Film Review: Shang-Chi and the Legend Of The Ten Rings

With Endgame, Marvel had somewhat boxed themselves into a corner.  A huge commercial and dramatic success but also chock full of those delicious fan service moments which elevated it above standard blockbuster fare and gave us those emotional payoffs you need with a grand finale.  Face it, if you didn’t crack a smile at “Cap… on your left,” you were watching the wrong film.  However it also ended the stories of its two biggest stars and lead (but not strongest) Avengers.  Thor will fight on and probably lose the gut, Hulk will cameo here and there, Hawkeye will get his own series in which he will most likely be retired, and we have a roster of established characters to play with.  But where do they go from there?

I get the distinct impression that Kevin Feige and co. are looking forward to the challenge and not shying away from taking chances with it.  Far From Home and Black Widow have been very good, if safe, follow up films and the Disney+ series open many new doors using existing characters, but with Shang-Chi, the first truly new Marvel hero just announced his presence with an expertly delivered roundhouse kick.

Much has been made of the studio’s decision to make its first Asian-led superhero film and it’s pleasing to see that Shang-Chi and the Legend Of The Ten Rings does so much more than simply recycle the Marvel formula but with a Chinese cast.  What we have here is a story steeped in wuxia styling, epic family struggles and mythological creatures.  Touch points would be the likes of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and even Disney’s 1998 Mulan; yes, there are dragons.  For what starts as a martial arts film, it goes to some bold places.

Cast-wise, director Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, very much worth a look) marshals a very able cast around newcomer Simu Liu in the title role.  The always-excellent Awkwafina drops the “what the hell is going on?” Marvel wisecracks, and Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, a man who practically sweats 100% proof charisma, does well in a slightly undercooked villain role.  At times sympathetic, he’s never a moustache-twirling Big Bad (there is a much bigger bad) and his goal is more personal than megalomaniacal.  Backing them up is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Iron Man 3’s Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley, in on the joke and adding comic relief), fully leaning in to that film’s ‘The Mandarin’ misdirection, and a sadly under-used Michelle Yeoh.  Asian actors make up most of the cast, with only Kingsley and Florian Munteanu’s Razorfist (sensibly never named out loud) the only white actors with significant roles.  It’s refreshing to see a major studio do this.  Liu himself broods and handles the physical stuff well, the fight choreography is breathless but not edited to death to hide actors’ failings, but on the strength of this it remains to be seen whether he has the magnetic presence to carry a solo film.  It’s fair to say he’s upstaged by the talent around him.

Cretton’s direction provides the impressive fight scenes one would expect, some affectionate family drama with themes of expectation and ambition, as well as some less-affectionate tragic family drama.  Admittedly it takes something of a leap into magic, mysticism, and mythology and away from pure martial arts, one which the film expects you either go along with or be left behind.  The titular Ten Rings are (sensibly) retconned from their (quite silly) comic origins, their powers established visually but never fully explained (stick around for the post-credits bit).  The obligatory final battle switches gears midway into a fight against demonic (and somewhat Lovecraftian) creatures.

Dragons should come as no surprise to a Marvel audience having appeared in Ragnarok and been a plot point in Iron Fist, but here Cretton makes full use of them as an important symbol to Chinese culture – no, it’s not the Marvel comics dragon with the silly name – and makes it work.

Ultimately it’s not a perfect MCU entry: the pace could have eased at times, the stakes are not raised particularly high until late on, there is no standout ‘MCU Moment’, and doubts remain over Liu’s (acting) chops.  But this is a huge, brave, bold step in a different direction, one which embraces rather than appropriates its culture and feels very much like an Eastern epic rather than a template Marvel film.

Film review: Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom

When word came out that there was going to be a reboot/sequel of Jurassic Park, I dusted off my well-worn sceptical hat and sat, arms folded, waiting for a raptor to disappoint me with a predictable attack from the side.  The law of diminishing returns had surely sent the franchise the way of its subject matter after Spielberg low-point The Lost World and the forgettable bollocks that was Jurassic Park 3. 

As frequently happens, I was wrong and 2015’s Jurassic World turned out to be loads of fun.  They took a chance on director Colin Trevorrow, a man with one cinematic release to his name at the time, and he engineered something both enjoyably familiar (Jurassic Park’s legacy woven into the DNA rather than in cheap callbacks) and surprising enough to offer thrills.  The best thing about it was the characters: Chris Pratt cemented his place as a leading man with roguish dino trainer Owen, and enjoyed good odd couple chemistry with Bryce Dallas Howard’s uptight Claire.  Both were likeable and fun, and even the imperilled kids weren’t huge irritants like in previous films.  Ifran Kahn was quietly charismatic as the Richard Attenborough proxy.  Bad guy duties (the human ones, anyway – think mayor from Jaws) were handled by the immense talents of Vincent D’Onofrio, who made his military stooge more than a one-note raptor snack.

Naturally, huge success whetted studio appetite for sequels and with Treverrow decamping to join (and the leave) the Star Wars galaxy, J.A. Bayona was drafted in to marshal the carnage.  A hugely disappointing trailer set internet tongues wagging, their main subject being “why didn’t they know the island was a volcano?”  This detail is brushed aside in the film, but the volcano provides a decent ticking clock for the first half, in which Owen and Claire (and a couple of hugely annoying helpers with silly job titles) are drafted back to the island as part of a rescue operation which to the surprise of absolutely nobody turns out to be a flimsy excuse for making weapons out of dinos, and more genetic tinkering.

Rafe Spall’s character, Eli, is looking after Ingen’s interests for the infirm James Cromwell, who was Richard Attenborough’s silent partner.  We find out that he’s a wrong ‘un early on when he shouts at a child, and he’s a dial-a-villain throughout.  Spall is a charming and charismatic actor but he doesn’t have a lot to work with here.  Doing more with less is Toby Jones (a man genetically incapable of playing a nice guy), whose smug auctioneer is particularly hateable and the film seemingly takes sadistic glee with his fate.  The scumbags’ gallery is rounded off by Ted Levine, playing a greedy ex-military man.  Levine brings authority and that voice but is a little underused, marshalling what looks like the same group of muscly mercenaries from Logan and being all gruff and stuff.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t bothered with Owen and Claire much throughout this review, it’s because the film isn’t really bothered with them either.  Their relationship, so well established in the first (or is that 4^th) film, is undercooked here and despite a few hints of what happened between the films, it’s as if Fallen Kingdom doesn’t really have room for them.  The strength of Jurassics Park and World was in the main characters; likeable and able, yet only really able to run away from danger, occasionally protecting a child.  Goldblum, Neill, Dern, Pratt, and Howard all give us something to root for among the chaos.  Here, we have some bants and a bit of peril, but they feel like an afterthought.

Plot-wise, it’s somewhere between a juggernaut and a clown car.  There is so much going on at such a high pace but so little of makes any narrative sense – a churlish argument when discussing a film about genetically engineered dinosaurs, I know – but it’s not as satisfying as the imperilled kids motif that drove the best parts of the previous films.  Eli wants to ‘rescue’ the dinosaurs, sell them on to generate seed money for a project to engineer a new weaponized dino, which is already mostly complete, but needs super Raptor Blue as a kind of mother figure. 

While they have admirably tried to build on and deepen Blue’s relationship with Owen, they have somewhat retconned Blue into a more empathetic and intelligent creature than she was before, and this doesn’t quite work.  And ultimately, the Indoraptor , a hybrid of World’s Indominous Rex and a velociraptor (strange, considering that Indominous was part raptor to begin with), isn’t much of a threat.  Not showing up until more than half way through, it’s smaller and spikier than the previous film’s new dino, and it isn’t as well developed.  Its first kill, spotted from a mile off, shows off some possum DNA in the mix, and there’s an underused laser targeting motif.  It looks pretty cool, but feels like a step down from the previous film, in which T-Rex and raptor alike were no match for the Big Bad.  Here, somewhat predictably, it’s Blue to the rescue and this feels cheap.

Despite all the negativity there are plenty of things to like about Fallen Kingdom.  It works nicely as a horror film, it’s loads of fun, and there will always be a piece of childhood glee which wakes up whenever I see a dinosaur chasing an asshole.  However, while World wore nostalgia on its sleeve, but gave you enough new thrill, Fallen Kingdom hopes nostalgia alone is enough to carry a whole film.  This is going to be disappointing and predictable, but I’m going to say it anyway because it’s apt: Fallen Kingdom lacks a bit of bite.

Murderthon! An afternoon on the sofa with random horror films.

Picture the scene: it’s a Saturday afternoon, the morning of which has been spent at a 4-year-old’s birthday party.  The rain, constant and grim, has killed any desire to leave the house for the foreseeable and our sloth is compounded by comfortable sofas, huge bags of crisps, and the choice of 3 separate streaming services.  Making a hasty decision before option paralysis robs us of too much time, we decide to embark on a day of horror films.

Being a lily-livered coward, I am not a massive fan of horror films.  My wife, being much harder than me, doesn’t mind the gore so much.  We start with recent Scandinavian-set Brit-flick The Ritual on the strength of solid reviews and Rafe Spall, who is ace.  It opens with a group of friends bullshitting in the pub, before one  of them dies in an off-license robbery while another cowers in hiding instead of helping.  We then have an interesting twist on the ‘lost on the woods’ horror staple; add the volatile elements of post-traumatic stress, guilt, and suspicion to a group of backpackers lost in Swedish woods and you have a great premise.  Occult markings, Predator-like corpses in trees, and an ill-advised stay in a creepy abandoned cabin lend the film a heavy dose of atmosphere.

As one might expect, the group argues, splits, all very organically, and is picked off one by one before the Wicker Man-inspired titular ritual becomes clear.  As with most horror films, it’s always better when you don’t see the creature, and I can’t help but feel some disappointment when all is revealed.  The Scandinavian occult angle is fresh and different, but the film can’t escape from its own trappings.

I think it’s at this point where we start drinking and search through a seemingly endless list of films I’ve never heard of for one that isn’t absolutely dire.  We settle on a found footage joint called Hell House LLC, which has a (relatively) decent IMDB rating of 6.4.  Another good premise (documentary team investigates the mystery behind the deaths of 15 people at a haunted house), and presented in the style of a documentary rather than just a series of scenes bookended by lines like “This footage was recovered from blah blah blah…”, Hell House LLC is surprisingly good.

We find out early on about a mysterious disaster at the house, see some footage of the event, discover that nobody wants to talk about it, and then see the events leading up to the fateful night.  There are horror clichés aplenty, including the house being cursed by previous deaths on the premises, and tropes which are played for maximum scares: dummies dressed as clowns, which move when nobody is looking, a piano playing itself, things moving in strobe lighting, a creepy girl who gets closer whenever you look away, and an increasing sense of dread through the characters.  It’s nothing you’ve not seen before, but it’s presented in an interesting way, and primed for maximum scares.  Actually not bad at all.  We keep the drinks flowing and dive back in for something else.

Mother’s Day (2010) is our choice.  Despite sharing a name with a 2016 Jennifer Aniston/Kate Hudson “comedy/drama”, this is actually a quite unpleasant home invasion movie.  Thoroughly implausible and about half an hour too long, it boasts a good B-movie cast (Rebecca DeMornay is brutally cold as the eponymous mother, Frank Grillo, Shawn Ashmore, and Deborah Ann Woll are all dependable Marvel veterans).

A family of fugitives (one of whom has been shot), arrive at their former home to find a nice middle class family entertaining their guests.  A hostage situation ensues, during which the residents (one of whom is, helpfully, a doctor) are beaten, tormented, killed, and threatened with sexual assault.  The plot is absolutely preposterous, presenting increasingly flimsy reasons for keeping everyone in the house, before bumping people off left and right.  It’s impressively brutal, quite distasteful, and not something |I’d rush to watch again.  But in our increasingly drunken states, now supplemented by Chinese takeaway, we were thoroughly entertained.

Speaking of brutal and distasteful, the conversation turned to Eli Roth’s charming Hostel films and we decided that neither of us had seen either of the sequels.  Much like the equally family friendly Saw films, it’s hard to remember which you’ve seen since they all blur into one.  So, Hostel: Part 2 gets an airing.  A further development of the premise of the first: wealthy businessmen pay shady company Elite Hunting to torture kidnapped tourists in a grotty Eastern European warehouse, and Part 2 treats us to the lovely auction and victim selection processes, and focuses on a group of female travellers this time. 

While the first film built steadily up to a gory climax, this gives us some hideous scythe-related action midway through. As well as the power tool-fodder tourists, we also see the two American businessmen, who have bid on their lives.  The arrogant and brash Todd, and the timid and reluctant Stuart are subtext personified: American wealth and its nonchalance towards the rest of the world; alpha male entitlement taken to its extreme; the elite at play when golf gets boring.  It’s obvious and as subtle as a drill to the forehead, but not really a stretch to imagine Trump and his cronies using a service like this.

Anyway, Roth turns the premise on its head when Todd has an implausible crisis of conscience mid-scalping and decides he doesn’t want to kill his prey, and Stuart decides that he can use Beth to act out his misogynist fantasies of killing his wife.  It ends badly for both when it transpires that Beth is richer-than-thou and outsmarts then outbids him, before leaving his genitals for the guard dogs.

