Yep, there\u2019s a lot to offload here. Four bigguns\u2019 of varying quality, with one of them taking the current podium position as my favourite film of the year so far (Hint: It ain\u2019t Wonka. Or The Boy and the Heron. Or The Iron Claw).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Wonka<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Going into this as a huge fan of the original, and as a particular fan of Gene Wilder in general, I was kind of set against this prequel, as much as I adore Paul King\u2019s Paddington<\/em> films and his work on the iconic TV series like The Mighty Boosh <\/em>and Garth Marenghi\u2019s Darkplace<\/em>. All in all though, it\u2019s a nice little film, it\u2019s just a bit ironic that Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet is the weakest part in the ensemble. Singing\u2019s not his greatest talent, and his relentless eccentricity leans more to the irritating side of Johnny Depp\u2019s rendition rather than Wilder\u2019s more sinister tone. His southern twang, particularly his Blanche DeBois \u2018I\u2019ve relied on the kindness of strangers\u2019 quip, are a tad grating. But I\u2019ll pause for a moment to add a few of my favourite Wilder lines from the Tunnel of Terror scene, where a nice quaint boat trip quickly goes crazy (and excuse WordPress for forcing me to skip a line each time I press enter):<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not a speck of light is showing so the danger must be growing,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are the fires of Hell a-glowing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is the grizzly reaper mowing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m tempted to quote the whole darn thing, but those are my highlights. Speaking of which, Wonka<\/em> doesn\u2019t have any of the lyrical genius of the original in terms of its new tunes, but its heart is certainly in the right place. King\u2019s prequel follows Wonka\u2019s rise to fame as he tries to start his own shop in the cutthroat world of chocolatieering (not a word, but I\u2019ll use it nonetheless) coupled with the evil shenanigans of Mrs Scrubbit (Olivia Coleman on typically fine form). It\u2019s the fine array of secondary cast members that really make the film shine, and it\u2019s fun to just check off the regulars like Ghosts<\/em> alumni Matthew Baynton, Simon Farnaby and Charlotte Ritchie. Other British stalwarts like Matt Lucas, Rowan Atkinson. Plus Hugh Grant is present and correct too, along with The Mighty Boosh<\/em>\u2019s Rich Fuller (it\u2019s nice to see him getting work outside the comedy series, even if it\u2019s impossible not to think of him as Bob Fossil and other assorted characetrs). It\u2019s these guys who give the film it\u2019s real warmth and make it a fun watch, even if its eponymous character is less convincing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Boy and the Heron<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not a huge Ghibli fan. I\u2019ve seen Spirited Away<\/em> and Howl\u2019s Moving Castle<\/em>, but those are the big ones. The animation\u2019s always amazing, and there\u2019s always a mix between grounded reality and far less grounded fantasy, sometimes peppered with a bit of darkness and violence too. This is apparently the most autobiographical film of Hayao Miyazaki, who after getting the trophy for Most Accomplished Animator is quickly vying for The Guy Who Keeps Saying He\u2019s Going to Retire But Actually Doesn\u2019t Retire and Keeps Making Films award. Props to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Set during the Pacific War, it follows the adventures of Mahito after the death of his mother, coming across the titular heron and an assortment of other suitably strange anthropomorphic creatures. I saw the dubbed version rather than the subtitled original, and dayum, the English-speaking voice cast is stacked. I recognised Chrtistian Bale as the father straight away (he voiced Howl in Miyazaki\u2019s previous film), but it took me a while to recognise Robert Pattison and Willem Defoe as well. It wasn\u2019t The Lighthouse<\/em> reunion I was expecting, but they nonetheless knocked it out of the park. And Mark Hamill too, along with Gemma Chan and Florence Pugh. And Dave Bautista. One of the most impressive voice casts I\u2019ve ever seen. And they\u2019re all awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Miyazaki masterfully blends bleak realist imagery of fires and destruction with surrealist animal characters. Look out for some frogs and barbel fish addressing Mahito with deep hymnal tones, and I have to give a particular shoutout to those talking parakeets who have a particular penchant for sharp knives and human victims. Yeah…odd. For those unfamiliar with Ghibli style, they might not gel with this one, but viewers willing to dive into a bit of eccentricity mixed with love and loss will have a grand old time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Zone of Interest<\/p>\n\n\n\n Goshdarn, Jonathan Glazer knows how to create tension and utter dread with the black screen (see Under the Skin<\/em>). And, as Zone of Interest<\/em> proves, he\u2019s a dab hand at doing the same with a blank white screen. And a blank red screen, too. The fear and dread are significantly bolstered by the reliably horrifying synths of Mica Levi, who is making a name for herself in vocalising the angst of central characters through music alone. \u2018Vanity\u2019 was a particular emotive standout out from Jackie<\/em>, and \u2018Love\u2019 was the haunting highlight of Under the Skin<\/em>. Here, there\u2019s no particular standout, but Levi makes a huge impact with the \u2018less is more\u2019 approach. Other than her occasional intrusions into the soundscape, there\u2019s no soundtrack at all. As films like No Country for Old Men<\/em> and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre<\/em> have supremely proved, it\u2019s often what the camera doesn\u2019t show you that makes the most emotional impact. Levi\u2019s occasional synths are guttural, deep and utterly alien, distancing the audience from already distanced and doom-laden imagery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Onto the plot, which Glazer loosely based on Martin Amis\u2019 novel of the same name. It follows the Nazi commander Rudolf H\u00f6ss and his family as they live their lives, with only a wall separating them from the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. There\u2019s not much more to it than that, but the way imagery and silences are used to evoke horror are unlike anything else. Images that might seem cute and innocent are rendered horrifying and evil through the background atrocities that are never shown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Glazer makes the sensible decision never to show the sufferings, instead cultivating disgust in the audience by having commanders discuss the camps over unseen documents and detailed maps. When one commander is asked by another how \u2018it\u2019 went and he responds that \u2018it\u2019 went \u2018better than expected\u2019, we can guess exactly what they\u2019re referring to, but the lack of specification makes the conversation all the more unholy. Never has a garden of colourful, healthy, beautiful flowers looked so ugly knowing the horrors that lie only yards beyond them, particularly when they\u2019re filmed in extreme close-up hellscapes while chimneys continue to smoke and machines carry on pulsing. That red flower adorning\u00a0The Zone of Interest<\/em>\u2019s central poster takes on a whole new kind of dread once you\u2019ve seen the film. Images of babies and children playing are filled with sadness rather than calm. If you can picture the sheer foreboding and unease rendered in that beach scene from\u00a0Under the Skin<\/em>, imagine that feeling stretched across a whole film.\u00a0The Zone of Interest<\/em>\u00a0isn\u2019t an easy watch, but it\u2019s a testament to the power of film and the myriad emotions that can be cultivated through imagery, sound and dreadful silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Iron Claw<\/p>\n\n\n\n I still can\u2019t really picture Zac Efron outside his High School Musical<\/em> persona, despite the fact that I\u2019ve never seen any of those films. Nonetheless, he puts in a solid performance as the wrestling champion Kevin Von Erich in Sean Durkin\u2019s sports biopic. It was hard to follow up with this one after watching Zone of Interest<\/em> a couple of hours earlier, but it\u2019s still a decent effort. Maybe not helped by the two girls sitting close by who were talking, messing around on their phones, resting their feet on other seats and generally being irritating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But despite their incessant volume (\u2018this is an English cinema, not an American one, so pipe down and watch the film properly!\u2019 said my uptight internal monologue, not wanting to engage in an actual physical or verbal confrontation, as I\u2019m too much of a dweeb), there were some strong performances, particularly from The Bear<\/em>\u2019s Jeremy Allen White, whose charisma helps lift the narrative a bit. And the wrestling scenes are well-choreographed too. Ultimately, despite some decent set pieces and heartfelt scenes, it\u2019s difficult to get engaged in a sport that\u2019s, y\u2019know, fake. And it\u2019s hard to mine too much psychological depth when the wrestling scenes, impressive as they are, often come at the expense of decent character development. If you\u2019re a wrestling fan, though, The Iron Claw<\/em> will probably be a, uh, RKO. Apparently that stands for Randy Knock Out, which is a top tier move in the wrestling world. The more you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yep, there\u2019s a lot to offload here. Four bigguns\u2019 of varying quality, with one of them taking the current podium position as my favourite film of the year so far (Hint: It ain\u2019t Wonka. Or The Boy and the Heron. Or The Iron Claw).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1476,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}