Tag: Idris Elba

‘Three Thousand Years of Longing’ needed another wish | Cannes movie review
Tilda Swinton plays an academic who frees a Djinn (Idris Elba) from centuries-long imprisonment and is granted three wishes in Three Thousand Years of Longing.

George Miller has never made the same movie twice in his storied career and Three Thousand Years of Longing is no exception. The movie is a visual feast as it hops across millenniums to tell the story of how a Djinn (Idris Elba) found his way into the hands of a lonely academic (Tilda Swinton). Elba’s grainy baritone voice over the lush visuals that Miller renders with the same imaginative spectacle that he did Fury Road draws you in and underlines the movie’s power of storytelling theme. However, whenever the movie trails from that thread and explores that potential romance between Swinton and Elba’s characters the spell is broken. Stories have power, but stories are only as good as their ending. Three Thousand Years of Longing needed one more wish.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is about a genie—or more specifically, a Djinn—and his worst enemy: an intellectual. Many of the myths we know about the concept of a genie tell us that they’re tricksters looking to leave their hapless “master” worse off than before. In that way, they’re cautionary tales. Interestingly, the Djinn at the center of George Miller’s newest film—played by Idris Elba—does the opposite. More than anything, he wants Alithea (Tilda Swinton), the scholar traveling through Istanbul who frees him, to make the right wishes. Still, this is a cautionary tale. One of love and loneliness rather than greed.

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It’s been seven years since Australian director Miller premiered Mad Max: Fury Road at the Cannes Film Festival and reminded us why he is one of the greatest directors working today, especially in the fantasy genre. Naturally, his return to the festival was one of the most anticipated movie premieres of the year—mine included. With a blank check from the incredible critical and awards success of Fury Road, I was anticipating nothing but the most impressive world-building wrapped in a visual spectacle that has to be seen to believe. Instead, Three Thousand Years of Longing left me yearning for much more like the characters at its center.

Alithea, a dedicated and eccentric scholar, journies to foreign lands to speak about her theories of how fantastical stories in our history have been rendered obsolete by science and now relegated to the pages of comic books. However, science can’t quite explain away the visions of ghosts of history haunt her including one of King Solomon who seems a bit angry at Alithea’s presentation at a conference. After exploring Istanbul with a colleague, she comes across an odd glass bottle. Warped, lined with a swirling blue design, and, of course, sealed shut.

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When she returns to her hotel room, the bespeckled Alithea inadvertently opens the bottle while cleaning it with her electric toothbrush. A thick dark mist envelopes her hotel room to reveal an enormous Djinn, a ghostlike creature from Arabian mythology but is used interchangeably with a genie in the movie. Elba’s hulking figure and striking face coupled with prosthetic pointed ears and yellow eyes make for a striking effect. He reveals to Alithea that he’s been imprisoned for hundreds of years and that now he owes her three wishes for setting him free.

Alithea, the ever-analyzing historian that she is knows from mythology that these wishes rarely turn out well and refuses. Djinn, sent into a frenzy, cautions that if she does not make her wishes nothing good could come of it recalling how it is what caused his imprisonment for the second time. He reveals to Alithea that he has been imprisoned three times over the past three thousand years.

So begins Three Thousand Years of Longing’s ode to storytelling as Djinn recounts in poetically-written narration his journey through millennia. From the Queen of Sheba (Aamito Lagum) to a poor concubine during the age of the Ottoman Empire, Miller brings each encounter to life as vivid magical landscapes that quite literally shimmer on the screen. However, we’re not given time to luxuriate in each world. This is a story that Djinn is telling us. As with all orally passed down stories, there are gaps as it jumps from moment to moment rarely letting the emotions of the events to seep through. It’s like there’s a barrier between the storyteller and the audience—it’s why Three Thousand Years often feels cold.

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Based on B.S. Ayatt’s short story The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Three Thousand Years of Longing feels like a blank check movie in that most studios wouldn’t immediately greenlight a $60 million fantasy romance told mostly in voiced-over flashbacks. You’d expect an epic. However, the movie feels slight because of its structure—especially compared to Fury Road. Though, that slightness is a benefit to the second half of the movie, which shifts—somewhat abruptly—from epic fantasy to a quiet romance.

There are two key ingredients to make a romance work: chemistry and overcoming adversity. Unfortunately, neither work here. Not to the fault of Elba or Swinton, who as always give masterful performances. Particularly Elba who has to literally portray three thousand years of longing and trauma—something he carries on his face throughout the movie. The movie structurally doesn’t give us the chance to fall for the characters as they fall for each other as we switch back and forth between times and places. We don’t have a reason to root for Djinn and Alithea’s love story by the time the movie focuses in on it. It’s a shame since the part of the story is what would have it work. Despite Djinn’s warnings and Alithea’s logic, they still fall into the same traps that Djinn has seen for millennia. It implies that matters of the heart are often clouded because it’s our nature as humans. However, Miller is never able to consummate that theme and the story.

There’s magic to be had in Three Thousand Years of Longing. And if you know Miller’s work—Mad Max, Babe, Happy Feet, The Witches of Eastwick—you know that you’re going to see and feel it. The world he builds is nothing less than spectacle. But behind the sparkling vivid imagery is emptiness. Ironically, the movie leaves us longing for more. More character, more emotion, more humanity. What made Fury Road such a monumental achievement was its ability to consummate a genre story with deeply complex human themes. Three Thousand Years frankly fails on both accounts. Well, here’s hoping for the Furiosa movie.

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More movies, less problems
Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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May 25, 2022
‘Beast’ roars for your attention | movie review
In Beast, a doctor and his two young daughters find themselves at the wrong end of a lion’s taste for vengeance as they become trapped in the South African bush

Over the running time of Beast, wildlife biologist and animal sanctuary protector Martin (Sharlto Copley) remarks a few times that what is happening isn’t normal. That being a lion on a path of vengeance through the South African grasslands after his pride is killed by a group of poachers. Most lions will kill to eat and generally avoid humans. This one is doing the exact opposite, leaving bodies behind in his wake. Why? The movie doesn’t exactly tell us. Rather than wrapping some wild exposition about the lion being infected by radioactive waste dumped by a nearby nuclear plant, Beast spares us from the unnecessary details and delivers what we want: Man vs animal. In that way, at its core, it’s a perfect B-movie.

However, it’s more than that largely thanks to director Baltasar Kormákur and actor Idris Elba who elevate the schlocky script into a surprisingly effective survival thriller. The details we do get are that Elba’s Dr. Nate Samuels recently lost his wife who he had separated shortly before. In the wake of her death, he brings his young daughters, teenager Meredith (Iyana Halley) and preteen Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries), to her home village in South Africa where Martin still works. After a magical encounter with a pride of lions that Martin has worked with since their youth, they come upon an abandoned village that looks to be on the wrong end of a vicious lion attack. From there, the movie roars to life.

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Thanks to Kormákur’s sense for suspense, Beast rarely gives you a minute to breathe. Through a series of single-shot long takes, the movie builds suspense until inevitably the antagonistic lion roars onto the screen. And despite it being done in complete CGI, the titular beast feels dangerous. In the movie’s first long shot, the camera follows the group as they arrive at a nearby village. As we sweep around following different characters, the discovery of multiple dead bodies sets our senses ablaze. When Norah temporarily goes missing, we follow Nate through a labyrinth of branches that further disorients our senses. The shot finally cuts when we find Norah who has discovered another body. And the games begin.

Each ensuing encounter with the lion feels as impactful as the last. Elba’s bonafide movie star glow holds every frame and makes you believe the stakes—even when the beast isn’t on screen. The movie is careful not to overuse its villain, but there’s always a sense that it’s lurking within reach. That’s what makes Beast worth its lean 93 minute runtime. Even if the material isn’t Oscar-worthy, every actor and filmmaker is performing like it is.

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Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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August 18, 2022
'Cats' out of the bag, let's put them back in — movie review

A tribe of cats gathers to decide who among them deserves to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life in this adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical

Quick review: At best, Cats is an interesting exercise in the boundaries of filmmaking. At the worst, which it treads closer to, it’s a disturbing, confusing, and misguided acid trip of a musical.

It’s truly confounding that a major Hollywood studio financed a movie adaptation of the stage musical Cats. Yes, it’s considered a classic. However, it received mixed reviews at best and since then its legacy has been questionable at best. I mean, other than “Memory” can you name another song? But what makes it truly baffling is that there’s not an obvious way to adapt it other than putting people in catsuits. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, I guess?

I’ll cut to the chase. Cats is more horrifying than you’d ever imagined. The highly publicized and poured over trailer doesn’t even do justice to just how off-putting the CGI — digital fur technology if you will — is to watch. It’s truly in the deepest trench of the uncanny valley. The biggest issue is that the very realistic fur clashes with the humanoid bodies, movements, and faces of the cast of cats. In some places, it works. Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson giving one of the best performances in the film), the magic cat, comes off a little better as the cat features obscure his face at least a little. It can’t be said for the rest.

The reason I want to start my review here is that it overshadows anything good that you could derive from the movie. The musical numbers are audaciously staged and fascinating to watch. The visuals are like a trip on acid. And the cast, for all the wonkiness with the conceptualization of the cats, are going for it in every scene. However, it’s almost impossible to get past just how ridiculous everyone looks. Frankly, it’s distracting.

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It also doesn’t help that the movie doesn’t really have a plot — though, that’s carried over from the musical. Over the course of the film, we’re introduced to various cats through elaborate musical numbers that we through the eyes of Victoria (Francesca Hayward), a recently abandoned cat. We meet Munkustrap (Robbie Fairchild), the leader of the tribe, who explains that every year they gather for the Jellicle Ball where Old Deuteronomy (a wild-looking Judi Dench) chooses one cat to ascend to the Heaviside Layer.

Over the course of the night, we meet the overweight cat Bustopher Jones (James Corden), showcat Rum Tum Tugger (Jason Derulo), lazy housecat Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson), Gus the Theatre Cat (Ian McKellan), and Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson), an old and mangy cat that was once known to be the most glamorous.

In the wings is Macavity (Idris Elba), a cat with mystical powers who is so bent on being the Jellicle choice that he’s systematically taking out his competition with the help of Bombalurina (Taylor Swift) — who performs the entertaining and truly mind-boggling number “Macavity: The Mystery Cat,” which finds her drugging the other cats with catnip. You can’t make this stuff up.

Drawing inspiration from musicals is a good trend, in my opinion. Creating a successful movie musical is difficult but having strong source material is a start. The fact of the matter is that Cats doesn’t have good source material to begin with.

All this being said, the whole movie is incredibly brave. I can say without a doubt that I have never seen anything quite like it. It’s overwhelming, confusing, and inarguably bad. But was I entertained? I sure was. I could not take my eyes off the screen. I’m going to take everyone I know to see it just so we can talk about which cat should be the Jellicle cat. I’m obsessed with the fact that it exists. A cult classic in the making.

December 18, 2019