Cast: Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, Crispin Glover

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Running time: 1 hr 54 mins

Genre: Animated/Action/Adventure


REVIEW:


As far as I could remember, back in high school years, I considered that old English poem ‘Beowulf’ as an every student’s nightmare. Stuffed with overly long lines, tedious to read and horrendously confusing, with a language so outdated. Apparently, it was written in 400 A.D. so what do I expect. If you come across this poem, chuck your copy in the bin – there’s no need, there’s a better medium, and this cinematic rendition of BEOWULF battling monsters, dragons, sultry sirens and his own frailty is told in a way that you would never expect somebody had decipher it from “that bloody old poem”. Yes, the film stuns, and it is rip-roaringly good.


The tale has been told throughout centuries, and throughout mankind, well at least to those who learned English. A Danish kingdom, ruled by scruffy and old King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) and young Queen Wealthow (Robin Wright Penn), is plagued by the local monster Grendel (Crispin Glover), a horrific beast that looked like a cross between Frankenstein and an Egyptian mummy, disturbed by the kingdom’s feasts and rabble-rousing noises. What comes next is that sort of rock-metal-post-punk gory pillaging you’ll ever see in an animated film. Now Beowulf (Ray Winstone) arrives at the kingdom from a Viking ship, fresh from a battle of sea monsters, and declares “I am Beowulf, and I am here to kill your monster”. He preps up for the upcoming attack, and unlikely, he sheds out of his armour and battles in the nude, as he reckons it would be fair to battle the monster in his own skin. He defeats Grendel, cuts off his arm, and the monster goes back to his lair, whimpering like a child and dies in the arms of his mother. Enter cunning, seductive temptress of a demon Grendel’s mother (Angelina Jolie) – the show turns into a slightly wicked affair.


This is Robert Zemeckis at his own pure element: he swore an oath many years ago that he would stop making live action films, and rather concentrate on motion capture animated technology. After his foray with THE POLAR EXPRESS, this sophomore effort of this genre is phenomenally stunning in technical aspects. He gives this archaic kingdom a believable feel, and his animated humans are oddly human-like and very detailed, almost pitch-perfect with conveying emotions. The visual bravura is splendid and an awesome achievement, and the dragon-slaying scene at the end steals the whole show away.


It is of course important to note performances of the hero we come to know of, Beowulf. Voiced by the actor Ray Winstone (who doesn’t look like Beowulf, not a tiny bit, whose fifty-something body is all big and corpulent), it’s a good choice for a voice that’s gruff, brutish and commanding enough to sound like a pure warrior. Beowulf here is digitally buffed up, with a set of abs that could parallel King Leonidas’ in 300, and with a face that looked a lot like Sean Bean. This is also a ‘nudist’ Beowulf, not the Beowulf that I know of in the old poem. Meanwhile, the other actors didn’t need enhancement, certainly not Angelina Jolie to play uber-hot monster’s mum, with gold-plated skin, long hair, long tail, and high stilettos that felt anachronistic for an 400 A.D. period. She’s nevertheless the cause of temptation and the fall of men. John Malkovich as counsel Unferth is a blatant choice, but brings humour enough in his sharp tongue calling the kingdom “pathetic” and Beowulf’s statement “bollocks”.


Let’s throw a big kudos to the writers Neil Gaiman (whose STARDUST is still in cinemas) and Roger Avary (PULP FICTION scribe, anyone?) for deciphering the monstrosity of the befuddling Anglo-Saxon poem. Although they took the ultimate liberty and produced a slightly subversive script with a modern language, they still manage to hold it together and give us a cracking good narrative and a pace that never hurries.


Thank Odin as well this film’s got depth. Impartially imperfect, this film has also its flaws, but certainly, they are levels to be eclipsed by the story that it is telling us: a tale of an egotistic, arrogant warrior swelling with pride, reduced to a human with a weakness he could barely face, turned into a king tortured by his own conscience crumbling from within, with a past that tempted him with power and wealth. The sins of the fathers reverberate unto his sons, and when they face the truths, they face a much bigger personal monster.


