BlacKkKlansman ★★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

 

Spike Lee has always made films that have managed to perfectly capture the mood and the attitudes of the time that they’re released, so in the era of Trump’s America, it seemed an odd decision for the iconic director to go and make a buddy-cop thriller that’s set in the seventies. But being Spike Lee, there’s a lot more to it than that and despite it’s period setting; it still feels very urgent, politically charged and incredibly relevant.

BlacKkKlansman has been hailed as a return to form for Lee and has been eagerly awaited since it premiered at Cannes, where it was well received and took home the Grand Prix. It features the true story of two cops that managed to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan, which would make it sound all very Mississippi Burning, if it weren’t for the fact that one of these cops was black. The cop in question is undercover detective Ron Stallworth, played by John David Washington, who is then subsequently played by his white partner (Adam Driver), for obvious reasons, when he has his face-to-face meetings with the Klan. The two form a great pairing; Washington and Driver are really good at capturing the conflicted feelings about their jobs and their identity (Driver’s character is Jewish) and the duo have some great chemistry.

The first half of the film is a pretty straightforward and thoroughly entertaining cop drama; it’s gripping as well as being really funny and draws you in to an engaging story that you can’t believe was based on true events. Some of the characters are painted in very broad strokes like the very racist cop or the blundering members of the KKK, but their idiocy does help to highlight how dangerous it is when these idiots actually start to take some form of action.

Entering the second half, the film undertakes a radical change of tone during a scene that contrasts two meetings, one with the white supremacists and another with the local college’s black student union. The merged chants of both white power and black power are overlaid in a powerful scene that really contrasts the differing ideologies behind both political slogans. From there on in, you really start to feel the full force of Spike Lee’s anger and it feels as though he’s using the cop-drama as a platform to directly address Trump.

He isn’t one for subtlety when it comes to putting his message across and there are a few very on-the-nose references to the current president that aren’t so much as a wink to the audience as a jab to the sternum. Overt references to modern political climates in films set in the past can feel jarring and distracting, but in BlacKkKlansman, the parallels he manages to draw are frighteningly accurate which make them all the scarier. It’s a film that feels very important and the final shots that feature recent clips, from Charlottesville and Trump’s subsequent response, show how prescient these issues remain and seeing them in the context of this film makes them so much more affecting than they would otherwise be on the news.

Despite the very clear message, there are still several grey areas that Spike has left to provoke conversations and there are a lot of the contrasting opinions, reminiscent of Do The Right Thing. BlacKkKlansman is an incredibly stirring film that really shakes you and forces you to think about important issues and a solid buddy cop drama as well.

Zama ★★★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

 

The opening shot of Zama, which is also the one used on the film’s poster, is one of pure noble imperialist power. It depicts protagonist Don Diego De Zama, a Corregidor in 18^th century South America, looking out to sea dressed in full bureaucratic attire, complete with three-tipped hat and powdered wig. It’s a striking image that look’s like it’s come straight from a Baroque painting. But in the two hours that follow, director Lucredia Martel does everything she can to completely shatter this image, by completely breaking down our protagonist and the representation of colonialism he embodies.

Zama, brilliantly played Daniel Giménez Cacho, is experiencing an existential crisis during a continuous run of terrible luck. A desperately lonely, sexually frustrated and pathetic man, he is trapped in a trivial military position in remote Paraguay, miles away from his family that leaves him hopelessly clinging on to any shred of dignity he’s got left. He commands zero respect from his officer peers, the women he’s trying to have it off with, or any of the indigenous people he is supposed to be ruling and has an almost slapstick ridiculousness about him that plays a fine balance between tragedy and comedy. Everyone he comes across is mocking and undermining his authority, including the environment in which he lives, showcased in a brilliant scene where a llama walks into frame whilst he’s trying to look important during a meeting.

He’s been made countless promises from his superiors that he is to be transferred to Buenos Aires, where his wife and children reside, but as the on-going, brutally unfair events that happen to him progress, it becomes clearer and clearer that this is offer is firmly not on the cards. Each time he is knocked back, he sinks to lower depths as he is gradually chipped away and begins his descent into despairing madness.

The film has the feeling of one of those dreams you might have where however hard you try and do something, you’re met with consistent failure and disappointment. The cinematography and sound design help add to this dreamlike feeling, adding several surreal elements that give it a feeling of a lucid hallucination. The haunting soundscape is oddly contrasted with a Brazilian surf rock soundtrack, which somehow seems to fit perfectly and the lush wide-open vistas of the Paraguayan landscape are beautiful but only serve to unsettle you more and conjures up images of Vietnam war films.

Watching Zama is a hypnotic experience; it really gets you into his head and traps you in his state of purgatorial anxiety and paranoia. It looks and sounds amazing and has an ethereal quality that sticks with you for days after watching it. It’s a scathing indictment of colonialism, but it’s done with a light touch in a way that’s both haunting and a pleasure to watch.

Ant-Man & The Wasp ★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

Marvel have been on a really good run of late, the gargantuan movie studio has been releasing films thick and fast in recent years (AM&TW marks their third release in 2018) and their most recent output hasn’t just seen them garner their biggest commercial successes, but also their biggest hits with the critics as well. The original Ant-Man came out three years ago and visionary director Edgar Wright was famously fired during production, the film that was released was an incredibly middling and bang-average affair that looked more like it had been conceived in a board meeting. Since then, Marvel has been hiring more and more innovative directors and then actually allowing them to have more creative input. This has resulted in some the franchise’s best films, from Scott Derrickson’s mind-bending Doctor Strange, to Taika Waititi’s wacky space opera Thor: Ragnarok and Ryan Coogler’s afrofuturist smash-hit Black Panther.

