Jurassic World (2015)

I never fell in love with a Spielberg film. It’s difficult however, not to foster a respect for his filmmaking formula when films like Jurassic World roll around – films that beg to be as cohesive a heartstring tugger as E.T, as expertly manipulative as Indiana Jones but fall way short due to lack of care and imagination. Unluckily for it, Jurassic World suffers from having the $1 billion-grossing classic, Jurassic Park (1993) as its ancestor, a solid, well-organised film that does what it does excellently.

The story here is very much the same. Humans have made a theme park full of genetically engineered dinosaurs, the dinosaurs get out and there’s lots of death while everyone evacuates and the threat is neutralised. Many motifs/scenes from the original film are ruthlessly re-exploited:

• There are two parentless kids. There’s a man, there’s a woman and there’s sexual tension between them as they fall into the roles of surrogate parents for the children.
• There’s a big establishing shot of the park with that brassy 5-note theme.
• There’s a bit where a crazy “chaotician” warns us with glee that any control humans imagine they have over dinosaurs is an illusion.
• There’s a bit of hiding under cars and a bit of cowering in cars and a crunch of teeth on a vehicle roof.
• There’s a bit of “hey, you might’ve pushed science a bit too far.”

Spielberg’s original was all about the tech. There really wasn’t much besides running away from dinosaurs because there wasn’t room for anything else. What makes it a bit of an anomaly in Spielberg’s canon is that it sacrificed satisfying character development for the sake of thrilling animatronic puppets – a strange stroke of genius, a choice that focused its concerns solely on being a thrilling ride. Jurassic World, however, suffers a crisis of confidence, assuming that “Wow! Dinosaurs!” isn’t enough for a 2015 audience. That’s the only explanation for the jarring amount of token storylines ignited and then abandoned or awkwardly under resolved in deference to the main issue of Running Away from Dinosaurs.

The subject most criminally raised and discarded is the impending divorce of the boys’ parents (who we see only in short scenes that bookend the movie). Spielberg loves divorced children in his adventure movies; he loves taking them on a journey towards accepting their situation by learning to look after themselves. They work through their domestic problems by being involved in lots of thrilling stuff and come out stronger as a result.

But here, children run from danger, hide from danger, and have it defeated around them. By adults – by male adults – while the female lead quails with them in a van, sitting in its passenger seat, shielding them from watching dashboard-based battle updates. “Your boyfriend is badass!” they squeal as Owen roars by on a motorbike. She smiles and that’s that – the film has betrayed its young characters. The children end up props. Props for the love story and props for Claire’s lesson: ‘tone down your ambition and make more time in your work schedule for spending time with family’ – a dubious lesson and one more forced than learned anyway.

Jurassic Park earned a bomb, Jurassic Park re-released in 3D earned a bomb and no one who wants more money could argue against re-realising the exact same film but with more people in the way of the dinosaurs and all the latest CGI, 3D and IMAX technologies to animate them (the dinosaurs, not the people.) Jurassic World is pretty terrible but (sigh) pretty entertaining. I do enjoy watching prehistoric beasts wreaking havoc as much as the next person. I’d just rather this film didn’t pretend to care about its characters and their lives when it can’t afford to.

“Wow! Dinosaurs!” gets you a long way, even now.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

The idea of a relentless thrust through 2 hours of near-silent cinema with laconic characters who let the cars do the snarling is an enticing one, one that sets its own challenge. How can a film maintain its momentum when every scene is an explosive set piece, stacked-up against the last and precision-engineered to top whatever came before? The fuel needs to be pure and Mad Max: Fury Road certainly draws its own world with a set of bold visual ideas followed through to their absurd conclusions. It’s a great starting point.

