Colchester 101 -

Passengers

30th December 201630th December 2016colchester101

(BBFC 12A)

There’s one really important thing you need to know about Passengers: It’s not the movie the trailers and marketing would have you believe. If you were expecting some kind of Titanic-style love story of two (unfeasibly) attractive spirits thrown together in the face of adversity then, boy-howdy, are you ever out of luck.

What the trailers and tv spots would have you believe is that Passengers is all about two travellers into deep space woken from their hyper-sleep 30-years into their 120-year scheduled journey to a new home world; love blossoms between the two who have the run of their pristine, super-swanky spaceship; catastrophe comes-a-calling and the two must save not only their own lives but those of their five thousand fellow (sleeping) passengers. It all looked like a rather sweet (if a little thin) romantic spectacular with plenty of special effects, explosions, excitement and two of Hollywood’s most likeable (and, let’s face it, bankable) stars, didn’t it? So why do I feel so underwhelmed and angry by the movie I actually watched?

What those trailers don’t tell you is that Jim (Chris Pratt) is awoken by a malfunction of his sleeping pod a year before the emergence of Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence), or that she isn’t the victim of another malfunction but of Jim’s sabotage. The first act finds Jim alone, wandering the pristine, mall-like decks and facilities of the Avalon (the ship, we are informed, was designed to wake its cargo four months from its destination hence the opulence), his only friend is bartender android Arthur (Michael Sheen) who listens to Jim’s woes and doles out only pre-programmed, clichéd advice. Jim soon sinks into depression as the knowledge that he will likely die alone long before another soul wakes begins to dawn on him. He begins to obsess over Aurora, laying there like his own personal Sleeping Beauty (hence her name, I guess), watching her pre-recorded video interview and reading her journal. So, he hatches a plan to revive her and tell her that both their pods must have malfunctioned at the same time.

The second act is the romantic bit as Jim woos the object of his affection and manipulates her to fall in love with him, all the while hiding his secret like a contestant on The Apprentice hides the truth about his CV. The truth eventually outs just in time for the all-action, explodey stuff of the final act as the two must come together to save the ship and its slumbering inhabitants.

There is very little that works in Passengers: Tonally the movie is all over the place, it just has no idea what it wants to be or where it is supposed to be going; as likeable as the two leads are individually, they have little to no chemistry between them; Jennifer Lawrence’s role in particular is hugely under written that one of the most talented actresses of her generation struggles to make Aurora believable (but, then again, she’s not a character, she’s a plot device or worse, a sex fantasy); it’s full of super-massive plot-holes that you could fly the Starship Enterprise through and still have enough room for a couple of Millennium Falcons.

But it’s the central conceit that troubles me the most. Jim is a liar, a cyber-stalker, a kidnapper but we’re supposed to forgive him because he’s lonely? He condemns Aurora to die alongside him because he’s horny? By his actions he rips away everything she ever hoped for and dreamt of and then manipulates her to fall in love with and sleep with him, but that’s okay because Chris Pratt(?). Imagine how you would feel if a film like the excellent Room asked you to side with the guy who kept Brie Larsen locked up as a sex slave?

Director Morten Tyldum (who it should never be forgotten managed to crowbar a heterosexual subplot into the story of Alan Turing in his last movie, The Imitation Game) and writer Jon Spaihts bungle the “promised” love story completely. What they have delivered is one of the most toxic pieces of misogyny outside of the dark side of the internet. If Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival was the shining ray of hope for the world in 2016, Passengers is the alt-right fantasy we should be railing against.

Passengers flubs the big questions it asks and worse, it doesn’t even acknowledge that it’s asking them.

Andy Oliver

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY

16th December 2016colchester101

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (BBFC 12A)

There’s a well-known, much-beloved high street clothes and food retailer whose sumptuous advertisements for puddings makes one salivate at the mere thought of them and, in general, they are quite delicious though sometimes a little less so than they would have you believe. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is such a confection, it’s not quite what you were expecting. There are those that are wholly committed to the brand who will absolutely love it and defend it to their dying breath and there are those that may choose to try it the once and, although mildly pleased by the product, opt to mark it up as a decent enough effort but are not entirely sure what all the fuss is about.

Rogue One is so calorie packed with Easter eggs and nods to previous movies (or chapters to come or however this works) that Star Wars fans may well leave the cinema with the top button of their trousers undone, appetites well and truly sated. The rest of us may find we need to cinch our belts one hole further.

When her mother is murdered by the Empire and her father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelson), taken to finish construction of the first Death Star, young Jyn Erso (Beau Gadsden) escapes the clutches of evil Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and delivers herself into the guardianship of more-than-slightly fanatical Rebel Alliance fighter Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). Years and untold adventures later, Jyn (now played by Felicity Jones) is rescued from a prison planet by Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), his robot side-kick K2-SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk) and his troop of rebels in the hope that she will lead them to her estranged father.

