Pride And Prejudice And Zombies

For F*** Magazine

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES

Director : Burr Steers
Cast : Lily James, Sam Riley, Jack Huston, Bella Heathcote, Douglas Booth, Matt Smith, Charles Dance
Genre : Horror/Thriller
Run Time : 107 mins
Opens : 11 February 2016
Rating : NC16 (Violence)

Something is rotten in the state of England – human flesh. It is the 19^th Century and a plague has befallen the nation, resulting in zombie hordes. Country gentleman Mr. Bennet (Dance) has ensured that his five daughters are trained in martial arts and weaponry to defend themselves against zombies, while Mrs. Bennet (Sally Phillips) is more concerned that they marry well. When the wealthy and single Mr. Bingley (Booth) purchases a nearby house, Mrs. Bennet sends her daughters to the first ball where Bingley is expected to appear. The girls defend the party from a zombie attack, and attraction sparks between Mr. Bingley and the eldest daughter Jane (Heathcote). Meanwhile, the second eldest daughter Elizabeth (James) clashes with Bingley's friend, noted zombie slayer Col. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Riley). Meanwhile, local militia leader George Wickham (Huston), who had a falling out with Darcy, takes a shine to Elizabeth. Elizabeth and Darcy must overcome personal pride and societal prejudices to battle the zombie menace and discover their true love for each other.

            Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is based on the 2009 parody novel of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith, who combined Jane Austen’s 1813 classic Pride and Prejudice with zombie fiction elements. A film adaptation has been in the works since even before the novel’s publication, with Natalie Portman set to star as Elizabeth and David O. Russell directing. Alas, the end result doesn’t have quite that level of pedigree, with 17 Again’s Burr Steers writing the adapted screenplay and directing. Portman remains as a producer. Across the development process, it ended up that Grahame-Smith’s follow-up novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter got a film adaptation first.

            While Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was criticised for being too self-serious, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies acknowledges its inherent absurdity more readily. It’s not a dour affair and there is a great deal of winking self-awareness to be had, which led to this reviewer laughing more than he anticipated to. However, it’s quickly all too apparent that this is built on just one joke, that zombies are having their heads blown to bits amidst all the Jane Austen refinement. This is how the idea was conceived: an editor at Quirk books literally compared a list of “fanboy characters” like ninjas, pirates, zombies and monkeys with public domain classics like War and Peace, Crime and Punishment and Wuthering Heights. Sounds arbitrary, doesn’t it? This laziness comes through and the novelty factor proves insufficient in sustaining the film.

            We’ve had Charlize Theron with a bionic arm driving a giant oil tanker across a post-apocalyptic wasteland and Emily Blunt in a mech suit fighting aliens, so kickass heroines are in vogue. In this film, the Bennet girls were trained in a Shaolin monastery and are proficient in various forms of combat. In one scene, two of the sisters engage in sparring practice while gushing over Mr. Bingley, speaking the original Austen dialogue. It’s pretty fun.

James makes for an adequate plucky, wilful protagonist and the actress demonstrates her awareness of the type of film she’s in. The Cinderella and Downton Abbey star is perfectly convincing as an aristocratic 19^th Century English woman fighting social norms, albeit a little less convincing as a formidable zombie killer. Riley’s Mr. Darcy is brusque and brooding, clad in a leather duster. Unfortunately, Riley and James share little chemistry and there’s no flow to the progression of their relationship. Matt Smith showcases good comic timing as the bumbling clergyman Mr. Collins, heir to the Bennet estate. In Austen’s original novel, George Wickham turned out to be a liar and conman, if not an out-and-out villain. Things end a little differently here. Huston’s pulchritude has a slight tinge of menace, which makes him suited to the role. Dance is a welcome presence as the kindly yet strict Bennet patriarch, but his Game of Thrones co-star Lena Headey gets all too little screen time as the eyepatch-wearing Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Many readers have used charts and diagrams to follow the interwoven relationships in Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies trips up when it tries to get through the plot of the story as quickly as possible so it can get to the next zombie attack. The genre mashup isn’t as seamless and confident as it needs to be to fully sell the conceit. Furthermore, the action sequences aren’t particularly memorable. It’s also lacking the raw sex appeal of, uh, Colin Firth.

Summary: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is not the unmitigated train-wreck it could’ve been, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that all the premise should sustain is a mock trailer on Funny or Die.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Jupiter Ascending

For F*** Magazine

JUPITER ASCENDING 

Director : Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski
Cast : Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean
Genre : Sci-Fi/Action/Fantasy
Opens : 5 February 2015

It seems that The Wachowskis enjoyed working on the futuristic “An Orison of Sonmi~451” section of Cloud Atlas, because with Jupiter Ascending, Lana and Andy go full-on sci-fi space opera. The title refers not only to the planet but also to the character Jupiter Jones (Kunis). The daughter of an astronomer and a Russian immigrant, Jones lives with her mother’s extended family and works as a maid, scrubbing toilets for rich families. Interplanetary warrior Caine Wise (Tatum) arrives on earth to guide and protect Jupiter, who is in reality the reincarnation of the queen of the universe. The queen’s three children, Balem (Redmayne), Titus (Booth) and Kalique (Middleton) Abrasax, are vying for inheritance of the planet earth, Jupiter’s emergence throwing a spanner in the works. Breaking free of her mundane existence, Jupiter comes face to face with her larger-than-life future among the stars.

