T2 Trainspotting Trailer Arrives: Better Late Than Never

I believe the expression is: 'there are no words'. The trailer for Trainspotting 2 has given me 'all the feels'. Finally, the sequel to one of the greatest movies of all time, and probably my favourite British movie ever, is here. And it's pretty much everything I could have hoped for.

T2 Trainspotting will be arriving at your cinematic station on January 27th 2017. Here's the poster and trailer:

The Sith Hits the Fan: Revenge of the Sith

Imagine trying to explain to someone who has only seen the prequels why you're a Star Wars fan. Must be tough. Where do you begin? I guess a lot of fans would argue that this is not a conversation worth having. Unless the person you're speaking to has seen the original trilogy, there's really no use trying to convince them of the wonders, the magic and the potency of Star Wars as a saga.

Now I've watched Revenge of the Sith, it has become incredibly clear to me that the prequel trilogy just should have been one film. If you'd asked any Star Wars fan exactly what they wanted to see in the prequel trilogy before it had come to pass, I bet they would have said something along the lines of 'I'd like to see the first time Obi Wan and Anakin faced off against each other'. Maybe some would have said they'd like to see Obi Wan training Anakin. Maybe some would have said that they'd even enjoy a bit of younger Yoda getting into lightsaber fights with people three times his size. 

No one would have said that they'd like to see Anakin as a little boy. NO ONE would have said that they'd like to see half a fucking film of Darth Vader falling in love and smooching and sitting in pretty countryside. Good Christ. If you haven't read my recaps of Episode 1 and 2, here they are below. It's not big, clever or pretty.

The Highs and Lows of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Attacking Star Wars: Attack of the Clones 

If Revenge of the Sith had been basically the only prequel film to the original trilogy, I think that George Lucas and everyone else would now be a lot happier. This is what it's all about. We've suffered through some pretty unspeakable shit to get here, but once it gets down to Anakin turning on Obi Wan, it all suddenly and astonishingly becomes almost worthwhile. 

Even Lucas sounds excited, starting the film with a full-on exclamation of 'War!' in the opening crawl As in violence! As in action! As in NOT SITTING IN A FIELD FUCKING SMOOCHING! Thanks be to the Gods! I breathed a sigh of relief when I read this. No more tax, no more trade routes. Looking good.

Ewan McGregor seems less bored with the whole shebang. Then he gets thrown through the air by Dooku, and it looks like shit. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! How come some special effects just don't work? At least McGregor isn't stuck talking to tennis ball after tennis ball.

Padme is preggers! There's a few scenes of the pair together, but luckily not enough to get me proper wound up. It's suddenly all so dark. Luke and Leia are just little innocent fetuses growing inside of her. Hopefully Luke isn't coming on to Leia in the womb or anything. I wouldn't put it past him. Anyway, after enduring Attack of the Clones I just can't wait to see these two pretty people torn apart. Stop hugging and do something dastardly Darth! I'm getting ahead of myself again. This is the eternal problems with prequels.

I'm guessing if you've seen The Clone Wars series, then General Grievous is more exciting to you than he is to me. I spent a good ten minutes wondering why a droid would be coughing before eventually finding out, he isn't a droid, but some kind of creature in droid armour. Anyway, he seems to only exist so that Lucas can stuff the frame with more lightsabers. Look! He's wielding four at a time! He must be terribly badass. Nope, Obi Wan makes fairly short work of him and for the record, more lightsabers does not a better lightsaber battle make! I suspect J.J. Abrams has made a note of this and is taking us back to basics in The Force Awakens.

Speaking of baddies, what a difference a hood makes. No wonder people worry about 'hoodies' in the UK. Doesn't everyone look more badass with their hood up? Palpatine finally turns real nasty and has a decent fight with Mace Windu. It looks to me in this fight that Ian McDiarmid didn't do a huge amount of training and therefore, he's barely involved. It's all stunt doubles and CGI bobbins. I'm not even sure Sam Jackson is there for much of it either. And then before you know it, Palpatine has a face like a Klingon and you're just desperate for him to put his hood up to save him from any more embarrassment. Forget moisturizer. This calls for a hood to get that silly forehead covered as quickly as possible!

