Day for Night

**CONTAINS SPOILERS**

We’d all like teachers like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, someone who recognises the genius in a student and does everything and anything to bring out that creative genius no matter how shy or uncertain the student.  Or, like Terence Fletcher in Whiplash you can push your nineteen year old musicians until they bleed all over their instruments and throw chairs at them when they don’t keep the right time.  

The film was shot in 19 days and went through post at a breakneck speed to get it into Sundance before deadline, and there are a couple of things…they’re not things that are necessarily wrong with the film, but they are things that somewhat under-ripe.  The romantic strand between Andrew and cinema worker Nicole isn’t really fleshed out, and doesn’t really end with in the way that a film about extremes like this demands.  When you have a film where a music teacher slaps his students face off the beat to illustrate the difference between a drummer “dragging” and “rushing”, an audience really needs to have everything turned up to 11.  

I have a feeling that the film’s second act would’ve been much better showing the emotional and physical strain that Andrew was putting himself under by showing how his relationships outside of the band suffer, probably tying it closer to something like Raging Bull.  The death of a former student of Fletchers momentarily causes him to become a little upset in front of his students, but again, it’s a story point that is never really fleshed out enough either to show Fletcher’s callousness, nor do we really find out if Fletcher is upset by the loss of what he would regard as a great musician, or moved by the realisation that his unconventional teaching methodology actually breaks the very talent that he’s hoping to cultivate.  The finale of the film, which is very well shot and choreographed is equally unexplored, while it’s great that the filmmakers don’t give into Hollywood schmaltz, the final few moments in which Andrew manages to win the respect of his teacher does edgy into slightly cheesy Dead Poets territory.  

For better or for worse, the film just throws you into a music conservatory, almost half expecting you to come pre-loaded with the idea that music school is harsh and cutthroat and that meek Chinese violin virtuosos are secretly plotting your murder just to get first seat (or something), and the brain damaged demographic of the cinema going public that keeps financing Michael Bay movies will probably not know that.  Thankfully the film skirts around the in baseball jargon, but there’s just enough to put of the sizeable number of people who still complain about the widescreen version having black bars and the top and bottom of the picture.

Whiplash is indeed a very good film, in fact, it’s excellent.  JK Simmons is outstanding as the pathological potty-mouthed music teacher who makes R. Lee Ermy  look like the tooth-fairy (for which the movie has been nicknamed Full Metal Jacket at Juilliard), and Miles Teller turns in a great performance as the naive, but fame-hungry music student who is humiliated, broken, undermined and humiliated all over again all the name of good tempo.  Andrew goes through a substantial and dizzying character arc throughout the first two acts, going from sobbing over his drumkit, to bleeding over it.  The film never really shows us why exactly these kids are prepared to punish themselves, and I can’t fully understand the drive that some people have or the willingness of others to set themselves standards that they could never possibly fulfill, but Whiplash manages to make that kind of drive and ambition eminently watchable, and it’s easy to see why it won so many awards. If anything, it’s a film that puts your faith back into the film industry and the festival scene.

For those who still have a six-year-old somewhere bawling out an off-key version of “Let It Go”, the thought of another CG offering from Disney makes most parents shiver.  What we actually get is something really quite enjoyable, and mercifully free of any musical numbers.

Big Hero Six opens with a sweeping, visually stunning birds eye tour over the megalopolis of San Fransokyo.  From the opening shots, the art department hit an impressive high note that doesn’t falter throughout the movie with a level of detail and realisation that has set critics buzzing that this could be Disney’s second CG serious Oscar contender.  

There’ve been a few tweaks to the story to make it work on the screen - Baymax is no longer a bodyguard that morphs into a dragon, and his creator isn’t the father, but Hiro's older brother.  The changes work rather well, and Baymax is now an almost anti-Terminator replacement big brother/father figure to Hiro, a character that has more than a dash of Wall-E to it.  

One of the nicest things about Big Hero Six is the wonderful way  that the movie gently moves from tragedy to comedy courtesy of it’s rotund star, the inflatable robot Baymax.  The development of the character is counterpointed by secondary stock Disney templates that make up the rest of the superhero team.  

The actual characterisation of the secondary characters isn’t fantastic, and there’s a sneaking suspicion that the films five screenwriters may have overdone the banter schtick and underdone character development.  The rest of the superhero team don’t really work in terms of having them working together using their respective strengths the beat the bad guy, rather they seem reduced to an afterthought, providing more zipping and zooming action sequences and awkward comic relief.

Being a Disney movie, it has it’s darker moments that probably wouldn’t be suitable for a younger audience (hence the movies UK PG rating).  The first half of the movie is essentially structured around Hiro’s desire for revenge when he supposes that a mysterious figure in a long black coat and kabuki mask is responsible for his brother’s death.  One sequence in particular where the lovable Baymax is transformed into something more resembling T1000 could unnerve a younger viewer.  

Themes of loss and revenge and are dealt with as they often are in Disney flicks, and there’s probably a style guide somewhere at Disney HQ that tells directors how to write the villians.    Almost everything that happens to Hiro and Baymax has probably happened before in The Jungle Book or The Lion King, but that’s not to say that the execution is samey, or that the main characters are offcuts recycled from another movie.  It’s a fresh and funny movie, helped enormously by the source material.

There are enough twists and turns and surprise reveals that keep the action moving along nicely, but apart from that, it’s a fairly conventional plot upon which, thankfully, are hung some delightful moments, most of them courtesy of it’s rotund star, the inflatable robot Baymax.  Most of the gags are of the Kung-Fu Panda variety, but much less in your face, and it’s this difference in execution that really makes the movie shine.  There’s the usual slapstick that often gets bundled along with a movie of this pedigree, but the staging of the physical humour seems so under-staged and set-up that it is, at times quite easy to forget you’re watching something were everything had to be meticulously created, rendered and animated virtually.

In short, it’s a cracker of a movie, and the talents from Marvel and Disney are clearly on display, it probably won’t become a Disney classic alongside The Lion King but it’s darn close and a hugely enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.  

The Farrellys have reunited with Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey in a remarkably unfunny film that manages the gross out, but falls short of providing any kind of comedy.  

I was once a big fan of the Farrelly’s work, and I still find some of the extended sequences in There’s Something About Mary and the first Dumb and Dumber really quite hilarious.  The problem with the particular brand of gross-out comedy that the brothers specialise in is that it can quickly become a one-trick pony.  

No one camps outside a cinema waiting for the next Tom Green vehicle to come along because if you’re a comedian who relies on sucking cows udders or putting live mice in your mouth before feeding it to a python, you can very quickly run out of material.  Even great comedians change their writing team at their peril, but if you don’t actually have anything beyond being an attention seeking class clown, work will dry up pretty fast.  

And it’s essentially the same thing with Jim Carrey in these movies.  In the same way that Arnie made the canny move into comedy and revitalised his career, Carry had sidestepped into serious acting and probably should’ve stayed there.  Going back into comedy and trying to recapture the manic stupidity of a film made 20 years ago wasn’t probably the best idea, but those mortgages in Hollywood don’t pay themselves.  The problem might be that since becoming a legit actor, Carrey is just thinking too much about being funny, rather than being let loose in front of camera and being asked to act stupid.  Whatever the reason, most of the jokes misfire, don’t go far enough, or in the case of the running Kathleen Turner isn’t-she-old-and-fat-now gag, keeps going long after it should’ve been retired.  

The main problem with Dumb and Dumber To is the flabby script.  The first film was, by comparison, tightly scripted with a crowd-pleasing mix of bullet fast jokes and visual gags and extended set pieces.  And these aren’t really present in this ill-advised sequel.  Many of the gags fail simply because it looks like the directors and the two stars just can’t be bothered doing it properly or rehearsing or refining any of the gags.  As a result the film comes across as one of those studio mandated lame ducks that came in being because people believed that by bringing a load of people together who had been quite amusing 20 years ago will be just as funny today.  And it isn’t.