            A friend of this reviewer remarked that she thought Jupiter Ascending was an adaptation of a young adult novel, and it’s not hard to see why. The Wachowskis follow the “chosen girl” template to the letter, with the Mary Sue trope of an ordinary girl who discovers her extraordinary destiny in full effect. The foremost example of the space opera subgenre in film is the Star Wars saga – unfortunately, Jupiter Ascending has more in common with the prequel trilogy than the original three films. The Star Wars prequels were preoccupied with political nitty-gritties that didn’t exactly make for very thrilling storytelling. There, it was trade negotiations, here, it’s a dynasty-run corporation. A good portion of this film is Mila Kunis about to sign contracts. With the three siblings jostling for control of an intergalactic corporate empire, this is Dallas in outer space.

            While the story isn’t the greatest, the milieu in which it takes place is quite impressive. This is a visual feast and everywhere one looks in Jupiter Ascending, care and effort is evident. From the production design by Hugh Bateup to the costume design by Kym Barrett to the visual effects work supervised by Dan Glass, this does not feel like hastily slapped-together sci-fi schlock. Sure, the visual ideas may not be earth-shatteringly unique, but this is the kind of film in which every little prop feels like a work of art. When there are low budget productions out there painting NERF guns black and hoping the audience doesn’t notice, that is worth something. A scene in which Caine swoops between skyscrapers on anti-gravity boots makes far better use of the Chicago skyline as an action sequence environment than the Transformers movies ever did. One of the locales is a city inside the storm of the planet Jupiter’s red spot. There is the feeling that there is a rich mythology and the potential for an engrossing universe somewhere waiting to be built upon that this particular story doesn’t tap into.

            There is an effort made to have Jupiter Jones be at least a little more than the tabula rasa protagonists of her type often are – Mila Kunis is sufficiently charming in the role and finds the right balance for the character such that she doesn’t come off as wholly annoying. We also get to see her relatives, their squabbles juxtaposed against the grand intergalactic family dispute. Points there, seeing as it would be easier to go the “conveniently an orphan” route. That said, it is still difficult to buy Jupiter as little more than a plot device.

            Caine is also very much a stock character – stoic, tough, not necessarily a romantic guy. We stand by the opinion that Channing Tatum’s true calling is comedy and he’s not the greatest at the straight-up man of action thing, but he does give it a good attempt here. He does look slightly goofy playing a space warrior spliced with wolf DNA and, naturally, he goes shirtless for a portion of the film. Going off Eddie Redmayne’s performance here alone, it’s hard to believe that he is an Oscar nominee. As the supercilious aristocratic villain, Redmayne opts for a hoarse, mumbling line delivery and his outbursts aren’t as hammily entertaining as this reviewer was hoping for. Douglas Booth’s Titus is preening and vain; these just aren’t very original interpretations for characters of this type. Sean Bean is as reliable as he usually is, but as “the mentor”, it’s another stock character without many dimensions to him.

            When Jupiter Ascending was pushed back from its summer 2014 release date, speculation was rife that it was because of a certain Marvel space opera flick that posed heavy competition and there and then, many made up their minds that the film would be a train-wreck. While there are potentially laughable elements, Jupiter Ascending is middle of the road rather than outright terrible and it is very competently made. The abundance of visual splendour does make up somewhat for the “been there done that”-ness of the plot.

Summary: Jupiter Ascending’s generic, sometimes uninteresting plot is rescued by exciting, meticulously-crafted visuals and fun action sequences.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

            

Noah

For F*** Magazine

NOAH

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast:         Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Douglas Booth, Anthony Hopkins, Leo McHugh Carroll, Nick Nolte
Genre: Drama, Adventure
Run Time: 140 mins
Opens: 3 April 2014
Rating: NC-16 (Some mature content and violence)

“Survival at sea” movies seem to be making a comeback: over the last two years, we’ve seen Life of Pi and All is Lost, with Unbroken due later this year. Darren Aronofsky delivers his take on what might be the original survival at sea story with Noah. It has been ten generations since the creation of Adam and Eve, and Noah (Crowe) receives visions from God foretelling a great flood that will annihilate humankind, who has become wicked and violent. Noah is tasked with building an ark to shelter one male and one female of every animal during the flood. His wife Naameh (Connelly), sons Shem (Booth), Ham (Lerman) and Japheth (Carroll) and Shem’s wife Ila (Watson) help Noah with his divine mission, but they also witness the torment brewing within Noah. The vicious self-proclaimed king Tubal-Cain (Winstone) refuses to acknowledge the prophecy of the flood and leads his men against Noah. The fallen angels encased in rock known as the Watchers, led by Samyaza (Nolte), protect Noah and his family against the hordes as the waters erupt from the ground and fall from the heavens.



