Mr. Holmes

For F*** Magazine

MR. HOLMES

Director : Bill Condon
Cast : Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hattie Morahan, Patrick Kennedy, Milo Parker
Genre : Drama/Mystery
Run Time : 104 mins
Opens : 6 August 2015
Rating : PG

Sherlock Holmes – he’s the greatest detective who ever detected, the greatest sleuth who ever sleuthed and the greatest crime-solver who ever, uh, solved crimes. In this film, we find Sherlock (McKellen) in his twilight years. It is 1947 and a 93-year-old Sherlock has long since retired from detective work, living in a remote farmhouse in Sussex with housekeeper Mrs. Munro (Linney) and her young son Roger (Parker). Holmes has taken up beekeeping, harvesting royal jelly in the hopes of improving his failing memory. He makes a trip to Hiroshima, meeting up with plant enthusiast Matsuda Umezaki (Sanada) in search of the fabled prickly ash, which Sherlock hopes will prove more effective in staving off senility than the royal jelly. In the meantime, he revisits his final case, the case that brought about his self-exile, a case involving the mysterious married woman with a peculiar obsession (Monahan).

The Guinness Book of World Records lists Sherlock Holmes, originally created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as the “most portrayed movie character”. The iconic detective has been played by over 70 actors in more than 200 films and to call Sir Ian McKellen a worthy addition to that pantheon would be an understatement. The character has been through myriad interpretations in his nearly 130 years of existence and Mr. Holmes can stand alongside the recent contemporary re-imaginings of the character, each take bringing something different to the table. This film is based on Mitch Cullin’s novel A Slight Trick of Mind, adapted by screenwriter and playwright Jeffrey Hatcher. Modern audiences have grown enamoured with the BBC series featuring Benedict Cumberbatch’s mercurial, misanthropic Sherlock paired with Martin Freeman’s harried everyman Dr. Watson. Here, we find that Sherlock and Watson’s partnership has dissolved and that Watson has been writing fictionalised accounts of Sherlock’s cases. This is Sherlock at a point of his life that we don’t see too often, but he is by no means less interesting a character.

The film is slowly paced and while there is an element of mystery, it is intended that the audience be captured not by a whodunit but by the enigma of the title character himself. There is a sense of scope to the tale, which sees Sherlock visit a post-Second World War Japan. A moment in which he sees a woman scarred by radiation poisoning and stops in his tracks, shaken, is effectively haunting. A good deal of the film is spent on the bond the elderly Sherlock forms with the precocious Roger, played by Milo Parker, a child actor very much in the Thomas Brodie-Sangster mould. This relationship is given meaningful development rather than being superficially twee. The primary conflict arises from Mrs. Munro’s concern that her son is spending too much time with Sherlock and chasing intellectual pursuits when she means for him to live and work at an inn her sister runs. This feels believable and earned.

The film also takes a meta-fictional look at the cultural impact of Sherlock Holmes, with Sherlock directly addressing the depiction of him wearing a deerstalker hat and smoking a pipe, calling these mere embellishments of Watson’s illustrator. In an amusing scene, Sherlock goes to see a movie based on a book Watson has written about him – the actor playing Sherlock in this film-within-a-film is portrayed by Nicholas Rowe, who played Sherlock in 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes. There is the sense that Sherlock himself is struggling to parse where the legends end and the real person begins. McKellen is able to bring out many colours in his portrayal of Sherlock, fleshing out the character rather than presenting a mere assemblage of tics. Because the use of his mind has been so important to him all his life, it is all the more heart-rending to see Sherlock come to grips with his waning faculties. 

Director Bill Condon paints a picture of Sherlock in which whatever cases the character is working on are secondary, with Sherlock Holmes, “the man beyond the myth” as the tagline puts it, at the fore. For those itching for a whodunit and who derive satisfaction at seeing the great detective unravel labyrinth mysteries, Mr. Holmes won’t quite do the trick. However, as a character study and commentary on the cultural impact of Sherlock Holmes, it is intimate, well-acted and emotional. 

Summary: Once you’ve come to terms with the fact that Mr. Holmes is a character piece rather than a thrilling mystery, it’s easy to embrace Ian McKellen’s stirring portrayal of the iconic detective. 

