One of the cinemas at Hoyts Victoria Gardens has this perfect little oasis called the Crying Room. Maybe nine seats, soundproof walls and glass, tinny sound piped in through speakers, and the opportunity to take any small children you may have to see a film where someone’s helmet is melted onto their face. Yes, I am an amazing mother.
Prometheus is a prequel of sorts to the Alien franchise, started by Ridley Scott and continued by numerous directors in varying levels of excellence and shambles detouring into the Predator universe. Seemingly deciding there was no way forward to pursue, Ridley jumped back into his unicorn-leather director’s chair and helmed a movie set before it all. Drs Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Holloway (Devil’s Logan Marshall-Green) discover the world’s oldest cave drawings—edgy sketches by the skinny-loinclothed hipsters of 40,000 years ago—and one more piece of a puzzle they’d been collecting. Artworks from diverse cultures and times all had one thing in common: a constellation unable to be seen by the naked eye. Shaw believes she will find her maker in this place, and with a rocket full of shipmates (including a robot, a bureaucrat, some comic relief and a stack of dispensable people you won’t miss when they get splattered), funded by the Weyland Corporation they head off on the two-year journey to this planet. Will they find happiness, peace, and a flowery sunny utopia? Seems likely.
Prometheus hasn’t been receiving the most favourable of reviews, and I can’t say I adored it either. There weren’t any moments of surprise in the film. Spoiler alert: they don’t find happiness, peace, and a flowery sunny utopia. They find dark caverns and goo and aliens so like sexual organs you won’t be able to do any bonking for days. (The penis-worm with the vagina-mouth is a good example noted by my friend Brett.) People have secret agendas on the mission but the agendas of the aliens themselves are never fully explained. Apparently Mr Scott wanted to leave a lot of loose ends to keep people interested in Prometheus 2: The Flubber Returns, but by the end I just assumed he’d done what I do frequently and interrupted his own story with a tangent and interrupted that and so on until he’d forgotten what he was originally talking about. Don’t worry, Ripley, it happens to the best of us. I don’t get paid tens of million dollars to do it though. While I’m on the whiny paragraph, I was thrown by the ship Prometheus itself: it has technology that far surpasses the 8-bit technology on Alien’s mining ship—I mean, my car has more advanced technology than the Nostromo—so even taking into account the fact that the Nostromo isn’t a luxury vessel it seems likely that anything that can make it into space will have a better font. But that’s not a huge problem—it’s not early-80s-Ridley’s fault that technology became amazing, and the audience would hardly believe shitty tech on a ship when our phones alone have Google Earth on them. I was also annoyed by the characters’ lack of emotions—their expressions when discovering alien lands were about as enthusiastic as when you discover a two-dollar coin in your car when you need to pay for parking. You know, pretty pleased, but nothing you’d talk about when you got home to your spouse. Their motivations were confusing at times, with crew member Millburn (a timid Rafe Spall) freaking out at the sight of a long-dead corpse then suddenly not being concerned about reaching out to the aforementioned penis-worm (and calling it “beautiful”, I mean, ew), and the ship’s captain Janek (Idris Elba) not at all worried about leaving Millburn and tattooed redhead Fifield (an unfriendly Sean Harris) in a corpse-ridden hellhole overnight even when the storm keeping them apart only lasted long enough for an (excellent) action scene. The only character whose emotions seemed right was Weyland’s representative Vickers (Charlize Theron, stony), though I guessed her role on the ship right from the start. Most frustrating of all, a particular character undergoes some dramatic stomach surgery, limps around for a bit, then is suddenly sprinting about and flinging themselves onto ledges. I don’t care how advanced medical surgery is in eighty years...just no.
On the upside, though, I was never bored, and the effects of the ship and the aliens and space itself were marvellous (and I saw it in 2D, for the record). There are numerous scenes of dramatic tension that had me clutching at arm rests and people’s hands. The stomach surgery I discussed above was so suspenseful that I was almost climbing the soundproof walls to get to the other end of the scene. All the bad reviews in the world weren’t enough to stop me from seeing this, and the many reviews that list what I’ve discussed above, and probably some smarter or more subtle flaws as well (apparently Holloway yells “Noomi!” instead of “Ellie!” during a particularly sandy part of the movie), shouldn’t be enough to stop you either. It’s not terrible, it’s just that the errors were numerous and obvious. Just about anyone who’s seen this will feel compelled to see the sequel to figure out what the hell’s going on—me included—so it can’t be that bad. Go in with low expectations and you might be pleasantly surprised.
I give it forty out of a hundred jars of black primordial goo.
Before I’d even seen this movie, I’d seen enough previews for it that I’d planned the review in my head. I was going to draw a comic which had three stick figures and went something like: THREE GUYS HAVE A WEIRD THING HAPPEN (picture of figures next to whatever gave them powers), GET POWERS (picture of them freaking out, waving their little stick arms), EVERYTHING IS FUN (picture of them doing fun thing), OH NO IT ALL WENT HORRIBLY WRONG WHAT A SHOCK (picture of them all dead with crosses for eyes). And look, my prediction wasn’t far off, because I have been to movies more than three times in my life and I know how these things go. But instead of cursing you all with my awful drawing skills, I’m actually going to give this a proper review, because it deserves one.
Chronicle opens with high school senior Andrew (Dane DeHaan, appropriately sulky and gawky) setting up his new video camera to record his life: his physically abusive, alcoholic father; his dying mother, strapped to machines in her bed; his school life, where bullies torment him mercilessly and the only person who gives him any time is his philosophical-stoner cousin, Matt (Alex Russell). Andrew doesn’t do himself any favours by bringing a video camera to school and creeping everyone out—in fact, he’s generally unlikeable, but wholly sympathetic regardless—but it comes in handy when, at a warehouse party, he’s summoned by Matt and the school’s gosh-darn endearing Mr Popularity Steve (Michael B Jordan) to a strange hole in the ground. They go underground, the camera gets fuzzy, things are weird, then bam: they are back in the sunlight and suddenly the three of them have developed telekinetic powers. All right! Awesome! This could never go wrong!
The movie succeeds because the three do exactly what you (well, I) would do if you had telekinetic powers. There’s a nod to the Lego video game franchise as they build things with their mind; they skim rocks over rivers; they use a leaf blower to blow up the skirts of the pretty girls. (Hey, I didn’t say they were mature about it.) They start small as they learn to control their powers, and the three develop a close bond—but it doesn’t take long before a harmless prank gets dangerously close to a fatality and the three lay down some ground rules, including the most important: don’t use the powers when you’re angry. However, teenagers do angry really well, and when things go wrong, it happens on an epic scale.
The movie centres around Andrew, as the one with the camera, but all three characters feel convincing: they dress and act like normal people, are occasionally jerks and frequently humane. Matt’s squirm-worthy attempts to prove to a girl that he’s, like, cool, but, like, above being like popular and stuff are painfully endearing; Steve’s determination to be a good politician see him take on Andrew as a challenge, where they use their powers to gain him popularity in the most wholesome way possible. Even Andrew’s jerk of a father has some depth: you hate him, but you have some understanding of him. This, all told in what is essentially a found-footage film (though both Chris and I had thought of the phrase “lost-footage”, as the movie uses footage from cameras that are destroyed, CCTV footage, people’s iPads and so on) is very impressive; it even dodges the problem of Andrew never being on camera when he gets the idea to control it with his mind so it is always looking at the scene from a short distance. The special effects are faultless, which makes the movie’s many tricks—small or large—great fun. The boys never break from character, and Chronicle tracks in an hour and a half the path to villainy that George Lucas barely achieved in the first (second?) three Star Wars movies.
Chronicle doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test—there are women, but they never talk to each other—and you do occasionally want to take Andrew by the ear and get him to the counsellor’s office for a thorough discussion about emotional control and dealing with turmoil at home (and finding somewhere new to live—or a way to get his father in jail.) But on the whole, Chronicle is a surprisingly excellent film that doesn’t bother too much with the why of getting superpowers (because really, who cares?) as much as what kind of person you are, and how you deal with them when you have them.
I give it four out of five car rides to school.
Attack the Block begins with a bunch of teenage miscreants mugging a young woman named Sam (Jodie Whittaker) at knifepoint in the a London street. During the altercations, an alien shoots from the sky, whereupon the kids beat the thing to death then parade it around on a stick. At this point, you’re pretty much thinking, great, I hope this alien’s friends fly down and kick the shit out of all these kids and claim the tall flats they live in as their base. I, for one, welcomed our new alien overlords.
But then you end up following these kids through their incompetent attempts to defeat the sudden influx of aliens and, dammit, after a while you don’t want them to die after all. Led by moodily attractive teenager Moses (John Boyega), the gang come across as quite threatening to begin with until you realise that actually they are all pretty incompetent because they are, well, yoof. It’s Guy Fawkes Night, and they were out to create havoc and striving to be part of the gang led by the block’s main criminal mastermind, Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter). Just as they finally strike it lucky enough to actually be on their path to, well, jail, more aliens rain down on them and everything changes, seeing the gang on the wrong side of everyone, from the police to Hi-Hatz to an irate Sam.
Having kids be the protagonists for a horror/sci-fi movie is pretty interesting, especially when director Joe Cornish chooses to be open about the facts that not all accidental alien-hunters are going to be as skilled as the team from Predators. These are kids who don’t have guns or fighting skills, but instead heed the call to arms with baseball bats, firecrackers, kitchen knives and false bravado. When shit gets real and they finally twig that they’re out of their depth, they can’t call for help because they’ve all run out of mobile phone credit; when they speed down staircases on their pushbikes they inevitably crash into the ground because they are not bicycle parkour enthusiasts. Despite the fact that the majority live quite standard home lives, getting told off by their mothers or told to keep out of trouble by their nannas, they’re all too desperately rough to turn to the grown-ups when being chased by deadly critters. And that’s the other thing, with them being kids: even though the movie is kind of funny, it’s not a balls-out comedy which makes it all the more surprising when you realise that not all of the teenagers are going to live out the film.
The film briefly touches on the state of British youth, when Moses speculates that the aliens have been sent by the Feds to kill the African-British because “we’re not killing each other fast enough”. It’s a nice try, but the fact that the kids, apart from Moses himself, seem to have fairly happy upbringings and some kind of self-awareness of what they’re getting into, means the movie doesn’t go far enough down that path, and you’re not even sure if any of the gang have learned a lesson by the end of it.
Nice touches are the aliens themselves: neon-fanged black holes of colour with no depth, like an orang-utan shagged a yeti in a dark cupboard using a glow-in-the-dark condom with a hole in it. The idea that colour shading would be different on a different hadn’t occurred to me and I thought it was really interesting, to be honest; it makes them shadowy and creepy even when they’re in a brightly-lit flat. It isn’t laugh-a-minute funny (which, as it’s from the writer of Hot Fuzz and stars Nick Frost, I was expecting), but it’s pretty amusing and the dialogue between the kids (who are also great actors) can be pretty hilarious at times. The two nine-year-old boys looking up to the gang are probably the comedy relief, flinging around tough phrases in high-pitched voices. It passes the Bechdel Test and the women in it—Sam, an elderly neighbour, and the girls the gang are all interested in—are pretty kick-ass, either physically or verbally.
Nick Frost’s high billing probably has to do with his star power more than his subdued role as a stoner in the only “safe house” in the building, though he and befringed try-hard Brewis (Luke Treadaway) smoke their way through some fairly funny moments. It was a fun movie that somehow missed a vital point with me, though I can’t think exactly what; I’d recommend it happily, even though it wasn’t quite cranked up all the way on either the funny, poignant, sci-fi or horror dials.
I give Attack the Block seven out of ten rows of glowing teeth. Because rows of teeth are SCARY.
In Time has a good idea behind it: everyone’s now genetically engineered to age only until 25, when they then have one more year of life they can add to only through hard work (or robbery or theft). The poor, like Will Salas (Justin Timberlake, shorn) live in a ghetto in one timezone, scrimping for every minute and trying not to be robbed by gangsters like Fortis (Alex Pettyfer, rough) and supporting his mother (Olivia Wilde, are you kidding? So hard to get behind this idea.) However, just over in another timezone, you have people with more time than they know what to do with, including businessman Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser, perfect) and his daughter Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried, not blonde.) What happens if someone like young Will gets pissy enough—and lucky enough, thanks to an unexpectedly timely (haha oh god there are many time puns to be had here) donation, to try and level the playing field?
