Tag: Timothee Chalamet

A Complete Unknown (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Dylan goes electric! Eventually.

Bob Dylan is an odd kind of celebrity. If you asked someone “do you recognise the name Bob Dylan?”, the majority of the English-speaking Western world would say yes. They could also probably name some of his songs. “Now, here are five photos of men dressed in casual clothes. Which one is Bob Dylan?” would be a much harder question. It’s not just age, his look is oddly fluent. At times he looks like one of the most handsome men who’s existed, and at other times he looks like he’s about to ask you for spare change so he can buy a bottle of White Lightning. It’s why I’m Not There worked despite featuring a multitude of Dylans. All of this is a long way for me to say that I’m not entirely opposed to Timothee Chalamet as the title role. Yes, I had objections to his singing abilities in Wonka, but if you think it’s weird someone doesn’t sing Bob Dylan songs in perfect pitch, then you’ve never listened to Bob Dylan.

The performances were some of my favourite parts of A Complete Unknown (Or, ACU, pronounced Ack-oo), Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez is a particular highlight. Edward Norton is okay but is occasionally a bit too “Mr Rogers”, which he may have been in real life, I don’t know. Boyd Holbrook is an unexpectedly good Cash, not quite as good as Phoenix was, but good enough that you don’t sit there thinking “That’s not Phoenix”. I was pleasantly surprised with how well Scoot McNairy performed as Woody Guthrie. Not because I don’t rate him as a performer, but because at the time, Woody Guthrie was in very poor health due to his battle with Huntington’s Disease. That’s a very hard disease to pull off on screen, especially when it’s at the stage it was here. If you go too far it can come off as unrealistic and kind of offensive, but if you don’t go far enough then it downplays how horrific it can be. McNairy has a difficult balance to achieve but manages it. Best of all, nobody is a vocal failure in terms of singing either.

On the downside? The script itself is lacking. It’s kind of dull at times, suffering from a lack of focus. It’s primarily about a singular incident, the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. You know, a time when instead of getting offended at silly things like sexual assault and unelected billionaires in charge of everything, people got offended at things that really mattered, such as black people sitting on a bus, and a folk musician playing an electric guitar. That’s partly why it’s difficult to buy into this. Yes, it was a HUGE deal, but it’s something so incredibly stupid that it’s difficult to build an effective opposition. The people against him aren’t given enough of a defence that they seem logical. I know, the reality is unrealistic and all, it’s the same issue that films about MLK have, the viewpoints of his opposition were so ridiculous in reality it’s difficult to showcase them onscreen in an effective way.

It’s not helped by how the narrative doesn’t seem to be building towards that moment. It’s just a loose series of events connected by its main character, which happens to end at the folk festival. It’s not detailed enough to count as a proper biography, so you don’t really learn enough about him. Much like the Elvis film from a few years ago, he goes from (pardon the obvious) a complete unknown to a massive star almost instantly in screen time. It’s almost like ACU feels it has to tell us he’s a big deal, and how he became a big deal, before getting to the main crux, but then realised it ran out of time so had to fit the whole Folk Festival plot in very quickly.

I liked some of the character set-up though. The moments between him and Baez on stage are beautiful, particularly when that chemistry causes Dylans’ relationship to break up. No words need to be said, the chemistry between the two, and his girlfriend noticing that and storming off, says it all. Looking at it now, most of my favourite moments from this did involve the music. The bits of him complaining about his record label forcing him to record an album of mostly covers? Meh. Dylan is surrounded by industry suits and feels like a musical prostitute. Okay, nothing special. Dylan sings The Times They Are A-Changing for the first time and the crowd spontaneously joins in? Magic. Dylan plays Song To Woody to Woody as Pete Seeger watches? Beautiful.

As a tool to learn about Bob Dylan? It’s not that great. As a way for people who are already aware of Bob Dylan to see some of the moments onscreen? It’s pretty cool. If you know the players involved in this story, it is fascinating to see them. If you don’t? There’s not enough for you to delve into.

Much like Bob Dylan himself, it feels like ACU truly comes alive when it’s onstage, and the day-to-day life is kind of not worth examining.

Borderlands (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A group of people aren’t friends, but have to work together to do something to save others. Yeah, original.