Max is the least capable of the heroes we’re bound to. His initial attempts to escape the clutches of the weird-faced tyrant Immortan Joe are easily thwarted and he is still being used as an unwilling blood donor (strapped to the front of a car) even when the film is well on the road. He can’t shoot straight, nor is he particularly adept a driver as far as we can tell. Agency belongs to the females of the piece, in particular Imperator Furiosa whose journey back to the ‘green land’ of her youth provides the film its narrative arch. However, that Max is the eponym – and not Furiosa – rather highlights his philosophy “hope is a mistake” amid all this elusive struggling towards a better place. The film needs to pretend itself a direction, hence the diversionary storyline of Furiosa and the Wives that we, and Max himself, are riding with. But by having the directionless hero at its centre, the hero whose only drive is survival, its makers have nailed their colours to the darker corner of this dystopian nightmare. Hope is a mistake.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that I liked the film despite sometimes feeling on the wrong end of one of its blood transfusions. Everything about its design is immaculately cohesive, from the ridiculous teal/orange colour grading to the grinding gears and grinning martyrs that populate its fiery dust storms. It is a singular vision and gloriously female-led at times. The only problem, on the first viewing, is pacing. 2 hours 10 minutes of this stuff is too exhausting – it mars the final half hour of the film, which in any case is a kind of journey home that should have begun at its midpoint anyway. The editing of the action is expertly done, but add a little more punctuation here and there and we’re laughing (maniacally into the void). ((With silver spray-painted mouths.))

It Follows (2015)

The way that many teen horror flicks successfully evoke the claustrophobic landscape of adolescence is mostly a happy accident, a natural byproduct of filmmakers needing to kill time waiting for the next big scare and not putting the effort into fleshing out their characters. It’s a strange thing but it accounts entirely for the genre’s success. Who needs three-dimensional characters when whatever big bad thing coming to get a group of teenagers can be relied upon as a metaphor for all their growing-up problems? Outsource all that messy stuff to a ghoul or a demon or an axe-murderer and it’s satisfying enough just to watch them trying to outrun it.

It Follows knows this. And it knows about the sex = death paradigm of these movies. And it knows about keeping adults out of the whole equation. And it has a load of fun with all of it. These are the rules: “it” is a murderous shape-shifting demon thing that never stops hunting its prey at a glacial pace. It can be outrun, if you fancy trying, but the only way to shake it off is to pass the curse on by having sex. Even then, you’ll still be able to see it, it just won’t be after you. Until it has killed everyone else that came after you in the chain. Then it will be after you.

So you see, some tropes are flipped on their head – sex becomes both a way of transmitting a morbid awareness of death from person to person (‘the curse’) but also the only way to keep death at bay. (For the time being anyway.) It’s like the original 80’s conservative slasher film message (“don’t have sex!”) has been updated for a generation of 21^st Century nihilists. Now the message reads: “there are fun things to do while you’re alive. Just don’t forget that one day you will die.”

The absent parent convention is also played with, and to the same end – adults actually do show up in the film, but only as empty vessels, manifestations of the “it” that follows, essentially reminders from the family tree that time is creeping up at walking pace to sweep us all away eventually.

With It Follows, David Robert Mitchell has purposefully made the film that so many writers and directors stumbled upon in the 1980s. It’s not a revolution in teen horror flicks, just a very well made one. But the film knows this, of course it does. Like its characters’ inability to outrun the inevitable, It Follows examines and rearranges all the clichés of its genre, but it can never escape them. And it doesn’t really want to.

Into the Woods (2015)

The thing about musicals is that they’re melodramatic. I’m not their biggest fan but, the way I understand it, the conceit is this: emotional things happen and excitement swells until the characters involved just cannot keep from spontaneously exploding with all of their joy and sadness into song. Which is fine. I mean, it’s weird, but every genre has its rules, so fine.

When they work on stage, the best musicals have big characters brimming with melodrama. This is partly so audiences on the back row can see what’s going on (and partly because the songs have to be justified somehow). On film, you don’t need to be so big. You have to find ways of communicating the brash audacity of a stage show with devices particular to the medium. That’s how Les Miserables (2012) worked; that’s how Sweeney Todd (2007) worked. Both of these films feel like films. Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods feels like a filmed musical, a throwaway money-spinner.

