Niagara Falls police detective and Iraq war veteran John Dromoor (Nicolas Cage, The Rock) is flagged down by a 12 year old girl after she witnesses her mother, Teena, being brutally attacked and left for dead by a group of local men.
When the men are caught, their parents hire slick criminal defence attorney Jay Kirkpatrick, (Don Johnson, Django Unchained) who puts the focus on Teena’s credibility, based on her sobriety and promiscuity. Shockingly her assailants are exonerated and released, even though the daughter’s testimony should have alone been enough for a certain conviction.
In the aftermath of the verdict Dromoor grows increasingly close to the victim and her family, who he then discovers are being taunted and stalked by the freed men. The injustice becomes too much for him to take and, fuelled by a sense of vengeance and his own personal demons, Dromoor sets out on a lone campaign to dole out the justice the men deserve.
Vengeance: A Love Story
How provocatively can a woman behave before she’s asking to be sexually assaulted? How far, before any battering she receives becomes her fault, and not that of her attackers? The answer is of course that there is NO distance a woman can go before she deserves to be raped, but these are the questions being put to the good folk of Niagara Falls, NY, in this, the new film by director Johnny Martin (Delirium). Based on the 2003 novella Rape: A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates, Vengeance: A Love Story plays in many ways like an eighties/nineties TV thriller. This feeling is no doubt augmented by the star turns of both Don Johnson in strutting peacock mode as cocksure defender Jay Kirkpatrick and of a (thankfully) largely restrained Nicolas Cage as John Dromoor, the detective determined to dispense justice when the law will not. The real stars here however are Anna Hutchison (The Cabin in the Woods) as Teena, the victim of the attack, and Talitha Bateman (The 5th Wave) as Bethie, the girl who witnessed the entire assault on her mother. I expected to find myself referring to Miss Bateman as a newcomer but this is her fifteenth picture and, given her ability on display here, I really shouldn’t have been surprised.
Vengeance: A Love Story
In addition to the rape itself which is brutal but mercifully brief, Vengeance: A Love Story is often a hard watch, from the various scenes of young Bethie being harried in her small town by the friends and relatives of the rapists, to the court scenes in which Teena is pulled to pieces all over again in an entirely different but hardly less inhuman manner. Things unfortunately degenerate into more typical Nicolas Cage territory later on but, this being a straight-to-video affair, that was always on the cards.
Vengeance: A Love Story
Vengeance: A Love Story never drags, Nicolas Cage maintains a laconic restraint for the most part, and the movie – due out on March 27th, 2017 – is certainly worth at least a look.
In 2008, first-time director John Krokidas convinced Daniel Radcliffe to play Allen Ginsberg. The movie was called Kill Your Darlings, and it centred around the birth of the literary movement known as the Beat Generation. Unfortunately for both parties, Radcliffe had to finish the final two Harry Potter movies first. And so the movie was recast, but the new cast eventually fell through because of financing issues, and Radcliffe re-joined the project. Is the movie better for it? Probably. Radcliffe certainly looks enough like Ginsberg and his American accent is fine, too, but what he really captures is the vulnerability of a young introverted gay man as he makes his way through his first year of college during a period of great repression. Radcliffe looks like he could break at any moment. His psyche is always on edge. This is what works about the performance. It might not be great, but at least it’s believable.
When Kill Your Darlings was finally released in 2013, critics who knew even a little about the history of the Beat Generation were quick to point out the film’s historical inaccuracies. True, the film is a mess in this regard, but that’s okay, because the best biopics are generally muddled in the same way. They have to be, in order to squeeze so much information into a two hour film. A super-compressed timeline means that the biopic is ultimately an impressionistic genre.
Though Kill Your Darlings is ostensibly about Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, a disturbed young man that Ginsberg met at Columbia University in the early 40’s, is the most interesting character. Certainly, he’s the one all the other characters orbit around, which is why he was able to bring together the key players of the Beat Generation while never writing anything more than privately circulated letters. Ginsberg first met Lucien when he heard Brahms music coming from Carr’s dorm room a floor below Ginsberg’s in the Union Theological Seminary during Christmas break, when each of them thought they were the only ones who decided not to go home to their families. As Ginsberg enters Carr’s room, Krokidas shows Lucien bathed in an angelic orange light from the window. And indeed, this must have been something of the vision that the romantic Ginsberg must have had himself as he looked at Carr.
Kill Your Darlings
And he wasn’t the only one who saw the charismatic young man that way. Some people have a kind of magnetic personality that can’t be resisted, and Carr was certainly one of those people. Two men about a decade older than Carr, William Burroughs and David Kammerer, had followed Lucien to New York City when he transferred to Columbia University in the fall of 1943. Burroughs came for the adventure, but Kammerer, who had once had a very inappropriate relationship with the young man, was in love with Carr and took a menial job as a janitor just to be close to him. In fact, Kammerer had been in love with Carr since Lucien was twelve years old, having been his Boy Scout leader back in St. Louis. That the movie only hints at the emotional and sexual abuse Carr suffered at the hands of Kammerer is perhaps its biggest sin, if we are to value historical truth at all.
The movie is about first experiences and the script never lets you forget that. Instead of letting the story unfold naturally, symbolic significance is attached to everything. This can get rather irritating because the symbolism is so obvious and back-patting. You want to tell Krokidas and co-writer Austin Bunn to just get on with the thing. Alas, everything has to have some huge symbolic significance to it. But, yes, the movie is about firsts, especially Ginsberg’s firsts. He arrives in New York City an innocent eighteen year old kid and by the end of the movie he’s experienced sex, drugs, passion and love. During the first party Carr takes Ginsberg to, he notices how overwhelmed and excited Ginsberg is and says, “Allen in Wonderland,” and that pretty much sums the thing up. Everything is a first, everything is new.And as Ginsberg argues with a professor that rhyme and meter are outdated and easy, the professor remarks that Ginsberg’s father actually practices rhyming poetry. We realize then that the movie is going to be about destruction. Even if we’re not at all familiar with the Beat Generation, we know from the beginning of the film that Carr will eventually murder Kammerer, so we have one kind of destruction, the most literal kind, but we also have the idea of destroying one’s father in order to move past him, to grow, to finally stop lionizing him and see him as human, complete with possibly damning flaws. So, yes, more heavy-handed symbolism here. Doesn’t get much more Freudian than killing the father, so to speak. And this heavy-handedness is really a problem for the movie.
Kill Your Darlings
At one point, Kammerer says about Ginsberg, “Under the right circumstances, even he might change the world,” basically winking to the audience, ‘cause, you know, later Ginsberg will become the most famous poet in the world. Same thing after Jack Kerouac is introduced and he’s sitting in a cafe with Burroughs and Carr. Kerouac, who briefly played football for Columbia, has his picture on the wall, along with other sports figures from the school. Carr remarks smugly that he never wants to end up on the wall, seeing it as a sign of being average, mundane, normal. Of course, Carr does end up on the wall, in the form of a newspaper clipping about the murder of Kammerer.
The filmmakers are so obsessed with the “firsts” theme that the second act climaxes with a montage of them. All these characters are having profound first experiences while Carr is killing Kammerer. Of course it didn’t happen like this, but, whatever, impressionism and all that. Anyway, the “firsts” montage is weird and jarring. Burroughs takes his first shot of morphine, something that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Ginsberg has sex with a man for the first time, and Kerouac learns about his best friend’s death in World War II, the first of many deaths that would have an impact on the rest of his very melancholy life. Krokidas moves between these scenes and the murder and the whole thing comes off as forced and a little distasteful.
