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Notorious - but for all the wrong reasons.

By Becca Hutson

7th March | 5 comments | 3 people like this

I love hip hop. I love East Coast hip hop, I love West Coast hip hop. Few of my mornings pass without a soundtrack from the likes of Dead Prez, Mos Def or Lauryn Hill, as well as their UK counterparts - Akala, Foreign Beggars, Skinnyman etc. So, the prospect of a biopic detailing the all to brief life of one Notorious B.I.G (Christopher Wallace) with a healthy serving of Tupac, Lil Kim and Faith Evans thrown in, sounded like a ‘gotta see’ kinda movie. I am of course talking about Notorious - which has recently made it onto regulation rotation over at Sky Movies.

For those of you that don’t know, Notorious B.I.G was shot and killed in 1997 at the age of 24 amidst an on going East Vs West coast hip hop feud, which had already claimed the life of fellow rapper, Tupac Shakur. A true rags-to-riches story, Christopher began his life as an overweight kid in Brooklyn’s deprived Bedford-Stuyvestant neighbourhood (a role played by Christopher’s own son, Christoper Jordan Wallace) and then found himself as a drug dealer, a father, a convict and upon release from prison, a multimillion dollar hip hop recording artist. The stuff movies are made of!

Which makes it all a more of a crying shame that this film isn’t better. Here is a life time which sums up the highs and lows of hip hop - it demonstrates how it can be used as a tool of escapism and opportunity, but does not ignore the at times dark underbelly that accompanies the scene . Yes, Biggie was a genius and yes, his music was allowing him to channel his street savvy into something meaningful - but he also cheated on the women he loved, dealt drugs and embodied all the braggadocio, machismo and excess that rap stars have been both vilified and celebrated for. Biggie is a fascinating subject - a gift to any film maker - but somehow, Notorious manages to ignore all of this.

Firstly, the characterisation. It’s clear from the amount of action Christopher packed in to his brief 24 years he was a pretty explosive and complicated character - but instead, he’s portrayed as a foul mouthed, lazy and self indulgent pig. He calls women ‘bitches’, he smokes a lot of weed and picks up some pretty groupies and then brags to his entourage about this lyrical prowess and talent. The film doesn’t even try to explain who he is or why he does these things - how did he feel after he got out of prison? How did he deal with fatherhood? Where did he get his inspiration from? All remains unanswered - instead there are just lots of glossy party scenes where he sits dressed in outlandish clothes, surrounded by beautiful women.

The same can be said for his supporting cast - Lil Kim - an ambitious ‘mall girl’ from New York is reduced to an angry ‘bitch’, his long suffering wife, Faith Evans is simply serene if not downcast, his mother is saintly and apparently unbothered by the at times immorality of her sons behaviour and finally, Tupac is the ‘revolutionary’ who speaks about three lines in the entire film - one of which is about Malcolm X to reaffirm his ‘radical philosophy’.

Offensive is not the word.

However, don’t be fooled into thinking that the energy saved from bothering to develop characters was expended anywhere else. The script is cliche ridden - all ‘hood speak’ - money, rims and ho’s, mixed up with inspirational ‘the sky’s the limit’ misguided optimism. Gritty scenes where Biggie deals crack to a pregnant addict are neatly tidied up when we see the same woman years later doing fine with a healthy kid, and the severity of the cross-country feud is dealt with in about twenty minutes, and really doesn’t seem that serious…

The film doesn’t entirely flinch away from the shortcomings of Biggies life, and of the industry which he inhabited, but it doesn’t even attempt to explain why they existed, who it involved, and why we should care. As it continues and we near his death, the sentimentality kicks in. Rather than a quickie with Lil Kim he opts to play with his daughter, he’s distraught when his mother tells him she has cancer and the same when he hears of Tupac’s death in Las Vegas. Behind all the hard talking and gangsta posturing, a gentle, honourable soul cracks through.

To say it’s incomprehensible is to be polite. Notorious is a frustrating, fluffy whistlestop tour through the life of Biggie Smalls, and a rose-tinted, shallow look at hip hop and the music industry. Produced by Christopher’s mother and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs (both come off very well in the film, incidentally), it’s my fault for expecting something serious and worthwhile from this story and this film. What I wanted was a new, intimate perspective on the life and times of Notorious BIG, what I got was sentimental, patchy and patronising. I imagine what the pair were going for was a ’sky’s the limit’ and ‘anything is possible’ moral for ‘hood kids across America, what it actually said was ‘get rich, or die trying’.