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars 


Jedd Jong 

Minions

For F*** Magazine

MINIONS

Director : Kyle Balda, Pierre Coffin

Cast : Sandra Bullock, Michael Keaton, Jon Hamm, Steve Coogan, Hiroyuki Sanada, Allison Janney, Katy Mixon, Dave Rosenbaum, Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud

Genre : Animation

Run Time : 91 mins

Opens : 18 June 2015

Rating : PG

Clad in blue overalls with thick goggles over their eye(s), preoccupied with bananas and spouting gibberish, the small yellow creatures known as Minions have scuttled their way into the collective popular culture consciousness. In this prequel/spin-off to the Despicable Me movies, we discover the origins of the Minions, who have been on earth since the dawn of time, drawn to evil masters whom they loyally but often ineffectively serve. It is 1968 and after a long period of unemployment, Kevin, Stuart and Bob set out to seek a new villainous employer for their clan. The stylish, dastardly Scarlet Overkill (Bullock) seems to be just the new boss the Minions seek. Her husband, inventor Herb (Hamm), outfits Kevin, Stuart and Bob with nifty gadgets and they are tasked to steal the Queen’s crown from the Tower of London for Scarlet, who dreams of ruling over the British Empire. Naturally, things go awry for our tiny yellow protagonists. Uh oh.

            It is very easy to be cynical about the existence of this spin-off film. A “minion” serves an evil overlord, who in the context of the Despicable Me series, is Steve Carell’s Gru. Here, the Minions, side characters by design, are given their own show to carry. There is an industry term for something with kid-targeted merchandising potential – “toyetic”. The Minions are as toyetic as they come, designed to be slapped on everything and anything that exasperated parents can fork over the cash for, with a new wave of Minion mania set to strike with the release of this movie. When McDonalds offered Minion Happy Meal toys here in Singapore, lines snaked around the block, rivalling those for Hello Kitty merchandise. It was a goofy, likeable idea to start with, but now it can’t help but feel all market tested and focus grouped out. A story focusing solely on the Minions would have worked fine as a short film or as a theme park attraction – actually, those already exist, but that doesn’t diminish the shiny, lucrative appeal of a feature-length summer release.

            That’s essentially a roundabout way of saying that Minions has no real need to exist, which sounds like a very curmudgeon-y statement indeed now that we’ve read it out loud. For what it is, the film is harmless, often quite amusing and very competently animated. Pierre Coffin co-directed both Despicable Me films and Kyle Balda helmed three Minion-centric short films included on the Despicable Me home release. Coffin and Chris Renaud, co-director of the Despicable Me movies, voice all the Minions themselves. There are several eye-catching sequences and plenty of fun period details for the parents in the audience to grab onto – Kevin, Stuart and Bob walking beneath a giant Nixon campaign poster is a delightfully surreal image. There are perhaps one too many pop culture references – for example, the Minions bumble into the Beatle’s famous Abbey Road crossing. The expected slapstick is not in short supply, but this reviewer’s favourite gag, featuring time-travelling mad scientist Dr. Flux, didn’t involve the Minions at all.

            It was assumed that the Minions were the genetically-engineered creations of Gru – the short film “Orientation Day” follows a bunch of freshly-cloned Minions around Gru’s lab. The Minions’ new back-story raises very many questions. Is this one tribe the only group of Minions in existence? What implications are there in these creatures’ nature to be drawn to only the most unsavoury beings currently alive? Would they have leapt at the chance to serve, say, Adolf Hitler? It makes sense if their lives have no meaning apart from indentured servitude if they were grown that way in a lab, but these creatures are naturally occurring. We’re definitely expending too much thought on it, but these notions did prove very distracting throughout the film’s duration.

            Sandra Bullock is the marquee-name star chosen to headline the film as Scarlet Overkill, the super-villainess kitted out in an array of dresses that also serve as booster rockets and who’s out to prove being a flashy career criminal isn’t just a guy’s game. She’s fine, but nowhere near as charismatic and entertaining as Steve Carell before her, and it is evident that she’s not a seasoned voice actress. Playing Scarlet’s laconic husband, Jon Hamm puts more effort into transforming his voice, but it’s not an especially memorable performance. Michael Keaton and Allison Janney voice a couple who let Kevin, Stuart and Bob hitch a car ride to the villain convention; it’s little more than a cameo.

