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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
When I saw Jurassic World back in 2015, I thought the franchise should die out. A massive box office return meant that it would not, and the announcement of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom raised the question of how would Universal reinvigorate a franchise that seemed exhausted of ideas? Enter director J. A. Bayona, whose career has risen steadily since his feature debut The Orphanage in 2007. Under Bayona’s steady yet unsettling hand, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom emerges like a T-Rex from foliage as a film of two halves. The first half is one we have seen before, with standard Jurassic tropes of island, jungle, rain and the occasional dinosaur. The addition of a volcanic eruption adds surprisingly little additional drama, although Bayona excels with some great set pieces. One features riding a humorous riff on the bucking bronco motif, and the other involves a submerged vehicle that is conducted largely in a single take. This sequence is menacingly immersive in all the right ways, and the menacing environment continues in the second half when the film moves into new territory for the franchise. A grand mansion and long subterranean tunnels, as well as judicious use of shadows and Nosferatu-like limbs, imbue the second half of the film with a Gothic milieu. The second half of the film also features effective villains of both the human and saurian variety, as well as some interesting if brief explorations of cloning, the right to live and that trusty stalwart of science fiction, hubris. There are some points where the preposterousness of the story is a little grating – why attempt to retrieve a valuable asset in a tropical storm? Is the nefarious scheme really likely to be profitable? With that much lava, surely the characters would be overcome by poisonous gas? Happily, Bayona’s effective style and the game cast – including the winning chemistry between Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard – ensure that the viewer spends little time worrying over such details. Meanwhile, there are references to earlier instalments that carry just the right level of knowingness to avoid slipping into parody. Overall, JW: FK takes the franchise in an interesting new direction, and ends with the promise of more, that will hopefully be different as well.
Atomic Blonde
In the middle of David Leitch’s unashamedly achingly 80s spy thriller, there is an action sequence presented in a protracted long take. The sequence is stunning in its execution, as combatants clash in an elevator, up and down stairs, into and out of rooms, guns spit, knives and razors slash and fists, feet, elbows and all manner of available weapons collide with bodies. It is a breathless and bravura set piece that genuinely hurts and leaves the viewer in no doubt as to the effects of this violence. The rest of the film hangs off this tent pole, rising to the set piece’s crescendo and then falling away from it and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Atomic Blonde never quite reaches such a height again. Despite this, Leitch still crafts an effective period spy adventure from Kurt Johnstad’s script, based on the graphic novel series The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart. The city in question is 1989 Berlin just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, a city of vice, corruption and constant surveillance. Into this seething swamp of sin comes cool as (and frequently immersed in) ice MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), sent to retrieve a list of undercover agents, which is also being hunted by the CIA, KGB, French intelligence and probably the dodgy bloke on the corner. It’s a well-worn plot imbued with regularly crunchy action and great attention to period style, as the film is blaringly 80s in its fashion, music, decor and geopolitical backdrop. Practically every scene emphasises a mise-en-scene that is garish, vivid and frequently drenched in neon; if there’s a film with more blue filters this year I’ll be very surprised. Looking back on this period with such overt nostalgia, Atomic Blonde is a fairly insubstantial 115 minutes, but it has enough kitsch charm and stylistic brio to earn its keep.
Tale of Tales
Fairy tales often contain dark and adult themes that are sanitised for young consumers. This is not the case with Tale of Tales, Matteo Garrone’s adaptation of three tales by Giambattista Basile. Bloody bodies, extracted hearts, exposed breasts and buttocks populate the film, within gorgeous Italian locations and sumptuous cinematography from DOP Peter Suschitzky. Garrone favours a steady, often detached visual style, with many long takes following characters from behind as they move through richly tactile environments. These environments are populated by three loosely connected tales: the Queen of Longtrellis (Salma Hayek) struggles to control her son Elias (Christian Lees); Princess Violet has troubled relations with her father the King of Highhills (Toby Jones); two aged sisters attempt to curry sexual favour with the King of Strongcliff (Vincent Cassel). Garrone’s great strength as a filmmaker is commitment to his dark materials, as there are various points where the viewer might expect the tale to baulk at the sheer extremity of the events, but it doesn’t. Nor does the film overplay its hand with gratuitously graphic gore, remembering at all times that these fairy tales are morality tales and the message is the moral more than the manner of its manifestation. Morals about parenting, duty and vanity, among others, populate the film, never over-emphasised but treated with just the right balance, making Tale of Tales a thoughtful, measured and compelling watch, if not always the most comfortable one.
Frightful Five No. 3. “The Mist” (Frank Darabont, 2007) [SPOILER WARNING]
A very recent addition, which I only saw earlier in 2012 on DVD. After watching The Mist, I curled into a foetal position and whimpered for about ten minutes. It is, quite simply, one of the most harrowing experiences I’ve ever had, and I dread to think how I might have reacted had I seen it at the cinema (probably would have had to be carried out on a stretcher). The Mist is oppressive and disturbing, gruesome and horrifying, and delivers not one but two devastating blows at its finale. Frank Darabont has directed some life-affirming cinema in the form of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. With The Mist, you might just question the value of continuing to live.
This may not sound like a ringing endorsement, but The Mist is immensely powerful and committed to its bleak portrayal of people and their world falling apart. The point at which The Mist declares itself as punishing and unforgiving is the first revelation of something nasty, and sets up the central conceit of horror both inside and outside. Our hero, David Drayton (Thomas Jane), is in the storage section of the supermarket which has become a makeshift shelter. He is there with some others, when tentacles appear out of the mist and ensnare the pleasant young man Norm (Chris Owen). David rushes to his assistance, but Jim (William Salder) and the other men do not. In similar siege movies, such as Night of the Living Dead (or any number of zombie films), a key element is disparate people banding together, conveying a sense of unity and people rallying against a common threat. This does not occur in The Mist, and it is the first indication that the film will not only feature horrible beasties, but fairly ghastly people.
This is the film’s central conceit: when placed under pressure, people become selfish, cruel and stupid. David remains the type of hero we want and that we would like to believe we would be, and there are some other positive figures in the besieged store such as Amanda Dunfrey (Laurie Holden) and Ollie Weeks (Toby Jones). But the majority of the people turn the store not into a sanctuary, but a kangaroo court governed by mistrust, judgement and eventual “expiation!” It is genuinely ambiguous whether the monsters outside are more horrific than the people inside, the eventual mob intent on casting blame, guilt and punishment upon scapegoats in the most merciless and pointless way. The mob is engulfed by the preaching of Mrs Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), proclaiming all as damned within her view of the world. The Mist can be read as a condemnation of Christianity, but the large biker (Brian Libby) who volunteers to go outside offers an alternative view: “Hey, crazy lady, I believe in God, too. I just don’t think he’s the bloodthirsty asshole you make him out to be.” Christianity is not to blame for what occurs in The Mist, any more than the military despite their meddling in forces beyond their control. The spilling of what could best be described as Hell into our world is not the focus – it is humanity’s inhumanity that provides the central horror. This is what makes the film so terrifying – it is entirely believable that in a horrific situation, people would not react the way they normally do in movies, banding together to preserve humanity in the face of adversity. Instead fear would take over, and frightened people are very dangerous. That is really frightening. Even the few who escape from the store end up giving in to fear. Their final solution proves misguided, as the film demonstrates that the only thing worse than the end of the world is surviving it. The Mist is a film about fear: its generation, its impact and its all-consuming power.
Vincent's Views 