Tag: James McAvoy

Speak No Evil

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★1/2Speak No Evil

Rated: MA15+

Written for the Screen and Directed by: James Watkins

Based on the Screenplay by: Christian Tafdrup and Mads Tafdrup

Produced by: Jason Blum, Paul Ritchie

Executive Producers: Beatriz Sequeira, Jacob Jarek, Christian Tafdrup

Starring: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, Alix West and Dan Hough.

‘I promise you guys, it’s going to be a great weekend.’

You know when you’re in a bad situation and you want to get out.  Do get out.  Only to be pulled back in against your better judgment? But someone continually plays you, pulls those strings so you get burnt, played, burnt again.

Based on the screenplay of Gæsterne, written by Christian Tafdrup and Mads Tafdrup, Speak No Evil shows the game, the cat playing with the mouse.

Meet Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy) with their daughter, Agnes (Alix West).

Ben is newly redundant and a little bored.  Louise fusses over their anxious daughter, Agnes, ‘Use your indoor voice.’

Then there’s Paddy (James McAvoy) cracking beers and getting it on with his young wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi).  Paddy’s forward and fun.

Ciara is lovely and they have a child who’s also awkward, a son, Ant (Dan Hough), who doesn’t speak because of a condition dwarfing his tongue.

The two families get along.

Paddy is a breath of fresh air so after Louise and Ben get home to London and disappointment, they decide it’s not such a bad idea to go to the Western Country to visit their good-time new friends.

The opening scene sets up the film well: a car being driven along a dark isolated road.  The reflection of a child’s face seen in the rearview mirror.  The adults get out of the car, leaving the child, his reflection watching.

It’s that ominous feeling of knowing something isn’t right that continues through-out the film.  The tension keeps building.  But the pacing gets annoying after a while.

It’s a gradual change as Paddy’s mask begins to slip, the sly comments, ‘Don’t put yourself down, that’s my job.’

The more off-colour Paddy becomes, the more precious Louise seems so Ben doesn’t know if they should just relax and get along or get out of there.

It’s a back and forth where the subtle becomes not so subtle to then lean into the unhinged to become so crazy it’s funny.  On purpose.

McAvoy steals the show as the charismatic, unhinged Paddy.

Paddy takes control through his constant manipulation, his presence claustrophobic, to the extent scenes felt empty without him.

But it’s frustrating to watch, that back and forth.  I couldn’t help but groan when the family continued to get sucked in again and again.

It’s a well-made film. I just got annoyed with it.

Submergence

Rated: MSubmergence

Directed by: Wim Wenders

Based on the novel, “Submergence” by: J.M. Ledgard

Screenplay Written by: Erin Dignam

Cinematographer: Benoît Debie

Produced by: Cameron Lamb along with Wim Wenders and Uwe Kiefer

Starring: Alicia Vikander, James McAvoy, Cerlyn Jones, Reda Kateb, Alexander Siddig and Hakeemshady Mohamed.

Based on the novel written by journalist J.M. Ledgard, Submergence opens the door to soaring cliffs and underwater twilight, to the senseless violence of women buried and bashed and foreigners imprisoned while Jihadists make suicide vests.

This is a movie of contrasts, where bio-mathematician Danielle Flinders (Alicia Vikander) and British Secret Service agent James More (James McAvoy) meet at a hotel on the Normandy coast in France.

Danielle’s a professor and believer in nature with a drive to understand the depths of the ocean down to where there’s no light, just darkness, searching for the origin of life to show the world there’s life in darkness.

Scottish agent James believes the world’s about power, that education is secondary – he wants to save the world by stopping terrorists from setting off bombs. His mission is to travel to Somalia to find the men responsible, to put his own life at risk to save others.

They meet; they fall in love. They each have a mission where they may never come back.

Submersion is a romance. The eyes meeting, searching to reveal the other. Yet, there’s this thread of water and life.

We’re introduced to the happy professor as she works on the discovery of the origins of life on earth; her research to compare samples with those from Mars, ground breaking.

Dani’s whole being is about work and what it means to the world.

She’s then drawn into a smaller world, a bubble – where love is like death; where apart she realises she’s never been lonely before.

To which her colleague Thumbs (Cerlyn Jones) replies, ‘Welcome to the planet’.

The film floats around with one storyline flowing into the other, from the underwater world viewed from a submersible hundreds of kilometres below the surface, to the stark desert sun where James is chained, waiting interrogation – waiting to get back to Danielle.

I drifted in and out of the film with the meeting of the British operatives to the lovers discussing life, to the science of photosynthetic life that creates through light to the organisms of darkness who live on chemicals – director Wim Wenders gives poetry to the perspective.