            It’s an animated film containing popular, easily-marketable critters and it’s being released during the summer holidays, so of course Minions is going to do well at the box office. It’s mostly pleasant enough, sometimes annoying but never outright cringe-inducing and it moves along at a decent clip. Because of the inherent simplicity of the Minions as characters and the fact that they have to carry this movie on their little yellow shoulders, this lacks the crucial emotional backbone present in the first Despicable Me film. Kevin, Stuart and Bob may be designed to be analogues for Margo, Edith and Agnes, but they just can’t replace the heart that the three girls and their emotional connection to their adoptive dad bring to the franchise.

Summary: Yes, the tykes will love it and the accompanying adults might find some tidbits hidden in the 60s setting, but Minions can’t transcend its function as a cash grab vehicle.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong  

The Railway Man

For F*** Magazine

THE RAILWAY MAN

Director: Jonathan Teplitzky
Cast:         Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jeremy Irvine, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tanroh Ishida, Stellan Skarsgård
Genre: Drama, Biography
Run Time: 116 mins
Opens: 13 March 2014
Rating: NC16 (Some Violence)

Eric Lomax, a British Army officer during the Second World War, was one of many thousands forced to work on the infamous Thailand-Burma Death Railway as a Prisoner of War. He lived to tell his tale in the autobiography The Railway Man, which serves as the basis for this film. Colin Firth plays Lomax who, in 1980, meets and falls in love with Patti (Kidman). Lomax’s post-traumatic stress disorder manifests itself and drives a wedge in his and Patti’s relationship, so a concerned Patti goes to Lomax’s best friend and fellow WWII survivor Finlay (Skarsgård) to learn about what really happened. Flashbacks featuring a young Lomax (Irvine) and Finlay (Sam Reid) depict this. In the present, Lomax tracks down Takashi Nagase (Sanada), the Japanese officer who imprisoned and tortured him, to settle an old score.



As students, most Singaporeans would have studied the Japanese conquest of South-East Asia, but watching this first-hand account is something different altogether. With its intimate focus, The Railway Man personalises the historical tragedy in a way that is eminently relatable. The film starts out under the guise of a romantic drama, with a meet-cute on a train and the depiction of a middle-aged couple’s whirlwind courtship, but as old wounds are re-opened, the audience is thrust into the harshness of the Death Railway and the extent of the suffering borne by Lomax and many who were not as lucky as him is laid bare. A clever, haunting visual device has Lomax walk out of the hotel in which he and Patti are having their honeymoon and straight into Burma of the past, where he confronts the demons which have been gnawing away at him.

Many movies have featured shell-shocked veterans whose lives are irreparably shattered following the trauma of war, but The Railway Man examines the long-term effects of such trauma as well as how it can weigh on a significant other. There’s also that “the past is a foreign country” theme, Finlay scoffing at tourists taking “Bridge On The Bloody River Kwai holidays,” a reminder to never forget the atrocities of war even if they seem like they may not directly impact us. However, a major change that this movie makes from the true story is how Lomax’s reunion with his tormentor is couched as an almost-Oldboy-esque quest of vengeance rather than one of reconciliation. Ostensibly, this is to up the tension and the scenes are indeed nail-biters, but the conflict comes off as feeling forced and this embellishment ultimately seems disingenuous.

The ever-dependable Firth is on expectedly excellent form, conveying the bottled-up torment of having lived through the war, while also displaying quick flashes of child-like innocence in Lomax’s love of trains. Irvine, who was a revelation in War Horse, is good as the young, pre-trauma Lomax, his performance lining up with Firth’s nicely. Sanada more than holds his own opposite the Oscar-winning Firth and he deserves his growing status as Hollywood’s go-to Japanese actor. Kidman is in a more passive role, having the story told to her for much of the movie, but she and Firth are relatively believable as a couple. While an excellent actor, Skarsgård’s Swedish accent is still audible and perhaps a British actor would have been better suited to playing Finlay. Seeing him and Firth together also conjures up images of a solemn semi-Mamma Mia! reunion.

Cinematographer Gary Phillips and composer David Hirschfelder both provide the film with plenty of atmosphere and, while the end result has its moments of stirring emotion, it can’t help but feel engineered and inauthentic at times. Even though the story’s focus makes it more involving, there’s also the danger of losing sight of the bigger picture and The Railway Man doesn’t quite balance this as well as the best war movies have. That said, Eric Lomax’s story is one that should be told onscreen and Firth’s performance possesses enough power to make up for the film’s shortcomings.

SUMMARY: The artistic license that The Railway Man takes feels forced, but Colin Firth’s turn as Eric Lomax is undoubtedly moving.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong