Academy Awards

Trumbo Review

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I missed Trumbo in its first cinema run, but it luckily was on a late run back home. It was nominated in the 2016 Academy Awards, sadly not winning any though. Now that I’ve seen it, did it deserve the nominations, and should it have won instead?

Trumbo stars Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, John Goodman and Elle Fanning and is directed by Jay Roach. Set during the 1940s, the film follows the real life story of Dalton Trumbo (Cranston), who was blacklisted from writing scripts for Hollywood films. He starts to write under pseudonyms to continue working.

The films performances are alright. Bryan Cranston obviously owns every scene he is in as Dalton Trumbo. I’m not sure if it is worthy of an Academy Award nomination (Cranston was nominated in the Best Actor category) but nevertheless it’s a solid performance. Elle Fanning as Trumbo’s eldest daughter Nikola is also good, and the interactions between her and her on-screen father are great. Helen Mirren and John Goodman are chewing the scenery every time they are on screen, while Diane Lane is the complete opposite, as the quieter side of the Trumbo household.

The film mixes characters made up for the film and the people who were there at the time. Last year’s Suffragette also did this, but here it works a lot better. Suffragette‘s real life encounters sometimes felt quite forced, while here a lot of it blends together well. The casting department did a good job, as a lot of the people they chose look almost identical to the actors they are portraying, such as Dean O’Gorman as Kirk Douglas or Michael Stuhlberg as Edward G. Robinson.

The script has some funny moments but I wish it had a bit more bite. I did laugh through several moments and Dalton Trumbo as a character has a way with words, confusing the authorities and making them look like fools when questioning him, but it leaves the rest of the film quite flat. Things are happening but not a lot of it is engaging. There is lots in the background, the civil rights movement, the Rosenberg’s, McCarthyism, but none of it explored at a much deeper level. I know that the film is focussing on Trumbo and the rest of the writers, but after a while it becomes repetitive just watching the same types of scenes play out over and over again. Trumbo just needed some variety.

The film also is incredibly long for the story it tells. Trumbo is over two hours, but it could easily be cut down to a ninety minute film. As I said before, too many scenes are repeated and some scenes just feel like padding for the sake of it. The film is set over several years as to hit all of Trumbo’s successes and failures, as well as his acceptance speech in 1970 at the WGA’s Laurel Award ceremony, but in between these moments, it falls below par.

Even though I do have problems with the story, it feels like something I should be interested in. As a Film Studies/Creative Writing student the film speaks to two things that I’m passionate about. Sadly, it’s not much more than an average film. If you watched Hail, Caesar! and were put off by the genre silliness of the Coen brothers, or you have a passionate interest in the story of the Hollywood Ten and America during that time, then Trumbo might be a film for you. To everyone else though, especially people who don’t know much about the Blacklist, this is one to miss.

Score: 6/10 Has some good moments and characters, but it’s length smothers it.

Dick Tracy Review

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Preface

I was looking through a long forgotten drawer in my room and came across a selection of videos and DVDs that I didn’t even remember owning. Filled with mostly forgettable films like The Tuxedo (a Jackie Chan/James Bond knock-off) and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, one film stood out; Dick Tracy. I picked the film out of the drawer and decided to watch it.

Review

Dick Tracy stars Warren Beatty, Madonna, Charlie Korsmo and Al Pacino and is directed by Warren Beatty. Based on the classic 1930s comic strip of the same name, the film follows police detective Dick Tracy (Beatty) as he takes on a colourful array of gangsters led by “Big Boy” Caprice (Pacino).

I did a bit of research on the original comic strip before I started this review, and I can say that the film sticks closely to the characters from the comic in look and design. In the comic, each character is over-designed with a specific feature and colour, making them instantly recognisible. It means with get characters with names like Lips, Little Face, Flattop and The Brow, each one grotesquely different and easily identifiable, with their name being their general description. Praise should be given to the make-up department (who won an Oscar for Best Makeup) who create these fantastic prosthetics that look very similar to the comic strip origins, giving many of the secondary characters memorable looks.

The connection with the original comic strip can also be seen in the overall design of the film. As director, Warren Beatty chose to try and make the film with a palette of only seven colours. This, along with the matte paintings of the skyline of“ The City” (no really, that’s it’s name) makes the film feel just like a moving comic strip, almost fifteen years before Sin City made waves in the film industry for doing the same thing.

