Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Written by Chris Weitz
Following the success of their live-action adaptation of their animated classic Alice in Wonderland back in 2010, Walt Disney Pictures has begun giving several more films from its library of animated movies the live-action treatment, complete with a 21st century sensibility. Last year they came out with Maleficent, a retelling of 1955's Sleeping Beauty which basically turned the movie on its head, making Maleficent, previously the antagonist of the animated film, into the hero of the live-action film. This year, they've taken a slightly less radical approach with their latest live-action update of Cinderella, starring Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) as the evil stepmother and Lily James (Downton Abbey) as the title character.
The story is essentially as I remember it: Ella (James, played by Eloise Webb in her childhood) is the only child of a kind, landed colonialist (Ben Chaplin) and his wife (Hayley Atwell). After her mother dies tragically of illness, her father remarries. His new wife, the widow of a former business partner, is the cruel, haughty Lady Tremaine (Blanchett) who promptly moves in with her two daughters Anastasia (Holliday Grainger) and Drizella (Sophie McShera) and proceeds to make Ella's life miserable while her father is away on his frequent business trips. Then, tragedy strikes anew, and Ella is left alone with her stepmother and her stepsisters, and things really get nasty as Tremaine dismisses all of the household staff to save money, and turns her stepdaughter into the household's only servant. Things couldn't possibly get worse for poor Ella, who at one point is dubbed "Cinderella" by one of her stepsisters after she spends one cold night sleeping by the hearth rather than her usual drafty room in the attic and wakes up with ashes all over her face, but for all of that she tries to stay kind to her new mother and stepsisters, and refuses to leave the house which her parents cherished, and which had been in her father's family for generations. After one episode of particular cruelty Ella rides out of her house to escape for a few moments, and meets the prince (Richard Madden of Game of Thrones fame) who is out hunting. She helps the stag he is hunting get away, and then enchants him with her protestation against the very concept of hunting, just before she leaves without even giving her name. The prince is utterly taken with her, so much so that he holds a grand ball open to everyone in the kingdom just to find her. Tremaine is determined to have one of her daughters snag the prince, but even though the prince himself has "democratized" the ball so that anyone and everyone can go, the evil stepmother and stepsisters live up to their billing and prevent Cinderella from going, ripping up her mother's dress and leaving her sobbing. It is then that Cinderella's fairy godmother (a scene-stealing Helena Bonham Carter) disguised at first as an old crone, to whom a despondent Ella gives a cup of milk in spite of her abject misery, appears, and gives Ella everything she needs for the night of her life: the coach, the footmen, the driver, her dress, and of course, her glass slippers (which, the fairy godmother assures her, are quite comfortable). Cinderella goes to the ball, meets the prince who recognizes her instantly and thereafter, but for a few twists thrown in to update the story a little bit, things play out just as anyone who's seen the old cartoon would expect them to.
As I write this, I find myself remembering Andy Tennant's 1998 film Ever After the last live-action retelling of the Cinderella story that I watched because I was quite honestly struck by how it had managed to influence this film. From the period garb to the prince played by a Scottish actor (Dougray Scott was Drew Barrymore's prince there) to, most importantly, the much more outspoken Cinderella. Branagh's updating of the story is hardly the somewhat progressive take on the lore that Tennant's film managed to be, but it does make some pretty important changes to the storytelling. This incarnation of Cinderella is considerably more empowered than her animated incarnation of over half a century ago.
At its heart, though, the story is still about a girl meeting a boy, falling for him, then getting him in rather short order. I have to credit screenwriter Weitz with his attempts to throw nuance into a 112-minute kids' movie by beefing up Cinderella's back-story as well as that of Prince Charm--excuse me, Kit--who now has more screen time with his father, the king (Derek Jacobi), and a somewhat trying relationship that vaguely evokes Branagh's fondness for Shakespeare.
