Zootropolis is going up against Metropolis this weekend. Are these bunnies nuts or what? Despite a name change from the American title Zootopia, the film has already racked up huge dollar at the box office elsewhere ($200 million in the US alone), so maybe Batman V Superman V Zootropolis isn't such a bad idea after all. It might be going up against DC's finest, but it's got the Easter holidays on the way to keep kiddies entertained. Here's a snippet of my review:
It's a brave move to make a kids film where there is a montage of the do-gooder main character dishing out 200 parking tickets. Zootropolis
could have done without this scene, but impressively it manages to make
its leading bunny likeable, no matter how many other
Zootropolis-dwelling animals’ days she ruins by slapping them with a
fine.
Judy Hops (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the bunny
tasked with parking duty, after she works her fluffy little tail off to
get out of her small town, get herself through police academy and
finally live her dream of tackling crime in the big city of Zootropolis.
Judy is a dreamer, determined to leave her carrot-farming folks behind
and be the first ever bunny police officer. But life in the city isn't
quite how Judy imagined it would be, and she is forced to team up with
streetwise hustler fox, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), to unravel the
mystery of some missing mammals.
To critics at Cannes that were growing weary of long-winded art
films that move at a snail’s pace, Disorder may have felt like a bit of a breath
of fresh air. Throbbing with an electronic beat from the start, and not getting
too bogged down by exploring it’s hero’s post-traumatic stress disorder, Alice
Winocour’s film is a simple thriller that mounts the tension from its opening
scenes and keeps audiences gripped throughout. It’s unlikely to win any awards,
but it’s a welcome chance to get comfortable on the edge of your seat for just
over an hour and a half.
Matthias Schoenaerts plays Vincent, a soldier who returns
from Afghanistan to be medically assessed due to his nosebleeds, hallucinations
and other symptoms of acute anxiety. Taking a security job at wealthy Lebanese businessman
Whalid’s mansion, Vincent soon finds himself becoming embroiled in the lives of
his client’s family. Knowing Vincent won’t be going back to fight again, his
friend Denis offers him the seemingly simple task of looking after Whalid’s
wife Jessie (Diane Kruger) and son Ali, while the businessman takes a
potentially dangerous trip. Becoming alerted to some dodgy dealings before
Whalid leaves, Vincent’s already burgeoning anxiety turns to full blown
paranoia as he strives to protect the family from a potentially dangerous
threat.
It’s not paranoia if they’re really after you and so it goes
for Vincent as he finds himself putting his temper and flair for violence to
good use during Disorder. It’s a slow build up, and Winocour is keen to make
viewer’s doubt Vincent’s mind state in the first half of the film. Is he
imagining threats around every corner, or is he just highly attuned to sense
danger after his time serving in Afghanistan. While this is all explored rather
pointedly in the early scenes with Vincent necking an assortment of pills and
suffering from a range of noticeable tics, it takes a back seat as the action
amps up for a home invasion set piece at the film’s climax. Once it becomes
clear that Vincent has every right to be on edge, Disorder strays into formulaic
thriller territory but still throbs with energy.
Before this, we have to make do with Vincent and Jessie
playing family as Vincent discovers his heart is intact, even if his mind is a
little fractured. While taking care of Jessie and Ali, Vincent starts to take
the absent father’s role and the hint of a romance starts to develop between
the couple. Schoenaerts is cementing his reputation as another heartthrob with
real talent behind his chiselled features and impressive physical presence. While
the chaste romance is kept just barely simmering, it is the earlier moments
where Vincent shows signs of trauma that allow Schoenaerts to really impress.
He’s a credible romantic lead, but when he springs into action, he is
impossible to take your eyes off.
Meanwhile Kruger gets the most minimal role imaginable,
trapped in an extremely tired and typical worrying wife role and given little
to do except look pretty. It’s a shame as Vincent comes across as a fairly
complex character but Kruger is under served here by the writers. That said,
she is certainly eye catching and while strutting around the beautiful mansion
she lives in, she does a convincing job of fitting into her lush surroundings
as the gorgeous trophy wife.
While the screenplay is nothing too original, the film looks
and sounds excellent. The production design manages to make the mansion where
most of the film is set both claustrophobic and wonderfully lavish. More
importantly the score from French techno artist Gesaffelstein is inventive,
energetic and perfectly captures the overactive and disturbed mind of Vincent.
Aided immeasurably by its sound design, Disorder pulsates in order to get the
blood pumping.
Those wishing to see Schoenaerts juggle machismo and sensitivity
will enjoy the star’s performance here. As far as story, Hollywood has done
this kind of thing a thousand times before and often better. However, while the
writing may be nothing hugely special, as a director, Alice Winocour will
probably be heading to Hollywood soon with a calling card as effectively
entertaining as this.
I'm teaching music video again at the moment, and I thought I'd throw up (literally) a quick music video analysis to give my students an idea of what I'm after from them. They've got to analyse five different videos in terms of the style, conventions and techniques used. Here's my example for them, but before you read it, please give the video a watch!
Drowning Pool’s music video for
their song Bodies is a great example of a video that is in a similar style to
many other hard rock / metal music videos. It shares many of the conventions
and techniques used in other music videos of songs within the same music genre.
