A couple of weeks ago I got to speak with Jez Lewis, director of the excellent documentary Shed Your Tears And Walk Away in which he returns to his hometown of Hebdon Bridge to try and root out the causes of the town’s crippling drugs, alcohol and suicide problems. Jez was screening the film and giving a Q&A and I spoke to him for about 40 minutes before he had to go into the screening room for the talk. Jez made for a great interview, passionate, intelligent and very honest.
Check out my review here first as it will help illuminate the people and scenes we end up talking about.
http://eggmagmovies.blogspot.com/2010/06/shed-your-tears-and-walk-away-review.html
This is a slightly longer version than the one on Eggmag's main website. Enjoy!
GARRETH. When you first left Hebdon Bridge when you were young, was there a problem then and were you aware of it?
JEZ. Yeah I’d say there was. Drugs were around, but because I was growing up there and nowhere else, I had a sense that it was unusual but I didn’t know – I couldn’t be sure. I had a year off before uni when I went travelling and got more of a sense that my experience in Hebdon was unusual. But also my next door neighbour had attempted suicide when I was about 16. Another friend committed suicide, I knew of another lad who committed suicide. But I actually became more aware when I got to university and experiences there showed me that actually most people didn’t take drugs – I didn’t take drugs.
GARRETH. That’s interesting because a lot of the time it’s the other way around. You go to university and this world opens up of alcohol and drugs…
JEZ. Well that’s what happened to some of my friends but I’d quit drinking by then, I quit drinking when I was 17.
GARRETH. How come? As a product of growing up in Hebdon?
JEZ. No, I was always terrified of drugs and addiction. I was also heavily involved in karate, I was quite sporty and I just made a twat of myself drinking one night and thought I’m not doing that anymore. A couple of friends had gone on a health kick and I joined in but took it a little further by quitting drinking.
Then, a friend came to me and said, “Can I ask you a personal question?” I said she could and with some trepidation she said, “A mutual friend told me you know someone who tried to commit suicide.” I just laughed and she looked incredibly shocked. I thought it was a wind up but it wasn’t. A friend of hers had attempted suicide and she wanted to talk to someone who had had that experience. So I said I didn’t mean to offend her, it’s just that I know a lot of people who have done that. And I started to get more of an awareness [of the problem] than I had when I was living at home.
GARRETH. You mean, being able to look back and say there is actually something seriously wrong?
JEZ. Yeah. Everyone at university was Southern, middle class and from private education. Whereas I was from a working class comprehensive school so there were differences and I didn’t know how much to attribute to the fact that we were from completely different backgrounds, or how much of it was specifically Hebdon. And then I made trips back to Hebdon and I saw my peers taking crack or whatever. It was gradual, but more people died or committed suicide, and really at the start of the film when Emma [School friend Of Jez] died I still hadn’t moved my perception to the fact that there is definitely something different there. So I did some research and it was then I decided I must make the film.
GARRETH. So then, when you started the film, did you have a particular agenda or did you find what you wanted as you were filming it?
JEZ. I went there to ask some questions in a journalistic way and I was only going to do a 15 or 20 minute film. I was going to say, here’s this beautiful place with a vibrant community but it also has this alternative community killing themselves one after another. I was going to ask questions of all people across the spectrum, but it changed quite quickly from that into what it is.
GARRETH. The main figures in the film; were they people you had been in touch with over the years, or people you got back in touch with specifically for filming?
JEZ. Cass I’d always been tentatively in touch with. The others mostly I hadn’t. I knew of them but they were not old friends.
GARRETH. This is one of things I’m interested in – watching the film you feel that there is probably an awful lot more footage – things you haven’t included, all kinds of people we don’t see…
JEZ. I had around 100 hours of footage!
GARRETH. Wow. So making Cass the focus, did that happen in the edit?
JEZ. No, I kind of knew. Cass was kind of a rock rebel when we were teenagers and I knew he had charisma. He also had looks, which were gone by the time I met him again. But those things were in my mind and I knew he knew everybody.
GARRETH. I must admit, that moment when you’re on the train back to Hebdon and Cass produces that can of special brew, it’s just heartbreaking.
JEZ. Oh yeah, yeah.
GARRETH. One of the things that interests me about documentary film makers is that question of wanting to make the film and watch this stuff happen but also the need possibly to intervene. Is that a difficult line to walk?
JEZ. I think if they hadn’t been my mates historically it might have been more difficult. I don’t know my audience when I’m filming, but my mates are there – they’re in front of me. I’ve done a lot of martial arts and I came across a samurai saying, I know this sounds quite juvenile to be quoting samurai, but the saying is: “You can hear of a danger and run away, but you can’t see it and run away.” I felt like that. When I wasn’t in Hebdon it wasn’t my responsibility but once I was there and filming, I felt almost ashamed to just point a camera at people who needed a hand. And I wouldn’t be able to live with being ashamed if I can do something about it.