While the tweaks to the story, while crucial, are still minimal, from a technical perspective Branagh truly brings the film into the new millennium with some amazing production value. This is a cartoon fairy tale brought to life, and Branagh, having cut his teeth on the mega-budgeted Marvel blockbuster Thor four years ago, does an excellent job visualizing that. This film is beautiful to look at.
Lily James is quite capable her role as Ella, and truth be told I enjoyed her performance all the more thanks to her lovely accent. Neil Patrick Harris was right; everything does sound better with a British accent (or at least, fairy tales do). It was also nice that Cinderella got to show acts of kindness other than feeding talking mice. Helena Bonham Carter was an absolute joy as the fairy godmother, and her screen-time was way, way too brief. I would have wanted her to at least show up again at the end, although she was the narrator all throughout. Cate Blanchett looked like she had a grand old time chewing the scenery as the wicked stepmother, especially in her outlandish, anachronistic outfits. Madden and Jacobi strike up a nice father-son rapport, too, but really, it's all about the ladies here.
Interestingly, it became clear at one point that this movie was not set in 18th century France but in a time and place of the filmmakers' own making, where clothes from various eras and people from various cultures and climes were basically all smashed together.
The thing about this PC overload, however, which hearkens back to 2013's Oz the Great and Powerful is that it feels like pandering of sorts. It's also worth noting that the first persons of color we see in the film are the servants of Ella and her family. Now, I'm all for equal representation in Hollywood, but this was rather patronizing, and a little hypocritical as well, considering that the lead characters were still white. The "diverse" cast ended up looking like employees at Disneyland rather than the ambassadors for racial equality they were probably meant to be.
Finally, as lovely as Patrick Doyle's music score was, I found it a bit overbearing; his orchestra was blaring for the vast majority of the running time as if to compensate for the absence of the show tunes that were such a staple of the first film. The only singing here was some wistful warbling by Cinderella's mother, and later, Cinderella herself (though James does a wonderful cover of "A Dream is a Wish" which plays during the end credits). Make no mistake, Doyle's music was beautiful, but it was also a bit cloying at times.
Speaking of cloying, I was amused by the animated short that preceded the film, Frozen Fever a sequel of sorts to Disney's billion-dollar grossing megahit from 2013, but I was also struck by the blatantly by-the-numbers approach employed in making it. It reproduced, in a few short minutes, most of the things that kids loved about the movie, from the song number between Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell) to the sisterly love, to Anna's messed up hair, to Olaf's childlike demeanor, to Kristoff's clumsiness, to...well you get the picture. They even managed to sneak in a line from "Let it Go." I dearly hope the recently announced sequel takes the characters into new territory. Still, as a short this film was a nice little confection.
All told Cinderella is worth watching, especially for the people who grew up with the cartoon. Frozen Fever isn't half bad, either.
7/10
Monday, March 16, 2015
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Thank You for the Music, Marvel
Amid the glut of hype for the impending megablockbuster The Avengers: Age of Ultron, there is one news item that is of particular interest to me: Danny Elfman will be involved with writing some music for the movie.
For the uninitiated, Danny Elfman is something of a god among fans of comic book-based movies, having written well-loved music for both Tim Burton's Batman films and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films. He's a frequent collaborator of both directors and there are few directors more respected in terms of genre filmmaking.
When Sony hired Elfman to write the music for Raimi's movies, I rejoiced because it was clear that they were serious in their respect for a truly iconic character. I was a little let down by the theme he eventually wrote but overall he turned in solid work for two whole movies. Whatever damage Sony may have done to the credibility of the Spider-Man franchise over the years, Elfman's reputation as a craftsman remained intact.
When Marvel Studios launched their unprecedented, sprawling cinematic universe with Iron Man back in 2008, they got a lot of things right, most of them in fact, but one aspect of filmmaking that was sorely neglected was, to my mind, one of the most important: the music. To compose the score for the first Iron Man, they hired composer Ramin Djawadi (of eventual Game of Thrones fame), whose work on the film was sadly, utterly generic. So forgettable was the music, in fact, that when Djawadi was replaced two years later with John Debney, no one seemed to care.