Meanwhile, Imperial defector Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed) seeks (the now even loopier) Gerrera with a message from Galen and news of the Empire’s new super-weapon. All sides converge on the desert planet Jedha where they enlist the cooperation of blind monk(?) Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) and his protector Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang) and witness at first hand the destructive power of the Death Star.

Rogue One then shifts from all this set-up to full-on “Men (and woman and robot) On A Mission” movie as the companions track down Galen, argue a bit and finally attempt to recover the blueprints of the Death Star and get them to the Rebellion.

So, what we have here is episode 3½, kind of. Assuming you’ve seen episode 4, Star Wars: A New Hope, (or at least, the opening crawl) you’ll already know whether, or not, the mission is a success and therefore the narrative drive of Rogue One rests wholly on which, if any, of the team will survive?

And therein lays Rogue One’s greatest strength and (one of) its greatest weakness(es). Being part of the larger Star Wars narrative it gives greater depth and resonance to the following part: there is greater weight placed on the climactic Death Star battle of A New Hope; Luke Skywalker’s final torpedo becomes laced not only with saving the rebels but with the sacrifices laid down before he even steps into his X-Wing fighter; we now understand why such a terrifying and devastating weapon was fitted with a single and ridiculous flaw.

Unless you’ve just emerged, Kaspar Hauser-like, from a gothic basement bereft of all forms of story-telling you will understand how these men-on-a-mission movies work: a disparate bunch of characters are brought together, often for the greater good, to battle indomitable odds and wave-upon-wave of bad guys and many, if not all, of the team will die for the good of the mission. We’ve seen it countless times in movies such as The Dirty Dozen, The Magnificent Seven and The Guns of Navarone, and the success, or failure, of the story-telling lays in how much we care about the characters and how much of our emotions we invest in them. It’s all about the ensemble and how well they’re written. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of sub-par character writing going on in Rogue One, many of the team feel under-written and more like tropes than real people and this detracts from any emotional gut-punch you may feel when any of them meet their heroic ends.

Rogue One’s problems don’t stop there, however. There is one character in particular that presents a hugely worrying and moral question that, I suspect, will rumble on in the many think-pieces that will be written about the movie: Grand Moff Tarkin. Originally played by the late, great Peter Cushing, Grand Moff Tarkin is replaced here not by another actor but by a CGI avatar. Beyond the quality of the effect (which is uncanny but rather waxen), I was pulled from the movie by its absolute brazenness and my mind began to wander from the film’s narrative to questions of the ethics of the resurrection of long deceased and how studios may employ this effect in future. Another character in CGI’d in to a much lesser extent (appearing in just one scene), though its inclusion seems arbitrary and an unnecessary reveal, I’ll let you decide on that one (you’ll know who I’m talking about as soon as you see it).

That said the rest of the movie’s special effects are absolutely on point and the climactic space battle is exciting and wrought with spectacle. There’s also a welcome return of practical alien effects rather than an over-reliance on CGI, which is to be applauded.

Director Gareth Edwards keeps the action moving along at a brisk pace even though he tends to drop the ball when it comes to emotional beats. The acting, on the most part, is good but not great (a few lines soar, though many are flat as if being read for the first time without emotion or understanding and one made me want to strangle myself – a Darth Vader “Zinger” that even a Roger Moore era Bond would shudder at). Michael Giacchino’s score hits a lot of the familiar John Williams beats and then becomes its own thing always adding to the film and never detracting.

Overall, Rogue One is the Rocky III of the franchise: it is so invested in entertaining its audience that, for the most part, its problems can be ignored. And it is entertaining, it’s the best movie in the franchise since The Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars fans are going to love it and, at the end of the day, that’s what counts. It would be churlish of me to moan that it doesn’t work as a standalone piece of work, that’s not what it is designed to be (imagine watching a single episode of, say, Game of Thrones and basing your opinion and understanding of the entire series on that single viewing), Rogue One is part of a greater whole and, as such, it “adds to” rather than “detracts from” the series.

Andy Oliver

Colchester Classics – Classical Music Picks for December

30th November 20161st December 2016colchester101

OUR CLASSICAL MUSIC COLUMNIST LIZ LEATHERDALE, FOUNDER AND OWNER OF COLCHESTER CLASSICS, BRINGS YOU HER PICK OF DECEMBER’S CLASSICAL MUSIC EVENTS IN, AND AROUND, COLCHESTER.

Somehow Christmas isn’t the same without Festive Music, whether traditional carols from a choir or a Brass Band playing seasonal treats. If you are looking forward to hearing Christmas music and singing some favourite carols, you will not be disappointed with the small selection highlighted here.