Most book-to-film adaptations are of full-length novels, and the first step in such adaptations is often trimming the material down to size and condensing it. The story of Noah is found in Chapters 6-9 of the book of Genesis in the Bible: it’s a short story that’s told matter-of-factly and this adaptation involves a good deal of expansion. Aronofsky set about making a film that would defy expectations associated with a Biblical movie, while staying true to the letter of the text – something definitely easier said than done. This is a filmmaker whose works include the provocative, disturbing likes of Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan and whose most technically ambitious film was the trippy The Fountain, so there’s no way he was going to play by established rules. Paramount got cold feet when test screenings last year generated controversy, but Aronofsky fought hard for the preservation of his cut of the film. The Noah audiences are getting stays true to Aronofsky’s vision, but it is easy to see why the studio panicked, and the multiple fades to black seem to indicate there’s still some re-editing that happened.



We don’t go to the movies to be preached to and Noah definitely isn’t a woefully laughable production the way Kirk Cameron’s Left Behind movies were. Aronofsky and co-writers Ari Handel and John Logan train the story’s focus on the humanity of the characters. The internal conflict that arises within Noah’s family and the external conflict provided by Tubal-Cain’s onslaught drive the narrative. All the players have their flaws, and oftentimes said flaws get magnified. The Bible is not a pretty book; many of the stories within are raw and hard to stomach. Aronofsky wanted to flesh out the darkness supposedly inherent in the story of Noah and the great flood, so the handling of the Watchers is particularly curious. In this film, they are fallen angels cursed to be imprisoned in stone, so they end up as rock creatures particularly reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen-style stop-motion movie monsters. In the Bible however, the Watchers lusted after human women, co-habiting with them and spawning the monstrous Nephilim; God bringing about the flood to wipe these giants from the earth. That Noah does not pursue this inherently juicy and fantastical story thread is puzzling.



There’s a lot of angst in this film, an understandable storytelling choice as angst breeds drama. Russell Crowe’s Noah is stoic but burdened with his divinely-appointed task, and as interpreted here, is intent that human beings not get a second chance. Russell Crowe certainly does “tough” and “angry” well; while this is a good performance, it’s not anything very new for him. Jennifer Connelly, who was also Crowe’s on-screen wife in A Beautiful Mind, is a dependable voice of reason as Naameh, who tries to reassure Noah that he loves his children and therefore cannot hate all of mankind.



Ila’s deal is that she is she is barren from a childhood injury and feels inadequate that she will not be able to provide Shem with children. Emma Watson attempts to give Ila a personality of her own, but it does seem like she’s defined by her role within the family. Logan Lerman’s Ham is the rebellious middle child, in danger of being swayed by the aggression and power Ray Winstone’s Tubal-Cain embodies. Winstone is as imposing and grizzled as he usually is and does make for a believable opponent to Noah, though he often falls into the position of “designated antagonist”. The slightest hint of levity in the film is provided by Anthony Hopkins’ Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather and a Yoda-type sage and mentor who misses the taste of berries.



Ideally, a film of this genre melds spectacle and intimate story-telling. It would seem that Noah accomplishes both, what with location filming in Iceland and on a purpose-built ark set at New York’s Planting Fields Arboretum, in addition to boasting the most complicated rendering in visual effects house ILM’s history. However, it sometimes feels like Aronofsky was reluctant to present a visual epic; that he was so intent on depicting a tense family drama that scenes like the masses of birds flocking into the ark were only included out of obligation. There is a time-lapse-heavy montage telling the creation story and illustrating man’s propensity towards conflict with several inventive touches. Perhaps it’s to do with the tonal approach: there’s a difference between “solemn” and “dreary” and most of the time, Noah leans towards the latter, resulting in a lack of sweeping majesty.

Darren Aronofsky wanted Noah to be “different”, and that it is. Filmgoers should appreciate the fact that a director as talented and as unique as Aronofsky was given around $130 million to tackle a story like Noah, rendering a well-worn story new again. It’s not necessarily going to sit well with the personal beliefs of every viewer out there but then again, that’s part of what sets this apart from the crop of Bible flicks – though it is at the expense of staying true to the source material. While the end result is far from watertight, it is interesting, it is sufficiently thought-provoking and taking a good deal of artistic license, the film explores the text as much as it challenges it.

SUMMARY: Far from the cuddly pleasure cruise drawn in so many children’s picture Bibles, Noah is complex, uneven, patchy but uniquely engrossing nonetheless.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong