Film Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Warning: This review contains spoilers.

B

ritish director Gareth Edwards shoulders a lot of responsibility in directing the first Star Wars spin-off film. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story marks the first ‘anthology’ movie in what is sure to be Disney’s mammoth Avengers-like expansion of the Star Wars franchise.  While Edwards succeeds in taking the saga to invigorating new places, he couldn’t quite resist the urge to be derivative.

Set between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) and the original Star Wars (1977), Rogue One stars Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, a plucky rebel fighter and daughter of Death Star research scientist, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), who is forced to work on the Empire’s unfinished planet destroying weapon by Imperial Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn). After Krennic has her mother killed and her father taken away, Jyn flees her home and is protected by fanatical rebel Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). Thirteen years later, Jyn is freed by Rebels from an Imperial prison, and they embark on a mission to steal the Death Star plans.

Rogue One should be praised for having the courage to explore the galaxy from a much darker perspective. We see a fractious Rebellion dealing with friendly fire and extremists within their ranks, we witness jungle battle scenes more reminiscent of Vietnam than Endor, Jyn’s father struggles with the guilt and pain of forcibly working for an evil Empire, and the Death Star’s destructive power parallels real world nuclear weapons. All this gives the film a comparatively bleak slant, and it is jarring to see morally grey areas dealt with in a universe so defined by the archetypal. Darth Vader’s return to the screen is of course a welcome one, with one genuinely terrifying scene restoring the Sith Lord to his rightful places as an imposing antagonist. But for all its grittiness, Rogue One is not humourless, mainly thanks to K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk). A reprogrammed Imperial droid fighting for the Rebellion, K-2SO’s droll pessimism brings to mind Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Star Wars saga doesn’t exactly have an unblemished track record when it comes to CGI comic relief sidekicks, but thankfully the unflappable K-2SO is no Jar Jar Binks. This seven-foot robot is both imposing and likable, and has a knack for timing his punchlines.

There are plenty of other compelling new characters to flesh out the Star Wars universe here. Felicity Jones provides us with another welcome addition to the series’ squadron of courageous female leads, although the former The Archers actress’s performance isn’t overly remarkable. Ben Mendelsohn revels in playing baddie Orson Krennic with the campy energy we want in a Star Wars villain. Chinese martial artist Donnie Yen brings an air of Buddhist spiritualism to The Force in his pious portrayal of Chirrut Îmwe, a blind warrior who battles Stormtroopers with a staff. But despite all this innovation, the film somewhat stifles in its delivery. Rogue One was plagued by last minute reshoots, and regrettably the final cut did not escape unscathed. Forest Whitaker’s role as Saw Gerrera, a cyborg veteran of the Clone Wars, grabs our interest, but his character arc simply fizzles out. A slow opening act, at times awkward pacing, and a totally extraneous scene involving a mind-reading tentacle alien all hint at trouble in the editing suite.

One of the film’s most technically remarkable achievements is the digital resurrection of Peter Cushing, so that he could “reprise” his role as Grand Moff Tarkin. While an impressive display of cutting edge visual effects, this spectacle somewhat eclipses our immersion, and our focus shifts from the narrative to noticing his uncanny facial expressions and slightly off skin movement, demonstrating that our ability to recreate flesh and blood with CGI isn’t quite there yet.

The way in which Rogue One dispenses with many of the saga’s conventions is cause for both admiration and criticism. Seven films in, Star Wars has a well-established cinematic grammar, and while, no doubt, some stylistic choices were deliberate — there is no opening crawl or screen wipe transitions here — others seem misplaced. John Williams’s music, the undisputed oxygen of Star Wars, is markedly absent. Instead, we get a rather bland score from Michael Giacchino, a composer hastily brought in after the reshoots to replace Alexandre Desplat. Giacchino composed Rogue One’s music in just four and a half weeks. Battle sequences interspersed with shaky, handheld shots gives the action a rather generic, decidedly un-Star Warsy aesthetic, and onscreen captions providing us with planet names and locations feel like a clumsy, and much too blatant a form of exposition for the saga’s brand of space opera fantasy. One of the many failings of George Lucas’s Prequel Trilogy was a lack of tension — we know which characters survive, and what will become of many of them — and while Rogue One largely avoids this by introducing a whole host of new characters, ultimately, it is still a prequel, and we all know how it will end.

It’s unsurprising that handing the reins to Gareth Edwards, a self-confessed Star Wars geek, resulted in a fan-pleasing exercise. Rogue One is packed with cameos and obscure references sure to delight fans and alienate those not as familiar with the franchise in equal measure. When the film gawkily pauses for us to gasp at a shoehorned shot of those guys from Mos Eisley Cantina, and prequel trilogy veteran Jimmy Smits awkwardly enters the frame (reprising his role as Bail Organa), we can almost feel Edwards elbowing us in the ribs.

While undeniably an enthralling new direction for the Star Wars franchise, Rogue One ultimately lacks the charm of the original trilogy or Abram’s The Force Awakens (2015). Instead, Edwards’s somewhat flawed addition to the franchise seems complaisant to place its emphasis on spectacular action sequences and packing the frame with as much nostalgia as possible.

Film Review: Paterson (2016)

N

ot much happens in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson. The film follows a week in the life of Paterson (Adam Driver), an aptly named, poetry-loving bus driver in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. While this minimal narrative may seem insubstantial, as we follow Paterson’s daily routine — listening to passenger’s conversations, absorbing the city around him and forming verse in his mind — the film adopts the rhythmic aesthetic of his poetry, inviting us to bathe in its subtle charm.

While Star Wars: The Force Awakens propelled Driver to superstardom, his career is taking an exciting path. “Once you get a taste for really good directors”, he said in an interview, “you just want to only do that.” Driver — who portrays a Portuguese Jesuit priest in the upcoming Martin Scorsese film, Silence — is certainly an actor worth following, and he is wonderful in Paterson. A far cry from his portrayal of raging Star Wars villain Kylo Ren, here he is given the opportunity to demonstrate his versatility, with a naturalistic, candid performance.

While Paterson’s wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) has no job, she is happy experimenting with clothes, cupcakes and chasing her dream of becoming a famous country singer. The two are so adorable, their relationship would approach the quixotic, where it not for the delicate credibility of their performances. Farahani and Driver create tender, funny scenes of domestic bliss — including Laura’s questionable Brussels sprout and cheese pie — and without the need of a single sex scene, they somehow manage to craft a love more profound than many Hollywood romances.

While idyllic, there is, however, some complexity to their relationship. Tension is created by Laura urging her happily unpublished husband to let the world see his poetry, and one can’t help but read a hint of frustration in her increasingly eccentric artistic endeavours. After Laura tells of a dream she had in which they have twins together, this theme becomes a recurring motif, with Paterson noticing twins all over the city. Is this symbolic of the couple’s inner desire to start a family? This question is left hanging. When even a subplot involving a dramatic lover’s spat ebbs away to little consequence, it’s clear that Paterson is intended to be as equivocal as its poetic subject matter.

On Paterson’s bus route, montages layered over images of flowing water give us plenty of breathing room to become lost in his mind, and the city that inspires him. While hardly a historical document, the film is peppered with nods to the city of Paterson’s past, its diverse community and its literary heritage. Much like the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) — in which Driver incidentally had a small part — we explore the setting from an unconventional viewpoint, while ultimately the focus is on the humanity at the film’s core.

A refreshing breather from action-packed blockbusters, Jim Jarmusch’s latest offering is a contemplative exercise that proves quietly courageous by placing great trust in the audience’s ability to find intrigue in the mundane. A film of tremendous simplicity, but not without depth, Paterson wins you over with its sheer, unironic loveliness.

Film Review: Finding Dory (2016)

P

ixar’s follow up to 2003’s Finding Nemo manages to successfully navigate the choppy waters of making a good sequel, striking an equilibrium between capturing the spirit of the original, and taking the franchise to a profound new place. While still at its core an epic underwater journey to reunite family members, this time we follow Dory, the amnesiac tang fish – ironically the most unforgettable character from the previous film – on her voyage to find her long-lost parents, one year after the events of Nemo.

As we have come to expect from Pixar, we are presented with a colourful, visually stunning adventure that pushes the boundaries of CG animation. However, Finding Dory is delivered with a remarkable restraint. While built on familiar foundations, it is not seeking to upstage its sprawling predecessor. Smaller in scale, but not short on emotional ambition, this is a fundamentally more intimate exercise – a tale of one fish’s battle with mental illness and identity.

Director Andrew Standon is no stranger to delivering decidedly adult themes wrapped in a child-friendly exterior. From the apocalyptic critique of consumerism in WALL-E (2008), to the burden of immortality eating at characters like a cancer in Toy Story 3 (2010), Standon has worked with Pixar writing and directing some of the studio’s most affectual texts. But Finding Dory may be one of their most human tales yet.

Dory once again steals the show, eclipsing the supporting cast of comparatively uninteresting characters. Ellen DeGeneres’ voice delivery provides ample laughs and a mastery of comic timing. But this forgetful fish is much more than the comic relief in this instalment. There is an underpinning tragedy to her condition. Her parents struggle with the burden of their handicapped daughter, and through Dory’s perspective we are able to experience a poignant exploration into overcoming disability.

On her adventure, Dory teams up with reportedly Pixar’s most challenging to animate character ever, a grumpy octopus named Hank (Ed O’Neill), who only has seven tentacles (his backstory was rewritten when animators found they couldn’t fit all eight on his body). Dory also encounters Destiny (Kaitlin Olson), an accident-prone whale shark suffering from nearsightedness, and Bailey (Ty Burrell), a beluga whale with a dysfunctional echolocation system. The group must work as a team to conquer their afflictions.

With this cast of misfits, the film risks belabouring its core message, but Finding Dory manages to deliver a parable more fine-drawn than many of Pixar’s previous morality tales – blatant anti-SeaWorld sentiment notwithstanding. The film’s story was altered after Pixar executives watched the 2013 documentary Blackfish – its aquatic park setting was changed to a Marine Biology Institute. Refreshingly, the primary source of antagonism stems not from a predatory giant squid or an evil shark, but the character’s own impediments.

While predictable in many respects, Pixar’s latest escapade is a nuanced, bittersweet tale of personal discovery and determination. It is packed to the gills with gags and eye-popping visuals, and even has a jocular Sigourney Weaver cameo thrown in for good measure. The film builds effectively towards its satisfyingly ridiculous climax, although it never quite reaches the tear-jerking apex of last year’s Inside Out.

Finding Dory is another commendable addition to Pixar’s catalogue, and that rarest of breeds – a sequel that really works.

Film Review: High-Rise (2016)

A

dapted by screenwriter Amy Jump from the prophetic 1975 novel by J. G. Ballard, Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise confronts us with a gross caricature of 1970s' Britain. Set in a state-of-the-art London tower block where inhabitants are cut off from the rest of society, we follow the young doctor Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) as he moves into the twenty-fifth floor. The isolated community encompasses its own cross section of the social hierarchy, which soon descends into all-out class warfare that sees the high-rise fragment into violent tribes.

While the film is in some ways a progression from Wheatley’s previous works, his fanciful, comically grotesque imprint remains prominent. With a tone almost dark enough to rival Wheatley’s uncompromisingly anarchic Kill List (2011), this film is packed with all manners of depravity. However, we are offered an even more conspicuous sense of playfulness – a black humour that gives the film more substance than the director’s previous films. As we are sucked into an unrelentingly bizarre, hyperbolized 1970s nightmare, most pretences of standard narrative form are soon dispensed with, in favour of crafting an unsettling collage of viscerally felt debauchery. We watch on helplessly as we are presented with a showcase of decadence. The film underlines the anxieties of an era in which brutalist monoliths began to dominate the skyline. We experience an anti-nostalgia for a boozed-soaked period of garish décor and inescapable cigarette-stink, with Portishead’s haunting cover of ABBA’s ‘SOS’ filling us with unease.

Certainly, the film is a triumph in a visual sense. Laurie Rose’s cinematography is superb, the screen is often populated with arresting imagery of the highest order, akin to a Stanley Kubrick text. The frame is filled with evocative shots – Huddleston’s paint splattered face, amber-tinged scenes straight out of a period drama, and ominous images of the monolithic buildings, which somehow themselves become the antagonist of the film.

The performances are also striking in their sheer ostentation. Hiddleston has a chilling presence as the shady Robert Laing, playing the role with an unsettling detachment. Luke Evans’ portrayal of the psychotic Richard Wilder keeps us on edge throughout, and Jeremy Irons returns to his Shakespearian roots in depicting the building’s flamboyant architect with a disturbing mischievousness. But underneath all this impressive form, High-Rise is to some extent a victim of its own ambition.

Perhaps at odds with its source material, we should probably not read this as a piece of speculative science fiction – it is more of a reflective exercise. The film is set in an alternate 1975, and presents us with a form of retro-futurism that is supposed to be all the more biting given the benefit of hindsight. A rather too overt Margaret Thatcher reference is even included, as if the film’s implications weren’t plain enough. This political retrospection may prove hard to navigate for some. The film is often drolly weird in it’s over the top cynicism, presenting us with a warped retro-reality evocative of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985). High-Rise is a surreal excursion to the bleakest depths of social injustice. It attempts to be a statement not only on 1970s' Britain, but on capitalism and social inequality in general. However, somewhere along the way this barrage of overt social commentary verges on pomposity. While the perspective offered by the film is thought-provoking, it quickly becomes insubstantial, causing us to wonder, is this is all there is? Perhaps in adapting Ballard’s novel something was lost in translation, or maybe this story was just more suited to the prose of a page. That said, this film is still a powerful dystopian vision, just one without much depth beneath its undeniably resplendent surface. 

Film Review: 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

F

or a second film in a blockbuster franchise, this unforeseen sequel to Cloverfield is uncharacteristically very small-scale. In fact, 10 Cloverfield Lane was not always intended to be linked to the series at all. It originated from a spec script written by John Campbell titled The Cellar, which Paramount bought and developed into this spiritual successor. Certainly, this is evidenced by its unexpected approach. While the basic premise seems formulaic – this is after all a film about aliens attacking Earth – it is used as a catalyst to explore the psychological impact the event has on its characters. Taking the directorial helm from Matt Reeves, newcomer Abilenne M. Barajas puts down the shaky handycam for the follow-up to the 2008 found-footage monster film.

After a heated argument with her fiancé, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) leaves her home in New Orleans and begins to drive through the night. As she listens to the radio we hear of blackouts in major cities, alluding the events of the original film. Suddenly, Michelle crashes her car. She wakes up in a prison-like room with her injured leg chained to a wall, in a scene reminiscent of a Saw film. A man named Howard (John Goodman) enters the room, and explains that a mysterious attack has rendered the air outside unbreathable. Fortunately, Howard – being a seemingly archetypal ex-military conspiracy nut – was prepared, constructing a subterranean bunker fitted with its own air supply. Michelle meets Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.) the only other co-inhabitant of the shelter, who fled there after the attacks started.