This month offers the chance to hear the unique sound worlds created by Wind Instruments from both Medieval Times and our current day, Christmas music and much more!

The final two concerts in the Colchester Early Music series 2016 take place in the Medieval Church at Marks Tey where the distinctive sounds created by period wind instruments originally heard at dances and banquets in Medieval and Renaissances times will be heard.

The first concert is on Sunday 4 December when The King’s Lynn Waites presents music and readings from the Hall Books of Lynn in a concert entitled “When th’ Instruments they can scarce hold: tales and tunes of a Wait’s life”. The following Sunday The York Waits end the Colchester Early Music 2016 concert series with seasonal music from the 12th-17th centuries on shawm, sackbuts, harp, gittern, fiddles, recorders, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy and rommelpot in “Godday my Lord Sire Christemass”. Both concerts start at 2.30pm in St Andrews Church, Mark Tey, near Colchester.

Tickets: £8 including refreshments. (01206 212466)

www.colchesterearlymusic.org.uk

Back to modern day wind instruments and the East Anglian Single Reed Choir conducted by Anthony Bailey present a concert in St Osyth Church of both non-seasonal and seasonal music including the premiere of Anthony Bailey’s latest Christmas music, this year based around the Holly & the Ivy. The word Choir is often associated with church choirs, large choirs but it is also the term used to describe an ensemble of wood wind instruments, either all of one type or in this case a combination of single reed instruments – the clarinet and saxophone. Sunday, 4 December, St Osyth Church at 6pm.

Tickets: £6 including refreshments available on the door

‘Christmas is Coming’ is the title of the recital on the magnificent Moot Hall organ with soprano soloist Lindsay Gowers accompanied by organist Ian Ray in an all-English programme of songs and organ music. Tuesday 6 December, 1-2pm in the Moot Hall, Colchester Town Hall.

Admission is free with a retiring collection

The following Sunday, Ian Ray will be back in the Moot Hall directing the Colchester Choral Society, a children’s semi-chorus singing from the gallery, a brass quintet, organist Dr Gillian Ward Russell and compere Terence Craig Waller in ‘Here Comes Christmas’. December 11 at 4pm.

Tickets £8 including refreshments in the Mayor’s Parlour

‘A Symphonic Christmas’ with The Choir of St Mary’s, Maldon, accompanied by the Lewisham Concert Band, performs John Rutter’s Gloria, Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. Saturday, 3 December at 7.30pm, St Mary’s Church, Maldon.

Tickets: £12. (01621 856503)

On the same day, the Clacton Choral Society accompanied by the Kingfisher Sinfonietta present their Christmas concert with Handel’s Messiah (Part One) and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols. In addition to these choral works the Kingfisher Sinfonietta who will also perform Winter from Vivaldi’s popular work, The Four Seasons, and in contrast Gabriel’s Oboe from the film, The Mission.

Ticket information (01255 221511)

Two concerts with little or no reference to seasonal music are also available this weekend. The Puffin Ensemble, Colchester Symphony Orchestra’s principal wind players, performs music by Strauss, Dvorak and Hummel in St Botolph’s Church, Colchester, tomorrow at 7.30pm. Tickets: £14 (01206 271128). Then on Sunday afternoon the Kingfisher Sinfonietta returns to Lion Walk Church in Colchester with music by Vivaldi, Mozart and Frank Bridge. . Sunday 4 December 2016 at 2.45pm.

Tickets: £12

www.facebook.com/ColchesterSymphonyOrchestra

www.colchestersymphonyorchestra.org.uk

If you have a forthcoming concert of classical music, you would like previewed, contact Liz Leatherdale on 0800 999 6994.

Start your love affair with Classical Music at www.colchesterclassics.co.uk and take a minute to watch their company video:

Liz Leatherdale

MOANA

29th November 201629th November 2016colchester101

MOANA (BBFC PG)

Beautiful.

There is nothing about Disney’s 56^th animated feature that is anything less than beautiful. From the tops of mountains to the depths of the ocean; from the inspirational, aspirational heroine to the ; from the comedy (both broad and oblique) to the truly exciting action set-pieces; from the effortlessly toe-tapping songs to the colourful, unforgettable characters; from the story to the message; from start to finish (and I mean the very end when the screen goes blank) Moana pulls at your eyes, heart and mind then snaps them back into your body leaving you breathless and basking in its sheer audacious over-use of the word.