I liked McAvoy as the Scottish operative who falls in love – he’s a witty and likable character and quite a different role with more warmth and less crazy than his recent previous roles in such films as, ‘Split (2016)’, ‘Atomic Blonde (2017)’ or even ‘Trance (2013)’. I admit I’m a big fan.

Alicia Vikander as the mathematician was slow to warm as she falls for the Scotsman.

They’re a couple I found more believable apart than together.

I didn’t believe their love for each other as much as their passion for life because there was so much reasoning involved.

The contrast of the scientist, the solider, the extremists who believe Jihad is life after death – this is what I found interesting.

As Wenders states:
“What I really hope is on a rainy Thursday night in Bristol or Detroit or wherever you are, when you come out of the cinema, your perspective of the planet, on your own habits, is just altered slightly. You will realize how large the world is, how varied it is, but also how fragile it is.”

Overall, I found Submergence a quietly absorbing and interesting escape.

Sherlock Gnomes

Rated: GSherlock Gnomes

Directed by: John Stevenson

Screenplay by: Ben Zazove

Produced by: David Furnish, Steve Hamilton Shaw, Carolyn Soper

Executive Producer: Elton John

Voices provided by: Emily Blunt (Juliet), Johnny Depp (Sherlock Gnomes), James McAvoy (Gnomeo), Michael Caine (Lord Redbrick), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dr Watson), Maggie Smith (Lady Blueberry).

 

With a vocal cast of A-grade actors most other films can only dream about, those entertaining garden gnomes are back in a sequel to the 2011 animated comedy Gnomeo and Juliet, which borrowed freely from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

 

Sherlock Gnomes, the 3D computer-animated comedy sequel, you guessed it, uses a lot of the ideas and characters from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic crime sleuth Sherlock Holmes, along with his partner Dr Watson and nemesis Professor Moriarty, to investigate the mysterious disappearance of garden gnomes.

 

Since the first film the gnomes have been forced to relocate to a new garden in London, where Juliet is so focused on getting everything sorted out or tidied that she has little time for Gnomeo, who tries to keep the romance alive in their relationship.

 

This situation helps to emphasise the importance of not taking what you have for granted, with Gnomeo and Juliet’s relationship subtly mirroring that of Sherlock and Watson, although the latter relationship is not romantic but more a partnership based on friendship and intellect. It takes a major threat to make Sherlock appreciate Watson’s equal contribution to their crime-solving escapades.

 

Adults accompanying their children don’t miss out entirely on being entertained, as there are plenty of references throughout the film to classic Sherlock Holmes stories and characters, not that the mostly young audience will be aware of this!

 

While this film has a fairly straight forward plot, what distinguishes it from other animated fare is the way it doesn’t dumb down the clues, which are quite complicated for Sherlock Holmes to figure out, ensuring audiences are kept engaged and guessing throughout its entirety.

 

Children will be entertained by the colourful and varied inanimate objects that come to life, and how they interact with each other. The backgrounds are beautifully realised and the animation of the characters is suitably cartoonish as one would expect. The film is quite fast-paced and seems to cram a lot of action, plot and subsidiary characters into its running time, so at least it doesn’t drag.

 

The catchy soundtrack music is provided by Sir Elton John, the executive producer, who also sings some of the songs, along with other artists who do cover versions from some of his extensive catalogue.

 

I haven’t seen the first film, but I gathered from my young companion’s comments that unlike Gnomeo and Juliet, which was apparently light and fun with some nice puns and an entertaining supporting cast, Sherlock Gnomes is darker, with less use of the supporting cast from the previous film and more focus on solving the crime, fixing mistakes and renewing relationships that are endangered. Younger viewers may find some of the scenes slightly scary, such as those involving the gargoyles (which look large and menacing but whose personalities balance out their appearance) or Moriarty’s penchant for destroying garden ornaments (although this is never done on screen).

 

While this film is obviously aimed at a young audience, the presence of such skilled vocal talent, along with lots of sly references to Sherlock Holmes, will hopefully ensure that adults will be entertained as well and not feel punished by having to sit through this animated offering.

 

Atomic Blonde

Rated: MA 15+Atomic Blonde

Directed by: David Leitch

Produced by: Eric Gitter, Peter Schwerin, Kelly McCormick, Charlize Theron, A. J. Dix and Beth Kono.

Based on the Oni Press Graphic Novel Series: ‘The Coldest City’, Written by Antony Johnston and Illustrated by Sam Hart

Screenplay by: Kurt Johnstad

Starring: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Til Schweiger, Eddie Marsan, Sofia Boutella and Toby Jones.

