Life is often so unpleasant. You must know that, as a peasant.

Into the Woods

(2014)

(SPOILERS) Rob Marshall tackles another musical, with all the acumen he brought to Chicago. And non-musicals (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides). Sure, he ensures nice art direction in, but that doesn’t make a good movie. I can’t say I’m hugely au fait with Stephen Sondheim’s oeuvre (West Side Story is a classic, obviously, and the Sweeney Todd movie is diverting enough), but if this is evidence of his musical/storytelling skills he’s rather lacking (does that count as heresy?) Mash up a few fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk), sprinkle a few variable songs over the top, and attempt to shoehorn in some kind of message about what happens if you get all you dreamed of (what a spoilsport). It’s a tepid affair, with only the occasional vital performance to perk it up.

There’s no shortage of fairy tale riffs these days, probably going back to Shrek, and we even had a Grimm specific piece a decade ago (Terry Gilliam’s ill-fated but sporadically sparky Brothers Grimm). Disney’s all over them like a rash; live action, animation, TV series, so it's no wonder they went for this one (eventually). Marshall’s movie manages to be simultaneously redundant and over-reliant on obvious stunt casting. Johnny Depp pulls a Brando cameo as a blink and you’ll miss him wolf, Meryl Streep hams it up rotten as a witch.

The picture particularly crippled by the undesirable presence of James Corden (thankfully exiling himself across the Pond and into a chat show) as the Baker/narrator. His voice is woefully ill equipped to introduce the tale, bereft of the remotest gravitas or garnish. He’s also expecting us to believe he could possibly be married to Emily Blunt.

Who is quite wonderful. As is Chris Pine, as a pompous jackass version of Captain Kirk (playing Cinderella’s prince). When these two share a scene and a song, Into the Woods momentarily comes alive. This is the only point where one gets the giddy sense of tales seeping into each other, mayhem unleashed and worlds colliding. Maybe the incredibly downbeat conclusion had more resonance on the stage (it was reportedly toned down by Disney to make the picture more family friendly) but here it just seems unnecessary and harsh in material that is essentially lightweight and frivolous.

Marshall ought to be able to marshal his great resources, but still manages to make the entire enterprise seem rather static and lifeless. Once the great wedding has taken place and the characters are lost in the woods once again, he envisages the most clueless and uncoordinated of moments; it screams of its stage origins in a most unflattering manner.

Essentially, others have done this kind of thing, and with much more verve, wit and lyricism. There’s exactly one song (It’s Your Fault) that gives a hint of what this might have been; it’s quick, clever and sharp. Elsewhere, there’s wholly too much of annoying little scamps wailing about beans and granny and the like. Tangentially, it’s nice to see (even more briefly than Depp) Frances de la Tour as the Giant’s Wife.

Marshall’s picture was inspired by Obama’s speech on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (only in Hollywood, eh?), but you’d be hard pressed to discern any great transforming and unifying spirit in this anodyne and stillborn lump. Still, Into the Woods made money, so it should keep the stage-to-screen gravy train going a few years yet for Sondheim’s back catalogue.

Abandon selective targeting. Shoot everything.

28 Weeks Later (2007) (SPOILERS) The first five minutes of 28 Weeks Later are far and away the best part of this sequel, offering in quick succession a devastating moral quandary and a waking nightmare, immortalised on the screen. After that, while significantly more polished, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo reveals his concept to be altogether inferior to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s, falling back on the crutches of gore, nihilism, and disengaging and limiting shifts of focus between characters in whom one has little investment in the first place.

If this were a hoax, would we have six dead men up on that mountain?

The X-Files 4.24: Gethsemane Season Four is undoubtedly the point at which the duff arc episodes begin to amass, encroaching upon the decent ones for dominance. Fortunately, however, the season finale is a considerable improvement’s on Three’s, even if it’s a long way from the cliffhanger high of 2.25: Anasazi .

The Bible never said anything about amphetamines.

The Color of Money (1986) (SPOILERS) I tend to think it’s evident when Scorsese isn’t truly exercised by material. He can still invest every ounce of the technical acumen at his fingertips, and the results can dazzle on that level, but you don’t really feel the filmmaker in the film. Which, for one of his pictures to truly carry a wallop, you need to do. We’ve seen quite a few in such deficit in recent years, most often teaming with Leo. The Color of Money , however, is the first where it was out-and-out evident the subject matter wasn’t Marty’s bag. He needed it, desperately, to come off, but in the manner a tradesman who wants to keep getting jobs. This sequel to The Hustler doesn’t linger in the mind, however good it may be, moment by moment.