The descendent of Polynesian sea-faring nomads Moana of Motonui (Auli’i Cravalho) feels the waves of wanderlust washing over her as she enters her mid-teenage years, she yearns for travel and adventure, to break away from the responsibility and staunchly land-based community provided and nurtured by her father, Chief Tui (Temuera Morrison). When ecological disaster threatens her tribe’s paradise and based upon the advice of Gramma Tala (Rachel House), Moana takes the initiative to return a magical stone to its original resting place on the distant shores of Te Fiti.

So, she takes a canoe, her pet pig Pua and, along with stowaway rooster Heihei (clucks by Alan Tudyk), sets sail to save her people. But to achieve her task Moana must enlist the aid of prankster demi-god Maui (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), who stole the stone in the first place and this entails rescuing his magical fish-hook from the Realm of Monsters and the clutches of villainous, “Glam-Rock” crab Tamatoa (Jermaine Clement).

Add in one of the most exciting chases since Mad Max: Fury Road involving some extremely diminutive pirates and the climactic battle with Te Ka, the monstrous lava creature guardian of Te Fiti and you have in place everything you’d expect from a Disney “Princess” movie.

Except one.

Romance.

There’s no handsome prince to woo Moana’s princess (although she determinably expresses that, despite being the daughter of a chief, she is no such thing). Moana is about friendship, mutual trust, platonic and familial love but not romance. And you know what? It is absolutely the right decision, Moana is about finding out who you are rather than how you are defined by your romantic relationship. It’s a subtle but powerful message that is as empowering as it is refreshing and it’s genuinely appropriate.

Directors Jon Musker and Ron Clements are no strangers to creating perfect Disney fare, their CV boasting The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and the criminally under-appreciated The Princess and the Frog. The DNA of those movies is more than evident in the character of Moana, someone who yearns for a life beyond their immediate environment, whose courage and ingenuity is tested, who lives beyond the screen. Using full computer animation for the first time (their previous films used traditional hand-drawn techniques with limited CGI) has not limited but expanded their palette, there is an incandescence to the colours, bright, popping and luminous; there are levels of detail here that deserve the biggest screen and highest resolution; there is warmth and emotional involvement from even the most surprising characters.

The voices are all perfectly cast and all deliver excellent performances, especially from Auli’i Carvalho as Moana who, only 14 when she recorded her part, makes for a believable and loveable protagonist, perky, plausible, intelligent and brave, she’s the person we all hope our daughters could be. Dwayne Johnson proves to be just as likeable and amiable as his on-screen persona and provides many of the movie’s best laughs (most of the others come via Alan Tudyk’s crazy rooster and Jermaine Clement’s jewellery obsessed crab, Tamatoa, both of whom are, again, perfectly cast). Maui is as vainglorious as Moana is earnest and they complement each other gloriously, like opposing sides of the same shiny coin you’ll want to keep in your pocket forever.

The bad news for parents who’ve only just reclaimed their music systems from their little darlings and the Frozen soundtrack is that the music and songs of Moana are just as catchy, infectious and sing-along-able to the point of distraction. The song-writing trio of Disney regular Mark Mancina, Samoan singer Opetaia Foa’i and Hamilton impresario Lin-Manuel Miranda have crafted songs that will have you humming on the way home and power millions of school-runs. All the cast sing their own songs which means, yes, The Rock sings and he’s not half bad, in fact he’s pretty good (so, that’s about the last thing you need to cross off your “Worry List”).

I don’t know whether Moana will have the same impact as Frozen, that’s down to a generation much younger than my own, although I very much hope it does. There’s so much misogyny and racism in the world right now a little immersion in a vibrant foreign culture and a bold heroine is a welcome respite, an exciting, funny, colourful and stimulating ray full of hope.

Beautiful.

Andy Oliver

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

15th November 2016colchester101

A spin-off of the Harry Potter film series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a fantasy film directed by David Yates, inspired by the book of the same name by J. K. Rowling.

Here’s a question for you: How do you follow up the Harry Potter series, one of the most successful and acclaimed literary and cinematic creations of all time? Do you…

Continue with the original characters and create new adventures?
Create new characters and place them in familiar surroundings?
Set the story 90 years in the past, introduce not only new characters but a new setting, new perils and throw in a whole bunch of themes/situations that have relevance to the world we’re living in today?

I think it’s pretty obvious which choices most Hollywood movie studios would usually opt for, given their obeisance to the Law of Diminishing Returns and a general fear of dipping their toes into unknown waters. Thankfully, and due in most part to author J.K. Rowling’s refusal to loosen her grip on the reins of her creation and seemingly boundless imagination, we are treated to the third option. And what a treat Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is.

Set in a fabulously realised 1926 New York, Fantastic Beasts finds Magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) making a quick stopover whilst on his quest to find and catalogue all the world’s magical animals. Newt carries with him a magical, Tardis-like suitcase in which he keeps his ever-expanding menagerie of beasts but a mix-up in a bank with a No-Maj (American parlance for “Muggle”), Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) results in chaos and the escape of the bag’s inhabitants.