It’s an interesting concept ruined once you try to think about it longer than thirty seconds. It’s an allegory for the power money has over people: after all, if you can’t afford shelter, food, or medical care, what hope do you have? And in this current economic climate, it’s true that few people hold most of the money just because they’re horrible examples of humanity. And it’s a pretty fun movie on a very base level, with a man hell-bent on revenge, a beautiful young woman who can’t help but be attracted to a man from the wrong side of the tracks with superior morals, an oily bad guy, some horrible thieves with cultured accents and a (time)cop who just wants to uphold the law, no matter who’s breaking it. But ultimately, it fails, because:
1) They never explain why society evolved like it did. I’m happy to take leaps of faith, but you have to give me something.
2) There are so many corny time/money jokes, it’s like someone as cheesy as me wrote the damn thing.
3) Why does everyone stop aging at 25?
4) Who would agree to have their child implanted with an under-the-skin digital clock that has a timer?
5) Cillian Murphy, while awesome, cannot pass as twenty-five.
6) Why does a civilisation advanced enough to be able to pass time through skin contact not have any other technological advances apart from a CCTV system that conveniently follows no one but important characters?
7) Why does everyone drive 70s-noir muscle cars like they’re in Mad Max?
8) Honestly, it is just really, really impossible to ever believe that a society would turn out this way, even being as pessimistic as I can muster.
9) You only ever see one evil fat cat in Kartheiser’s Philippe—does no one actually rule this world, or the countries, or the timezones? Is no one actually in charge?
10) And seriously, why the hell is everyone in this world skinny? This just makes no sense at all.
11) The future doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test.
12) How does it all WORK??
On the upside, there’s some good casting (Alex Pettyfer and Vincent Kartheiser are stand-outs), it trundles along nicely, and the Robin Hood aspect of Will and Sylvia’s criminal spree is something you can really get behind. It really has to be said that having everyone’s timers on the verge of running out half every second scene makes for some seriously intense viewing: anyone can die, at any time.
In Time isn’t the worst thing you could spend your afternoon watching, but if you really want something juicy this week, go see Drive.
I give it twelve out of twenty-five years.
When I first saw the preview for this Hugh Jackman robot fighting movie I was so underwhelmed that it was possible for a while I was covered in all the whelming in the world. But as good films are still thin on the ground at the moment, and the last thing I’d seen was massively depressing The Whistleblower (pro tip: do not see a movie about Bosnian sex trafficking as your anniversary date) so I was ready for something stupid. The big surprise was, however, that Real Steel isn’t actually that stupid, and when you readjust your preconceptions of the film, it’s actually quite smart and a hell of a good time.
It’s 2020 and robot fighting has superseded human boxing (hooray! I knew the future would be good for something), and Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman, unexpectedly jerky) is a total asshole who wrangles said robots for a living. He isn’t actually that good at it, and owes money to boxing promoters all over America, and is on the run from yet another one—the film’s cowboy-hatted villain Ricky (Kevin Durand, slimy)—when he gets a life-altering piece of news: his ex-girlfriend is dead, and their son Max (Dakota Goyo, awesome), who he abandoned years before, is now is his care. While trawling for robot parts, Max—after a heartstopping accident—finds an retro (read: 2014-era) sparring bot named Atom in the mud and digs it out with his bare hands, and is then determined to put him in the ring and show his dad that he has the nous to win. Will Charlie be able to stop being an asshole long enough to turn his life around? Will he stop ruining the lives of those who care for him, including old pal and robot mechanic/boxing gym owner Bailey (Evangeline Lilly, wise and hot)? It seems obvious, but actually Charlie is such a horrible person for the first half of the film that you really doubt it, and don’t even want him to get custody over Max’s rich aunt Debra (Hope Davis).
The movie is basically a kids’ fantasy: robots, fighting, a dad who takes you on the road to grungy underground fights, lots of money, hamburgers for dinner. So when I went in thinking it was a typical blockbuster, it did seem a little cheesy in parts, until Chris whispered, “This is basically a kids’ movie.” And it’s true. Like the equally fun Super 8, it’s the story of the kid’s troubles almost more than the adult’s—it’s devastating as Max tries desperately to forge an emotional bond with the robot that he is lacking in his own life—and follows a plotline where the kid is pretty much smarter and more savvy than all the adults at just about anything, including building a championship-quality robot out of dumpster parts. Real Steel, however, succeeds because of these childlike touches rather than in spite of them, and means you’re much more willing to dismiss plot holes and strange moments (why are more people not using these old robots if they are so damn excellent? Why does literally no one else ever turn up at Bailey’s gym? Also, isn’t it totally creepy when Charlie sneaks into Bailey’s bedroom at night? etc etc), because kids don’t always care about such stuff, and maybe adults shouldn’t either. At the risk of sounding like a prude, it’s actually nice to see a film where someone drives 1200 miles just for a kiss, women can be smart instead of nude and where blood is actually a very rare sight. It means you could take your twelve-year-old nephew as well as your eighty-year-old grandpa and everyone would have fun, though the word “shit” is said maybe three times if that’s something you’re concerned about.
The acting is top-notch—Jackman is a truly horrible person but still appealing because he’s basically the world’s favourite person; Dakota Goyo is someone you may literally cheer for (I sure as hell did) and Evangeline Lilly is a bit weepy, as women typically are in movies (but as a habitual weeper I can totally relate—I mean, I cried in a hospital ad showing before the movie today), but is also tough and smart. The special effects are great, the robots utterly convincing in the presence of the humans; the sets are huge and fun—glitzy arenas, jungle-based underground fights populated by future-punks (still wearing Ramones t-shirts), rodeo-style Texas fights with a bull. The last of those was the only thing I can really say I didn’t enjoy—of course the bull was CGI in most parts (assuming bulls aren’t good at dealing with green-screen acting) but pitting an animal against a hunk of metal still made me uncomfortable and it was horrible when it got thrown around. (Vague spoiler: the bull wins that fight, but still.) The dance scene where Atom shadows Max’s moves should suck but is actually quite hilarious. The robotic rival/final boss Zeus is huge, terrifying and smashes lesser robots instantly, all while being commanded by enigmatic maker Tak Mashido (Karl Yune, moody) and icy owner Farra Lemkova (Olga Fonda, tight ponytailed). It doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, but the movie’s full of women who are perfectly capable of doing their own thing, even including a bunch of little girls at the start who give Charlie attitude when he richly deserves it.
Top effort to director Shawn Levy for making me care about robots without actually giving them any personality. It probably has to do with Atom representing all of the Kanters’ hopes and dreams, and all behind a sad little stitched-together mesh face and in a future that looks pretty much exactly the same as right now. I don’t want them to make a sequel, but if they do, I’d see it. I give Real Steel four out of five punches in the nuts.
Much like Snakes on a Plane, it is physically impossible to stay away from a movie with a title so tempting. Cowboys? And aliens? In the one movie? Grab the smelling salts, I’m feeling woozy. How could a movie called Cowboys and Aliens not be ridiculous fun?
Well, apparently the equation to make it not ridiculously fun is this: Jon Favreau + Daniel Craig + Harrison Ford = No. Which is surprising, as Favreau directed the stellar Iron Man (though is tarnished by Iron Man 2), Daniel Craig made an excellent Bond, and Harrison Ford is [insert your favourite character of his here]. And clearly the people in the cinema who applauded at the end of the film thought it was great. I did not. Actually, by the end, I was so busy crossing my arms and sighing theatrically that I can’t believe I wasn’t punched in the face by an audience member.
The movie begins in dusty silence as Jake Lonergan (Craig) wakes up in some dirt and has no idea who he is, or why he has a mysterious metallic wristband on. After an altercation with some no-good-criminals he winds up in a single-road town with the vital elements (saloon, jail, porches to lean against) and gets into an altercation with a bratty kid called Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano), who holds the town in fear as his father Woodrow (Ford) is the only reason the town still survives. After another altercation with wide-eyed Ella (Olivia Wilde), Lonergan is about to get smacked down by protective father Woodrow when aliens come and ruin what could have been an interesting Western and steal half the townsfolk. Banding together despite their differences, Lonergan and Dolarhyde Snr. go to rescue everyone, followed by town doctor Doc (Sam Rockwell), preacher Meacham (Clancy Brown), Dolarhyde’s Native American sidekick Nat (Adam Beach), Ella, a kid, a dog, and some other people who are totally irrelevant. Fighting with aliens ensues, as does fighting with some bad cowboys and a band of Native Americans. Somehow, it’s still not interesting.
I have a lot of problems with this movie; so many, I can’t even really think of good parts. Wait, I know: I jumped twice at surprise alien appearances. It did a good job of feeling very 1873. (I assume.) That’s about all I can say on the positive side though. The score was nonexistent; sure, great movies don’t need false soundtracks to move them along, but this isn’t a great movie. It needed a crescendo for victorious moments to bring some emotion to the piece. The lighting, while accurate, meant that scenes shot at night (ie when the aliens most love to attack) were almost impossible to see and gave me a headache within about fifteen minutes. (Said headache may have contributed to my eventual grumpiness.)
As far as gender politics go, the movie doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, and the three women actually in the movie are either a) a whore b) naked or c) kidnapped. As far as political correctness goes, our major interaction with a Native American community has them initially appearing as terrifying savages happy to throw a now-deceased main character into a fire; shortly afterwards, they become mystical and wise healers. It dehumanises the culture and makes you think they must be bored when they don’t have white people to attack; it just made me want to cringe.
The cast, while serviceable, were not stretched in the least—Harrison Ford is old and cranky, along with being a racist, violent asshole who lets a whole town suffer for his financial gain; Daniel Craig is as reserved, quietly violent and shirtless as he is as Bond; Paul Dano is another annoying Western caricature (though his turn in There Will Be Blood is, of course, brilliant); Olivia Wilde is as wide-eyed and other-ish as she was in Tron. Actually, Olivia Wilde’s character Ella annoyed me most in this film, I think: she stood around being frustratingly cryptic when it was clear she knew something. Instead of saying, “Right, guys, here’s what I know,” she just hung around being obtuse until the moment came—post many loved characters dying—when she felt like sharing her story.
The script was dull and predictable; no one was fun or funny, bar Rockwell’s Doc who made one flimsy joke that fell flat even on my accompanying Saturday night drunk crowd; the directing wasn’t even that great, noted by both the ridiculous pacing of the ending (with accompanying pretend danger) and one scene full of every character’s inital reaction shot to the aliens showed. Which is another point—there wasn’t nearly enough discussion about what the hell was happening, from a world where aliens were so far removed that not even ET had screened on television yet. The lack of discussion about aliens was about as surprising as the lack of horror of everyone who had just had a loved one snatched by demons. Were there no emotions in the past? Was sadness not mined until the 1890s?
The trouble is that a movie called Cowboys and Aliens calls to mind something much more fun than what was ultimately made. It takes itself far too seriously without having any stand-out parts to make it work as a serious film. It’s bleak, dark, completely boring and full of characters so horrible you honestly couldn’t care if aliens killed everyone but the kid and the dog.
I give it one out of four gross alien arms.
While I can only remember spending my school summer holidays watching Spaceballs on repeat and eating peanut butter out of the jar, in Super 8 a bunch of clearly more motivated kids decide to spend their summer holidays shooting a zombie movie. Among them is Joe Lamb (an excellent Joel Courtney), in charge of makeup effects, who lost his mother in an industrial accident four months earlier. He and his father’s relationship has suffered heavily, most heartbreakingly displayed in a moment when dad Jackson (Kyle Chandler) sells him on the idea of spending summer at a baseball camp by saying “it’s best for both of us”. Before the idea takes hold, the group of friends sneak out late one night to film a midnight scene by a train line. Accompanying them is the only person with access to a car—Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning), whose first scene is amazingly snippy but who Joe is besotted with regardless. As they start filming, a train comes along in the background, and all hell breaks loose.
The train crash scene was incredible. I love a good smashy disaster spectacle on film—only pretend ones, though—and this blows most other such scenes out of the water. Carriages go flying, debris everywhere, fireballs—you name it, it happens. And it keeps happening. It takes your ability to believe in the physics of a crash and stretches it as thin as possible. It is one of the most entertaining ten minutes I’ve ever had in cinema, and though the movie had been fine up until that point, that was when the audience gasped at each other in shock and I blustered about it happily in my seat. In the aftermath of the crash, the story proper is set up: something mysterious and alive was in one of those carriages, and the Spielberg/Abrams camp is happy to scare the pants off you from here on in.