In 2011, however, Marvel finally seemed to understand the importance of some solid musical scoring, and hired veteran composer Alan Silvestri to write the theme of Captain America: The First Avenger, and more critically The Avengers. The former was a delight to listen to and hearkened back to the rousing, marching-band appeal of the old Indiana Jones movies, but the latter was much more important, because The Avengers is, all exaggeration aside, the centerpiece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It had to have a theme that was no less than iconic, and to Silvestri's credit, he achieved just that with his theme, which was right up there, I would say, with his work on Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future movies. The Avengers has become the most successful comic-book based movie of all time, and people started humming the theme and even started covering it. (This one's my favorite).
Then, inexplicably, Marvel replaced Silvestri for what portends to be one of the biggest sequels of all time with Brian Tyler, best known for his work on the Fast and Furious movies, and who had already done work for Marvel on Iron Man 3, and Thor: The Dark World. So enamored is Marvel with Tyler, in fact, that he has even composed the "Marvel fanfare" that plays at the beginning of every film. The problem with Tyler is that his music is, even more than Ramin Djawadi, extremely generic, and in fact, his music last year for the distinctly non-Marvel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles remake sounded like he had basically lifted it from all of his Marvel music. By giving him their most important movie franchise to score, Marvel was essentially saying something like "all of them sound the same, anyway," and apparently taking a giant dump on the importance of iconic film scores. I suspected that Tyler was a relatively cheap composer, and that this was at the heart of the decision.
Then, Danny Elfman's name appeared on the final "Avengers" poster as providing "additional music." As it turns out, this meant he was brought on board to "refresh" Alan Silvestri's original theme. Apparently, Marvel has finally noticed how cookie-cutter Brian Tyler's music is as well.
That Elfman has been brought on board, however, is a source of relief for me, and while I would have preferred Silvestri to have stayed on board, it's enough for me that Marvel has shown interest in some sort of musical continuity. It's the thought that counts.
For the uninitiated, Danny Elfman is something of a god among fans of comic book-based movies, having written well-loved music for both Tim Burton's Batman films and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films. He's a frequent collaborator of both directors and there are few directors more respected in terms of genre filmmaking.
When Sony hired Elfman to write the music for Raimi's movies, I rejoiced because it was clear that they were serious in their respect for a truly iconic character. I was a little let down by the theme he eventually wrote but overall he turned in solid work for two whole movies. Whatever damage Sony may have done to the credibility of the Spider-Man franchise over the years, Elfman's reputation as a craftsman remained intact.
When Marvel Studios launched their unprecedented, sprawling cinematic universe with Iron Man back in 2008, they got a lot of things right, most of them in fact, but one aspect of filmmaking that was sorely neglected was, to my mind, one of the most important: the music. To compose the score for the first Iron Man, they hired composer Ramin Djawadi (of eventual Game of Thrones fame), whose work on the film was sadly, utterly generic. So forgettable was the music, in fact, that when Djawadi was replaced two years later with John Debney, no one seemed to care.
In 2011, however, Marvel finally seemed to understand the importance of some solid musical scoring, and hired veteran composer Alan Silvestri to write the theme of Captain America: The First Avenger, and more critically The Avengers. The former was a delight to listen to and hearkened back to the rousing, marching-band appeal of the old Indiana Jones movies, but the latter was much more important, because The Avengers is, all exaggeration aside, the centerpiece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It had to have a theme that was no less than iconic, and to Silvestri's credit, he achieved just that with his theme, which was right up there, I would say, with his work on Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future movies. The Avengers has become the most successful comic-book based movie of all time, and people started humming the theme and even started covering it. (This one's my favorite).
Then, inexplicably, Marvel replaced Silvestri for what portends to be one of the biggest sequels of all time with Brian Tyler, best known for his work on the Fast and Furious movies, and who had already done work for Marvel on Iron Man 3, and Thor: The Dark World. So enamored is Marvel with Tyler, in fact, that he has even composed the "Marvel fanfare" that plays at the beginning of every film. The problem with Tyler is that his music is, even more than Ramin Djawadi, extremely generic, and in fact, his music last year for the distinctly non-Marvel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles remake sounded like he had basically lifted it from all of his Marvel music. By giving him their most important movie franchise to score, Marvel was essentially saying something like "all of them sound the same, anyway," and apparently taking a giant dump on the importance of iconic film scores. I suspected that Tyler was a relatively cheap composer, and that this was at the heart of the decision.
Then, Danny Elfman's name appeared on the final "Avengers" poster as providing "additional music." As it turns out, this meant he was brought on board to "refresh" Alan Silvestri's original theme. Apparently, Marvel has finally noticed how cookie-cutter Brian Tyler's music is as well.
That Elfman has been brought on board, however, is a source of relief for me, and while I would have preferred Silvestri to have stayed on board, it's enough for me that Marvel has shown interest in some sort of musical continuity. It's the thought that counts.
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Hail to the King: A Review of Kingsman: The Secret Service (spoilers)
directed by Matthew Vaughn
written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
The prospect of seeing the prim-and-proper Colin Firth (The King's Speech) kicking some serious ass was more than enough to make me want to see this adaptation of yet another hyper-violent comic book series written by Mark Millar, this one titled "The Secret Service," and I'm happy to say that this film does not disappoint on that front.
The title refers to a super secret independent organization of spies founded just after World War I by wealthy English aristocrats who had lost their sons to the war. At the beginning of the film, a team of Kingsman agents invades an unnamed fortress in the Middle East, and are in the middle of interrogating a man they have captured when he detonates a grenade with his teeth. One of the group sacrifices himself, covering the grenade with his body and getting killed in the process. The group leader, agent Harry Hart a.k.a. Gallahad (Firth), contacts the late agent's wife and son, giving them a medal and a pledge that the organization will grant them a single favor through a phone call, whenever they should need it. The widow is too grief-stricken to accept, but the young Eggsy takes the medal, no questions asked.
Seventeen years later, the now adult Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and his mother live in a squalid apartment with her abusive new husband, a local toughie with a gang of young thugs as his entourage. When Eggsy, in a fit of pique following a verbal tussle, jacks the car of one of the thugs and crashes it, finding himself looking at jail time, he glances at the medal he has been wearing around his neck all these years, and decides to make the phone call. Charges are dropped immediately, and Eggsy receives a visit from Harry himself with a bit of a job offer. One of Kingsman's agents (Jack Davenport) has gotten killed by the mysterious, blade-legged Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) and there's an opening on the team.
After initially refusing, Eggsy decides to try out for the spot, but it isn't that easy; with the exception of fellow applicant Roxy (Sophie Cookson) he doesn't make a whole lot of friends, and the trials themselves are quite difficult. Fortunately, Eggsy is quite capable, and has considerable talent to muster, and not a moment too soon; Kingsman will need a good recruit to be able to take on multimedia magnate Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson with a lisp), employer of the aforementioned Gazelle, a multi-millionaire with the best of intentions but the most murderous of grand plans.
While Firth as a gentlemen spy with some mad fighting skills was the highlight of this movie for me, it has a lot of other things going for it, like Jackson's campy villain, Boutella's somewhat novel henchwoman, a reasonably affable lead in Taron Egerton, and some pretty good laughs. Oddly enough, this movie shares DNA not only with James Bond but with Austin Powers, complete with a rather crude sex joke at the very end. What it doesn't have is anything compelling to say about the human condition, which is all right, considering I wasn't expecting anything like that from the get-go. Millar being Millar, there seem to be some subversive undertones to the narrative, but they are drowned out by the somewhat prodigious displays of violence.
