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Wonka (2023)
Pointless
A hideous movie that attempts to give us the backstory of the Willy Wonka from the even more hideous 1971 Hollywood bag of tosh entitled Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which Roald Dahl himself hated.
I really didn't see the point of this movie. It doesn't really tell us anything worth knowing about Willy Wonka, and even dares to radically change the Oompa Loompa backstory as told in Roald Dahl's books., in a way that makes absolutely no sense. It introduces a whole bunch of extraneous one-episode characters. Wonka himself is lightweight and lacking substance, with not a hint of darkness or creative charisma. All the songs are needless and throwaway, and the many attempts at big, Oliver-style street choreography numbers fall totally flat. The trio of Slugworth, Fickelgruber and Prodnose are a bore, and even performances by the likes of Olivia Coleman, one of the great comic character actors of our time, are insufficient to elevate this sorry excuse for a story beyond what it truly is... an ill-conceived, cynical attempt to capitalise on one of the greatest icons of children's literature.
For me, this film will always represent one hour and fifty six minutes of my life I'll never get back.
If you want to avoid making the same mistake, here's my three-step programme:
1. Buy the books Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
2. Read the books
3. If you must watch a movie of the books, watch the Tim Burton film from 2005 which is almost entirely faithful apart from a bit of extraneous backstory.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
A film of the book, not a remake of the 1971 sickly sweet debacle
I read the book when I was a kid. I loved it. So I read the sequel. I loved that too. So re-read both... over and over again. The movies of my mind were magnificent.
One day I saw that the 1971 movie was being shown on TV. So I watched it. I was so disappointed. It was nothing like the book. Sickly sweet and lacking all the darkness, full of stupid schmaltzy songs and a Charlie, Grandpa Joe and Willy Wonka that were nothing like the ones of my imagination.
When this film came out I was already a parent of children who had read the books. I doubted it'd be very good, but being a Tim Burton movie I thought I'd give it a go.
Apart from the needless Willy Wonka backstory, it's entirely faithful to the book. The Bucket house, Charlie's family, his home town, the factory... everything. The only songs, the ones the Oompa Loompas sing whenever one of the kids gets what he or she deserved, were worded from the lyrics Roald Dahl wrote in the books. The result is a dark series of cautionary tales that does total justice to the first book, and one that I believe Roald Dahl himself would have loved or at least approved of. Because he too hated the 1971 film.
If you were a child who read the books, a true icon of children's literature, you'll probably love this. If you were a child enchanted by the 1971 Hollywood travesty then you'll hate it.
I know which camp I'd rather be in.
Summerland (2020)
Historically laughable, intensely pretty, embarrassingly watchable
This is a beautifully shot film with some of southern England's prettiest scenery using some skilled cinematography. The acting is pretty good too, and it holds the entire thing together. But the anachronisms and historical inaccuracies (evacuation starts 1st Sep 1939, war declared 3rd Sep 1939, blitz starts 7th Sep 1940, and that's just the beginning) are ignorant and laughable, detract immensely from the story for me, and left me wishing I didn't have such a clear knowledge of WW2 chronology and history.
The Great Race (1965)
Grandiose, self-indulgent & unfunny comedy
I had in my memory all those old comedy road movies I used to watch as a kid. Apparently this wasn't one of them, as it provided no familiarity at all. And now I know why. Jack Lemmon basically shouts his way through the entire thing. The rest of the cast hams it up, whilst the set piece fight scenes and jocular exchanges are ridiculous rather than being particularly funny. Maybe it's just aged badly? But no, I think not. An apparently huge budget spent on a substandard script that relies on slapstick, and even that's not even done as well as in other films of the same era and genre. And the whole race fizzles out completely in the last third of the film in favour of a lookalike-prince Prisoner of Zenda style sub plot that feels incongruous and was probably just an effort to spend more money, have a nice holiday in Salzburg, and cover up for the fact that the race Itself was really quite a non-event. But at least I never have to spend over 2.5 hours of my life watching it ever again. If you should decide not to take the gamble... Try Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines - it's a better, wittier, funnier movie in every way.
The Mountain Between Us (2017)
The viewer needs to share the director's vision
Over and over again I come across films where the viewing public seem to fail to grasp the vision of the director. This is one such film.
I've seen criticisms in reviews such as "only 8 minutes to get to the mountain". The point is, the two characters are strangers to each other, and likewise they are strangers to us. If their characters were better developed, we'd know too much about them. Instead their characters are unfolded through the story, in a way which lets us discover who they are at roughly the same rate as they're discovering each other as people, and as survival companions.
And as for "the last 25 minutes were unnecessary", I disagree. The story needs to slow down, once they're back in civilisation trying to get on with the everyday lives they lived before. But after that shared experience, things seem empty. You can't rush this part of the story, or you simply won't tell the story. Thankfully the director allowed the characters to tell their stories, to show us that life couldn't simply continue as before, that something was missing for both of them.
As for an unrealistic descent from the mountain... not really. It generally is a matter of finding a navigable path and getting to lower altitudes, then finding shelter, fresh water and food. Perhaps the least realistic part was eating snow to get water - it's really not advisable as your main source, though it was only shown the once.
Great characterisation and acting from both Winslet and Elba. But great directing and storytelling from the director too.
Third Person (2013)
Utterly misunderstood
I cannot believe that so many people apparently fundamentally failed to understand the story this film tells.
Michael (Neeson) is telling the story of his own tragic life in his writing. He writes in the third person in order to weave the threads of his story into his novels. His moment of negligence which led to his son's accidental death by drowning is echoed in three tragic stories - a literal drowning of a daughter, a near-death accident of a son and the desperate attempt to save the trafficked daughter of a beautiful stranger. Even his lover is imagined; the mistress of his writing occupation. His tempestuous love/hate relationship with her and her incestuous relationship with her father are symbolic of one's writings; the difficulty of the creative process; and the fundamental truth of one's creations being at once children and mistresses. And it's that love which was occupying his attention at the time of his son's tragic accident. "Is she there?" his wife asks on two occasions. "No" he replies, because she truly isn't. He could never bring himself to admit that it was his obsessive attention to his writing that killed his son. Even the spiteful hatred directed towards Julia by her son's father is symbolic of the self-loathing Michael experiences every time he thinks about his part in his son's death.
The problem when you set out to tell a story by metaphor is that people may just not get the metaphors. This is perhaps Paul Haggis' only failing here.