Movie Review - Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, 2011.

Directed by Guy Ritchie.
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris, Rachel McAdams, Stephen Fry, Kelly Reilly and Eddie Marsan.


SYNOPSIS:

Never one to take a fair, even-handed approach to those untrustworthy thieving gypsy types (my entire experience based of course upon Guy Ritchie films and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, and the fact that I’m nothing if not an idiotic mindless consumer) Ritchie's latest incidentally concerns a traveller called Simza (Noomi Rapace). Through some convoluted plot machinations she becomes embroiled in a scam masterminded by the masterful Moriarty (Jared Harris) a Cambridge professor and Holmes’ intellectual match who plans on starting a World War. Sherlock catches wind and soon finds himself in a game of cat and mouse with his ultimate rival. Meanwhile Dr Watson ties the knot with his fiancée causing Holmes to slaver homoerotic subtext all over himself and Watson at any given opportunity from then on. Business as usual then.


Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective has had many incarnations. He’s been gay, camp, serious, tall, short, loud, quiet and most recently a bit of a brawler but one thing remains constant. Sherlock Holmes is always interested in the questions at hand. How can a movie be both clever and idiotic? How can it simultaneously be frenetic and lazy? How can a film possibly be so modern yet so out-dated in equal measure? Well look no further because Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is here to provide the answers.

As is typical of this wildly contradictory film Robert Downey Jr finally goes full schizo with Sherlock and almost comes unstuck. The whole flawed/crazy genius schtick can only go so far before it becomes a bit too random for its own good. One minute a super sleuth the next an petulant child wearing ridiculously implausible disguises, it takes Jude Law’s Dr Watson to save the day in the end. Playing a solidly good straight man he helps keep Sherlock’s lunacy on a somewhat level playing field. But rest assured, when the duo get it right it’s great entertainment.

Ritchie’s direction also has its ups and downs. He directs everything nowadays like The Matrix didn’t happen. When in 1999 the Wachowskis started slowing the world down for dramatic effect they immediately brought slo-mo into then straight out of fashion. God knows how they managed to do it but Ritchie hasn’t noticed. Whilst there is an actual reason for Sherlock’s slo-mo fight planning, the splintering tree scene replete with massive high-caliber explosions should seem tonally redundant. But somehow it isn’t. It all seems terribly out of date and try hard and sometimes it may seem like it’s all Ritchie can do to stop himself from screaming ‘stylish steam-punk anachronism’ in your face but somehow he pulls it off. Amongst the numerous swiftly cut montages and over the top camerawork it really is a joy to behold such a tonal marriage between the film’s impressive period feel and it’s more modern and often tacky cinematic garnish.

So, whilst Ritchie does a bombastic job Hans Zimmer attempts to do the same, but the score is not a patch on his 2009’s original. Blasting away with a harrumph here and a ear splitting parp there, it starts to really grate after a while. The intermittent parping also continues in the script which whilst sporadically clever and witty too often falls into nonsense and dead ends. It is also no were near clever enough to satisfy. Holmes and Moriarty’s final face off as so often happens in this film is a physical fight rather than a complex and erudite unfurling of all that has come before. Often instead of reasoning and deduction Holmes solves things with a gun or his fists. I think it’s telling that the main set piece on show here involves a huge munitions factory.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is therefore a bit of a mess. But an entertaining one nonetheless. Oh, and Stephen Fry’s Mycroft gets naked. There’s always that...

Ross Jones-Morris

Movie Review - Another Earth (2011)

Another Earth, 2011.

Directed by Mike Cahill.
Starring Brit Marling and William Mapother.


SYNOPSIS:

One night people start to spot what to all intents and purposes it looks to be a carbon copy of Earth. Aspiring Physicist Rhoda Williams (played by co-writer Brit Marling) hears this on the radio whilst driving home drunk from a party and her resulting interest leads to something terrible. In prison for four years she emerges into a world in which ‘Earth 2’ has become somewhat of a normality, but she also emerges just as Earth first makes contact with its twin counterpart. Throughout this Rhoda slowly inveigles herself into the life of victim John Burroughs (William Mapother) in an attempt to make amends for her mistake.


At the start of 2011 weather forecasters missed a trick. Rather than talking about sun, snow, wind and more rain than you can shake a soggy stick at, they really should have been talking about the imminent approach of a metaphorically significant twin planet, that and also savage bouts of depression that cast the metaphor in a new and dramatically subversive light.

What with Another Earth and Melancholia it’s been a case of ‘you wait for one cosmologically redemptive event to happen and two come at once’, you know, one of those moments. Not that I’m complaining. It’s typical Twilight Zone fodder. Stick a new planet next to our planet and reap the all too human consequences. And I love The Twilight Zone - in principal.

In this case what emerges is an oddly affecting - albeit clunky and ragged - human drama that just happens to feature a sci-fi element. The MacGuffin to end all MacGuffin’s, the planet comes to be a mere plot point as opposed to the main thrust of a film that mostly takes place in houses. Working on a budget of only $200,000 what writer/director Mike Cahill has created is nothing short of astonishing. Calling to mind last year’s Monsters the special effects are done subtly and economically. In fact the special effects get hardly any air time at all.

It’s all about people and in particular the relationship between Rhoda and John. What starts out as quiet and icy affair changes throughout the film into something complex and worrying. But this doesn’t mean that it didn’t sometimes jar with me. There's a moment between them about halfway through where I think that I almost pulled a muscle I cringed so hard, and not in a Ricky Gervais good way.

Nevertheless Brit Marling gives what will surely be a star-making performance, what with her Hollywood ready smile and obvious talent. William Mapother on the other hand – a somewhat established actor - gives proceedings a decent go looking throughout like Jeremy Renner after an especially hard fight (although whoever Renner is fighting currently is anyone’s guess, who can keep up?).

So if the star of the show isn’t the performances and isn’t Earth then what is it? It’s the ideas, it’s the way the plot neatly ties itself up but above all else it’s the aspiration. It’s not just another dull story of redemption, neither is it a sci-fi face mashing fest. Another Earth is quiet and intelligent and thoughtful. Well at least that’s the impression you get. There may be plot holes large enough for you to drive a planet through and if you think about the ending for a microsecond it becomes so improbable as to almost invalidate its impact, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it has impact. And with the poor showing of cinema in the last few months that’s something to be treasured.

Ross Jones-Morris