Based on the Oni Press Graphic Novel Series, The Coldest City, Atomic Blonde was cold alright, with Lorrain Broughton (Charlize Theron) a killing machine breed out of MI6 to seek out the assassinator of a spy, who stole a list of all the identities of Western agents operating in Berlin, behind The Iron Curtain, circa 1989.

Atomic Blonde is a spy/action movie set in the 80s like I’ve never seen before.  So 80s it took a while for the movie to get over itself and get to the meat of the story.

After a failed attempt on her life when landing in Berlin, Broughton makes contact with Station Chief, David Percival (James McAvoy) – an operative who’s been unmonitored for years; king of the castle, he does as he likes.  Percival’s gone feral.Atomic Blonde

And the closer Broughton gets to finding the list, the more complicated the journey.

It’s a familiar story: spies, betrayal, seduction and deception, but shown in a different way – the 80s flavour of fluorescent paint mixed with the noir persona of Broughton, like the film was trying to establish itself with bright saturated colour against a mute cold character.

I felt the reliance on the early fight scenes heavy until I witnessed a seamless montage of smacking, spraying blood and keys left dangling, impaled in a bad-guy’s cheek: AKA gritty fisticuffs that legitimized the film from something that was trying-out 80s noir for size, into a sit-up and take-me-serious action movie.Atomic Blonde

I like a film that explores a different vibe and no other actor could have achieved the feminine brutality of Broughton like Theron.  Every single fight scene in the film is Theron, hence that seamless raw feel.

Angelina Jolie also played the seductive spy in, Salt (2010), but Theron has stepped up and brought a brute coldness to this role.  The sensual was there with some steamy scenes with French operative, Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella, who you’ll remember from the recent film, The Mummy (2017)).  But what I really believed was the brute force of Broughton’s nature.

And Atomic Blonde is all about Broughton.  There’s only a hint of belly to humanise the character, the rest is all action –  a hallmark of director David Leitch being a stunt man himself and directing the highly successful, John Wick (2014).  He likes his characters dry and unrelenting.  And Theron was perfect for the role.

Atomic Blonde twists the classic noir genre into something else; for me, the action was the highlight.

SPLIT

Rated: MSPLIT

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Writer: M. Night Shyamalan

Producer: M. Night Shyamalan, Jason Blum, Marc Bienstock

Executive Producer: Steven Schneider, Ashwin Rajan, Kevin Frakes

Starring: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula

Director and writer M. Night Shyamalan (Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), The Visit (2015)) is back with his unique, sometimes tongue-in-cheek style of horror thriller, this time featuring Kevin (James McAvoy): a man suffering (or is he suffering?) from DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder).

After the kidnapping of three young girls, the audience is given a taste of the 23 different personalities inhabiting Kevin’s body.

Shyamalan together with clever camera angles (from cinematographer Mike Gioulakis) use the change in personality to amp up the horror the kidnapped girls experience when they realise their captor is using completely different voices to have a conversation, with himself.

It’s Kevin’s psychiatrist, Dr. Karen Feltcher (Betty Buckley) who speculates whether DID caused through trauma is a weakness or a strength.  And whether the Split is a way of tapping into the plasticity of the brain, creating pathways into parts unknown.

An interesting premise and the main thrust of the film.

 

Shyamalan really takes the idea of tapping into the power of the mind as far as he can. The result being a thought-provoking horror with a bit of dark humour thrown in the mix.

Thankfully, the few snorts of laughter I had were meant to be provoked, but jeez, there’s a real push of that suspension of belief, the suspension achieved through the believable and truly phenomenal performance of James McAvoy as all those differing personalities.

McAvoy’s great at those parts that require equal measures of
nice guy versus evil.  I kept thinking back to the character from the film: Trance (2013), another thriller that delves into the mind.

And Anya Taylor-Joy was well-cast as the, well, out-cast, Casey Cook.  Anya looks different here, compared to her unforgettable performance in, The Witch (2015), but you can’t miss those sanpaku eyes…

I think people will either swallow the story and enjoy the film, or they won’t.  There’s certainly a unique flavour here.

I liked the exploration into the realm of neuroscience, the idea that thought and belief can change the organic.  To make imagination into reality.  And I enjoyed the interaction between the personalities of Kevin and Dr. Karen Feltcher, the sessions giving much needed authenticity through the grounding dialogue.

However, I found myself wanting to get sucked in then jolted out of the film with that weird sense of humour that’s all Shyamalan.

SPLIT is something different to watch, that reaches for those edges. And if you don’t mind a bit of weird you’ll be rewarded with a unique story well executed.

 

 

 

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