"Fiction is worthless!" decries Sherlock Holmes, the famous (and fictional) sleuth, at one point in Mr. Holmes. What then would he make of a film (directed by Bill Condon) based on a novel (by Mitch Cullin) which imagines the retirement of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic detective?
Now in his ninety-third year, and relocated from his Baker Street London address to a house by the sea where he is tended to by housekeeper, Mrs. Monroe (Laura Linney), and her precocious son, Roger (Milo Parker), Holmes (Ian McKellen), who really needs a carer, is battling time and senility. But he is also battling the past.
In particular, the detective is troubled by his last case which he is struggling to recall; hoping to write an account of it to right two wrongs: the fictional and fanciful accounts of his other cases by long-time partner, Doctor John Watson (whose books Holmes declares as "penny dreadfuls with an elevated prose style"); and what actually transpired in that last case more than 30 years ago and which continues to niggle at the back of his mind.
But memory is not Holmes' friend. The sharp and perceptive mind which made him such a formidable detective -- his powers of deduction second to none -- is gradually giving in to time; slipping and fading. In his friendship with Roger, cultivated as Holmes teaches the youngster to tend to his beehives, Holmes is encouraged to continue writing; Roger as keen as his hero to know how the case was resolved. But memories of that final case come fleetingly to him, throughout the day and in his sleep.
Sherlock Holmes has enjoyed a pop culture resurgence in the last several years, with Robert Downey Jnr. bringing him back to the big screen, and both Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) and Jonny Lee Miller (Elementary) embodying modern-day television incarnations; each actor providing the sleuth with a mixture of arrogance and the autistic. At the very least, we can be thankful that Condon and McKellen have not given us an all-knowing egghead who sits somewhere on the spectrum. This Holmes is fallible, vulnerable. Human.
It is also refreshing to see Ian McKellen in a straight role for a change. For the best part of 20 years the British actor has either appeared on screen as the mutant super villain, Magneto (from the X-Men series), or as Gandalf the Grey, the wise but fair-weather wizard in Peter Jackson's adaptations of J.R.R Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
The last time McKellen did anything this dramatic was in another Condon film, Gods and Monsters (1998), which also scored the actor his first Oscar nomination. A reasonable deduction would suggest that awards aren't in McKellen's future, but his turn as Sherlock Holmes is an impressive one; shifting between the detective still in his prime, and the feeble old man who clings to his greatest possession -- his mind -- for dear life.
Linney is fine, too, in a small role and with a working class English accent, but it's Milo Parker who deserves second billing. The young actor as equally precocious as Roger, a kid with a mind ripe for learning and who wants so much more than his mother (and deceased father) achieved in life.
This trio of performances, the cinematography (Thomas A. Schliessler) and score (Carter Burwell) make Mr. Holmes an enjoyably watchable film, but one more polite than alive. The central mystery which Holmes hopes to recall is not all that intriguing, and a subplot involving Holmes' recent trip to Japan in search of prickly ash -- a plant regarded for its restorative powers -- is more distracting than anything. That said, Mr. Holmes is far from elementary.
After the excesses of Age of Ultron -- including a platoon of superheroes and a European city dropping from the sky -- Marvel Studios have decided to dial it back, and down, for their next outing. And although Ant-Man doesn't always live up to the adage that good things come in small packages, there's enough action and humour in Peyton Reed's film to ensure it's not the smallest contribution to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
A prologue set in 1989 introduces us to scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), who has succeeded in producing a serum and a super suit that can reduce humans to the size of ants whilst retaining their human-size strength. But falling out with Howard Stark (John Slattery), father of future Iron-man, and still mourning the loss of his wife, Pym hides his research away.
But the so-called Ant-man project needs to be dusted off when, in present day San Francisco, Pym's one-time protege and now owner of his company, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), comes ever closer to producing his own shrinking super suit; Cross prepared to sell to the highest bidder rather than aid a higher cause. Hank needs a hero, and much to the chagrin of his one-time estranged daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), he decides upon Scott Lang (Paul Rudd).
A cat burglar recently released from prison, Scott is determined to go straight for the sake of his young daughter. But unable to hold on to a steady job, and with the constant nudging of his former cellmate cum housemate, Luis (Michael Pena), Scott is soon falling back on his old ways.
That brings him into possession of the Ant-man suit and eventually Hank Pym -- the scientist using a robbery as an audition to prove Scott's mettle -- and not before long the Pyms and the crim are in training for a heist to steal the rival suit from Cross. Cue a montage of Scott mastering the ins and outs of the suit, how to wrangle a selection of ants, how to throw a punch (and take one), and how to navigate the fraught relationship between father and daughter.
This latter theme adds a dollop of schmaltz to proceedings, making Ant-Man the most noticeably 'Disney' of the Marvel films to date. And while Reed (with thanks to original helmer, Edgar Wright, and co-writer Joe Cornish) manages to make it something different to the Iron-man, Thor and Captain America films, Ant-Man is by no means a Guardians of the Galaxy breakout. And Paul Rudd (with all due respect) is no Chris Pratt.