Les Mis was big in that its characters maintained the melodrama of the stage and were then knowingly filmed in portrait-style close-ups to give audiences a perspective they could never have even sitting on the front row in a theatre. That’s really smart.

Sweeney Todd was big in that, in the hands of a gothic auteur, it was drenched in the visual language of a silent movie and injected with pace by a man who knows a few things about cutting.

As with adapting novels, so with adapting musicals. You won’t offend anyone by blandly covering all the angles and making sure the actors read the script and sing the songs. But it takes a bolder attitude to make it a worthwhile endeavor. The wit of Sondheim and his distinctively angular vocal lines will always be a pleasant thing to sit through but that’s where the good time ends. As a film, Into the Woods just feels exhausting and unnecessary.

Nightcrawler (2014)

It’s difficult to find much information about Nightcrawler’s writer/director Dan Gilroy. With only a handful of writing credits to his name during a career spanning over 20 years he appears both a seasoned veteran and a green upstart. Whatever explains his trajectory in the industry, it led to this film – so it can’t be bad.

Utilising the intense nocturnal-ness that made his performances in Donnie Darko and Zodiac so striking, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as sociopath Louis Bloom, a creepy autodidact intent on cashing in on television news’ insatiable lust for bloody stories with which to terrify audiences and therefore drive up ratings. Armed with a police radio and a video camera, Bloom trawls the night, seeking out violent crime and horrific accidents, often arriving on the scene before the emergency services. Once capturing the debris on film (at any cost), he sells the footage to a news broadcaster just in time to make their breakfast show.

Gyllenhaal gives the performance of his career. He makes Bloom a magnetic anti-hero. What he captures best is the drive and ambition of his character, causing us to be awkwardly awestruck at how passionate he pursues his depraved goals. This, along with the narrow-minded subjectivity of the direction (that’s a good thing), invites us to get behind Bloom and – as the stakes get higher – subconsciously wince when the obstacles stack up against him and smirk with guilty glee when he gets his way.

All 3 central characters are drawn well. It was no surprise to me to learn that the first-time director is an experienced writer. Although this is Gyllenhaal’s moment and he’ll be the one touted for awards, it cannot be denied that both Rene Russo, who plays news director Nina, and Riz Ahmed, who plays Bloom’s protégé Rick, match the leading man at every step with skilled and detailed performances. They deliver characters that are designed for us to measure Bloom’s mental state against. Just how abnormal is he in a world that was already amoral before he entered it?

The reason that Russo and Ahmed’s performances might fly under the radar has something to do with how attractive constructed Lou Bloom’s dialogue is. This is a man who doesn’t let the qualms of others get in the way of his own eloquence and quick wit. Bloom is sharp, he never takes his eye of the ball and Gilroy has a field day with his lines, feeding Gyllenhaal consistently tasty paragraphs, all of which he delivers with those unnervingly bright eyes.

The film is shot as nicely as it is written. For a debut director, it can’t have hurt to be telling a story about a man whose life mission is to meticulously frame the subjects he is capturing on camera; it must have kept Gilroy as focused as his main character. Especially impressive is the ebb and flow of pace during the film’s climactic scenes which is what keeps them thrilling for longer. Some of the personal scenes involving Bloom alone might have been handled a little slower but that’s as much my taste as anything.

It’s a really good film, one of the best of the year.

