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Showing posts with label roger deakins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roger deakins. Show all posts
13 January 2020
The Pink Feather Of History
15 October 2017
Is The Blade Runner Sequel A Benefit Or A Hazard?
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6 January 2014
Suspecting The Worst
If you've not yet seen The Hunt yet then
cancel everything and get the fuck to it! It's a genius slab of drama that
focuses on the trauma an adult can suffer when accused of introducing a child
to his fleshy man-dick. I know the film has been out a little while but due to
life’s incessant bullshit, I'd somehow unknowingly avoided it for far too long…
however like the irregular schedule of the bastard bus, you wait forever for
one pedo-film and then two come along at once. Only a couple of weeks after
buzzing off The Hunt, I recently caught up with the pervert-tacular
Prisoners. Both films take place during a holiday, begin with a deer hunt
and feature the fucktarded consequences of spontaneous vigilantism. The
difference between the two is that in The Hunt you know that the accused
is innocent of his crime. Prisoners on the other hand is a bit more of a
kiddy-fucking free for all.
Prisoners tells
the story of two families whose Thanksgiving is ruined when they misplace their
daughters like a set of shitty car keys. Luckily though there was a greasy
looking critter parked outside their house all that day in a large pedo-mobile
who probably knows where they are. One of the missing girls’ dads, played by
Hugh Jackman, therefore makes the logical decision to kidnap the oddball and
punch the living shite out of him until he talks. I guess he just figured that
the chap would be more likely to co-operate if choking on his own teeth and
being screamed at by fucking Wolverine. Meanwhile, detective Donnie
Darko is on his own mission to find the girls and uncovers so many more
pedo-ish suspects that the area starts to resemble a holiday camp for retired
BBC presenters. The plot set-up then is simply that there are several potential
kidnappers with Jackman's character already having picked his 'molester du jour’
before even glancing at the full menu. What plays out is therefore just a
classic game of nonce-roulette in which you take one of several local creeps,
crack open their head and then hope to fuck that you had the right one.
| You've got to love There's Something About Mary... |
On the bright side, there's no doubting
that Prisoners is a good film. In fact for the first two-thirds there's
an enjoyably suffocating Zodiac-esque feel to the thing as it attempts
to establish itself as being both sombre and weighty. Helping this is of course
the predictably brilliant acting in which Wolverine and Donnie
Darko do their best to inflate their unblinking eyes to blood-shot and
bulbous levels of intensity and anguish. Nothing hammers home the serious intentions
of a film more than having your two leads stare so hard that their face veins
explode in a way that only naturally occurs during anal rape. Although both men
are indisputably impressive throughout, I think that for me I was perhaps most
impressed by Gyllenhaal. I guess that you kind of expect intensity from Jackman
because he's most famous for playing an angry twat with knives up his hands, however
Gyllenhaal has had to fight to be taken seriously as an adult against the curse
of his annoyingly handsome but boyishly dopey face. Here though he manages to
believably play a demented detective so successfully that I almost didn't mind
the odd haircut that made it look as though he was being scalp fucked by a
tattered doormat.
If they're on one side though then I
suppose we should also have a little look at their rivals over on Team Nonce.
Sadly though, I kind of think that this is one of the areas that the film kind
of lets itself down in as it lazily just reaches into the big bag of pervert clichés.
Paul Dano plays one of the twitchy suspects and don't get me wrong- he is as amazing here as he usually is in
terms of immersing himself in the role. I don't know what it is about Dano
considering I know nothing about his real life but for some reason I really
think me and him could one day be friends. Although that might just be because
of his mute performance in Little Miss Sunshine and my desire to know
somebody who literally has no choice but to listen to my everlasting drivel…
However as great a performance as it is, his character couldn't be more
classically pedo if he walked around with his cock disguised as a new born
puppy. As the other suspects show up they too all have a look about them that's
so sinister that you'd be forgiven for an involuntary scream of “FUCK OFF,
CREEPER” if you passed them in the street. Films like Hard Candy and The
Woodsman went someway to showing that the most dangerous thing about a sex
offender is that they don't necessarily look like monsters. They could be
anybody, anywhere and at any time, but here with their greasy hair, twitchy
energy, bullet proof glasses and the pin-prick, tiny eyes of shrew, they
couldn't be anything fucking else.
