Movie Review – Wonder Wheel

Another year, another Woody Allen film…

 

⭐ ⭐ ½
Josip Knezevic

Much like veteran actor Robert De Niro, Woody Allen can’t stop rolling out one film after the other, and boy is it getting ever stale. It’s been far too long since anything remotely worthwhile came from either one of these Hollywood giants, and both seem destined to repeat their same mistakes, without ever learning from them.

Allen’s latest effort does nothing more than cling to his fading legacy, trotting out his quintessential tics and techniques, without bringing anything new to the table. Set in the 1950s, Wonder Wheel follows failed actress and wife of Coney Island carousel operator Ginny (Kate Winslet) who has an affair with a handsome, young lifeguard (Justin Timberlake). Their romance blossoms at first, but is soon complicated when Ginny’s husband (Jim Belushi) is visited by his estranged daughter who also sets her sights on Mickey.

Whether it be Vicky Cristina Barcelona or Café Society, Allen has developed a bit of an obsession for love triangles in recent times. Treading over well-worn territory, Wonder Wheel quickly becomes predictable and lacks the fire we saw in the likes of VCB.

The only upside here is the faithful recreation of the 1950s Coney Island setting, with its vibrant display of colours and classic costumes. The attention to detail is to be commended, especially during the beach scenes filled with countless extras.

Meanwhile, Winslet and Belushi deliver solid performances, making the most of what they’ve been given for their respective roles. Although Timberlake is suitable for the strapping, young man type, he isn’t given any form of character arc to work with.

Overall, Wonder Wheel is less of a wondrous spectacle and more of a tiresome affair. Allen needs to ditch the love triangles and either get back to exploring new and interesting concepts (Midnight in Paris) or dive back into complex character studies (Blue Jasmine).

Wonder Wheel is available in Australian cinemas from December 7 

Image courtesy of EntertainmentOne Films

Movie Review – Viceroy’s House

Gurinder Chadha serves us a slice of British/Indian history in a clumsy mix of waffling politics, tumultuous outbreaks, lush sets and romantic fluff.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Corey Hogan

After three hundred years under British rule, India is finally transitioning to an independent nation in 1947. The Viceroy’s House, a decadent palace in Delhi, was home to these rulers for centuries. Now it is to host one final Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) and his wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson), tasked with overseeing the handover back to the Indian people. But this is no simple manoeuvre; the nation is divided in opinion from the great change and soon mass conflict erupts, severely complicating things for the Viceroy, his family and his servants.

Director Gurinder Chadha (Bend It like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice) occasionally gives life to the rich history and subject matter of Viceroy’s House, though it’s a tad too often that she squanders it with the melodrama and directional flair of a made-for-television movie. Luckily, such superficial shortcomings are routinely rescued thanks to history itself stepping in to give some vibrancy to an otherwise flat and conventional royalty period piece.

Pomp and circumstance is dialled up to eleven as the Mountbattens enter the Viceroy’s House. Thankfully, the charade is dropped when the Lord is forced to deal with real issues, and suddenly we’re permitted a more authentic look at everyday life in the House, and the actors are given the opportunity to flex more than just their accents.

The film is at its best when famous real-life figures drop in, especially Gandhi (portrayed cheerfully by Neeraj Kabi), who gets some of the most amusing and interesting scenes. It’s unfortunate that much of the lead up to this is a long slog of dry political negotiations and debates. These may be authentic, but they’re deadly dull, save for the occasional bit of conflict or wry humour from General Ismay (Michael Gambon).

Even worse is the extremely strained and hokey love story between Jeet (Manish Dayal), a manservant of the Viceroy, and Aalia (Huma Qureshi), a newly appointed assistant. It checks off every romantic cliché in the book, even throwing in a love triangle with an arranged marriage and a separation that leads to tragedy. This does a great disservice to the plot, feeling clumsily placed and distracting from anything potentially interesting.

