Month: March 2021

Antebellum (2020)

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I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but there’s something VERY Jordan Peele about this film. I know how that sounds, “oh, so all horror films starring black people are Jordan Peele ones now?”. Obviously that’s not the case (it just seems like it because the media can only focus on one black director at a time), but this film is very reminiscent of some of his work. Particularly in the use of music to turn seemingly idyllic shots into horror ones. That’s where the similarities end, this is nowhere near as good as Peele’s work.

In fact, this is actually quite poor. The pacing is one reason, it takes over 40 minutes for the film to introduce a major plot point. This meant it was weird watching for me as I remember watching the trailer and being like “okay this is set in the civil war era, but didn’t she come from modern day and just wake up there? Is that not part of the story?”. And it is, it just doesn’t really go into the modern world until too late in the film. It then stays there for a long time. I get what they were going for but all it really achieved was taking you out of the narrative of the plantation.

As I said, I get the logic behind doing it, horror movies need to start with the horror, particularly for modern audiences who don’t care too much for story and character. So if you had all these non-horror moments in there means you wouldn’t get the audience in the correct mood for the film. But doing it this way means you get taken out, and it really disrupts the flow. I’m not entire sure how you’d fix that, either cut it in half and still put it at the start so her waking up in the plantation is the inciting incident, or you could possibly intercut it, so it doesn’t happen all at once, but in small sections. So you have both narratives happening at the same time.

Also, the way it’s done means you guess the ending. I somehow already knew the ending, but even if I hadn’t, the nature of the flashbacks would have told me. If it started with her in the modern way, then she goes to sleep in a hotel and wakes up in the plantation, then there would have been a “oh maybe it was supernatural” element to it. As it is, you know exactly what happened, and it takes far too long to get there.

Having a THIRTY MINUTE flashback scene is overkill, and really doesn’t work. The writers/directors of this film have primarily worked in shorts, and writing for those is very different from feature length. You can’t anchor the entire thing on one killer scene, and you need to pay particular attention to making sure you have a long narrative, and not just a series of scenes.

There is a fantastic story to be told in this film. About how white America is still haunted by the sins of a past it refuses to acknowledge (it’s very telling how Americans describe the Civil War as “a war to free the slaves”, rather than “a war to keep slaves”, which is just as accurate). About how modern racism is still a thing, and just as cruel and sadistic as it was back then. About how the nostalgia for certain time periods is anchored in “back when those people knew their place” (British people are just as guilty for this btw, forever waxing lyrical about the good days of the empire). The film does make those points, but is more interesting in making those points, than building a narrative around those points.

Onto the good: Janelle Monae gives a great performance, definitely the films best, you are with her character every step of the way. The idea of a racist being dragged by a rope around their neck and being killed by hitting a confederate statue is incredibly smart. As I alluded to earlier, the music is great. Plus the moment of her riding through a “battle” on horseback is incredible, and just what the film needs. It’s a shame as I was really looking forward to this ever since I saw the first trailer. Looked like it was going to be an incredible piece of social satire with a captivating story. So fair to say, the result is incredibly disappointing, and should have been guessed by how the US release came and went and I heard no buzz about it.

Soul (2020)

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Two minutes into this I knew it would break me. Somehow I hadn’t even seen a trailer for this so I genuinely had no idea what to expect, I knew it had something to do with music, but other than that, nothing. This is the part where I say “and I’m glad as it meant I went in with no expectations so I enjoyed it more since it was all a surprise). I’m not entirely sure thats applicable here though as I feel that even if saw a trailer, I still would have enjoyed this. It has so much heart and soul (OMG that’s the title of the movie) that no trailer could have ruined this movie for me. It could have put all the plot points in, ruined the ending, used a Black Eyed Peas song, all things I normally hate from trailers. It could have done all of that and I still would have enjoyed the film.