Dick Tracy is apparently set in the 1930s, but the film plays mostly as a pastiche of the old Hollywood films from the era of hard-boiled detectives and private eyes. Warren Beatty plays Dick Tracy as the same hard-nosed, soft hearted cop that you’ve seen a thousand times, and Madonna plays the role of the femme fatale Breathless like one of Hitchcock’s infamous blonde beauties, meaning she can’t act but looks great on screen. The film continues it’s pastiche style when Al Pacino (known for his violent gangster roles such as Tony Montana and Michael Corleone from Scarface and The Godfather respectively) turns up as head gangster Big Boy Caprice, chewing scenery and quoting historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in a bid to look cleverer than he actually is.

But for all the amazing visual design and the large ensemble cast made of great actors, (the previously mentioned Beatty and Pacino, but also Dustin Hoffman, Paul Sorvino, Mandy Patinkin and Dick Van Dyke) the film feels really plastic and fake. The sets look like they could be knocked down by a gust of wind, and the seven palette colour tone, while striking at the beginning, makes the some of the sets interchangeable.

The acting is of two halves, with some actors being monotone and wooden and some overacting their little hearts out. Beatty and Madonna fall into the former category, coming off as boring and disinterested in everything that happens around them. The rest of the cast, mainly the gangsters, police officers and the journalists are just rolling with the daftness of the film and playing it up to eleven, meaning there is this strange dissonance when the two styles of acting meet. But the main problem with Dick Tracy for me is that it just drags. The film is 105 minutes, but it feels a lot more than that. The final act, while thoroughly entertaining, just keeps going and going until you stop caring about the machine gun fire and explosions that litter the final twenty minutes.

In summary, Dick Tracy is fun in the beginning, but begins to slow down past the halfway point. If you’re a fan of the Hollywood films of the 30s, or looking for a comic book adaptation that isn’t about superheroes, then I would recommend it.

Score: 6/10 Looks good, but is a bit forgettable.

Selma Review

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After all the fervour around Oscar snubs and the whiteout of the Academy Awards, I finally got round to watching Selma. Sure, I’m a little late to the party on this one, but anyway, let’s get on with it.

Selma is the story of the three month struggle by Martin Luther King Jr. (played here by David Oyelowo) to march from the towns of Selma to Montgomery so that African Americans would be able to register to vote. The film details King’s inner circle of followers and how then US President Lyndon B Johnson (played by Tom Wilkinson) is trying to barter with MLK over civil rights.

Selma for me is a film of two halves. After a startling introduction, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which killed four young girls, Selma settles into a very slow pace as it introduces its main characters, to the point where I almost nodded off due to their being nothing on screen that made me invested. However, that all turns around the halfway mark, where Selma’s pace and brutality are ratcheted up high, delivering a powerful and moving ending.

To start off with, Oyelowo’s portrayal of MLK is stunning, to the point where it should have at least been nominated for Best Actor. A biopic about an important historical figure always hinges on said portrayal, and Oyelowo perfectly encapsulates all of MLK’s determination and passion and performs his speeches with vigour, to the point where you believe that the spoken word were from MLK speeches, rather than original writing due to the actual speeches being copyrighted. Tom Wilkinson also gives a good turn in as Johnson, even if his scenes are few and far between. Tim Roth as well, who gives Gov. Wallace a healthy dose of sliminess, a trait Roth has pulled off before in films such as Arbitrage. (On a side note, I find it quite amusing how all three are British actors playing iconic American roles). We also get some new faces such as Stephan James, who play’s John Lewis, giving gravitas to some of the darker scenes that appear in the middle of the film. However, the film has some big names in supporting roles, such as Giovanni Ribisi, Martin Sheen, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Oprah Winfrey, which for me is a fault of the film. While all of those mentioned are seasoned actors, I found it hard to keep concentration when one turns up, as I felt like I was being pulled out of the experience since it is clear that it is Martin Sheen or Gooding Jr. and not a character in the film.

Violence plays a large part in the film, with Selma really pushing is 12 certification. While we don’t actually see any punishing, brutal beatings, the direction and sound design left little to the imagination, to the point where I started comparing it to The Raid 2, arguably one of the most visceral films in recent memory. The film also earns its certification through its use of racial slurs and foul language, and while the former can be attributed to the time period and setting of the film, the latter really does not add much to the scenes that it features in, it probably should have been left out.