Roth pulls off some inventive kills, some nice shots, and otherwise hits you in the face with a rusty hammer made from subtext, but it’s not something you’ll want to see more than once.  As inventive as Roth’s kills are, they are nothing compared to what comes next.  It’s getting late and we’re pushing the drunk envelope somewhat, but I make the executive decision to keep it going with The ABCs of Death 2.  Possibly the strangest choice for a sequel since The Last Exorcism’s title turned out to be a lie, the first film was 26 vignettes, each representing a letter of the alphabet and an aspect of death.  It was, to put it mildly, strange as fuck (F is for Fart, and L is for Libido are two you will not want to revisit).  This anthology is more of the same, from 26 different directors.  It opens well, with Amateur, Badger and Capital Punishment being both messed up and hilarious.  D is for Deloused is a Robert Morgan claymation piece and one of strangest things I’ve ever seen.

Special mention goes to Grandad, Invincible, Jesus, Nexus and Questionnaire, for being brilliant and terrible in their own special, inventive way.  It runs out of steam somewhat and a few are forgettable where they really should be seared onto your psyche.  It often feels like watching 26 short episodes of Inside No. 9 without the quality control, however a film featuring a scene as outright wrong as X is for Xylophone can’t be all bad.

We call it a night with our heads spinning from a combination of gore, Chinese food and rum, but satisfied with a day well spent doing absolutely nothing.

Mission: Imposspielberg Vol. 10 - Horses and Presidents

After a 3 year gap, Spielberg turned to an adaptation of a play about a horse. At the time, this was one of the rare occasions where I was not interested in seeing a Spielberg film at the cinema and War Horse remains a film I find it hard to care about.  After a recent re-watch, I still think there are good things about the film (for example, nobody stages a war scene like Spielberg), but a lot of ‘meh’ and overwrought sentiment and a hideous John Williams score signposting every emotion.

I’ll start with the negatives.  The film’s non-equine protagonist, Albert (Jeremy Irvine) is terrible.  Doe-eyed, insufferably optimistic, and with a horrible Devon accent, 20 minutes into the film you’re practically screaming at him to get laid.  He also vanishes out of the film for a good while, replaced initially by Tom Hiddleston’s army captain, who at least injects some charisma, then a nondescript group of German soldiers, and then a nondescript French family, and then some more Germans.  This is a strange move, Spielberg ditching his human protagonist and instead relying on the audience buying into successive characters’ mystical obsession with a horse.

The film’s climax, which reunites boy with horse, ties everything together a little too neatly, as the French farmer, having bought the horse for his beloved grandchild, bizarrely returns it to Albert. After War Of The Worlds and Minority Report both erring on the side of saccharine, War Horse fits into the pejorative category of a ‘Spielberg Ending’.

On the positive side it’s a technically amazing film, featuring some incredible cinematography courtesy of regular Spielberg collaborator (and full-on artist) Janusz Kaminski.  It also benefits from a largely brilliant cast, including Emily Watson and Peter Mullan as Albert’s parents, David Thewlis, Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Toby Kebbell who manages one of the few non-awful Geordie accents produced by a non-Geordie.  The familiar faces make the horse’s odyssey easier to follow.  The Somme scenes are incredible, Spielberg wisely refusing to make German soldiers outright bad guys as he does with his WW2-set films.  It’s not a criticism to say that War Horse has heart and is unashamedly sentimental; this is deliberate and the film fully commits to it, it’s just that while the world has become more cynical over time, Spielberg seems horribly naïve when he rose-tints the past.

Released the same year and envisioned as the first in a trilogy (with Peter Jackson taking over the reins of the follows ups), The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn is, for me, everything that the fourth Indiana Jones film should have been.  I’m not 100% sure how much ‘directing’ is involved in directing a cartoon and the third film running, I was questioning Spielberg’s choices.  Having been a fan of Herge’s comics as a kid, I had my worries that it would be ruined, but these turned out to be unfounded, as Spielberg delivered probably his most outright enjoyable film of his late phase.

Tintin himself (a motion capture an voice performance by Jamie Bell) isn’t perfect.  Too clean and too innocent, he would be an insufferable goody-two-shoes were it not for Spielberg and Bell fully committing to the character and the OTT nature of the story without so much as a wink to the camera.  I don’t think characters look particularly brilliant, falling uncomfortably with feet in both photo-real and comically unreal.  While Herge sold it time and again, it’s also hard to believe on film that a slender character (who looks about 14 years old), could carry out such amazing feats (and knock out a burly sailor with one punch).  Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s Thompson Twins are just the right side of incredibly annoying, but only just.

Despite that, Tintin is a very enjoyable film, never more so than when it follows Tintin’s dog Snowy.  Immune to the effects Mo-Cap has on human characters, Snowy allows Spielberg to have some real fun, with small pockets of suspense, wonderful grace notes and flourishes which give the film energy and a caper-ish quality.  In fact, the whole medium gives Spielberg fantastic license to up the ante on impossible set pieces and impressive long takes, none more so than Captain Haddock’s alcohol-induced ancestral flashbacks and the wonderfully ridiculous tank-bike-bird chase.

Andy Serkis’ Captain Haddock could easily have been a John Candy-like blundering irritant but he is given an arc, a story, and some genuine emotional heft.  Spielberg keeps the pace high throughout, the action suitably OTT and is faithful to the spirit of the comics.  So yeah, everything Crystal Skull should have been.

Since Schindler’s List, one theme Spielberg has returned to time and again is a moral man in immoral times.  Amistad, Bridge Of Spies and The Post all tell tales of men trying to do the right thing in the face of the powers of the time.  Lincoln continues this theme, telling the story of the passing of the 13^th Amendment, which precipitated the abolition of slavery in America. 

Here, despite the title, Spielberg does not opt for standard biopic fare, showing Abe’s youth, struggles, formative political years, elections etc.  Instead we join him in his mid-50s amid the Civil War and the film charts his dilemma: push legislation through that will forever end slavery but prolong the war, or seek peace with the Confederate states end the war and save thousands of lives, meaning slavery will continue.

When it comes to actors, there are two categories: Daniel Day Lewis, and everyone else.  Only clocking up 6 acting credits since the year 2000, he is picky about his projects and never less than brilliant.  Here, he makes Abe Lincoln a magnetic character: tall and deliberate, moving uneasily, and speaking calmly in a high register.  The rare occasions where he is given cause to raise his voice are devastating, including his “clothed in immense power!” speech, preceded by a frustrated, authoritative open hand hitting a table.  He is the epitome of grace, dignity, and confidence in his actions.  The one moment where he is forced to make his moral choice, push for the amendment or meet with the Confederate delegation to discuss peace terms, is the moment which stays with you, such is your faith in him.

