It’s fascinating and often uncomfortable viewing. The music is tremendous, and the drumming sequences are almost unbearably intense.
Director Damien Chazelle also directed La La Land and there are some similar motifs.
Showing posts with label Year: 2014. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Year: 2014. Show all posts
Whiplash (2014)
Gone Girl (2014)
Extremely disappointing thriller directed by David Fincher and adapted from the popular novel by Gillian Flynn.
I’d heard great things about it, but it turns out to be oddly mannered and unconvincing.
Ben Affleck stars as a man who becomes a suspect after his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), suddenly vanishes. The plot is ludicrously far-fetched and there's something silly about the whole thing.
Visually and tonally, there's a "clinical" quality to it that's hugely unpleasant.
A Most Violent Year (2014)
Oscar Isaac stars as a New Yorker whose business – selling oil – is threatened by corruption and violence. Jessica Chastain plays his tough wife – a complex, brilliantly drawn character, whose father has a dubious criminal background.
It has a Martin Scorsese feel and the choice of urban locations is superb. The title doesn’t quite work, though, as it could be applied to countless other thrillers.
Madame Bovary (2014)
Emma Bovary (Mia Wasikowska) finds her marriage to a village doctor stifling and lifeless. She seeks more exciting distractions, with disastrous consequences.
Wasikowska is excellent, as is the supporting cast. My only criticism is that Emma's character seems to change too quickly, with her downward spiral beginning rather suddenly after years of quiet restraint. This sort of character development can be handled more subtly across a novel but can seem rushed in the 118-minute running time of a film.
The Fault in Our Stars (2014)
Adapted from the novel by John Green and directed by Josh Boone, this is a romance about two teens with terminal cancer. It’s more watchable than that description might suggest.
Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort star as the main couple, Hazel and Gus, and both are fairly compelling. Since it’s very much from a teen perspective, the adults are oddly marginalised. Laura Dern just about has a role as Hazel’s mother, but Sam Trammell is a complete nothing of a character as her father.
Another interesting aspect is Hazel’s (dying) wish to seek out an obscure author whose work she admires (played by Willem Dafoe). When she eventually meets him, in Amsterdam, he’s a disappointingly unpleasant alcoholic. It’s a slightly odd plot – especially when he shows up again, and surprisingly hasn’t been humbled or redeemed by his encounters with the innocently adoring fan.
An unusual affair all round, but it certainly makes you think.
Dying of the Light (2014)
Nicolas Cage plays a CIA man intent on revenge after he was tortured by a terrorist 22 years previously. The unusual twist is that he is suffering from a form of dementia, which affects not only his memory, but also his moods and behaviour.
It has a low-budget feel and there’s very little action. It seems like a cut-price attempt to make a Jason Bourne film, but without Paul Greengrass’s directorial energy and skill.
The dementia angle is surprisingly low-key in the plot. I was expecting it to be used as a rationale for all sorts of odd outbursts from Cage.
The Two Faces of January (2014)
It’s 1962. American con artist Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife Colette (Kirsten Dunst) are holidaying in Greece, when MacFarland’s criminal past catches up with him. Desperate and needing to flee, the couple team up with Rydal Keener (Oscar Isaac), an American tour guide who himself is a conman, albeit on a far smaller scale. But Rydal’s motivations are ambiguous – he has designs on Colette, while seeing Chester as a reminder of the father he recently lost.
The exciting plot consistently ramps up the tension as the fortunes of the three become more and more entangled.
It’s brilliantly directed: every shot is expertly framed for maximise the drama.
The soundtrack by Alberto Iglesias is uncannily well suited to the action.
It’s an admirably short film at 97 minutes: taut and perfectly paced.
Selma (2014)
David Oyelowo stars as King, Tom Wilkinson is President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Tim Roth is George Wallace.
It’s slow to get going and I wasn’t especially engaged until the second half. I would have liked more about MLK’s family – the kids are barely seen or mentioned, and even the scenes with his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) seem to lack dynamism. There's too much of King the legend and not enough about the man, who must have felt so conflicted as he surely knew he wouldn’t be around for long.
A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)
Scudder, who now works as a private detective, begins investigating a series of brutal kidnappings.
It’s a little gruelling in places – there’s a theme about chopping people up, so there’s some gore. There’s a degree of tension from the suspenseful plotting, and the film is highly watchable without ever quite dazzling.
The “Y2K” panic references stand out. It’s a story that’s preoccupied with the millennium in a way that seems baffling now.
Unbroken (2014)
Directed by Angelina Jolie, this is a long and slow true story of American Olympic runner Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell).
Zamperini survives two plane crashes, several weeks floating on a raft and two Japanese POW camps – and yet the film detailing these events somehow ends up plodding and dull.
O'Connell is OK, but he has few lines and little actual character. Even less well drawn is Sgt. Mutsuhiro "The Bird" Watanabe (Miyavi), who is sadistic in a way that’s never really explained – despite the seemingly endless scenes of torture.
A good story, badly told, it's further proof that actors don't usually make for great directors.
Northern Soul (2014)
Two Lancashire teenagers discover Northern Soul music and dedicate their lives to the pursuit of it, hunting down obscure seven-inch singles and dancing the nights away on amphetamines as an escape from the oppressive traps of family and education.
In some ways, it’s like an English Saturday Night Fever. It’s a perfect evocation of the grimy, gritty, dour aspects of the early 1970s. Everything looks convincingly grubby and horrible. Most of the film is really dark, to the extent that it’s sometimes difficult to see what’s happening.
Elliot James Langridge is superb as the alienated John, who finds a meaning to life in the sweaty clubs away from the pressures of his parents (Lisa Stansfield plays his mother) and teachers (Steve Coogan plays the unpleasant Mr. Banks).
The music sounds fantastic – twitchy and energised – and the film has real energy.
Fury (2014)
The set pieces are violent and dramatic. An extended scene set in a house with two German women is especially powerful.
It’s atmospheric and it looks convincingly grey, bleak and muddy.
Brad Pitt has rarely impressed me as an actor but he’s at his best here, finding a depth and charisma that sometimes eludes him in lesser roles.
The Maze Runner (2014)
A bunch of boys find themselves in a grassy glade surrounded by an ever-shifting maze that’s populated by killer alien robot monsters. A new child arrives every month with no memory of their prior life. When Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) and then Theresa (Kaya Scodelario) appear, everything changes.
It’s a fascinating premise but the wider story arc – explored across two further films (adapted from the novels by James Dashner) – is too silly to be believed.
The characters are strong, though, and the interplay between them makes for the most engaging elements. It’s heavily influenced by Lord of the Flies and there’s a fair bit of interesting stuff about how the boys live together and the society they’ve evolved, with all its rules and rivalries.
Genuinely impressive sound design and visuals also lift the film into something you can watch and enjoy more than once. The maze itself looks terrific and its physical presence and psychological influence are expertly conveyed.
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
A ludicrous mess. Part four of the popular series stars Mark Wahlberg as an inventor, Nicola Peltz as his daughter and Jack Reynor as her boyfriend. The baddies are played by Stanley Tucci and Kelsey Grammer.
The plot (borrowed from the internet): “The Autobots, a faction of robots from the planet Cybertron, are hunted down by an elite CIA black ops unit and a ruthless bounty hunter. They turn to a struggling inventor and his daughter for help.”
It turns out that it was the Transformers, and not a meteorite, that caused the death of the dinosaurs.
The robots have been given silly voices and accents, which makes them a lot less scary. One of them even seems to have a beard and a cigar. Why? It’s nice to see them transform out of cars and lorries, but it’s utterly exhausting to see so much “impossible” CGI so quickly unfolding for such a long time. The running time of 165 minutes is wildly excessive.
Everything is so big, loud, fast and explosive that the film quickly finds it has nowhere left to go. In dramatic terms, it’s a disaster: you are left completely numb by the relentlessness of it. But on the plus side, it’s unintentionally funny and some of the daft dialogue is absolutely priceless. For example: “Autobots, we’re going to prove who we are! That’s why we’re here!”
Before I Go to Sleep (2014)
Nicole Kidman stars as Christine, a woman who lost her memory 10 years ago. Each morning her husband Ben (Colin Firth) has to tell her who she is and what happened to her, because she can’t remember anything from before the last time she slept. What trauma caused her to forget everything? Why is Ben concealing certain facts? And what are the motives of the neuroscientist (Mark Strong) who offers to help her without Ben’s knowledge?
It’s an intriguing premise – somewhere between Memento and Groundhog Day. Plot-wise there were some questionable aspects. Why doesn’t Christine simply keep a notebook and add information as she learns it? There’s a digital camera (supplied by the neuroscientist), but how does it get new batteries? What stops its memory from filling up? And how are the photos on the wall explained once the big twist has been revealed?
On the plus side, the English landscapes (such as Greenwich Park) look better than they usually do in films.
Lucy (2014)
Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) gains extraordinary mental and physical abilities when the full capacity of her brain is unleashed by a wonder drug. Unfortunately, a bunch of South Korean gangsters want to kill her. Morgan Freeman, meanwhile, plays a well-meaning scientist who tries to help her.
The plot, which includes dinosaurs and time travel, only works if you go along with the premise that unlocking brain power would essentially make you a superhero. And as with superhero films, it suffers from a problem – that is, once anything is possible, nothing really works as drama. Someone who can do anything is no longer a protagonist you can relate to.
The main draw is the visual flair that director Luc Besson brings. It looks imaginative and psychedelic even if it makes little real sense. There’s also a lot of violence that we could probably have done without.
A far stronger film on a similar topic is Limitless (2011), which not only keeps to its own “rules” but also creates engaging characters you can actually relate to.
My Old Lady (2014)
Kevin Kline plays Mathias, an American who travels to Paris to claim an apartment his father has left him in his will. But he finds living there the 92-year-old Mathilde (Maggie Smith), who – because of a “viager” arrangement – is legally entitled to live there for the rest of her life while being paid a monthly fee to do so. Things become more complicated when Mathias meets her daughter Chloé (Kristin Scott Thomas) and he begins to learn more about their pasts.
There are comic moments throughout, but the film becomes more serious and poignant as it progresses. All three leads are superb and it’s striking how “real” it all seems, with the emotions and pain seeming entirely convincing. The characters grow deeper as the plot moves along.
The only aspect that I didn’t really like was the slightly clichéd “French” music on the soundtrack. But that aside, it’s pretty much flawless.
The Monuments Men (2014)
George Clooney stars, writes and directs but unfortunately can’t decide if he’s making a comedy or a drama. It falls somewhere in the middle – neither very funny nor very exciting, with too much rather stilted sitting around. The all-star cast seems underused, with Matt Damon, Bill Murray and the dreaded John Goodman in underdeveloped roles and not really getting a chance to shine. Only Cate Blanchett (a sympathetic curator with an inconsistent French accent) comes out of it unscathed.
The tone is all over the place. The film flits between trying to make serious points at certain times and seeming like Dad’s Army at others, with “jaunty” music that’s especially jarring. Even the central message – art is so important that it might be worth dying for – is watered down by the way it’s something we’re repeatedly told rather than meaningfully shown.
The final scene – a modern-day glimpse of Clooney’s Lieutenant as an elderly man appreciating Michelangelo in a gallery with his grandson – is particularly awkward and naff.
Jersey Boys (2014)
It’s an extremely well-told story, with the characters breaking the fourth wall to narrate their history as it’s happening. John Lloyd Young, who was also in the popular stage show, manages to sing with Valli’s distinctive falsetto – a voice that’s both iconic and a little ridiculous. Vincent Piazza plays tough-guy bandmate Tommy DeVito, while Christopher Walken is their gangster friend Gyp DeCarlo – a somewhat romanticised portrait in that you never get to see him do anything nasty (this isn’t a Scorsese film, even if it occasionally reminds you of one).
It rightly puts the music to the fore, and you are left singing classics such as “Sherry”, “Walk Like a Man” and “December, 1963 (Oh What a Night!)”. The final dancing-in-the-street sequence appears to emulate the curtain-call section of the musical, and is a blast of good-natured cheer.
It Follows (2014)
Monroe is excellent as the doomed 19-year-old who is constantly pursued by a supernatural being, having suddenly discovered that her life has become a terrifying nightmare.
The idea of a malignant entity forever edging towards you is deeply unsettling, and it’s to the credit of director David Robert Mitchell that the film sets out its “rules” and keeps to them. The premise is faithfully explored and not messed around with for the convenience of the storytelling. It’s clever, too: you begin to spot various walking individuals planted in certain shots who may or may not merely be ordinary people. The film makes you question everyone and everything.
You could see “it” as being a metaphor for sexually transmitted disease, or even for sex itself. Or you can just accept it as a horror film.
Slow panning shots add to the suspense and all-round creepy feel.
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