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ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY

16/12/2016colchester101

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

MOANA

29/11/201629/11/2016colchester101

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

Arrival

10/11/2016colchester101

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

25/10/201625/10/2016colchester101

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

18/10/201618/10/2016colchester101

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

18/10/2016colchester101

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

03/10/201604/10/2016colchester101

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

Breakfast with a Conscience

27/09/2016colchester101

Pete Hope, the man behind GO4 Enterprises and the Market Café in the town’s Holy Trinity Church tells us about his latest scheme, Breakfast Payforward.

GO4 Enterprises origins lie in homelessness, an experience fortunately most of us never have to even contemplate yet experience.

A roof over our head, food in the fridge, warm bed are things we probably all take for granted.

In our Market Café in Holy Trinity Church, Trinity Street, we often have homeless drop in and we help them out whenever we can, having recently initiated a Breakfast Payforward for anyone unable to afford a hot breakfast or hot drink, and we have been amazed and humbled by our customers’ response. Hopefully we can sustain this with continued customer support, no grinding grant making applications, and a simple human response to another human’s need.

The scheme relies on customers buying a breakfast in advance for someone down on their luck. It costs £5 and is an adaptation of an idea from of Naples where customers of a coffee shop were invited to buy coffee in advance for people in need.

The first day we went “live” Wednesday 14^th September, our very first customer of the day was a lad I knew to be on the streets. Coincidentally he had come to us because he had no money – his benefits had been stopped and he had no place to stay – he was sleeping rough on the Hythe Quay, and hadn’t eaten. He looked emaciated to how I remembered him before, his face was bruised and his arms and legs lacerated from being beaten up.

He had been denied a tent from a local charity working with the homeless. The reason being was that they wanted to “see him around” for a longer period of time before giving him a tent. He didn’t have the money to get into the night shelter, and in any event had been banned for a previous misdemeanour.

£3 though for a night in the shelter buys a lot, and is only the price of a coffee, almost, but is a king’s ransom to some people

He had been going round all the charity shops asking if they had a tent they could give him. He found one but they wanted £6, so that’s why he came to us, hobbling on crutches, his foot in a cast, he wanted to know if we could give him a job for the day so he could go and buy the tent and a pillow, which had been put aside for him.

He wasn’t seeking charity from us, he didn’t know about our Payforward Breakfast scheme, he was clutching at straws, desperate for a tent.

We couldn’t give him a paid job for the day, but were able to give him a hot cooked breakfast and drinks.

We went to the charity shop to confirm that his story was true, and it was, so we bought the tent for him out of our petty cash float – explaining why we need a tent in our catering operation will be tricky with our bookkeeper!!.

Some people have a problem accepting Social Enterprises as “proper businesses”. Some would rather the issues that surround homelessness, poor, not be seen in High Street settings where image is paramount.

We counter those views with positive action. In reviving our High Street areas we want to embrace those who are less fortunate, help them eat, work with other agencies that support them, but also serve our own customer base, whose amazing response to our scheme is a big vote in favour of what we are doing.

In every High Street, retail area, there are empty lifeless shops, we brought an empty lifeless Church back into being again… a contemporary resurrection.

If we can do it, anyone can do it.

Colchester Borough Council extended us an opportunity, but how long we can remain is unknown as our future tenure in doubt. The principle worked here and can work anywhere. The challenge to the council is to continue supporting “edgy” initiatives, because they bring life and diversity, as well as commercial activity in disused buildings.

Pete Hope

Pete’s Dragon

15/08/2016colchester101

We can count ourselves lucky at Colchester 101 that our resident movie critic has written this review of Pete’s Dragon as he wasn’t expecting to like it. Instead he loved it.

It was a very different person who walked out of the darkened cinema to the one that went in. A grumpy, middle-aged cynic took his seat for the remake of Disney’s underwhelming Pete’s Dragon, a cutesy-cute confection of a kid’s film from that studio’s doldrums years; it was a small child, heart full of hope, joy and the possibilities of an unlimited imagination, cheeks still damp from tears, that emerged into the bright Summer sunshine 100 minutes later.

Pete’s Dragon is an absolute gem of a movie, a family film that is enchanting, beautiful, terrifying, funny, glorious. In short, it delivers everything that the very best of cinema promises: it lifts you up, carries you on a journey and leaves you way up high with emotions, characters and story that will live long in your heart.