(mild spoilers)
Speaking of the violence, while it wasn't really surprising that the director and writer behind Kick-Ass would produce yet another searingly violent tale, I confess I was genuinely uncomfortable with one stretch of somewhat protracted violence late in the film, and it wasn't the kind of discomfort I would feel watching a video about the Holocaust or the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. The church massacre scene, arguably the action centerpiece of the film, is actually a masterclass in camera movement and fight choreography, but thematically, I had problems with it. In it, Jackson's Valentine takes his electronic doomsday device out for a test drive, ramping up the aggression of everyone in range of the signal and removing all of their inhibitions. Think of it as an electronically-induced version of 28 Days Later. Firth's Hart gets caught up right in the middle of it, but is saved by his considerable fighting skills...that is to say, he butchers almost everyone around him. Now, all of this happens at a hate church in Kentucky, so clearly there's some kind of intent to have the audience cheering through all of this gore. To cap it all off, Vaughn plays frenetic, somewhat upbeat rock music throughout all of the carnage. Basically the entire thing is played for laughs, but frankly, after the first fifteen seconds of mass slaughter I didn't really find it all that funny. A friend of mine said it pretty well, though; it was sickly hypnotic.
I know of a few people who were offended by the fairly crude sex joke at the end, though I can admit I chuckled a little at it. I cannot, however, quite get over that church scene. A few months ago, at the beginning of season 5 of The Walking Dead, the show's protagonists killed a group of cannibals who were basically trying to hunt them down and eat them. From a narrative perspective, one would think it would feel righteous and satisfying, but instead, it felt unremittingly dark, especially considering that it took place in a church. Here, the melee in the church is supposed to be funny. Now, I laughed when Hit Girl skewered, sliced and diced a bunch of lowlifes in Kick-Ass, and in truth, I laughed for a few seconds when the fight in the church broke out, but damn, it was just too long. I know there have been similarly bloody sequences in films like The Raid: Redemption, but I haven't seen them so I can't really compare.
I do know that this scene has offended a lot of people; the authorities of a few Asian countries have cut the scene from the movie altogether. I would never advocate censorship, not even for this, but I get where they were coming from. The scene really felt like violence for the sake of violence, really.
(end spoilers)
To end the review on a high note, though, I genuinely enjoyed this movie, my qualms with the church scene aside. It was worth the time and money spent, and delivered on what it promised: a stylish action-packed send-up of the spy genre. And just as I hoped, I got to see Colin Firth as an amazing, ass-kicking superspy. He has erased the image of his hilarious non-fight with Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones Diary from my memory with his startling action-hero turn.
7/10
written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
The prospect of seeing the prim-and-proper Colin Firth (The King's Speech) kicking some serious ass was more than enough to make me want to see this adaptation of yet another hyper-violent comic book series written by Mark Millar, this one titled "The Secret Service," and I'm happy to say that this film does not disappoint on that front.
The title refers to a super secret independent organization of spies founded just after World War I by wealthy English aristocrats who had lost their sons to the war. At the beginning of the film, a team of Kingsman agents invades an unnamed fortress in the Middle East, and are in the middle of interrogating a man they have captured when he detonates a grenade with his teeth. One of the group sacrifices himself, covering the grenade with his body and getting killed in the process. The group leader, agent Harry Hart a.k.a. Gallahad (Firth), contacts the late agent's wife and son, giving them a medal and a pledge that the organization will grant them a single favor through a phone call, whenever they should need it. The widow is too grief-stricken to accept, but the young Eggsy takes the medal, no questions asked.
Seventeen years later, the now adult Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and his mother live in a squalid apartment with her abusive new husband, a local toughie with a gang of young thugs as his entourage. When Eggsy, in a fit of pique following a verbal tussle, jacks the car of one of the thugs and crashes it, finding himself looking at jail time, he glances at the medal he has been wearing around his neck all these years, and decides to make the phone call. Charges are dropped immediately, and Eggsy receives a visit from Harry himself with a bit of a job offer. One of Kingsman's agents (Jack Davenport) has gotten killed by the mysterious, blade-legged Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) and there's an opening on the team.