The other festering cock of a problem is
pretty much the entire third act which, in my opinion, kind of undermines
everything that had been done over the previous two arse-numbing hours. Like I
said, the film has a moodiness to it that suggests a degree of realism and
importance however the concluding third just goes a bit fucking mental. I won't
spoil the details but it's like the plot slips over and accidental falls tit
first into the boring world of the bog-standard thriller- the kind where some
dick of a main character starts acting like the worlds thickest plank and walks
gormlessly into the gaping, toothy snatch of the villain. Real life is both
dull and as predictable as fuck and does not contain as many twists as this
story attempts to suggest. If a little girl goes missing then the odds are
she's dead- killed by either the school caretaker or her pervy uncle. What
starts off as a downbeat, gritty depiction of child abduction concludes with so
many bullshit 'surprises' that it's like a weird pedo-sequel to Ocean's
Eleven. It's a shame too because everything starts off pretty great, it's
just that when it comes time to explaining itself, it kind of starts to fuck
up. Maybe if they'd gone for the gothic horror of Silence of the Lambs, the
conclusion would have rang slightly more believable. It's like that moment when
you ask somebody who’s lying a question and suddenly they get stumped and
splutter out some panicked bollocks that sounds so much shitter than the
previously prepared story of crap.
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| Anyone who uses a Blue Shell is a dick. |
Still the whole thing is still pretty
enjoyable for the most part. It's just such a shame that for a film that's
about two and half hours long the story still seems to have bigger, gaping
holes than an eighty year old whore. If they could just re-write the end and
then squeeze the bagginess out of it then I think you'd end up with a movie
worthy of its performances. Although, to give credit where it's due in regards
to the end, there is a pretty cool high-speed car scene in the middle of heavy
snow as the driver's head-wound gushes blood into their eyes. The film was lit
by a cinematographer named Roger Deakins whose work, for those who don't know,
is the human equivalent of having your eye gauged out by a golden paintbrush.
Everything he works on has his unmistakable stamp of beauty on it and this is
no exception. However this speeding car scene near the end is almost painful in
its artistic genius. With the snow, the blood and the passing neon signs,
there's so much colour being seared into our retinas that everything starts to
look like Mario Kart’s
Rainbow Road if it had been designed by a psychopath.
Prisoners is
a good film that's just nowhere near perfect. If you have a few spare hours and
there's nothing else to do then I recommend you give it a go. On the other hand though, The Hunt almost
is perfect and as I said at the start, you should go check that out before it's
too late and we're all dead. They're both very enjoyable but if you only get
chance to relax to one film about child abuse this year then really, it isn't a
hard decision as to which you should go for. I don't regret having paid to
watch Prisoners at all but if I'm honest I don't think I'd pay to
own it on DVD. If however I was lucky enough to trip over the frozen corpse of
a rotten tramp and he had a copy of it in his lethally chilled begging-claw
then I would be more than happy to steal it from him and I'd appreciate the
repeat viewing. But only under those circumstances.
29 October 2012
Skyfall Is Where We Start
Being the miserable cunt that I am, I'm
obviously not a fan of special occasions. I could rant all day about my hatred
of jolly, merry Shitmas but the rest are just as bad. All of the other yearly
occasions were simply invented to make insecure people feel loved at the
benefit of card companies. I hate to sound like a twat but if I have to pick a
side, I'd rather be labelled as a 'cynic' than be a dead-eyed member of team
gullible. Despite all that however, there is one thing that I look forward to
more than anything else and that's the release of a new James Bond film. If
commercialised affection isn't for me then you can damn well bet that watching
a misogynist shooting a Russian in the face is. I think that everybody should
also agree that after fifty years and twenty-three official films, the latest
adventure to feature one of Britain's finest contributions to pop-culture
really is something that should be celebrated. Given a choice between a
birthday or 007's latest premier, I honestly prefer the one that doesn't
make me feel a year closer to fucking death.
Because of this, Skyfall has a lot
of expectation to live up to. Not only has it got several generations of film
lovers eager to see it but it's been four years since the release of Quantum
of Solace. I'm a punctual chap in general who treats lateness with such a
level of fascism that for every minute waiting for someone who is late, I spend
it planning the next holocaust. Considering that Bond has had me waiting for
approximately one thousand, four hundred and fifty days, that suave cunt had
better have a fucking good excuse. As it turns out, he bloody well does.
Skyfall begins
with Bond trying to salvage a mission gone wrong. Somebody has stolen a
hard-drive which contains a list of all known working field agents and M wants
it back. Bond therefore gives chase in an attempt to prevent this sensitive
information from being released. To be honest, the only thing on my hard-drive
is hardcore pornography so I can empathise with MI6 here. God knows what I'd do
if my computer was stolen because I'm seriously prepared to kill if anyone even
glances towards my browsing history.