VERDICT:

Not 300, not LORD OF THE RINGS, this is uniquely BEOWULF: roar-worthy, gory, Gothic, and rabble-rousingly terrific that tells a tale of humanity in the old time of heroes and valour. It is a balance between huge entertainment and technical splendour. Also, it’s the bloodiest animated film going.



RATING: A-

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Clive Owen, Geoffrey Rush, Samantha Morton

Director: Shekhar Kapur

Running time: 1 hr 54 mins

Genre: Historical Drama


REVIEW:


Circa 1998, Cate Blanchett became known to the world as probably the best actress to play the role of Queen Elizabeth I of England in the much glorified ELIZABETH. One Golden Globe Best Actress award and an Oscar Best Actress nomination later, she decided to reprise the role in its second film, actually a sequel concealed beneath Shekhar Kapur’s air of no-it’s-not-a-sequel defiance. So here comes ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE – pompous, luxuriant, sweepingly epic, possibly the sumptuously richest film, costume-and-prop-wise, since Sofia Coppola’s anachronistic and punky MARIE ANTOINETTE. Yet with all the ball gowns, long swooning cloths, big wigs, gold-festooned lavishness, this second film staggers a wee bit in its storytelling, as though you just went into a history class that just crammed your brain with book-length history information in one single sitting. And probably, historians would start sending some hate mails to Kapur for some ridiculous historical inaccuracies.


However, it’s ultimately undermining if one would ignore ELIZABETH’s gorgeous cinematography. Beautifully staged and compellingly designed, this 16th century Britain never looked luscious, surreal, and breathtaking altogether before. Every scene’s palette, tone of colour, hues and shades – it all felt like it all sprung out of Rembrandt’s or Raphael’s paintings. The sequence of the British Navy versus the coalition of Spanish Armada and French fleets is not overwrought and offers what is needed, and its visuals are just marvellous. Here we see Queen Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) in front of a massively complex backdrop around, being threatened that her empire will crumble, and at the same time, battling with her own personal war – the choice between responsibility to her nation and indulgence. Her Protestant rules comes in terms with her half-sister, Mary (Samantha Morton), Queen of Scots, England’s invalid queen, who was a Catholic, and was supported by Spain’s King Philip II. Spain’s building an Armada to defeat Britain’s naval power, and with France’s alliance, Elizabeth trembled in her knees.


Amidst the furore, of course there’s the romance bit. Dashing Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) comes into court and charms Elizabeth, but beneath her gaze, he impregnates the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Bess Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish). Both of them underestimated Elizabeth’s sharp words and her fury. She had a choice, whether to follow her heart or stand her ground for her people, which would leave her virginity intact forever.


This new ELIZABETH film doesn’t offer new ideas, and brings back the rhetoric of the first Elizabeth film, about a woman bereft of the right to be decadent and of astounding courage and responsibility. We’ve all seen it before. It also goes beyond romanticism and melodrama that it sometimes become soggy, but nevertheless saved by ELIZABETH’s saving grace herself: the acting supremacy that is Cate Blanchett. No other actress could have done this role a better job. Her return is remarkable and stunningly compelling. Her groundbreaking lash of fury “There’s a hurricane in me that will strip bare if you dare betray me!” is so wrathful, so powerfully delivered that it could sweep the whole sails of Armada under her breath of rage. Slap her come Oscar nod, it wouldn’t hurt her at all, not a single flinch. Clive Owen is understated in this one, appearing a tad shallow and a simplistic swashbuckler, and I believe there’s a better Clive Owen performance to give. Samantha Morton’s Mary is absolutely intriguing, yet unfortunately given less time appearance. She’s involved in one of the film’s heart-stopping scenes, the execution of Mary.


But after all, there’s still a delicate balance between pageantry and heavyweight drama, which the film nearly topples sideways. It’s Blanchett always on the rescue; every time she’s not on the scene, you’re craving for her presence more. Oh, and some historical inaccuracies as I’ve known some of bits of British history: Sir Walter Raleigh was never really in the British naval ships on the battle of Armada, brandishing swords and swinging from one rope to another as though has was Captain Sparrow, he was ashore that time, as he was a tactician. Blame romanticism.