The Best of 2014 So Far (Part Two)

Locke (18^th April)

The only argument to be had over a story as well written as Locke is as to whether it belongs on the stage or the screen. Tom Hardy is fantastic as Ivan Locke, a construction foreman on a long night’s drive from Birmingham to London. The film takes place entirely inside Ivan’s BMW with the drama unfolding through a series of hands-free phone calls between Ivan and his family and co-workers. Something big has happened and Ivan steps up to mastermind his life, making emotional and logistical decisions under pressure from all directions. The film’s central theme is responsibility and watching one man’s attempt to organise his way out of crisis after crisis is compelling viewing. Tom Hardy is at the top of his game.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (11^th July)

Teed up nicely by the first of the rebooted franchise (2011), Dawn takes place in a world where human civilization has collapsed and a sticks-and-stones struggle for land and resources is the way of life. In the 10 years since the events of the previous film, ape leader Caesar has effectively formed a society away from human interference. When the two species collide once more, it is up to the good guys on either side to halt the impending war mongered by their not-so-peaceful counterparts. Weta Digital continues to lead the way in the field of performance capture with extraordinary technical work. Thankfully their efforts are matched by those of the writers who have produced a smart political fable that will hopefully continue to deepen as the franchise moves forward.

Boyhood (15^th August)

The best film of the year so far is Boyhood. Richard Linklater’s speciality is time, as it is experienced in real life, with all the messy detours and untidy exchanges uncut. In the same way that Slacker (1991) was a ramble through a day in Austin and the Before films (1995 – 2013) are a ramble through an afternoon/evening, Boyhood covers 12 years in the life of its main character, Mason, aged from 6 to 18. Its dialogue is characteristic of the other films in Linklater’s oeuvre, a kind of well-constructed naturalism written during improv sessions in the rehearsal room. While the most extraordinary thing about the film is watching Mason’s progression from boy to man, what flies under the radar are the performances of Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as his parents. Arquette in particular is gut-wrenchingly good as a mother whose two-decade-long dedication to her children suddenly seems meaningless to her in the face of their move away to college. With Boyhood depicting the years of youth flying by in a 165 minute running time, the film seems to say as much about a parent’s perception of time as it does their children’s development. A real achievement.

Pride (12^th September)

Suspicious as I am of a feel-good British film of the year, Pride is actually brilliant. Covering the unlikely alliance between a Welsh mining village and a group of gay rights activists in London during the 1984 strike, Pride lets the true story do the telling. Passionate portrayals of strong characters give the drama heart and substance. Simple direction lets the writing shine and there is real warmth to the humour. Paddy Considine, Bill Nighy and Imelda Stauton are typically excellent and are matched by the younger cast. Attention to period detail makes the film look perfectly ‘80s and its grasp of the issues of the time feels sensitive but also brave and thorough.

The Best of 2014 So Far (Part One)

The Lego Movie (7th February)

Breakneck fast and razor sharp witted, The Lego Movie is among the least patronizing children’s films you will ever see. Writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller share the attention deficit particular to the under 10s which keeps the film zipping from one exciting scene to the next before boredom ever becomes an issue. Not that this makes for a confusing mess, rather it seems as if the film’s narrative actually moves with the speed of juvenile thought, obeying the push of imagination. It isn’t hard to envision the creative team dancing around the ideas table, gleefully yelling “And then THIS should happen. Yeah, and then THIS.” With dystopian sprinklings like $37 coffee and a pumping pop song that seems to keep the whole city running, the film’s satirical edge is as sharp as any. It’s the kind of anarchic fare that keeps new generations asking questions while growing up, imagination intact.

Her (14th February)

The relationship formed between humans and artificially intelligent computer programmes is in no way a new idea but the best thing about Spike Jonze’s Her is that it makes it feel like the freshest notion around. This is in no small part due to Joaquin Phoenix who continues his study in angst with a performance to match that he gave in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012). The operating system with whom he falls in love is voiced meticulously by Scarlett Johansson whose recent roles (in Lucy and Under the Skin) have carved her somewhat of a niche in the sci-fi genre as the go-to girl for portraying troubled androids. The vibrant colours of the film and its measured writing help imbue this most unusual of relationships with a tangible warmth which succeeds in drawing the audience into the romance as much as it confuses their sense of what constitutes a relationship.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (7th March)

The Grand Budapest Hotel is immaculate in its design and direction. It is utterly insubstantial and won’t stay with you a moment outside of the cinema but that is part of its tidy charm. A disciplined farce, a visual feast, this film exists in its own rich world, remains in it, tells a story, and balances your enjoyment in the palm of its hand. Ralph Fiennes delivers a studied deadpan turn as the lead character – a hotel concierge framed for murder. He escapes from The Grand Budapest Hotel and, with lobby boy Zero (Tony Revolori) in tow, embarks on the adventure he hopes will prove his innocence. Absurd and highly stylized, once the film is finished with you, it leaves you the exact same person you were when you walked into the cinema. The craft required to pull off such a clean schism is more impressive than it sounds.

The Double (4th April)

Richard Ayoade’s debut Submarine (2010), a modern coming-of-age comedy/drama, is one of my favourite films. Adapted from the Dostoyevsky novella of the same name, Ayoade’s follow-up The Double draws from much older source material but continues to demonstrate the writer/director’s knack for adaptations. Jesse Eisenberg stars as Simon James, a cog in the wheel of a futuristic bureaucracy who turns up for work one day to find a man who looks exactly like him generally outperforming him in every aspect of his life. This includes seducing the girl of his dreams, Hannah (Mia Wasikowska).

Ayoade is very good at neurotic dialogue – my favourite kind – and this absurdist situation perfectly justifies his central character’s awkwardness. Normally, we route for shy introverts as they attempt to overcome imagined obstacles and vanquish their own ineptitude but here his worst enemy is actually himself, not as a metaphor, as a solid being. The opportunity for black comedy is taken with gusto. Cameos from the architects of British comedy abound with the likes of Tim Key, Chris O’Dowd and even the legendary Chris Morris getting involved.

Under the Skin (2013)

The film opens with a sequence of measured shots, slowly revealing a Kubrickian blackdrop into which colour and shape are birthed over the swirling dissonance of an atonal minimalist score. Reminiscient of 2001, it is a hypnotising draw which expertly settles the brain’s waves into the rhythm of the following 2 hours.

We follow the dispassionate exploits of an alien dressed in a Scarlett Johansson suit whose mission it seems is to ensnare the men of Scotland in a gloopy black honey trap.

The pattern of seduce and destroy is presented in two styles. The first takes the form of a hidden camera documentary in which Johansson crawls the urban kerbs of Scottish cities in her white transit van, soliciting the conversation of unsuspecting members of the public who really were unsuspecting members of the public. It was only once lured into the van that the director Jonathan Glazer briefed the men about the conceit and hired those willing to be a part of the film to take part in the second of the film’s styled scenes in which Johansson takes her victims into a kind of parallel universe and leads them backward into the sticky black abyss where, one assumes, they are either preserved for study by her alien race or just eaten.

I really liked the film. It is slow but it is involving. Johansson’s performance succeeds in the same way David Bowie’s had to in The Man Who Fell To Earth. Her job is to demonstrate a range of ‘emotion’ through blank glances and the stilted misunderstood movements of her alien’s new human shell. Subtler than a silent movie, the measure of her success is how clearly she conveys the alien’s progression from ruthless efficiency through sympathy and towards eventual depression with very little acting tools allowed.

The direction is beautiful, never losing the measured purpose of the opening sequence. Scotland feels desolate and inviting. It’s a cold film and your engagement with it will creep up on you; that’s how it functions. By giving you a limited ‘way in’, the connection you eventually make with the film is a firm one.

February Catch-up Part 1: Zero Dark Thirty & Wreck-It Ralph

Zero Dark Thirty

For anyone but the most bloodthirsty American, the filling in of the minor intricacies in the last chapter of the War on Terror is the main attraction of this film. Watching it is an easy way to get better acquainted with the who’s who and (more importantly) who’s where of America’s Most Wanted list 2001-2011.

