It's hard to tell what Neill Blomkamp's intention was with Chappie. Both District 9 and Elysium are heavy handed allegories for social issues, more specifically the role that inequality places in our society, but Chappie is devoid of any deeper meaning that I could find, it's lack of strong themes making it stand apart from Blomkamp's previous two films. The problem with this is that it would seem that without a social message from which to hang his film around, Blomkamp has no idea how to tell a story. This is not a good trait for a director to have.
Set in a slightly futuristic version of Johannesburg, South Africa, Chappie tells the story of Chappie, an artificial intelligence in the chassis of a half destroyed police robot. We follow Chappie as he grows and learns under the guidance of Ninja and Yolandi, two gangsters who kidnapped him and are trying to use him as muscle in an armed robbery they have planned. Chappie, however, is torn between fulfilling a promise to never commit crimes he made to his creator, Deon, and the lifestyle that Ninja and Yolandi are pushing him into.
Thank to the sour taste that the truly awful Jupiter Ascending recently left in my mouth (and you can read my full review here), I decided that a great way to cleanse my film palate would be to go back and re-watch a Wachowski film that initially blew me away - I'm talking, of course, about Cloud Atlas.
Directed in tandem by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer and based on a book of the same name, Cloud Atlas was considered unfilmable by a great many people thanks to the nature of the story being told. Cloud Atlas has no central narrative or main characters, the film instead being split into six short stories that are each set in a different time period, linked by something (whether that be a character, a decision, a piece of art or an idea) to the last one in a demonstration of how the decisions that we make now will no doubt have long lasting consequences in the future, not just for ourselves but for potentially the entire human race.
I was really looking forward to Jupiter Ascending. The Wachowskis are an interesting, if not necessarily consistent pair of directors, their short filmography showing a large variation in both style and quality, as demonstrated by the near perfect Cloud Atlas and the mundanely bland The Matrix sequels. They are amongst just a small number of directors that are truly open to new ideas, and as demonstrated in a number of their films are more than happy to push the boundaries and test the conventions of story telling in order to provide a new experience. So an original, big budget sci-fi action film from these people? Sign me up.
Unfortunately, Jupiter Ascending seems to have taken everything I ever found interesting about the films that the Wachowski's created and buried the bodies so deep no one would ever find them.
I want to live in San Fransokyo.
Big Hero 6 takes place in a slightly futuristic combination of San Francisco and Tokyo, the whole city (but particularly the Golden Gate Bridge) having a slight oriental flavour that when mixed with the signatures of San Francisco create a visually stunning and unique location for this film. The technology of this world is slightly in advance of our own, and there is an abundance of it - Hiro Hamada, our main character, makes money by betting on robot fights, and both he and his brother have a vast wealth of technology available to them to experiment with. This creates a fantastic little world which you are drawn into immediately, a perfect example of world building in cinema and a great place in which to set this kind of story.
Based on the book of the same name, Inherent Vice follows Larry "Doc" Sportello, a hippie Private Investigator operating in Los Angeles in the 70's, as he stumbles through several different cases after learning of a plot to do away with wealthy businessman Mickey Wolfmann from his ex-girlfriend, ultimately uncovering a much larger conspiracy at the heart of it all.
Between the varied cinematography and the pseudo-philosophical narration, it would be hard to argue that Inherent Vice isn't a stylish film. The 1970's Los Angeles setting gives it plenty of opportunities for interesting costumes, dialogue and music choices which it consistently capitalise on, and when mixed with the vibrant tone provides the film with a very unique feel to it. I haven't seen anything else in Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography (shoot me, cinema buffs), but Inherent Vice has certainly made me interested to see what else he has done, even if it ends up being totally different to this.
Kingsman: The Secret Service is the latest film from the team that bought you both Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class, director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman once again loosely basing their new film on a series of comics written by Mark Millar. The film follow Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, a young and reckless council estate kid with a kind heart as he is recruited by a member of the secretive special forces group known as Kingsman, who operate out of a secret base that is accessible through the basement of a tailors.
The only things I knew about Ex Machina going in to it was that it's a British made science fiction film, written and directed by Alex Garland (writer of 28 Days Later and Dredd) and that the plot revolved around the idea of an artificial intelligence. I was sold on it instantly.
Ex Machina is the story of Ava, an artificial intelligence created by wealthy business man and technological genius Nathan, told through the eyes of Caleb. Caleb is a computer programmer in Nathan's company who wins a competition to go and visit Nathan in his home/research laboratory for a week, and ends up with the opportunity to perform a variant of the Turing Test on Ava in order to determine if she qualifies as a true artificial intelligence - that is, if she can be classed as a true consciousness.
Based on a short-film of the same name (which in turn was based on the original screenplay for this film), Whiplash follows aspiring jazz drummer Andrew Neiman and his time in the Shaffer Conservatory of Music, a prestigious music school in New York, as he joins the schools jazz band under the supervision of Terence Fletcher, the infamously short tempered and volatile band master.
The relationship between Andrew and Terence is the main focus of Whiplash, and is simply riveting. Terence is emotionally manipulative, abusive and genuinely intimidating, and J.K Simmons plays the role perfectly, never quite allowing his character to become the moustache twirling villain of the story, something that easily could have happened given the events of the film and the way he constantly tortures Andrew. He's a force of nature, a howling wind that through sheer power and persistence will turn Andrews slab of marble into a beautiful statue, or crumble him in the process. It's a fantastic performance, certainly worthy of the Best Supporting Actor nomination that J.K Simmons has earned based on this film.
Foxcatcher tells the true story of the Olympic gold-medal winning wrestlers Mike and David Schultz. Mike Schultz is a man overshadowed by his older, more recognisable and successful brother, so when the chance comes for him to make something of himself without his brothers help, he jumps at it - in this instance, the chance being the opportunity to work with John du Pont, a wealthy wrestling enthusiast who intends to put together a team to train for the World Championship known as Team Foxcatcher.
Foxcatcher is a film entirely occupied with the relationships between it's three main characters, in the best possible way. You could write an entire essay on the interactions between these three, each of them clashing and reacting to one another in ways that are mostly independent of the events of the film, made all the more disturbing (and fascinating) by the fact that these three people really did exist, and this film is based on things that actually happened.
Birdman, or to give it it's full title, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), takes place in a Broadway Theatre as washed up actor Riggan Thomson, most well known for his role as the fictional early 90's superhero Birdman, attempts to write, direct and star in an adaptation of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love", a short story written by Raymond Carver.
Birdman is by no means a conventional film. Almost the entirety of the film is presented to us a single uninterrupted take, a development of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's trademark long takes, who also worked on Children of Men and Gravity. Although initially distracting, this technique is surprisingly effective, both grounding the film and helping the story to flow while also adding a sense of surreality that Birdman thrives off. The audience is expected to know when time has passed or a scene has changed with little to no indication from the film itself, and although this can seem strange at first it really shouldn't pose much of a problem for anyone paying attention. It's an example of one of the ways that Birdman credits its audience with intelligence, something that's always refreshing to see, and something to is unfortunately quite rare.