He’s ably supported by a remarkable cast, including David Strathairn, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Jackie Earl Haley, Jared Harris, and a powerhouse Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens.  Casting recognisable faces across the board is a wise move (Oliver Stone did as much in the labyrinthine JFK) as it helps the audience follow difficult subject matter, and Lincoln is certainly not the easiest film to follow.  Unless you take a close interest in the mechanics of the American legislative process (in 1865), this is very dry material. 

The dialogue appears authentic, Aaron Sorkin this is not, with politicians hurling insults at one another in congress before making shady deals in back offices.  While the outcome is a good one, it’s not the most engaging or cinematic journey to get there, essentially amounting to politicians doing deals with and coercing one another, manipulating the media, and trying every dirty trick to push forward their agenda.  This is drama with conversations, not chases.  While, like Schindler, the character of Lincoln is probably somewhat whitewashed, Spielberg does well to keep him from being a saint.  For him, the end justifies the means, and the means include threats and lying to Congress. 

In a beautiful moment, Spielberg’s trademark ‘God Light’ floods into Lincoln’s chambers as he entertains his child, not betraying any nerves about the outcome of the final vote.  Spielberg shows relative visual restraint through, letting Kaminski’s luscious cinematography do the talking.

The main fault I had with Lincoln himself was that he spoke entirely in speeches and parables (it’s joked about at one point), and this becomes wearing by the end.  It’s also not really necessary to show that he died shortly after the result.  For me, a more fitting ending would have been seeing him walk away from his servant in that stooped gait of his, cutting back to the look of admiration on the servant’s face, but I suppose killing your main character by default stops this from being a ‘Spielberg Ending’.  That can only be a good thing these days.

Gig Review: Jamie Lenman, Newcastle Academy, 01/02/18

I was gutted when Jamie Lenman’s former band, Reuben, broke up.  Brilliant, endlessly inventive, but unfortunately not successful enough to sustain themselves, they called it a day after 3 studio albums.  Lenman apparently, to quote his own lyrics, “got a real job in the office.”

He returned in 2012 with ambitious double album Muscle Memory; a patchy mix of aggressive, abrasive songs, showcasing the scream heard in Reuben’s heavier moments, and gentler, folk-y tunes.  The heavy stuff neglected the melodic flourishes that made Reuben so special and the folk album did little for me.  Jump to 2017 and out of nowhere he returns with the stunning Devolver album, which is a riff-driven juggernaut where it needs to be, gentle in places, and unafraid to dabble in bold new sounds. And that about brings us up to date.

I realise how infrequently I visit the Academy these days as I walk into the sparsely populated upstairs venue.  A quick look at the listings shows why: at least half of the acts are tribute bands, and one of the upcoming original bands is the Insane Clown Posse.  There is still barely anyone in when opening band Loa Loa start playing.  The singer is wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt, and this tells you everything you need to know about them.  He sings in that gobby, tuneless manner that Britpop singers used to use, and I remember almost nothing else about them.

The place is filling up nicely when Gender Roles come on stage.  Looking like an in-their-prime Nirvana (tiny, bleached-haired guitarist, tall bassist, and energetic drummer with lank hair), they sound not unlike Seattle circa 1991, with moments of Dinosaur Jr., Mudhoney, and indeed Nirvana themselves.  They make an impressive noise and over the course of a 30 minute set, I’m sold.

It’s clear that there are some serious, hardcore Reuben fans in the venue, which has now filled out but nowhere near to capacity.  This doesn’t deter many from indulging in a moshpit as soon as Lenman walks on with the palm-muted staccato guitar that opens ‘Hardbeat’ playing over the PA.  Band-wise, it’s just Lenman and drummer Dan Kavanagh.  Both are dressed in white shirts and trousers, Lenman sporting the same faux-vintage hairstyle-moustache combo from his album cover.   He looks like one of the bartenders in those insufferable ‘shabby chic’ bars who call themselves mixologists but are actually just cunts.  I don’t like this kind of gimmickry, especially from a songwriter as good as Lenman, but if it helps him get noticed then fair play to him.

He starts the rhythmic, almost whispered verse to ‘Hardbeat’ and the place goes wild, adding flourishes with his guitar as the song builds.  It’s akin to an upbeat Nine Inch Nails song, eventually reaching a drum break, at which point Lenman joins Kavanagh on a 2^nd drumkit, adding fills galore before taking over the beat which Kavanagh takes his guitar to end the song.  Technically, we have a drum solo in the first song, but the whole thing is done with such charm and enjoyment, they get away with it.

‘Hell In A Fast Car’ follows, with its killer riffs and infectious chorus, and then – yes! – Reuben’s ‘A Kick In The Mouth’.  He dips into Muscle Memory for a brutal ‘One Of My Eyes Is A Clock’ and later ‘Tiny Lives’ but the set is mostly derived from the excellent Devolver.  ‘Waterloo Teeth’, ‘All Of England Is A City’, and a funky ‘I Don’t Know Anything’ are all aired before Reuben classic ‘Every Time A Teenager Listens To Drum And Bass A Rock Star Dies’ and an epic ‘Mississippi’ close the first set.

Lenman is in good form between songs, his banter ranging from genuine appreciation to mock arrogance, and all is supremely good humour.  The man is a fine singer and a human riff machine, but for the latter part of the show he returns to the stage alone to reel off renditions of ‘Devolver’, ‘It’s Hard To Be A Gentleman’, a wonderful ‘Bodypopping’ and ‘Pretty Please’ before signing off with a tongue in cheek ‘Let’s Stop Hanging Out’ to send the crowd away.

Lenman is one of England’s finest songwriters, a fantastic performer, and has a small but extremely dedicated army of fans.  We all leave thoroughly entertained by both nostalgia and a selection of sublime new songs.  He’s back, and you should take notice.

Last, But Not Ultimate - Some thoughts on The Last Jedi and far away galaxies

There are few cinematic experiences that can recreate the feeling of being a kid.  There is a rare thrill to be had when the Jurassic Park soundtrack for the first time in years, or when you hear the Indiana Jones theme swell (whatever the quality of the film…).  One of the few film series able to summon both nostalgia and cultural currency is Star Wars.  Once thought dead and buried under three prequels worth of George Lucas’ self indulgence, it has awoken thanks (whatever you may think of their influence) to Disney’s desire to build a new franchise.

Now this emotional connection is a huge part of the enjoyment of Star Wars; the ability to conjure childhood memories while showing you exciting new things, occurs almost nowhere else in popular culture.  It is also a huge problem, for example when filmmakers have the audacity to try new things.  George Lucas, who in fairness is free to do whatever the hell he wants with Star Wars,  was guilty of introducing ‘midichlorians’, offering a physical explanation for the force.  Swing and a miss in trying to demystify the mysterious.  New is not always welcome when you’re messing with somebody’s childhood love.