With a main cast consisting of only three, the film relies on combining a confined setting with potent interplay between characters to produce nail-biting tension. Rather like Danny Boyle’s post-apocalyptic thriller 28 Days Later (2002), this film finds the sinister in not only the existential threat, but in how humanity reacts to that jeopardy. In Boyle’s text it was in the form of psychotic rapist soldiers determined to rebuild society, and in Cloverfield Lane, our primary source of antagonism comes from the perfectly casted John Goodman. Goodman’s chilling portrayal of Howard confronts us with the prospect of a world where bunker-building paranoia has been proven entirely justified.  Our perceptions of Howard frequently shift as the plot unravels. We feel fear, admiration, pity and hatred towards him the more is revealed. Through three exceptional performances, we are presented with a visceral experience that alters between black comedy and heart-pounding disquietude.

10 Cloverfield Lane renounces the formal aesthetic of its de facto prequel with Jeff Cutter’s swooping cinematography. The screenplay (by Josh Campbell, Matt Stuecken and Damien Chazelle) certainly stands out here. Events are effectively foreshadowed and some scenes so are so rousing they raise the standard far above the hinterland of its monster movie predecessor. The film plays like a protracted Twilight Zone episode, forcing us through sheer veristic credibility to place ourselves in the circumstances presented. That is, until the closing act.  Perhaps inexorable given a screenplay that – while solid – requires explanations. We revert to far less compelling territory when the emphasis veers to CGI monsters and spaceships, and Michelle’s survival prowess – while for the most part empowering from a feminist standpoint – verges on deus ex machina by the finale.

Despite its rather meandering climax, the film succeeds as an all too welcome break from a landscape of banal sequels. A successful franchise follow-up should take the property to a new place, and to a large extent 10 Cloverfield Lane does exactly that.

Film Review: The Witch (2016)

T

he Witch (suitably stylised as The VVitch), the feature-length debut and Sundance triumph from Robert Eggers, manages to derive its terror not only from witchcraft, but from the unknown, claustrophobia, the fear of God and the bleak landscape. The 17^th century. New England. a family is excommunicated from a Puritan Christian plantation for “prideful conceit.” The exiled family must survive on their own farm, out in the wilds near a forest.

The family, father William (Ralph Ineson), his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), their daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) their son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) and their young twin children Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson) provide the sparse main cast. Months after their exile, Katherine gives birth to her fifth child, Samuel. When the unbaptised baby vanishes, apparently abducted by a witch, Katherine is distraught, spending her days praying to God and weeping.

As the plot slowly unravels like a camp fire tale, it draws us in with its folkloric disquiet.  The whole cast delivers pragmatically naturalist performances. Eggers’ script clearly had authenticity in mind, the dialogue is an historically accurate representation of Puritan dialect. In fact, Eggers’ script lifts some dialogue directly from Puritan prayer manuals. The film draws on concepts so archetypal, they would verge on being outmoded had they been handled with less care. We fear God with these characters, their desperation as they beg for mercy instils an anxiety within us – we want their prayers to be answered.

The dialogue’s archaic validity is matched by the film’s eerily plausible visuals. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke chose to shoot The Witch in a 1.66 aspect ratio, giving a timeless, claustrophobic feel to cinema audiences who presume the use of widescreen. The woods seem taller, and the huts more enclosed. Predominantly natural lighting was used for exterior shots, and interiors are often shot by candlelight, giving the film the genuine visual aesthetic of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975). The colour palette is bleak and subdued, adding to the palpable hopelessness.

The film continuously plays with genre convention, while other horror texts would rely on jump-scares and gory imagery, The Witch derives its trepidation from escalating dread, constructing an experience that is as tight as a drum. In one particularly well-crafted sequence, inordinate tension is drawn from wood chopping, using a combination of excellent editing and sound design. The film-makers even manage to find fear from an unlikely source – a hare. While not without its shocking moments, the film primarily unnerves us through suggestion, and what lies beyond its narrow frame.

Cinema audiences will of course associate witches with the low-budget, found footage style of The Blair Witch Project (1999). But The Witch stands apart by tracing its subject matter back to its roots, capturing colonial America’s first witch hysteria, in a setting 62 years before the notorious Salem Witch Trials. In deriving fear from the archetypal and loosely building on a foundation of historical records, Eggers manages through sheer verisimilitude to deliver what is a novel experience.

Building gradually towards its comparatively explicit – albeit somewhat ambiguous – crescendo, this is a film which gets under the skin, but the real horror only sets in once we have left the cinema. The film’s authenticity leaves us feeling unsettled, as if we have flipped through a dusty occult manuscript we were not meant to see. The Witch is an extraordinary achievement for the horror genre, and a promising first offering from newcomer writer-director Robert Eggers.

Film Review: London Has Fallen (2016)

I

n this post-9-11 world a new film genre has emerged. Hollywood has shown recently that it loves fantasising about large-scale terrorist attacks threatening them. London Has Fallen, the Babak Najafi directed sequel to Olympus Has Fallen (2013) is determined to build a franchise. While the action is moved to England’s capital, the story is essentially the same. This marks the first venture into the realm of big-budget Hollywood film for the Swedish director, whose previous works mainly comprise of Swedish language thriller films.

Gerard Butler reprises his role as top Secret Service agent Mike Banning. Unlike the first instalment, it’s not the Koreans that provide our antagonism, but a Pakistani arms dealer named Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul). Capitalising on the fear of remote-controlled warfare, after Barkawi’s compound is located, a drone strike is launched, killing both the terrorist mastermind and his family – or so we think.

Two years later, the stakes are set high. Banning – now contemplating his resignation – is expecting his first child with his wife Leah (Radha Mitchell). Banning’s hope to settle down and start a family is clearly a contrived attempt to add tension to a script totally absent of all suspense.  Predictably, meanwhile in Yemen, Barkawi is still alive, and begins plotting his revenge with his surviving son, Kamran (Waleed Zuaiter).

When the British Prime Minister dies, Banning and US president Benjamin Ahser (Aaron Echhart), along with every Head of State (including a somewhat obvious caricature of Silvio Berlusconi) are sent to attend the funeral in London. We spend the next few scenes awaiting the inevitable, jumping every time a car door is slammed shut.

The gun shots start, and world leaders (but not the US President of course) immediately get killed off. The standard action-thriller we were expecting begins. However, the action is unremarkable. Dreary car chases, sub-standard CGI, explosions and stale set pieces almost have the audience reaching for the Xbox controller to play along with this derivative Call of Duty-style shoot em’ up. We are treated to an American tourist’s view of London – we see most of the major landmarks get blown up – in this alternate reality where high ranking members of the British military still chortle as they refer to Americans as ‘yanks’.

While it is obvious this film is calculated to beguile an audience expecting a superficial popcorn thriller, there is something more sinister at its heart. As we see Gerard Butler slowly sink a knife into a screaming terrorist time and time again – at one point twisting the blade while holding a walkie-talkie to their mouth so his comrades can hear him scream – this formulaic action film becomes something altogether more vulgar. We are expected to cheer along our muscled warrior as he tortures his foes, but the film verges on propaganda – some form of ISIS revenge pornography – often entering the realm of xenophobia. The film conveniently side-steps the issue of Islamic extremism, not wanting to appear too intolerant, instead focusing on a generic shady arms dealer, the tired stereotype of the dark skinned desert-dwelling baddie. Aboutboul attempts to portray our villain as a cold, soft-spoken maniac, but instead just comes across as bland, and in fact much less psychotic than our hero.

Not a hint of tension is provided throughout, all the jeopardy seems forced and artificial, and the few twists are predictable. We are presented with an insipid, hackneyed text so formulaic it would verge on parody, had that been its intention. The clichés are fired off like machine gun bullets, providing us with a third-rate, recycled 90's action film that would be totally forgettable, if it were not so offensive.