Disappointingly sweet - but with no after taste.
Review: Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

By joewest

5th March | 6 comments | 1 person likes this

There is more than a little of the Harry Potter about this tale of Greek myths and legends imposed upon a modern American landscape. It may be because quite a lot of the cast is British (Sean Bean, Steve Coogan, Pierce Brosnan), and it may be because the ‘son of a god’ thing matches up quite nicely to ‘son of a couple of wizards’. But mostly it’s because I’m a bit bored by the whole concept.

Logan Lerman takes on the role of Percy Jackson, a teen with a troubled home life who learns that he is a demigod, with absentee dad Poseidon replaced by mortal slob Gabe (an under-used Joe Pantoliano). Turns out Zeus is cheesed off because he’s been told that Percy has stolen his master lightning bolt, and with a deadline for its return set, the newly deified youngster must train himself up, get his kidnapped mum back from Hades, and then find out who did steal the bolt before there is war amongst the inhabitants of Olympus.

His training takes place at Camp Half-breed (or ‘Hogwarts’ if you’re feeling nit-picky) though he is forced to duck out early and go on a quest to retrieve his mother and the bolt. This involves visiting three places in the US that are inexplicable inhabited by mythical monsters. He is accompanied by a love interest/ tough chick as well as a satyr/best buddy who acts as comic relief.

The main problem I have with the whole Percy Jackson concept is that it’s a little bit lazy. Copying and then pasting chunks of Greek myths into a 21^st century setting is not hard, and it seems that here the bare minimum has been done to make it all stick. Why is Olympus accessed from a lift built into the Empire State Building? It just is. Why is Medusa handing out in rural America? Stop asking questions! Perhaps the books upon which the film is based offer a little more, but I don’t think I’m going to be reading them myself. Please let me know if I’ve missed some salient point. The God of War video games do a much better job of recreating the violent, romantic mythologies of ancient civilisations than this boring film.

To read more from Joe West check out www.t5m.com/joe-west
Review: Shutter Island - a thrilling melodrama

By Nicholas Deigman

4th March | 1 comments | 2 people like this

Dir: Martin Scorsese Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams

US Marshall Ted Daniels (DiCaprio) has his head “halfway down the toilet bowl” for the duration of his stormy trip to Shutter Island, a dark and jagged outcrop off the coast of Boston, home to the infamous Ashcliffe Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Unfortunately for Daniels, his headaches are only just beginning…

Daniels has been called in to investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando, and is joined by new recruit Chuck Aule (Ruffalo). But Professor Cawley (Kingsley) and his subordinates make life extremely complicated for the Marshalls, and Ted soon decides there is no point in continuing without the help of the FBI. But when a destructive hurricane strikes the coast, Ted and Chuck are stranded on the island; surrounded by rats, the criminally insane, and the morally questionable staff.

It is at this point that Ted finally confesses to Chuck why he really came to the island: Andrew Laeddis, the man who set fire to Ted’s house and killed his beloved wife, Dolores, is being held in the high-security ‘Ward C’. While checking out Laeddis, Ted also discovered a high-reaching conspiracy involving barbaric, government-run experiments in mind control conducted on Ashcliffe inmates. Suddenly a much more terrifying possibility becomes all too real… what if Ted has been lured to the island because of the threat he poses to Cawley’s experiments? And how can Ted prove his own sanity if Cawley tells the world he has lost it?

This is an unapologetically melodramatic and lugubrious take on the ‘psychological thriller’ genre, but it is also eerie and gruesome. As the classic, Soviet-styled, minimalist credits and the bombastic orchestral overture ebb away, we find Ted talking to himself in the style of a 1950s anti-hero (“It’s just the sea… just a whole lotta sea”) and stumbling through a galley filled with rusty manacles hanging from the ceiling to reach Chuck on the deck.

These early scenes –filled with jump cuts, still frames, and moaning, creaking, marine noises – also employ a purposefully obvious use of back-projection, and one of the most exhausting and pompous scores since Howard Hawkes set down his camera. There is humour, but there is also an assurance that we are watching one of the masters of the homage creating a truly ‘classic’ piece of filmmaking.

The swirling storm clouds and jagged shards of rock erupting from the ocean bed convey one very simple message from the outset: the hospital might not be a ‘prison’… but the island is. Within this dank world, however, Scorsese is not scared to bring his love of vibrant colours and purposeful production design. The hospital itself, save for the menacing ‘Ward C’, is a charming community of red brick buildings and colonial gardens; Ted and Chuck’s ties are ludicrous; the wardens uniforms resemble Gestapo regalia; and the small graveyard is straight out of a Hammer film. There is an easy comparison to be made to ‘The Wicker Man’ in all this, and Scorsese does not make those comparisons any harder to draw up.

‘Shutter Island’ is a perfect example of why Scorsese will remain underappreciated by the vast herds of cinemagoers less cine-literate than himself. It would have been so easy to strip Dennis Lehane’s novel of it’s knowing genre conventions and subtle humour, and create a brooding and edgy ‘neo-noir’ that had audiences and critics cooing throughout the festival season. But instead, Scorsese has created an uneasy hybrid of ‘Douglas-Sirk-melodrama’ and ‘Stanley-Kubrick-horror’.

Leonardo DiCaprio is engrossing as the browbeaten Marshall. His Boston accent remains faultless, and is here imbued with a sharp 50’s twang made dull by years of drinking. His well-practiced ‘grimacing-while-choking-back-tears’ face – which served him so well during his dalliance with the greatest romantic tragedy ever told, not to mention during the tale of a certain hubristic cruise liner – is once again affecting and powerful. DiCaprio has rarely put a foot wrong in his career, and his partnership with Scorsese is fast becoming the stuff that legends are made of.

This is not an easy film to enjoy unless you have a soft spot for the melodramatic thrillers and films Noir of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Scorsese has created a wonderful, personal take on a ‘classic’ style of cinematic storytelling; and while ‘Shutter Island’ may lack the pace and raw modernity of recent neo-noirs, it makes up for it in zeal and self-confidence.

To read more from Nicholas Deigman go to www.t5m.com/nicholas-deigman
The Wolfman: An unoriginal remake that will have you squirming

By Nicholas Deigman

11th February | 0 comments | 1 person likes this

Dir: Joe Johnston Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving

Universal’s spate of horror films in the 1930s are some of the most iconic and memorable films in Hollywood history. But while Hammer recreated Dracula and Frankenstein with more colour and gore in the 1960s; Lon Chaney Jr’s Wolf Man was left to languish in black and white… until now.

Universal’s remake of their 1941 classic The Wolf Man is not an attempt to ‘redefine’ horror films; but in the same way that Hammer revamped old films with colour and gore, so Joe Johnston has injected this old story with frenetic editing and gut-churning special effects.

The film follows Lawrence (Del Toro), the estranged son of Sir John Talbot, as he returns to his family’s country seat to mourn his murdered brother. The local villagers blame the gypsies for the murder; but when the villagers approach the gypsy camp, a horrific creature attacks them all. Lawrence chases the creature and is bitten.

By the next full moon his wounds have completely healed, and Lawrence accepts that he has become a monster himself. He sends his brother’s wife, Gwen (Blunt), to London to spare her a gruesome death; and goes on a murderous rampage that results in his arrest and internment in a well-guarded mental asylum. But the story does not end here… as Lawrence notices inconsistencies in his memories of his childhood and the nature of his mother’s death, he begins to suspect that he is not the only ‘Wolfman’ in his bloodline.

This is a fairly straight ‘Creature Feature’, and all the real positives are to be found in its homages to early horror films. Hugo Weaving is superb as the moustache-twiddling, Peter Cushing-inspired Scotland Yard detective, who relishes his power in this backwards country village. And the Wolfman himself, once the transformation has occurred, is delightfully camp: he is gangly and awkward, like Lon Chaney Jr. in a hairy suit, and barely scary at all except for the fact that he is ripping people’s limbs off.