Considering that most people would feel
short-changed if this was the end, I think it's obvious that 007 doesn't die in
the first five minutes. Instead he decides to take a little time out to
recuperate on a relaxing sandy beach. We rarely see Bond on holiday so it's
interesting to watch what he gets up to. As it turns out he enjoys getting
wankered, pissing about with scorpions and fucking people. I'm not a travel
agent but I think that's called the 'Charlie Sheen Package'.
After an attack on MI6 headquarters, Bond
decides to return to work. The stolen hard-drive from the beginning has come
back to haunt them and the culprit appears to have some personal vendetta
against M. It's not revealed why yet but I suspect it's probably that he saw
the Judi Dench fingering scene in Notes on a Scandal. Unfortunately for
her, 007 is now out of shape and needs retraining. Since being shot a couple of
times, he can now only run several miles, do a few hundred sit ups and really
struggles at a few measly pull ups. What a lazy, fat bastard he is!
In the twenty-three films released so far,
it seems that there are two kinds of Bond film. There's the slightly more
grounded ones like Live and Let Die and then there are the bat-shit
crazy ones like Moonraker. I know every Bond film is technically a
fantasy but there are obviously various degrees of it. 007 verses the drugs
trade is quite grounded whereas Roger Moore riding a hover gondola past the
double-take pigeon isn't. On a scale of zero-to-'what the fuck', I'd say that
interestingly Skyfall is heading back into the more fantastical kind of
Bond film. Personally I don't have a problem with this so long as they stay in
control by continuing to hire respectable directors. Sam Mendes proved his
credibility when he won an Oscar for American Beauty, a film which
brilliantly depicted a man having a midlife crisis. Lee Tamahori helmed Die
Another Day and has since been arrested for dressing up as a woman and
trying to charge random men for a shag. No prizes for guessing which of those
two had the better insight into the mind of James Bond.
One of the more fantastical elements of Skyfall
is of course the crazed villain Raoul Silva. Played by Javier Bardem, he's a
bit like a cross between Hannibal Lecter, The Joker and Quentin Crisp. I won't
reveal too much about him except to say he's brilliant and proper full-on gay.
As far as I know, there hasn't been a male villain who threatens Bond with sex
since Grace Jones fucked him in A View to a Kill. Each Bond villain in
the Daniel Craig films has had a disability and Skyfall is no exception.
Again, I won't reveal it, except to say it's worse than Le Chiffre's bleeding
eye but not as awful as Dominic Greene being French.
The other thing that I really loved about Skyfall
was just how much of it was set in Britain. There's always been an odd
relationship between Bond and Batman and there's no denying that this film
borrows from The Dark Knight. The shots of Bond surveying London from
the rooftops are iconically similar to Batman guarding his city of Gotham and
there's a downbeat tone suggesting that not everyone will survive. Bond’s dead
parents also get highlighted and used as the motivation for his life a little
like Batman's always were. I think it's strange that being an orphan would make
Bond want to become a spy as both my parents are alive and nothing could drive
me to kill more than them. None of these comparisons are a criticism either by
the way, as Nolan has made a career out of pilfering from 007 in the first
place. To be honest I think if that fucker tries to take anything else from
Bond he should be punished and forced to direct the next film in the franchise.
That'd teach the talented little shit a lesson!
It was always obvious that Mendes would be
able to handle the drama of a Bond film but the question was ‘could he do the
action too?’ So far the closest thing he's done to this is Jarhead which
follows a gulf war soldier who, in an act of pure visual cinema, didn't kill a
single bloody person. I hate to reveal my own mental issues but if Bond hasn't
fucked and killed some dumb broad within the first hour then I'm really not
happy. It's not that I'm a sexist, it's just that he is and I'm a little afraid
of any change whatsoever. Luckily however, Mendes knows this and so deals with
the death and destruction in a suitably nonchalant way. At one point there's a
game of 'shoot the bottle off a girls head' followed by a brilliant, cold-hearted
and fucked up quip from Bond. To be honest I'm glad the quips are making a
return as from 007's previous one liners, it's obvious that like Fatty Arbuckle,
he's always going to be known for being more of a killer than a comedian.
However nothing beats a man with a prosthetic hand struggling to remove a watch
before Roger Moore angrily calls him a “Butterhook”.
The other great thing that Mendes did was
bring over his regular cinematographer Roger Deakins. For anyone that doesn't
know, a cinematographer is simply the guy who hangs the lights up and makes a
film look all pretty and shit. In terms of the people doing that job, Deakins
is one of the best and a genuine genius. Being a reserved and gentle Brit, he's
also one of the better DoP's that's not stupid enough to slag off The
Avengers and piss off the fanboys. His inclusion on Skyfall is
an act of sheer brilliance with this clearly now being the most visually
impressive Bond film ever. Thinking about it, I'd probably say that the
Shanghai sequence was so beautiful that with it's neon lighting I swear they
must have invented some brand new colours for us.