The film opens with five-year-old Pete and his family heading out for an adventure in America’s densely forested Pacific North-West. Pete is sat in the back of the car reading Elliot Gets Lost when a deer wanders into the road resulting in a devastating crash that kills his parents. Young Pete crawls from the wreckage his picture book in hand and wanders off into the forest. Things go from bad to worse for our young hero when he is set upon by a pack of ravenous wolves, but then a huge, lumbering form intervenes and saves the child from a horrific death a great, green dragon, its shaggy fur bristling with anger and menace. When the child places his hand on the dragon its fur changes from dark to a light, friendly green and I think this was the moment I fell in love with not only Elliot (as Pete names him) but also with the film itself.

We then skip to six years later and civilisation begins to encroach upon the idyllic, fun existence the boy and his dragon chum enjoy, loggers are clear-cutting the forest in which the pair have played, romped and flown. Only park ranger, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her kindly old dad, Meacham (Robert Redford) stand between the loggers and the destruction of the wilderness, but this is further complicated by the fact that Grace is engaged to Jack (Wes Bentley), the owner of the logging company responsible. Jack’s brother Gavin (Karl Urban) is determined to push further and further into the forest and cutting as much as possible and it is here that he encounters the now feral Pete (Oakes Fegley).

Pete is the boy many of us wanted to be, tough, self-sufficient, effortlessly athletic, brave and living his life and adventures with his very best friend. Oakes Fegley is yet another wonderful find in a year stuffed with great child actors, especially in the moments where he realises the other side of the fantasy – the loneliness, fear and isolation, the pull of reality and that first pre-teen love (provided here by Oona Lawrence, Jack’s snappy, street-wise daughter Natalie).

It’s a great cast and everybody gives nothing less than their best, especially Karl Urban as the movie’s villain, Jack. Whereas the big bad of the original was a two-dimensional cartoon baddie played by Jim Dale, Urban plays Gavin with nuance and depth, a deeply wounded man who is just doing what he believes must be done. And it’s always great to see that winning twinkle in the eyes of Robert Redford.

But it’s Elliot who’s the standout character. Maybe not every shot of him is perfect but every shot he’s in is perfect. With his big eyes, wonky under-bite, stumpy legs and bright green fur it’s impossible not to love him. He’s silly and sad (sometimes in the same scene), exuberantly full of life and love for his forest and for Pete and full of happiness.

Director and writer David Lowery has crafted a beautiful and awe inspiring cinematic experience, that’s not afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve and yet is full of goofy fun and buckets of snot. All the characters are allowed to be fully human, or in Elliot’s case fully dragon, and there are hints of their back stories carefully hidden in plain sight. It’s difficult not to compare Lowery’s approach to that of classic Spielberg, there’s a sense of awe that permeates the entire film and not just those fantastical scenes where Elliot appears. Pete’s Dragon is a big screen movie that is unashamedly big screen, that’s where it was designed to be seen and that’s where you should see it, you’ll thank me later.

I was glad I saw Pete’s Dragon with a real audience and not in a screening room full of cynical critics (myself included). I revelled in the joy, giggles, awe and occasional sniffles of the children (and some of the parents) in the audience. It’s a movie that makes adults feel nostalgic, not for the original or for toys but for the nostalgia of a time when we felt anything was possible and for younger viewers just starting out on the journey that cinema offers, Pete’s Dragon is a giant, furry, welcoming pair of friendly arms that say, “Come with me, let’s go on an adventure”.

Andy Oliver

Suicide Squad

10/08/201610/08/2016colchester101

Andy Oliver is fresh back from the Odeon with his review of Suicide Squad. Read on to hear what he thought of it.

This is my third attempt at writing a review of Suicide Squad, basically the first two drafts were spent feebly attempting to put a positive spin on what is, possibly, the most disappointing movie of the year, so far. Disappointing mostly because the marketing campaign was so fabulous, a couple of really fun trailers, exciting dayglow posters, star-studded cast, interesting choice of director (David Ayer, known for his visceral, gut-punch style of movie making) and a promise that it would be everything Batman Vs. Superman wasn’t. The problem is that there is so little to like in a movie that looks and feels like that old adage: a camel is a horse designed by a committee. And, boy, is Suicide Squad one ugly looking camel.
As destabilised as the appearance of Superman made the world, his (spoiler) death has created even further chaos and uncertainty. Every nation and terrorist group is desperate for their own super-powered protagonists and, to cope with any potential threat, government agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) puts together a task force, a suicide squad, from the super-powered inmates of Belle Reve prison. This is obviously a bad idea, especially when The Enchantress (Cara DeLevigne) manages to escape Waller’s fail-safe and becomes the first major threat the group has to face.