I love watching films, I’d just like to point that out (just in case the almost 500 reviews on this site didn’t make that clear). But I’m not one of those people who hunt down trailers of everything and absorb information about everything that’s coming out. My at-home trailer use mainly consists of films I already know I’m interested in/curious about. The way I find myself watching NEW trailers is generally at the cinema itself. So I distinctly remember the first time I watched this trailer (I believe it was one of the trailers before Frozen Empire), I turned towards my cousin and said “Well someone’s watched Guardians Of The Galaxy”. The whole thing looked like a mockbuster GOTG directed by some music video guy on a budget of $11.50 and a tin of chopped tomatoes, starring the editor’s best friends cousin’s wife, only it was directed by Eli Roth and had a budget of around $120million, starring scream queen (and star of Scream Queen) Jamie Lee Curtis, five-time winner of “ohhhhh, her, I like her” award Cate Blanchett (whose crown has now been taken by Olivia Colman), and the person who stole the “I’m gonna fuck that Peach” award from Timothee Chalamet, Jack Black.

Maybe that was just the marketing, maybe the film itself will actually be surprisingly good. I mean, it’s directed by a competent director and has a very talented cast. So there’s always a possibility it will actually be really good. But is it? To answer that question I’ll show you a sentence I sent to someone after I left the cinema that day:

“Watched Borderlands and the new Alien movie today. The new Alien is very good”

That sums it up. Borderlands is not just bad compared to Alien (spoilers for that review), it’s a bad film. For a storyteller as creative and visionary as Eli Roth, Borderlands is a shockingly cliche piece of work. It follows the standard “ragtag group of misfits go in search of a MacGuffin” plot that has already been seen in both GOTG and DAD: HAT. It has gone through ten different scriptwriters in its development, and usually, that causes a film to be inconsistent and a tonal mess. Thankfully that’s not the case here, it keeps a pretty even tone and level of quality throughout; it’s just a shame that level of quality is complete shit. I’m not going to go into the “Blanchett is 52 but the character in the game is 22, and the character Kevin Hart plays is taller” etc. Those are valid concerns and criticisms for fans of the game, but I’ve never played the games so they didn’t affect my enjoyment of it at all. In fact, the cast is one of the few things Borderlands has going for it (and there are some subtle visual storytelling touches which are really good), everything else sucks.

It’s not terrible in a “nobody is trying” way, people are trying, they’re just making terrible decisions. The chief one is the violence, there’s not any. Borderlands NEEDS blood, this film is crying out for it. I’m guessing it’s so it can get a 12A rating instead of a 15, and thus appeal to more people. It’s clear that the studio wanted Borderlands aimed at the mass market, which was a mistake. Not only because of the lack of violence but also because it seems to assume the audience is full of idiots. That’s clear from the opening, which features far too much narration, and holds your hand more than a nervous mother teaching her child to cross the road. It doesn’t trust you to work something out for yourself. Such is its dedication to “No questions! No wonder!” I’m surprised that every character isn’t introduced with a fact sheet saying where you’re likely to know each actor from. The most egregious demonstration of this is when the film tells us that Lilith is from Pandora. Now, how do you think this film did it?

  1. “I haven’t been there in a long time”, and leave the meaning hanging in the air.
  2. Have another character tell them “I need you for this job, I know you were born there”
  3. When she arrives on the planet, have her say something along the lines of “This planet is shit, I should know, I was born here”.

Take a guess. I’ll wait. Have you guessed? Congratulations! You’re correct. I’m not saying that because I guessed that you picked the one most likely, I’m saying that because whichever one you picked you are correct since it does all three. They aren’t even spread out, all three of them take place within a few minutes. So it’s not even “we’re recapping this in case you went to the toilet”. There are other issues with the writing; primarily the amount of moments which make no sense.

The best example; everybody in the group is wanted by the police, so how do they disguise themselves? With a hologram mask. One of the characters has bright red hair, one talks like Kevin Hart, one is giant and muscled, one is a one-of-a-kind robot, and another has bunny ears. With all those visual and audio clues, I don’t think “slight covering of the face” is going to do much good to hide your face. If you saw Superman walking around in full costume but wearing a Lucha Libre wrestling mask, I’m pretty sure you’d still recognise it’s him by the giant fucking S on his chest. Same issue here. That’s not an issue for long as the masks are never used again once the characters pass that level scene. Fuck it, I hid it there but I’m going to flat-out say it here now; there’s zero cohesion between different scenes, as such they all come off as a series of levels rather than one continual narrative. As a result, it sometimes feels like we’re not watching a movie, but instead seeing a 2-hour “highlights” package from a 13-hour videogame. That’s why there are random things which aren’t explained at all, why certain characters’ relationships with each other seem to be based not on emotion or truth, but on the amount of time left in the film, and why it makes bafflingly random time skips at a level not seen since Fant4stic.

It’s nowhere near as bad as Madame Web was, but that’s damning it with faint praise. As I said, the performances from the leads are fine, Ariana Greenblatt in particular is a ball of chaotic energy. There are some nice ideas at play here, and the visuals are pretty nice to look at. But otherwise? When the universe collapses in on itself and completely destroys existence, the resulting void of infinite nothingness will still have more stars than this deserves out of 5. Harsh? Yes, but it deserves it.