The Big Daddy though came earlier this year, with the release of Avengers: Infinity War. This was the huge culmination of 18 films and 76 named characters that were all battling it out for a bit of screen time. It made over 2 billion dollars at the global box office and is currently the highest ever grossing superhero film and the fourth highest grossing film of all time. But aside from all this, it managed to beat the odds and astonishingly it managed to be good, and not in a good-for-a-marvel film kind of way either, but in a way that it was really, properly good. So how does the studio follow up the release of their biggest ever film? The answer it would seem is to make one of the smallest.

This isn’t a bad thing at all really and Ant-Man does benefit from the low-stakes and the more compact story lines away from the wider universe of alien raccoons and thunder gods. We begin with Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang on house arrest following the events of Civil War and there’s some sweet scenes with him trying to entertain his daughter whilst he’s stuck at home in his loft. Ant-Man’s USP is that his films are more all-out comedies and they deal with more human-sized problems on less of a grand scale. The extended scenes of Rudd improvising, usually with his mate Luiz (Michael Pena) were quite grating in the first film, but here they find a nice rhythm and they’re integrated better with the action stuff.

There’s also the addition of Evangeline Lily’s The Wasp, which marks the first time a female character has headlined a Marvel film and had their name appear in the title. This looked a bit like Marvel was making a quick grab for some diversity, to jump on the success of last year’s Wonder Woman and that they were just throwing in a female sidekick as a last minute rush to appear progressive. This isn’t the case though and The Wasp is a fully formed character who’s as interesting, funny and important to the story as her male partner.

Ant-Man and The Wasp don’t actually have any superpowers themselves but, like Iron Man or Batman, their powers come from their suits. Their insectile names tell us that they have the ability to shrink down to minuscule sizes, which can be quite limiting in terms of offering inventive action sequences. The pair also have the power to alter the size of other objects too, by zapping things and making them either really big or really small. This is the ability that has the power to inject more comedic potential and more creativity into proceedings and these are the scenes that utilise this are the most memorable. There’s a great sequence that puts these shrinking powers to use, during a car chase through the streets of San Francisco that plays out like Steve McQueen’s Bullitt by way of The Borrowers.

Ant-Man & The Wasp is perfectly fine, it uses what worked with the first one and plays to its strengths. The plot doesn’t manage to remain very coherent but it zips along just fine, clever action sequences and some enjoyable performances make it a fun and flashy, if a bit forgettable, romp.

Mission Impossible: Fallout ★★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

1996’s Mission Impossible was never one of those films that was calling out for a multi-billion dollar franchise and 22 years ago, it would have been hard to predict that they’d still be popping out sequels in 2018. But here we are 6 movies in, the series is bigger than ever and it’s showing no signs of stopping. The key to its success has been fairly simple: Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise running about, Tom Cruise jumping off stuff and Tom Cruise hanging from big things that people don’t usually hang from.

The big objects that Tom hangs from are what sell these movies and because of this, they’re heavily publicised. They’re the focus of the trailers, the posters, they’re plastered on buses and billboards and it’s what he talks about on chat shows. In recent instalments the big set pieces have had him hanging off a plane and the Burj Khalifa, but in the case of Fallout, it’s a helicopter and a cliff-face that Tom’s using as precarious climbing frames. You’d think after being constantly bombarded with these images during the film’s promotion that they’d lose their effect on the big screen. This is absolutely not the case.

There’s a reason the Mission Impossible franchise has remained so big for so long and that’s because it’s so bloody reliable. When it comes to big stunts and impressive set pieces, it really delivers the goods and they’ve never been more stunning or more incessant than in Fallout. There’s a short segment at the start where our hero, Ethan Hunt, receives his mission statement that tells us all the general things we’re going to need to know about the plot. From thereon in it is just non-stop balls to the wall action. No sooner has he jumped out of a plane at 25,000 feet, he’s bombing it through the streets Paris on a motorbike without a helmet, then he’s free running over the rooftops of London (breaking his ankle in the process) before climbing up and subsequently piloting a helicopter whilst it’s flying in mid-air.

The action is relentless and the filmmakers are obviously very keen to show off the fact that all of the stunts are performed by Cruise himself. The guy’s an absolute nutter and any aversion you might have had towards him beforehand quickly evaporates as you can’t help but fall for his unyielding enthusiasm and his willingness to jump into all manner of dangerous stunts if he thinks the audience wants to see them. The technical brilliance of the action scenes is also amazing, if Tom is jumping out of a plane then the camera crew are jumping out first, there isn’t a green screen in sight and you can really tell, the action also manages to flow really well and this makes it all the more captivating.

Hunt is joined by his usual team of Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson et al, but this time there’s a new addition: the brilliantly named and expensively moustachioed, August Walker. Walker is played by Henry Cavill, whose recent outings as Superman have been more wooden than an oak-furnished dining room. But here he’s perfectly cast, his bulky frame is put to great use as the brutish counterpart to Hunt’s nimble and quick thinking secret agent (the pair are even contrasted in the film as the ‘hammer’ and the ‘scalpel’). An early scene cleverly tells us all we need to know about the pair’s differences through their contrasting fighting styles during a tense scrap in a nightclub bathroom.

There’s enough of a story to keep you engaged in the action and even though there aren’t too many surprises in the way of plot, it’s done in such a brilliant way that your jaw consistently remains glued to the floor. There’s also a really nice recurring theme about the moral dilemma of killing one person in order to save the lives of more, this is seen by some to be Hunt’s weakness and it’s explored in a really interesting way.

In terms of delivering the goods, Mission Impossible is that rarest of franchises that has actually managed to perfect their formula and improve with each one. The action sequences in Fallout are not only some of the best of the series, but some of the best ever put on film. It may just be Tom Cruise hanging off things that people don’t usually hang from, but nobody hangs off things better than Tom Cruise.