Prime Time: Here (2024)

I've said it many times before, and I will undoubtedly say it again, but we definitely lost something when Robert Zemeckis started to become more and more seduced by technology. He was a director once able to use the best special effects to tell wonderful and hugely entertaining stories (having helmed at least two features that could easily be considered absolute classics of the 1980s), but he started to focus more and more on FX-laden movies that just seemed designed to showcase the FX work.

And now we have Here, a film with a couple of gimmicks to attract or repel viewers, depending on your reaction to the main premise. With the camera largely locked off for most of the runtime, Here shows us a house, and the people who have inhabited that house over the decades and centuries. We also see the space as it was before the house was built, sometimes seeing people coming and going from the house across from that space, sometimes seeing people moving through the space when it was just untamed wilderness, and sometimes even seeing a bit of prehistoric action. Although various people come and go, the two main characters are Richard and Margaret, played by Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. They are digitally de-aged for certain scenes, and we get to see most of their lifetime play out in front of us. 

Based on a graphic novel by Richard McGuire, turned into screenplay fork by Zemeckis and Eric Roth, the visual style here may put many people off, but it's a nice way to keep things moving along and keep jumping in between the various generations. What you see are various panels appearing in different areas of the screen as the image transitions from the present to the past, to the very past, and back towards the present. The visuals sometimes lag behind the audio, but it works to keep viewers engaged in a way that wouldn't otherwise wouldn't be possible with such a static camera set-up.

Hanks and Wright are very enjoyable when they get to be front and centre, but they share a lot of the screentime with Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly (as the parents), Michelle Dockery and Gwilym Lee (a couple who lived in an older incarnation of the house), Ophelia Lovibond and David Fynn (a different couple who also made the place their home at one time), and Nicholas Pinnock, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and a handful of others helping to keep the space busy.

The big surprise, however, is how little the film really rests on the shoulders of the cast. They help, and Bettany and Reilly have some particularly effective moments, but this is a film that actually allows Zemeckis to marry the tech to a strong heartbeat in a way that is unexpectedly satisfying. While it's a technical exercise, one that may only appeal to a minority able to tolerate the use of the format, it's actually more interested in sharing a positive message about the shared experience of life. Birth, love, pain, loss, sacrifice, laughter, tears, and, of course, death.

I don't think I'll ever rewatch this, and I cannot think of anyone I would strongly recommend it to, but I enjoyed it while it was on. Everyone involved, on both sides of the camera, is doing very good work, and there's a lot of sweetness, but, unlike the fixtures and furnishings of the house depicted here, there isn't all that much below the surface. 

6/10

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Killers Of The Flower Moon (2023)

Sometimes you allow your expectations to dictate your viewing experience, which is how I set time aside to start 2024 with a viewing of Killers Of The Flower Moon, a film I was very much hoping to really enjoy. I ended up loving it. I'd even go as far as calling it another masterpiece in the extensive filmography of Martin Scorsese.

What you have here is a story of greed and white privilege, all stemming from the oil that was discovered under Osage Nation land in 1920s Oklahoma. Not necessarily trusted to manage their new wealth on their own, the government created a system that would allow the Osage people to spend their money while safeguarding the potential for white men to infiltrate, and benefit from, the community. William Hale (Robert De Niro) is a man who claims to be a friend of the Osage people, but he's trying to feather his nest while viewing himself as some kind of criminal mastermind. A grand plan is set in motion when his nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns from WWI, leading to Ernest eventually courting Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), with the intention of marrying her and getting himself in line for a very nice inheritance. Things inevitably don't go to plan.

Based on the non-fiction book by David Grann, Killers Of The Flower Moon was crafted into a brilliant and brilliantly intelligent screenplay by Scorsese and Eric Roth. Not only does it tell the story that deserves to be told, Scorsese also acknowledges the problematic nature of the material. It's an important travesty/tragedy packaged for entertainment, to some degree, and it's being told via the perspective of a privileged white man, which is almost a constant issue being explored throughout the hefty runtime. Scorsese actually makes an appearance in front of the camera at one point, and he comes very close to just outright apologising for sharing this tawdry slice of American history in the only way he can.

If you watch the film and don't consider how important, and how unfair, the perspective is, it's worth remembering that many of the characters onscreen are idiots. Some are more obviously idiotic than others (DiCaprio's character being the simplest, but De Niro undermines almost all of his serious and scary moments with ridiculous attempts to maintain a sense of self-importance and a facade that so many around him can already see through), but you could throw a ball of paper at this assembled cast of characters and have a 98% chance of hitting a moron.

It feels like I don't even have to say how good the main cast are. Aside from DiCaprio giving another performance up there with his very best, and De Niro doing what he has done so well for Scorsese over the years, Gladstone is just sublime. She's helped by the fact that she gets to be smarter than so many of the people around her, and there's a sad desperation sighing in her soul as she views a "coyote" as a better option than many other men in the community, thinking that an open admission of greed and laziness will make her situation safer than it could be. Scott Shepherd is also very good, playing Ernest's brother, and also someone even more brazen about his criminality and abuse of others. There are many others who step on screen to steal a scene or two, including Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser, and John Lithgow, but the other real stars are Cara Jade Myers (playing the beautifully spirited and unrelenting Anna) and Ty Mitchell (who seems acutely aware of the idiocy of the criminals he ends up working with, but is unable to avoid them).

Every element here is as carefully considered as it needs to be, from the bursts of violence to the score and soundtrack, from the moments that make the bittersweet humour more obvious to the growing and stifling air of tragedy and horror, and I personally felt the three and a half hour runtime fly by (although others have seen this as a major failing). As I said at the start of this review, this is another Scorsese masterpiece.

10/10

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Prime Time: Dune (2020)

It's a bit of a running joke sometimes, but I tend to mention the fact that I've not yet read the source material in a lot of my movie reviews. Films and books are two very different mediums, of course, but knowledge of one can inform your opinion of the other, which is why I try to let people know the full context of my opinion. And it feels even more important than ever to mention it here, considering how many sci-fi fans seem to love the franchise kick-started by Frank Herbert back in 1965.

With the memory of the 1984 film still looming large in my subconscious, I kept delaying a viewing of this film for as long as I could. The cast seemed good enough, the visuals looked great, and I hadn't yet been disappointed by director Denis Villeneuve. I just couldn't bring myself to give it 2 1/2 hours of my life though. Until I could.

Timothée Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, the son of Lady Jessica Atreides (Rebecca Ferguson) and Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac). This noble family are sent to the planet Arrakis, a hostile environment that also happens to be the home of the most valuable resource in the universe, spice. Spice makes interstellar travel possible, among other things. Arrakis has some hostile native inhabitants, in the shape of both humanoids and the huge sandworms, but the House of Atreides hope to use diplomacy and respect to make the best of their situation, ignorant to the fact that they have been set up for failure. Aside from the political manoeuvring, Lady Jessica spends time helped Paul develop his power, known as "The Voice", and preparing him to fulfil his prophesied potential.

Adapted for the screen by Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, and Eric Roth, the latter two with very mixed filmographies that wouldn't necessarily lead you to think of them as first main choices for this, Dune is a dense viewing experience that admirably does enough throughout to keep viewers up to speed with the developing intrigue and treachery. It's part one of two, and that was definitely the right choice. In fact, the more of the source material that comes through in each main scene, the more you realise what a fool's errand poor David Lynch was on when he tried to pack everything into one feature back in the mid-1980s.

Packed with gorgeous visuals from start to finish, Villeneuve makes sure to once again build a completely believable and fully-formed environment for the characters to inhabit. The production design, make up, wardrobe, etc, are all absolutely stunning, and displayed beautifully by cinematographer Greig Fraser, and there's a superb Hans Zimmer score to accompany the flawless visuals.

While Chalamet plays the lead role, it's an extra delight to have the rest of the cast so stacked with great performers and familiar faces. Not that Chalamet is bad, but his character is, certainly in this first half of the tale, a bit weak and passive, for the most part. Ferguson and Isaac are effortlessly impressive though, and they have a couple of reliable advisors/warriors in the shape of Jason Momoa and Josh Brolin (both excellent, the latter disappointingly under-used). Stellan Skarsgård is almost unrecognisable, at first anyway, as the repugnant and cold-blooded Baron Harkonnen, Dave Bautista turns up just long enough to play his nephew, and there are excellent contributions from Chang Chen and Sharon Duncan-Brewster. You also have small roles for Javier Bardem and Zendaya, both playing different Arrakis natives who could end up helping our lead to fulfil his promise.

This is the kind of big-budget sci-fi that fans deserve. It feels more mature and intelligent than the usual mainstream releases, it has been crafted with a real care and attention to detail, and Villeneuve and co. have taken care to punctuate the ethereal and meditative mood with enough livelier set-pieces to ensure that the lengthy runtime doesn't feel like an unendurable slog. Many fans will have already seen this, and been won over by it, but I recommend it to anyone else who has been as hesitant as I was. It's worth your time, and I hope everything comes together for a satisfying concluding instalment.

8/10

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