Wonka (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: It’s a Willy Wonka prequel, do you need a synopsis?

I will admit, I went into this knowing there was a chance that it would end up being terrible. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely ADORE the Paddington movies, I think they’re genuinely two of the most enjoyable films I’ve ever seen. But I didn’t know that much about Paddington, so I had no preconceived notions of what the character should be. Wonka’s different, I’ve read the book (and the sequel), watched both of the films, and really enjoyed one of them. So I already knew the character, I had an idea in my head of what he was like, and the tone. Where the Depp one went wrong (in my opinion) is it just made him weird and kooky, lacking the (weird description but it makes sense to me) sociopathic kindness of the character. The trailer did not ease my worries; I know Chalamet is a good performer, but I just don’t buy him as Wonka. My rule for Wonka is this; can I imagine them playing The Doctor? If so, they’re a good fit (and vice versa). Chalamet feels like he’s trying too hard. It always feels like he’s acting as Wonka, it never feels like he completely disappears into the role and becomes him. It’s not helped by the fact that his singing isn’t the strongest, which isn’t great for a musical.

It’s a shame because apart from that, this is a great watch. The songs are catchy as hell and instantly feel familiar. That’s probably helped by how even in Paddington, Paul King directed everything with a sense of rhythm so that everything flowed together and created a sense that you were in a musical. So really, an actual musical was the next logical step. Importantly, the songs don’t overshadow the narrative, there aren’t any moments where it feels like they spent 4 minutes singing about something they could have said in 10 seconds, the songs all have a purpose; either driving the narrative forward, introducing a character etc.

Much like Paddington, the supporting cast is a delight. Paul King has always had a talent for putting random British comedy performers in small roles, and thus, making those characters memorable. That continues here, with one-scene characters played by Charlotte Richie, Phil Wang, Isy Suttie etc. Even the main “villains” are mostly unknown outside of the UK; people will know Olivia Colman and might know Matt Lucas from Bake Off, but I don’t think performers like Matthew Baynton or Rakhee Thakrar can be considered mainstream names, even in the UK. But none of them are weak links. Special mention must go to young American actress Calah Lane, who outshines the aforementioned Chalamet at every moment. I hope she goes on to do something special, as she definitely has the potential to do something amazing.

This film is lucky, because of the universe it’s created, it allows things which could sink other films. Gaps in logic, contrived coincidences, things existing just for silly reasons. They don’t matter as much in this as they do in say Good Burger 2 (spoilers for that review btw).

So in summary, this is completely predictable, overstuffed with cliches, and also unbelievably fantastic.

Beautiful Boy (2018)

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Okay so the last two films I’ve seen, well they have not been the best. Actually, it’s not been a great last month or so really; I Love My Mum, Bright Burn, Songbird, Dark Phoenix, it’s been a bad run. With a few notable exceptions (Spider-man, Toy Story) I couldn’t be blamed if I was slightly losing my enthusiasm for film. The last film I really enjoyed that wasn’t part of a franchise/reboot was Late Night. I’ve been crying out for something unique and good. Okay, this is based on a book so isn’t technically original, but it is very very good. Incredibly emotive and stylish. It’s a story about a teens addiction, and his family’s reaction to it, particularly his dad. This is not just a story about addiction, but also about family love. Their relationship is integral to the plot, and you completely buy into it. The big problem with it is how distracting it is to have Amy Ryan and Steve Carell reunited on screen and have it be so serious, they were a great comedic couple on The Office, so it’s weird to see them together and have it be so serious. Other than that weirdness, the cast is pretty solid. Carell is so good at being serious that at this point it no longer comes as a surprise. His chemistry with Timothee Chalamet is electric, you genuinely feel like they care for each other. It’s also great to see Jack Dylan Grazer in more stuff, he’ll have the lead in a sitcom at some point, I guarantee it.

It’s also a great-looking film. Don’t get me wrong, there are no shots here which you’ll frame and hang on your wall, but for Van Groeningen’s English-language debut he really shows what he can do, using his shots to tell a story, framing characters in such a way that just by a single shot you can see character relationships. There’s a stark brutality to some of the shots

I’m not saying this is the perfect film, but it doesn’t have any major negatives to it. It’s almost two hours and does kind of feel it. Also, there are moments where it seems to make certain insinuations about what caused the addiction. I don’t think some of them are deliberate, but someone with a knowledge of film language won’t fail to see the (possibly unintentional but still uncomfortable) implications.

But that aside, it’s still definitely worth your watch. I’m trying to think of one word to describe it and all I can come up with is; beautiful. It has a timeless quality and feels like a film that’s always existed, highly recommended.