GARRETH. Absolutely. One of the things that’s so interesting about the film is how much you feature in it, and, purely from the perspective of just watching the film, there’s a great moment later on when you say, “I have to just walk away. I’m trying to help you, I can’t do anymore.” But this is what you’re saying, you still can’t walk away really because you’re there, you’re watching it and there’s that sense of responsibility.
JEZ. Yeah, for me my responsibility is to the people there but I do have a responsibility to the film too so that’s part of the difficulty of those decisions and I’m more their friend than a film maker but I’m still a film maker. In that last scene when I’m saying I’m going to walk away, if I hadn’t had a camera [in that scene] I’d have walked away a long time before.
GARRETH. That’s very honest.
JEZ. In the end, after that scene, I put him [Cass] in a car and drove him to the house of a person he was with many years ago.
GARRETH. That has to be incredibly frustrating though too – you’re there and trying to help and, okay you’re making a film, but, you’re actually there and trying to help. Was there a part of you that experienced that frustration? Or was it just an overwhelming sense of sadness about the whole thing?
JEZ. It’s an overwhelming sense of urgency more than anything. I mean, I don’t know if you know but, since I stopped filming, five of the people I filmed have died.
GARRETH. I didn’t know that, no.
JEZ. Yeah, died of overdoses. I hate to say this but it’s not going to stay at five. But yeah – of course there’s frustration. To be honest with you, in that scene, it was my fucking chips and mushy peas he ate! You traipse around following people for 15 hours a day – it’s November and you’re cold, you’re hungry, you’re knackered, you have a 30 pound camera on your back, you can’t sit down - and then finally you go and get some chips. And it happened so many times, I’d go get some chips and there’d be somebody totally muntered! Staggering through the streets as if they’re about to die and I use that expression completely seriously, “as if they’re about to die.” And I’d go, “Have a chip. Oh fuck it, have ‘em all.” And it’s a joke in a sense but the frustration in that day was that. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I only went there to wish Di a Happy Birthday. I always have my camera with me but I had no idea Cass was there. And the truth is all that sadness and frustration and urgency was built up over that day and at that last minute, I was just so annoyed.
GARRETH. At that moment, when you found out Cass was there, what went through your mind?
(The day of the scene in question, Jez thought Cass was in London going through rehab, not back in Hebdon getting pissed.)
JEZ. I didn’t believe it. I genuinely didn’t believe it. That’s why [in the film] the guy who saw Cass tells me the make of his car, because he could see I didn’t believe him. I hoped Cass could come, like he did before, and not drink, but he didn’t. He came and he fucking hammered himself that weekend, you see it in the film…
GARRETH. I was going to say, he’s doing pretty badly at that point!
JEZ. Apparently the next day he got worse. His mate put him on a bus back to London and he got chucked out of his home which is the phone calls you hear in the end credits. He got fucking chucked out. Sorry about all the swearing!
GARRETH. Not at all. Do you know where he is now?
JEZ. Yeah, I speak to him every other week. He phoned me the other day and said, “Jez I think my head is swelling up.” I said to him, “Why Cass? Whats up?” And he said, “I was walking along and I heard someone shout “Cass!” and I turned around and there were two women sitting in a silver BMW. They got out and told me they had seen the film at the ICA and they thought I was right lovely and I’m starting to feel like a superstar!” He is drinking again, but that pattern is fairly normal. It’s quite normal, for people who succeed in getting off alcohol, to take four or five attempts. Just because he’s gone on and off it a few times doesn’t mean he won’t make it.
GARRETH. So when it comes down to it, do you have an explanation as to why this is concentrated in one small place?
JEZ. The people living that life think it’s normal. And I did. It took me until Emma’s death to convince myself that it’s not normal. Since finishing the film I’ve come across it people saying again and again, “I thought it was normal. Isn’t it the same everywhere?” And you have to say, “NO IT’S NOT!” My mate who was too shy to be in the film asked the same. My mate from uni stood up and said, “I don’t know anyone who has died from drugs or alcohol, I’m not sure I know anyone who has died under the age of 40.” My Hebdon mate was shocked because he knew about 30 people who had died. And a few months after that conversation, his own nephew hanged himself.
GARRETH. Oh God…
JEZ. Yeah. In the film when I say I’m afraid of the phone, it’s because [all this] was happening – getting texts or calls in the night. Imagine, you get a text to tell someone that their friend has just died – that’s how commonplace it was. And when it’s normal, it becomes an option, if you see what I mean.
GARRETH. That’s interesting. I mean, if I’m in the park drinking, or doing drugs or whatever – if that’s my lifestyle then I can kind of understand that becoming my normality. And people dying as a result of that, well it‘s sad but that’s what happens. It’s when so many people actively take their own lives… to my mind, I start to think that there’s a degree of awareness in that, that I have to get out and so I kill myself. It seems more active than just sitting in the park slowly drinking yourself to death…
JEZ. Cass says that, around here you either kill yourself or you die anyway. It is that thing, it’s ingrained in their unconscious, and it just seems like it’s par for the course. It’s simply how it is.
GARRETH. And there’s also a very strange disconnect between that life and the people watching it – two different worlds right beside each other. Because it’s very visible – it’s right there for everyone to see.
JEZ. Oh it is. Yards from each other.
GARRETH. And is there any sense then of what the rest of Hebdon feels about what’s going on across the street?
JEZ. They tolerate it. By the way, the film is a sugar coated version of what goes on there.
GARRETH. Really?!
JEZ. There are much worse things going on than you see in the film.
GARRETH. Can I ask…?
Long pause.
JEZ. No, I don’t think so.
GARRETH. Okay, fair enough.
JEZ. But there’s tolerance to a lot of things and they [the people watching] don’t mind if one or two of these people die. They think that we all make our choices and they are living out theirs. I’m not going to judge or criticise them for that. It’s not my way of doing things. It’s normal for these people, for everyone in the town. I have a mate who wouldn’t touch the drugs that the others use, he’s friends with them but he wouldn’t go near them and HE thinks it’s normal. And the suicides, as far as I can tell, aren’t really connected with the drugs. It’s like you said earlier, it’s an active exit strategy rather than a passive one.
Checks his watch…
Oops, I better go now…
GARRETH. Sure. Thanks so much for talking to me, it’s been really interesting.
JEZ. Not at all. Thanks.
A quick ending to a brilliant interview. Check out Shed Your Tears And Walk Away, it‘s a tough but excellent film.
Friday, 13 August 2010
Thursday, 5 August 2010
A Quick Post On 3-D.
I ended my Toy Story 3 review with a quick little sentence: "Oh, and the 3-D does absolutely nothing." A friend of mine posted a comment, leaving a link to Mark Kermode's blog in which he reads out a letter he received from the "3-D Guy" as Kermode calls him, who oversaw the 3-D conversion on Toy Story 3. The long and the short of it is that Kermode had said that he forgot he was watching a 3-D film while he watched Toy Story 3. He meant that he forgot it because he was so engrossed in the story and characters. The 3-D guy argues that, you don't notice the 3-D in the same way that you don't notice most of the music, the camera's focal length and the million other things that go into the making of a film, all of which operate on your subconscious to create a mood, evoke an emotion or help tell the story. Pixar's goal with 3-D is to have one or two "wow" moments but overall the 3-D should help create a mood, evoke an emotion or help tell the story. It's an interesting idea, particularly to a 3-D sceptic.
My feeling on 3-D is this. Watching a bad film, the 3-D helps because it's a distraction, it's something to take your mind off wretched characters, dreadful stories or whatever else is wrong with the film. Watching a good film in 3-D, the 3-D doesn't really add anything because the experience is satisfying as it is. This viewpoint clearly emphasises story above everything else and if the story is intact and the narrative working as it should, then 3-D is exposed as the sideshow it really is. But is it possible that 3-D can work as subtly as the other technical elements of the film? Several directors have pointed out that the very phrase "3-D" is something of a misnomer because every film you have ever watched has created depth of image in its many frames. Could Citizen Kane for example use depth to any greater degree? Taking this as truth, I don't think I really buy the idea that 3-D in its newest incarnation is another story-telling technique because depth of frame (or indeed lack thereof) has always been a story-telling technique. That Pixar emphasis story and characters is well documented and clearly evident in their films and I have no doubt that their brief with 3-D conversion is exactly as the chap who contacted Mark Kermode described it. I simply can't get over the fact that it is a gimick, a way of selling tickets at higher prices and a way for studios to think they're combating piracy.
I will get around to writing my Inception piece but one of the things that film demonstrates is that a film can enter the zeitgeist, create a conversation AND make a tonne of money without forcing people to put on the glasses and watch it in the third dimension. The fact that films have done that since their creation seems to have been forgotten. Give people a reason to go to the cinema and they will go. Give people a compelling story, a hook, a concept, interesting ideas, on top of a visual experience, and they will go. People want to be part of something and if that something is a sporting event, Live Aid, a demonstration at Trafalgar Square or that film that everyone is talking about, they will do what they have to to be part of it. Sure there will be those who think that downloading is enough, everyone hates the queues, the popcorn crunchers, the mobile phone talkers but films are shared experiences and, even though you don't have much control over who you're sharing it with, people still want that feeling of being in it together, of walking into the daylight chatting with whoever they're with about what they've just seen as everyone around them does likewise. I have no intention of ever sitting through a Twilight film but even these films attract their audiences because people want to see those characters.