But unfortunately there is no way to truly recreate the eeriness of the grainy footage, cheap sets, and camp acting that defined those old horror films. This is a well-manicured hollywood film with a gigantic budget, and there is something far too comforting about that. Even after all the shocks and loud noises, you will feel cheapened by this experience and eager to watch Christopher Lee lurking in his colourful mansion drinking luminous blood out of a ditzy blonde.

The transformations themselves are far too smooth and weightless in that yet-to-be-truly-believable CGI way; but the bone-crunching sound effects and agonising roars really do get you wincing. Joe Johnston clearly has Clive Barker’s respect for the abject horror of the ‘transformation’.

Del Toro should have been perfect for the Wolfman, and it is his involvement in the project that attracted most critics to it, but his performance is mostly disappointing. He is mundane as the grieving, troubled prodigal son, and barely even acting as the Wolfman; and it is only in the brief section between being bitten and first transforming that he is at his magnificent, terrifying and brooding best. Del Toro is not to be blamed for this failing though; the film lacks any substance or intrigue, and there was nothing for this extraordinary talent to sink his teeth into (no pun intended). He was also left stranded in a cast of irrelevant actors. Hopkins seems to enjoy playing the menacing and vacant patriarch; but you get the sense that he isn’t really trying. And Emily Blunt is just a blank canvas, her role requires little, and she offers up just that.
Review: Up in the Air - Business Class

By Joel Gregory

9th February | 6 comments | 5 people like this

Director: Jason Reitman

Starring: George Clooney, Anna Kendrick

Like the planes upon which the frequent flyers at its heart so frequently travel, Up in the Air rises and falls, at times reaching great heights but at others descending from its peaks of quality. It is, of course, a romantic comedy, and at times it does fall prey to the clichés and overly contrived emotional choreography which so often blights films within the genre. Yet this is a film which tries to do things slightly better and to offer slightly more and, pleasingly given such admirable intentions, manages to succeed. Not in a feat-of-human-endeavour Concorde manner, but the target destination is ably reached, even if there is some turbulence along the way.

Dispensing with the aeronautical similes momentarily, Up in the Air is ostensibly a simple character transformation piece. Ryan Bingham, portrayed with predictable charm by the ever-lovable Clooney, is an employment termination specialist (or some other similarly heartless title), employed by various companies and managers without the requisite stones to dispense with the services of their workers to do the dirty work for them. By espousing platitudes and distributing positivity packets Mr. Bingham attempts to soften the blow felt by the newly unemployed. Or, more accurately, protect the company’s liability and stop the more volatile redundants from making a scene. You say potato… The crucial impact of the job, however, is that which it has on the man who inhabits it. In order to can workers in Detroit on Monday, Portland Tuesday, Boston Wednesday - and so on ad nauseum - Ryan spends the majority of his time in the eponymous location. Problematic as this may be for some, our man revels in it. A vagrant of the skies, the lack of attachment and burden is liberating - so much so that he presents seminars extolling the virtues of his ‘philosophy’.

Such a seemingly selfish and uncaring character would ordinarily be one to whom it was hard to warm. But it’s a testament to the roundedness that the character is given by the writing, and the unforeseeable likeability he is given by his inhabitant, that at no point are negative emotions towards him stirred. Although perhaps one might be eager to ask why Ryan subscribes to his particular world view (for no substantial explanation is ever proffered), such opacity actually adds to the integrity of the construction. No attempt is made to boil down life’s myriad experiences and their cumulative effect into one poignant monologue or unfortunate back-story, and it is only via a naive and blinkered view of the world that one could thus conclude an unbelievability to Clooney’s character.

The man himself is, predictably, superb. The decline of the ‘movie star’ and the lack of ‘box office names’ in modern cinema is a more than well-trodden path - and a facile enough one to go down in the first place - but, whether or not such monikers can be attached to anyone currently taking their place on the big screen, there are few, if any, more watchable figures in the industry at present. It is perhaps the effortlessness of his performances which end up giving them their gravitas, and this is no exception. Though this is not a poor film made good by its central performance, it is a film whose quality would be greatly diminished were that performance not of such a high standard. Also deserving of mention for the quality of her turn is the confusingly attractive Anna Kendrick (you may not see it at first, but it’ll come). As a character who could have so easily slipped into intolerably annoying territory - the precocious and idealistic upstart in Bingham’s illusion-shattering industry - Kendrick manages to do a stellar job of rounding out the story’s intentions, while lending both comedic moments and a weight of meaning. And again, as with Clooney’s character, credit must be given to writer/director Reitman for the well-judged material.