Newt and Jacob attempt to recapture the beasts as surreptitiously as possible, which is to say they absolutely fail at the “Surreptitious” part. They are joined in their endeavours by former Auror Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) and her telepathic, breathy bombshell sister Queenie (Alison Sudol), but the bedlam the quartet creates brings them under the unforgiving spotlight of the MACUSA (the Magical Congress of the United States of America, the US equivalent of the Ministry of Magic) and their Chief of Secret Police Percival Graves (Colin Farrell).

What it lacks in central plot Fantastic Beasts more than makes up for in its world building. Setting the film in Jazz-Age New York adds relevance and poignancy, a surface world of excess and flamboyance whilst austerity and intolerance bubbles just beneath, the city is cold and dark, seething with mistrust and pamphleteers call for a “Second Salem” (two centuries after the infamous Witch trials). American wizarding hides itself and enforces its laws with a fascistic iron fist: no mixing of cultures; inter-racial marriage an unforgiveable sin. There’s echoes of Runyan and Fitzgerald but they’re faint and only there if you’re willing to look hard enough. There’s also a smirking son of privilege running for Congress, supported by his father’s fortune, take from that what you will.

Remember that Fantastic Beasts is the first part of a five-part movie cycle which, kind of, gives it a pass: the introduction of fascinating characters, some of whom you’ll love, some of whom you’ll despise and the world building gives the viewer plenty to enjoy, digest and look forward to. There’s a lot of setting up of things that will be more important in future, a lot of exposition and the film misses the mark slightly by not having an immediate threat (just an introduced one in the form of Gellert Grindelwald – Potter fans will understand the significance of this character, casual viewers, though, are left in little doubt), but such is the way with first episodes.

The film is immaculately cast and Eddie Redmayne is immediately adorable as the bashful and twitchy Newt and seems born to the Potter Universe. More than able support is offered by Waterston’s pragmatically heroic Portentina, Alison Sudol fizzes as the peppy Queenie and Fogler’s bumbling, fumbling, loveable Kowalski makes for a great comic sidekick. Colin Farrell captivates as the husky Percival Graves but, unfortunately, the film undersells his worth and squanders his character. It’s one of the few bum notes in the movie, though not as glaring as the “Ta-Dah!!” appearance of a certain superstar. Honestly it’s such a gurning misstep I’m still cringing at the very thought of it.

There’s two great elements of Fantastic Beasts I haven’t mentioned yet, the creatures and the design. From the Niffler (a kleptomaniac echidna) to the Erumpent through the Thunderbird, the Swooping Evil, the Graphorn and others, they are all beautifully realised and amuse, terrify and fascinate in equal measure. I suspect it will not only be the youngest of fans who will wonder at the magical menagerie with open mouthed awe. Enjoyable as the creatures are, there is as much pleasure to be had in the overall design of the movie from the on-point costume design to the stunning recreation of Jazz-Age New York. This movie is a feast for the eyeballs.

Director David Yates, who helmed the last four parts of the Harry Potter series, keeps the movie moving along at enjoyable clip despite a few static moments and the afore mentioned “Superstar” reveal. The script and story comes from a first-time screenwriter, though when said person happens to be Joanne Rowling you know Fantastic Beasts is in safe hands. Rowling is a consummate storyteller and everything here plays out in service of a bigger picture you suspect she already has in mind, whilst providing an exhilaratingly fun ride for this chapter’s 133-minute run time.

Potter fans will love it. The casually interested will enjoy it. Maybe it doesn’t quite do enough to convert the sceptical, but it has a helluva lot of fun trying.

Andy Oliver

Arrival

10th November 2016colchester101

Arrival has arrived at Colchester’s Odeon cinema and 101’s movie critic Andy Oliver gives us his verdict.

When twelve mysterious, monolithic objects appear at random points around the Earth, the race is on to find out why they are here: is this an invasion? A warning? A gift? A precursor to war?

That is the conceit at the heart of director Denis Villeneuve’s provocative, thoughtful and (at times) stunningly beautiful new sci-fi film, Arrival, and to tell you too much more about its plot would wander into the territory of spoilers. I shall attempt to review it without giving too much away but, in case you’re worried, know this and read no further: Arrival is not just one of the best science fiction movies since Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it is one of the best movies of the year.

Still with me? Good. I’ll tread as carefully as I can. Promise.

The objects are so alien when they appear that their purpose is completely unknowable. They float just feet from the surface like giant sky-written exclamation marks or (from certain angles) like enormous chocolate orange segments. There are no observable means of propulsion, no cockpit, no weapons, no clue as to what they are or why there’re here. Governments around the world gather academics to discover their purpose: physicists, engineers, code-breakers and linguists alike are charged with the seemingly impossible task.