There's also a shadowy noir feel to Skyfall
that creates a blanket of mood so heavy it could almost smother Bond himself.
In fact, the end of the movie looks so gloomy and haunted that it almost
becomes the Bond equivalent of Straw Dogs. Just for clarification though,
I mean that in terms of style and tone and not the occurrence of a randomly
indulgent rape scene. It took us long enough to accept a blonde Bond so I think
it'll be a few more years before we allow him to become a full blown sex
offender. Whether he gets consent or not however, I do think it's about time Q
branch started supplying him with standard issue condoms. If they designed some
of those novelty luminous ones, Deakins could probably control that too and
make a sex scene look like some sort of fucking poetic lightsaber fight.
If I have a criticism with Sam Mendes's
usual team here, then it would probably be with the hiring of composer Thomas
Newman. It's not that the music wasn't good but rather it was possibly too
obviously his own. Half the film sounded like American Beauty and then
every so often the Bond theme would unsubtly kick in. There was scenes in which
Bond was talking to Silva and it genuinely felt like Chris Cooper was going to
walk in and shoot them because of his own repressed homosexuality. Having said
that though and because I'm really, really cool, I've just spent the last few
hours repeatedly listening to the score and it does sound great. Maybe it just
felt a little jarring at first because I'm used to the sound of regular Bond
composer David Arnold being here. Like I said before, I'm not a fan of change
so maybe this will be a grower. I know that the film isn't perfect but I'm
genuinely struggling to find anything negative I want to say about it and that
was the closest I could think of…
Daniel Craig's ears looked particularly
massive but that's not really a fault of the film. If anything they'd probably
even help Bond as a spy by acting as a pair of huge, meaty satellites. In fact
you know what? Fuck it. The film is genuinely fucking brilliant and probably
the best thing I've seen this year. I've been a huge fan of the franchise ever
since I was old enough to support the weight of my own head and so this film
was as enjoyable and appealing to me as pregnancy is to underage trailer-trash.
It's nice to see too, that Craig is settling into the role with the kind of
comfort that's going to ensure that every one of his successors will be one day
compared to him. Judi Dench was also so stupidly good in this that she's
officially become the first and best Bond Woman. She plays the vulnerable but
confident surrogate Mum to both Bond and Silva with the two brothers fighting
to protect and kill her. It's nice to know that the plot of Skyfall is
kept very British and is clearly an adaptation of The Jeremy Kyle Show.
In a way, Skyfall almost feels like
it could, in an alternate world, be the reboot film that Casino Royale turned
out to be. Its basic theme seems to be looking at how relevant Bond is
in this modern world and then asking if we could get by without him. In fact
that the whole set up can be summed up by Bond and M's first exchange in Goldeneye.
She accuses him of being a, “Sexist, misogynist, Dinosaur. A relic of the Cold
War!” before admitting that, “If you think for one moment
I don't have the balls to send a man out to die, your instincts are dead
wrong”. To her cold hearted credit she at least can't be accused of being two
faced!
Skyfall spends
its duration subtly and lovingly hinting towards 007's past films and upbringing
and then like a twat, rather bluntly burns it all to the ground. By the end of
this film, Bond is as complete, fresh and attachment free as Sean Connery's was
at the start of Dr No. As far as last scenes go, Skyfall's is
almost fifty years in the making and has created a level of excitement not felt
since Batman Begins revealed the Joker card. The franchise has being
going for half a century and the line; “He'll see you now” has ensured a
freshness of direction that makes the sequel just too exciting to think about.
Is Bond still relevant? Relevant's got nothing to do with it. Bond has an
unexplainable and ingrained sense of loyalty to his country and so do we, to
him. It's a similar relationship that fatties share with cake and lard.
For as long as they make films, Bond will
be around with each new adventure being treated with the excitement and sense
of occasion that they genuinely deserve. Perhaps the character has been a
little lost since the Cold War ended, but finally with Skyfall he knows
where he is and has found his place in our world. That's definitely more than
can be said of hairy man-tit David Hasselhoff and he's still got a career. Five
decades since the first film and I'm already looking forward to being in the
queue for Bond 24. If there's two things us Brits love, it's a Bond
movie and a good queue. Throw in a cup of tea and some repressed sexual urges
and you've got yourself a perfect Saturday night. Is Skyfall the best
Bond? Maybe- I'm just glad that we've now got twenty-three to choose from and
there's a chance that it could be.
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