What a waste of everyone involved, MCJ, Guy Pearce, Jamie Bell - all left to spin in the wind by an appalling script, confusing editing and inert direction. I didn't think much to Jodie Turner-Smith's mannered performance in Queen & Slim but she is the only one here who makes an impact, bringing a nice steely edge to her Karen Greer. Fight scenes are poorly composed, the prison fight and set-up is lifted from an infinitely superior British film "Starred Up" watch that if you want to see how to build tension in a scene. All in all, it's just all over the place and a waste of time.
Reviews
3 Reviews
Spaceship
(2016)
Pretty to look at but empty.
17 October 2016
Caught this as LFF the other week. It's pretty awful. I think it's meant to be some revelatory insight into teen culture but there's no depth to any of the characters - they're just mouthpieces for the director's pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-philosophical stream of conscience stuff. There's not much of a plot - a girl possibly gets abducted by aliens - but the film doesn't have the guts to pursue that with any real intelligence. The writer/director introduced the film and seemed to think that the film was "really weird" and we should "embrace the strangeness", but I think there's a difference between being cleverly strange like Aronofsky or Korine to create an emotional response, versus whatever this is where the filmmaker seems to think that going on about unicorns and rainbows equates to enough depth to sustain the audiences interest. It doesn't. I will say that it looks very nice, there's a sequence at a party with day-glow neon make-up that looks great - but looking great isn't enough. The actors are interesting and some of them have real presence, it's just a shame they're forced to speak the rubbish dialogue.
Misunderstood film
27 August 2015
I think the biggest problem people have with this film is that they were expecting a regular documentary about Edwyn. Forget that. The film is designed to reflect his struggle back to health and the result is jaw-dropping. It begins fractured and barely coherent, a series of scattered images on screen - sea, sky, a grainy 16mm image of a walk with a loved one, snippets of half-remembered conversations and lyrics.
Make no mistake, this was done deliberately to try and instill in the viewer some tiny amount of the disorientation that Edwyn would have felt - a struggle to think clearly or even construct intelligible sentences. As the film progresses it becomes more linear as we follow the singer's road back to health and his determination to play live once again.
Only the most cold-hearted would not be inspired and amazed by his journey - a lovely guy hit by tragedy who lucked out with having an incredible woman by his side.
Make no mistake, this was done deliberately to try and instill in the viewer some tiny amount of the disorientation that Edwyn would have felt - a struggle to think clearly or even construct intelligible sentences. As the film progresses it becomes more linear as we follow the singer's road back to health and his determination to play live once again.
Only the most cold-hearted would not be inspired and amazed by his journey - a lovely guy hit by tragedy who lucked out with having an incredible woman by his side.
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