Materialists, How to Train Your Dragon and Dangerous Animals are in cinemas.
In Celine Song’s new film Materialists, Pedro Pascal plays Harry – a six-feet-tall billionaire private equity financier who is described by successful Manhattan matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson) as a “unicorn”. That’s a word that might have been used to describe Song’s previous film, Past Lives. That was a modest little drama centred on two emotionally repressed but deep-feeling characters that broke free from the festival circuit and went on to have a big impact on audiences and be nominated for two Oscars.
It was a calling card for actors and three of the biggest names in Hollywood were encouraged to sign on for the follow-up – Johnson, Pascal and former-Captain America Chris Evans playing against type as a struggling off-Broadway actor, part-time catering assistant and Lucy’s ex-boyfriend.
Matchmaking in New York is evidently big business and the film would have us believe that wealthy single women are queuing up to be introduced to eligible bachelors like Harry by dedicated agents like Lucy – people who can sum up what makes people connect romantically simply by looking at their resumés and their bank balances.
To Lucy, everything about marriage is transactional – the word dowry even gets used in one conversation with Harry – and human beings are all about the value they bring. It’s clear that Lucy is going to have those assumptions challenged in some way and what makes Materialists its own kind of unicorn is how sensitively and intelligently Song’s script and direction goes about it.
There’s a part of me that wants Materialists to be the second film in a kind of thematic trilogy by Song, about the mysteries of love and how unlikely it is that humans ever overcome the obstacles in the way of making lasting, real human connections. In Past Lives and Materialists, she sees it as something of a miracle and anyone who has managed to pull it off successfully would probably agree.
A final thought. The marketing for Materialists has portrayed the film as as a star-studded romantic comedy set among the New York elite – an inheritor, if you like, of the 90s Nora Ephron era of rom-coms – but that is pretty misleading. There isn’t much comedy in it (although the montage introducing us to Lucy’s clientele has a satirical edge) and the romance is heartfelt. So I wonder whether the marketing is a deliberate bait-and-switch – a contribution to how we appreciate the story – or something more misguided. I’m charitably inclined towards the former, mainly because I don’t see A24 or Killer Films bowing to that kind of pressure to mislead.
One final final thought, if I was handing out star ratings I would be giving Materialists and extra star for the delightful scene that plays out behind the closing credits and I implore you to stick this one out until the cleaners are picking up popcorn from around your ankles. The editor-in-chief and I were the only ones who stayed and we are both very glad we did.
I’ve heard ‘live action’ remakes like Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon described as ‘the death of cinema’ by some commentators but they could do with asking an actual cinema how they feel about it. Based on the huge crowd at a How to Train Your Dragon IMAX session yesterday afternoon, these films are actually the saviour of cinema.
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Dragon is something of a unicorn as it has been made by Dean DeBlois, the co-director of the original 2010 animated version, and he’s admitted that several of the scenes are shot-for-shot recreations of his earlier film. But having one of the original creators involved – also a co-director of the original Lilo & Stitch coincidentally – feels like there’s some other kind of creative connective tissue there than just box office dollars.
But if Dreamworks are going to carbon copy the first film I’m going to repeat my first review:
Handily for a reviewer’s segue, male parenting issues are also to the fore in the animated children’s romp How to Train Your Dragon. Nerdy engineer Hiccup (Jay Baruchel, now Mason Thames) is a terrible disappointment to his father Stoick, leader of the Vikings protecting their unpromising island home from marauding dragons. After commencing a “Keep Gerard Butler Off Our Screens” campaign three weeks ago I have to say I’m feeling a little sore that he’s back yet again as the voice of Stoick, this time using his natural Scottish accent. At least I don’t have to look at him. (Editor’s note: Reader, I now do have to look at him …)
Designed as a kind of cross between Asterix and Avatar, How to Train Your Dragon works best when it is up in the air and soaring with the dragons and is less successful down on the ground. Kids will like it though, and it doesn’t require the 3D if you don’t want to pay the glasses tax.
A couple of years ago, I was commissioned by the BBC website to write an appreciation of Australian outback horror films. That article needs an update now, as Aussie horror seems to have abandoned the dusty and deserted interior for the beach. Last week it was Nicolas Cage tormented by Western Australian boofhead bullies in The Surfer and this week it’s American TV actor Hassie Harrison (Yellowstone) being tormented by psychopathic Surfer’s Paradise tourism operator Jai Courtney in Dangerous Animals.
Courtney is Tucker (first name Bruce, pointing at the all-Australianness of the film’s theme) and his serial killer methodology is to entice backpackers on to his boat for a shark cage adventure, and then feed them to the wild sharks while forcing the rest to watch.
He meets his match with Zephyr (Harrison) whose experience in the hard-scrabble world of multiple care homes gives her a survival instinct to rival the greatest ‘final girls’. She’s great but it’s Courtney who steals the film. He and writer-director Sean Byrne (The Loved Ones) have created a stronger character than most villains because he’s actually so much weaker.
I was intending to also review the new Prime Video action comedy Deep Cover – starring noted screen comedian Orlando Bloom – this week but I gave it five minutes and simply had to walk away. It’s incredible to think that the MGM name goes on this crap and that this is the studio that’s going to be responsible for the next iteration of James Bond.
My friend and colleague Glenn Kenny reviewed it for the NY Times and did see it to through to the end. His – I’m guessing – charitable review is here.
