The 10 Worst Performances of 2016.

I thought I'd post this list now, as I generally don't watch a film unless I think it's going to be 7/10 or more in terms of my enjoyment of it, thus, can't foresee me watching any other bad films (which usually contain the stinker performances) from this year.

10. Jared Leto, Suicide Squad 

An annoying and laughable bastardisation of the Joker character (which in Heath Ledger's far more capable hands, was terrifying) where he plagiarised liberally from James Franco in Spring Breakers as well as the 'Mexican gangster' cliche. But the worst thing about Leto's interpretation of the Joker  were his obnoxious off-screen antics during filming, all in the name of being 'Method'. Viola Davis giving him the sideye at this press junket perfectly encapsulates my feelings towards his insufferable behaviour. The fact that Leto has an Oscar and Davis doesn't says a lot about how little that golden man is actually about meritocracy.

Film review: THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (Antoine Fuqua, 2016)

The town of Rose Creek is terrorised by mercenary Bart Bogue and his henchmen, who wishes to mine it for oil. In standing up to the villains, several innocent people are slaughtered in cold blood, including Matthew Cullen, leaving his grieving widow Emma (Haley Bennett) seeking retribution. She implores bounty hunter Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington) to defend her townspeople, a request he initially declines, until he hears who the enemy is. 

However, Sam alone isn't enough to overturn Bart's army, so he recruits wayward gambler Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt) using Josh's horse as barter. Faraday then enlists the help of Sam's former acquaintance, a sharpshooter named Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke) and gets his companion, assassin Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), thrown in for free. The foursome are rounded off with wanted outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), giant Jack Horne (Vincent D'Onofrio),  and a Comanche warrior Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier).

The trailer for The Magnificent Seven was so cool and enticing that it made me momentarily forget my aversion for needless Hollywood remakes, of which Oldboy is the worst of a sorry bunch from recent years. But, in Antoine Fuque's plodder of a film, I realised that the film peaked at the strategic bass drop on the ad.

The film's four most well-known stars: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke and Peter Sarsagaard barely make it out of first gear. Pratt and Sarsgaard, in particular, both who have done exemplary work in the past, phone it in on crushingly disappointing levels.  Pratt, so charismatic in Guardians of the Galaxy, seems to think he can ride on the memory of his charm in this film, and exhibits no attempt at characterisation in his role. Waving his hands around to do a card trick is about the most he exerts himself.

Sarsgaard is equally limp as the villain, to the point where it detriments the film. Because The Magnificent Seven then lacks a compelling antagonist, it renders all the expensive (the film had had a eye-watering budget of $95 million) training montages shown in the film hollow, because we're simply not afraid of the force they're all priming themselves to face.

For the Training Day fans out there, of which I am one, the scenes between Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke lack the spice and spark that the two organically just had in Antoine Fuqua's earlier film. This is as much to blame on the clunky screenplay as it does the performers, where practically every character in the film speaks in (not very incisive, it has to be said) one-liners but strung together, it doesn't come close to resembling dialogue.

The cast member who makes the most lasting impression is pretty Haley Bennett as Emma, who the script graciously refrains from making a damsel in distress trope. Bennett fleshes out a 2D(ish) character into something resembling a human with a beating heart, and her early scenes where she pleads to Chisolm's sense of humanity do carry genuine pathos.

Perhaps rising star Bennett (who will next be seen in October's release The Girl on the Train), unlike the four male movie stars who I've named and shamed, actually bothered in Magnificent Seven because she cannot yet rest on the laurels of her name alone. The supporting cast also feature some witty turns, especially South Korean actor Byung-hun Lee who throws knives with panache and inhibits his taciturn/cool character with ease, and the always memorable Vincent D'Onofrio, who plays against his formidable physicality as surprisingly soft-spoken tracker.

There are a few gripping action sequences (which were the main contributor to my generous decision to award The Magnificent Seven 6/10), but they could all have been trimmed by at least 20% in the editing room. The final set piece dragged far too much and caused the payoff to feel frustratingly anti-climactic.

The Magnificent Seven touches upon topics of substance such as male companionship, the destructive nature of greed, carrying the guilt of one's actions (Hawke's character is crippled with bouts of PTSD) and bigotry, but they are all dealt with and resolved in a very superficial, Hollwood manner. Some of the cinematography is nice and the iconography of the seven men riding on horses will certainly make for some decent gifs. But sadly, The Magnificent Seven proved to be a lot less than the sum of its parts.

Not so magnificent, after all.

6/10

FILM REVIEW: Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)

Socialite Jasmine French (Cate Blanchett) had lived the charmed life in New York, married to a canny, popular financier husband (Alec Baldwin) in a huge mansion. However, her world came crumbling down when said husband was done for being a Ponzi scheme-running crook, and sent to prison. With no life skills, work experience or educational training of her own, she is forced to re-root to San Francisco, where her adopted sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) lives. 

Lovelace (Rob Epstein, 2013)

Given the current furore over David Cameron’s proposal that we bad porn completely, the release of Lovelace, which charts the story of America’s most celebrated blue movie actress, could not have come at a more topical time. Starring Amanda Seyfried as the eponymous character, the film shows how she came to make porn movies, the ensuing glitterati that followed, before revealing how she was manhandled into it every step of the way, posing the question of just how “liberating” porn really is.

Linda Lovelace, real name Linda Boreman’s beginnings are no different from many an American good-girl-gone-bad. Raised by a Bible-bashing mother (an unrecognisable Sharon Stone, commendably playing against type) and a meek, hardly there father, Linda’s only bouts of having fun are at her local roller-disco with best friend Patsy (the ever-lovely Juno Temple, adding another independent movie to her growing collection). It is there that her shy, wide-eyed charm captures the attention of Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard).

Traynor is an extremely seedy fella, owning a stripclub where he casually turns a blind eye to his strippers’turning tricks, as well as hitting on Patsy the second Linda’s back is turned. But he can be the most charming man in the world when he wants to be, and that is how he cons Linda into being his betrothed. A few months down the line and Chuck’s various shady dealings land him in serious debt, and it is here that Linda tentatively stars in the movie “Inside Deep Throat”, about a woman who’s clitoris is inside her throat. The first part of the movie makes porn seem like no big deal, almost fun, with its witty sex jokes and repartee among the cast and crew, not to mention the glamour parties with Hugh Hefner. The second part, however, shows us the ugly scenes after the parties, where we discover that Linda was not a so-called empowered woman embracing her sexuality, but rather the victim of her controlling, monstrous husband.

The movie poster for Lovelace boasts a litany of Hollywood A-listers as well as independent movie darlings, but blink and you’ll miss a couple of them. Chloe Sevigny, horrifically underused as one of Lovelace’s various interviewers, is in it for the best part of 10 seconds. However, that’s not to say there aren’t some great performances. The Simpsons’ Hank Azardia as the director who pompously thinks his movie “transcends porn”, is a riot. Sharon Stone is completely dislikeable as the overbearing mother who won’t give her daughter an inch of freedom, but her personality is exactly the type that would drive a girl to porn, and thus, is utterly believable. She's so caught up in her Bible readings that she can't see that her little girl is getting abused. Stone's branch of Christian crazy channels Piper Laurie in Carrie, and we all saw how well that turned out.

Seyfried is pretty good in the lead, although she’s let down by one element that’s not so much to do with her acting per se: Seyfried has usually played it safe with her movie roles, such as Mamma Mia!, or pretty Cosette in Les Mis, so to see her wide-eyed as America’s most famous porn star is a bit of a stretch. Linda Lovelace herself definitely had a bit of a “been around the block” look about her, whereas Seyfried spends the entire movie looking virginal, which doesn't quite go with the image of her character. Peter Sarsgaard is fantastically odious as her partner. I doubt there’ll be a single person watching Lovelace who can like or sympathise with Chuck, but Sarsgaard is completely committed to his oily, disturbing performance. Mao Zedong once famously said, “power grows out of the barrel of a gun”, and it’s with a little handgun that Traynor wields his influence over his poor wife, pimping her out to strangers in clubs and coercing her to give blowjobs on screen. He’s a terrible person, but Sarsgaard gives an excellent performance.

In the end, I was left feeling far too sorry for Linda Lovelace to have any kind of impression of this as a piece of art. Although we as the audience are happy that Linda escaped the chain of violence at the end, as a biopic, it had no message other than “don’t stand for abuse”. Pertinent as that is, I like my biopics to say something more, for example, 2005’s Capote about Breakfast at Tiffany’s writer Truman Capote cannily captured just how much of yourself you have to sacrifice for the sake of your art. Tonally, it was also suspect. Sex jokes in one scene, then brutal depictions of spousal abuse in the other… it didn’t sit with me. So, because of the lack of message, as well as the movie being so completely at void of redemptive characters apart from the lead, and the terrible tonal modulations, I left Lovelace feeling short-changed.

Grade: C+/B-