Life

For F*** Magazine

LIFE

Director : Anton Corbijn
Cast : Robert Pattinson, Dane DeHaan, Ben Kingsley, Joel Edgerton, Alessandra Mastronardi
Run Time : 1 hr 52 mins
Opens : 31 December 2015
Rating : M18 (Sexual Scene and Some Nudity)

It can be said that a photo of someone is a sliver of a life frozen in time. It is 1955 and photographer Dennis Stock (Pattinson) of the Magnum Photos Agency is out to create art, tired of the same old set visit and red carpet assignments he has been given by his boss at the agency John G. Morris (Edgerton). At a Hollywood party thrown by director Nicholas Ray (Peter J. Lucas), Stock meets young actor James Dean (DeHaan). Stock quickly identifies Dean as a fascinating potential subject and pitches a photo essay for Life Magazine to Morris. Stock eventually convinces Dean to let him tag along, taking candid un-staged photos around L.A., New York and the farm in Indiana where Dean was raised. Warner Bros. studio head Jack Warner (Kingsley) is intent on pushing Dean as the next big thing, but Dean rejects the pageantry involved with presenting himself as a new matinee idol. Stock and Dean gradually go from being photographer and subject to true friends, all while Dean’s status as an icon for the ages is being moulded.

            It seems that garden variety “cradle to the grave” biopics just won’t cut it anymore, and a movie about a real person has to have some kind of hook to stand out from the crowd. Steve Jobs takes place behind the scenes of three key Apple/NeXT product launches, and Life focuses on the relationship between James Dean and Dennis Stock, the photographer who took some of the most iconic photos of the star. Screenwriter Luke Davies had originally intended to pen a traditional biopic about James Dean, but was struck by the photos that Stock took of Dean walking in Times Square and looked into the background of said photos. Director Anton Corbijn is himself a photographer, famed for being U2’s official photographer and the director of many of the band’s music videos. As such, it is easy to see why he was drawn to material, perhaps feeling an affinity with Stock.

            Life proves incredibly frustrating because for a film about a figure who lived fast and died (very) young, it ambles along at the most leisurely of paces. In order to capture the rising star in his most unguarded moments, Stock hung out with Dean and this movie could be titled “Hanging Out with James Dean”. When we hang out with friends, noteworthy occurrences are usually infrequent. In the film, Dean attends an acting class conducted by legendary teacher Lee Strasberg (Nicholas Rice), then goes for drinks with a few classmates and dances. It just so happens that he’s dancing with Eartha Kitt (Kelly McCreary). We glimpse a who’s who of 50s Hollywood luminaries including Elia Kazan (Michael Thierrault), Raymond Massey (John Blackwood) and Natalie Wood (Lauren Gallagher), but all the glitz and glamour is intended to be secondary to the central friendship of Stock and Dean. It’s akin to a kid at Disney World being dragged past Star Tours by his parents and forced to sit through the Hall of Presidents.

            James Dean is hailed as something of a mythic figure idolised by many and casting someone to play a personality whose look and attitude has been influential far after his death must have been an immense challenge. DeHaan might only resemble Dean on a foggy night from 30 feet away but he does make a conscious effort to convey Dean’s brooding intensity. There are moments when the performance comes across as whiny and others when it feels like someone playing dress-up, but one can tell DeHaan’s done his homework. Fellow Harry Osborn James Franco has also played Dean, in a 2001 made-for-TV biopic.

Pattinson has spent most of his post-Twilight career trying to distance himself from the vampire romance franchise and while he’s not a terrible actor, he’s not great either – at least not yet. Pattinson does develop a chemistry with DeHaan and the relationship progresses believably. The film depicts the dissolution of Dean’s romance with Italian starlet Pier Angeli (Mastronardi), though it seems like the film is eager to get her out of the way so the bromance may commence. Kingsley shows up to do some very delicious scene-chewing as Warner, less head honcho and more terrifying overlord of tinsel town.

Life views James Dean through a photographer’s lens, pushing the glitz and glamour out of frame as much as possible. Perhaps through observing Dean, Stock changed and impacted the actor in some way as well. The approach is hit and miss – sometimes, Life’s quiet approach distinguishes it from melodramatic broad strokes biopics but at others, this feels like a boring movie about a fascinating subject, never digging quite deep enough.

Summary: While thoughtfully crafted, there are considerable stretches where Life seems to come to a standstill, the low-key approach working both for and against it.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

F*** Magazine

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2

Director: Marc Webb
Cast:  Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz, Colm Feore, Paul Giamatti, Sally Field, Chris Cooper, Marton Csokas, B.J. Novak, Denis Leary
Genre: Comics, Action, Fantasy
Run Time: 142 mins
Opens: 1 May 2014
Rating: PG13 (Violence)

Has it really been a whole decade since Spider-Man battled Doc Ock atop that train? The time sure has swung by. In this new Part 2, Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Garfield) sorts out his complicated relationship with Gwen Stacy (Stone), still haunted by the death of Gwen’s dad Captain George Stacy (Leary). Peter’s childhood friend Harry Osborn (DeHaan) returns from boarding school to see his dying father Norman (Cooper), founder of Oscorp. Lowly Oscorp employee Max Dillon (Foxx), who has an unhealthy infatuation with Spider-Man, is transformed into the villainous, all-powerful Electro during a lab accident. As Harry develops a vendetta on Spider-Man and turns into the Green Goblin, he and Electro unite to bring the web-slinger down once and for all.

Spider-Man fans greeted 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man with much scepticism and this reviewer found himself surprised by the film, the chemistry between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone its strongest point. That continues to be true for the sequel. Unfortunately, this follow-up is often a downright cheesy affair when not focusing on Peter Parker’s interpersonal relationships. The scenes between Peter and Gwen and Peter and Harry are great, but when the movie turns its focus to the superheroics and the bad guys, as it must, prepare to cringe a little. One would think that comic-book movies have progressed past the point of cartoony, maniacally cackling supervillains. This movie is wall-to-wall maniacally cackling supervillains.



Now, we aren’t saying all comic-book movies should be grim and depressing, far from it. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is, if nothing else, pretty fun. However, director Marc Webb has repeatedly expressed a desire to keep the new film series grounded in some form of reality, hence the more “realistic” and less outlandish appearances of the costumed villains in this movie. Yet we have Spider-Man yanking down the trousers of Russian mobster Aleksei Sytsevich (Giamatti) to reveal rhino-print boxers. We have a container of volatile capsules that narrates “Warning: Plutonium 238 is a radioactive material and is highly explosive”. We have Spider-Man whistling his own theme song as he fights Aleksei (the theme song is also his ring tone). And all this just in the first Spider-Man-centric action sequence following the prologue featuring Peter’s parents.



Garfield and Stone continue to be a delight when together onscreen. Garfield has embraced the role and does display some pretty impressive physicality; it’s not easy for an actor to make it clear to audiences that it actually is him under a superhero suit and mask, something Garfield achieves. He makes Peter Parker very endearing and it’s impossible not to break into a smile seeing how much he’s enjoying himself. It is during Peter and Gwen’s shared moments that the talent that Webb displayed in (500) Days Of Summer is evident. This is also the best Spider-Man’s outfit has ever looked in the movies.



It’s often said that “sequels are all about the villains” but the rogues that Spidey faces off with in this film are not all that remarkable. Jamie Foxx’s Electro is essentially Jim Carrey’s Riddler from Batman Forever, with shades of Richard Pryor in Superman III. He’s the put-upon dweeb who’s ignored by everyone and makes the world pay when he gains superhuman abilities. We’ve seen this countless times before, and as far as supervillain origin stories go, falling into a vat of electric eels isn’t one of the greats. DeHaan showed a lot of promise in Chronicle and does make a great bratty rich kid here, sharing a good deal of chemistry with Garfield. However, there is far from enough time dedicated to the strained friendship between Peter and Harry, with Harry becoming a full-fledged monster in the same movie in which he’s introduced. Giamatti is completely wasted in his minor role as the Rhino, hamming it up as a beyond-stereotypical Russian mobster. There’s also no real “uniting” of the villains, who tackle Spidey one at a time. To top it all off, Dr. Ashley Kafka, who was female in the comics, is played by Marton Csokas as an eccentric German-accented mad scientist with a silly hairdo.



In terms of the spectacle, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 does boast some sizeable action set-pieces, most notably a confrontation in Times Square in which Electro feeds off the electricity coursing through the New York power grid. Webb injects a dynamic style to the sequences but some tricks, most notably a prolonged bullet-time breakdown, do seem a little tired. The penultimate battle at a power plant seems almost completely synthetic and does carry with it a niggling “video game” feel, the CG animation by Sony Pictures Imageworks falling short of photo-realistic. That aside, the 3D here is excellent; there’s just enough stuff hurtling out of the screen to make one feel like the premium ticket price is worth it without jabbing audiences in the eyes, and sequences of Spidey swinging through the air are adequately exhilarating.



There’s half of a good movie here. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is not terrible, but we’ve come to expect more out of our comic book films since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. If those movies haven’t aged well, it’s likely that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will also soon be seen as campy and dated. The 9-year-olds in the audience might well have the time of their lives but, for viewers who are experiencing comic book movie fatigue, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be little more than annoying. The Stan Lee cameo is also pretty lacklustre, especially when compared with his appearance as the school librarian in The Amazing Spider-Man. Sony is looking to build their own “Spider-Man movie universe” in an effort to keep up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with supervillain team-up movie The Sinister Six coming soon. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is cause for at least a little worry.

Summary: While Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone continue to be great together, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is mostly cheesy and cartoony, entertaining in some spots but cringe-worthy in others.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong