(Would swapping Portman for Chris Hemsworth have strengthened Paramount’s resolve?)įor Netflix, however, it’s a gift after a couple of months that have seen the credibility of the Netflix Originals brand – a catch-all term that covers both the films it develops in-house and the ones it acquires from other production companies – take some hard knocks. That a Hollywood studio has effectively given the 2018 version of straight-to-video treatment to a £29m A-list sci-fi epic because a) it’s deemed too brainy, and b) its predominantly female ensemble, led by Natalie Portman, isn’t deemed bankable enough, says volumes about the fears and biases of an industry in thrall to safe, macho franchise formula. This would be a dispiriting turn of events for cinemagoers even with a less exciting film. Might audiences on Garland’s British home turf have been more supportive? Perhaps. Nice as it would have been had the American public then proven the studio drastically wrong, you can’t count on the American public for much these days: Annihilation took in a somewhat soft £8m on its opening weekend in February. With Garland refusing to make suggested alterations to the final act – rightly so, since the whole film is contained in its wordless, haunting crescendo – and Paramount still licking its wounds from the box-office failure of its last adult auteur experiment, Darren Aronofsky’s outlandish Mother!, the studio settled on a cautious compromise: release it theatrically stateside but cut their losses by dumping it on Netflix abroad. I missed the vast, dark expanse of a cinematic environment for its gasp-worthy effects and shuddering sound design Paramount, the studio behind Annihilation, started to get cold feet after test screenings for the film suggested mainstream audiences found Garland’s film overly chilly and intellectually complex – quite what manner of blockbuster they were expecting from him after Ex Machina, not exactly a candyfloss rollercoaster itself, one can only imagine. What happened, then? Annihilation’s surprise, do-not-pass-go swerve into the streaming realm portends an interesting, somewhat alarming future for grownup genre cinema: films that are too large and flashy for arthouses, but whose adult inclinations or deviance from formula make major distributors commercially nervous. Watching it at home, I missed the vast, dark expanse of a cinematic environment for its gasp-worthy effects and shuddering sound design – it may be intimately, brain-scramblingly idea-driven, but Garland has fashioned it first and foremost as big-screen spectacle. Tensely following an intrepid group of female scientists into an uncannily mutating stretch of wilderness from which almost no man comes out alive, it’s a larger-scale follow-up to Garland’s smart, stark, Oscar-winning directorial debut, Ex Machina, and should have doubled down on that film’s sleeper success in cinemas. Feverishly awaited by cinephiles and sci-fi geeks alike, Alex Garland’s Annihilation was not supposed to be a direct-to-Netflix release internationally. Gerard as Lewis' great rival Elvis, and Steve Allen as himself.T onight, at the stroke of midnight, one of the year’s best films will be readily, quietly available to pyjama-clad night owls at home – while over in the US, it is still screening to admittedly sparse crowds in multiplexes. Featured in the cast are Alec Baldwin as Jerry's cousin Jimmy Swaggart (the same!), Michael St. Otherwise, Quaid is terrific as Lewis (expertly lip-synching to the original records,) and Ryder is equally good as the long-suffering Myra. After establishing a brisk, satirical tone through most of the proceedings, the film plummets into heavy dramatics in its final portions, jarring disastrously with all that has gone before. When it is revealed that Myra is only 13 years old, Lewis is condemned as a molester and pervert by the public (his disastrous tour of England during this crisis is depicted in hilarious Tex Avery fashion). Along the way, he falls in love with his second cousin, Myra (Winona Ryder), eventually marrying the girl. The story takes place during the years 1956 through 1958, as Lewis rises to the top of the charts with such hits as "Crazy Arms," "A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," and the title tune. As played by Dennis Quaid, "the killer" is a very mixed-up individual: a saintly sinner, a world-wise naïf, a skilled performer with zero sense of discipline, a loving husband who uses his wife for a punching bag. Until its last ten minutes or so, this filmed biography of controversial recording star Jerry Lee Lewis plays like a live-action cartoon.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |