Tag Archive: Scarlett Johansson


The Coen Brothers’ cesarian cut and paste job

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March 12, 2016

HAIL CAESAR! directed by Joel & Ethan Coen (USA,2016)

large_large_ux5y8qjkszufab5vsaqxhndmyt3Friends, Romans,countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Hail Caesar!, not to praise it.

We all love the Coen Brothers, and not without cause, yet I am sad to report that this is one mess of a movie.

It’s as if the siblings decided to do a cut and paste job based on ideas left over from earlier films, then phoned round all their favorite actors to see who was available for a two hour love in.

There are some clever and amusing scenes but none of them lead anywhere because there is no coherent storyline to tie them together.

Along with the equally dire Burn After Reading from 2008, it is plain that what we have here is an ensemble cast that had more fun making a movie than the audience have watching it. Continue reading →

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WHY I DON’T LOVE LUCY

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October 1, 2014

LUCY directed by Luc Besson (France/USA, 2014)

Ever wondered what would happen if humans achieved the power to use 100% of their brains? No, me neither, but Luc Besson has given the matter some thought and this overblown piece of cinematic nonsense is the consequence.

What makes the movie so unbearable is that you get the impression that Besson takes seriously the debunked  scientific premise that humans only make use of 10% of their grey matter. Not only that, but it is packed full of psychobabble and pseudo-spiritual musings that are preachy, absurd and humorless.

Scarlett Johanssson is charged with the task of convincing us that she has undergone this altered state but since she is laden with a truly dismal script she fails miserably.

The more her brain grows the more robotic she becomes so in the end she’s like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator without the muscles or one-liners. In Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) her aloofness worked because she was meant to be an alien but Lucy is supposed to represent the pinnacle of human potential.

You even come to doubt her newfound intelligence when she thinks nothing of shooting a patient in an operating theatre (“He would’ve died anyway!”) but passes over countless opportunities to kill the stereotypical Korean mobsters who are pursuing her. This prolongs the chase and gives Besson a chance to stage a final shoot out which makes no sense within the context of the movie.

Lucy contacts Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman) because he’s the one scientist who knows why (and can tell us) how she can develop the ability to literally apply mind over matter. You know he’s an intellectual because he talks in terms of ‘cerebral capacity’ when ordinary mortals would say ‘brain power’.

The Matrix-influenced visual effects are intermittently impressive but quickly become tiresome when they are not linked to any coherent or logical storyline. If there even the tiniest hint of irony Besson might have made this into a passable piece of mindless entertainment; instead he merely reaffirms the director’s capacity for style over substance.

 

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LOVING THE ALIEN

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July 8, 2014

UNDER THE SKIN directed by Jonathan Glazer (UK,USA, 2013)

ScarlettThe greatest movies are those that discretely change your perception of the world. Inspiring auteurs like Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch play upon the voyeuristic nature of cinema and their strength of their vision lies in drawing the viewer into the kind of dark and sinister worlds ‘normal’ citizens would go out of our way to avoid. Jonathan Glazer can safely be added to this exclusive director’s club.

Under The Skin is loosely based on Michel Faber’s brilliant and disturbing debut novel. The operative word here is ‘loosely’ because so much of the plot has been changed it almost amounts to a different story entirely. The Scottish setting is the same but otherwise the divergences far outweigh the similarities. Even so, the movie captures the essence of the novel by being faithful to the atmosphere if not the details.

In the novel the alienated alien, Isserley, is described as “half Baywatch babe, half little old lady” which is hardly a description that applies to Scarlett Johansson who still manages to look sexy despite wearing a scraggy black wig and manky fur jacket. In fact Glazer makes sex the chief way in which the solitary males are lured to their fate; they don’t have to be drugged.

The movie is seriously creepy although not as explicitly horrific as the book. The victims disappear into a strange liquid, a symbolic and seemingly painless death which is a happy death compared to the nightmarish process of being turned into braised meat that Faber describes. Continue reading →

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THE AVENGERS – A VICTORY FOR EXCESS

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May 15, 2012

THE AVENGERS directed by Joss Whedon (USA, 2011)

I remember when I first saw James Cameron’s Terminator 2:Judgement Day  in 1991 I came out of the cinema thinking that there’s no way this can be topped for audacious effects and technical innovation. Obviously, I was wrong,  as a spate of movies since, not least Cameron’s Titanic and Avator have pushed the boundaries still further.

This is not to say movies have got better but they are certainly met audience’s insatiable demand for spectacles.

Joss Whedon’s The Avengers can be added to this lIst and after this two-hour  experience I felt like I’d been pummelled by Thor’s hammer or been roughed up by Hulk (and I didn’t even see it in 3D!).

As Oscar Wilde once wisely observed, “nothing succeeds like excess” and having a squad of superheroes is a bit like having a soccer team full of Messi clones.

The end result  is overwhelming but effective as they manage to save the planet once again.

It’s fun, fast and quite absurd but pushes all the buttons as a pure entertainment package albeit one that could be enjoyed with the brain on standby. Continue reading →

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SEX, PEARLS AND PAINT

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April 15, 2012

GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING directed by Peter Webber (2003)

girl-with-a-pearl-earring-scarlett-johansson-15469105-1470-1050I read and admired Tracy Chevalier’s novel when it was first published in 1999 but was never strongly drawn to the movie adaptation.

I had serious misgivings about the cast and a few lukewarm reviews put me off too. Surely Scarlett Johansson was too sexy to play the young girl and Colin Firth too English to play Vermeer.

Having finally got round to seeing it on DVD, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the skilled way Peter Webber captured the detail and atmosphere of painter’s household in 17th century Delft and of how faithful he was to the novel. This is all the more impressive as it was the British director’s debut feature film.

Chevalier’s book works both as an examination of Vermeer’s meticulous pictures made of light and as a sympathetic study of the plight of women who  were resigned to a hard life of servitude while being at the mercy of their randy masters.

Firth ogles her like a ravenous wolf hound waiting for the moment to pounce. Tom Wilkinson as Vermeer’s patron Van Ruijven is less reticent and makes his move while she’s hanging out the washing. By strength of will and good fortune Griet manages to avoid becoming a ruined maid and finds love among her peers by winning the heart of butcher’s boy Pieter (Cillian Murphy) but not before she has become the subject of Vermeer’s portrait.

Johansson as Griet has the scrubbed and pasty look of a young nun but still manages to look stunning and convince you that she would arouse lustful thoughts. Her resemblance to the girl in Vermeer’s portrait is uncanny.

The story of a servant with a pearl earring and a moody Dutch painter obviously offers less scope for action than a murder mystery so those who criticise the movie for being slow-moving are missing the point.

This is not a plot driven thriller but a detailed character study, and a very good one at that. It works by creating an intense and claustrophobic world within a world. There are no bodice ripping scenes but the sexual tension is ever-present – when Vermeer makes Griet lick her lips not once, not twice but three times this is more sexually charged than any explicit romp among the easels would have been.

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