There are several other things for the film that also should have been omitted, mainly certain scenes, due to the lengthy runtime, being just over two hours long. One scene that springs to mind is a conversation between MLK and his wife Coretta detailing whether he has been faithful to her or not. I understand the inclusion of this scene, as they want to show MLK as a character that has flaws. In contrast, the film Fruitvale Station, another film that deals with race issues, was criticised for having its main character not be flawed in some way, yet in Selma the topic is never heard from again and doesn’t move the story along, so it seems a bit redundant to have it appear in the film. The only other problem I have with Selma is it glosses over many of the facts of the actual three month story. Very much like 2012’s Hitchcock, important figures like Malcolm X and Fred Gray are introduced but aren’t expanded upon or only stay for one or two scenes, meaning that important facts in the story are glossed over.

In summary, Selma is a film that has its flaws, yet the story it produces to us is powerful and meaningful, with small post-scripts next to the major players within the story, detailing their eventual careers or shocking early demises, along with actual footage of the Selma March. The film is then topped off with John Legend’s Glory playing over the credits, with is the perfect send off to a film which finally finds its feet.

Score: 7/10, An essential watch, but it is let down by poor pacing and weak story elements.

Whiplash Review

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Take the premise of High School Musical, who’s script has been written by Quentin Tarantino crossed with the boot camp parts of Full Metal Jacket and you’ll get an idea of the film you’re about to watch: Whiplash.

Whiplash (which is also the name of the main accompanying song by Hank Levy) is about a drummer named Andrew (played by Miles Teller), who after catching the eye of Terrence Fletcher (played by JK Simmons) the possibly psychotic band leader of the music college Andrew goes to, becomes the main drummer of the band.

That’s where the connection High School Musical ends. What we now get is one and a half hours of JK Simmons using every single cuss word under the sun against Miles Teller, with nothing off the cards. Ethnic slurs are used; f-bombs are dropped and family members are being verbally disrespected. That’s the Tarantino script. Now for Full Metal Jacket. During the first band practice after getting the timing wrong for what seems to be the hundredth time, Fletcher finally throws a chair at Andrew’s head, before slapping him repeatedly in the face to teach him about timing. That isn’t the first use of violence against our lead and it won’t be the last. Welcome to class.

JK Simmons is one of those actors that everyone knows from somewhere. Be it J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spiderman films or Ellen Page’s father in Juno, everyone has that film that they’ve seen him in before. But Whiplash has to be the film that will win him an Oscar. The ferocity that Simmons brings lends him an air of menace which can be seen in every scene that he appears. Whenever he walks into a room, everyone falls completely silent, to the point you would be able to hear a pin drop. That coupled with his use of snatching the air when there is a single imperfection within his band makes us feel like the man is a single break away from total psychosis. Simmons ferocity is only levelled by Miles Teller’s determination to prove he is the best drummer of the band, to the point where Teller’s real blood is being spilled on the drum kit. But it all comes to fruition, just like JK Simmons Fletcher has planned, since we get to bear witness not just the best drum solos ever put to film but some of the best musical performances, with a nine minute drum solo near the end of the film being the crowning achievement. It’s the first time I have come away from a film and been genuinely exhausted after watching it

The film is akin to Hollywood blockbuster, with the story merely a device to bring the next big musical set piece along (the music is front and centre in the film) yet it differs enough from Hollywood narrative to give some flourish to the story. While some scenes might seem daft in other films (one scene where Andrew pulls himself from a car crash, covered in blood and still wanting to play the drums at a concert springs to mind) we the audience buy into it in Whiplash, as the sense of dedication that Teller brings to Andrew makes us believe that the character would do something that drastic.

The only real problem I had with the film was a romantic sub-plot which is set up early on in the film, which apart from two more scenes in the film doesn’t really pay off. It would have been fine to cut this from the film as it doesn’t add anything more to the story.

In conclusion, this film definitely isn’t for everyone. If you are sensitive to foul language or are not a fan of music then I’m not sure that this is the film for you. However, if you’ve ever had a teacher akin to the Demon Headmaster and need something cathartic or if you’re a fan of jazz music, then go see Whiplash, it is well worth your time.

Score: 9/10 An exhausting tour-de-force that never lets up.