US Army officer Colonel Weber (Forest Whittaker) brings together a team including physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to decipher the meaning of the wedge hanging unfeasibly above the Montana landscape. It turns out that a door in the base of the object opens every eighteen hours, allowing access to the inhabitants and the chance to communicate.

Arrival doesn’t baulk at showing the aliens and we get to meet them very early, mammoth, seven-limbed, intimidating beasts that move through their atmosphere like elephant-sized squid. Their language is so alien and complex that Banks quickly realises it is only through the written word that we will be able to communicate, if only we can work out their alphabet, grammar and the limitations of translation.

It’s a movie featuring solid but seldom flashy performances by the central trio of Adams, Renner and Whittaker, which is not in any way a criticism more another attempt to avoid spoilers (revealing anything more would likely hint at the movie’s remarkable denouement). Beautifully shot by cinematographer Bradford Young, Arrival is frequently breath-taking, occasionally abstract and builds tension and character with oblique lighting and strikingly vivid splashes of unexpected colour against the desaturated environments.

As with all the best science fiction, Arrival holds up a mirror to the viewer and the viewer’s world finding allegory and metaphor without sacrificing story, character or intent by pushing it in your face. Villeneuve has already proved he is a master of the subtlety of theme with the excellent thriller Sicario, a film about how men use sex to maintain power skilfully hidden within a drug war narrative. Here Villeneuve explores how cognitive linguistics shape our understanding, and limit our perceptions, of the world about us and cultural differences. It’s heady stuff that has led to some reviewers claiming that parts of the narrative are misleading and unnecessarily tricksy, but that’s missing the whole point of the movie.

Arrival is a movie for people who enjoy taking their brain to the cinema, who love to think through movies for many weeks after viewing, who like to dissect, discuss and argue. Don’t expect gung-ho heroics, laser beams and the destruction-porn of landmarks a la Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay, this is a film about understanding not xenophobia, it’s about the world today and the hope of what the world could be. It’s a ferociously smart movie and one, I hope, we’ll be talking about for a long time to come.

Andy Oliver

Doctor Strange

25th October 201625th October 2016colchester101

Doctor Strange is the latest superhero movie from Marvel Studios based on the comic book character of the same name. 101’s movie critic Andy Oliver has been along to the town’s Odeon cinema to bring you this exclusive review.

The opening act of Doctor Strange has a feeling of familiarity, of déjà vu, of “Haven’t I seen this before?”; by the end of Doctor Strange there is a feeling of vertigo, of wonder, of kaleidoscopic, hallucinatory weirdness you’ll wonder if your popcorn hasn’t been laced with LSD*.

That first act is hugely reminiscent of Iron Man, the movie that kicked off this whole connected Marvel Universe: Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is arrogant, confident, in control of his world until an injury takes everything away from him. His hands crushed in an horrific car crash, the world-class surgeon spends his fortune trying to find a way to mend his damaged digits and, as a last resort, heads to the Himalayas to search for a guru/cult-leader/holy-person he has heard can cure any ailment. In finding The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), Strange finds not only a fix for his injured hands but also his for injured soul as he repurposes his destiny as a master of the mystical arts.

Anyone who’s a sucker for cocky student/inscrutable teacher paradigms (like the many Eastern martial arts movies that Tarantino’s Kill Bill riffed upon and, obviously, Harry Potter) will love the interchanges between Cumberbatch and Swinton as the sceptical, intellectualism of Strange smashes head on with the theosophical platitudes of The Ancient One.

Upon his graduation to the title of Sorcerer Supreme and his return to Manhattan Strange must battle the threat of the movie’s big bad, Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson), a former pupil of The Ancient One who believes that Earth would be a better place if magic were allowed to thrive rather than a hidden force that keeps the world in balance and other dimensional threats at bay.

Cumberbatch throws himself into the role of Stephen Strange with deadpan theatrical zeal, relishing the journey from arrogant intellectual through humility to champion warrior of the astral plane. Strange is Sherlock with the rational, intellectual glamour of that character slowly and surely chipped away revealing the hero beneath.

A lot was made of the “White-washing” of Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One character – The Ancient One was originally portrayed in the Stan Lee and Steve Ditko comics as an oriental Methuselah complete with long white beard and crinkly, smiling eyes a la Sam Jaffe’s High Lama in Frank Kapra’s Lost Horizon – when news of her casting was announced. Whatever your opinion of this decision it is hard to argue that Swinton’s other-worldly androgyny makes for an interesting choice and she appears to be having a lot of fun as Strange’s enigmatic mentor.

As with so many of the Marvel movies, Doctor Strange suffers from limited screen time for the supporting cast and a villain that seems a little too under written. Mads Mikkelson doesn’t appear for long enough to present a credible threat but still manages to inject a little complexity and humour into his role. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Benedict Wong appear too infrequently as fellow apostles of The Ancient One: Mordo and Wong (though subsequent movies should feature them more heavily, Wong as Strange’s manservant/librarian of mystical tomes and Mordo as… well, that would be telling but hang around for the post credits scene for a clue). Rachel McAdams stars as doctor Christine Palmer, for whom Strange still carries a torch but, again, she struggles to break out from a role that is little more than “Love interest”. Of the supporting cast it is weirdly Strange’s Cape of Levitation that has the most life and the one you want to see more of, imbued with a personality of its own much like the magic carpet in Disney’s Aladdin.

But it is in the visuals that Doctor Strange really comes alive, we’ve never really seen sorcery used in such an original way or at such a scale: magical engrams fizz and crackle with blazing intensity; cities and buildings fold, twist and turn inside-out to create Escher-like landscapes; journeys into nightmare alternate dimensions bring Ditko’s weird, exciting comic panels to terrifyingly beautiful life. Director Scott Derrickson keeps the action tight and exciting, using the effects to create a dizzying trip into the unknown but sometimes struggles to keep the attention during the (necessary) talkie bits.

As a movie, Doctor Strange is a bit of a mixed bag and is in no way the best of the Marvel Studios crop but as an eye-popping, energetic thrill-ride it totally delivers the goods.

*Disclaimer: It hasn’t

Andy Oliver

Gilly Looks Back… When AC/DC came to Colchester

18th October 201618th October 2016colchester101

Can you imagine one of the world’s biggest rock bands playing at a cinema in Colchester? Colchester legend DJ Gilly looks back at the night he roadied for AC/DC when they came to town.

It may be hard to, but it actually did happen on Thursday 18th May 1978. The band that night was AC/DC and the venue was the old ABC Cinema on St John’s Street, now the Playhouse pub. This was to be the first of two visits to our town, the second coming in October when they returned for a gig at the University as part of the BBC’s Rock Goes To College series. On this occasion though John Hessenthaler, a local promoter, had booked the Aussie heavy rockers, and yours truly was asked to go along and work as a roadie helping the band’s own road crew unload, and later reload, their truck full of amps, guitars, drums and other gear.

It was an exciting afternoon mixing with the band’s own crew, and even meeting AC/DC themselves, including Angus Young and original vocalist Bon.

Scott who tragically died less than two years later in London after a night of heavy drinking.

By the time AC/DC took to the stage that evening I was now working in my dual role as part of the security team protecting the band. The show was everything you would expect from them, LOUD and full of energy, the highlights for me coming when Angus disappeared from the stage only to reappear a couple of minutes later in one of the boxes up on the circle playing a guitar solo. He disappeared a second time too with Bon Scott, reappearing together from the back of the auditorium with Angus playing away at his guitar, dry ice pouring from his satchel, whilst sitting on Bon’s shoulders as they made their way back to the stage.

It really was an amazing day which finally ended, once all the gear was safely back on the tour truck, with me eating pizza, which had been bought by the band, with the rest of the crew.

So next time you are in the Playhouse maybe stop for a moment, cast your eyes towards the stage, and imagine Malcolm, Phil, Bon, Angus and Cliff up there belting out Whole Lotta Rosie, Let There be Rock…

For those AC/DC aficionados amongst you 101 readers the set list that night consisted of:

Riff Raff
Problem Child
Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be
Rock ‘n’ Roll Damnation
Dog Eat Dog
Bad Boy Boogie
Down Payment Blues
The Jack
High Voltage
Whole Lotta Rosie
Let There Be Rock
Rocker

I couldn’t find a video of the ABC Cinema gig, but there are a few on YouTube of the university gig. So just to prove AC/DC really did come to town… Let There Be Rock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAnYqAoGKsQ

Gilly

The Girl on the Train

18th October 2016colchester101

Andy Oliver has visited Colchester’s Odeon cinema to watch Tate Taylor’s The Girl on the Train based on Paula Hawkins’ debut novel of the same name. Here is what he thought of it.

There is a separation between page and screen that The Girl on the Train seems unable to understand. The twisting, three-person narrative that made Paula Hawkins’ novel so successful just makes for a confusing and plodding motion picture that will leave fans of the book frustrated and those new to the material, quite frankly, bored. And that’s a shame, what could have been a taught, Hitchcockian thrill-ride is reduced to a prurient, picaresque soap-opera that would better be consigned to one of ITV’s “filler” time slots.

Rachel (Emily Blunt) commutes to Manhattan by train from the leafy suburbs of up-state New York, staring out the windows and constructing fantasy lives for a young couple, Megan and Scott (Haley Bennett and Luke Evans) she spies every morning. One morning she sees the girl in the arms of another man and when Megan subsequently disappears Rachel becomes entangled in the missing person investigation. But there’s more to this story than at first appears: two doors down from the fantasy couple is the house where Rachel used to live and where her ex-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux), and his new wife, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), are now building their new life together. And there are plenty of witnesses that can place Rachel in the vicinity the night Megan disappeared.

It’s a pretty straight-forward plot convoluted and confused by the film’s often jaw-droppingly unnecessary narrative structure, not only does it skip between characters but between time as well. Add to this the fact that Rachel is an alcoholic who suffers (conveniently placed) black outs and you have a thriller that is so intent on keeping the audience guessing that it forgets to include any thrills. All thrillers rely to some extent on contrivance, but The Girl on the Train pushes its contrivances to the point of viewer exasperation; there are enough red herrings to fill a trawler and secondary characters seem arbitrarily introduced just to further muddy the waters.

Emily Blunt, an actress who has shown that she can play injured, fractured, believable characters in the past (Sicario, The Devil Wears Prada) does her best here but Rachel is such a whingy and relentlessly weepy role that Blunt struggles to break free of her constraints. The rest of the cast fit perfectly with the bland characters presented to them and, apart from Alison Janney as the tough detective in charge of the case, they’re pretty perfunctory and forgettable.

Director Tate Taylor chooses melodrama ahead of tension, pacing or invention and seems as confused by the film’s structure as the audience. That structure is a major problem of a screenplay, by Erin Cressida Wilson, that resolutely refuses to take the core of the story and assign it to a single protagonist rather than stick so rigidly to a structure that can only work on the novel’s page. Had the film stuck with a single point of view, however unreliable the narrator, not only could the pace have been upped, but the sex scenes might not have felt so jarringly voyeuristic rather than the fantasy love making they are presented as.

I think it’s fair to say that, despite the hype, The Girl on the Train was not the next Gone Girl on the page and it is certainly not that on the screen either. The screenplay of Gone Girl understood the difference between the two mediums and wasn’t afraid to cut the stuff that worked in the book but would seem shoe-horned into the film. The Girl on the Train is neither brave enough or smart enough to make either of these decisions and therefore is not only a lesser film it’s a confusing trudge devoid of entertainment. Fans of the book will be as disappointed by it as much as those looking for a movie full of tension and thrills.

Andy Oliver

Shining a Light on Colchester’s Heritage

3rd October 20164th October 2016colchester101

If you were in Colchester town centre during the evening a couple of weeks ago it would have been hard not to notice Jumbo, the town’s magnificent Victorian water tower, lit up in purple against the night sky. Sadly the lights have now been switched off, but Darius Laws, the man behind this temporary installation, talks to Colchester 101 about his vision to light Jumbo up permanently, along with the town’s Roman walls and other heritage sites.

If you’ve visited cities like Lincoln, York and Newcastle, you can’t fail to be impressed by the way they light up their iconic heritage at night – whether it’s a cathedral, castle or city walls.

I think it’s a great way to express pride in where we live, highlighting its history and creating a strong sense of ‘place’ for residents and visitors alike. It also brings some welcome magic to a town centre’s nightlife.

I’ve long wanted Colchester to follow in the footsteps of these cities. With our iconic water tower, Jumbo, and our unique Roman walls, we could create an atmosphere of positivity and transform our town into a welcoming beacon that could be seen from afar – and by passing visitors travelling through Colchester station.

That’s why I decided to put the concept to the test by lighting up Jumbo with the help of a professional contractor. It was a temporary installation, and it relied on the goodwill of neighbouring businesses* that allowed us to use their electricity supply – but the results were dramatic. I received so much feedback from residents and visitors who wished we could make the lighting permanent.

Just think what we could do. As well as Jumbo and our Roman walls and gates, we could light our war memorial, our churches, and other landmark buildings. We could project videos that tell the story of our history, from Boudicca to Humpty Dumpty to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

I can’t think of an easier, more cost-effective way to make a bold statement about the pride we feel in our town, or of a better way to get potential visitors talking about us. It would pay for itself quickly by increasing tourism and bringing more self-confidence to our night-time economy.

By lighting Jumbo for a week, at the cost of only a few hundred pounds, I’ve shown what is possible if we dare to think creatively. If we could even start lighting up our heritage one step at a time, we’ll compete better with other local towns and our future will be a bright one.

*special thanks to the Mercury Theatre & Molloy’s Irish Pub for their support.

Darius Laws