The vision board for “Terminal” must have been incredible. It’s certainly easy to picture: the cold geometry of Stanley Kubrick married to the sleazy neons of Nicolas Winding Refn, a pair of smirking hitmen ripped from some Tarantino-flavored auteur of the month, tossed in with a Party City vision of femininity: sexy waitress, sexy nurse, quasi-demure stripper.
Like a teen’s journal, writer-director Vaughn Stein’s debut feature is a scrapbook stuffed with allusions. The fondness is clear. But the resulting compilation is self-indulgent twaddle.
Many an award-season darling sees a terrible project come out in the months right before or after Oscar night, with distributors hoping that a star’s time in the spotlight will boost the profile of an otherwise forgettable film. “Terminal” is Margot Robbie’s. In her first on-screen role since her virtuosic turn as Tonya Harding in “I, Tonya,” Robbie at least looks like she’s having fun as a Cockney-cadenced waitress-stripper-hitwoman with the apparent moral compass of an Iron Maiden.
Also Read: Margot Robbie, ABC Team Up for Anthology Series With Female Spin on Shakespearean Plays
She makes hokey, on-the-nose lines like “I have an unquenchable thirst for darkness and depravity” sound like silk sheets rubbing against each other. But this brain-dead material resists being elevated even to the level of schlocky fun.
Plaudits are due, if nothing else, to cinematographer Christopher Ross (“Trust”) and location scout Benjamin Bailey (“Show Dogs”). They give this fatuous drama its best elements: its tasteful gaudiness and its lurid, borderline-fantastical atmosphere, which could have carried the picture some ways were it not for the tinselly, discount-Martin McDonagh dialogue. It’s so bad a knockoff you can practically taste the lead.
The plot is hazy, but does take shape eventually. In her first scene, Annie, cigarette in hand, makes a deal with a priest — or just a raspy, demon-voiced man sitting in the padre’s side of the confessional. She’ll prove herself worthy of a stack of assassin’s assignments, or the man on the other side of the sin box can watch her die. Until the final five or so minutes, viewers will suffer through a similar level of narrative opacity.
Also Read: 'Mary Queen of Scots' Gets Early December Release From Focus Features
Annie flirts aggressively with two of the three men who end up at the cafe where she works, seemingly alone, in the middle of the night. A professorial weenie, Bill (Simon Pegg), is the first to arrive. Dressed like Vincent Van Gogh in a red-flecked beard and a large, woolen overcoat, he reveals that he’s terminally ill, an admission that sends Annie into a dizzy spin about all the ways he could kill himself, and all the reasons why he should. The Manic Pixie Suicide Girl act is grating, and the film’s one good line is when Annie is finally called out on it.
The sarcastic server is kinder to the younger, taller, and more handsome of the two mercenaries who stop by the cafe while awaiting instructions for their next job. They exist mostly so that Annie can flaunt her sexual power: She tells hunky Alfred (Max Irons) to stay (“I need someone to butter my buns for”) and irascible Vince (Dexter Fletcher) to shoo. Already at each other’s throats after spending the last two weeks holed up in an apartment with each other, Annie becomes the willing Yoko of their strained partnership. Mike Myers co-stars as a train station janitor, his break from semi-retirement as wasted as Goldie Hawn’s in “Snatched.”
Also Read: Cathy Yan in Early Talks to Direct Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn Movie
Most of the plot and character development in “Terminal” take the form of twists: grandiose and supremely dumb backstories that attempt to recontextualize Annie’s motivations into something resembling female righteousness. (Such last-minute reshuffling might have been more convincing if it weren’t for the gratuitous sexualization of the main character, or the fact that Robbie has the sole speaking female role in the film.)
“Terminal” gives audiences no reasons to treat it any differently than how Robbie likely will: Something to move on from.
Read original story ‘Terminal’ Film Review: Margot Robbie’s Silkiness Wasted in Polyester Movie At TheWrap...
Like a teen’s journal, writer-director Vaughn Stein’s debut feature is a scrapbook stuffed with allusions. The fondness is clear. But the resulting compilation is self-indulgent twaddle.
Many an award-season darling sees a terrible project come out in the months right before or after Oscar night, with distributors hoping that a star’s time in the spotlight will boost the profile of an otherwise forgettable film. “Terminal” is Margot Robbie’s. In her first on-screen role since her virtuosic turn as Tonya Harding in “I, Tonya,” Robbie at least looks like she’s having fun as a Cockney-cadenced waitress-stripper-hitwoman with the apparent moral compass of an Iron Maiden.
Also Read: Margot Robbie, ABC Team Up for Anthology Series With Female Spin on Shakespearean Plays
She makes hokey, on-the-nose lines like “I have an unquenchable thirst for darkness and depravity” sound like silk sheets rubbing against each other. But this brain-dead material resists being elevated even to the level of schlocky fun.
Plaudits are due, if nothing else, to cinematographer Christopher Ross (“Trust”) and location scout Benjamin Bailey (“Show Dogs”). They give this fatuous drama its best elements: its tasteful gaudiness and its lurid, borderline-fantastical atmosphere, which could have carried the picture some ways were it not for the tinselly, discount-Martin McDonagh dialogue. It’s so bad a knockoff you can practically taste the lead.
