Tag: 3D

Gemini Man

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Henry (Will Smith) is a mercenary sniper so skilled that, in this film’s bravura opening sequence, he can shoot a distant target through the carriage window of a fast moving train. He’s getting on in years, though, and has decided to retire because he feels he’s losing his edge. He should have shot the mark in he head not the neck, and he could so easily have shot by mistake the inquisitive little girl who was briefly standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

No matter, he’s retiring and plans to spend his time sailing on the open sea and generally doing nothing. He hasn’t yet realised that the target sold to him as a terrorist was, in fact, innocent – and consequently he”s about to become a target himself. Moreover, because his skills are unrivalled, his employers represented by Clay Verris (Clive Owen) have cloned him, raising the clone to capitalise on his strengths and improve on his weaknesses. And to eliminate him, they’ve sent his clone – a younger, leaner, hungrier and arguably more efficient version of himself.

Thus, the film is basically old Will Smith hunted by young Will Smith with, as is the way in Paramount action thriller franchises from Mission Impossible to Jack Reacher, a female companion thrown in for good measure, here in the form of Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Benedict Wong plays an old friend of Henry.

It seems we haven’t quite reached the point yet where an actor can be scanned into a computer as in The Congress (Ari Folman, 2013) and turned into a career’s worth of movies. Young Will Smith is played by the actor and then changed into a younger, leaner version of himself via reference footage of himself in old movies and mountains of CGI work. It’s impressive; you really feel like you’re watching a real life, younger Smith. Ang Lee is, after all, the man who pushed effects technicians to create the central character of Hulk (2003), a technically groundbreaking if flawed film. There as here, he’s pushing at the limits of the medium and learning all the time as he goes.

As if that wasn’t enough innovation for one movie, Lee here redefines the action movie deploying the combination of 3D and HFR (High Frame Rate of 120 fps) that he employed on Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) although it was shown in only five cinemas around the world in that format (New York, Los Angeles, Taipei, Beijing and Shanghai). It’s not clear exactly how many cinemas will be able to play Gemini Man in the exact format Ang Lee intended – see here. Sadly, not every director is Ang Lee and as with 3D, there will no doubt be a rash of not very good 3D + HFR movies so that ticket prices can be upped. A rash of run of the mill 3D movies is why 3D is now widely looked down on.

So, what’s so impressive about this particular movie in 3D and HFR, then? Well, Lee thinks about every shot in terms of 3D, conceiving it as not a flat photographic image but sculptural, three dimensionally blocked out, staged action – whether that’s two people talking in a room or an above the water / under the water shot of two fighting people falling a couple of storeys into water. On top of that, the increased number of frames per second makes everything feel more real, and when you’re talking about fast paced action stunt work that actually makes a considerable difference to your viewing experience. My question on emerging from the press screening, for the record at London’s Cineworld, Leicester Square on the digital Imax screen, was, “What exactly have I just watched?” (I’ve been unable to ascertain what frame rate was used at that screening, although it felt much higher than 24 fps.) If all directors were as talented as Ang Lee, the answer would be, “the future of cinema”. One can but hope.

Gemini Man is out in the UK on Friday, October 11th. On VoD in March. Watch the film trailer below:

They Shall Not Grow Old

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

While you’re wondering about why Peter Jackson’s assemblage of Great War archive footage put together in collaboration with London’s Imperial War Museum should be in 3D, he opens his film with a tiny, mid-screen window-boxed image of soldiers marching to war. The greyish white piece of archive footage is in 3D and we are – to use a well-worn phrase – looking through a window on the world.

The window grows larger, filling first the Academy (4:3) frame and then the full wide-screen image. At various points in its running length the film switches back to Academy, but unusually for me, I found the experience so engrossing that i didn’t notice the change until after it had happened.

As for the 3D conversion, it definitely adds something on the level of involving you in the footage: this is one to see with the glasses as a 2D version wouldn’t gave the same impact.

Jackson starts off his soundtrack with nothing but readings from extracts of testimonies from those who attended WW1 as soldiers. So just black and white archive images and spoken word on the soundtrack nothing else.

The testimony snippets cover a whole range of subjects – what people were doing when war was declared (playing football with a German on the team and deciding not to call him The Enemy ’til tomorrow), younger boys lying that they were 19, army boots which came in sizes that didn’t fit but could be softened up by urinating in them, marching round the town and scamming hapless locals to join up. It’s compelling, but you wonder how long word, footage and nothing else can sustain a film.

Then we get to the Front and the fighting and Jackson plunges us into the full horror of war by colourising the 3D footage to make it feel that much more real and adding in all sorts if sound effects – shells flying, bombs exploding and so on. I’ve seen countless war or violent action films over the years, but very little as harrowing as this.

(Quick aside: the one film that was actually more harrowing still was another Imperial War Museum production, their restoration of the British propaganda film German Concentration Camps Factual Survey (Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein, 2014), intended to show the Germans how they’d been exterminating the Jews in the death camps, complete with footage by the first Allied cameramen who went in there not knowing what they’d find.)

So, anyway, there are bombs blowing up. Men seriously injured or dead. And lots more battlefield footage. So horrible that you wonder, why do people do it. There’s a lot of this stuff and it feels relentless. There’s testimony on feet freezing inside boots, going gangrenous and requiring amputation. There’s testimony on all sorts of other tough material too.

It’s a difficult one to judge, but although it’s often (too?) hard going, They Shall Not Grow Old succeeds in communicating what it must have been like to be member of the British army during that particular conflict. Which is quite an achievement given that many if those who fought never discussed the experience with their loved ones but instead kept silent about it often taking their experiences to the grave with them.

This is very different from the three – no six – part Lord Of The Rings adaptation Jackson made. It’s good to report that it’s a highly impressive and sensitive exploration of a very difficult subject indeed. Something of a change of pace for this maverick New Zealander but definitely with catching up with. And if you can hold out through the end credits, Jackson runs a superb recording of the soldiers’ popular prostitution song ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres Parlez-Vous’ over them.

They Shall Not Grow Old plays in the 62nd BFI London Film Festival, where this piece was originally written. It’s out in cinemas everywhere on Friday, November 9th.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Posted on by victorfraga

For those who never saw their less impressive first film, the eponymous Guardians are a rag-tag of space travelling mercenaries often on the wrong side of the law. Rocket (a raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper) has an unfortunate habit of insulting the wrong person at the wrong time. Peter Quill / Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) is a problem solver and adventurer, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) an agile fighter. The group also includes strong man Drax (Dave Bautista), from a race who take everything literally, and cute, walking baby tree-being Groot (voice: Vin Diesel). Welcome to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

Clever and efficient story construction ensures that many different narrative strands are deftly balanced with several intertwined plots in play. Romantically involved with an Earthwoman in the 1980s, Ego (Kurt Russell) is an alien who seeds and cultivates mysterious plants on the planets he visits and is searching for his long-lost son Quill. A genetically engineered race called the Sovereign hire our heroes to protect their precious supply of batteries until Rocket steals some, at which point they send assorted armadas and later a gang of mercenaries led by blue-skinned Yondu (Michael Rooker) after them. And so on.

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Unusual elements fire off in every direction in this surprisingly innovative Marvel feature.

Leaving aside the plot, the space opera special effects are peerless and, seen on a huge screen in 3D, spectacular. All of which might be reason enough for the comic’s fans or even your average popcorn moviegoer to see it, if not for those of us who like our cinema on the more subversive side.

Where the film really scores though is in the spaces in between and around the franchising, the plot and the special effects which allow it room to breathe, play and get dirty. Take the very early scene in which the Guardians protect the Sovereign’s world from a marauding, tentacled maw. We’ve seen scenes like this before and they’ve become boring. This film knows that and shows much of the fight scene out of focus in the background or off to the side while in focus in the foreground baby Groot plugs in a sound system and dances to music as the mayhem rages.

Baby Groot will later fail several times to retrieve a simply described object from a sleeping jailer that would allow those who requested it to escape imprisonment and certain death. He keeps returning with various incorrect items. And later still, a lengthy sequence is constructed around baby Groot’s being assigned to press one of two buttons on a detonator, one of which would prove lethal. Infused with the spirit of gag cartoons or burlesque comedy, there’s something wonderfully subversive about all this.

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Some of the superheros from the surprising Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.

Thus you have another scene where the action stops for Quill to insist that Gamora has an “unspoken thing” for him and dance with her on a balcony. Or a fight sequence where Yondu’s one foot long spear weaves a non-linear trajectory through the air as it takes out a plethora of enemy mercenaries by fatally piercing them one by one. Or an antagonistic character as complex as Gamora’s supposedly villainous sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) who may or may not be trustworthy. Or the iconic Kurt Russell clearly relishing his pivotal role. Or an entire sequence detailing a character’s funeral.

A big budget blockbuster this may be, but unexpected, additional elements constantly fire off in interesting directions without ever compromising form, narrative or visuals. The whole thing is efficiently scripted Hollywood eye candy with grime lovingly rubbed into its very fabric from the bottom up to turn it into something far dirtier and altogether more compelling.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 is out in showing in cinemas across the UK from Friday, April 28th. Get a feel for the movie by watching the trailer below. Then close your eyes and picture it in 3D.