Finally! Finally! After something like seven hours of suffering (us, not him), Darth Vader is born. And then... wow does it escalate quickly. Kids are culled and suddenly Hayden Christensen looks the part. It's the hood. Must be the hood.

The final fight between Obi Wan and Anakin is stunning. It's got a fantastic location that somehow avoids looking too fake (mostly). And these two characters that we care about are suddenly determined to kill each other. The full tragedy of the situation is abundantly clear. It really is bloody sad. Meanwhile, cutting to Padme dying while giving birth is a decent decision and you almost start to think that Lucas can be forgiven for everything that came before. These were the secenes he wanted to write. This is the backstory he had in mind when writing the original trilogy. If the fat had been trimmed, and all that Padme/Anakin stuff could have been cut right back to a bare minimum, maybe, this prequel trilogy could have been one great film. Shame Peter Jackson didn't get the memo in time for The Hobbit.

And it's absolutely horrifying seeing Anakin die. How they got away with a 12 rating for this is beyond me. It's brutal. I've seen Irreversible, Human Centipede, You name it. If it's sick, I've probably watched it. But people burning is always hard to handle. Anakin burns slowly and painfully after having his legs lopped off. And Obi Wan just leaves him to suffer. It seems like a particularly nasty thing to do, even after Anakin has slayed a bunch of Jedi kids. And if Obi Wan had just finished the job, well then there'd be no original trilogy so maybe that's not the best idea. Thanks Obi Wan for just watching him burn before walking off. Bastard.

After three films, Lucas seems to have finally found his mojo. It's almost like even he didn't care about all the stuff that came before. Once Anakin turns, it all goes so damn well. McGregor reminds us he can act. And Christensen has never been better. And then this...

 

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo. I know how you feel Darth. What a laughably awful moment. It had been going so brilliantly for a little while and then Lucas fucks up the birth of Darth Vader as we know and love him. Couldn't he have fallen to his knees? Punched a hole in a wall? Anything but this raising his hands and head to the sky crap! Oh dear. Well, never mind. Lucas kind of manages to pull it back from the brink with the Tatooine double sun shot below:

If you're not excited to dive into the original trilogy after this, you may not have a pulse. I'm writing this with three days to go until The Force Awakens. Revenge of the Sith has given me A New Hope! Let's do this!

The Highs and Lows of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Attacking Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

Star Wars: The Original and Still the Best?

Before Steve Jobs: A Danny Boyle Retrospective

Director Danny Boyle's latest film Steve Jobs (read my review here) may not have set the box office alight (currently sitting at a $24 million gross off a $30 million budget), but it has been a hit with the critics and should snaffle a few big awards over the coming months. You never know quite what you're going to get next from Danny Boyle, as a look back at his wonderfully varied career shows.

Starting out in TV movies, mini-series and episodes of Inspector Morse from 1987 to 1993, it took Danny Boyle’s gripping debut feature Shallow Grave in 1994 for anyone to take notice of the mild-mannered Northerner before he would go on to become a national treasure last year. His career has gone from the controversy baiting Trainspotting about a group of Scottish junkies to be being the pride of Britain with his stunning marvel, the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. With Trance about to hit cinemas, we take a look at just what it is that makes Danny Boyle the best of British.

Danny Boyle’s debut feature film arrived in 1994 with the frenetic, energetic and deeply dark Shallow Grave. Putting Boyle and McGregor close to being on the map rather than slap bang in the centre; it nevertheless introduces many of the themes, stylistic traits and collaborations that would colour Boyle’s career. From its opening voiceover (not nearly as cool as Trainspotting’s) to its mistrust between friends, betrayal over a suitcase full of money and its collaboration between director Boyle, writer John Hodge, producer Andrew Macdonald and star Ewan McGregor, there are many signs of great things to come.

Three friends sharing an apartment in Scotland find a new housemate to join them in their spare bedroom. After spending his first night there, the new guy drops dead leaving a suitcase stuffed with cash for the three friends to decide what to do with. When they decide to dump the body and keep the cash, things turn swiftly sour. Greed, betrayal and brutality soon follow as gangster types show up for the lost money and the three friends finally turn on each other. Boyle’s mobile camera is wonderful to watch, the soundtrack pulses and Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston bring two very different characters to the central triangle, leading to a thrilling and clever final act.