There are, though, those moments of descent. Just as the film is amping up the quality and gathering momentum, the brakes of genre convention are applied and things begin to wobble. On two or three occasions the pacing slows jarringly and attempts to tug at the heartstrings are made in a blatant and unnecessary manner, to the detriment of the overall piece. It feels as though concessions are being made regarding the overall intent and execution of the movie, and, given that without these it could have truly flourished, they are deeply unfortunate. At no point is this truer than towards the dénouement, where things take an excruciatingly misguided turn. Yet at some stage during each of these nosedives the controls are righted and a recovery is made - and at no point is this truer than ever so slightly nearer that dénouement.

While there undeniably lies within it a parable about the importance of companionship, Up in the Air presents more than that simplistic tale. Issues about a transient existence, self-reliance and comfort, and the nature of life’s relationships are all raised. Admittedly the presentation of these things is not profound nor life-altering, but nor does it try to be. Important questions are simply proffered for consideration, but can be easily ignored should one choose to do so. If that unfortunate choice were made though, Up in the Air becomes little more than a middling romantic comedy, lifted by the quality of its performances. And while, due to the moments when it offers nothing more than exactly that, it doesn’t elevate itself totally out of sight from such a classification, it undoubtedly does enough to fly closer to the sun.
Edge of Darkness leaves edges unraveled

By Angelique Moon

29th January | 3 comments | 1 person likes this

Edge of Darkness
GK Films/Warner Bros. Pictures

Movies starring Mel Gibson usually draw audiences to theaters like moths to a light. However, his latest endeavor, the thriller Edge of Darkness, leaves edges unraveled thanks to a plot with many holes. This summation of the film is not an attack on Gibson’s acting. In fact, the acting in the movie from all involved is superb. Too bad the storyline couldn’t keep up with the caliber of the performances.

The movie follows Thomas Craven (Gibson), a Boston Police Department detective, as he tries to discover who murdered his only daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) when she comes home for a visit. As the trailer implies, it appears at first to be a shot gone awry — one where the bullet was intended for him, not his daughter. But as he starts investigating who might want him dead, he soon discovers the reality he clung to concerning his family isn’t as it appears. Soon, he finds himself looking into his daughter’s secret life and caught up in a world of corporate corruption, people on the run for their lives and illegal government activity.

The best part of the movie is the thrill aspect. It will have moviegoers on the edges of their seats. However, instead of a Ransom-type scenario in which Gibson’s character gets the bad guy and everything ends happily ever after, it ends up more like a botched Conspiracy Theory. In fact, it soon becomes clear there’s a conspiracy theory in the plot concerning the government and foreign policy, but unlike the 1997 Gibson flick, not all the dots are connected in the end. Instead, the movie ends on a weak note and with a trail of dead bodies and unanswered questions. Even the action scenes in the trailer are far and few between. They end up being more gruesome and unrealistic at times. A perfectly timed hit-and-run with no one hearing the speeding car? Sure, if the victims are deaf or blasting music that could bust the ear drums of those within 100 feet. How about Craven suddenly ending up like his daughter the last few days of his life? That’s not explained either.

Another bothering factor in the movie is the introduction of characters who are only in one scene, but who serve no purpose and who don’t add any information to Craven’s investigation or justify his actions. Even Ray Winstone’s character, a shady foreign government “consultant” named Darius Jedburgh, doesn’t live up to his potential. Was his presence just to instill fear? I’d like to know the answer to that because he’s made to seem like a tough guy you don’t want to cross, but he disappears entirely until the end of the film. What was he doing this whole time?

Based off an award-winning BBC miniseries in the 1980s, this version of Edge of Darkness seems a little far-fetched and left this moviegoer with an unsatisfactory feeling.

My verdict? A little too salty.

Edge of Darkness opens Jan. 29 in the U.S. and UK. Click here to view the movie trailer.