This is what cinema at its best is. And it doesn't take the 3-D fad to accomplish it. So sorry Mr 3-D guy. I've nothing but admiration and respect for the work you do and it must be said that the 3-D on Toy Story 3 is very impressive; none of your hastily and shoddily done conversions to make a quick buck here. I think I can say with relative certainty that the reason I forgot about the 3-D was not because it blended in with the rest of the film making process, it's because the story and its characters were working so well. 3-D is here to stay. That much is certain. Equally certain for me is the fact that cinema, like literature, like theatre, like television comedy and drama, tells stories. And it's the stories that make me feel like what I'm watching is real, that what I'm watching matters , that the people I'm watching it happen to are real and that it all has consequences. It's the stories that achieve this. Not the artificiality of making me think the space it's happening in is all around me.
Thanks to Jon for leaving a comment and posting the link to Mr Kermode's blog.
My feeling on 3-D is this. Watching a bad film, the 3-D helps because it's a distraction, it's something to take your mind off wretched characters, dreadful stories or whatever else is wrong with the film. Watching a good film in 3-D, the 3-D doesn't really add anything because the experience is satisfying as it is. This viewpoint clearly emphasises story above everything else and if the story is intact and the narrative working as it should, then 3-D is exposed as the sideshow it really is. But is it possible that 3-D can work as subtly as the other technical elements of the film? Several directors have pointed out that the very phrase "3-D" is something of a misnomer because every film you have ever watched has created depth of image in its many frames. Could Citizen Kane for example use depth to any greater degree? Taking this as truth, I don't think I really buy the idea that 3-D in its newest incarnation is another story-telling technique because depth of frame (or indeed lack thereof) has always been a story-telling technique. That Pixar emphasis story and characters is well documented and clearly evident in their films and I have no doubt that their brief with 3-D conversion is exactly as the chap who contacted Mark Kermode described it. I simply can't get over the fact that it is a gimick, a way of selling tickets at higher prices and a way for studios to think they're combating piracy.
I will get around to writing my Inception piece but one of the things that film demonstrates is that a film can enter the zeitgeist, create a conversation AND make a tonne of money without forcing people to put on the glasses and watch it in the third dimension. The fact that films have done that since their creation seems to have been forgotten. Give people a reason to go to the cinema and they will go. Give people a compelling story, a hook, a concept, interesting ideas, on top of a visual experience, and they will go. People want to be part of something and if that something is a sporting event, Live Aid, a demonstration at Trafalgar Square or that film that everyone is talking about, they will do what they have to to be part of it. Sure there will be those who think that downloading is enough, everyone hates the queues, the popcorn crunchers, the mobile phone talkers but films are shared experiences and, even though you don't have much control over who you're sharing it with, people still want that feeling of being in it together, of walking into the daylight chatting with whoever they're with about what they've just seen as everyone around them does likewise. I have no intention of ever sitting through a Twilight film but even these films attract their audiences because people want to see those characters.
This is what cinema at its best is. And it doesn't take the 3-D fad to accomplish it. So sorry Mr 3-D guy. I've nothing but admiration and respect for the work you do and it must be said that the 3-D on Toy Story 3 is very impressive; none of your hastily and shoddily done conversions to make a quick buck here. I think I can say with relative certainty that the reason I forgot about the 3-D was not because it blended in with the rest of the film making process, it's because the story and its characters were working so well. 3-D is here to stay. That much is certain. Equally certain for me is the fact that cinema, like literature, like theatre, like television comedy and drama, tells stories. And it's the stories that make me feel like what I'm watching is real, that what I'm watching matters , that the people I'm watching it happen to are real and that it all has consequences. It's the stories that achieve this. Not the artificiality of making me think the space it's happening in is all around me.
Thanks to Jon for leaving a comment and posting the link to Mr Kermode's blog.
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
The A Team Review
I was about to launch into a full scale review but you know what? I can't be bothered. The film is terrible. I wasn't expecting a classic. For that matter, I wasn't even expecting a good film. I did think that maybe there might be some fun moments, some good action, it might be a laugh. It isn't. At all.
2/10
Friday sees the release of another throwback action movie that IS good fun. I was at a press screening last night but I'm embargoed from talking about it for a few days.
Let's just say that if you'd like to EXPEND some energy and you're ABLE to See a film at the cinema next weekend then you might want to check this film out...
It's like the enigma machine all over again.
2/10
Friday sees the release of another throwback action movie that IS good fun. I was at a press screening last night but I'm embargoed from talking about it for a few days.
