There can be few names so famous as Vincent Van Gogh, the influential post-impressionist painter known best either for his painting of Sunflowers, or for cutting off his ear. At Eternity’s Gate explores the later stages of the artist’s life, with Willem Dafoe cast as the red-haired icon. Director Julian Schnabel provides a rare biopic that revels in fascination surrounding the subject, rather than letting his lead actor do the heavy lifting.
Not to say Dafoe is anything short of astounding. Insisting that he must paint all in one thought, his energy and instability bursts through his broad brushstrokes. Turns by Oscar Isaac and Mads Mikkelson facilitate passionate dialogue, but both are dwarfed by the magnetism Dafoe exudes. Perfectly centred, Dafoe is given sufficient time to show the painful disintegration of Van Gogh’s mental state.
Schnabel’s disregard for cinematic form ranges from the tentative repetition of dialogue to increasingly garish, non-naturalistic cinematography. Filtered through a yellow haze at the extremes, often the perspective is merely slightly off – as if in part refracted through water. The image remains beautiful, but like Van Gogh’s paintings, it is a harsh effect, paradoxically unwelcoming and enticing. Coupled with a fluctuating use of point of view, and a sly masking of Van Gogh’s presumably gory self inflicted wound, Schnabel ramps up empathy to uncomfortable heights. Distance from the sorrowful genius is never afforded, resulting in a striking mixture of pity and indignation.
“Maybe God made me a painter for people who aren’t born yet,” Van Gogh laments, a sentiment that rings true in every frame of the film. Van Gogh tragically wrestles against demons real and imagined, standing just short of immortality. At Eternity’s Gate provides a masterful study into a man’s tormented mind, with all the beauty and intensity of a magnificent Starry Night.
A spider scuttles towards the freedom of an Irish forest from the garden of new homeowner Sarah and her son Chris. Promising spine tingles and wide (or tightly shut) eyes from the off, Lee Cronin’s The Hole in the Ground follows Sarah’s journey through doubt into mania over the sudden change to Chris’s demeanour. As he crushes the fleeing spider beneath his shoe, it’s hard not to think that the poor creature was probably more afraid of Chris than he was of it. And with good reason.
An encounter with a disturbed stranger, coupled with some pleasingly disjointed exposition, sets up for the possibility of history repeating itself in a horrifying way. Cronin invites us to revel in a delicious build, as Sarah discovers a huge (titular) sink hole in the forest near her house. It is here that Stephen McKeon’s overpowering score begins to betray the film’s main issue – familiarity. For every discordant piano note and crescendo of screeching strings, there is a hint of déjà vu. Cronin doesn’t go to particular lengths to make the piece stand out from the thousands of films that have come before, despite delivering those tropes to a wickedly high standard
This hardly hampers enjoyment or thrills however, as the film’s second act masterfully descends into something close to terror. One night, Sarah wakes to find Chris missing from bed, discovering him sometime later alone by the sinkhole. But Sarah is guided hint by hint towards the realisation that the son who entered the forest may not be the one who returned. Chris is ravenous when before he turned his nose up at food, he is less precocious and more polite, at least at first. Playing Chris, James Quinn Markey skilfully switches gears as the changeling son, with the ability of someone far beyond his age and experience.
Seána Kerslake’s performance is similarly impressive. It is a pleasure to watch and be a part of Sarah’s plight, Kerslake drawing us in with a brilliantly naturalistic performance that cements her place among the greatest of modern horror heroines. As Sarah crawls through a claustrophobic, dark underground tunnel towards her goal, we feel everything weighing down on her, everything screaming at her to give up. And we silently rejoice in watching her refuse to do so, continuing to wriggle through the dirt.
Like other recent entries into the hall of horror fame (Get Out and A Quiet Place spring to mind), The Hole in the Ground sacrifices a strong opening for an end that doesn’t quite hold up. Cronin’s enemy is pacing – the film is over before intrigue has a chance to properly build to a climax, and the director might have been better off workshopping a different outcome, or at least giving some more time to his chosen plot. At 90 minutes, you wouldn’t be blamed for feeling a tad underwhelmed by a film so close to something great, but a little too short and hampered by clichés to be memorable.
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were a hugely successful double act of the silver screen during the late 1920’s and 30’s. Put together by Hal Roach (the producer of many of their movies) the duo was a big hit due to their immaculate comedy timing, timeless jokes and a chemistry that defied science. Even today they are well loved and have influenced many double acts, from Abbot and Costello to The Chuckle Brothers. Not bad for a couple of actors who were put together simply because one was fat and the other was thin.
Twenty years after it seemed that their best days were behind them, Stan (Steve Coogan) and Ollie (John C. Reilly) find themselves overseas in England to do a series of live shows to raise money for a movie that Stan is excited to be writing – their first in a very long time. So, the famous pair are welcomed to England, although the welcome that they are given is not quite up to the standard that they were expecting. Their entertainment manager Bernard Delfont (Rufus Jones) assures them that they will be treated in the manner that they deserve. However, they soon start to suspect that they’re not being told the full story.
Stan & Ollie is a biopic of arguably Hollywood’s most well-known comedy double act. Both Coogan and Reilly clearly come across as big fans of the pair and their performances lovingly recreate the personas of the two men as if they were still alive. The chemistry between the two actors also mirrors that of the people they are portraying, helping to bring them back to life for the die-hard fans and for those who may only having a passing knowledge of the Laurel and Hardy legacy. Also, the film brings back some of the partnership’s most famous routines that Coogan and Reilly perform with as much precision and careful thought as when they were conceived all those years ago.
