★★★☆☆

Three Stars

As the latest superhero blockbuster pumped out by Marvel, one could be forgiven for dismissing Captain America: The Winter Soldier as effects-heavy, action-filled, character-lacking nonsense. It is pleasantly surprising then, to find a seemingly intelligent and, most importantly, relevant piece of cinema that is raised from ‘light’ to ‘fairly weighty’ entertainment by it’s overtly political premise, not to mention a few notable performances. Sadly, the film fails to fulfil its early potential, and its latter stages are as generic as they come.

The first Captain America film introduced Chris Evans (no, not that one) as the refreshingly straight-laced Steve Rogers. Transformed from a weedy no-hoper into a strapping superhero in a radical scientific experiment in 1940s New York, he eventually thwarts the ultra-evil Nazi science division, only to be locked in ice for 70 years and reawakened in the present day. Good defeated bad. Everything was very black and white.

Here, in what seems a startlingly bold move by Marvel, he is pitted against Shield itself, the not-so-secret secret agency that has become the tiresome preoccupation of Marvel. Shield’s main man, Samuel L. Jackson’s ever present Nick Fury, has spearheaded a project to spy on the entire world and Captain America is alienated for voicing his concern (‘This isn’t freedom. This is fear.’), teaming up with The Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson, to prevent such a violation of American liberty. With the recent prominence of Edward Snowden, whistleblowers and worries over mass surveillance by intelligence agencies, one cannot but admire Marvel’s audacity and apparent relevance.

There is something endearing about Evans’ understated portrayal of the protagonist. Captain America provides a comforting alternative to the swashbuckling enigmas that are most Marvel superheroes, and his emotional depth is enhanced as a result. His reservation provides moments of genuine humour, especially when juxtaposed with the fiery Johansson. There are other commendable performances; Samuel L. Jackson is typically stylish and Robert Redford is well-cast, if perhaps ironically, as the suspiciously determined government official with something to hide.

Unfortunately, the film’s subversive premise is lost halfway through, perhaps incompatible with the film’s principal motivation, and the final acts are typical, if entertaining, CGI set-pieces. Captivating though they may be, one cannot help but wonder what may have been had the plot’s political focus been maintained throughout. That said, this is a superhero movie and the amount of mind-blowing action is more than enough to satisfy the viewer – after all, what were you expecting? The showdown, an almighty battle in the skies above Washington, DC, is exceptionally impressive. 

One wonders how long Marvel’s superhero franchise can continue on action alone though. With Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and its 136 minutes, there was a perfect opportunity to truly reach hitherto unplumbed depths. The film’s descent into typicality, particularly as a conclusion to the promisingly bold premise, leaves one weary with the realisation that there are four more of these money-spinning sequels already in the pipeline. 

Netflix’s recent decision to add Pokémon to its list of shows not only reveals a brilliant awareness about the desperate nostalgia of its main customer base (adult children, often students, with a keen desire to ironically revisit the youth they don’t really remember), but also illustrates an interesting shift in the relationship between supply and demand in the TV business. Many Netflix subscribers, including myself, have experimented with Pokémon: Indigo League – to give it its full title – and have revelled in the adventures of Ash, Misty and Brock, three overwhelmingly 2-dimensional characters in what is, if I abandon sentiment, a sub-par TV adaptation of a video game.

Who am I kidding? I got chills.

Viewers’ attitudes towards Pokémon, and indeed many other shows on Netflix, seem to have come to a point resembling George Mallory’s views on Everest. Why watch all 52 episodes of Pokémon: Indigo League as quickly as possible? Because they are there.

Netflix’s success in recent times has been largely because of the quality of their flagship TV shows. Purchasing the rights for shows such as Breaking Bad, Arrested Development and Homeland have been master-strokes, pulling in viewers and increasing popularity. This has enabled the site to produce their own creative content, which has been a huge boon for the TV industry, with original shows like Orange is the New Black and the incredible House of Cards finding an excellent home in the online streaming market.

But it is what goes on behind the flagship that is most interesting. The still somewhat limited supply of TV and film on the site means that to some extent, Netflix is able to dictate what shows or films come back into fashion. The vogue for Pokémon is entirely due to its being on Netflix.

Does this phenomenon exist elsewhere in culture? The example that springs most immediately to mind is Spotify, the music version of Netflix. Spotify’s coverage, unlike Netflix’s, is almost universal, with artists like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Tool being notable for their absence from the service. Though Spotify is far more complete than Netflix, we can see the same effect. Artists not on Spotify are quite simply not going to get as much attention as those who are. Furthermore, Spotify offers some albums to their Premium customers to stream before release, showing another way in which, like Netflix, the supply of media dictates the actions of the consumer.

The Kindle is another prime example. Many classics are available for free on Amazon’s e-reader, meaning that the first thing many people do upon buying a Kindle is to fill in the gaps in their classical bibliography. As e-readers grow in popularity, books not available in the format will – it is certain – struggle to be successful.

As these new ways of accessing cultural content grow, it is inevitable that those who do not move with the times will fall by the wayside. The retailer seems to have more power than they used to, with the ability to dictate what cultural content moves into the mainstream. But in fact this has always been the case. Radio and television schedules define what we watch, and anything on at prime time will do well purely because of its timing. The internet democratizes this process, and actually puts the consumer back in charge. Netflix is still in its infancy, but it is not difficult to imagine it arriving at the same place as Spotify, a service through which it is far easier to find alternative, obscure artists than ever before, and where each artist has an equal chance for success. On the Kindle, there are no tables in bookstores full of the new John Grisham book. Instead, numerous options to find your next read are available.

So it seems that although Netflix has the power to make a whole generation turn back to Pokémon, it also has the capacity to pander to more diverse interests than the idiot box. Just as Spotify opens up a whole new world of music completely separate from the charts and the radio and as the Kindle reignites the world’s passion for reading, so Netflix and its increasingly powerful competitors will facilitate the discovery of lost but brilliant TV and film, excite a more discerning screen audience, and strike ever more fear into the heart of an already declining live market.

★★★☆☆
Three Stars

SOHN – real name Christopher Taylor – is a British musician, but his work is immersed in the traditions and atmosphere of his home in Vienna. His debut album Tremors draws influences from the burgeoning electronic scene in the city while also drawing inspiration from British and American artists. First and foremost, he’s from the James Blake school of electronic crooning, but influences from Frank Ocean and The Weeknd are evident in his soulful musings.

Initial tracks ‘Oscillate’ and ‘Warnings’, released back in August 2012, were impressive, filled with an emotional and a musical maturity that announced SOHN as a future big-game player. Both these tracks are, disappointingly, missing from Tremors. Last year’s ‘Bloodflows’, SOHN’s first release on 4AD, raised him to a whole new level. Where previously the electro had carried his singing, lyrical proficiency now reared its head. Naturally, this huge single couldn’t stay off his debut album, but unfortunately it feels somewhat isolated.

No other track on Tremors has the same lyrical depth, nor is any other track as deftly and subtly put together. One gets the feeling that, overcome by his own brilliance with ‘Bloodflows’, SOHN decided that anything else he did would turn out equally well. But the standard has dropped. Lead single ‘Artifice’ has some excitingly energetic beats, but all of SOHN’s beauty was in his subtlety, and it’s difficult to be subtle when you’re belting out “somebody better let me know my name/before I give myself away” (as cheesy a chorus as you will find anywhere this year) over a made-for-club electro riff. In fact, ‘Artifice’ perfectly exemplifies the main problem with this album. Interesting musical threads are weaved together to form a  coherent and intriguing pattern; the tapestry becomes slightly more complex as the vocals are introduced… and then the H&M-advert-hook ruins everything. And when SOHN does slow down on ‘Paralysed’, he’s forgotten that he’s an electro artist and makes do with a plodding piano accompaniment.

Even the wonderful voice distortion on ‘Bloodflows’ and ‘Oscillate’, which had Taylor’s vocals blend into the sound of a repeating synth in a confusing and wonderful way, is overused to the point of exhaustion. This is not to say that the album is a complete disaster. Most of the tracks have something interesting about them. SOHN’s use of digital effects and distortion is still excellent, and Tremors might even make a fine instrumental album. ‘Lessons’ and ‘Bloodflows’ are still great, and title track ‘Tremors’ makes an impressive ending to the album, epic but understated. However, the lack of imagination in the lyrics and the incredible overkill of Taylor’s ‘haunting’ tone makes for a disappointing overall effect, which is a real pity considering the quality of his early work.

★☆☆☆☆
One Star

The words “Based on a True Story” have often prefixed movies to great effect. In many ways, the awareness of historical counterparts encourages directors and viewers alike to consider not only what happened but to interrogate the how and why behind the narrative, introducing a level of social psychology which made movies like Zodiac, Snowtown and The Imposter so genuinely unsettling. Unfortunately, as in the case of the The Quiet Ones, it seems that the ‘this actually happened’ marketing strategy is increasingly being used to justify lazy film-making.

The movie follows a physics professor Joseph Coupland (Jarred Harris) in 1974 who assembles a team of three students to channel the energy of a poltergeist which seems to be possessing a young girl. The film’s opening sequences at Oxford University are relatively intriguing, with Coupland espousing his theories to sceptical students in lectures before his funds are cut off entirely by the university administration. Harris’ performance begins to touch on a kind of scholarly neurosis and academic hysteria which would make for an interesting playing-field in this genre but, alas, the production company evidently ran out of money to film in Oxford and so our intrepid foursome relocate their supernatural experiments to – that’ right – an abandoned house in the country.

1974 is the same year The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released. The characters clearly didn’t make an effort to see it, otherwise they’d have thought twice about making camp in an old homestead.

And thus we have the set-up: a creepy child, playing with a creepy doll, in a creepy building – all being caught on camera by main character Brian (Sam Claflin) much of which is relayed to the audience as grainy, hand-held 8mm footage. The extent to which these same plots are recycled nowadays is infuriating, and it comes as a relief for movie-goers when surprisingly original horror movies like last year’s In Fear (A home invasion film but in a car and in real time) grace our screens.

Admittedly however, there is a voracious appetite for these films which shouldn’t necessarily be scorned. The issue with The Quiet Ones, then, doesn’t lie with unoriginality per se but with the general mind-numbing awfulness of its execution. Films like Insidious, The Woman in Black and The Conjuring were very predictable, exploiting obvious horror movie tropes at every possible turn, yet the scripts were fleshed out to be ultimately quite engaging stories. Here, the dialogue is purely expository, and the lacklustre visuals fail to be disguised under the façade of ‘found footage’.

Claflin is a one-note charisma vacuum, Kristina (Erin Richards) is the token beautiful blonde given nothing to say but placed centre stage for pubescent 15 year olds to gawp at, and even Harris (a reliably brilliant actor) struggles to make anything substantial out of his pantomime ‘mad scientist’ role. The only actor I found in any way engaging was Rory Fleck-Byrne, in that he was head-thumpingly annoying. Personally speaking, I couldn’t wait for him to be killed off by a demonic poltergeist. 

The audience I was with seemed collectively irritated. People were checking their phones and, at other moments, there were inappropriate howls of laughter, as when Kristina reaches the end of her tether with the supernatural occurrences and vows to return to Oxford, exclaiming (with no hint of irony) “We’ve already missed loads of lectures!” Every jump could be anticipated by the routine sound design (Quiet -> Silence -> 1, 2, 3 -> BANG), and the repetitive tense/reliefs induced for the viewer felt less like scares and more like an abdominal workout.

As the screening ended, chatter resumed, and the person sat behind me asked her partner about their evening’s dining options. Indeed, not one person seemed to be talking about the movie – as if The Quiet Ones had rudely interrupted their previous conversation. The film made me long for a viewing experience like last year’s Stoker – a head-scratching horror film made chilling not through artificial loud bangs but through aesthetically arresting cinematography and tantalising lead performances.

