You don't want the bumpers, life doesn't give you bumpers.

Boyhood

(2014)

(SPOILERS) Richard Linklater’s one-time shoe-in Best Picture winner went from being early favourite to also-ran as the initial wow factor of its logistical achievement subsided. Making a film at intervals over a 12-year period is indeed quite something, but more impressive is how it achieves its storytelling goals seamlessly and subtly. It has no earthly need to be nearly three hours long, yet it never becomes a chore to watch, despite its young protagonist having resoundingly uneventful formative years. The drama occurs on the periphery, as do Linklater’s less measured indulgences. This is where you can hear the same guy who made the Before… trilogy voicing his adorably trapped-in-amber student philosophising and political discourses.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the picture is how passive Mason Jr (Ellar Cochrane) is. That’s not a negative in this case, although it may be for some; we follow Mason Jr from the age of six and, the odd flare up aside, he never becomes a clichéd troubled or rebellious youth (perhaps that is really why his girlfriend calls him weird, since there are no other obvious indications). In a genre (and reality) where this age range is always the end of the world for those experiencing it, it’s interesting to see a teen go apparently untraumatised through such turbulent times, a contemplative observer, even as his domestic situation undergoes tumultuous change.

Cochrane isn’t always the most naturalistic physical performer, but his understated manner helps him along (more consistently impressive is Lorelai Linklater as his sister Samantha). Linklater only comes unstuck when he attempts to foist his own preoccupations on the character, diving into the kind of shallow stoner contemplation that is probably his most consistent trope. So Mason Jr musing on how we’ve become robots through technology is a bolt from the blue; where did that come from? At least his campaigning for Obama has the touch of dad (Ethan Hawke).

That’s the main problem here. If you’ve seen enough Linklater films you recognise the same conversation clusters repeating. One can put that down to the “like father, like son” influence here, but Hawke’s Mason Sr is a slacker version of his Before… character. Political punctuation points never feel finessed, so the War on Terror repeatedly intrudes on the conversation with a big arrows pointing to it. While Mason Sr’s wife’s family turn out to be Bible bashers, Linklater at least exercises some restraint in not making them evangelical crazies. They still give Mason Jr a shotgun for his sixteenth birthday, though. Linklater handles the way in which kids are wont to idolise the less-than-perfect absent parent perceptively, but his parting shot of Mason Sr’s empty wallet when he offers to contribute to his son’s graduation party is clumsy at best.

The best passages are those focusing on the experiences of mum Olive (Patricia Arquette, more than earning her Oscar statuette) and her serial lack of luck with the men in her life. Marco Perella amps up the charm as her second husband and former professor, until his drinking problem manifests as spousal abuse. Perella perhaps isn’t so good with the dramatics (the tense meal scene featuring flying glass borders on parody at moments; I could easily see Will Ferrell performing it), but Arquette contrastingly carries these episodes powerfully. We also witness her repetitive cycles and tendencies matter-of-factly; her passivity in relationships until the situation snaps and she is compelled to act, and the recurrence similar types recur in one’s life; Jim (Brad Hawkins), her next beau, is a veteran and one of her students (a little too neat mirroring there of her previus hubby) and he too has problems with drink. Her moment wondering where life goes as her kids leave the roost and she moves house is somewhat telegraphed, but poignant nevertheless.

Being in part an exploration of his own upbringing, it’s probably no surprise Linklater should have Mason Jr gravitate towards a career in the arts, so its welcome that he doesn’t opt to have his alter persona offered everything on a plate (his photography teacher advises that talent isn’t enough on its own). Generally though, Linklater’s film is more successful when he doesn’t announce his themes and indulge his pop sensibilities. The picture begins with the easy emoting choice of Coldplay’s Yellow and ends with a space caked rumination on how we don’t seize the moment, “the moment seizes us”. Both are Linklater at his most Linklater, but in between it’s the restraint and contemplation that impress the most.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Prepare the Heathen’s Stand! By order of purification!

