Drum roll please......
First up is 'Whiplash'
You've probably heard great things about 'Whiplash' and read all the rave reviews. It's better than that.
'Whiplash' is without a doubt a masterpiece. It's tight, tense and totally absorbing. A sadistic music tutor pushes his students to the limits and beyond. Who knew a film about jazz drumming could be so thrilling and so dramatic?
All sentimentality is stripped away. Instead we see the bruising dedication and sacrifice needed to excel in any field.....and it isn't pretty.
The opening scene should be taught on every screenwriting course. Everything we need to know about the two principle characters, their motivation, their goals and the major themes are all revealed within a couple of minutes in one location. It's a masterclass. The final scene is probably the best closing ten minutes of any film so far this decade. All points in between aren't bad either. Acting, editing, direction and sound are all top notch.
'Whiplash', then, a great film about the near impossibility of achieving anything great.
'Birdman' (or 'Being Michael Keaton" as I like to call it) on the other hand is a nearly great film about the impossibility of achieving anything great. It is good and deserves the plaudits that it has had thrown at it but I do have reservations. It's exactly three scenes too long. Three scenes that do nothing other than build to a shaggy dog story punchline. Three scenes that stretch your patience and goodwill just a little too far. There's also some unnecessary magical realism, way too much camera trickery (dazzling long takes are the cinematic equivalent of an extended guitar solo), a lesbian seduction apropos of nothing and the sense that this is little more than a "fuck you" to the audience and the critics. Apart from that I liked it.
Keaton is twitchy but never annoying. Ed Norton reminds you that he's a damn fine actor. Emma Stone is great and Naomi Watts and Angela Riseborough somehow make the best of their roles; not an easy task considering this film hasn't got a clue what to do with its female characters.
I see 'Birdman' as an extended skit exploring one terrible day where an actors' worst nightmares come together. On that level it is a thoroughly enjoyable black comedy. Oscar worthy? Yes. Better than 'Whiplash'? Nah.
"Great film" and "great art" are two things that are never going to said of 'Jupiter Ascending'. I was kind of looking forward to this in a perverse sort of way. I fully expected it to be this year's 'John Carter' a much maligned, misunderstood, future cult classic. It's not. It's a terrible movie. Terrible but not awful. It has some interesting ideas but it needs a better springboard for them.
It's from the Wachowskis, who gave us 'The Matrix' trilogy and 'Cloud Atlas'. As you might expect it features lots of running around in cool outfits and some hippy trippy cod philosophy. Instead of Neo we have Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) transcending her dull, boring life (she cleans toilets - that's right - Mila Kunis cleans toilets) to fulfil her greater destiny as "the one". Instead of Trinity we have Channing Tatum with mascara as a pixie-eared Wolfman warrior flying around in roller blade styled rocket boots (I'm not making this shit up - I've seen it). Instead of unknowingly enslaved humans being harvested as batteries we have unknowingly enslaved humans being enslaved as....clocks....or something.
The plot as far as I understand it is basically Mila Kunis' face trying to save the Earth from Eddie Redmayne's face. Beyond that I don't really have much of a clue as to what was going on and frankly I don't care. I just couldn't buy in to any of it at all. At least with 'The Matrix' the Wachowskis were ripping off Grant Morrison. At least with 'Cloud Atlas' they had the authorial voice of David Mitchell to contend with. Here they are just ripping off themselves and it's a right old mess. It just can't settle on the right tone to adopt. At times it is high camp like 'The Fifth Element' or 'Flash Gordon' but then at other times it is as po-faced and serious as the first ten minutes of 'Man Of Steel' or the senate debates of 'The Phantom Menace'. Just as you think it wants to be 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' it grinds everything to hold to engage us with a supposedly "hilarious" bureaucratic red tape sequence that is presumably inspired by Terry Gilliam and Douglas Adams. It falls completely flat. The design is 'Dune' by way of 'Chronicles Of Riddick'. It's like Disney trying to do a fairy tale in space and then neglecting to put any wonder into it. And Sean Bean is in it.
And fuck only knows what Eddie Redmayne thought he was doing. If he wins an oscar for 'The Theory Of Everything' it should be instantly taken away from him for mincing around in this. What is he doing with that voice? That comedy voice? A hoarse whisper that is even more laughable and unendurable than Tom Hardy's Bane. And that's going some.
There's no chemistry between any of the actors, no spark to the action, too many tedious sub plots and apart from the occasional visual flourish every ten minutes not much spectacle. You can also tell it was designed as a big 3D movie because there are those irritating glowing embers flowing around the screen all the time. It barely passes as one dimensional. It's bound to end up as a late night staple on ITV4 in years to come. I Look forward to that.
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