Let's just say that if you'd like to EXPEND some energy and you're ABLE to See a film at the cinema next weekend then you might want to check this film out...
It's like the enigma machine all over again.
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Toy Story 3 Review
I’m snatching a few minutes to write this review as it’s late. It’s about to be late AND hurried. I’m nothing if not professional folks.
Toy Story 3 comes eleven years after the second instalment in what is currently Pixar’s only franchise, although with Cars 2 and Monsters Inc 2, this is about to change. Toy Story 2 is one of the great sequels. It belongs to that rare group of sequels that surpass their originals. Yes Jessie is a bit annoying (culminating in her song that is rip-your-ears-off irritating) but Toy Story 2 does what all great sequels do. It furthers the story and the world, introduces new characters without sidelining the old ones and allows those old characters to grow in new ways, all the while remembering what made the original so successful in the first place that it demanded a sequel at all. Toy Story 3 is very, very good. If this were number two, there would be no need for any qualification. The problem for me is that it covers very similar ground to the second film and, as a result, struggles to justify its existence in a way that is pretty much unheard of for a Pixar film. That probably sounds like a very begrudging criticism, it certainly feels that way typing it. But I simply can’t get away from the nagging feeling that for the first time Pixar are chasing commercial success more than they are striving to make a great film. I will immediately qualify THAT (keep up here folks; this is the Inception of film reviews. And we’re only in level 2 yet.) They DO make a great film. Everything you love about Pixar, warmth, wit, character, story, are all present and accounted for. But Toy Story 3 is the first in a run of sequels and, though it might be very good, the fact that it’s not really covering new ground, or telling a story that is particularly different to the second, gives you a slightly nagging feeling.
The threat posed in Toy Story 2 that their owner Andy will one day grow up and outgrow his toys has come to fruition in number 3. We join the gang trying desperately to get the attention of a teenage Andy who has to start making choices about which of his toys he is going to put into the attic (from the toys’ perspective, the equivalent of a retirement home) which will go to the jumble sale and which will ended up in the dreaded trash bin. Through a series of plot machinations the toys end up at the Sunnyside Day Care facility which at first seems like a haven the toys never dreamed possible but quickly becomes a nightmare they fear they will never escape from. The toys hatch a plan to extricate themselves from their situation as well as create a place for themselves in the world once again.
The best thing about Toy Story 3 is the way it riffs on being a prison film, a kind of Cool Hand Luke meets The Great Escape but for toys. All prison movie clichés are here and are often hilariously adapted for the PG requirements of the genre and the execution of the toys' break out of Sunnyside is the highlight of the film and, for my money, one of the best set pieces in the Pixar canon. Pixar still has the monopoly on walking that fine line between keeping the kids entertained and having enough in there to make the adults laugh too and Toy Story 3 is very, very funny. Michael Keaton as the very metrosexual Ken is the comedy highlight of the film. The discovery of Buzz’s reset button, the omnipresent drumming monkey CCTV monitor and Mr Potato Head having to improvise a body for his eyes, ears and appendages are amongst the other many comedy highlights that had children and adults alike laughing in the screening I saw. Ned Beatty as Lotso, the bear in charge of Sunnyside, does great work and has an interesting back story of his own. The film is surprisingly dark and scary at times and Lotso's right hand man, a weird, creepy as hell baby doll, would not be out of place in a David Lynch dream sequence. Also, the ending of the film finds a nice way to resolve the central dilemma that is sentimental in the right way. Buzz and Woody end up somewhat sidelined and this, for me, is the most telling problem with the film. The characters have nowhere to go now. They simply have to be themselves in a new adventure and while it's very well done (once again the plotting of the film is superb. Seriously, anyone who wants to learn about screenwriting should watch Pixar films for the elegance of their plotting) it doesn't feel like it's enough.
I want to stress again that this is by no means a bad review and, by the way, I think the film is way better than, for example Ratatouille or the much loved Wall-E which is much more problematic story-wise. I think the problem though comes down to ambition and while Wall-E might not work for me, it really is trying to accomplish something interesting. Last year’s Up tried to accomplish something and succeeded, being as it is a nearly flawless film. Judged in those terms, Toy Story 3 is kind of treading water a bit, made worse by the fact that we’re now in a run of sequels. The simple fact is that Pixar films are judged by a higher standard, a standard they set for themselves. Toy Story 3 is smart, laugh out loud funny and a great time at the cinema. It just lacks the X-Factor we’ve come to expect (and probably demand) from the very best of Pixar’s output.
7/10
Oh, and the 3-D adds absolutely nothing!
Toy Story 3 comes eleven years after the second instalment in what is currently Pixar’s only franchise, although with Cars 2 and Monsters Inc 2, this is about to change. Toy Story 2 is one of the great sequels. It belongs to that rare group of sequels that surpass their originals. Yes Jessie is a bit annoying (culminating in her song that is rip-your-ears-off irritating) but Toy Story 2 does what all great sequels do. It furthers the story and the world, introduces new characters without sidelining the old ones and allows those old characters to grow in new ways, all the while remembering what made the original so successful in the first place that it demanded a sequel at all. Toy Story 3 is very, very good. If this were number two, there would be no need for any qualification. The problem for me is that it covers very similar ground to the second film and, as a result, struggles to justify its existence in a way that is pretty much unheard of for a Pixar film. That probably sounds like a very begrudging criticism, it certainly feels that way typing it. But I simply can’t get away from the nagging feeling that for the first time Pixar are chasing commercial success more than they are striving to make a great film. I will immediately qualify THAT (keep up here folks; this is the Inception of film reviews. And we’re only in level 2 yet.) They DO make a great film. Everything you love about Pixar, warmth, wit, character, story, are all present and accounted for. But Toy Story 3 is the first in a run of sequels and, though it might be very good, the fact that it’s not really covering new ground, or telling a story that is particularly different to the second, gives you a slightly nagging feeling.
The threat posed in Toy Story 2 that their owner Andy will one day grow up and outgrow his toys has come to fruition in number 3. We join the gang trying desperately to get the attention of a teenage Andy who has to start making choices about which of his toys he is going to put into the attic (from the toys’ perspective, the equivalent of a retirement home) which will go to the jumble sale and which will ended up in the dreaded trash bin. Through a series of plot machinations the toys end up at the Sunnyside Day Care facility which at first seems like a haven the toys never dreamed possible but quickly becomes a nightmare they fear they will never escape from. The toys hatch a plan to extricate themselves from their situation as well as create a place for themselves in the world once again.
The best thing about Toy Story 3 is the way it riffs on being a prison film, a kind of Cool Hand Luke meets The Great Escape but for toys. All prison movie clichés are here and are often hilariously adapted for the PG requirements of the genre and the execution of the toys' break out of Sunnyside is the highlight of the film and, for my money, one of the best set pieces in the Pixar canon. Pixar still has the monopoly on walking that fine line between keeping the kids entertained and having enough in there to make the adults laugh too and Toy Story 3 is very, very funny. Michael Keaton as the very metrosexual Ken is the comedy highlight of the film. The discovery of Buzz’s reset button, the omnipresent drumming monkey CCTV monitor and Mr Potato Head having to improvise a body for his eyes, ears and appendages are amongst the other many comedy highlights that had children and adults alike laughing in the screening I saw. Ned Beatty as Lotso, the bear in charge of Sunnyside, does great work and has an interesting back story of his own. The film is surprisingly dark and scary at times and Lotso's right hand man, a weird, creepy as hell baby doll, would not be out of place in a David Lynch dream sequence. Also, the ending of the film finds a nice way to resolve the central dilemma that is sentimental in the right way. Buzz and Woody end up somewhat sidelined and this, for me, is the most telling problem with the film. The characters have nowhere to go now. They simply have to be themselves in a new adventure and while it's very well done (once again the plotting of the film is superb. Seriously, anyone who wants to learn about screenwriting should watch Pixar films for the elegance of their plotting) it doesn't feel like it's enough.
I want to stress again that this is by no means a bad review and, by the way, I think the film is way better than, for example Ratatouille or the much loved Wall-E which is much more problematic story-wise. I think the problem though comes down to ambition and while Wall-E might not work for me, it really is trying to accomplish something interesting. Last year’s Up tried to accomplish something and succeeded, being as it is a nearly flawless film. Judged in those terms, Toy Story 3 is kind of treading water a bit, made worse by the fact that we’re now in a run of sequels. The simple fact is that Pixar films are judged by a higher standard, a standard they set for themselves. Toy Story 3 is smart, laugh out loud funny and a great time at the cinema. It just lacks the X-Factor we’ve come to expect (and probably demand) from the very best of Pixar’s output.
7/10
Oh, and the 3-D adds absolutely nothing!
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Inception Review
I really want to talk about Inception… But it’s important to know as little as possible going in. So here’s what I’m going to do. This review is going to be short and sweet. And then in a couple of weeks I’ll write a few thoughts about the film that will go into some spoilery detail about the story as there really is a lot to talk about.
The long and the short of it is that Inception really delivers. It’s an intelligent, exciting, thought provoking film, utterly unique amongst modern Blockbusters. Slightly overlong perhaps and I’m not sure it’s the instant miracle, modern classic, solution to life’s problems some have made out. Also much has been made of Nolan’s slightly cold, distant approach to his stories in the past and many of the reviews have pointed to the warmth and humanity in Dom Cobb’s (Leonardo DiCaprio's) journey in this film. This is actually the weakest stuff for me. Plot wise, story wise and ideas wise it’s absolutely great, but I never really felt anything for the characters and their story.
But Christopher Nolan has demonstrated once again that he is a great film maker with great ideas. His central concept here, entering people’s subconscious through their dreams is great but to put that in the milieu of industrial espionage is a stroke of genius and the film plays like a heist thriller with Cobb assembling his team so that, rather than stealing an idea, they can carry through inception, planting an idea in a person’s mind. We get an opening heist to bring us into the world, the assembling and training of the team, which does go on a little long. But the last hour or so is the heist itself and once this begins it really doesn’t let up. The dream world and its rules have been meticulously thought through and Nolan obeys his own internal logic at all times. The best part of this is how there are different levels of dreaming and what is happening in one level impacts upon the next. The high point of this is Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s zero gravity fight in a hotel corridor but that whole last hour, while maybe not being quite as tense as I’d hoped (or for that matter as James Newton Howard’s bombastic score wants you to think it is) is Hollywood at its best and Nolan utterly confident in what he is doing.
This is perhaps the most exciting thing about watching Inception. You get the sense that we are watching a film maker now at the peak of his powers. For all its faults I absolutely love The Dark Knight but much of what is wrong in that film is corrected here. I’ll return to The Dark Knight more often for the atmosphere and action and I’ll return to Inception more often for its ideas. How this film got made is a miracle because, while The Dark Knight is a Summer movie with a brain in its head and some good ideas, Inception is an ideas movie with some action in it released in the Summer.
Don’t misunderstand, there is plenty of action; that last hour is basically one, sustained action set piece. But it’s for its ideas that Inception should be credited. As with every good heist movie, once they start their plan it all goes wrong and watching the way the team improvises is incredibly impressive from a writing perspective. Nolan has set up the rules of the dream world and is now free to bend our expectations of them to provide the team ways out of their problems that are plausible, that never cheat and are utterly compelling.
This review was supposed to be short! Go into Inception prepared to do a little work, pay attention to it, and you’ll be utterly rewarded. And once you’ve seen it, let the debate begin about just what it all means. Inception is fantastic, deserves its hype and is a call to every other studio and film maker in Hollywood that this is what is possible with a large budget. And there is simply no excuse for bad storytelling in any films, including big budget ones. Roll on Batman 3!
8.5/10
The long and the short of it is that Inception really delivers. It’s an intelligent, exciting, thought provoking film, utterly unique amongst modern Blockbusters. Slightly overlong perhaps and I’m not sure it’s the instant miracle, modern classic, solution to life’s problems some have made out. Also much has been made of Nolan’s slightly cold, distant approach to his stories in the past and many of the reviews have pointed to the warmth and humanity in Dom Cobb’s (Leonardo DiCaprio's) journey in this film. This is actually the weakest stuff for me. Plot wise, story wise and ideas wise it’s absolutely great, but I never really felt anything for the characters and their story.
But Christopher Nolan has demonstrated once again that he is a great film maker with great ideas. His central concept here, entering people’s subconscious through their dreams is great but to put that in the milieu of industrial espionage is a stroke of genius and the film plays like a heist thriller with Cobb assembling his team so that, rather than stealing an idea, they can carry through inception, planting an idea in a person’s mind. We get an opening heist to bring us into the world, the assembling and training of the team, which does go on a little long. But the last hour or so is the heist itself and once this begins it really doesn’t let up. The dream world and its rules have been meticulously thought through and Nolan obeys his own internal logic at all times. The best part of this is how there are different levels of dreaming and what is happening in one level impacts upon the next. The high point of this is Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s zero gravity fight in a hotel corridor but that whole last hour, while maybe not being quite as tense as I’d hoped (or for that matter as James Newton Howard’s bombastic score wants you to think it is) is Hollywood at its best and Nolan utterly confident in what he is doing.
This is perhaps the most exciting thing about watching Inception. You get the sense that we are watching a film maker now at the peak of his powers. For all its faults I absolutely love The Dark Knight but much of what is wrong in that film is corrected here. I’ll return to The Dark Knight more often for the atmosphere and action and I’ll return to Inception more often for its ideas. How this film got made is a miracle because, while The Dark Knight is a Summer movie with a brain in its head and some good ideas, Inception is an ideas movie with some action in it released in the Summer.
Don’t misunderstand, there is plenty of action; that last hour is basically one, sustained action set piece. But it’s for its ideas that Inception should be credited. As with every good heist movie, once they start their plan it all goes wrong and watching the way the team improvises is incredibly impressive from a writing perspective. Nolan has set up the rules of the dream world and is now free to bend our expectations of them to provide the team ways out of their problems that are plausible, that never cheat and are utterly compelling.
