Archive for July 15, 2010
RAW: Creation – Film – 4K
Jul 15th
By Lucy Campbell
“You’ve killed God!” exclaims the earnest Thomas Huxley to an ill and burdened Charles Darwin as he enthuses of Darwin’s as-yet-unfinished ‘Origin of the Species.’ Thus begins the first real biopic of Charles Darwin, cleverly crafted in the hands of director Jon Amiel and actor Paul Bettany. Beautifully shot and recreated,
Creation speeds back and forth through time as Darwin comes to grips with the death of his daughter Annie, whilst at the same time struggling to finish his revolutionary theories. With quite a brilliant performance from Bettany, he’s well-supported by Jennifer Connolly as his deeply religious wife and Martha West as the precocious dead daughter Annie. But anyone hoping for an insight into Darwin’s theories, or how those twenty years were spent slowly deconstructing the Christian world’s entire existence will be disappointed.
This is not a film about Darwin’s theories, but about his personal life and his inner struggle between religion and truth. The few scenes of Darwin actually working seem sketchy to say the least: snippets of Darwin jotting down in a notebook, a seemingly brief encounter with a chimp and a bit of unexplained peering into a microscope. The film tends to sag a little in the middle under the considerable weight of Darwin’s family and personal life, and at its weakest when overly emotional, but through it all still keeps its course and satisfies us. Above all, Creation is a film of the power of individual thought, the repercussions of which we still feel today, and the unshakeable human desire for truth and understanding.
RAW: The Runaways – Film – 4K
Jul 15th
Reviewed By Lucy Campbell
For anybody with even the slightest of grasps of The Runaways music can probably guess that this film is a romped up biopic of Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, the infamous duo to front the all-girl rock phenomenon of the 70s. The Runaways centres heavily around the performance of the two leads; teen hype machine Kristen Stewart as Jett and child actor workhorse Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie. Luckily both actors do a fine job as the superstar teens, with Stewart in particular proving she’s made of stronger stuff than the ‘Twilight’ bamboozle. The best performance goes to Michael Shannon for his acidic, aggressive and egotistical Kim Fowley; manager dash collaborator.
Runaways has all the plot one would expect from such a biopic: the inevitable drug problems, sex, alcohol abuse, relationship meltdowns and eventual breakup, and it suffers from hovering between too sexy, offensive and dark for a teen audience and a little too tame for the real rock n roll romp it should be. Nevertheless the film looks beautiful, and the time and place have been lovingly captured by writer/director Flora Sigismondi, with the relationship between Jett and Currie as believable, tangible and not overplayed. Despite the second half, which goes on far too long and focuses on the least interesting of the two rockers (Currie, whose Dakota Fanning saucer-eyes and drug-fuelled clichés lack the passion and energy of Jett) The Runaways is still an enjoyable if un-subtle glance into the world of 70s rock n roll, and to a lesser extent the role and influence of women in a male dominated industry.
Kryztoff Rating 4K