Which is handy. When bin Laden was killed I didn’t look into it too much, so watching Zero Dark Thirty served as a recent history lesson – which I think is how many will experience it.

I didn’t engage too strongly with Jessica Chastain’s Maya character and her struggle to be taken seriously by her CIA colleagues who are convinced she is pursuing a dead trail. Her triumph in convincing the men around her to follow the lead that eventually takes them to bin Laden seems inconsequential. If the film wants us to experience it as a feminist victory (at times it pushes this agenda but overall seems largely unsure) then it fails, if only because we all know that the highly classified nature of America’s intelligence organisations mean that the real life characters involved in ‘Operation Neptune Spear’ won’t enter public knowledge for many decades yet.

But I don’t mind too much that it fails on that level. No fictional CIA agent’s ‘personal journey’ can ever be as juicy as the actual storming of bin Laden’s compound, which Kathryn Bigelow directs with superb pacing. I caught myself with my mouth open as the helicopters reach their destination and the Navy SEALs silently rope down to the floor.

The odd thing about this film is that it’s worth seeing despite the fact that it fails to accomplish the emotional drama it sets out to fictionalise. The fast talking military speak and leaps of faith on ropey intelligence are the exciting thing – that’s why it is a good film, not because of any heart wrenching backstory.

 

Wreck-It Ralph

A successful modern Disney film finds new ways of presenting a familiar story. It succeeds on its surface freshness despite the underlying pedalling of proven ideas. This is not a criticism; a fresh look goes a long way in a surface medium and I am pleased to report that Wreck-It Ralph is indeed a successful modern Disney film.

Big studios learn what works from the wild failures and unexpected triumphs of more experimental fare. Wreck-It Ralph certainly has its foundations in other places. It’s central conceit of video game characters carrying on independent lives outside of human company has more than an echo of the Toy Story about it. The big heart of a designated bad guy also borrows from Shrek. Finally, the whole gamer style owes as much to the aesthetic of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as anything else.

The story follows Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly), the stuff-smashing nemesis of Fix-it Felix, Jr., whose 30 years of watching everyone rooting for the game’s hero Felix, has him try to turn the tables and win a medal for himself at long last. Eventually ending up in the game Sugar Rush, Ralph befriends another ostracised character, the glitching Vanellope Von Schweetz, and realises that helping secure his new friend’s victory in her kart-racing game (and so secure her very existence) is perhaps a nobler pursuit.

The voice acting is the best thing about the film. John C. Reilly has complained of being consistently typecast in the role of a man-child and Wreck-It Ralph offers him the chance to almost parody himself, playing the man-child card to the max. The difference here is that his character isn’t written for the audience to poke fun at for a change; his vulnerability is central to the role. Ralph is a powerful physical presence with the simple desire to be accepted and Reilly is perfect at giving voice to this innocent agenda. Sarah Silverman is excellent too; she lends a real sparky zaniness to Vanellope whose strong individuality yet sensitivity to Ralph’s plight really rings true.

The gaming style of the film’s look is fresh like I said and it’s no problem to accept the invitation to dive into it’s world, although I think it could actually have played up a lot more to the retro gaming theme. I might be too much the Scott Pilgrim fan but it borrowed an awful lot from that film’s aesthetic without doing the whole arcade game homage thing half as well. The pixelated Disney ident before the film begins isn’t as brilliantly brash as the 32-bit Universal ident it ripped off from Scott Pilgrim and its flashing “Press Start” text at the film’s close seemed tokenistic and didn’t tie in with the film’s story as perfectly as the Scott Pilgrim “Continue? 10…9…8…etc” ending.

Nevertheless, Wreck-It Ralph is good fun, feels shiny and original (even if it isn’t quite) and has enough of a strong narrative to carry it through. Kids probably love it – (I’ve no idea, don’t know any.)