However 1996 was the year that Boyle really got noticed. Trainspotting is his masterpiece, based on the book by Irvine Welsh and telling the tale of Scottish junkies trying to kick the habit; failing, fucking and finally trying to go straight after one big score. Ewan McGregor stars as Renton but the ensemble cast of Ewan Bremner as loveable Spud, Robert Carlyle as psychopath Begbie, Johnny Lee Miller, Kelly Macdonald, Kevin McKidd and Peter Mullan are all on finest form. Working again with writer Hodge and producer Macdonald, the filmmaking triumvirate produce the most iconic and best British film of the 90s.

Renton and his ‘buddies’ should be despicable low lives but Boyle and his collaborators keep all these junkies believable and most importantly sympathetic… except maybe Robert Carlyle’s mini-madman Begbie. It was accused of promoting heroin chic, a fashionably scrawny look still modelled by Kate Moss, and of glamorising heroin use. It does neither, giving a brutally honest account of the degradation and danger of heroin addiction but still managing to give some character’s an almost happy Hollywood ending. The soundtrack, the ‘choose life’ monologue and the iconic marketing not only put Boyle on the map but also Britain and set McGregor off on his journey to Star Wars.

odge and Andrw Hodge

How can you follow a film like Trainspotting? Unfortunately it’s very difficult and some might say you just can’t. Boyle took the lure of Hollywood dollars with his next production; keeping McGregor, Hodges and Macdonald in tow but producing the ambitious, surreal but fatally flawed misstep that is A Life Less Ordinary. Released only a year after the success of Trainspotting it was bound to be a disappointment but even on its own terms this tale of angels and kidnapping fails to elicit much of a response, emotionally or intellectually. It feels rushed, miscast and too silly for its own good. Cameron Diaz joined the cast as a spoiled rich girl who allows herself to be kidnapped by Ewan McGregor’s loveable oaf, but the chemistry, the comedy and the supernatural interference of two of Heaven's angels fail to gel and offer a satisfying whole. If there is one film in Boyle’s career to avoid, this is it.

Three years later Boyle returned with another shot at the blockbuster; this time starring Leonardo DiCaprio in a role that was promised to Ewan McGregor but then snatched away due to studio interference. It caused a riff between Boyle and McGregor that is rumoured to have only recently been resolved. It’s also a huge shame as Boyle’s adaptation of Alex Garland’s incredible book The Beach feels like one big bucks compromise after another. Richard, the hero of the book, is British and would have been a better fit for McGregor and his unrequited love for the girl he couldn’t have is a high point of the novel. Instead the film makes the most of Leo’s heartthrob status and has him shagging his away around the beautiful, idyllic island hideaway of the title.

Lots of Boyle’s fun and funky stylistic traits are there and Leo isn’t bad as Richard but the film had a huge mountain to climb to be anywhere near as brilliant as the book. Shooting in Thailand and making the most of beautiful locations, the ending was also changed from the novel in an exciting direction. More interestingly, the collaboration between Boyle and McGregor came to a close, but it opened the door to a new collaboration.

After the critical shrug towards The Beach, Boyle retreated to television to complete a couple of television movies in 2001. Feeling refreshed and ready to take on a feature film again, Boyle resisted the studios and offers of big budgets and decided instead to film a zombie movie that would redefine the genre forever. 28 Days Later marked his second collaboration of sorts with writer Alex Garland. Whereas Garland wrote only The Beach novel with Hodges penning the screenplay, 28 Days Later was Garland’s first film script.

Featuring Cillian Murphy (who would later appear again in Sunshine), 28 Days Later is the story of a virus that spreads throughout Britain turning people into blood-spewing rage-filled savages, the Infected. Giving the zombie genre a vital shot in the arm by unleashing basically what amounted to sprinting, extra-terrifying zombies, its digitally shot, low budget thrills are just what the British horror film needed and also sent Boyle in a new direction, sticking with lower budgets to enhance his creative and bold visions. 28 Days Later feels like Boyle back to his roots; low budget, British characters and setting, gritty, brutal, but stylish and subtly commercial enough to attract the American audience. It also marked the start of his collaboration with director of photography Anthony Dod Mantle that would continue through Millions, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours and Trance and his collaboration with composer John Murphy that would make more music together through Millions and Sunshine.

Sticking to home turf, a small story and returning to a narrative that spins around an ill-gotten bag full of money (see also Shallow Grave and the final act of Trainspotting), Boyle’s next film introduced him to the wonders of working with children, which he would again do in Slumdog Millionaire. Millions feels a little like an anomaly in Boyle’s career though. It is the utterly charming and completely surreal tale of two little boys who come across a large amount of money as Britain prepares to convert to the Euro. It’s alt-universe where England has decided to go with the common currency is far from the strangest things about it. One of the little boys sees saints everywhere and even converses with them. There is a strong spiritual element throughout with stars in the sky, a pivotal nativity play and Jehovah’s Witnesses all featuring heavily.

Though that all might bring back unwelcome memories of A Life Less Ordinary and its not so heavenly angels, Millions is far smarter and more surreal, but also much more emotional than Boyle’s earlier misfire. Its ending is completely bonkers but Millions is worth a look to see Boyle at his weirdest. Incredibly, it manages to balance family drama and laughs and with smart scripting and intelligent themes.

In 2007, Boyle returned to Alex Garland for his next script, the science fiction scorcher Sunshine. Infinitely smarter than many examples of the genre, it’s not quite Danny Boyle’s 2001: A Space Odyssey but it is an outstandingly shot, edited, scored and special effects dependent intellectual blockbuster. Though it may sound more like Michael Bay than Stanley Kubrick with a crew of scientists sent to kick start the dying sun with a nuclear weapon, it is smarter than the average mission to save the Earth stupidity.

With its beautiful and haunting score from John Murphy, incredible special effects and gorgeous cinematography, it is worlds away from anything Boyle had directed before, despite the presence of Cillian Murphy, returning after their collaboration on 28 Days Later.

Danny Boyle’s next two films were both written by Simon Beaufoy, the writer who until then had been best known for The Full Monty. Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours were both adaptations of books, something Boyle had not attempted since the success of Trainspotting and the relative disappointment of The Beach. Slumdog Millionaire gained Boyle real international recognition and acceptance as it scooped eight Academy Awards. Its success not only reflected Boyle’s incredible directing talent but also the spot on selection of his collaborators from Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography to Beaufoy’s screenplay to his editing and music teams.

Slumdog Millionaire also confirmed Boyle as a director at his best working with budgetary constraints and with a vibrant culture to capture and put up on screen. His work with the young Indian non-professional actors recalls his eliciting of wonderful performances from the boys in Millions.

Boyle then took restraints to new limits with his adaptation of Aron Ralston’s incredible survival tale Between a Rock and Hard Place. Sticking James Franco down a canyon and trapping him under a rock for 127 Hours meant the real star of the film was not just Franco and his desperate, determined performance but also Boyle’s signature kinetic style. For a film so limited to one location (and a claustrophobic one at that), 127 Hours is a speedy, zippy, film-making tour de force with whizzing camerawork, split screens and choppy editing all amounting to a highly emotional and cathartic cinematic journey.

It is not only a great tale of survival, like a real-life Saw film, but 127 Hours also brings together many of the themes of Boyle's film career to date. From Trainspotting’s opening sprint through the Edinburgh streets set to Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life, Danny Boyle has created memorable characters whose life-affirming stories really do show a strong desire to survive from Renton kicking heroin to Ralston cutting his own arm off. There are elements of the spiritual present with Franco’s hero finding hope in premonitions of his future son. Angels, saints, hope and visions of paradise have all featured in Boyle’s films of the past and Ralston is forced to question his morals and values while trapped in the canyon. Danny Boyle’s films have always questioned moral choices over money, drugs and the value of human life.

He is a director who has traversed genres like few others. Not content with this, Boyle recently directed his own version of Frankenstein at the National Theatre and quickly and conscientiously silenced the cynics by putting on one of the greatest Olympic Opening Ceremonies the world has ever seen.

Trance sees him work with James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel for the first time in a trippy art-heist thriller that also sees him reunite with writer John Hodge and director of photography Anthony Dod Mantle. With the news that the long-awaited sequel to Trainspotting will now be arriving in 2017 with the original cast intact, it looks as though Danny Boyle’s lust for a life in filmmaking is set to continue long into the future. 

Son of a Gun Review

Young, naive JR is sent to prison for a lowly crime where he quickly becomes the target of some very dangerous men on the inside. Luckily, the fresh faced JR is also noticed by Brendan Lynch (Ewan MacGregor), a professional criminal who takes JR under his wing and protects him while on the inside. Brendan’s help comes at a cost though, and JR is soon embroiled with a daring prison escape. Once on the outside, JR becomes an apprentice to Brendan as they plan a major robbery but it soon becomes clear to JR that he may be just a pawn in a very dangerous world of high stakes criminality.

Forgetting one of the most ludicrous prison escapes you will ever see on screen, Son of a Gun is actually a generally grounded and gritty look at professional criminals in Australia’s underworld. The film is filled with shady characters with questionable motives and some seriously seedy crime bosses. JR is lucky he has the brains to keep up, and perhaps stay one step ahead, of these characters as it looks increasingly like behind their charm and banter, they are all willing to make JR a sacrificial lamb.

The father and son dynamic between JR and Brendan is more interesting than the romance that develops between JR and Alicia Vikander’s endangered damsel. It’s a shame Vikander does not get a fully rounded character to show off more than just her striking beauty but instead Ewan MacGregor seizes his role as an unpredictable psycho and relishes it. He is the ruthless spark at the centre of the story and provides the film with its most interesting and volatile character.

Son of a Gun is hampered by predictable plotting but it still manages some very tense set pieces. Starting off as a realistic prison drama, it soon emerges into the Aussie sunlight and develops into something a little more fanciful on its way to a wonderfully tense heist as the criminals go after a horde of gold. The double and triple crosses won’t be surprising to many, but decent performances and some thrilling action keep Son of a Gun from firing too many blanks.

Watch the trailer:

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Inherent Vice 

The Imitation Game

Birdman

A Most Violent Year

Wild

Whiplash

Testament of Youth

The Theory of Everything

American Sniper

The Impossible Review

The Impossible opens with a terrible rumble sound. If you know what the story is about, you are immediately filled with a sense of dread that lingers long into the film until you realise the impossible has been achieved. The film is technically accomplished, brilliantly acted by the big stars and not as insensitive as the story of a family of foreigners affected by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami tragedy could have been.

 

Sadly the decision to cast Watts and McGregor to enable the film to have a big budget and sell to a large audience is necessary to attract attention and the level of investment needed to do the story justice. It is a shame that a real Spanish family become a British family in the film and that the deaths of 230,000 people are not the focus but on the other hand as a story of one family's experience of the disaster, The Impossible excels. The disaster is too huge for one film and so like World Trade Centre before it, The Impossible narrows its focus.

Though the film focuses on foreigners, the local people emerge as the real heroes. The hospital staff, villagers and others show incredible determination, sympathy and strength in the face of one of the worst natural disasters in history.

Tsunami survivors are unlikely to find The Impossible entertaining or have a desire to see it but this is because it is an incredible recreation of what happened; sickening, horrifying and breathtakingly realised.

For those not directly affected by the real life events depicted, it is enjoyable to an extent because although it is incredibly tragic, there is also so much hope and happiness (if just for this one family) in the film. However it is a tough watch and unbelievably sad, made more so by the bravura filmmaking and performances.

The eldest kid Lucas played by Tom Holland is amazing, carrying much of the film and doing a brilliant job. The two youngest kids waver a little bit but not enough to do any damage. McGregor is superb particularly in one heart wrenching sequence involving a phone call home, while Watts’ glamour and beauty are left bruised, battered and utterly redundant in the face of what her character endures. The production design is so convincing and the many extras around must have really helped all the actors, but especially the kids.

The moment the wave hits leads to an incredibly visceral sequence that is terrifying, shocking and impossible to take your eyes off the screen. The sound design, cinematography and practical effects combine to create a sickening sense of what it would have been like to be there. It is astonishing filmmaking; heart breaking and relentless and completely unforgettable.

Moments of the film may be sentimental but it's a story that does truly seem impossible. If Hollywood had made it up you would likely be disgusted. But the sentimental stuff is handled well and with the exception of a couple of scenes, it is not overly manipulative.

Real life tragedies deserve big screen treatments if they are handled sensitively and this film stands as a testament to the Thai people and their selflessness in the face of utter despair. What isn't appropriate is showing the trailer in front of The Hobbit without a warning. People should be able to choose whether or not they wish to be assaulted by such a film and the thought of somebody being ‘ambushed’ by the images in the trailer is saddening.

I hope that people will see the film and realise how wonderful the Thai people are and hopefully future generations can get a sense of what a tragedy it was.

The Impossible is a huge emotional and technical accomplishment. It manages to tell the small story of one family in a huge disaster and sensitively portray both the intimate and the epic of the tragedy. Though the focus is on a foreign family, half-drowned and lucky to be alive, it is the local people who surface as the heroes. The performances are amazing, aided in no small part by the incredible production design and terrifyingly real special effects.

The Impossible is a very powerful film, incredibly moving and emotionally devastating. Along with United 93, it is one of the most realistic depictions of a real life tragedy you will ever see. It is impossible to remain unaffected by the plight of the people in the story and by the credits it is impossible to move from your seat. Hopefully some of the profits will be put to good use in the places affected by the disaster.The Impossible is easily an early contender for my top 10 of 2013.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Lasse Hallstrom, 2012) Review

Satire runs dry in a soggy romance.

Fisheries expert Dr Alfred Jones (Ewan McGregor) gets reeled in by a billionaire Sheik and his lovely assistant Harriet (Emily Blunt) in attempting to bring salmon and fishing to the desert of Yemen.  But can a love affair bloom in the arid region?

Despite his reservations, Dr Jones (far less exciting than his namesake, the adventuring archaeologist) accepts the offer of bringing fishing to the desert.  This decision is made easier by his tentative relationship with the Sheik’s delightful assistant but also because of the UK government’s pressure to create a story of positive Yemeni-British relations.  

Casting the net and catching Kristin Scott Thomas is the greatest achievement of director Lasse Hallstrom whose former glories (Chocolat, The Cider House Rules) seem like distant memories.  Scott Thomas lands the tastiest role as the Prime Minister’s press guru and gets all the laughs with the sneaking satire that made the book so well loved.  Her oily spin doctor slices through the sentimentality of the script delivering welcome moments of spiky dialogue like a cactus in a sea of sand.

Despite being quite an appealing character with his musings on faith and fishing, the Sheik’s motives for his expensive experiment remain fishy.  The violent complications that briefly add excitement to the story are dubiously dealt out by those typically slippery Middle Eastern stereotypes but the film does question the ethics and intentions of both the wealthy Sheikh and those intent on destroying what he intends to create.

The love affairs of the upper crust characters fail to ignite the screen with the relationship between McGregor and Blunt being a little damp but both stars give charming performances given the limitations and predictability of the script.  It’s all very typically upper middle class with restraint and lip-chewing over who should jump in the sack with who but the resolution is never in doubt and the emotions are all so reserved, it fails to hook the audience or swim away with any tears.

Simon Beaufoy, an extremely reliable screenwriter, adapts Paul Torday’s book but has lost much of the political satire present in the source.  Following excellent adaptations that even exceed their origins with 127 Hours and Slumdog Millionaire, this is somewhat of a disappointment from Beaufoy.  Next up he’s tackling Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire.  Let’s hope he hooks a bigger beauty with that one.

Nevertheless the film is infinitely more entertaining than anyone with no interest in salmon, fishing or Yemen would suspect.  It’s a sweet if only mildly satisfying romance that has a memorable turn from Kristen Scott Thomas.  As a whole, most minds will release it as quick as they caught it. 

While not even remotely close to being as boring as the title would suggest, this film is still highly unlikely to get you swimming upstream for it.

I give it 5/10 but I don't think I'm the target audience.

 

Released Friday 20^th April in the UK.