Author: Callum Forbes

Studio 54: Review

I must confess to not having been familiar with Studio 54 at all, never mind the story behind it. Or even that of its founders. For the uninitiated, like me, Studio 54 was a passion project by founders Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager – it was a theatre in New York, until Rubell and Schrager reconstructed it into a nightclub. It quickly became a huge hit due to the amount of celebrates that frequented it – including but not limited to Michael Jackson, Grace Jones, Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Mick Jagger, Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. It got so big that new from Studio 54 was hitting the front page of every major newspaper in New York. But when the IRS found out about Rubell and Schrager skimming a huge sum of money.

The documentary follows interviews of former employees, with the interviews with Ian Schrager being at the core of it, as we see the rise and fall of the famed club. It’s a primarily interview-based documentary, with no singular narrator carrying us through the documentary. Again, most of this duty all to Schrager – which is an interesting risk to run. It’s always possible to have the interviewee be uncharismatic and flat in their delivery. That is not the case with Schrager. He has a good way with words, easily making you picture what it was like.

You couldn’t have written anything better, just hearing him recite these memories is far more powerful. It also adds a dreamlike quality to the documentary. I got a similar feeling as I did to watching the film Ed Wood – it’s pleasant and dreamy and in a weird way, you wish that you were there to see it all happening, until the point where the curtain is drawn, and the real world finally shows itself. In Ed Wood that was the final title-card, in Studio 54, it’s once the arrests are made.

The footage used, when not during present day interviews, which are mostly shot in-doors and more often than not are close-ups of head and shoulders, is made up of images of the time and video and interview footage of the time too. The lack of colours or over-expositor of them, as well as the grained feel of video footage of the time, does more to add to the dream state and brutal reality that the film conveys. It’s simple but perfectly effective in its execution, namely due to some good editing and use of disco music.

The cherry on top is that it is an interesting subject. The interviewees discussed the topic in such a way that it makes it sound like a huge and important that it probably was to society as a whole – but the truth is that to them, it was this huge and important. You could watch the documentary and come away being sold on how impactful Studio 54 was the world of night clubbing, and how it still impacts it. It could also be seen as an inspirational piece, of how you can – and maybe should- follow your dreams, with the old story of Icarus flying too close to the sun being present too. Overall, I was surprised with how much I enjoyed and appreciated Studio 54. Night clubbing isn’t really my idea of a good time, I’m personally more fond on a few pints in the pub, but to those who are, it’s a fun little story about the one that turned the heads of many.

22nd August 2018
The BRWC Review – Mission: Impossible – Fallout

It’s time to see another Mission Impossible film, should you choose to accept it. I find myself in a minority here, but I don’t like this series. Mission Impossible was an interesting, yet uninspired spy-thriller to me. It had an uneven plot and managed to infuriate all the cast-members of the show that it was based on, not to mention the fans. There was a cool moment in a federal building, and a fun action scene involving a helicopter in the Eurotunnel, plus the casting of Jean Reno, but that was it for me. MI-2 was easily the worst one, yet it was at least laughably enjoyable, with John Woo action that was as over-the-top as ever. MI-3 had a good villain in Philip Seymour Hoffman and introduced Simon Pegg to the series but was otherwise a very dull and forgettable film.

Ghost Protocol was where things changed for me. It had a good story, interesting characters, fun action, jaw-dropping spectacle, good humour and was solidly directed by Brad Bird. I loved it and recommend it to anyone who loves a good spy-movie. Rogue Nation, sadly, knocked things down for me. It was a well-made action film but was beyond cliched and very dull to me – it not being as good as that years 007 Spectre (which wasn’t a great film) didn’t help matters either. Now we have a sixth film in the series.

Ethan Hunt has failed in his mission to retrieve military-grade plutonium. Now he must get it back, with help from Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg and CIA operative Henry Cavill. However, things turn for the absolute worst when an old ally – in the form of Rebecca Ferguson – and an old enemy find themselves in play too. Worse is that one of those who Hunt must trust on this mission is a villainous traitor. The odds are against him, and the mission is looking more and more impossible by the minute. It’s now a race against time to retrieve the plutonium or find out what its planned use is.

It’s admittedly hard for anyone to imagine this series without Tom Cruise. Like it or not, he is Ethan Hunt. Cruise’s dedication to his stunts is beyond commendable. It is nice to see an actor avoid the use of stunt-doubles and computers and do the stunts himself. I also find that Cruise works best when he’s surrounded by a strong cast to bounce off of. This is good in the scenes with Rhames and Pegg particularly. With that, we also have a pretty strong villain and an interesting set up. For a good twenty minutes I was being thrown through hoops. I wasn’t able to keep up with the plot, in a good way. I liked seeing things develop and unfold. Then thing’s got very predictable and very cliched very fast.