Django Unchained (2013)

Quentin Tarantino’s return to form is, like all of his best work, a showcase of tributes to his favourite exploitation films all squished together to the point of bloodbath. The outrageous violence of its set pieces is choreographed to perfection and is topped only by the mellifluous ear candy of the movie’s dialogue.

Let’s first be clear, there is no controversy here. Django Unchained is neither as offensive as Spike Lee imagines it would be (were he to actually give it a watch) nor is it as thought provoking as Tarantino himself pretends. The subject of slavery is volatile of course and a filmmaker who really wanted to ‘raise issues’ would have to tread extremely carefully. But this isn’t a film about slavery by Quentin Tarantino, it is a Tarantino film with some slaves in it.

The cast is nothing short of superb. Christoph Waltz was made to deliver the magniloquent exactitude of Tarantino’s dialogue and does it in a dandyish devil-may-care manner that never contradicts the menace of his character, Dr. King Schultz – a German ex-dentist bounty hunter who abhors slavery and sets Django free. Django himself is played by Jamie Foxx in a brooding and controlled manner which perfectly compliments his co-star. As the film progresses, Schultz betrays a burden of care for Django, who becomes more and more cocky as he adjusts to freedom. The interaction between the two as their performances shift is fascinating to watch.

Also fascinating is Calvin Candie, owner of the infamous Candieland plantation, who Leonardo DiCaprio portrays with a subcutaneous threat to match that of Schultz. The tension in the air as Django and Schultz slowly acquaint themselves with Candie is delightful. Under the guise of Mandingo Trainers (‘mandingos’ are slaves bred to fight each other to the death) they attempt to rescue Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) from Candieland with a predictably messy climactic outcome.

The ultimate show-stealer is Samuel L. Jackson who plays the elderly servant Stephen, Candie’s (sort of) Head of the House Slaves. Stephen is a masterpiece of a character, unconditionally loyal to his master but exhibiting the cheek of Django and the irritability of an old man who Candie has allowed to get away with years of surliness for the sheer fun of his outbursts. Jackson brings an unsettling elderly shake to his character and the slow-spreading contortions of face as Stephen becomes suspicious of Candie’s guests is physical acting at its finest.

If there is one element of the film that can be written about seriously in terms of racial politics then it is Stephen, it is the psychology of a man enthralled by his master, a man who truly believes himself inferior to a white man.

Django Unchained is directed with the care and consideration taken to framing its subjects that the old Spaghetti Westerns took. Apart for the sequences of violence, camera movement is generally slow and often holds on shots that could pass as paintings as far as mise en scène goes – moments such as: the chain gang far off in the distance bookended by two nearby rocks at the screen’s left/right extremities, two horsemen riding as shadows into the sunset, a whole town pointing 100 shot guns at the camera and DiCaprio’s Candie grinning full-screen with smoke seeping through his teeth. Juxtaposed with this style is the occasional crash zoom, which nods fondly to old westerns, and induced grins around the cinema.

The one gripe I have with the film is its lack of discipline. Quentin Tarantino is an auteur; of that there is no doubt. Give him a camera and some money and he’ll have a ball. But while that might be unbridled joy for him, his films suffer if nobody reins him in. Take his interviews in which he often makes fantastic points and examines cinematic issues in very interesting detail but which can quickly topple into ridiculous self-important ramblings if the interviewer lacks the bravery and awareness to contain his answers and switch the area of conversation when required.

My favourite thing about Tarantino is those absurd moments where captious characters tie themselves up in semantics trying to explain why a Ku Klux Klan mask isn’t practical when riding a horse or pondering the layers of meaning behind a foot massage. However, these can only work within the context of a story moving forward. Occasionally, Django Unchained loses its momentum. Whether this is because Tarantino is missing the skills of his late long-time editor Sally Menke or because he works best with a writing partner, I don’t know but it definitely looks as if the critical eyes of sterner collaborators could be vital in helping maintain the focus of his work as he moves into the later stages of his career.