The plot is hazy, but does take shape eventually. In her first scene, Annie, cigarette in hand, makes a deal with a priest — or just a raspy, demon-voiced man sitting in the padre’s side of the confessional. She’ll prove herself worthy of a stack of assassin’s assignments, or the man on the other side of the sin box can watch her die. Until the final five or so minutes, viewers will suffer through a similar level of narrative opacity.
Also Read: 'Mary Queen of Scots' Gets Early December Release From Focus Features
Annie flirts aggressively with two of the three men who end up at the cafe where she works, seemingly alone, in the middle of the night. A professorial weenie, Bill (Simon Pegg), is the first to arrive. Dressed like Vincent Van Gogh in a red-flecked beard and a large, woolen overcoat, he reveals that he’s terminally ill, an admission that sends Annie into a dizzy spin about all the ways he could kill himself, and all the reasons why he should. The Manic Pixie Suicide Girl act is grating, and the film’s one good line is when Annie is finally called out on it.
The sarcastic server is kinder to the younger, taller, and more handsome of the two mercenaries who stop by the cafe while awaiting instructions for their next job. They exist mostly so that Annie can flaunt her sexual power: She tells hunky Alfred (Max Irons) to stay (“I need someone to butter my buns for”) and irascible Vince (Dexter Fletcher) to shoo. Already at each other’s throats after spending the last two weeks holed up in an apartment with each other, Annie becomes the willing Yoko of their strained partnership. Mike Myers co-stars as a train station janitor, his break from semi-retirement as wasted as Goldie Hawn’s in “Snatched.”
Also Read: Cathy Yan in Early Talks to Direct Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn Movie
Most of the plot and character development in “Terminal” take the form of twists: grandiose and supremely dumb backstories that attempt to recontextualize Annie’s motivations into something resembling female righteousness. (Such last-minute reshuffling might have been more convincing if it weren’t for the gratuitous sexualization of the main character, or the fact that Robbie has the sole speaking female role in the film.)
“Terminal” gives audiences no reasons to treat it any differently than how Robbie likely will: Something to move on from.
Read original story ‘Terminal’ Film Review: Margot Robbie’s Silkiness Wasted in Polyester Movie At TheWrap...
- 5/10/2018
- by Inkoo Kang
- The Wrap
Set to release on Sept. 2 from Image Comics is Jeff Lemire and Emi Lenox’s Plutona, a miniseries about a rag-tag group of five kids who bump into the dead body of a famous superhero.
“The book isn’t so much about the superhero as it is the kids who find her. It’s about how this discovery, and the decision they make, starts to affect their lives and their friendship,” said writer Lemire via email interview. “It’s a very grounded story told from these kids’ point of view.”
Lemire isn’t new to superheroes, stories focused on kids, or original creator-owned work. He has worked on books like Animal Man and Justice League United for DC Comics, Sweet Tooth for DC Comics’ Vertigo line, and Descender, an ongoing comic for Image Comics that was picked up by Sony for an upcoming film adaptation.
Lenox is best known for...
“The book isn’t so much about the superhero as it is the kids who find her. It’s about how this discovery, and the decision they make, starts to affect their lives and their friendship,” said writer Lemire via email interview. “It’s a very grounded story told from these kids’ point of view.”
Lemire isn’t new to superheroes, stories focused on kids, or original creator-owned work. He has worked on books like Animal Man and Justice League United for DC Comics, Sweet Tooth for DC Comics’ Vertigo line, and Descender, an ongoing comic for Image Comics that was picked up by Sony for an upcoming film adaptation.
Lenox is best known for...
- 8/20/2015
- by Matthew Petras
- SoundOnSight
20 year old newcomer Sally Messham, a final year student at Rada, has been cast as Jane Watkins, the daughter of exorcist Merrily, in ITV Encore’s new three-part drama Midwinter of the Spirit.
Sally (represented by Curtis Brown), will leave Rada early to take up the role alongside the double BAFTA award-winning actress Anna Maxwell-Martin who leads the cast as Merrily Watkins, a single mother who isn’t your average country vicar.
Merrily’s newly acquired training has put her on the dark side of the pulpit. She’s become one of the few women priests working as an exorcist - a job increasingly mistrusted by the modern Church and rarely talked about, even though it operates in virtually every diocese in the UK.
Merrily is deeply human in her doubts and scepticism, but her knowledge of the paranormal underworld brings her to the notice of local police who need...
Sally (represented by Curtis Brown), will leave Rada early to take up the role alongside the double BAFTA award-winning actress Anna Maxwell-Martin who leads the cast as Merrily Watkins, a single mother who isn’t your average country vicar.
Merrily’s newly acquired training has put her on the dark side of the pulpit. She’s become one of the few women priests working as an exorcist - a job increasingly mistrusted by the modern Church and rarely talked about, even though it operates in virtually every diocese in the UK.
Merrily is deeply human in her doubts and scepticism, but her knowledge of the paranormal underworld brings her to the notice of local police who need...
- 4/14/2015
- by noreply@blogger.com (ScreenTerrier)
- ScreenTerrier
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