The story isn’t good. It’s too familiar and the pace is too slow, which is especially surprising for a film with as much action in it as this does. It’s very dialogue heavy, and if you tune out for the smallest moment then you will be completely lost. I know that some will appreciate this, with the reasoning behind it being that it’s more of a thinking man’s film – but the story is too familiar for that to work. You know who the villain is very early on, and yet the film carries on as if we don’t know who it is. It also falls into the unfortunate trend of the other Mission Impossible films – where the team element of this team film gets lost, completely at points, behind the Ethan Hunt character, who is really not an interesting character. He’s very one note and at the worst times comes off as an ego-trip for Cruise himself.

But, what we’re all here for is the action. In that the film is almost always on point, and at times is outright exceptional. The public toilet scene is a definite standout. There’s some fun foot and motorcycle chases throughout the entire film. The final action scene, involving a lengthy helicopter chase, was phenomenal. It went on a little too long for me, and come the end it got really ridiculous, but that doesn’t chase the fact that it’s a very fun and thrilling action scene. Some of the action does focus a little too much on luck for my liking – for example, a truck just happens to cut off the cops in a chase. I prefer action where a character is using their surroundings in a logical way, so relying on this method is a little irritating for me. But overall, it’s great action and that alone will appease the masses who go to see it.

Mission Impossible: Fallout does its job, and certainly works very well as an action film. I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe it’s because of the character of Ethan Hunt, or just the formula of the series so far that is putting me off it. Or perhaps it was just too long for me. Either way, I couldn’t get into it. But, those who are fans or just love their big action films (which I usually do) should find this to be a very enjoyable film. It’s not often a film of this budget is as well made as this. I just wish that it wasn’t wasted on this story or this character. By all means, go, see it and have a blast.

21st August 2018
Skyscraper: The BRWC Review

So, this is what we’ve come to is it? Is Hollywood really so starved of ideas that even original films just copy what’s come before them? Skyscraper follows that oddly familiar trend now of being a film that feels simultaneously nostalgic and of the time. The story to it isn’t worth mentioning really. Outside of having the heroic character being a physically disabled man, we’ve seen everything in here before. It’s the story of Die Hard with more than a sprinkling of Towering Inferno thrown in for good measure. That’s where most of the nostalgia comes from. The more of the time elements come from the casting of Dwayne Johnson and the film’s setting being in China.

To be fair to Skyscraper, it is a solidly made and entertaining blockbuster. The acting around the board was good. Johnson and Neve Campbell – who I haven’t seen since Scream 4, which I think is a shame – do stand out as the better actors in this film. They have very good chemistry with each other. It’s nothing special, but they do come off as a legitimate couple. We also have some cartoonish villains, although the more entertaining of which are hardly in the film – such as a Dutch hacker and an Asian feme-fatal assassin – mores the pity.

On top of that, director Rawson Marshall Thurber – who mostly specialises in comedies, such as the hilarious Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Central Intelligence and We’re the Millers (the last one I don’t like, but it was a hit anyway) – does very well with his action too. Moments of genuine suspense are far and few between, but the action is well set-up. It’s well shot and choreographed. All the action builds on the last one, making things quickly move from silly to ridiculous as it goes on. There is genuine comedy here, although it is used sparingly throughout. All of this is what most people will be wanting to see. If you saw the trailer and thought that it looked fun, then that’s exactly what you will get from this.

But we do still have the issue of the film being absolutely nothing new. And I mean that completely. We have indeed seen absolutely every little point in this film somewhere else. The burning building where people have to beat the flames to reach the building’s top? Towering Inferno. Terrorists taking a building in order to steal something the building’s owner has? Die Hard. To top that we have some villains who look like henchmen from John Wick. There’s the colossal buildings from Dredd, numerous anime and Bladerunner to a lesser extent. We even have a hologram room like in Ender’s Game. Does anyone even remember that film?

While it is fun, nothing is explored or new. There’s a scene when Johnson has to find a switch to override the locks on a vault door and finds that the switch is hidden behind a fan, which was clearly set up to be for this scene. He say’s something along the lines of, of course it’s there. That is the perfect sum up of this film. Traitors are easy to spot and when we are introduced to the numerous rooms and wonders of the skyscraper, we can all assume that they will be the centre-piece of another action scene.