Captain, he who walks in fire will burn his feet.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) (SPOILERS) Ray Harryhausen returns to the kind of unadulterated fantasy material that made Jason and the Argonauts such a success – swords & stop motion, if you like. In between, there were a couple of less successful efforts, HG Wells adaptation First Men in the Moon and The Valley of the Gwangi (which I considered the best thing ever as a kid: dinosaur walks into a cowboy movie). Harryhausen’s special-effects supremacy – in a for-hire capacity – had also been consummately eclipsed by Raquel Welch’s fur bikini in One Million Years B.C . The Golden Voyage of Sinbad follows the expected Dynamation template – blank-slate hero, memorable creatures, McGuffin quest – but in its considerable favour, it also boasts a villainous performance by nobody-at-the-time, on-the-cusp-of-greatness Tom Baker.

Your desecration of reality will not go unpunished.

2021-22 Best-of, Worst-of and Everything Else Besides The movies might be the most visible example of attempts to cling onto cultural remnants as the previous societal template clatters down the drain. It takes something people really want – unlike a Bond movie where he kicks the can – to suggest the model of yesteryear, one where a billion-dollar grosser was like sneezing. You can argue Spider-Man: No Way Home is replete with agendas of one sort or another, and that’s undoubtedly the case (that’s Hollywood), but crowding out any such extraneous elements (and they often are) is simply a consummate crowd-pleaser that taps into tangible nostalgia through its multiverse take. Of course, nostalgia for a mere seven years ago, for something you didn’t like anyway, is a symptom of how fraught these times have become.

I think it’s wonderful the way things are changing.

Driving Miss Daisy (1989) (SPOILERS) The meticulous slightness of Driving Miss Daisy is precisely the reason it proved so lauded, and also why it presented a prime Best Picture pick: a feel-good, social-conscience-led flick for audiences who might not normally spare your standard Hollywood dross a glance. One for those who appreciate the typical Judi Dench feature, basically. While I’m hesitant to get behind anything Spike Lee, as Hollywood’s self-appointed race-relations arbiter, spouts, this was a year when he actually did deliver the goods, a genuinely decent movie – definitely a rarity for Lee – addressing the issues head-on that Driving Miss Daisy approaches in softly-softly fashion, reversing gingerly towards with the brake lights on. That doesn’t necessarily mean Do the Right Thing ought to have won Best Picture (or even that it should have been nominated for the same), but it does go to emphasise the Oscars’ tendency towards the self-congratulatory rather than the provocat

Out of my way, you lubberly oaf, or I’ll slit your gullet and shove it down your gizzard!

The Princess and the Pirate (1944) (SPOILERS) As I suggested when revisiting The Lemon Drop Kid , you’re unlikely to find many confessing to liking Bob Hope movies these days. Even Chevy Chase gets higher approval ratings. If asked to attest to the excruciating stand-up comedy Hope, the presenter and host, I doubt even diehards would proffer an endorsement. Probably even fewer would admit to having a hankering for Hope, were they aware of, or further still gave credence to, alleged MKUltra activities. But the movie comedy Hope, the fourth-wall breaking, Road -travelling quipster-coward of (loosely) 1939-1952? That Hope’s a funny guy, mostly, and many of his movies during that period are hugely inventive, creative comedies that are too easily dismissed under the “Bob Hope sucks” banner. The Princess and the Pirate is one of them.

My hands hurt from galloping.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) (SPOILERS) Say what you like about the 2016 reboot, at least it wasn’t labouring under the illusion it was an Amblin movie. Ghostbusters 3.5 features the odd laugh, but it isn’t funny, and it most definitely isn’t scary. It is, however, shamelessly nostalgic for, and reverential towards, the original(s), which appears to have granted it a free pass in fan circles. It didn’t deserve one.

I’ve heard the dancing’s amazing, but the music sucks.

Tick, Tick… Boom! (2021) (SPOILERS) At one point in Tick, Tick… Boom! – which really ought to have been the title of an early ’90s Steven Seagal vehicle – Andrew Garfield’s Jonathan Larson is given some sage advice on how to find success in his chosen field: “ On the next, maybe try writing about what you know ”. Unfortunately, the very autobiographical, very-meta result – I’m only surprised the musical doesn’t end with Larson finishing writing this musical, in which he is finishing writing his musical, in which he is finishing writing his musical… – takes that acutely literally.

Who gave you the crusade franchise? Tell me that.

The Star Chamber (1983) (SPOILERS) Peter Hyams’ conspiracy thriller might simply have offered sauce too weak to satisfy, reining in the vast machinations of an all-powerful hidden government found commonly during ’70s fare and substituting it with a more ’80s brand that failed to include that decade’s requisite facile resolution. There’s a good enough idea here – instead of Charles Bronson, it’s the upper echelons of the legal system resorting to vigilante justice – but The Star Chamber suffers from a failure of nerve, repenting its premise just as it’s about to dig into the ramifications.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog