Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller, shot entirely on iphone, is well written, well refined, and clench inducing.
While it’s iphone-quality may turn some off, Soderberg utilizes the camera’s wide angle and deep focus to fully play into it’s characters insanity and the 90’s pulpy TV show feel of the feature. It may look cheap, but it never seems like a student film, and won’t be remembered as another “film shot on iphone”.
Yo ho Yo ho a franchise life for me.
Ben offers up a review of Danny Boyle’s latest, a sequel to his 1996 cult hit Trainspotting.
Since Coraline first hit cinemas in 2009 and terrified multiple generations of both kids and adults the world-over, the Laika name has become associated with first-rate animation, putting even the likes of Pixar to shame. And with their latest effort, they’ve somehow exceeded expectations.
Set within the gorgeously-realised, origami-infused lands of ancient Japan, Kubo and the Two Strings follows a young storyteller, obsessed with the legend of his dead samurai father, who quickly finds himself thrust into a cross-country quest to uncover an unbreakable suit of armour.
Charlize Theron voices a talking monkey, Matthew McConnaughey an amnesiac warrior beetle and Rooney Mara a pair of sinister, V For Vendetta-meets-The Shining style twins; based on character descriptions alone you wouldn’t be mistaken for thinking that this was just any other super-colourful fantasy adventure. But of course, you would be horribly, horribly wrong.
Not only is Kubo Laika’s most polished and pronounced project to date (yes, even more so than the Oscar-nominated Coraline) but it’s also one of the most heartfelt, sincere and just generally badass releases of the year full-stop.
It’s a film that’s completely spellbinding in almost every department from even just its opening alone. From the sharply cut animation, to the endlessly creative plotting, to Dario Marianelli’s positively entrancing (and neatly oriental) score, every single painstakingly rendered frame just oozes with subtle Japanese nods and inspired artistic vision. Throwaway kids movie this most definitely is not.
In fact, whilst the basic quest plot and underlying jokes are very obviously child friendly, the more unusual and uncharted directions Kubo eventually springs into don’t always follow suit. There’s not exactly anything here to cause alarm or complaint from parents, but it’s worth noting that this isn’t a film that insults the intelligence of its younger viewers, stretching their mental and visual capacities wherever possible.
The level of detail and genuine texture the stop-motion approach brings to Laika’s projects has always been a major part of their pulling-power as a studio, and here is really no different. Scenes flow so smoothly and with such consistency that at times it’s very easy to forget that you’re not watching something that’s been rendered by computers.
Bundle this precision together with a tightly-woven story guaranteed to excite almost anyone of any age (legends are quite clever that way) and it becomes instantly clear that with Kubo, Laika have produced one of the smartest and most beautiful films in a long while.
It may get a little sappy for some, particularly towards its finale, and Theron’s voice-work could use a tiny emotional touch-up, but none of these things separate Kubo from its legacy as one of the finest animated movies possibly ever. Well, at least in the top ten.
With Pixar and DreamWorks still seemingly lost in a haze of reliving old classics, and Disney largely concerned with soft-edged musicals, this could well be Laika’s time to steal the limelight once and for all. Something we’re happy to fully endorse.
Kubo and the Two Strings is released in the UK this Friday by Universal Pictures.
John Luther and Robb Stark team up for a poorly-timed bomb chase through the streets of Paris, that seems almost destined to be buried.
A victim of nothing more than unfortunate scheduling, James Watkins’ Bastille Day finds an American con artist and pickpocket (Richard Madden) thrown in to the centre of a French terror plot when he accidentally steals a bag that just so happens to contain explosives. Narrowly escaping the blast and branded the country’s public enemy number one, he’s forced to team up with rogue C.I.A. agent Briar (Idris Elba) to uncover the truth and prevent further attacks from going down, as the Bastille Day parade approaches.
There’s a little more to it than that; in fact, terrorism isn’t really the focus here at all, but it’s insanely hard to bypass these sorts of assumptions without giving off major spoilers. Meaning that it’s likely that upon its release, Bastille Day will be considered distasteful and unpleasant and thrown straight in the distribution bin.
Which to be honest, is a bit of a shame. This might not exactly be the pinnacle of action cinema or a particular high-point in either Elba or Maddens’ careers either, but what it is is a lot of fun. It’s ridiculous, silly and always painfully over the top, but Watkins never loses sight of this; he never masquerades the film as something it’s not, and that has to be praised in some form.
Although to be fair, it’s probably hard to even take yourself seriously when your film features a hammily-accented Idris Elba playing an American government official who jacks cars, hospitalises civilians, and even – no word of a lie – sings the film’s theme song. It’s all totally absurd, but if you accept this early on and just buy into how mind-numbingly stupid the whole thing is, you’re guaranteed a good time.
Madden plays along sheepishly, whilst international villains bark their own character descriptions and goofy lines like “upload the final hashtag!” in their most convincing menacing accents, and Elba continues strutting around cracking skulls and truly butchering the French language like he’s in some sort of higher-budget Seagal shooter, that’s found itself somehow crossed with a teenager’s attempts to play Grand Theft Auto.
Any time Elba ever picks up a gun on screen, the public seem to race towards labelling him as a future Bond, but here he proves himself more of a Taken-esque Liam Neeson type. Bold, brash, and a helluva lot more fun than Bond’s been in years. There’s no stealthy one liners or cuff-straightening here, just cold, hard beat-downs, packed out with totally nonsense, cliche-ridden dialogue.
After all, Bastille Day is an action movie. It might not be as clever, or as classy in its execution as a Bond or a Bourne, and it might fall a little short of ever being quite as crowd-pleasing as a Fast & Furious or even the first Taken, but Watkins’ attempt is a solid and well-rounded dose of fun. Nothing more, nothing less.
Switch off from all your preconceived worries about plots making sense or dialogue being subtle. This is just pure entertainment from start to finish.
Bastille Day is released in UK cinemas on 22nd April through Stuidocanal.
Ben reviews Jon Favreau’s live-action/CGI Jungle Book remake, and is totally floored with surprise.
Ben reviews Zack Snyder’s latest stab at adapting the DC comics universe.
A gang of criminals and corrupt cops plan the murder of a police officer in order to pull off their biggest heist yet across town.
Ben and Matt discuss the latest Coen Brothers feature. Talking everything from genre, script, and cinematography.
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