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdcBNrjc3wo
The supporting cast are excellent as well, Jones brings a devious charm to Delfont’s sleazy agent and most surprisingly is the addition of Stan and Ollie’s wives who join their husbands on tour and perhaps even to spoil their good time. Stan’s wife, Ida (Nina Arianda) and Ollie’s wife Lucille (Shirley Henderson) are probably the biggest surprise of the film and are a most welcome distraction from a story that may have gone stale if there wasn’t something to build up the rising tension. As Delfont says, the film gives the audience two double acts for the price of one and that addition to the script is inspired, further fleshing out the lives of the aging comedy couple.
Stan & Ollie is a heart-warming, crowd pleasing and uplifting biopic. For a movie about two actors that made some of the funniest films in cinema history, the source material would speak for itself and still entertain as it did all those years ago. But to be able to lovingly put their lives back on the silver screen whilst being so honest, loyal and respectful of the lives of Laurel and Hardy is a joy to see for both ardent fans and those who will discover their on screen magic for the first time.
A young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) was once a petty thief who worked for Lady Proxima (Linda Hunt), a Grindalid crime lord working in the slums of Corellia’s Coronet City. After a job that went wrong, Han faces the wrath of Lady Proxima and goes on the run with his girlfriend, Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). Unfortunately, Qi’ra and Han got separated, and in a rush to escape, Han joins the Empire as a pilot (something he’s always wanted to be). From that point on, Han Solo is born and his new life will take him on an adventure the likes of which he had never dreamt of having.
Along the way he meets Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) who is the leader of his own criminal gang, much smaller than Lady Proxima’s but Solo sees an opportunity and so along with his new friend, Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) they go on their next adventure which leads Solo back into familiar territory. The plan is to retrieve a large shipment of coaxium (unknown McGuffin material) from a train but with Han and Chewie being new to the crew, Beckett’s well-oiled criminal machine has a spanner in the works as things go wrong, leading Solo to answer to the man that they failed – Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).
Admittedly, my expectations remained high for Solo: A Star Wars Story despite Phil Lord and Chris Miller being replace in the director’s chair by Ron Howard because I like Howard’s work as a director. However, I felt that the resulting movie may have been an altogether safer, more bankable direction, giving the audience what they’d expect rather than anything less conventional and possibly more creative and unique. Unfortunately, I was right. The backstory of Han Solo is not really a very memorable one and despite the years of speculation about how the space pirate got to be the way that he is, the result seems to be a rushed and generic depiction of a man who could be anyone if not for the Star Wars label. Ehrenreich’s performance is impressive and he shows a real talent for mimicry but the fact still remains that he is taking on a massive role which has been played by the same actor for over 40 years so even after his best efforts, the audience is still thinking about Harrison Ford. As well as being slightly generic, the script shoehorns in some references to Solo’s future life as well as showing things happening that are referred to in later movies in the franchise. Some of these are nice little nods but overall the audience gets the feeling that in this case, show don’t tell is not always the better path in storytelling.
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPEYpryMp2s
The supporting cast are of a varying quality too, Paul Bettany puts in a suitably maniacal and overblown performance that Star Wars fans are used to from its villains but it feels like Woody Harrelson may be phoning in his performance as he counts the zeros in his paycheque, although Woody Harrelson phoning it in is still better than most actors on their best day. Thandie Newton’s Val is built up but ultimately wasted (literally) which I thought was a shame. Emilia Clarke is also there. Her character is all but defunct in this story, despite her built up part she only serves as a love interest that the audience never cares about (where’s Leia?) and the plot twist in her character only serves as a way to force (no pun intended) in a character whose appearance may confuse the majority of the audience.
However, for all the bad I must say that I found L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) to be an amusing and quite different kind of droid, one that may annoy more of the old school Star Wars fans but considering the role I found her connection to Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) to be genuine, funny and warm, making the character’s end to be believable and heartfelt in Lando’s reaction. Then there is Lando himself, proclaimed to be the coolest man in the galaxy by the fans so there was only ever one man (in the character’s age range) that could have played him. Donald Glover puts in a fine performance even though his chemistry with Ehrenreich does not gel as well as it did between Billy Dee Williams and Harrison Ford. Fleshed out, Lando becomes a rich philanthropist, playboy and fashionista, spending his days seeking the finest that money can buy and it may seem that the picture that many fans had in their minds may be broken a little but I for one would have liked to have seen how Solo and Calrissian’s friendship could have evolved with the two respective actors. Although perhaps my eagerness came from what the script was lacking.
In the end, Solo: A Star Wars Story is not an essential watch for the fans but does give moments of excitement and delivers on the feeling of a classic Star Wars story. However, if the title wasn’t prefaced by Solo then it may have been just any old Star Wars story from any other character. Since the release of the film, Disney has pared back its planned Star Wars prequels and since The Last Jedi the fans may be finally finding franchise fatigue. Pity really, that Wicket origin story has been something I have been dreaming about for years – only kidding.
Inseyed is an impressive animated short film, made by then-student of the School of Visual Arts Jessica Hudak.
A woman hears strange noises in her house, and attempts to investigate, looking everywhere, unable to find the source. When she finally does, what she discovers is something far more sinister than she could have ever imagined.
With an admirable knack for animation, Hudak creates a mythical world in which a hideous monster lurks in an unexpected place. The film is bizarre, eery and original, and it manages to disturb even in the very short time of 2 minutes. Hudak shows great promise as not only an animator, but also in her individual and intelligent storyline.
The final shot of the film is especially memorable, and perfectly rounds off this smart and noteworthy piece. If this is where she begins, then it is safe to say that this won’t be the last we hear from Hudak.
INSEYED/ Jessica Hudak/ US/ 2 mins:A girl hears mysterious noises and investigates, but the source isn’t an easy answer.