The video mixes ‘as-live’ elements of Drowning Pool performing in a few
different locations (but without an audience) and elements of a narrative style
music video. The main ‘as-live’ performance parts of the video feature the band
playing in a large dark warehouse and also in what looks like a very small room
in a hospital. This latter location ties in with the narrative of the music video
which features a male patient in what can be assumed to be a psychiatric
hospital being taunted by the lead singer of Drowning Pool who is singing to
him. The video ends with the members of Drowning Pool appearing to help the man
leave the hospital, but actually they take him back to his room, where the
patient is already sitting. Is he mad? Why are there two of the patient? Is
this a dream? As with many music video narratives, it’s quite ambiguous.
The song is clearly about having
a very disturbed mind state. The repetition of ‘Nothing wrong with me’ and ‘Something’s
got to give’ suggest this is a song about feeling angry, particularly if you
feel trapped by society, and unable to express how you really feel and who you
really are. The lyrics have been interpreted by the music video creators as being
about a man who is literally trapped in an institution and is perhaps
struggling to come to terms with his demons or his past. Perhaps the repetition
of ‘Let the bodies hit the floor’ is a reference to the past of this patient,
when he went on some kind of murderous rampage. In this sense, the video
consolidates the song’s meaning because both the song and video seem to be
about a disturbed man. There are possible vague allusions to a film like One
Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest which is also set in an asylum, but no clear
references. Similarly, there are no direct links to other artists, but the appearance
of Drowning Pool in terms of their hair, tattoos, performance style and dress
sense reminds of similar bands such as Korn, Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit.
In terms of
techniques, lip sync is used frequently in the video. It opens with the lead
singer whispering ‘let the bodies hit the floor’ into the ear of the patient,
combining both performance and narrative in the very first shot. We also see
the drummer lip synch some backing vocals and the patient from the narrative
lip synch the line ‘nothing wrong with me’ repeatedly. There is also cutting to
the beat frequently. From the opening lines of the song, the video cuts between
every repetition of ‘Let the bodies hit the floor’. There are many other points
in the video where it cuts on the drum beat or the strike of a guitar chord.
There are multi-image moments because Drowning Pool often appear to be
performing on the TV screen that the patient is watching in the hospital. There
is a strobing lighting effect used at some points when the band are performing
in the darkened warehouse and a fish-eye lens is used on some shots,
particularly when the band are performing in the small hospital room. The
strobe makes the editing and performance even more hectic and the fish eye lens
emphasises how small and claustrophobic the room is, particularly for a full
band to perform in. There are a lot of close-ups, particularly on the lead
singer and the patient in the narrative. The video is full of conventional
camera movements and angles; tracking around the drummer while playing, low
angles of the guitarists, wide shots of the whole band and quick cuts between
all of these.
I think it's a cool, if pretty conventional video, particularly for the editing and use of both performance and narrative elements.
Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers, A Field in England... It's fair to say that Ben Wheatley has had a pretty interesting career so far. His latest High-Rise is out in UK cinemas on Friday and here's a snippet of my review from the London Film Festival:
While
lesser filmmakers get their heads down and sprint into the mainstream
after even the most offbeat of beginnings, Ben Wheatley appears
determined to keep himself steadfast on the outskirts of conventional
filmmaking. High-Rise may feature his starriest cast yet with a
so-hot-right-now Tom Hiddleston and Sienna Miller, but this is
definitely no cautious step towards blockbuster boredom. Wheatley
follows up the dazzlingly weird and wonderfully experimental A Field in England with something higher budget but equally perplexing, adapting J. G. Ballard's ‘70s novel.
Opting to keep the ‘70s setting of the book, High-Rise
offers an oddly nightmarish vision of what a near-future building would
look like as conceived in the ‘70s. It’s the future as seen from the
past, and at the same time an apparition of a future that has already
passed. The residents of a brand new tower block descend into a mad orgy
of sex and violence as the different floors of the building turn to
tribalism and savagery. Isolated by their own free will from the outside
world, petty grievances over usage of the building’s swimming pool and
waste chutes become amplified as the high-rise structure begins to
disintegrate and the formerly ‘civilised’ society inside collapses.
What is it with witches? Almost 20 years ago The Blair Witch Project sent horror fans and the mainstream into a frenzy, and now comes The Witch to terrify cinema-goers all over again. The title of this film has been trending on my Twitter feed on and off for months now.
This witch may not be from Blair, and she's definitely not part of any project, but she is as scary as Angelica Huston in The Witches. Yes I said it.
"What went we out into this wilderness to find", says patriarch Will at the beginning of Robert Eggers' spine-chilling debut feature The Witch. Anyone still smarting almost 20 years later over the complete lack of any witch sightings in The Blair Witch Project can rest assured that The Witch
is not nearly as coy about revealing its scary woman in the woods. It
may be a slow burner, but it builds to a crescendo that might very well
give many horror fans a little too much full frontal witchery at the
expense of some far more interesting earlier ambiguity.
A
strict Christian family are banished from their plantation in 17th
century New England; William (Ralph Ineson), Katherine (Kate Dickie),
their four children and brand new baby boy. Settling on the edge of a
dark forest, their crops will not grow and hunting in the woods results
in no meat. Then, baby Sam mysteriously disappears without a trace while
under the watch of oldest child Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy). Despair and
desperation soon take hold of the family, leading to paranoia and a
further descent into pious babbling. Eggers makes it clear that there is
something wicked in the woods, but The Witch explores how innocent the family are themselves.
