Entering T2:Trainspotting, the twenty-years later sequel to Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, a quote from the latter comes to mind. Not the ‘choose life’ one – which, anyone who’s seen the trailer will already know, gets an updated reprise in T2 (‘choose Facebook’). No, it was Diane’s ‘You’re not getting any younger’ speech: ‘The world’s changing; music’s changing; even drugs are changing…you’ve got to find something new’. Back in 1996 Trainspotting was newness epitomised. Is it unfair to want the same of the follow up? How can a sequel ever be as original as, well…the original?
You could never accuse Martin Scorsese of lacking in diversity when it comes to his body of work. Silence, Scorsese’s latest to hit the screens, follows a fowl-mouthed Wolf of Wall Street which was itself preceded by the charming (and, unusually, child-friendly) Hugo. In a way, however, Silence predates both having been first conceived back in the nineties – not long after Scorsese concluded work on his Last Temptation of Christ, a film of kindred spirit to its later successor. Silence battled much in its pilgrimage to production – appropriately surviving its own ‘hell’, albeit a development one – and must be termed another passion project of willpower for Scorsese. It’s not hard to see why. Adapted from the book of the same name by Shūsaku Endō, Silence tackles themes potent amid Scorsese’s oeuvre. Guilt, faith, Catholicism…all present and correct. I have niggles but wouldn’t hesitate to call the effort worth it.
Ah, Hollywood! The magic, the romance, the city of angels: Los Angeles. Secretly we all know that Hollywood’s not a real place. Hollywood’s a dream and creative ideal combined and it’s a world captured picture-perfectly by Damien Chazelle’s first work since his Oscar-winning Whiplash from 2014. La La Land tells the tale of aspiring starlet Mia (Emma Stone) and jazz wannabe Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) in an all singing, all dancing tribute to those cockle-warming classics of the mid-twentieth century.
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