A notable subplot is the treatment of women in the Beat movement and during the period in general, which was pretty horrendous. Poor Naomi, Ginsberg’s schizophrenic mother, is abandoned to an institution by Ginsberg’s father. And of course there’s the case of Edie Parker, Kerouac’s girlfriend, a very bright person in her own right who would finally write her memoirs about the period in 2007. Her personality is completely subsumed to Kerouac’s and she’s expected to cook his meals and support him and listen to him while her own needs are wholly unimportant. Women, even the most intelligent and artistic, were given short shrift during this time.
Kill Your Darlings
It was kind of weird seeing David Cross as Louis Ginsberg, but it was a role the comedian took seriously and his is actually one of the better performances in the film. Ben Foster channels Burroughs almost perfectly, nailing the voice, the stiff walk, the elitist tone. Michael C. Hall maybe channels Dexter, his most famous character, a little too much as David Kammerer. Dane DeHaan is just fine as Carr and is able to bring out the vulnerability underneath the extrovert’s facade. Jack Houston is pretty not bad as Kerouac. Definitely more athletic looking than Sam Riley, who played Kerouac in 2102’s On the Road. He also delivers a very convincing New England accent.
Frankly, Radcliffe carries the thing. Ultimately, the movie is about a fragile and sensitive young man discovering who he is going to be for the rest of his life, as an artist and a man. Had the writing been better, this could have been the dramatic role that really put Radcliffe on the map.
As far as black comedies go you’ll struggle to find any darker than ‘Trainspotting’. It’s been years since I last saw that one and I’m actually surprised with how much I actually remember. Although when your film features swimming in toilets, dead babies, dead baby hauntings, brutal depictions of heroine abuse and British life, with Danny Boyle’s visuals then it’s bound to be at least memorable. ‘Trainspotting’ has been called such things as “one of the most important film in British cinema”, and it’s easy to see why. Outside of its off-putting content to some viewers it’s an amazing film, both heartfelt and hilarious why also being brutally realistic and outright horrifying. What I’m building up to is that it’s not really a film that warrants or even needs a sequel. But I couldn’t deny that from the advertising ‘T2: Trainspotting’ looked pretty good actually. With the original cast and director returning there was hope for this hopeless cause.
Picking up 20 years after where the first film let off, I guess we’re doing an off-screen version of what ‘Boyhood’ did, the story is that Mark Renton has returned to Edenborough after having stolen from his mates. He aims to gain forgiveness from Daniel (Spud) and Simon (Sick-Boy) and hopefully regain the friendship they once had, while also avoiding past mate and psychopath Franco (Begby). There is more to it but that’s the skin and bones of it. And to the films credit it handles it very well. This is exactly what a sequel should do, build on the original and develop from it while also remaining true to the spirit of the first film.
Trainspotting 2
Let’s just dive right into the cast of ‘Terminator 2: Trainspotting’. ‘Trainspotting’ was the catalyst for the careers of those involved and they all return to their roles as if they never left. Ewan McGregor as Renton is our focus once more and if there was ever an actor who could hold up any film it’s Ewan McGregor (you may remember him as one of only two decent actors in the ‘Star Wars Prequels’). Here we get a likable and even relatable character given by an actor who gives everything he can to a down-to-earth and respectable performance. Renton has more faults that qualities going for him at times, but we like him anyway; for his charm and quick wit, and his passion to live his life as he can. As for his friends we have Ewen Bremner as Spud, who get much more development given to him and who becomes the most sympathetic character and performance in the whole film. Jonny Lee Miller returns with a good performance to the big screen as Simon, whose chemistry with Renton makes for most of the film. I’m really glad it is as well because it’s those two who make the film almost singlehandedly. And then there’s Robert Carlyle as Bigby, easily the most enjoyable performance of the whole film; but considering that it’s Carlyle that should come as no surprise to anyone. All great all around. I felt like I could watch these four for hours after the film had ended. It’s only a shame that Kevin Mckidd’s character died in the first one.