This review was supposed to be short! Go into Inception prepared to do a little work, pay attention to it, and you’ll be utterly rewarded. And once you’ve seen it, let the debate begin about just what it all means. Inception is fantastic, deserves its hype and is a call to every other studio and film maker in Hollywood that this is what is possible with a large budget. And there is simply no excuse for bad storytelling in any films, including big budget ones. Roll on Batman 3!
8.5/10
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
Predators Review
20th Century Fox really have the bargain basement blockbuster honed to a fine art. This Summer however they’re struggling to turn a decent profit with The A Team and in particularly Knight And Day underperforming at the US Box Office. With Predators, they have a July release with an apparent budget of $40 million. With the average cost of a Summer movie these days being $200 million (that’s just production costs, it doesn’t include marketing and distribution) $40 million is a bargain, right? I am no advocate of the idea that with large amounts of money automatically comes interesting results. Most of the mega-budget movies are pretty terrible these days if you ask me. But what’s happening currently at Fox seems to be a lack of ambition that is typified in the small scale nature of projects released in a large scale season. Enter Predators.
Predators is that kind of film where you walk out and say, “Well it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be” and this seems to be where Fox is happy to pitch their films. Predators isn’t as bad as you’d think it would be but that doesn’t mean it’s good. It doesn’t even make it okay. I sat there throughout its running time, not angry, not irritated but not excited or even interested either. Predators is basically a retread of the original except that instead of being on Earth, the jungle is on the Predator’s home planet, the group of walking corpses isn’t a coherent unit as it was in the first film but is instead a rag-tag group of the world’s best killers (or “predators” if you will) from a range of backgrounds and countries and… Nope, I think that’s it for differences. Oh, the CGI predator dogs… Which are excellent. Really, really excellent.
Boxes are ticked, enormous weapons fired and spines are torn from bodies. Adrien Brody lowers his voice and makes it husky to let us know he’s a credible action star and Laurence Fishburne turns up as a kind of Colonel Kurtz meets Ogilvy from War of the Worlds which is one of the more fun things in the film. Many of the effects are done practically which is admittedly refreshing, the Predators still feeling like guys in suits which is by no means a criticism. The film is presumably a low budget attempt to resuscitate a franchise that basically flatlined after the first film, a kind of Predators Begins. But what it lacks in budget it really needs to make up for in story, imagination and inventive action scenes. There is nothing remotely fresh, original or even interesting in most of Predators. It’s just…there. Inoffensively there.
Enough messing around 2010. It’s time for Inception. Don’t let me down!
5/10
Predators is that kind of film where you walk out and say, “Well it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be” and this seems to be where Fox is happy to pitch their films. Predators isn’t as bad as you’d think it would be but that doesn’t mean it’s good. It doesn’t even make it okay. I sat there throughout its running time, not angry, not irritated but not excited or even interested either. Predators is basically a retread of the original except that instead of being on Earth, the jungle is on the Predator’s home planet, the group of walking corpses isn’t a coherent unit as it was in the first film but is instead a rag-tag group of the world’s best killers (or “predators” if you will) from a range of backgrounds and countries and… Nope, I think that’s it for differences. Oh, the CGI predator dogs… Which are excellent. Really, really excellent.
Boxes are ticked, enormous weapons fired and spines are torn from bodies. Adrien Brody lowers his voice and makes it husky to let us know he’s a credible action star and Laurence Fishburne turns up as a kind of Colonel Kurtz meets Ogilvy from War of the Worlds which is one of the more fun things in the film. Many of the effects are done practically which is admittedly refreshing, the Predators still feeling like guys in suits which is by no means a criticism. The film is presumably a low budget attempt to resuscitate a franchise that basically flatlined after the first film, a kind of Predators Begins. But what it lacks in budget it really needs to make up for in story, imagination and inventive action scenes. There is nothing remotely fresh, original or even interesting in most of Predators. It’s just…there. Inoffensively there.
Enough messing around 2010. It’s time for Inception. Don’t let me down!
5/10
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Don't Walk Away From Shed Your Tears And Walk Away
The last film I reviewed was the excellent documentary Shed Your Tears And Walk Away and in the review I said that the film is only showing at the ICA. The film's director Jez Lewis left a comment on the blog correcting that and left a link to the showings of the film. The link is included below so have a look and see if, in the midst of one of the worst Summers for films in recent memory, you can go out and support a genuinely good film.
Huge thanks to Jez Lewis for getting in touch. Best of luck with the film.
http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/shedyourtears-playdates.htm
Huge thanks to Jez Lewis for getting in touch. Best of luck with the film.
http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/shedyourtears-playdates.htm
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