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“Free Fire” Attempts Farce, Ends Up Boring and Haphazard
In a strange paradox, executing a proper farce demands preternatural planning. Stray but a little from the knife’s edge, and the tone can spiral out of control as the conflicting elements of the film separate like a broken sauce. Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire suffers such a fate, though it isn’t for lack of effort or a gripping central idea. The film tries to position some idiosyncratic characters in a bottle, shake everything up, and let them shoot guns at each other for 75 minutes, but too many of these elements are just a bit off the mark. The characters and the performances mostly hit, and the inciting event feels reasonable, but the organization and the length of the fight strains comprehension and ends up being to repetitive to hold the spectator’s interest. Free Fire does a better job than most genre-bending farces, but ultimately it just feels too boring for a movie centered around a free-for-all firefight.
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State of the Blog: May 2017
April showers bring May flowers, Mayflowers bring pilgrims, and May itself brings the start of Summer Blockbuster Season, that baffling mixture of excitement and predictable, four-quadrant committeethink. As we touch base at the beginning of this season, I’ll discuss the films that have me stoked for this month (both big and small), talk about a few pieces I have in the works, and generally lay out the plans of Plot and Theme. Not too complicated, but it should at least be fun.
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Hot Docs 2017: Ramen Heads
Check out my review of Ramen Heads at Cinema Axis.
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Hot Doc 2017: Birth of a Family
Check out my review of Birth of a Family at Cinema Axis.
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Hot Docs 2017: Integral Man
Check out my review for Integral Man at Cinema Axis.
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Hot Docs 2017: Manic
Check out my review of Manic at Cinema Axis.
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Stanley Kubrick and “Lolita”: a Most Ambitious Fantasy
The fourth entry in Plot and Theme’s year-long look at the filmography of Stanley Kubrick. Check out all entries here.
Introduction
In 1962, Stanley Kubrick adapted the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita for his sixth feature film. Though published only 7 years earlier, Nabokov’s novel was already reaching the status of a classic work due to its controversial subject matter, witty wordplay, and themes of erotic fantasy, hebephilia, and sexual predation. Working with Nabokov on the screenplay, Kubrick’s adaptation faithfully recreates the key aspects of the novel, capturing the sexuality, irony, and tragedy of a man who lusts after a prepubescent girl.
Still shackled by the Hayes Code, Lolita was thought to be unfilmable, and the director himself later expressed that had he known how severe the censors were going to be, he probably wouldn’t have bothered to adapt Lolita. Fortunately, he did.
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Hot Docs 2017: 78/52
Check out my review of 78/52 at Cinema Axis.
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Hot Docs 2017: Let There Be Light
Check out my review of Let There Be Light at Cinema Axis.
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Hot Docs 2017: Still Tomorrow
Check out my review for Still Tomorrow at Cinema Axis.
Film Criticism and Fiction Writing by Derek Jacobs