Skyscraper is a perfect example of blockbusters today. It’s well-made and fun, with a likable cast and some note-worthy moments. It’s also unoriginal, unchallenging, hollow and just plain forgettable. I’m already forgetting about it. It’s something that will be fun to watch on a smaller screen – it’s the kind of film I’d put on when I’m ironing or eating a meal at home. That’s the kind of film that keeps on coming onto our screens. I can’t say how long that will continue for, but if Skyscraper is the film that sums it up, then I can safely say that we’ve all watched a lot worse.

17th August 2018
The Meg: Callum’s Take

Shark films from Hollywood are just like actual shark attacks really. They’re extremely rare, all things considered, but when they happen they’re all over the place. There’s been this strange tradition with Shark films – barring Deep Blue Sea and arguably Jaws 3D, the big budget films are often treated seriously, whereas the low-budget ones take a sillier approach. So, it’s nice to see that with The Meg, the tongue appears to be firmly imbedded in the cheek.

The Meg is based off of the book, Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten – which I have read and found to be very enjoyable, despite and indeed because of the ridiculousness of the book. The story follows Jonas Taylor, a deep-sea rescue diver, who encountered a creature living at the deepest depths of the ocean. He’s called back into the fray when a million-dollar sub and its crew are lost at the bottom of an ocean trench. He goes down to the rescue, but in doing so he releases something monstrous – a seventy-five-foot prehistoric shark. Megalodon! Now back from extinction, and insatiably hungry in a world of new and innumerable prey.

Nobody will have seen this trailer or the posters and thought that they were about to see high-art. Nobody came to admire the performances, or be blown away by a stellar script, or see a director work to make the film of their career. We all came to see some dumb, thrilling, gory fun. In this The Meg delivers at times and doesn’t really at others. The first act in particular is a little slow – we get a lot of technical jargon that doesn’t really get us anywhere. It thinks it’s more interesting than it is, which does bog it down a little. It’s also tame at times, which surprised me, though not in a good way.

Luckily the second and especially the third act make up for this little short coming. The shark action hits, and it’s constantly entertaining. It feels a lot like Deep Blue Sea and has echoes of Piranha (the original, not that trash with Kelly Brook) – those being very entertaining films in their own right. The Meg’s story is full of logical errors and many plot conveniences, but that doesn’t really take away from the film. That’s mostly because it’s very evident that the plot is not the point. The point is to see a gigantic shark cause complete and utter chaos. I love the set up to these action scenes. The beach scene from the trailers – which I’ll warn now is at the end of the film – was a good deal of fun and a perfect note to end on.

The actors did perfectly fine jobs with what they were given. Jason Statham feels like a modern-day Arnold Schwarzenegger – in that he’s a terrible actor but is endearing for it. He plays the part of Jason Statham fighting a shark. That’s it. It’s not very creative, but it’s also part of what people came to see. The other actors, again, are fine in their roles. Cliff Curtis and Li Bingbing play their roles with what dignity was needed and are having a bit of fun with the material. Ruby Rose is fun, as is Robert Taylor. The show stealer is Rainn Wilson, from the American Office and Super, as a fun yet out-of-touch billionaire. He gives some of the best moments of the film, knowing exactly what he’s starring in and wanting to keep the audience on board with it. All these actors manage to play very likable, if cliched characters. You’ll be able to guess who’ll make it come the end, but it’s a good bit of fun watching them bounce off each other too.

My only real problem with this film is how tame it is. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching them lately, but the pacing of this film reminded me a bit of the George A. Romero zombie films. We have our slow start, then we build the action but still keep things at an even pace, only for things to go crazy come the end. It was always either going to be that way or just relentless violence, like in Snakes on a Plane. Either would work. But the key to those is that they are gory! The 12a rating is a sad hindrance to the film. What action is here is good, but a good splatter of blood and some comical close-ups would have gone a long way. I hear that the original director for the film was Eli Roth – director of Cabin Fever and Hostel. While I don’t think he’s a great director, I do think his style of unapologetic gore and offensive humour would have gone a long way. I also have a feeling that this is why he didn’t make the film in the end.

I’ll admit it, I liked The Meg. I really enjoyed it for what it was, even if at times it didn’t know what it was. A scene that made me laugh was when someone tries to make that speech of the follies of mankind – how it’s all our fault and that we should be punished…only for Rainn Wilson to moan irritably! Moments like this make me wonder if the film was in on its own joke – that it did know exactly what it was but pretended that it didn’t. It’s not quite Deep Blue Sea or Snakes on a Plane, but The Meg is a fun little romp. I really recommend it if you enjoy this kind of thing. It doesn’t take itself seriously, it doesn’t try to do anything other than entertain you and it does it a lot better than most these days. Get to the cinema and chomp on this!

17th August 2018
#BRWC10: Ageing Films

I think that we should all give battleroyalewithcheese.com the biggest happy birthday cheers we can. For ten years, BRWC has provided us with coverage on the latest in on-screen entertainment and has helped writers with a passion for film find a voice. Not only that, but it has gained the favour of a great fan-base. Ten years old, and yet it’s still growing and finding ways to reach out to people. For this special occasion, I thought it’d be nice – and fun – to find what I would consider to be ten films that capture the themes of growing up – of birthday celebrations and ageing. This is of course a broad spectrum of films and remember that I will not have seen every film that carries such a theme. If you think a film not mentioned deserved a mention I do apologies, odds are I never saw it.

Without stalling anymore lets start the list, with a very happy tenth birthday to BRWC!

10/ BOYHOOD. DIR: RICHARD LINKLATER.

Boyhood is a very interesting experiment. The films story is very un-unique, a boy grows up and we follow his life from the age of six to the age of eighteen. We see his parents get divorced, him go to school and watch him experience new things that we all experience. The main difference here is that director Richard Linklater (who also directed A Scanner Darkly and School of Rock) started filming this in 2002 and finished in 2013. So, we are actually seeing actors grow up right in front of our eyes.

It’s an interesting experiment that hasn’t really been done before. It’s certainly an interesting way around hiring separate child actor and giving the adults ageing make-up. It was a successful experiment, particularly with critics. The film earned an impressive score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and an almost unheard-of score of 100% on Metacritic. It won Academy awards everywhere to boot. The film’s success is undeniable.

Watching Boyhood is something that isn’t really done on a whim. It’s not something that people watch for fun, but to be fair the film doesn’t pretend that it is. It can be classed as nostalgic for the times that it was filmed in – I remember having a PSP at that age too, that kind of thing. What Boyhood is, is artful and a definite slow burn. If I’m going to be brutally honest, it’s not a film I like personally. In fact, I’m inclined to say that I hated it. The film itself is far less creative without the filming in real time, and the story itself is just boring and overly pretentious. But even I can’t deny that Boyhood deserves it’s placing simply because of how bold it was with its idea.

It’s by no means a bad film. The acting – except from some of the other kids and especially the step-father – was great throughout and Linklater knows how to shoot and edit his films in creative ways on relatively low budgets. It’s worth at least one watch for any aspiring filmmaker or for people who just love the art of filmmaking. Don’t go into it expecting the amazing film that the critics at the time were calling it and you might find something to enjoy. It wasn’t for me, but it’s certainly one to appreciate.

9/ THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. DIR: DAVID FINCHER.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is, well, a curious film. It essentially tells a very similar story to Forest Gump, but with one major difference in terms of narrative. You see the protagonist, the titular Benjamin Button, doesn’t age like we do. He ages backwards. He was born as an old man and dies as an infant. This sounds very silly, and in many ways it is, but it’s handled with unexpected maturity and it takes itself just seriously enough to work.

This is a rare film from director David Fincher. Fincher’s filmography is mostly made up with the likes of Se7en, Fight Club, Gone Girl and Panic Room. So, for him to make something that even a younger audience could enjoy is something very unexpected from the man. That being said, the audience for this shouldn’t be too young, as it does have dark tones, brief images of gore (particularly in the war segment of the film) and has plenty of implied sex scenes. All of this works well in a film that is ultimately a celebration of life.

Something that the film highlights is the surprising similarity between the times of infancy and elderly. The ending is tragic, but it’s how it needed to be to complete its story. It’s what we do between birth and death that matters, that’s the message of the film. It’s a nice message and it demonstrates how we all change in life – again, all by looking at it backwards.

That being said, it’s not perfect. It’s my personal least favourite of Fincher’s work. The pacing is the main culprit here as the film runs a little longer than it should do. There’s a sub-plot about an affair that I thought could have been cut entirely. To top it off, the acting isn’t great. Cate Blanchett and Jared Harris do respectable jobs here – but Brad Pitt, while not necessarily bad, does feel out of his depth with the role. His southern-American accent is a little too silly too. But don’t let that detract from what is otherwise a well-directed and well-constructed film that was far better than it had any right to be.

17th August 2018