Studiocanal
MOVIE REVIEW
High-Rise (2016)
J. G. Ballard’s 1975 novel “High-Rise” famously cold-opens with a hot sentence about a dead dog; Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump‘s film adaptation opts to cut directly from the urbane sophisticate Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) glancing at the animal to the spit-roasting aftermath. The elision makes for a decent cinematic effect, showing not telling; but also sounds a warning shot about conventionality, a distilling down of Ballard’s haunted prose into nothing more adventurous than good old black humor. Mr. Wheatley’s taste for unsympathetic British grotesques also starts to crop up early before running rampant across the narrative by the end, joining a handful of Ballard’s dots about the inhabitants of the island without getting much of a grip on his social science.
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Angelo Valentino/British Independent Film Awards
Danny Boyle found himself in an especially cold and wet part of London on the evening of Nov. 30 but his thoughts were clearly further afield. One would have expected him to be entirely jubilant, considering he had just picked up both the “Best British Film” and “Best Director” prizes at the British Independent Film Awards for “Slumdog Millionaire.” The film was shot on location in Mumbai which had made headlines the previous week for far more tragic reasons as real life scenes of terrorist violence were played out on its streets. Mr. Boyle was mindful that his film had gained a sense of topicality that no sane man would ever have wished for.
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