Enzo Cilenti – People Talking

Movie Review – ‘Free Fire’ – Shooting Blanks

Directed by Ben Wheatley
Written by Amy Jump & Ben Wheatley
Cast: Enzo Cilenti, Sam Riley, Michael Smiley, Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Armie Hammer, Sharlto Copley, Babou Ceesay, Noah Taylor, Jack Reynor, Mark Monero, Patrick Bergin, Sara Dee (voice), Tom Davis
Soundtrack: Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury

This isn’t my first go ’round with this crew.

I saw Ben and Amy’s High-Rise last year, and wasn’t particularly impressed, but far be it from me to not give people second chances if it feels warranted. After all, Free Fire obviously features a whole lot of guns, and a good handful of actors I actually like, so how bad could it be?

Well, frankly, I wish I hadn’t even asked the question.

This movie sent up red flags almost immediately, thanks to some bad Boston accents, and it never got much better from there. The plot is razor thin (and boring), the characters are thin (and boring), and the action is poorly executed (look, I get that the joke is that they’re all bad shots, but you’ve got to give me some geography, man). Seriously, I haven’t been this bored watching people shoot at each other since Jason Bourne (at least Free Fire has the decency to not be two hours long, although, honestly, the shorter runtime doesn’t help much).

Much like with High-Rise, there’s just something missing with Free Fire (maybe a lot of things, actually). It’s not funny enough, violent enough (with the exception of a couple of quick moments), stylish enough, frightening enough, or clever enough to make you feel like you saw something worthwhile. I can’t even tell you how much of the runtime I spent asking myself, “What emotion am I supposed to be feeling right now?” I did chuckle a few times (which is why it’s not getting zero stars), but that was it; there was nothing else to grab onto.

Not every movie has to be the same, not every MacGuffin has to pay off, and not everything has to have “a point,” but every movie has to have something, and at the end of the day, Free Fire‘s pretty much got nothing. I didn’t think I liked High-Rise all that much, but it feels like a quantum leap ahead of this movie, I tell you what.

Maybe I’m just not on board with Ben Wheatley (who knows?), but this movie is not one to be seen.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Twofer Movie Review: ‘The Lobster’ and ‘High-Rise’ – Independents’ Day

Not everything that gets talked about here is action schlock. Some of it is more artsy.

The Lobster

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou
Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Barden, Olivia Colman, Ashley Jensen, Ariane Labed, Angeliki Papoulia, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux, Michael Smiley, Ben Whishaw, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Ewen MacIntosh

I do my best not to spoil things here, and that’s particularly true of a movie like The Lobster, because so much of the enjoyment comes from discovering how its world operates as the story progresses. There are no title cards at the beginning like Red Dawn to explain how we got here, you just figure it out on the fly.

What I can tell you, because it’s in the trailer, is that The Lobster is the story of a man who goes to a special resort to find a mate, and if he’s unsuccessful in that he will be turned into an animal he has previously chosen. In the case of our protagonist, he has chosen to be a lobster should it come to that.

I will also tell you that the world of The Lobster is one of rigidity and harsh consequences, and it is this area in particular where the movie so deftly commentates on our own society in terms of the nature of relationships.

Tonally, the movie is a dark comedy, and a rather funny one at that. Colin Farrell turns in a delightfully awkward performance, John C. Reilly is his naturally humorous self, and Rachel Weisz delivers some absolutely absurd voice-overs completely straight, which is hilarious.

It’s a bit of a long, strange trip, and it may not end the way you like, but it’s one worth taking. Check out The Lobster if you’re up for something off the beaten path.

Rating: ★★★½ (out of five)

High-Rise

Directed by Ben Wheatley
Written by Amy Jump, based on the novel by J.G. Ballard
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, Reece Shearsmith, Enzo Cilenti, Sara Dee (voice)
Soundtrack: Clint Mansell

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde

No doubt, High-Rise aspires to be great, but it’s no Brazil. Heck, it’s not even Snowpiercer.

Based on the novel by J.G. Ballard (which was, perhaps correctly, considered “unfilmable” for nearly four decades), High-Rise is chock-full of British classism, Seventies excess, and tons of actual garbage. Not having read the source material, I can’t tell you if the adaptation is too faithful, not faithful enough, or somewhere in between, but it does feel like it’s in a no-man’s-land of sort.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what High-Rise is missing, but it’s not thought-provoking enough, shocking enough, funny enough, or horrifying enough to make the impact it desires. At a certain point it becomes a bit meandering, but the core story is so simple that you never really lose track of who’s doing what and why. Perhaps it’s the fact that we’re not given anyone to truly invest in that makes High-Rise so muddled.

However, one thing I’ll give a lot of credit for is the production design. Rather than taking place in an uber-futuristic dystopia, High-Rise is set in a dystopian vision of the 1970s, which means lots and lots of period cars, costumes, hair, and carpeting. in addition to more fantastical elements like an 18th century costume party.

If you’re a hardcore fan of Ben Whealey’s films or J.G. Ballard’s books, then you’ll probably see it anyway, but, save for that, High-Rise is probably not worth your time.

Rating: ★★½ (out of five)

Movie Review – ‘The Martian’ – Red Storm Rising

Directed by Ridley Scott
Written by Drew Goddard, based on the novel by Andy Weir
Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover, Benedict Wong, Enzo Cilenti
Soundtrack: Harry Gregson-Williams

I know I’ll probably take some flack for this, but I’ve actually seen more of Tony Scott’s films than Ridley’s; and, yes, that does include some major tentpoles.

Regardless, and in spite of Ridley Scott riding in on kind of a bumpy streak, my expectations going into ‘The Martian’ were sky high (like 4.5 out of 5 stars minimum high).

Did it deliver? Should you believe the hype?

Well, mostly.

Let me start with the negatives, because, frankly, this movie left me with a funny aftertaste in my mouth. 95% of the film is “fictional ‘Apollo 13’ 2.0”, which is great, but then the remaining 5% is “MOAR ‘Gravity'”, which I was not expecting and which I found to be quite off-putting. Also, I question whether ‘The Martian’ needed to be two and a half hours long, and the length of acts should have been more balanced (first act a little longer, second act much shorter, third act much longer). Furthermore, everyone not named Matt Damon seemed pretty interchangeable in their roles; I mean, I don’t know this for sure because I didn’t work on the movie, but it didn’t seem like any role was written with a particular actor in mind, and they just cast whomever they wanted for whatever reason. Lastly, there’s a running gag of bad 1970s music which I didn’t find all that funny, and I thought it felt somewhat out of place in a movie such as this.

So, anyway, what’s good about this film?

Well, for one thing, Matt Damon. I’m not going to say it was the role he was born to play or anything like that, but the script puts a tremendous amount of responsibility on his shoulders and he carries all of it with aplomb. As an actor, he gets to demonstrate almost the full spectrum of emotion, and he is always believable; total heart and soul of the movie.

Another main strong point of ‘The Martian’, as you might expect, are the visuals. Now, it’s not on the same cinematic level as, say, ‘Interstellar’, or even ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, but for an outer space movie it looks as it should. There was obviously a lot of thought and effort put into the mission itself, like how all the vehicles and habitats and equipment would look, and it definitely comes through in the finished product.

Really though, what makes ‘The Martian’ as good as it is is the story, and this is no doubt thanks in large part to the fact that it’s based on a highly acclaimed novel. Movies don’t have to be entirely new ideas to capture our imagination (not that any idea is really new anymore). Sometimes they can take things we’re already familiar with and expand on them in a creative and exciting way, and that’s how I think of ‘The Martian’. And really, when is someone facing impossible odds not, at the very least, interesting? Not only that, but I appreciated seeing the ethical dilemmas of both the various teams on Earth and the remaining crew still in space.

It may not be the next “greatest movie of all time”, but ‘The Martian’ is certainly worth a theatrical viewing. Even if you don’t want to run out and see it again, you definitely won’t regret seeing it once as it was meant to be seen; and it’s probably much more fun than you’re expecting.

Rating: ★★★★☆