Tag: James D’Arcy

Twofer Movie Review – ‘Only The Brave’ and ‘The Snowman’ – Fire and Ice

Ordinarily I can find some kind of connection when reviewing two films at once, but I’m at a loss here, other than these two having the same release date.

Only The Brave

Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Written by Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer, based on the GQ article “No Exit” by Sean Flynn
Cast: Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, James Badge Dale, Taylor Kitsch, Jennifer Connelly, Andie MacDowell, Geoff Stults, Alex Russell, Thad Luckinbill, Ben Hardy, Scott Haze, Jake Picking, Ryan Jason Cook
Soundtrack: Joseph Trapanese

A few weeks ago I woodshedded a pair of “based on a true story” films and I was not eager to do the same thing again this week.

Fortunately, I don’t have to.

I hesitate to call it great, but Only The Brave is very good.  A bit uneven perhaps, but it’s a fitting and deeply heartfelt tribute to a group of men who battled not flesh and blood, but rather the fierceness of nature itself.

In a word: wildfires.

If you’re unfamiliar with the world of wildfire firefighting, don’t worry, the movie gives you a pretty clear picture, so much so that I won’t even bother to provide a primer, but suffice it to say it’s not the sort of work for the faint of heart, to say nothing of the physical demands.

It sounds like the most obvious thing in the world, but Only The Brave has realism on its side.  I don’t know all the true life facts, I know for sure there’s some timeline shifting, but, on the whole, you don’t get the impression that there’s a lot of Hollywood-ing going on, which is nice for this sort of movie; and, outside of a few dream sequences for Josh Brolin’s character, nothing is even shot in a way that would seem unrealistic.

Speaking of Josh Brolin, this movie has a great cast (including Jennifer Connelly, who’s still as captivating as ever, and James Badge Dale, who’s probably my favorite actor who’s not yet a household name), and they all do solid work, though because it’s a feature film and not a miniseries, not a lot of people get much to do (there are twenty guys on the hotshot crew alone, let alone the other supporting characters, so screen time is at a premium for just about everybody).  It’s hard for me to be critical because maybe everyone is portraying their real-life counterpart perfectly, but if there’s one performance I found puzzling at times, it’s from Taylor Kitsch, but, again, I don’t know.

Given that I didn’t know the story going in, I’ll assume most people won’t know the story going in either, so I’ll leave that to be discovered, but it’s most certainly a story worth telling, and I think Only The Brave tells it well.

It may feel a bit by the numbers at times (I mean, Peter Berg has had a near-monopoly on this kind of film the past few years), but I’d say it’s a movie absolutely worth seeing theatrically.

Just make sure you bring some tissues.

Rating: ★★★★☆

 

The Snowman

Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Written by Peter Straughan, Hossein Amini, and Søren Sveistrup, based on the novel Snømannen by Jo Nesbø
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Ronan Vibert, Toby Jones, Genevieve O’Reilly, James D’Arcy, Adrian Dunbar, Chloë Sevigny, Anne Reid, Jamie Michie, Alec Newman, Jamie Clayton
Soundtrack: Marco Beltrami

Boy, was this a disappointment.

The Snowman has pretty much all of the elements you need for a pulpy crime thriller: based on a novel (one book in an expansive series; if they were planning on a movie series, that ship has now sailed), a drunkard detective, a murderer with a gimmick, intrigue, flashbacks, and, perhaps most importantly, an A-list cast devoting themselves to B-level material (somebody even plays twins).

This could have been so-good-it’s-good, so-bad-it’s-good, or, at the very least, just some trashy fun, but the execution was totally lacking (and, if recent rumors are to be believed, so was 10-15% of the script).

Right off the bat, there’s a lethargy to this film that it never quite shakes, and I don’t know that it could be fixed purely with editing.  I was never so bored that I completely checked out, but, make no mistake, this was a bit of a chore to watch.

In contrast to Only The Brave, The Snowman thoroughly wastes its tremendous cast.  Honestly, there’s not one standout performance in the whole bunch, at least not in a good way.  Val Kilmer has a strange role that’s made doubly stranger by some truly awful dubbing, which I have zero explanation for, but that’s about it.

None of this really matters, however, because, in the end, this movie isn’t worth seeing or talking about any further.

I questioned whether it would be worth full price, but it’s not even worth a matinee.

Shame.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Movie Review – ‘Dunkirk’ – “What a piece of work is man”

Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan

Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Damien Bonnard, Aneurin Barnard, James Bloor, Barry Keoghan, Mark Rylance, Tom Glynn-Carney, Tom Hardy, Jack Lowden, Billy Howle, Mikey Collins, Dean Ridge, Bobby Lockwood, Will Attenborough, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Nolan, James D’Arcy, Matthew Marsh, Cillian Murphy, Adam Long, Harry Styles, Miranda Nolan, Bradley Hall, Jack Cutmore-Scott, Brett Lorenzini, Michael Fox, Brian Vernel, Elliott Tittensor, Kevin Guthrie, Harry Richardson, Jochum ten Haaf, Johnny Gibbon, Richard Sanderson, Kim Hartman, Charley Palmer Rothwell, John Nolan, Bill Milner, Eric Richard, Michael Caine (voice)

Soundtrack: Hans Zimmer

This film has barely been out for a hot minute and there’s already very little I can say about it that hasn’t been said already.

Lord knows there are plenty of World War II movies out there (and they’ll probably keep making them until the end of time, since it seems to be the only armed conflict in history without any moral ambiguity), and there are plenty of EPIC war movies, so do we really need another epic World War II movie?

Well, yes.

Maybe someone somewhere out there has seen a movie like Dunkirk before, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t (and I’ve seen a myriad of World War II movies).  Certainly no one has shot a movie like this on IMAX before, but I can’t recall another film that features warfare on the land, sea, and air while still keeping most of (if not all of) the visual spectacle in camera; not to this degree anyway.

Is Dunkirk perfect?  I say no, but I don’t think it’s intended to be either.

The film is laid out in a non-linear fashion, featuring three different stories in three different time frames, eventually intersecting:

1. The Mole – One Week: This is the story of soldiers on the beach at Dunkirk, awaiting their fate, played out over a week’s time.

2. The Sea – One Day: This is [mostly?] the tale of a civilian boat crossing the Channel to rescue troops, played out over the course of a day.

3. The Air – One Hour: This is the story of a flight of Spitfires who do battle over the channel, played out over the course of an hour.

The various and overlapping timelines result in the audience seeing certain events from multiple perspectives at different times throughout the film  I don’t think it’s all edited together in the most elegant fashion, but I’m not sure it’s meant to be.  Perhaps Christopher Nolan was intending to portray war as more disjointed and chaotic than we often see, especially in classic Hollywood films.

I know for sure he wanted to go against the Hollywood grain in terms of casting, using actual young people, as opposed to late-20s/early-30s standing in for teenagers (not dissimilar to how Jon Watts approached Spider-Man: Homecoming).  I’m not sure exactly how much this translates to the screen, I think the movie could have worked just fine with older actors, but, in comparison to other films, say, Starship Troopers, where 28-year-old Casper Van Dien is dancing at the senior prom (or whatever), this choice definitely stands out.

Honestly though, like every Christopher Nolan movie from 2008 onward, this movie is really about the visuals, and in that regard it excels wildly.  The large film format allows for images of stunning breadth and clarity (the air-to-air sections in particular are truly spectacular), but I was surprised at how many intimate moments (e.g. close-ups) there were as well.

Frankly, this movie was a bit more arthouse than I was expecting, and I think a lot of people have been surprised by that as well.  There’s certainly a lot less dialogue than we’ve been accustomed to in this type of film, which some have complained about, but it doesn’t bother me.

There’s one last large component I haven’t touched on yet, and that’s Hans Zimmer’s score.  I’m a bit conflicted about it.  I think oftentimes it’s a bit too modern (which, in comparison, makes Michael Giachinno’s score for Apes 3 all the more impressive), but I can’t deny that it’s effective.  It’s really the uniting factor of all of the disparate elements of the film.

At the end of the day, the tagline of Dunkirk (“Survival is Victory”) is exactly what the message is, which is to say that sometimes just staying alive is enough.  It’s truly a tale of the human spirit, for better or worse.  It may not seem as “vital” as other contemporary combat pictures, but just because the story is old doesn’t mean it can’t speak to you today.

Quite simply, Dunkirk is a triumph of cinema, and should be seen by all.

Rating: ★★★★½ (out of five)

P.S.
I saw this on a 70mm IMAX print, which I do recommend if you can find one, especially since these don’t come around every day, but it’s fine if you see it on a slightly smaller format first, because the IMAX experience is truly overwhelming (especially for your ears).