 JJ Abrams’ The Force Awakens nailed everything you would want from a Star Wars film: the light tone, the overwhelming enemy and underdog resistance, dogfights and lightsabre battles, the hint at something grander and more mysterious at work.  However, the main criticism levelled at the 2015 film (aside from pube-less misogynist keyboard warriors complaining about an all-powerful female character, and using their mother’s Wi-Fi to do so) was that it was, beat-for-beat, a cover version of A New Hope, even down to the tragic character death.  It also managed a tricky feat, which remakes, reboots, and retcons (the recent Alien films, Indiana Jones 4, any remake of a Paul Verhoeven film) tend to get horribly wrong: adding engaging new characters that you actually cared about.

Filmmakers now find themselves in a bind, tightened by competing factions of nerds, whose complaints are directly contradictory: don’t change anything about the thing I love, but make each one different to what we’ve seen before.  Rogue One, whose function was to plug a gap between episodes and not further the main story, is excused from criticism by virtue of being totally awesome.

And so we come to The Last Jedi.  After a largely positive reaction to TFA, the anticipation levels were higher than Anakin’s midichlorian count.  Speculation mounted that it would be ‘the dark middle film’ like Empire Strikes Back, that villain Snoke would be [insert ludicrous theory here], and that Rey’s family would definitely, without question, be powerful Jedi knights that we’d seen before (despite them all being dead and the 30-year time difference making no sense).

As done with the original trilogy, directorial duties had been handed off, this time to Rian Johnson; a man whose films tend not to feature much levity and have genre boundaries greyer than Skywalker’s beard.  Surprisingly, Johnson has made a very light film: from the priceless moment where Poe Dameron throws some shade the way of General Hux by pretending to be on hold and not hear his monologue of threats, to General Leia’s “what are you looking at me for? Follow him!” there are just enough funny beats.  This is important: if you don’t add levity like this, you run the risk of lengthy conversations about senates and trade embargoes.  Films about telekinetic space monks, intergalactic war, and a yeti with a crossbow, which borrow heavily from Hamlet and Kurusawa need a dose of humour. Po-faced doesn’t gel with porgs, wookies, and a goblin with poor syntax, so the humorous tone is just what is needed.  My favourite part: Chewie cooking a porg in front of horrified on looking porgs.

Plot-wise, this is a very different beast to what we’ve seen before.  A thoroughly pissed-off First Order are closing in on the remnants of the Rebellion and despite an early victory, the rebels find themselves pursued by Snoke’s ship, with dwindling fuel and an against-the-orders scheme the only way for them to get away.  It annoyed me that despite seeing several Rebel ships escape at the start of the film, we are told that there are only three remaining.  This adds an element of peril but feels cheap.  The Rebel escape plan is the film’s weakest part: John Boyega’s Finn finds himself on an opulent casino planet with an irritating sidekick, looking for a codebreaker who can facilitate the Rebel escape.  This whose sequence suffers from an abundance of needless CGI animals and a class-war subtext which just doesn’t fit.  Subsequent plot developments also render it pointless.

The film opens and closes really well but suffers from a huge lull in the middle, including the above casino planet sequence.  Part of this lull is the anticipated Rey-and-Luke part, in which Luke refuses and then agrees to train Rey as a Jedi, and his recluse status is explained.  An underrated actor – Luke had the biggest character arc of the original trilogy – Mark Hamill does his best work here as a traumatised, conflicted Luke.  Following the path taken by both Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi, his failures and fears have driven him to seclusion and forced him to turn his back on The Force.  With hints that Rey could follow Kylo Ren’s route to the Dark Side, and Luke’s fear of that exact thing, this makes for a fascinating deepening of Rey’s story but is very dialogue heavy.  The rumoured attack by the Knights of Ren doesn’t happen but this part of the film desperately needed something like that.  Luke’s nonchalant dismissal of his own lightsabre, however, is priceless.

As Rebel plans come to a head, we see a failed mutiny, a failed stealth mission, and a semi-failed escape, all of which add to the increasing sense of peril.  The identity of Supreme Leader Snoke was the source of much rumour-mongering and those same nerds will be disappointed that he isn’t given more of a backstory.  What he is given, however, is a huge amount of power and a strange vulnerability.  His desire to recruit blank-slate Rey as his new apprentice leads to him shunning Kylo and ultimately his death.  A sucker for a great villain, I would have liked to see more from him, but his death will lead to the conflicted Klyo’s ascension to Big Bad.  His death leads to the coolest lightsabre battle seen in a good while but he feels kind of underused, in that Kylo doesn’t seem any more powerful for it.

Changes to Luke’s character have been one of the more complained-about subjects, however these make perfect sense when the full picture is revealed.  Both Yoda and Kenobi ran and hid from their fears and failures.  Luke and Kylo give slightly differing accounts of what happened (another Kurusawa reference, samurai fans), and Luke’s arc reaches a satisfying conclusion when he embraces his position and returns to the fray.  His ruse makes for a wonderful moment where he faces down Kylo with faint echoes of Kenobi taking on Vader.  Yes, Luke’s character is different and Johnson’s choices for him are iconoclastic, but that’s what makes it so good.

The best thing about The Last Jedi is its bravery in ignoring the expectations and doing new things with the characters.  There are no set rules for what The Force can or cannot do, or where this universe can or cannot go, and Kudos for Johnson for making what feels like a complete film and not just filler material between episodes 7 and 9.  The final episode can be approached with a blank slate and two opposing forces whose allegiances to Light and Dark are not 100% clear.  What he doesn’t do so well is keep the pace for the duration.  There is also the strange treatment of Carrie Fisher in what turned out to be her final role.  The decision not to kill Leia when the chance was presented remains one of the film’s weakest moments: it’s silly, confusing, has very limited foregrounding in the previous films (although it’s hinted that Leia is force-sensitive), and given Fisher’s tragic passing, now impossible to follow up.

Like Skywalker himself, it isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough to sit alongside the greats, even if there are moments of madness.  Where we go from here is, again, tantalisingly far, far away from being known.

Is It A Wonderful Life..? Ruining a Christmas classic

Newcastle boasts a fine independent cinema (The Tyneside) and one of its finest events is the annual screening of Frank Capra’s 1946 masterpiece It’s A Wonderful Life in the weeks leading to Christmas.  Massively popular, each year thousands of punters turn up to watch James Stewart’s George Bailey lose and then spectacularly recover his will to live, and in doing so help an angel get his wings.  70 years on and it has lost not an ounce of its power to fill the viewer full of hope and make them appreciate the good will of their fellow man.  For me, seeing It’s A Wonderful Life here marks the start of Christmas, and hopefully the only time of the year where I cry in public.