Indeed, Rudd's charisma, along with Scott's body, seems to have been reduced; reined in perhaps by the film's PG rating? An always affable, charming and warm screen presence, it's somewhat of a surprise that Rudd (who apparently had extensive input into the character and script) doesn't register in the same way that Pratt did in Guardians (and subsequently with Pena getting the majority of the laughs).
Signalling the end of MCU's Phase Two (for those keeping count), Ant-Man doesn't go out with a whimper but more a less-than-expected bang. The film is not so much sub-par as sub-atomic, if you will.
Thomas Hardy's Bathsheba Everdene may lend her name to The Hunger Games heroine but the only arrows being fired in this beautiful looking adaptation (penned by David Nicholls; directed by Thomas Vinterberg) of the author's Far From The Madding Crowd are by cupid. Not once, not twice but thrice.
Such is the allure of Bathsheba (Carey Mulligan, radiant as ever), the farm girl cum heiress, that she draws the attentions of three suitors. The first is Gabriel Oak (a warm Matthias Schoenaerts), a shepherd who proposes to Bathsheba (within the film's first few minutes) before the pair have had a reversal of fortunes; Bathsheba receiving her uncle's inheritance and Gabriel losing his flock and livelihood to an overzealous sheepdog.
Bathsheba politely rejects Gabriel's proposal ("I would want a husband to tame me and you wouldn't be able to do it."), as she does William Boldwood (a vulnerable Michael Sheen), the wealthy neighbour of her uncle's estate who becomes smitten with her following a Valentine's Day prank.
Although the marriage would be advantageous land-wise, Bathsheba is an independent woman; the kind who doesn't ride side-saddle and who is happy to muck-in with the workers when needed. But Bathsheba's also human and prone to romantic fervor, so when the handsome but caddish Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge) arrives she throws caution to the wind, marrying in haste and repenting at his drunken leisure.
And while a loveless marriage is some kind of tragedy, that's about as tragic (unusual for Hardy) as it gets in Far From The Madding Crowd. A subplot involving Troy's pregnant lover (an under-utilized Juno Temple), missing her trip down the aisle due to a church mix-up (and thus the reason for his drunken cruelty0, isn't given enough screen time to render it in any way affecting.
Indeed, there's very little in the film in which to get emotionally invested. For all the beautiful trappings -- the sun-dappled cinematography by Charlotte Bruus Christensen; costumes by Janet Patterson -- and fine performances (Mulligan and her trifecta of leading men are all solid), the episodic nature of the story and the almost inevitable ending (even those who haven't read Hardy's novel will guess at and/or be pleased by the denouement) combine to make Far From The Madding Crowd a satisfactory but far from satisfying viewing experience.
Biopics of musicians usually follow the same template: birth, rise, fall, redemption, rise. And then possibly death. Regardless of their race, musical genre and status within music history, it too often seems that one musician's life is as standard as any other.
Taylor Hackford's Ray (2004), about the life of Ray Charles, was closely followed by James Mangold's Walk The Line (2005), about Johnny Cash, and other than the two men being of different colour, there was very little difference in either musician's life story. So it was somewhat refreshing when Todd Haynes's I'm Not There (2007), a biopic-of-sorts of Bob Dylan, took the almost revolutionary route of having the role performed by six different actors, male and female, black and white, child and adult.
Director Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy isn't quite so revolutionary as that film but in splitting the story of Brian Wilson, the creative force of 1960s pop sensations The Beach Boys, into two halves -- with each half having a different actor perform the main role -- much of the musical biopic cliche is avoided (although the parallels, both in story and structure, with Scott Hicks' Oscar-winning Shine (1996) are strong).
Set in the late 1960s and the late 1980s, we meet two Brian Wilsons: one (Paul Dano) at the height of his creative powers but on the verge of a breakdown; and another (John Cusack) on the other side of that breakdown trying to find his way back through a haze of medication and bad advice.
Those drugs and that advice are dispensed by Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giammatti), Wilson's therapist and legal guardian. But it's when Wilson meets Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), a one-time model now Cadillac salesperson, that the possibility of escape and new beginnings for the musician present themselves.
As good as Cusack is in these 'modern' scenes -- an at times incoherent babbler, a lost man-child -- it's Banks who really shines. Melinda may look like a Barbie doll but she's made of sterner stuff, and not one to be dissuaded from rescuing the man she's come to love even when faced with a Svengali-like Landy (Giammatti relishing the 'bad guy' role).
But it is Paul Dano who truly impresses in Love & Mercy. As the younger Wilson, Dano brings a wide-eyed innocence to the role of the musician who literally moves to his own beat; hearing things that no one else can. Of course that sensitivity also makes him vulnerable. Throw in an oppressive father and some LSD, and Wilson's breakdown -- just as his musical experimentation becomes ever bolder -- seems inevitable.
Those scenes of Brian creating and recording his music in the studio, improvising, collaborating, experimenting -- "Can we get a horse in here?!" -- are some of the film's best. Not surprisingly, Love & Mercy boasts both an excellent soundtrack as well as sound design; the growing noise in Brian's head as integral to the story as The Beach Boys' greatest hits.
If the modern scenes don't quite boast that same level of fascination, the strength of Cusack, Giammati and especially Banks' performances will keep you engaged. But like some of those great Beach Boys songs, it's the performance of Dano you won't be able to get out of your head.