It continues to baffle me how commercially successful films like The Quiet Ones are. I suppose it’s largely due to how cheaply they can be made. But considering the inflated price of cinema tickets, I’d recommend going to see a movie where the film-maker has put in slightly more effort, and not explained away a poorly conceived narrative by ostentatiously publicising the fact it is “a true story.”

Which it’s not. Obviously.

★★★★★
Five Stars

As interview subjects go, Donald Rumsfeld is a pretty big fish. Holder of the dubious honour of having been both the youngest and oldest Defence Secretary in US history, he has presided over many of the decisions that have shaped our political landscape, perhaps most significantly the Iraq war.

The director, Errol Morris, is also a pretty big deal. His documentary ‘The Thin Blue Line’ is often called the greatest documentary of all time. About two suspects in a murder case, it famously ends with a shot of a Dictaphone playing what amounts to a confession, which Morris had managed to coax out of the guilty party 10 years after the other suspect was sentenced to life imprisonment. It is the only film in history to have altered the course of justice, resulting in the innocent man being freed.

Many came to “The Unknown Known” expecting Morris to pull off a similar feat with Rumsfeld and coax out an Iraq-based confession. But this in not the case. In an ironic twist, we hear that while he was serving in the Nixon administration, Rumsfeld was considered a persona non grata and so sent to work on foreign shores, a move that saved Rumsfeld’s career from the fallout of the Watergate scandal. Unlike Nixon in the famous post-Watergate Frost/Nixon interview, never once does Rumsfeld break down in tears or confess to any possible wrongdoing. In fact, he seems to actively enjoy justifying himself, and not once does his grinning visage betray even the slightest hint of remorse. He tells Morris “I’ll chalk that one up” with palpable glee on its face, after spieling his way out of Morris’ accusation of “all those torture memos”.

Yet, rather than be the film’s shortcoming, Morris turns Rumsfeld’s unfazed performance to his advantage. As Rumsfeld spins his self-justificatory rhetoric, Morris often intercuts imagery or footage that undermines it. At one point, Rumsfeld denies that the US public were ever led to believe Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were connected, just before cutting to footage from a 2003 press conference where Rumsfeld responds to Saddam Hussein’s claim that Iraq had no WMD’s or links with Al Qaeda with the laconic, “and Abraham Lincoln was short.”

More subtly, Morris gets Rumsfeld to read out some of the hundreds of memos, nicknamed “snowflakes”, he recorded during his lengthy career. These snowflakes are then realised in the repeated image of a snow globe containing a miniature Washington monument. Throughout, the monument remains obscured by the snowflakes, only clearing when we reach his final memo that simply states, “the blizzard is over”. This powerful image of language being used to obscure rather than clarify, to bring us further away not closer to the truth, highlights exactly what Rumsfeld and his rhetoric are trying to accomplish.

The extraordinary thing about the film is that it takes this analysis to another level, by suggesting that Rumsfeld himself is caught in this blizzard. The title “The Unknown Known” is the fourth variation on the series of “known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns” Rumsfeld described in a 2002 press conference about the lack of evidence of WMDs in Iraq.

In their original incarnation, the first three were intended to provide rhetorical support for a potential invasion. At the start of the film, Rumsfeld reads out a memo from 2004 that gives his definition of the “unknown known” as, “things that you think you know, that it turns out you did not”. This pretty clearly refers to the faulty evidence they had for the invasion, and seems like a strategy for avoiding blame. But at the end of the film, Rumsfeld admits he got his definition of “unknown known” wrong. Really, it should have been, “things that you may know, that you don’t think you know”. Another way to put this would be, ‘things you knew deep down, but had refused to consciously acknowledge’. The redefinition makes you think once again about the lack of remorse Rumsfeld displays throughout the film, whilst also reinforcing the idea that he really believes the rhetoric he’s spinning.

You come away with the conclusion that this is a man caught up in his own sophistry; in a blizzard so thick, that he will never have to properly consider the consequences of his actions or feel the guilt that would come from an honest introspection. In its own warped way, this is his genius; and in revealing this to the public, Morris has produced an astounding piece of work.