After initially refusing, Eggsy decides to try out for the spot, but it isn't that easy; with the exception of fellow applicant Roxy (Sophie Cookson) he doesn't make a whole lot of friends, and the trials themselves are quite difficult. Fortunately, Eggsy is quite capable, and has considerable talent to muster, and not a moment too soon; Kingsman will need a good recruit to be able to take on multimedia magnate Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson with a lisp), employer of the aforementioned Gazelle, a multi-millionaire with the best of intentions but the most murderous of grand plans.
While Firth as a gentlemen spy with some mad fighting skills was the highlight of this movie for me, it has a lot of other things going for it, like Jackson's campy villain, Boutella's somewhat novel henchwoman, a reasonably affable lead in Taron Egerton, and some pretty good laughs. Oddly enough, this movie shares DNA not only with James Bond but with Austin Powers, complete with a rather crude sex joke at the very end. What it doesn't have is anything compelling to say about the human condition, which is all right, considering I wasn't expecting anything like that from the get-go. Millar being Millar, there seem to be some subversive undertones to the narrative, but they are drowned out by the somewhat prodigious displays of violence.
(mild spoilers)
Speaking of the violence, while it wasn't really surprising that the director and writer behind Kick-Ass would produce yet another searingly violent tale, I confess I was genuinely uncomfortable with one stretch of somewhat protracted violence late in the film, and it wasn't the kind of discomfort I would feel watching a video about the Holocaust or the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. The church massacre scene, arguably the action centerpiece of the film, is actually a masterclass in camera movement and fight choreography, but thematically, I had problems with it. In it, Jackson's Valentine takes his electronic doomsday device out for a test drive, ramping up the aggression of everyone in range of the signal and removing all of their inhibitions. Think of it as an electronically-induced version of 28 Days Later. Firth's Hart gets caught up right in the middle of it, but is saved by his considerable fighting skills...that is to say, he butchers almost everyone around him. Now, all of this happens at a hate church in Kentucky, so clearly there's some kind of intent to have the audience cheering through all of this gore. To cap it all off, Vaughn plays frenetic, somewhat upbeat rock music throughout all of the carnage. Basically the entire thing is played for laughs, but frankly, after the first fifteen seconds of mass slaughter I didn't really find it all that funny. A friend of mine said it pretty well, though; it was sickly hypnotic.
I know of a few people who were offended by the fairly crude sex joke at the end, though I can admit I chuckled a little at it. I cannot, however, quite get over that church scene. A few months ago, at the beginning of season 5 of The Walking Dead, the show's protagonists killed a group of cannibals who were basically trying to hunt them down and eat them. From a narrative perspective, one would think it would feel righteous and satisfying, but instead, it felt unremittingly dark, especially considering that it took place in a church. Here, the melee in the church is supposed to be funny. Now, I laughed when Hit Girl skewered, sliced and diced a bunch of lowlifes in Kick-Ass, and in truth, I laughed for a few seconds when the fight in the church broke out, but damn, it was just too long. I know there have been similarly bloody sequences in films like The Raid: Redemption, but I haven't seen them so I can't really compare.
I do know that this scene has offended a lot of people; the authorities of a few Asian countries have cut the scene from the movie altogether. I would never advocate censorship, not even for this, but I get where they were coming from. The scene really felt like violence for the sake of violence, really.
(end spoilers)
To end the review on a high note, though, I genuinely enjoyed this movie, my qualms with the church scene aside. It was worth the time and money spent, and delivered on what it promised: a stylish action-packed send-up of the spy genre. And just as I hoped, I got to see Colin Firth as an amazing, ass-kicking superspy. He has erased the image of his hilarious non-fight with Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones Diary from my memory with his startling action-hero turn.
7/10
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