The full tale of India’s Partition is perhaps too much to be crammed into less than two hours, especially when much of that time is spent focused on melodramatic nonsense over the great transition at hand. Viceroy’s House will no doubt be adored by the elderly, to whom this by-the-books royal biopic is clearly geared towards. It’s lively and watchable enough, and does boast another exotic score from A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire).

Viceroy’s House is available in Australian cinemas from May 18

Image courtesy of Transmission Films

Movie Review – The 5th Wave

Once upon a time, teens had movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Breakfast Club and The Lost Boys. Today, they have only the doom and gloom of government oppression in the post-apocalypse. Like, what a drag, man.

⭐ ⭐
Corey Hogan

At one point, about two-thirds of the way through The 5^th Wave, one of our protagonists asks his tormentor in confused anguish, “What is the point of any of this?” “Nothing,” comes the reply. I had to wonder whether or not this was an intentionally meta moment inserted by the filmmakers, purely to kick a little extra sand in our eyes. This exchange could be seamlessly transposed between a disgruntled audience member and a smug Sony executive; the latter well aware their film is shamelessly nonsensical, derivative and apathetic, yet justifiable, simply by the need to follow other studio’s successes and turn a popular young adult novel series into a cash cow film franchise. So here we have it; yet another addition to the increasingly bloated and manipulative teen dystopia genre.

J Blakeson’s The 5^th Wave, based on Rick Yancey’s book of the same name, follows ordinary teenage girl Cassie (Chloë Grace Moretz) whose world is turned upside down by the arrival of an ominous alien mothership above the Earth – which, without warning, wipes out most of humanity with four increasingly deadly “waves” of attacks. With her parents eliminated, and younger brother recruited by the military to join an army of child soldiers, Cassie must traverse the new world’s dangerous terrain – with the help of a mysterious young man named Evan (Alex Roe) – and rescue her sibling. Meanwhile, the human survivors learn that those among them may not be who they seem; but instead part of an impending fifth wave of attack…

Given its title, The 5^th Wave is ironically (and quite surprisingly) only the fourth wave in the post-apocalyptic science fiction for teens fad excreted by Hollywood, following in the profitable wake of The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Maze Runner. But while each series varies in quality, this latest incarnation may be the weakest entry yet. Worse, it threatens to derail the genre itself, making its formula and tropes more obvious than ever, and highlighting the many problems that seem to persist within this strain of blockbusters. It does show early signs of promise, but it’s not long until we’re going through the motions; the film gradually checking every cliché off its list of How to Set Up a YA Franchise 101.

A barrage of questions remains not only unanswered, but ignored entirely – why is it we learn absolutely zilch about these aliens and their reasons for attacking Earth? Why do they take the unnecessarily complicated approach of wiping out human survivors by posing as them when they have already shown they can kill by tsunami and plague? What sane military would recruit children to fight an alien invasion? The scattershot plot shambles from one disjointed scenario to the next whilst taking itself far too seriously; its wooden script and dialogue painfully lacking a single squirt of personality or awareness of its ridiculous situation. The premise itself is awfully similar to another sci-fi adaptation – 2013’s dreadful The Host (in turn a rip-off of Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and Cassie’s laughably forced romance with the potentially “dangerous” Evan (and set-up for a future love triangle) brings to mind a certain sparkly-vampire series we don’t speak of anymore.

As ever, some Hollywood heavyweights phone in the supporting roles – this time it’s Liev Schreiber, Maria Bello and Ron Livingston, but most disheartening is Miss Moretz. She does her best with the thin material, but cannot do much to elevate it – on the bright side, at least these hurried franchises give their actors guaranteed long-term work.

In the end, The 5th Wave divulges into a mess of predictable twists and the obligatory “This is just the beginning,” monologue, leaving us to sigh and accept that this, and many more like it will continue to generate a healthy box office for a while to come. Bring on the 6^th wave, I suppose. And the 7^th. And the 8^th…

The 5th Wave is available in Australian cinemas from January 14th 

Images courtesy of Sony Pictures