But let’s not leave out the final team member, Mr Danny Boyle. Boyle is possibly one of the greatest directors of our time with such films as ‘Trainspotting’, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, ‘Sunshine’ and ’28 Days Later’ under his belt. He’s a man who has avoided sequels until now, which may be a wise move really but here it’s like he was born to it. But outside of doing what a sequel should (I mentioned it earlier if you were paying attention) he still delivers on what made the first one good in the first place. He knows exactly how to get the most out of the actors he works with. He knows how to work with John Hodge’s excellent script. And most importantly, he knows how to pull off a great film with style. It’s visually nice to look at, even at the film’s most unpleasant moments. He brings in music and songs and implements them perfectly into the scenes he makes. He knows how to use footage from the first film, amazingly, to this one’s advantage.
Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) and Begbie (Robert Carlyle) in toilets at nightclub.
On top of all of that it’s hilarious, one scene in particular (it involves two toilet cubicles) had me laughing to the point where it must have annoyed people around me. It’s also thoughtful and moving. It has that great “choose life” speech. It’s also not as hard going as the first one is, making it a slightly easier watch. This is also brought in by the films message. Both films focus on friendship at the heart of it all. But the difference is that my feelings on the first one was that it marked a loss of innocence with it; this one on the other hand gives more of a reconnection feeling. Again it makes it feel less aggressive and more pleasant a watch than the first one.
But that is also ‘T2’s Achilles heel. ‘Trainspotting’ was a unique film, and a huge part of that is because it feels like a visceral experience that once it finished left you feeling exhausted. ‘T2’ feels like a film. A well-acted, well-written, well-directed film with a great story, characters and style to it, but it still feels like a film. And it should go without saying that being a second film means that it feels less unique too. I can see this easily annoying some fans of the first film, but for me I think this films pacing, which is tighter than the originals pacing, even things out.
‘T2: Trainspotting’ is a great British film and a more than worthy successor to the original. For fans of the books ‘Trainspotting’ and ‘Porno’, which this film is based off of apparently, I can’t tell you how faithful it is but I think you’ll enjoy it regardless. If you haven’t already go and see it, it’s more than worth your time. It might be cheesy to say so, but this duo is pretty addictive. Welcome back boys, we didn’t realise how much we missed you.
T2: Trainspotting is a rare sequel these days in that it reintroduces you to characters you haven’t seen in a long time as if they were old friends, yet doesn’t beat you over the head with some of their most superficial qualities, like particularly memorable catchphrases or traits. But at the same time, I haven’t seen a sequel that’s so overt in its direct linkage to the first film. Unlike the modern blockbuster sequel, which are usually to IPs that are around 25-30 years old, T2 isn’t a thinly veiled remake or copy of the first instalment with the occasional visual homage or callback. Instead it wallows in and offers a more bittersweet look back to times gone by, an extension of the overall theme of nostalgia, regret, growing up and looking back.
This film almost feels like an anti-sequel because instead of the past being revered as a golden age that the characters look back to, it’s instead treated with a respectful understanding that not everything looks appealing with rose-tinted lenses. It honestly feels more like the second part of a diptych, a literal direct continuation that works best as a double bill. Perhaps other will disagree with me on this but I found this structure very exciting, and we haven’t even gotten on to the new aspects that T2 brings to the table.
Trainspotting back in the day.
It’s refreshing to see that Danny Boyle continues to embrace the new forms of digital presentation and aesthetic that he first started to flirt with in Trance (2013), a welcome addition to the series that builds on the chaotic nature of the first film but brings this chaos into a the modern day. Using the relative ease of editing that digital filmmaking affords, Boyle’s able to distort the space, temporality and characters of the film world, giving it a hallucinogenic quality that verges on détournement.
The film never feels like pointed satire, but its use of new technologies and modern cultural imagery such as emojis gives an underlying sense of disdain. This disdain is then wonderfully pointed inwards towards the film itself, with a brilliant subversion of the “Choose Life” monologue. Any other film would have saved this moment until the climax, perhaps even mirroring its placement in the original work. But instead it shows up limply and without much heralding and portrayed in a less than stellar light. It takes a certain level of courage and maturity to essentially critique an iconic moment that’s since taken a life of its own in our real world, and that’s what gives T2 a sense of self-loathing that makes for a great parallel with how the characters feel in the context of the film.
Trainspotting 2
T2 is a fantastic continuation of a film with a well-deserved cult fandom. But it doesn’t pull any punches. It’s dark and funny but almost has a meta story going on with the relationship of the actors, the director and the writers to the original piece. It weaves in possibly the most enjoyable use of “fan service” that’s happened in a long time, where it feels organic and right to the tone of the story. There’s far more going on with this film under the surface than one would initially expect and I would honestly say that it’s actually improved the first film retroactively in my mind. I would recommend watching this film with the first still fresh in your memories.
In a sea of bubble-gum graphics and computerised cartoons, there is one studio that stands out from the animated herd. Laika, famed for their stop-motion approach to filmmaking, have already made waves in the past with the likes of The Boxtrolls, which garnered nominations from both the Academy as well as BAFTA back in 2015. Now, with awards season in full swing and the 2017 Oscars only weeks away, their latest outing, Kubo And The Two Strings is looking like a strong contender to take home the studio’s first major award.
Kubo is a folksy tale, told in the Japanese tradition, of a young boy (Art Parkinson) who holds within him a tremendous power. It’s this power that makes him of special interest to his grandfather, the malevolent Moon King (Ralph Fiennes). As he tries to evade the clutches of his grandfather and his demonic aunts, he meets a talking monkey (Charlize Theron) and a cursed samurai (Matthew McConaughey) who help him in his quest to track down three pieces of enchanted armour and follow in his heroic father’s footstep.
Kubo And The Two Strings
While you might be forgiven for assuming Kubo is adapted from an ancient story, handed down through the generations, it’s actually a purely original script. The storybook style telling whisks us away on a familiar quest as the hero travels to dungeons in search of hidden treasure, crosses treacherous oceans concealing gargantuan monsters, and unravels enigmatic puzzles. Meanwhile, the films own particular eccentricities let it stand above other generic fairy-tale fodder and breathe fresh life into tried and tested tropes.
As with many of the ancient folk tales that Kubo draws inspiration from, this cautionary children’s story is not afraid to get dark. Anyone that has seen the masterpiece that is Coraline, the studio’s first (and, to this day, best) feature film, knows that Laika are more than happy to go to that dark place, and Kubo is no exception. The stop-motion animation lends itself so willingly to horror, as is evident in films such as The Ring that use its fractured movement to great effect. Some of Kubo’s most arresting sequences are those that play on the unsettling beauty that the medium is capable of producing. But be warned, the haunting imagery may be too intense for some youngsters and parents may want to vet the film before introducing it to very young kids. Having said that, do not be deterred, as Kubo effortlessly balances its more severe moments with generous helpings of pure joy and whimsy.
Kubo And The Two Strings
The voice cast all do a solid job of bringing their characters to life. Art Parkinson (best known as Rickon Stark in HBO’s Game of Thrones) provides the vocals for Kubo himself, while Charlize Theron and Matthew McConaughey bounce nicely of one another as a talking baboon and a half-beetle-half-man creature respectively. However, if there is one criticism to be had of Kubo it’s that it is lacking that one stand-out character to steal the show. Frozen has Olaf, Moana has Heihei the deranged chicken, Nemo had Dory. Kubo has no such star, but perhaps it doesn’t need a gimmick, instead relying on its many other strengths to capture the minds of its audiences.
All in all, another stand out hit for the stop-motion studio that can, after four tremendous feature films, boast a clean sheet. Stunning animation and enchanting storytelling, all wrapped up in an admirable message, makes this one a very hot ticket this coming awards season.
