Having just said on a previous blog that I don’t often have the attention span for movies I actually sat down to watch one last night. My boyfriend and I popped into town over the weekend and bought four dvds – all of films I’d never seen. I went into the shop planning to buy Thor Ragnarok but apparently it isn’t out until February so I browsed around instead. If the HMV in Brighton had either an LGBT+ cinema section or a decent selection of queer films that I don’t already own (preferably with happy endings) available in the general A-Z of film I probably would have come out with a very different stack of dvds. As it was I ended up with Atomic Blonde, The Dark Tower, The Dark Knight Rises, and Constantine.
Two of those (Atomic Blonde and The Dark Tower) are things I didn’t get around to watching in the cinema last year despite their having caught my attention as things I might enjoy. They were on offer so I ended up with both.
One of them (TDKR) my boyfriend chose. I’ve never got into Batman; I find his villains more interesting than I find him and, from the perspective of a casual observer, it annoys me the lengths to which they seem to have gone to make him almost unkillable (autocorrect tried to make that unlikable and I was tempted to keep it). He’s just a human in some armour with a load of money – how is he still alive!? I know there’s more to it than that but I find the character off-putting enough at the outset, that it’s hard to get deeper into his story.
The final movie (Constantine) is one which I’d been meaning to watch for a long while, mostly because I’ve based the physical appearence of the main character in the story I have yet to write on Tilda Swinton’s character (Gabriel). I can’t remember what I googled when looking for reference images to make that come about – all I know is that I saw a picture of Gabriel stood by a fireplace in their pinstriped suit, blue shirt and pink tie and I knew right away that that was how I wanted Moth to look. At the time I didn’t know who that reference image was of – there was just a slight otherworldly something about them that I loved. After further googling I was pleased to find that I’d managed to inadvertently select an image of a character who was part human and part something else, and who seemed to have been coded as gender neutral. That seemed pretty perfect given Moth’s intended background and lineage (I might go into details about this at some point but for now just take my word that it works pretty damn well).
Having seen the movie I’m left feeling a bit underwhelmed. It wasn’t as bad as I’ve heard some people say, but it definitely wasn’t a cinematic masterpiece.
I enjoyed some of the concepts and world building elements and it did make me want to look into reading some of the graphic novels, but I felt the actual plot was a bit weak. It was nice to see a film not trying to cram too much into its allotted time but this felt like a bit too little and left me feeling unsatisfied.
Having read other DC series which touch on hell I was annoyed when Lucifer showed upbecause he wasn’t as I’d expected. He was suitably creepy and demonic so I suppose that will do, particularly since I think they were working with alternative concepts to those in the Sandman/Lucifer pocket of the DC verse which is the bit I’ve read. The scenes in hell I thought were really well done – nice and disorientating with a real sense of wrongness.
There were actually a few scenes which I thought were really well executed but there were also lots which could have done with a fairly hefty re-script. I didn’t understand why Shia LaBeouf’s character felt the need to use Constantine’s first name at every available opportunity – he knows his name, he’s the only person around, you are obviously talking to him! On a more technical note, the sound quality wasn’t great, we had the volume cranked really high and I still struggled to make out what people were saying.
Overall I’d say it was an amusing way to spend a bit of time but might have been improved by a drink in hand and a little more heckling than I bothered with.
My suggestion for a Constantine drinking game:
- Drink every time somebody uses Constantine’s first name.
- Drink every time Constantine lights a cigarette.
- Drink every time Constantine is rude to somebody.
- Drink every time Constantine coughs.
- Drink whenever a demon is seen possessing somebody.
- Drink whenever there’s Latin (spoken or written).
- Drink when any religious iconography appears on screen.
Maybe only play that with soft drinks… I feel like even just 1, 2 and 7 would get you very drunk very quickly.
It made for an enjoyable evening in, and I had a peanut butter milkshake which definitely helped my mood. Now to wait and see if I manage another film anytime soon.
Writer's Plunger 