In the first thirty minutes of the movie we are introduced to the individuals via flashback/origin tales that play out like extended dvd extras, all to the beat of far too on-the-nose choices of music tracks. Deadshot (Will Smith) is a conflicted assassin, the World’s greatest marksman, who constantly worries that his daughter will she him as a villain. Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) is a former psychiatrist and psychotic sex-doll girlfriend of The Joker. Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is a crocodile skinned killer (obviously). Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtenay) is a notoriously silly Flash villain and comic relief whose name pretty much explains his skills. El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) is a tattoo-faced former gang member who can wield fire. The Enchantress is a six-thousand-year-old spirit who inhabits the body of archaeologist June Moon. There’s also Slipknot (Adam Branch), but he disappears from the film so quickly I couldn’t tell you anything about him.
To control this dirty half(ish) dozen is soldier Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman) and his sidekick: sword-wielding, woman of mystery, Katana (Karen Fukuhara). Can this conglomeration of misfits form a cohesive team and fulfil their appointed assignment? Put their collective differences aside and become an effective force? What do you think?

So when The Enchantress sneaks away from Waller and Flagg’s control and resurrects her brother, Incubus (a cgi character so bad it makes The Mummy Returns’ Scorpion King look like the absolute apex of special effects), the squad gains its first major mission. Cue explosions, shouting, incomprehensible action and hordes of blackberry-headed cannon fodder (The Enchantress transforms men into fruity-headed minions. Seriously).

This film is a mess. It’s been well documented that major reshoots were ordered by the studio after initial photography was finished, those reshoots stick out like a sore thumb, poorly edited in in an attempt to inject more humour and “fun”. There are tonal shifts that destroy any flow the story might initially have had; characters disappear without reason, some are introduced multiple times, some are hardly introduced at all; there’s way too much brooding from the male characters and the female characters are either trying to be the brooding male characters or exist purely as fan-boy sex fantasies; the motive of the villains is unclear, if not totally inexplicable (in a movie about bad guys taking on worse guys there really shouls have been stronger villains); an already flawed script is muddied by the obvious reshoots; the editing is all over the place (at one point a character leaves the group and, in the very next scene, is seen walking in slow-motion with the rest of the squad; and then there’s Jared Leto’s Joker…

The Joker appears mostly because he’s the only recognisable DC Comics villain/character mainstream audiences will probably know, he’s shoe-horned into the film “Just because” and serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. You could cut virtually all of the five minutes he appears and have no impact on the story at all and he’s such an irritating presence that you’ll wish they had. Leto’s version of The Joker is bad. Really, really bad. So bad that it actually harms the character, the legacy of Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hammill and Heath Ledger is marred by every second he’s on the screen.
Leto is bad, yes, but at least he’s trying to act, Cara DeLevigne on the other hand… DeLevigne is truly awful. She puts in a performance (if you can call it that) that’s not only a career low but might also stand as one of the worst ever captured on film. I have no words…
Ben Affleck appears as Batman for a few minutes but his appearance culminates in a scene so sex-creepy that my jaw almost hit the floor. It’s one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie and so misjudged that it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the character that, and I don’t say this lightly, I’m not sure I’ll ever feel comfortable watching Batman on film ever again.

Fortunately, Will Smith and Margot Robbie sparkle with on-screen charisma, not enough to save the movie but enough to make it just about watchable. It might sound bizarre but Deadshot is far more heroic than the current Henry Cavill iteration of Superman, he’s the moral centre of the movie and, unlike Cavill’s Superman, he actually wants to be a hero. Stand out for me, though, is Jay Hernandez as El Diablo. Hernandez brings a wounded humanity to his character and in a smaller roster this might well have been a break-out role for him, as it is he is mostly left in the background but when he comes to the front he is both magnificent and tragic.
Suicide Squad has its moments, but they are just that: Moments. Technically Batman Vs. Superman is a worse film but the disappointment I felt coming out of Suicide Squad weighed much more heavily upon me.

Andy Oliver