The gut reaction is that this is a wholly good and hopeful fable about a man who sacrifices himself time and again for the good of his town, and is rewarded for it in his time of need.  It makes you feel warm inside and makes you want to do good things; it reminds you that a kinder world is a better world.  And don’t get me wrong, this is the appropriate reaction to this film.  But I am now going to try to spoil it for you, so please stop reading if you don’t want your next Christmas ruined by a blogger who probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Made after World War 2, at a time when Capra and Stewart wanted to make people feel better after the world had been devastated by Holocaust, war and nuclear bombs.  The world was in a mess and people were struggling to cope with incalculable horrors, so a film culminating in an overwhelmingly positive message really meant something.  But consider George Bailey’s character: all he wanted to do was “shake off the dust of this crummy little town and see the world!” and by the time the story ends that’s the one thing he hasn’t done.  Bailey is our protagonist; Stewart, the ultimate everyman, is noble and normal, not what you’d classically call heroic.  As our onscreen proxy, he singularly fails to achieve any of his ambitions.  He never leaves Bedford Falls, never sees the world, never does what he so dearly wanted to do.  For such a wholly good man, he is not rewarded by getting the one thing he desires.  While this self-sacrifice, and the power of the individual, is largely what Capra is promoting as important, there is something very sad about George Bailey’s geostationary life.

In cinema, America often has a problem with small towns. Davids Lynch and Cronenberg used them as settings for violent and downright bizarre events in Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and A History Of Violence. Hitchcock used one as a murderer’s hiding place in Shadow Of A Doubt. Viewing them as a microcosm for the larger society, films like Invasion of The Body Snatchers made barely masked political statements about perceived dangers of communism.  Bedford Falls is squarely aligned with the latter, with Capra using the town to demonstrate the importance of collaboration, of sacrifice, and of seeing your own importance to the rest of society.  What this implicitly does is criticise the self-interest and ambition that goes hand in hand with American capitalism.  That’s right: the all-American, staunchly Republican James Stewart made a pro-Socialist Christmas film.

Although the equally-Republican Capra likely saw his films as demonstrating a stance against corruption and in favour of individualism, it’s possible to view It’s A Wonderful Life as promoting social endeavour (the Bailey Building and Loan a ‘thorn in the side’ of the bank).  Imagine for a moment what an individualist George Bailey would do; a fully Capitalist George Bailey would not make his raison d’etre the welfare of a small town that he sees as a millstone around his neck.  A George Bailey following an American individualist ideology would have left Bedford Falls, made a fortune, and allowed that money to trickle on down to his former neighbours. But Carpa’s film preaches that there is more moral value in helping society than oneself; the antithesis of what would become the Reaganite mantra 40 years later.

The character of Potter would surely represent Capra and Stewart’s Republican ideal.  Somewhere between the Monopoly Man and Donald Trump, he is the arch Capitalist, loathsome and alone.  Capra even presents him in a Satanic light: the scene where he attempts to buy off George Bailey only to be thwarted by a handshake, Potter’s name is kept in frame, written in reverse. The fantasy of Pottersville, a sleazy, base version of Bedford Falls, is Capra’s warning about the danger of rampant capitalism leading to moral decay.  In short, Las Vegas.  What Potter represents is thus: there is only evil in the accumulation of wealth, in living life for oneself, yet there is nobility in poverty.  In a classical sense, this is not what you would call The American Way, but a humane, socially conscious view of life.  If I were Senator McCarthy, I would be starting my witch hunt at Carpa’s office.

Politics aside, why does It’s A Wonderful Life seem better with each passing year?  It seems to be because there’s an inversely proportionate relationship between it, and how wonderful life actually is.  Life gets harder, we live under increasing pressure to earn, to do the best for ourselves, and see the increasing damage done by Potter’s progeny across the world.  Pottersville is spreading, and there is an increasing need to cling to something wholly good and innocent.  We need more George Baileys; people who will put the needs of others before their own.

So while I’m doing my best to ruin what is probably the best Christmas film for you, I still love it, love what it means, and love how for 2 hours it can transport you into a more wonderful version of life.  For you, for me, for everyone in Bedford Falls; for everyone except George Bailey. 

Gig Review: Enter Shikari, Newcastle Arena 19/11/17

I wasn’t a fan of Enter Shikari until recently.  A term which is vastly and lazily overused, ‘crossover’ music held no appeal to me when they debuted in 2007.  While by definition not a genre itself, crossover was something that had been done to death: take a dash of Genre A and add to a bowl of Genre B, simmering until the public gets bored… All I heard when their debut, Take To The Skies was released was an album of pseudo-hardcore riffs with that one keyboard sound they use in trance music played over the top.  It wasn’t until I saw the video for ‘Arguing With Thermometers’ that I saw how far they had come.  Genres now woven seamlessly together rather than just played atop one another, and the song had more bite and satire.  Debut album aside, I was converted.

As much as they are now established as one of Britain’s biggest rock bands this side of Biffy Clyro, they are still this side of Biffy and as such haven’t really sold enough records to justify playing the Arena.  I was curious.

Newcastle’s worst venue was less awful than usual tonight, with about half of the floor in use and the side seats curtained off it was more intimate than the cavernous shell that this place normally becomes.   I arrive as opening band Astroid Boys are starting and immediately wish I had stayed in the pub for another half an hour.  There are six of them on stage: 3 rappers, two of whom shout the last word of every line while the other does all the work; a guy on turntables, who seems to cue all of the music up on a laptop and never changes the record (whichever way you cut it, this constitutes cheating at a live show); a drummer, who is decent; and a guitar player who embellishes their songs with power chords and looks embarrassed to be there.  They look and sound like charvers and are truly awful.

Next up is Lower Than Atlantis, whose singer Mike Duce bounds onstage full of energy and attitude, but whose set is less than brilliant.  Their last two albums have seen a marked change of direction into more overt pop-rock territory and while 2014’s Lower Than Atlantis boasted some fine songs, this year’s Safe In Sound is dull.  Their entire set is drawn from these two albums and while the songs are made for this kind of venue, they are hardly the best material this band has produced.  They play well, but the whole things feels too polished, and I maintain that ‘Emily’ is a boyband song with the guitars turned only slightly up…

The crowd has padded out a bit when Glen Miller-style swing and a First World War-style countdown plays over the PA, announcing 10 minutes until The Spark commences.  10 minutes later, Shikari have Entered and opened with recent single ‘The Sights’.  It’s infectious, catchy, and the audience laps it up.  It’s testament to the standard of their recent output that songs from The Spark and The Mindsweep are the best on display, with a punky ‘Take My Country Back’ (probably the most uplifting chorus of the year), the flawless stylistic fusion of ‘Rabble Rouser’, and a stunning ‘The Last Garrison’ highlights of the set.

