Out here, I'm only responsible for the light.

The Light Between the Oceans

(2016)

(SPOILERS) I’m a sucker for a good lighthouse drama. Or comedy (The Goodies’ Lighthouse Keeping Loonies being up there with the best). Unfortunately, Derek Cianfrance’s adaptation of ML Steadman’s novel The Light Between the Oceans isn’t that. It isn’t bad per se, and can boast a couple of very dedicated performances from Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander (and Rachel Weisz in an effective supporting role), but its melodramatic progression feels patently forced, such that you can see the plot staples popping out as its leads strain to invest their characters with plausibility.

Fassbender’s Tom Sherbourne, a reclusive and damaged World War I veteran (if only Diane Prince had been there to help him at just the right moment), seizes the chance to become lighthouse keeper at Janus Rock, off the coast of Western Australia, but it isn’t long before he falls for, and marries, Vikander’s Isabel Graysmark. Following two miscarriages, the arrival of a boat occupied by a dead man and a baby girl is greeted as a gift by Isabel, and she persuades the reluctant Tom not to report the incident and pretend the girl is theirs. The proceeding tale abounds with unlikely coincidence, in which, on a rare occasion they visit the mainland (for the baby’s christening), Tom just happens to see the actual mother (Weiz’s Hannah Roennfeldt) at the grave of her husband and daughter.

Tom’s growing guilt, leading to his sending Hannah notes and mementos, is convincingly portrayed by the Fass. And Vikander is hugely affecting as a mother overcome by the loss of her children. Still, though, it’s painfully evident, for plot expediency, that Tom is granted the picture’s moral centre while Isabel remains oblivious even when Hannah appears on the scene, so gradually reducing sympathy with her point of view and maternal attachment. This is a picture that, in order to stay its course, requires its characters to engage in Tom’s reticence from communication and expressed feeling, at least until Weisz’s sympathetic mother, struggling to find a path with a reunited daughter who just wants her “real” mommy back, is given the empathy and insight the main couple lack.

There’s a sense, as with his previous The Place Beyond the Pines, that Cianfrance lacks a firm grip on the storytelling side, that he’s plumped for a dramatic weepy but has only sporadic investment in or identification with the tale itself; you can see a similar interest in intertwining generational tragedies running through both films, with ellipses and the past returning to haunt protagonists. The Light Between the Oceans is gorgeously shot by Adam Arkapaw, and Cianfrance is a sensitive actor’s director, keen to linger and draw out as much resonance as he can from a performance, but he’s dreadfully let down by Alexandre Desplat’s over-emphatic score, almost a parody of the tearjerker, it’s so unsubtle. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a composer as variable as Desplat, who can completely make one movie and all but ruin another.

While it takes unconvincing dramatic licence at key points, The Light Between Oceans is at least more grounded than The Place Beyond the Pines, and more convincing overall. The introduction of Hannah, although burdened by an awkward and unnecessary flashback (Weisz is easily a great enough actress to carry inn her face and bearing all you need to know) that threatens to schism the picture halfway through, turns out to be the element that sustains it. It’s her character who can offer the forgiveness and understanding Tom and Isabel lack. And there is the hope of generations carrying this insight onwards, in the now adult Lucy-Grace (Slow West’s Caren Pistorius). Nevertheless, one almost feels there was a better, lower-key and more meditative picture here, one without the dramatic fireworks of the novel. As is not uncommon among his peers, Cianfrance appears to be a misconceived multi-hyphenate; he’s a much better director than he is screenwriter/adaptor.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

This risotto is shmackin’, dude.

Stranger Things Season 4: Volume 1 (SPOILERS) I haven’t had cause, or the urge, to revisit earlier seasons of Stranger Things , but I’m fairly certain my (relatively) positive takes on the first two sequel seasons would adjust down somewhat if I did (a Soviet base under Hawkins? DUMB soft disclosure or not, it’s pretty dumb). In my Season Three review, I called the show “ Netflix’s best-packaged junk food. It knows not to outstay its welcome, doesn’t cause bloat and is disposable in mostly good ways ” I fairly certain the Duffer’s weren’t reading, but it’s as if they decided, as a rebuke, that bloat was the only way to go for Season Four. Hence episodes approaching (or exceeding) twice the standard length. So while the other points – that it wouldn’t stray from its cosy identity and seasons tend to merge in the memory – hold fast, you can feel the ambition of an expansive canvas faltering at the hurdle of Stranger Things ’ essential, curated, nostalgia-appeal inconsequentiality.

The Illumi-what-i?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) (SPOILERS) In which Sam Raimi proves that he can stand proudly with the best – or worst – of them as a good little foot soldier of the woke apocalypse. You’d expect the wilfully anarchic – and Republican – Raimi to choke on the woke, but instead, he’s sucked it up, grinned and bore it. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is so slavishly a production-line Marvel movie, both in plotting and character, and in nu-Feige progressive sensibilities, there was no chance of Sam staggering out from beneath its suffocating demands with anything more than a few scraps of stylistic flourish intact.

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989) (SPOILERS) There’s Jaws , there’s Star Wars , and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws ’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy , to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “ more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie ”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “ mainly boring ”. Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the

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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) (SPOILERS) I didn’t hold out much hope for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent being more than moderately tolerable. Not so much because its relatively untested director and his co-writer are mostly known in the TV sphere (and not so much for anything anyone is raving about). Although, it has to be admitted, the finished movie flourishes a degree of digital flatness typical of small-screen productions (it’s fine, but nothing more). Rather, due to the already over-tapped meta-strain of celebs showing they’re good sports about themselves. When Spike Jonze did it with John Malkovich, it was weird and different. By the time we had JCVD , not so much. And both of them are pre-dated by Arnie in Last Action Hero (“ You brought me nothing but pain ” he is told by Jack Slater). Plus, it isn’t as if Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten have much in the way of an angle on Nic; the movie’s basically there to glorify “him”, give or take a few foibles, do

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

Whacking. I'm hell at whacking.

Witness (1985) (SPOILERS) Witness saw the advent of a relatively brief period – just over half a decade –during which Harrison Ford was willing to use his star power in an attempt to branch out. The results were mixed, and abruptly concluded when his typically too late to go where Daniel Day Lewis, Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro had gone before (with at bare minimum Oscar-nominated results) – but not “ full retard ” – ended in derision with Regarding Henry . He retreated to the world of Tom Clancy, and it’s the point where his cachet began to crumble. There had always been a stolid quality beneath even his more colourful characters, but now it came to the fore. You can see something of that as John Book in Witness – despite his sole Oscar nom, it might be one of Ford’s least interesting performances of the 80s – but it scarcely matters, or that the screenplay (which won) is by turns nostalgic, reactionary, wistful and formulaic, as director Peter Weir, in his Hollywood debu

What’s so bad about being small? You’re not going to be small forever.

Innerspace (1987) There’s no doubt that Innerspace is a flawed movie. Joe Dante finds himself pulling in different directions, his instincts for comic subversion tempered by the need to play the romance plot straight. He tacitly acknowledges this on the DVD commentary for the film, where he notes Pauline Kael’s criticism that he was attempting to make a mainstream movie; and he was. But, as ever with Dante, it never quite turns out that way. Whereas his kids’ movies treat their protagonists earnestly, this doesn’t come so naturally with adults. I’m a bona fide devotee of Innerspace , but I can’t help but be conscious of its problems. For the most part Dante papers over the cracks; the movie hits certain keynotes of standard Hollywood prescription scripting. But his sensibility inevitably suffuses it. That, and human cartoon Martin Short (an ideal “leading man” for the director) ensure what is, at first glance just another “ Steven Spielberg Presents ” sci-fi/fantas

Get away from my burro!

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) (SPOILERS) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is beloved by so many of the cinematic firmament’s luminaries – Stanley Kubrick, Sam Raimi, , Paul Thomas Anderson and who knows maybe also WS, Vince Gilligan, Spike Lee, Daniel Day Lewis; Oliver Stone was going to remake it – not to mention those anteriorly influential Stone Roses, that it seems foolhardy to suggest it isn’t quite all that. There’s no faulting the performances – a career best Humphrey Bogart, with director John Huston’s dad Walter stealing the movie from under him – but the greed-is-bad theme is laid on a little thick, just in case you were a bit too dim to get it yourself the first time, and Huston’s direction may be right there were it counts for the dramatics, but it’s a little too relaxed when it comes to showing the seams between Mexican location and studio.

If that small woman is small enough, she could fit behind a small tree.

Stranger Things Season 4: Volume 2 (SPOILERS) I can’t quite find it within myself to perform the rapturous somersaults that seem to be the prevailing response to this fourth run of the show. I’ve outlined some of my thematic issues in the Volume 1 review, largely borne out here, but the greater concern is one I’ve held since Season Two began – and this is the best run since Season One, at least as far my failing memory can account for – and that’s the purpose-built formula dictated by the Duffer Brothers. It’s there in each new Big Bad, obviously, even to the extent that this is the Big-Bad-who-binds-them-all (except the Upside Down was always there, right?) And it’s there with the resurgent emotional beats, partings, reunions and plaintively stirring music cues. I have to be really on board with a movie or show to embrace such flagrantly shameless manipulation, season after season, and I find myself increasingly immune.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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