By this point, you know what you’re getting with Pixar, you’re either going to get one of the greatest kids films you’ve ever seen (Monsters Inc, Ratatouille, Finding Nemo), or you’re going to get something that at some point will make you cry like a baby cutting onions while wearing menthol-shooting glasses in front of a stranger. This is the second one, and very much so. I’m not really sure whether this would count as a kids movie, would you show this to a child? It seems you’d only show this to a child if you wanted them to have an existential crisis. Disney have done stuff like this before, the obvious one being Inside Out, but that distracted you with it all taking place in a childs head, and having a colourful playfulness to a lot of the darkness. This is different, it has a certain playfulness to it, yes. But it’s still a playfulness rooted firmly in the concept that the main character is dead and scared of moving onto nothingness as he feels he’s accomplished nothing. There’s no sugarcoating the medicine in this, it’s incredibly in your face and there is a chance that this will hurt its chances of being loved among kids.

For someone like me? I loved it. Pixar know what they’re doing. They generally make films which can only be made as animated (with the possible exception of Wall-E maybe) and this is no exception. Yes, a lot of it takes place in this world featuring a person and a cat talking, so you can do that live action. But the moments taking place outside of the real world, which exist as more of an abstract concept than a reality? That does things that ONLY animation can do. The fluid nature of the characters being shown as shapes and concepts is not something that would be possible in live action.

So in summary, if you have disney+, you HAVE to watch this. If you don’t, find another way to watch it. The first truly great film I’ve seen this year, and in terms of animated films it will take something truly special to upstate it.

Blithe Spirit (2020)

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This, this was not a great movie. It’s in the running for one of the worst of the year already. I hope it is anyway as I can’t cope with films that are a lot worse than this. It’s a shame as I like Noel Coward’s stuff, his dialogue and situations are really good and are timeless, IF they’re performed correctly. The issue is that a lot of adaptations of these kind of films have the actors play the same way: they are full of overacting and BIG body language. Essentially they get performed like people think they were performed on the stage back in the day. The trouble with this is acting is different on stage and screen, on the stage you perform for the people at the back, so you need to be physically expressive and larger than life, especially in comedies, there is no place for subtle facial language. Film is different, the camera is close, so you don’t need to act so big, you can be more subtle, you can be quieter, and a lot of adaptations don’t take that into account and it’s frustrating. Not just because it seems fake and unnatural, but also because, even if the film was made this year, it makes them seem incredibly dated.

So that’s the issue with this film in general. More specifically? It just doesn’t have that spark that the film needs. I often talk about actors performances and mention how it feels like nobody actually enjoyed making the film, and how this can hurt it as everyone seems too wooden. This is the opposite, everyone seems like they’re having too much fun, it’s like they’re all just dicking about and waiting for someone to tell them “okay we’re starting now”. I watched it and I can’t tell what nationality Leslie Mann’s character was supposed to be, was she supposed to be British and couldn’t quite manage it, or was she just supposed to be posh and her mind automatically leant slightly British?

Coward’s plays are iconic, and it can feel like sacrilege to mess with them. But by continuously restraining adaptations to his own timeline you’re doing his work a disservice. The basic plot for this film would still work today, the concept and the characters would still be suited for a modern age. People update Shakespeare for a modern age all the time, so there’s no reason someone can’t do it with something like this. It would make it seem less dated, and would stop everyone giving the “oh darling how fabulous” style performances they all feel compelled to give in these movies.

On the plus side, some of the dialogue is incredibly funny, and it looks great. Often when films are set before 1950’s directors have a habit of either making everything rather murky and drab, or just gold-colours everywhere. There’s no room for bright reds and blues that pop. This is the exception, it’s a very colourful film and is a visual delight. It’s just the shame the rest of the film isn’t as good.

Let’s See You Do Better: Update 5

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I’ve actually finished. A 104 page script complete. It’s not perfect, I added a plot point half-way through writing that I’m going to need to set up better. And I’m thinking of completely changing the opening (as seen here). But other than that I’m pretty proud off what I’ve done. It’s not the greatest Freddy film, but I am confident it’s better than the worst, and really that’s all this was for, was to prove there’s no excuse for film studios to churn out bad scripts. I’m not going to post it all yet, will do once I go through it, but I will give you the ending as it’s probably the most “controversial” part of it.

So to bring you up to speed with the characters:

  • Bruce, summons Freddy to help him stop having nightmares about his mother molesting him. In this he just came out of a coma where he spent every moment in an empty void of nothingness which has driven him slightly mad. He’s also written a screenplay based on Freddy (which is implied to be the first Nightmare On Elm Street film) and posted it.
  • James and Molly. The last survivors. Just before this scene they entered a police station to dispose of evidence of Freddy. In this universe, the town are using Freddy as a form of justice, unleashed on someone if they break the law (or become “undesirable”, which is a fucking chilling thing to think of by the way). All the information about Freddy is at the station, so they hope by destroying it, the town won’t be able to use it as a form of justice anymore because if nobody finds out about Freddy, he can’t be effective.

So without further ado, here’s the ending:

nightmare-endingDownload

Read it? Good. So yeah, I did the ending to a Freddy film where he barely features. I know some people won’t like that but I think it suits this film better. This was never Freddy against the teens, this was always about someone using Freddy for his own ends, and that person is more important to the story than Freddy is.

Quite like the ending i’ve got (even though I blatantly stole the final scene from Watchmen), because I went abstract as hell. It made sense as if it’s a dream world, you don’t want a normal fist fight, you want something that can only exist in this film.

Coming 2 America (2021)

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It’s been a while since I’ve done this, I hope I can still review in the eloquent way you’re used to. Here goes:

Film yes good? Or film be bad? What be story?

Okay now that’s done, let’s onto the serious bits. Well I say “serious”. One of the most unrecognised downsides of cinemas closing is it’s meant that film marketing has changed. I used to find out when films were on by watching the trailers at cinema, obviously I can’t do that now. Because of that there are films coming out which I don’t know anything about, or in the case of this film, assumed was still in pre-production. I guessed it was coming out soon when cinemasins did a video on the original. I’ve kind of stopped seeing that channel as essential now that a lot of the “sins” include stuff like: “stacks cereal boxes in a way I don’t like”. But I will still watch it if it’s a film I know. I’m really glad I watched it for this, as otherwise a lot of the jokes wouldn’t have landed. That’s both a big flaw, and a great part of this film. It’s full of references to the original, so if that was one of your favourite films you will thoroughly enjoy all the returning characters. If, however, you watched it years ago and can barely remember it, there will be a lot of moments in this where you’re trying to remember who that character is, not remembering them because they were only in a few scenes in the original.

Returning characters aren’t the only cameos though. There’s a moment full of them. The kings birthday. It’s overblown and cultish in a way that’s entertaining in film, but is a horrible to see in reality. I was surprised enough by the Morgan Freeman cameo, then it gave us Salt-N-Peppa, then Gladys Night. It’s fun, and very nice to see.

What’s not nice to see is the incident which kicks the plot off, when it’s discovered that Eddie Murphy’s character has a male child so has a possible successor that he doesn’t know about. He seems confused about this as doesn’t remember having sex with anyone else. We find out that during the trip in the first film, he was drugged by Leslie Jones character, who then fucked him whilst he was unaware what was going on. Basically, he was raped. The other characters (including his wife) seem to blame him for it and at no point is the woman criticised or reprimanded for it. It’s kind of uncomfortable to watch nobody bring it up. Some of the American characters are….well they’re not great. Their general story arc seems to be “let’s go to Africa and be rich. We’re rich!”. With the exception of his son, most of them just come off as selfish, never changing or learning anything.

Jermaine Fowlers character is the exception, not only does his character grow, but he plays him well. A mix of confidence and uncertainty that plays very well in this film. Which is good as Eddie Murphy’s character isn’t as strong in this film as he was in the first one. I think that’s partly because the film doesn’t know how to treat him. For most of the film he is the king, but his character never seems like he’s in charge. For this story to work his character has to be the comedic straight man, and he sometimes is, but then he’s treated as the standard Eddie Murphy character. It’s inconsistent and harms the film. It’s a shame, the original is still a classic, so anything less than very good means this would be a disappointment, and that’s definitely the case for this. Wesley Snipes is entertaining as hell though.