Despite a sample malfunction causing a false start during ‘Undercover Agents’, which the band handles with good humour despite the obvious complexity of restarting the song, they are impeccable.  Rou Richards is in fine voice and his livewire performance suits the large venue.  Effortlessly switching from his regular croon to rap, falsetto, and a low baritone, he is a box of vocal tricks and this adds textures and a sense of humour to what might otherwise be very dry, political material.  He’s ably supported by impeccably-dressed bass player Chris Batten.

Although they use the None-More-U2 cliché of Reynolds and drummer Rob Rolfe moving to the back of the venue for a couple of numbers (ballads ‘Airfield’ and ‘Adieu’), they have enough charm to pull this off, and when you can go straight into a song as good as ‘Anaesthetist’ (a war cry against for-profit healthcare) you can get away with such things.  Reynolds then introduces the “quickfire round”, comprising of 4 songs in 8 minutes; we get ‘Sorry You’re Not A Winner’, ‘Sssnakepit’, ‘…Meltdown’, and ‘Antwerpen’ and the place goes mental.

Despite my reservations about them playing a venue of this size, it’s clear that Shikari are a stadium band without a stadium audience.  Their stage set up and lightshow are impressive and befitting a large arena.  They create a party atmosphere while hitting you with the sort of irony and subtext that the likes of Pitchshifter used to toss out at will.  They end with a riff-heavy ‘Zzzonked’ before returning for the euphoric ‘Redshift’ and close with catchy recent single ‘Live Outside’.

Enter Shikari offer a positive message, a good time vibe, a sense of humour, a fantastic back catalogue, and a furious political message.  They are one of the few bands not to rest on their laurels and repeat themselves.  In many ways, it’s a shame that they aren’t filling venues like this but as long as they can play them at all, I’ll take what I can get and I recommend you do too.

Film Review: Justice League

It’s probably fair to say that your expectations going into something can affect your enjoyment of it.  I had super-high expectations of Warner Bros’-DC’s previous tentpole event movie, Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, and despite several viewings and multiple chances given I still find it dull, incoherent, with undersold drama and poor CGI.  It seemed to exist not to tell a story on its own, but to foreshadow something bigger, and that left it hugely unsatisfying.  As I mentioned in my review at the time, Marvel had earned their right to a crossover with several smaller films to introduce characters, featuring knowing nods to the camera.  Marvel were taking their time with foreplay; DC were rushing in dry.

That said, BvS had its moments; admittedly not too many of them for a long film, but enough to stop me from completing hating it completely.  Warner-DC’s endgame was Justice League.  After the clusterfuck of Suicide Squad (although I did enjoy Wonder Woman) I was going in with rock bottom expectations, but a decent spark of excitement.  I mean, how could a geek like not be excited for a film featuring Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Aquaman fighting together?  And I suppose world’s dullest superhero, Superman, would be in it, too.

My rock bottom expectations had been informed by the curse of knowing too much.  Firstly, the previous films DC hadn’t exactly been brilliant; Chris Nolan’s high benchmark in terms of drama and tone had not been matched.  They could surprise, while even Wonder Woman was very ‘stock’, fun as it was.  Secondly, a notoriously difficult shoot with rumours of almost daily script revisions, extensive reshoots (I tried ever so hard not to mention Henry Cavill’s moustache, but here we are…) and the tragic circumstances behind Zack Snyder’s departure and replacement.  These things don’t exactly scream cohesion.  Thirdly, the dangers of giving new characters short shrift, best demonstrated by most of the X-Men films, in which major characters are briefly introduced and given too little to do.  DC clearly have big plans for major players like Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg but the rush to their moneyshot has meant the only introduction we’ve had was Bruce Wayne watching some secret YouTube videos of them.  Justice League has a lot of work to do before it even gets entertaining.

I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed it.  I certainly didn’t hate it; like the predecessors, there were moments, but there were far more problems than there were moments.  I’ll start with the villain.  Who could DC put in the way of a team  consisting of six super powered people? Darkseid is being saved for the future, so Lex Luthor, Bizarro, Metallo, Brainiac?  They went with Steppenwolf. No, me neither.  A poorly-rendered CGI Ciaran Hinds as a dull megalomaniac with a big axe and an army of humanoid insects who feed on fear.  His motivations are sketchy, his dialogue is sub-Bond villain scenery chewing.  He’s stronger than 5 of the 6 members (no prizes for guessing which one can take him) and he looks awful.  Counting Doomsday, Ares, and whatever that thing was in Suicide Squad, he’s now the 4^th consecutive characterless CGI armoured monster (with horns) to be thrown up by the DC villain machine.

Then there are the heroes.  The most interesting character, Batman, unites the team but is (perhaps rightly) left behind during much of the action as the actual super heroes do their thing.  He’s pleasingly battle-scarred and knows he’s outgunned.  Wonder Woman is the pick of the bunch; both the most interesting character, bringing Themyscerian vengeance to Steppenwolf, and enjoying the best of the set piece action.  Ezra Miler does well enough with The Flash, although his best bits are all in the trailers.  He’s fun, wide eyed and here are some touching moments between him and his father (Billy Crudup).  Jason Momoa’s Aquaman is terrible.  There is a character in pointless spoof Not Another Teen Movie who identifies only as “token black guy”, whose only job is to stand in the background and say things like “damn”, and “that shit is whack”.  That is all of Aquaman’s dialogue.  Cyborg, whose proximity to the silly-sounding ‘Mother Box’ Macguffins should have made him the heart of the film, is dull at best and so poorly-rendered he makes The Phantom Menace look like Terminator 2.

The dynamic between them doesn’t feel complete, either.  Mostly reluctant to join Batman’s super-team, they all fall into place where required and bicker over nothing much before falling into place just as the story requires.  A fight with the newly resurrected Superman is fun but still overstates his power set and ends with a predictable move.

Plot-wise, there is nothing you haven’t seen before here.  The drama is undersold and we never get a sense of threat.  Steppenwolf, we are told via flashback, is trying to unite three Ark-Of-The-Covenant boxes whose combined power will… do something bad to Earth, presumably involving the exponential spread of purple crystalline worm things.  He mentions Darkseid at one point.  In fact, I only know what he’s attempting to do because I read up on it before seeing the film.  The climactic battle is an anti-climax which fizzles where it should explode.

So as one might expect, a troubled shoot in a rushed overall project, two different directorial approaches (although I think Joss Whedon’s input as director has been overstated), and some very strange choices do not make for a cohesive film.  I tip my hat to the film giving Superman some decent one liners and keeping Wonder Woman front and centre, but there just isn’t enough here to carry what should have been the film event of this or most other years.  My low expectations have probably sullied by enjoyment, but being so low to begin with, Justice League didn’t even come close.  It’s an opportunity fumbled, made worse by poor choices in previous films and the lack of a singular vision at studio level.  And one last thing: Henry Cavill’s moustache, for fuck’s sake…

Film Review: My take on Aronofsky's mother!

When a film carries a reputation before it even comes out and then divides opinion down the middle, it’s hard to steer clear of snippets of information before you see it.  Such was the case with Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, which has gained headlines for putting star Jennifer Lawrence through the wringer and for being batshit crazy.  I’m going to attempt to get to the bottom of what this unique, difficult, and visceral film is all about.  I probably won’t be right, but one of the remarkable things about mother!, is that interpretation is not just invited, but essential to enjoying it.

My gut reaction on leaving the cinema was that it was like watching an escalating panic attack.  Cinematically, Aronofsky has outdone the gut punches he threw with Requiem For A Dream and Black Swan, adding an acute sensation of drowning in anxiety.  The entire film is set within an impressively complex octagonal house; that we never leave is important to my interpretation, but I’ll get to that later. Boasting impeccable production design, mother! is meticulously constructed with the express intention of keeping you on edge, and then sharpening the edge.  Creaking floors, unpredictable water pipes, and the unpleasant sound of glass rubbing on glass are almost constant, and this is aside from J-Law’s nameless character often seeing a decaying heart through the walls.

The ‘plot’ (loose as it is) sees Lawrence trying to restore husband Javier Bardem’s fire-damaged house.  Uninvited visitors arrive, preventing her work, while he (a respected poet) does none anyway.  An unnamed Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer arrive and befriend Bardem; drinking and smoking, they are passive-aggressive towards Lawrence and ignore her every request.  They go to Bardem’s forbidden writing room, which contains a strange, brittle crystal, implied to be his inspiration.  They break it, and then when told to leave go to their room and have sex instead.   Their children and extended family arrive and won’t leave when Lawrence asks them to (often asking if this was his decision, as though hers doesn’t count). This escalates to a point where the endless guests, mostly ignoring her or carrying out unrequested decorating on her behalf, sit on an unfinished sink and cause a flood.  Cue Lawrence going apeshit and making them leave (although they still look at her like she’s overreacting).  Lawrence and Bardem have sex and she wakes up instinctively knowing that she’s pregnant; this inspires Bardem to write like a man possessed.

Jump forward 9 months and Lawrence is ready to drop, while Bardem’s poem is finished.  Believing it to be his best work, within minutes of completion it starts to attract increasingly sycophantic and fanatical readers to the house.  He basks in the adulation, but Lawrence can’t keep them out of the house (again), and they start to become abusive.  Now… if at this point you’re taking any of the film literally, you will be thinking that mother! is baffling, annoying, and probably a little silly.  The fans, including Kristen Wiig’s publicist, start to debate the meaning of the poem, form factions over its meaning, then execute opposing factions, then a full-on war breaks out.  All the while, Lawrence is trying to find somewhere quiet so she can give birth.

Baffled by her husband’s behaviour, she refuses to hand the child over to him, fearing what he’ll do.  She falls asleep and he takes it, handing it over to the waiting mob… who proceed to kill, eviscerate and eat the baby.  Her protests result in her being called a whore and beaten by the fanatical crowd.  Angry, she retreats to the basement and uses Ed Harris’ lost cigarette lighter to ignite heating oil and destroy the house.  An unharmed Bardem pulls out her heart, from which he then finds another crystal.  The film ends with the same shot that began it: ‘mother’ waking in her bed, only this time played by a different actress.

I don’t normally describe the whole plot in these things, but in this case the details are important.  My take is that mother! roughly, loosely tells the story of the bible from Genesis to Revelations, but from the point of view of Mother Nature (Lawrence).  The house represents Earth (Lawrence states that she wants to make it a paradise), hence Lawrence can’t leave it.  Bardem’s study, the Garden of Eden.

Bardem plays God; proud, resting on his laurels, and bathing in the adulation of his followers.  His poem is the bible (or another holy text) – a throwaway line states that everybody takes its meaning differently.  Harris and Pfeiffer are Adam & Eve; entering the forbidden room, breaking something they shouldn’t have touched then popping off for a shag.  Their warring children, obsessed with inheritance and legacy, are Cain and Abel.  Those who follow are the human race; going with this reading of the film, Aronofsky clearly has little affection for his species as they ignore, destroy and abuse nature content as long as they think their God is happy and welcoming.  This phase of the film ends with a flood (his previous film, Noah, didn’t do it this well) which empties the house.

The second phase of the film, once ‘mother’ is pregnant, tells the tale of organised religion.  Factions form based on differing interpretations, they fight, and the house becomes dangerously overpopulated, all he while ‘mother’ is shunned and abused, the film becomes overwhelming to watch.  Bardem often refers to her as his Goddess; one might see this as simply affectionate but nothing else about his behaviour supports this.   The most horrific part of the film centres around the baby; the crowd stops their violence in anticipation of the 2^nd coming, and then promptly resumes, and the unrepentant nastiness that follows can be read as the origins of the Catholic church.

Rather than just telling the bible story as a lengthy metaphor, Aronofsky seems intent on making a point.  That point is up for debate but here are a few suggestions:

That Lawrence’s Mother Nature character is shunned, ignored, abused, and her creation trampled by countless brainwashed humans, plays into Aronofsky’s well publicised environmental concerns.  His message may be that if we continue down this road – too much respect for a lazy, egotistical God and not enough for the goddess who does all the actual work in sustaining our world – she will turn on us and we will then be promptly fucked, and God will not care.  mother! can also be read as a warning about the dangers of an increasingly misogynistic world.  Everybody, even female characters, take Bardem seriously, love and respect him, but patronise and ignore the actual creative force.  Even when she creates life, all anybody cares about is that it came from him.  Probably the most personal reading is that Aronofsky is commenting on the creative process itself: nobody cares about the muse, only the poet, whose success causes the neglect and destruction of the muse.  The poet then moves on to another muse.

mother!, while horrific, is not a horror film.  It owes a huge debt to Polanski: the claustrophobia and ‘living’ rooms of Repulsion, and the bleak commentary on motherhood that pervades Rosemary’s Baby.  It trusts the audience to go along with the metaphor – taking it literally will mean not taking it seriously.  On an emotional level, it is a cinematic masterpiece; if you let mother! in, it will make you feel something and leave you different to how it found you.  And that is the essence of all great art, and like all great art, nobody says it has to be pretty.