caesar steals it and infects his fellow primates at the shelter. Because, while Will has become ever more confused about his identity as a Man of Science, letting his love and arrogance warp his judgement, Caesar has become far clearer about his identity as an ape. Newly politicised by his brutal treatment in the shelter, and disenchanted by Will's refusal to let him be anything other than a cute family friend on a leash, he leads the apes in a rebellion.

The strength of the film is the depiction of Caesar's journey to social and political consciousness. Andy Serkis, who stole every scene as Gollum in LORD OF THE RINGS, is simply brilliant as Caesar - portraying the journey from youthful naivete, to hurtful rejection, to resolution. I kept thinking that Caesar's story was similar to that of Frankenstein's monster - the creation of an arrogant scientist; not really a man and yet possessing a man's intelligence; confused and eager to fit in, but frightening the humans he meets. So powerful is Serkis' performance that you root for Caesar, even more than for the human protagonist. And when he reaches his final declamatory scenes, the audience audibly gasps in awe.  It was a crime that Serkis didn't win an Oscar as Gollum, and the Academy should not overlook him now.  

The Academy also shouldn't overlook the behind-the-camera work director Rupert Wyatt (THE ESCAPIST), DP Andrew Lesnie (LORDS OF THE RINGS) and the effects team that so vividly created Caesar and so seamlessly blended him into a live-action background.

The weakness of the film is that the humans are by far less interesting than the apes.  James Franco's Rodman is far less powerful and charismatic than Victor Frankenstein. In fact, he just comes across as a sappy dope.  His girlfriend (Frieda Pinto) exists merely as a foil - occasionally pointing to his folly but going along with it anyway. The corporate boss (David Oyelowo), is surprise surprise, amoral and purely profit-motivated.  The father too, is simply there to tug the heart-strings, although John Lithgow is too good to allow a potentially mawkish final scene to become kitsch.  Brian Cox and Tom Felton as the animal shelter guards are simply pantomime villains, and I do hope Felton aka Draco Malfoy, doesn't get typecast as the insecure bully.  

Still, despite the cardboard cut-out humans, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES more than delivered in the character of Caesar, and in the final action sequence.  And I really can't wait to see the next instalment in the franchise.  As we've left the movie, we know that humans are going to be infected by the virus, but we haven't seen their hysterical response. And Caesar is still an ape who loves his human friend, and forbids his followers to deliberately kill humans. In other words, his rebellion is of the Gandhi/Martin Luther King variety. I am fascinated to know whether it is Caesar who is radicalised to the point where humans end up as slaves, or whether he is deposed by the brutalised chimp who was infected with ALZ-113.  I am NOT however, eager to know what happens to Will, his drippy girlfriend or any of the other humans.  


DANIEL PLAINVIEW adds: I agree, the humans are all ineffectual idiots - set-piece props for the more complex apes. 

For me though, this was a more serious omission. There are clearly parallels in this story with the African American civil rights movement - and hence the question of whether Caesar is Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, and how the story develops from here, is key.

However, casting the "white people" as either textbook Republican money-grubbing baddies, or ineffectual liberal good-at-heart nicies, is in this context disappointing. The reaction of society at large to the ape movement is probably more interesting than the ape movement itself, because it gives us an opportunity to explore and comment on different reactions of difference, fear and prejudice.

This films gives us two choices - you're either a full-on exploiter, or a patronising do-gooder. Particularly sad was the way Draco Malfoy was used - he's just a sneering arsehole - and then there's the mentally retarded nice-guy who tries ineffectually to look after the chimps at the shelter. What polarised American nonsense!

Having said all that - it was well made, a lot of fun, some of the performances were excellent, and we can all rest happy knowing that most of humanity is going to be wiped out in Episode 2 - and the remaining rump are likely to be spunkier, more interesting characters (we hope).

THE RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is on release in Malaysia, Indonesia, Belarus, Denmark, Greece, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, Turkey, the USA, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Portugal, the UK, Finland, Ireland and Norway. It opens next weekend in Sweden, Georgia, Hungary and the Netherlands. It opens in Italy on September 23rd and in Japan on 7th October.

NIM'S ISLAND - heart-warming kids adventure

I didn't expect to have such a good time watching NIM'S ISLAND. I couldn't imagine Jodie Foster playing comedy - nor romantic comedy opposite Gerard "This is Sparta!" Butler. And the thought of Abigail Breslin as an abandoned child on a tropical island, doing a HOME ALONE against "invading" litter-bug tourists made me break out in hives. But what can I say? NIM'S ISLAND is a well-made, nicely acted, warm-hearted....just fun. Somehow it's plot contrivances didn't bother me. Maybe because the film-makers (the guys behind LITTLE MANHATTAN) took such pains with making the CGI blend seamlessly with the live action.

The plot is simple. Nim is a small girl living with her father - a marine biologist - on a tropical island. When her father is lost at sea, Nim asks her favourite adventure writer to come and rescue her. Unfortunately she discovers that Alex Rover is in fact a frightened, house-bound middle-aged woman. Still, Alexandra conquers her fears, forms a bond with Nim, and all ends happily. Awwww. Just go watch it. It's better than it sounds!

NIM'S ISLAND is on release in Australia, Romania, the US, France, the Philippines, Switzerland, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, Belgium, Russia, Singapore and the UK. It opens later in Iceland on May 16th; in Germany on June 19th; in Hungary on June 26th; in Argentina on July 17th; in Brazil and Mexico on July 18th; in Spain on July 25th; in the Netherlands on August 7th; and in Finland and Norway on September 26th.