Apostle (2018)
(SPOILERS) Another week, another undercooked Netflix flick from an undeniably talented director. What’s up with their quality control? Do they have any? Are they so set on attracting an embarrassment of creatives, they give them carte blanche, to hell with whether the results are any good or not? Apostle's an ungainly folk-horror mashup of The Wicker Man (most obviously, but without the remotest trace of that screenplay's finesse) and any cult-centric Brit horror movie you’d care to think of (including Ben Wheatley's, himself an exponent of similar influences-on-sleeve filmmaking with Kill List), taking in tropes from Hammer, torture porn, and pagan lore but revealing nothing much that's different or original beyond them.

You can’t just outsource your entire life.

Tully (2018)
(SPOILERS) A major twist is revealed in the last fifteen minutes of Tully, one I'll happily admit not to have seen coming, but it says something about the movie that it failed to affect my misgivings over the picture up to that point either way. About the worst thing you can say about a twist is that it leaves you shrugging.

There's something wrong with the sky.

Hold the Dark (2018)
(SPOILERS) Hold the Dark, an adaptation of William Giraldi's 2014 novel, is big on atmosphere, as you'd expect from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) and actor-now-director (I Don’t Want to Live in This World Anymore) pal Macon Blair (furnishing the screenplay and appearing in one scene), but contrastingly low on satisfying resolutions. Being wilfully oblique can be a winner if you’re entirely sure what you're trying to achieve, but the effect here is rather that it’s "for the sake of it" than purposeful.

No one understands the lonely perfection of my dreams.

Ridley Scott Ridders Ranked
During the '80s, I anticipated few filmmakers' movies more than Ridley Scott's; those of his fellow xenomorph wrangler James Cameron, perhaps. In both cases, that eagerness for something equalling their early efforts receded as they studiously managed to avoid the heights they had once reached. Cameron's output dropped off a cliff after he won an Oscar. Contrastingly, Scott's surged like never before when his film took home gold. Which at least meant he occasionally delivered something interesting, but sadly, it was mostly quantity over quality. Here are the movies Scott has directed in his career thus far - and with his rate of productivity, another 25 by the time he's 100 may well be feasible – ranked from worst to best.

Well, you did take advantage of a drunken sailor.

Tomb Raider (2018)
(SPOILERS) There's evidently an appetite out there for a decent Tomb Raider movie, given that the lousy 2001 incarnation was successful enough to spawn a (lousy) sequel, and that this lousier reboot, scarcely conceivably, may have attracted enough bums on seats to do likewise. If we're going to distinguish between order of demerits, we could characterise the Angelina Jolie movies as both pretty bad; Tomb Raider, in contrast, is unforgivably tedious.

This is it. This is the moment of my death.

Fearless (1993)
Hollywood tends to make a hash of any exploration of existential or spiritual themes. The urge towards the simplistic, the treacly or the mawkishly uplifting, without appropriate filtering or insight, usually overpowers even the best intentions. Rarely, a movie comes along that makes good on its potential and then, more than likely, it gets completely ignored. Such a fate befell Fearless, Peter Weir’s plane crash survivor-angst film, despite roundly positive critical notices. For some reason audiences were willing to see a rubgy team turn cannibal in Alive, but this was a turn-off? Yet invariably anyone who has seen Fearless speaks of it in glowing terms, and rightly so.

Weir’s pictures are often thematically rich, more anchored by narrative than those of, say, Terrence Malick but similarly preoccupied with big ideas and their expression. He has a rare grasp of poetry, symbolism and the mythic. Weir also displays an acute grasp of the subjective mind-set, and possesses …

If you want to have a staring contest with me, you will lose.

Phantom Thread (2017)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps surprisingly not the lowest grossing of last year's Best Picture Oscar nominees (that was Call Me by Your Name) but certainly the one with the least buzz as a genuine contender, subjected as Phantom Thread was to a range of views from masterpiece (the critics) to drudge (a fair selection of general viewers). The mixed reaction wasn’t so very far from Paul Thomas Anderson's earlier The Master, and one suspects the nomination was more to do with the golden glow of Daniel Day-Lewis in his first role in half a decade (and last ever, if he's to be believed) than mass Academy rapture with the picture. Which is ironic, as the relatively unknown Vicky Krieps steals the film from under him.

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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