IN the wake of the success of the Hunger Games franchise, the youth dystopia is now suddenly cool again.
TV's The 100 has been a worldwide success story, the Divergent movies looked to start a new franchise based on a completely insane pretence, The Giver gave Taylor Swift her acting break, and there is even the likelihood of the youth market finding Interstellar something worth viewing. This is all accompanied as well by the latest installment in the Hunger Games franchise, with the first part of final novel Mockingjay set to be released in November.
Arguably the biggest hype comes for the best-selling Maze Runner, which is based on a best selling series of novels by author James Dashner. With three books, two prequels - although one is currently being written for a 2016 release - and a large fanbase, many anticipate success.
Box office success is already assured - the film has already made enough to have more than its budget back - and its predominantly young cast is mostly signed up for the sequel next year, and most likely its own sequel in 2016.
The film starts with a sharp shock of a lift rising to the top containing a young man who has been in water. He rises into a green grassy square filled with similarly aged boys and surrounded by giant walls, beyond which lurks - as will be painstakingly explained later on - a maze filled with robotic spider-like creatures.
The central idea may work eventually, but it does sacrifice a lot of its early momentum in the opening moments to endless painstaking exposition. The first third is almost constant explanation of every single detail, and the momentum first generated in the panicky rise to this strange new world is lost.
The boy (Dylan O'Brien) wakes with total amnesia, although eventually remembers his name to be Thomas. He tries to integrate himself into this new societal order, but finds things a struggle, and also seems adept at trying to break through the societal structure.
Things quickly begin going awry, as the previously held societal order begins to break down. But even then, it all feels a bit slow despite the gentle raising of the stakes. As a result, despite the actors doing reasonably well with their dramatic rations, there is very little sense of jeopardy or momentum towards any end goal or game.
There are equally some predictable story tropes being trotted out. To bring out just one example, one of the things spouted is that "Nobody who has spent a night in the maze came out alive". You can already guess from there what will happen next.
Gradually, things reach some sort of climax, as the maze is further explored, explained and everything else. But then, when the finale is reached, things actually get interesting.
There is more explanation, as there seems to have been throughout, but at the business end, it provides a new and interesting sheen to proceedings, and is perhaps the thing that makes the most sense of this previously unfulfilling storyline. Christ knows it needed it, and almost in a surreal way, it seems to justify the need for a continuation, even after all the pedestrian sub-Hunger Games twaddle before it.
The final bit is certainly the most interesting portion of this enterprise, and seems to weight out some of what came before. There's nothing terribly bad about it, and there's certainly no fault of the actors involved, who do their best to breath life into the script. But it needed to possess a lot more about it in the initial period to make it stand out in the dystopian crowd.
Maybe the other works coming out in the next few weeks will have more about them to bring something fresh amidst the crowded dystopia field.
2/5
Wednesday, 29 October 2014
Friday, 10 October 2014
Gone Girl - Film Review
When director David Fincher told the Guardian bad things happen in Gone Girl, he was hardly kidding.
The advance buzz trailed there was going to psychopathic touches to this movie. But then anyone who read the book would have know unpleasant things lurked on the pages, and were undoubtedly going to an interesting thing when made flesh.
Even so, its impressive with how much relish Fincher and his assembled cast are willing to go in creating a psychotic pantomime depicting a love undergoing studious dismantling.
The story created in the diary parallel to the main story is almost perfect. Boy meets girl at writer's party in February 2005, where they share a tender first kiss amidst a cloud of sugar in a bakery. Boy and girl get married two years later, and things are still going well in 2009 - two years into the marriage.
All of which runs concurrent to the start, where girl - Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) - has gone on the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary. Her husband and fellow now-failed writer Nick (Ben Affleck) is stunned and brings in the police to find her missing wife. And then the game of cat and mouse begins.
The concurrent narrative tells the movement of Dunnes from not knowing one another to being stuck in a collapsing marriage in an unwanted Missouri McMansion alongside the first week after she disappears.
Shot in 6K, it has a very hyper-real look, and even brings an impressive sheen and look to the desolate dying towns across America most people wouldn't look twice at. It also fully feels like you're watching a perfectly, studiously put together crime scene, almost like the scene at the start. An untouched, pristine nature right down to the newly broken shards littering the piece.
Nick starts off feeling surprisingly unruffled but panicky, and from there, things unravel quickly. The media latch onto his unruffled public persona as signs of sociopathy, the police begin to pick apart details at the crime scene, the police show confusion at how little he knows about her, and before long, he looks for all the world like he's staring into the abyss.
As the central character and co-narrator, in effect, Nick is the driving force in the first act as we move from the disappearance on. His character play isn't too far removed from the smug coaster Affleck was once characterised as in his early days, and he certainly provides us with a protagonist that is easy to be painted a a problem.
The merciless police with unconvincing Midwestern accents - led by Detective Boney (Kim Dickens and her near ubiquitous coffee cup) and Officer Gilpin (Patrick Fugit) - certainly have a perfectly poised interpretation at their fingers.
The supporting cast is therefore left with a narrative to flit in and out of. Amy's needy ex Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris) is not as likeable as he was in prose, but is still a nice performance of a man desperate to be the good guy. Meanwhile, attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry, in a long way from his Razzie nominated works) is a very capable supporting cast member.
Framing the proceedings frequently is cable TV host Ellen Abbott (Missi Pyle), who adds a wonderfully messed up framing air, urging the public towards the self-discovered "right answer".
Yet then the film changes tack, Amy storms into prominence. In the first act, she's simply the strung along inspiration for the Amazing Amy books her parents wrote almost as correcting facilities for their failing daughter. Then suddenly, she takes the film into a new direction with a twist that maybe easy to detect from afar - and if, like me, you'd read the book beforehand, you'll almost be counting down to its arrival - but nevertheless takes Pike towards an impressive calibrated change in both motivation and performance.
This brings up multiple layers of deceit and psychosis to a movie hardly short of it. This in many ways is a very psychotic pantomime, replete with some unwittingly laughable dialogue and even the overt prominence of Punch and Judy dolls, framed by television personalities and acting.
Certainly, there is a decent dissection of the idea of couples acting, and how much people are willing to go either to repair the initial behaviour or to re-add the layers.
This is not to say its a perfect movie. Some of the dialogue is fairly clunky when its not unintentionally hilarious. There's also a lack of subtlety in places. It is a more subtle read, not only fleshing out Amy's diary vignettes and her relationship with her correctional author parents, but also fully exploring every detail of every character. Some, by contrast, aren't given them here.
Perhaps one of the more crucial characters in the plot, for example, is given all of three scenes, and very little beyond a stereotype to work with.
In all, however, the narrative, plot points (despite editing by the screenwriting) and somewhat-believable characters are enough to keep the film together without feeling it might fall apart. It also has a brilliant cosmetic feeling captured by 6K cameras, and studiously nice performances fully played off in a world without a hero.
4/5
The advance buzz trailed there was going to psychopathic touches to this movie. But then anyone who read the book would have know unpleasant things lurked on the pages, and were undoubtedly going to an interesting thing when made flesh.
Even so, its impressive with how much relish Fincher and his assembled cast are willing to go in creating a psychotic pantomime depicting a love undergoing studious dismantling.
The story created in the diary parallel to the main story is almost perfect. Boy meets girl at writer's party in February 2005, where they share a tender first kiss amidst a cloud of sugar in a bakery. Boy and girl get married two years later, and things are still going well in 2009 - two years into the marriage.
All of which runs concurrent to the start, where girl - Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) - has gone on the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary. Her husband and fellow now-failed writer Nick (Ben Affleck) is stunned and brings in the police to find her missing wife. And then the game of cat and mouse begins.
The concurrent narrative tells the movement of Dunnes from not knowing one another to being stuck in a collapsing marriage in an unwanted Missouri McMansion alongside the first week after she disappears.
Shot in 6K, it has a very hyper-real look, and even brings an impressive sheen and look to the desolate dying towns across America most people wouldn't look twice at. It also fully feels like you're watching a perfectly, studiously put together crime scene, almost like the scene at the start. An untouched, pristine nature right down to the newly broken shards littering the piece.
Nick starts off feeling surprisingly unruffled but panicky, and from there, things unravel quickly. The media latch onto his unruffled public persona as signs of sociopathy, the police begin to pick apart details at the crime scene, the police show confusion at how little he knows about her, and before long, he looks for all the world like he's staring into the abyss.
As the central character and co-narrator, in effect, Nick is the driving force in the first act as we move from the disappearance on. His character play isn't too far removed from the smug coaster Affleck was once characterised as in his early days, and he certainly provides us with a protagonist that is easy to be painted a a problem.
The merciless police with unconvincing Midwestern accents - led by Detective Boney (Kim Dickens and her near ubiquitous coffee cup) and Officer Gilpin (Patrick Fugit) - certainly have a perfectly poised interpretation at their fingers.
The supporting cast is therefore left with a narrative to flit in and out of. Amy's needy ex Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris) is not as likeable as he was in prose, but is still a nice performance of a man desperate to be the good guy. Meanwhile, attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry, in a long way from his Razzie nominated works) is a very capable supporting cast member.
Framing the proceedings frequently is cable TV host Ellen Abbott (Missi Pyle), who adds a wonderfully messed up framing air, urging the public towards the self-discovered "right answer".
Yet then the film changes tack, Amy storms into prominence. In the first act, she's simply the strung along inspiration for the Amazing Amy books her parents wrote almost as correcting facilities for their failing daughter. Then suddenly, she takes the film into a new direction with a twist that maybe easy to detect from afar - and if, like me, you'd read the book beforehand, you'll almost be counting down to its arrival - but nevertheless takes Pike towards an impressive calibrated change in both motivation and performance.
This brings up multiple layers of deceit and psychosis to a movie hardly short of it. This in many ways is a very psychotic pantomime, replete with some unwittingly laughable dialogue and even the overt prominence of Punch and Judy dolls, framed by television personalities and acting.
Certainly, there is a decent dissection of the idea of couples acting, and how much people are willing to go either to repair the initial behaviour or to re-add the layers.
This is not to say its a perfect movie. Some of the dialogue is fairly clunky when its not unintentionally hilarious. There's also a lack of subtlety in places. It is a more subtle read, not only fleshing out Amy's diary vignettes and her relationship with her correctional author parents, but also fully exploring every detail of every character. Some, by contrast, aren't given them here.
Perhaps one of the more crucial characters in the plot, for example, is given all of three scenes, and very little beyond a stereotype to work with.
In all, however, the narrative, plot points (despite editing by the screenwriting) and somewhat-believable characters are enough to keep the film together without feeling it might fall apart. It also has a brilliant cosmetic feeling captured by 6K cameras, and studiously nice performances fully played off in a world without a hero.
4/5
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