Machine Gun Preacher Review

As you are probably and unfortunately aware, Machine Gun Preacher is not the tale of a man of god that takes to the mean streets of LA armed to the teeth to deliver some righteous justice and stick it to the man. Along with Hobo with a Shotgun, it’s one of the best exploitation titles you could hope for. In real life, however, Machine Gun Preacher is the true story of Sam Childers, former hell-raising bad-boy, who, after the kind of epiphany only brought on by stabbing a homeless person half to death, turns to Jesus. After seeing the light, Sam begins working in Sudan, caring for the orphans of the war zone.

The DVD release of Machine Gun Preacher is timely, given the recent internet outcry over Kony 2012. The backlash against that video (and to some extent the ‘panning’ Machine Gun Preacher received on its release) is somewhat aggravating; is it important how and why people are made aware of real world issues as long as they are made aware in the first place? The humanitarian disaster happening in Sudan right now is appalling and Machine Gun Preacher should at least be applauded for its largely unflinching and mature portrayal of the crisis.

It isn’t the point of a review to judge how worthy a film’s subject matter is though, and the narrative itself can be somewhat plodding. It also takes director Marc Forster over two hours to tell a story that is in real life on-going, meaning that it’s both overlong and inconclusive. And while Gerard Butler gives a generally rather mature and focused performance, his wild man act at the beginning of the film feels somewhat more like a caricature than a portrayal. Towards the end of the film however, things do get interesting as Sam begins to undertake his mission more aggressively, to the detriment of both his family and his new-found faith.

There’s also able support in the form of Michael Shannon and Michelle Monaghan and Madeline Carroll (whom sharp-eyed readers will recognise as creepy Ben’s childhood sweetheart Annie from Lost) is also rather good as Sam’s daughter.

Machine Gun Preacher is a much more challenging and occasionally more interesting film than perhaps its title and the presence of Butler would suggest. It’s no must-see, but as a competent and sober depiction of a continuing travesty, it more than does its job.

Touching Home Review

Touching Home is a true story written and directed by Logan and Noah Miller about their relationship with their late father. With no previous experience of working in film and a budget of $2million (small beer in movieland), they have created an interesting and sensitive, if workmanlike film. Touching Home sees the twin brothers striving to break into professional baseball whilst dealing with their homeless and alcoholic father Charlie, played by an excellent Ed Harris.

Whilst the film is an impressive achievement in and of itself, though it pains me to say it, Touching Home is simply a little dull. It tends to meander and dwell too much where succinctness and implication would serve the film better and feels rather baggy around the edges. There’s a very televisual feel to proceedings, which marred my enjoyment somewhat.

That said, the cast are excellent. Alongside Harris, Robert Forster (probably best known for his brilliant performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown and currently appearing inAlcatraz) does himself proud as the town’s fatherly cop and the boy’s former coach. Credit is also due to Brad Dourif, who gives a sensitive performance as Clyde, Charlie’s brother with learning difficulties. Logan and Noah Miller, who play fictionalised versions of themselves, are also good.

Baseball is seemingly the medium required to tell the stories of American sons struggling to come to terms with the lives of their fathers. See also Field of Dreams and The Open Road. I’m not really a fan of the former (sacrilege to many, apparently) and I doubt the latter will have set many people’s world alight. Perhaps being British and only really caring about one sport that isn’t baseball makes it difficult for me to engage properly with these films. Touching Home may not reverse the trend I’ve just strung together of slightly ropey father-son baseball dramas, but heck, it’s at least as good as those other two and is much more authentic in its affectionate, yet honest portrayal of a deeply flawed individual.

Albatross Review

Looking for a quirky, British, coming-of-age dramedy, that though far from rubbish, isn’t quite as good as it thinks it is? Then look no further than Albatross, the debut cinematic effort for both its director and its writer, Niall MacCormick and Tamzin Rafn.

The lives of a family on the Isle of Man are turned upside down and inside out when a new cleaner, Emelia, is hired to work at their hotel. Emelia is seventeen, precocious and belligerent. She befriends the family’s bookish elder daughter Beth and begins an affair with her father, one hit wonder novelist Jonathan and events inevitably spiral out of control.

The double act between Jessica Brown-Findlay (Emelia) and rising star Felicity Jones (Beth) is the film’s strongest asset. The scenes of friendship between these two capable young actors are well-crafted and believably performed. It’s pleasing to see a relationship between two female teenagers explored properly on screen – lord knows the ‘bromance’ genre is far from lacking in material, but it seems rare that we are treated to a mature take on the female equivalent. Brown-Findlay and Jones give excellent performances that promise great things to come for both of them.

Unfortunately, whilst the adolescent characters are satisfyingly created, the same cannot be said for the adults in the film. Sebastian Koch and Julia Ormond do the best they can with their roles, but their mum and dad characters are written with shockingly broad strokes. And for a film in which two characters discuss bad writing and weak metaphors, there are some terrible instances of both in Albatross. It also flirts dangerously with pretension.

Still, it’s possible to overlook the film’s inconsistencies and enjoy it as a fairly amusing and occasionally touching drama. Additionally, it deserves innumerable plaudits for its invention of the work ‘procasturbating’.

John Carter cast & crew interviews

On Saturday morning, I was invited to go to the Corinthia Hotel to take part in round table interviews with the cast and crew of the forthcoming John Carter. My previous experience of round table interviews suggested I’d probably get around twenty minutes at best with a couple of actors or crew members, but to my surprise, the assembled journos and myself were put into small groups and got a good twenty-five minutes or so each with Lynn Collins, Taylor Kitsch, Andrew Stanton, Willem Dafoe and the film’s producers, Lindsey Collins and Jim Morris.

That gave me more material than I could ever hope to transcribe in a weekend, so with that in mind, I’ve produced them as podcasts that you can listen to at your leisure, on your way to work, on the beach or even on the loo. Technology, eh? It’s brilliant. Not to pick favourites or anything, but meeting Dafoe was certainly a personal highlight and Stanton is very forthcoming too. Please enjoy.

Oh and just to add a little personal context to my day. As I was exiting the tube at Westminster I ran into none other than our wonderful and respected leaders, David ‘Cammo’ Cameron and Boris ‘Bojo’ Johnson. How about that, eh? Also, when leaving the hotel I inadvertently ducked into a lift with Taylor Kitsch and his assistants, whereupon their conversation promptly stopped short. I felt a bit awkward. Kitsch was really nice though and my mumbled, ‘good luck with the film’ seemed to be received well.

Taylor Kitsch:

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Lynn Collins:

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Willem Dafoe:

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Director Andrew Stanton:

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Producers Lindsey Collins and Jim Morris:

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Take Review

Prior to hitting it big with The Hurt Locker and propelling himself into superstardom/back into obscurity with the enormous success/spectacular failure of Avengers Assemble, Jeremy Renner starred in this fairly low-key drama about a man on death row and the woman he wronged. Minnie driver plays Ana, a woman struggling to make ends meet and raise her son, who has additional support needs. Renner plays Saul, a man whose gambling debts have force him into a life of crime. These two people’s lives collide in a dramatic, tragic and highly predictable manner.

The problem with Take is that for all its worthiness and decent performances, it is unfortunately very dull. I finished watching it not three hours ago and I’m already struggling to remember much of it. The Big Important Climatic Crime Scene is pulled off pretty well, but why does it come so late on, towards the final third of the film? The narrative is constructed in a nonlinear manner and it seems to me that to have The Big Important Climatic Crime Scene happen much earlier would have ultimately made me care more about the characters’ fates. It’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen anyway, so they might as well have got it other with.

The most interesting thing about the film is the title card at its end which discusses Restorative Justice, a charity that seeks to make criminals and victims and the public at large more aware of the human damage of crime and seeks to create meetings between criminals and victims to discuss their crimes to much great affect, apparently. This is all well and good, but personally it was difficult to sympathise too heavily with this cause whilst the film maintains an apparently nonchalant position on the death penalty, the abolition of which, I feel, is a much higher priority.

Still, at least Saul was humanised and while there was a certain amount of catharsis, there was no cut and dry resolution for the pair at the film’s end. It’s nice to watch a film with some thought behind it, so it’s a shame that Take is delivered so weakly.

Reykjavík-Rotterdam Review

The funny thing about reviewing films not in the English language is that it can be all too easy to assume that just because you’re reading subtitles, you’re watching a work of major artistic quality. This can simply be because somewhere in your mind you make the equation ‘subtitles = clever’, or in slightly more complex terms, why would distributors bother releasing a film in a foreign territory if there wasn’t something special about it that will attract an audience?

Reykjavík-Rotterdam is an Icelandic thriller about a former smuggler who takes on ‘one last job’ when faced with considerable financial difficulties. The thing is, whilst it’s a fairly competent film in its own right, it’s not really clear what makes it stands out from your common or garden crime-heist movie (though in its home country, it won several awards at Iceland’s equivalent of the BAFTAs). The reason for this DVD release then, we can assume with some certainty, is to coincide with the soon to be released Mark Wahlberg film Contraband, which is a remake of this film, directed by its star, Baltasar Kormákur.

I had some problems with this film. For example, it was difficult to really root for Kormákur’s character. Kristopher isn’t particularly heroic and the trouble he causes his family is difficult to forgive. Not that films must have likable protagonists to be successful, not at all; however in this film, it’s somewhat alienating. I ended up rooting for the hired goon who terrorised Kristopher’s family – sure he was violent and horrible, but at least he was mildly amusing.

The plot is also overly complicated. What should be a fairly straight forward con-job plot is over egged unnecessary convolutions and layers of none-too intriguing intrigue. It’s also a fairly depressing watch, frankly, as misery upon misery is piled onto Kristopher’s family.

That said, there’s stuff to enjoy in the film for those curious enough to seek it out. Much of the film is set on a cargo ship which is an inherently interesting location. There’s a couple of exciting scenes, such as when the aforementioned ship is set on a collision course with the Rotterdam dock or the slightly random but well shot street shoot out. The ending is also pretty good, if a bit obvious.

If you find yourself loving Marky Mark’s latest and want to find out from whence it came, or perhaps you wish to discover what Icelandic cinema can offer (other than the otherworldly glory ofHeima by Sigur Rós), then by all means give Reykjavík-Rotterdam a go. Just don’t go expecting anything earth-shatteringly brilliant.

John Carter Review

John Carter used to be called John Carter of Mars, which is an obviously better title. It’s considerably more evocative, it intrigues those who are already aware of the character and those who are not equally and finally it doesn’t sound like a film that might possibly be about an accountant or something. I hate film titles that are simply a non-descript name. Recent and upcoming weeks feature the releases ofLaura and Michael. Rubbish! Others that spring to mind are Larry Crowne, Cyrus, Michael Clayton and Amélie. These titles tell us nothing about the film, other than the gender of the protagonist. It’s a bug bear of mine and probably pretty petty, but still, why you’d go for boring old John Carter over John Carter… of MARS! is beyond me.

Fortunately, that has no actual bearing on the quality of the film. John Carter is the live action debut of Pixar whizz-kid Andrew Stanton, based on the sci-fi and fantasy novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs he loved as a child. Carter is an American Civil War veteran who is whisked away to Mars via otherworldly magic/technology. There, he uses his newfound super jumping ability to fight for and against the various warring factions on Mars, forge relationships with four-armed aliens and win the heart of a conveniently human princess of Mars.

Whilst it is far from perfect, to call John Carter a magnificent failure seems overly harsh. It’s more of a really rough diamond. It has numerous flaws but it matches each of them with its no less numerous charms, its invention and visual grandeur.

Those flaws then; rather than focussing on Carter from the start, allowing the audience to view the strange world of Mars through his eyes, it opens with some pretty hardcore gobbledygook exposition, which will be a pretty sure-fire turnoff for many viewers. Also confusing is the fact that whilst the film feels way too long (it takes ages to get to Mars proper), it also feels like it’s been pretty severely edited at the cost of smoothness of narrative and clarity of plot. There are also substantial inconsistencies between time and space in the film – sometimes journeys between the three or four main locations in which the action takes place seem to take days, sometimes hours. These locations also seem fairly arbitrary and it’s sometimes difficult to follow who’s doing what, where and why. Characters also seem to change their allegiances and motivations very quickly, making it occasionally difficult to root for them. Throw in a bit of occasionally dodgy writing and acting and a few less than great special effects (about standard for the average blockbuster) and you’ve got a bit of hodgepodge.

But fear not! In spite of all of those issues, John Carter is still a very watchable and often very enjoyable film. Its meta framing device (which involves Burroughs as a character) is quite clever. Its production design and general aesthetic is often gorgeous. Lead actors Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins are a cute couple and are ably supported by the rest of the cast which impressively includes (take a breath) Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Thomas Hayden Church, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Bryan Cranston, Mark Strong and personal favourite Daryl Sabara (from World’s Greatest Dad) as Burroughs. Woof.

The action sequences are handled deftly and tastefully (in particular, the one where Carter takes on an alien horde singlehandedly intercut with tragic flashbacks) and there’s a pleasing amount of humour in the film too. The emotional finale, though rushed, is both bittersweet and uplifting.

Throughout all of this, Stanton brings a strange sort of humanism to his film. There’s real heart and soul in the thing and the love the director has for the character shows on screen. As his fellow Pixar luminary Brad Bird did with his live action debut Mission Impossible 4, Stanton brings real likability to a concept which on paper comes across as so much hokum. For that he should be applauded and his film, though he will surely better it in the future, celebrated.