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Anima (2019)
Favourite filmmaker and musician combine for a beautiful one-reeler
PTA is my favourite filmmaker, and his work on Amina is absolutely on par with everything I've come to love and expect from him. Thom's music changed my life (without getting corny about it), and this album is hands down his best work. It's emotive, breathtaking art from two of the absolute best in their respective fields.
Dredd (2012)
Dredd - A damn fine 3D outing.
Dredd From the gruff introductory monologue, Dredd sets up the pieces for a thrill ride that rarely lets up for the next 90 minutes. The soundtrack blares and screeches, the electronic inspired mix matching and accentuating every inspired shot that fuels this adrenalin pumped action film like a shotgun blast.
Alex Garland, an established writer with an intense background with Danny Boyle, penned the script for this comic based adaptation, and in each bass filled speech and cocky one liner, he perfectly captures the essence of one of the most brutal Judges, the titular Dredd. His character plays one of many "judges", who act as a police force in the wastelands that people now populate.
Mega City One oozes grime and grot from every rusty scrap of metal to every citizen that lives in it, but Dredd stands above all as a Godlike figure, given the ability to pass judgement on crooks crimes and punish them aptly, he makes for one hell of a protagonist, and he is the figurative Second coming to the hundreds of criminals that fill Peach Towers, where most of the film takes place.
Ma-Ma, a former prostitute turned gang member, is a drug lord that has the two important attributes of an antagonist: Ruthlessness and an intimidating presence. And with her newly manufactured drug, Slo-Mo, she begins to make monumental movements in the city to become the biggest supplier to the inhabitants of Mega City One. In a particularly grisly scene, she makes the command to have three small time crooks who were selling on her turf skinned, which is around about where you realise that this film doesn't just garnish its 18 rating, it pushes it to the limits. This display of arrogance and fear tactics does not come without its consequences though.
On her first day, rookie mutant Anderson gets to ride shotgun with Dredd. Her advantage in this film being that she has the ability to read minds, to put it mildly, but the most relieving part of her character is this: She isn't annoying. Too many films use the secondary characters as some sort of excuse to throw some eye candy at the audience, but fortunately, this film is not one of those. She's used in an intuitive fashion, not just to back up Dredd's homely demeanour with a flutter of the eye lashes and a pout of the lips, but to assist him in one of the most extreme "First day gone wrong" scenarios. She does as she's told, she doesn't act in any other fashion than the mighty Dredd would expect, and she does so very well.
The visuals in this film are perhaps the most stand out feature – from the very first chase scene where slo-mo is used down to the last, grisly one, this film is a feast for the eyes, and all the better that it's in 3D. It doesn't abuse the extra money you have to pay to see it; it makes the entire experience more entertaining. Shots fly off screen at you in slo-mo, although not before going through a nameless crook first, with blood and guts pouring out at you by the gallon, this film lives up to the brutality of its source material.
Comparisons with The Raid have already been made since the trailer debuted, but rest assured, these films are nothing alike. Dredd possesses an immediate decaying presence on the screen, with a sense of dismay and fear playing malevolently to the viewer, and creates an entirely different reality that, God knows we hope won't ever come true, but is damn engrossing to watch from through the looking glass.
The story briskly moves along, developing further than the average shoot-em-up would, subverting the viewers expectations and giving it a razor sharp edge of humour to lighten the tension. Dredd and Anderson have chemistry, and all credit due to the actors Karl Urban and Olivia Thrilby for handling their characters physically and emotionally, creating some real depth between the pair. Today is Anderson's field assessment, so there's a real teacher/student style relationship between the two that develops as far as it should. And through the ever changing spectrum of the battlefield that ranges from hand to hand combat, shoot outs galore and tactical breaches, they showcase the killer tendency and the perhaps unintentional question of political power.
There is a sense of monotony towards the second half of the film, where we see Dredd encounter a set of corrupt Judges, which plays out in a familiar fashion, Déjà Vu is still present in a few scenes, but not necessarily in a bad way. There needs to be a shining light of hope in every dreary, bland future based film, and this isn't any different. The victory tastes as sweet as one would hope, however, and with witty writing and enough visual panache to keep you occupied, it carries itself with confidence and pace.
Dredd is a rare theatrical treat that blends brutality without the banality; It creates a centre stage for some of the most outlandish, off the walls entertainment that I've seen this year, with a real taste for the cinematics and visuals, for those of you who don't mind a kilometre high apartment block of bloodshed, I hope you're ready.
(And a special mention to the composer, Paul Leonard-Morgan, for his Nine Inch Nails-esque score that makes the skull crushing and panic all the more entertaining).
Film: **** ½ / *****