VERDICT:

Seesaws between beauty pageantry and compelling historical drama, ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE more or less settles a bit weight on details and colours rather than putting something heavy on characterization. Pull out Cate Blanchett and this film will sink with the Armada itself. Gladly, it’s an entertaining, albeit historically inaccurate, and gorgeous depiction of the 16th century England.



RATING: B+

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassell

Director: David Cronenberg

Running time: 1 hr 40 mins


REVIEW:

Because HISTORY OF VIOLENCE was such a huge hit, both critically and financially, not to mention the handful of awards it gathered, masterclass auteur David Cronenberg sticks to the basics of bloodshed filmmaking and gives us its unintended sequel, EASTERN PROMISES: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE 2. Or maybe you can call it A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE: THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION. Or just call it EASTERN PROMISES, it doesn’t diminish its own gore-spluttered sheer brilliance of a film.


Sequel or not, it goes back to the roots of VIOLENCE and studies, er, well, violence. EASTERN PROMISES is probably one of the most Cronenbergian films that Cronenberg can make. Throw in some dark, gloomy story of underground mafias, pull out lights from the street, diffuse some mist, and paint the town red with blood, there’s the perfect mix of Cronenberg’s main course. But what makes this a compelling film that thankfully shuns away from the shallower part of the pond is that in its subtext, there’s morality beneath its murky waters.


Viggo Mortensen, reteams with Cronenberg after being so fantastic in VIOLENCE, plays the mysterious bodyguard Nikolai, also a mafia fixer and driver, whose boss, the laid-back patriarch Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), is the god of a Russian underground mafia clan in the suburbs of London. But before we cascade to them, the story opens with the death of a pregnant teenage girl in a garage shop and a birth of a baby plummets the whole sinister plot moving. Anna Khitrova (the beautiful Naomi Watts), a Russian-born Londoner midwife, vows to dig deeper into the enigma and determines to find the baby’s family and save it from foster care. The dead mother’s diary came into her hands, and with the help of her mother and uncle (who’re also Russian born) to translate everything, it all led her to Nikolai and the entire furtive bloody affair of the Russian underworld in London, with subtext to Eastern European prostitutes being shipped to London and abused.


Cronenberg is perfect at pathos. He sulks in moods and visceral atmospheres that gave London a disparaging, eerie countenance that you wouldn’t find in postcard-perfect London photographs. However, one misstep of the film was that it sways between an issue-driven, morality plot to a dark gangster flick. One fascinating step, however, is Mortensen’s egregious, very contemplative face of a character – a performance that’s so carefully constructed that Mortensen might have probably immersed himself in the Russian atmosphere for decades. In VIOLENCE, there was no doubt Mortensen proved himself as a top-class actor, but here, veiled in a thick Russian-accented accent with a very thuggish yet professional cold-blooded killer-demeanour, asserts his CV with another solid performance. Slap this bloke with an Oscar nom, nobody would protest, I presume.


However, no matter how good this film is, it’s not a film for everybody. Easily disgusted individuals, run away for with you tummies, as what might befall might not prove pleasurable to your inner senses. Probably one of the most effectively disturbing, seat-gripping, stomach-churning hell of a fight sequence this year, EASTERN PROMISES will defy your lasting tolerance for its amazing bathhouse bloodshed scene. It’s a sequence that deserves some plaudits by pundits. The white tiles, two black-clothed assassins with knives, the steam, Mortensen vulnerably nude – these erupted in a showdown that’s not at all fabulous by Hollywood standards and gives us the three basic g’s: gore, gruesome, and great.


VERDICT:

A tad inferior by an inch to Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE but certainly, EASTERN PROMISES is a fascinating thing to watch; gives us gore and glory, and surprisingly, humanity beneath Mortensen’s cold-blooded, stone-hearted Mafia fixer, and Watts’ compassionate nurse. The bathhouse scene is worth the ticket alone.



RATING: B+