Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood (2019)

If you take any one scene from Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood that features a look at the winding career paths of either Rick Dalton (former movie star, now a TV name, played by Leonardo DiCaprio) or Cliff Booth (main stunt double for Dalton, and good friend, played by Brad Pitt) then you have something pretty wonderful. Also take any scene with Sharon Tate (played by Margot Robbie) being happy and seemingly unspoilt by her near-stardom and you will be smiling, thanks mainly to the wonderful performance from Robbie.

But there's everything else here. Tarantino, for he's long been in the position where we don't have to use his full name, has crafted a fairytale, which the title clearly signifies, but he's done so in a way that loses focus, seems to often have its heart in the wrong place, and just stumbles into a grand finale that is, at best, uncharacteristically graphic and tonally jarring and, at worst, disappointingly disrespectful and distasteful.

The core of the film is based around the relationship between Dalton and Booth, as the former tries to keep working while not allowing his name to lose that star quality. Tate is shown being the kind of woman who lights up any room when she enters it, although those who know what happened to her cannot keep a tinge of sadness at bay, despite suspecting that the fairytale aspect may allow for more QT historical revisionism. And then you have the Manson Family, a shadow looming over the film once they make their first appearance.

Let me make something clear first of all. There are no bad performances here, and Pitt is doing his best work in years (this is arguably more his film than DiCaprio's, although the latter does brilliant with a range of acting, from his natural state off-camera to his cheesier style in some of his TV work). Robbie is phenomenal, if underserved, and there are also excellent turns from Timothy Olyphant, Margaret Qualley, Julia Butters, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell, and Al Pacino, to name but a few. Even those who turn up just to do a small impression (Damian Lewis is Steve McQueen, Mike Moh is Bruce Lee) do great work.

All of the things that don't work here come from Tarantino, a man who has indulged and deluded himself for so long that I doubt he will see anything wrong in what he may consider the culmination of his career. The soundtrack is what you'd expect, the barrage of movie and TV references are on point (and the second-best thing about it, after the lead performances), the violence appears (but it feels different from other violence he has depicted, it feels . . . more unpleasant and out of place, considering the tone of the rest of the finale, as if he felt everyone would need things to be pushed further and further, like some kind of cathartic release), and you get so many shots of people with their bare feet up in the air/on furniture that it starts to feel like he's trolling us all.

Obviously intended as a love letter to this time, and a way of both celebrating and lamenting the effect that TV had on the careers of many in the movie industry, Tarantino throws everything in the mix without considering how much of it is necessary. Although this allows for more treats (the technical side of things is wonderful, when it comes to capturing the feel of the time, and the many shows shown are wonderful, as are some of the movie clips, both real and re-envisioned with Dalton in a main role), it also allows for the moments that feel most sour. Why have your character shown to be a badass in a number of different ways when you can just have him go toe to toe with Bruce Lee? Why give someone a dark backstory when you can just imply a very similar fate to that of Natalie Wood? Why treat well-known names with a little more respect when they can be bit-players in the lives of the two main characters?

There were so many other ways to do this, ways that didn't have to be signposted less than halfway through the 161-minute runtime (at least I think the moment in which Booth is asked to fix a TV aerial is before the halfway point). This should have been a pure celebration from start to finish, showing the bad with the good but ending on a great upswing. Instead . . . well, it feels completely misjudged, completely gratuitous (sometimes for the better, often for the worse), and completely half-assed, considering how much the viewer is expected to bring to the table in order to fill in the gaps and place characters that ultimately end up being so transformed and/or discarded by Tarantino that they didn't have to be based on ANY reality at all. But then he wouldn't be able to feel quite so self-indulgent, and we all know that QT loves to indulge himself. It's just that his best movies also indulge the audience at the same time. This one doesn't. In fact, I am tempted to say that it ends up being downright insulting at times, but then often manages to make up for it with some little moments of cinematic beauty.

Hugely frustrating, hugely problematic, and still absolutely essential viewing for those who want to see where they stand on another Tarantino film that, at the very least, is once again steeped in the history of the cinema he loves.

5/10

You'll be able to get the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

The House With A Clock In Its Walls (2018)

IF you don't mind his presence in films, Jack Black has spent the past 10-15 years steadily building up a great selection of family-friendly adventure films. Okay, I'm the only one who enjoyed Gulliver's Travels but most people seemed to enjoy the Kung Fu Panda movies, School Of Rock, Goosebumps, and Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle. And here's another to add to the list, a film full of magical delights that is an unexpected directorial effort from Eli Roth (a man more well-known for his gory horror movies and twisted thrillers).

Owen Vaccaro plays Lewis Barnavelt, a young boy who ends up going to stay with his eccentric Uncle Jonathan (Black) after his parents die in a car crash. Uncle Jonathan lives in a very strange house, is himself a very strange individual, and has a good friend in the shape of the very strange Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett). There's a lot of magic being bandied around, and Lewis wants to learn how to use it as soon as he sees it happening, and that clock in the walls, a device placed there by a warlock for reasons unknown. But it's counting down to something, and that something can't be good.

Based on a John Bellairs book that was first published in the early 1970s, The House With A Clock In Its Walls manages to feel surprisingly fresh and fun, despite not being entirely dissimilar to so many other movies we have seen aimed at children in the post-Potter entertainment years. A large part of that is to do with the cast but it's equally down to the surprisingly spot-on handling of the material by Roth, working from a script by Eric Kripke. This is not a film concerned with mystery and personal discovery, it's a film about magic. Young Lewis finds out about it quite quickly, making it a very normal part of his life for most of the movie, and the fun and thrills come from that magic being used, and from a third act that culminates with the final ticking and tocking of the clock.

Black is as energetic and amusing as he usually is (IF you like him, those who don't will want to find some other viewing choice), and Vaccaro is perfectly likeable in his main role, but it's always a lot of fun to see Blanchett in a lighter role, and she's her usual wonderful presence here. You also get Lorenza Izzo in a small, but important, role, and Renee Elise Goldsberry and Kyle MacLachlan as the two main characters who want to be there when the clock finishes the countdown. Colleen Camp is a neighbour who witnesses some odd stuff going on, Sunny Suljic play a boy who befriends Lewis, but may just be using him, and there's an array of enjoyable CGI creations that have fun personalities of their own (the best being a pet armchair that acts like an excitable puppy).

You can probably already guess the main problem that the film has. It's just too similar to so many others that we've seen over the past decade or so. The fantastical elements don't quite go as far as they could, it lacks some tension, and the grand finale feels more like an afterthought. There are also some toilet humour gags that don't feel in line with the rest of the film, just a couple of them but they're in there. These things aren't enough to spoil the whole movie, they just drag it down slightly.

Roth will always have his detractors, no matter what genre he tries his hand at, as will Black, so that also provides a lot of people with more reasons to give this a miss. I think it's worth your time though, especially if you have children at just the right age for it (probably between 6-14 being the optimum demographic . . . or anyone with the same mental age as me).

7/10

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The Green Inferno (2013)

Please note, this is my same review as it originally appeared over at Flickfeast. But f you didn't see it there then please enjoy it now.

Expectations have been high ever since Eli Roth announced that he was working on a cannibal movie. The fact that it was titled The Green Inferno – a title that was originally going to be used for Cannibal Holocaust (and ended up being the title of a cash-in “sequel”) – clued most horror fans in to the fact that this should be a goodie. It should be intense, gory and slightly disturbing.

Thank goodness, then, that The Green Inferno is intense, gory and slightly disturbing. It may well be the best film that Roth has directed so far, and it’s certainly the best, full-on, cannibal movie that I can think of since the heyday of the subgenre. It takes time to put everything in place, but viewers are then rewarded with a second half that moves from gruesome set-piece to gruesome set-piece.
The plot sees a bunch of young activists travelling from America to Peru to protest against the destruction of the natural habitat by a nasty corporation with nasty, big bulldozers. That’s dangerous enough, thanks to the armed guards on the site, yet it’s nothing compared to what happens after the protest. The small plane that they’re travelling in crashes, leaving them in the middle of the jungle. However, they’re not alone. It’s not long until some jungle inhabitants drug the youngsters, take them back to their village, and start to plan lunch.

It’s hard for me to think of any major flaws here. The characters, despite being potential menu courses, are all quite well-written, and certainly all get enough moments to mark themselves out from the group. This was a pleasant surprise, as I really expected a bunch of unlikable and interchangeable victims, but that wasn’t the case. The first half might be slow for some, yet Roth rewards everyone with a second half that starts to deliver the goods and doesn’t really let up until the end credits. Even the humour, so often an easy source of criticism in his previous movies, is perfectly pitched here. The movie doesn’t provide a lot of obvious laughs, although there are some, but the sly wit of the commentary here is probably the furthest that Roth has ever moved away from his comfort zone of “Jock talk”. Cannibal Holocaust was about people meddling where they had no right, and different forms of savagery, from the visitors and from the local inhabitants. The Green Inferno is about people meddling where they have no right, and also pretending to do more, and be better, even while operating within a protective bubble of privilege and ignorance.

The cast all do well, with Lorenza Izzo really easy to root for as the nominal leading lady. Ariel Levy, Daryl Sabara, Aaron Burns, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Sky Ferreira, Magda Apanowicz, and Nicolas Martinez all make their characters feel like proper individuals, as opposed to “potential victim #2″ or “shrieking white girl”, for example. They’re all helped by the script, which Roth wrote with Guillermo Amoedo, and it also helps that a few of the people involved will be familiar to fans who saw Aftershock. They’re vaguely recognisable, yet not so famous to be exempt from any of the ordeals that the cannibals may have planned for them. Richard Burgi also does well with his few minutes of screentime, although he gets to avoid the jungle madness.

With some lush cinematography, an appropriate score by Manuel Riveiro, and a real feeling of authenticity to the whole thing, The Green Inferno manages to cram in all of the obvious homages that fans of the cannibal movie subgenre will expect while also standing proudly as a new leader in the ravenous, though admittedly sparse nowadays, pack. The screen may not be dripping with gore at every opportunity, which only makes it all the more powerful when it’s put front and centre (kudos to the special effects guys for such moments of visceral brilliance).

Roth is a master of hype, and it seems as if he’s been building up The Green Inferno for a long, long time. That will inevitably lead some people to view the film and feel disappointment. Hell, this review will also help to do that, so I apologise for getting your hopes up. I won’t apologise too profusely, however, as I feel that, on this occasion, you CAN believe the hype. The Green Inferno is a modern horror classic . . . . . . . . . . . . for those who have the stomach for it.

9/10.

Aftershock (2012)

Directed by Nicolas Lopez, Aftershock is yet another movie that many people will most readily associate with Eli Roth. Why? Well, he produced the movie, helped write the screenplay (with Lopez and Guillermo Amoedo) and also takes on one of the lead roles. Roth is great at engaging with fans and publicising movies that he's involved with, but the downside is that everyone just thinks of them as "Eli Roth movies" - if you think I am talking nonsense then just ask a random selection of a dozen people who directed The Last Exorcism. See?

But I digress.

Roth plays a character only known as Gringo, a young man who is enjoying some time in Chile with a couple of friends/acquaintances (Ariel Levy and Nicolas Martinez) when the memorable partying is rudely interrupted by an even more memorable earthquake. The earthquake causes no small amount of damage and death, but the survivors soon realise that the dark side of mother nature can be matched by the dark side of human nature.

If you had a problem with Hostel (a movie I love, but some seem to think that it shows up Roth as a complete xenophobe) then you're really not going to like the general misanthropy on display here. As well as showing a situation in Chile that goes downhil fast this just casts everyone as dangerous, selfish pieces of crap who often don't take much to be pushed into committing terrible crimes.

The acting is uneven, to put it nicely. Roth is okay in his role, but not great. Levy and Martinez are worse, and their characters are just so hard to sympathise with that viewers just won't care when all hell breaks loose. Andrea Osvart, Natasha Yarovenko and Lorenza Izzo are all pretty enough, but not that great at actually acting, so viewers won't care about them either.

Director Lopez at least gets the carnage and nastiness right. When that's onscreen the movie is at least entertaining. Some fine gore gags pop up here and there, and there are one or two squirm-inducing moments. If only the grue and violence had been accompanied by decent characters and a solid script then this could have been a solid, fun, horror-tinged, disaster movie. As it stands, it's a disappointment.

Oh, and avoid the trailer for this one as it commits the cardinal sin of revealing the very end of the movie. Who the hell designs trailers and thinks that showing the final moment is a good idea?????

5/10

http://www.amazon.com/Aftershock-Watch-Now-While-Theaters/dp/B00CQ3R1BA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368741901&sr=8-1&keywords=aftershock+eli+roth