As the town deals with the crash and the subsequent drama of both the army’s arrival and the fallout from the accident, Joe and his friends have their own problems—jealousy, grief, blossoming friendship and the need of movie director Charles (Riley Griffiths, shouty and excellent) to finish the film. Shit gets real pretty quickly, and our characters are in actual danger, making it a tense and gripping film that has typical Spielberg humour to lighten the mood. And I don’t begrudge him that for a second; it’s bloodier and the kids swear like troopers, but otherwise, it’s got a real Goonies feel to it; fun, scary, everything a kid could want—though I’d be hesitant recommending it to anyone under the age of twelve or so.
The acting is perfect, and the kids—some of who have never acted in film before—will make you weep for them and laugh with them. The film-within-a-film’s lead actor Martin (Gabriel Basso) barfs at any level of distress; explosion effects master Carey (Ryan Lee) is a slightly alarming little pyromaniac; Preston (Zach Mills) designs sets and is a terrible extra. You’ll love them all—apart from Alice’s guilt-ridden father Louis (Ron Eldard), none of the humans are really a grey area as far as how you want them to see out the movie. The army is made up of jerks. The townspeople are good. And with a mysterious creature on the loose, someone’s going to get attacked.
The scares were so neatly placed that I never expected them; one particular bus scene had me so surprised that I knocked Chris’s Pepsi over in my terrified flail. One guy behind me screamed in an earlier moment of shock. With these moments of alarm coupled with jokey characters and a pace that never stops being affecting in some way, Super 8 is almost a perfect movie.
It isn’t, though: the creature itself is a grey area emotionally and has a frustrating ending; Alice’s dad Louis seems to have more backstory with Joe’s family than is properly exposed; a particularly magnetic (this is a terrible pun) scene at the end is laboured and pointless; a joke about a kid listening to this new thing called a “Walkman” is forced and elicited nothing but groans from the audience. But no movie is flawless, and it was such a fantastic movie overall that a few people even applauded as the credits rolled. And you should, of course, stay for the credits.
Super 8 is a wonderful, instant-classic type movie; it gives me hope for J J Abrams (because let’s face it, Cloverfield was pretty average) and reminded me why Steven Spielberg is the kind of guy who you want to hug and thank for making childhood seem much more fun than it actually is. For the first time in a long time, I am contemplating seeing a movie at the cinema twice. This time I’ll make sure we take drinks that have screw-top lids so no one needs to find themselves covered in ice just because I can’t control my arms.
There really aren’t enough movies about aliens coming to earth that aren’t nightmarish scenarios, like everything bar Hollywood getting destroyed in Battle: Los Angeles, or Keanu Reeves having to be emotional in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Of course, all the nice-alien ones are all comedies, because it’s tricky to take seriously, right? And hey, I’m no scientist—for all I know, electricity is still made by catching lightning with your kites—but my opinion is that it’s a bit self-absorbed to think that we’re the only living critters on this great expanse called the Universe. And I’ll always be happy thinking that any close encounters would be more likely to produce laughs than terror.
In Paul, nerdy British pals Graeme and Clive (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, stretching their abilities) take off on a UFO-themed road trip across America, hiring an RV and stopping at all the premier sites—the Black Mailbox, Area 51, Roswell, and so on. Despite their open minds, it still comes as a bit of a surprise when they happen upon Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen, so casually he possibly recorded his voice sitting in a beanbag in front of his tv), a green, big-headed alien driving poorly and at speed to get away from the people who are trying to kill him—and who is aiming to get back home. With his car smashed, Paul hitches a ride with our heroes, and they belt away from agent Zoil (Jason Bateman, coolly terrifying) and his bumbling subordinates, Haggard and O’Reilly (Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio, respectively), and even manage to pick up a pretty lady when they rent RV space from religious zealot Ruth (Kristen Wiig) and then kind of kidnap her.
As a proud owner of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz on DVD, I did a little dance when I heard about Paul. Comedies are something I’m shamelessly and vocally thrilled about watching and I was sad that I missed its opening weekend by being overseas. (I know, I know. You feel terrible for me, don’t you?) I finally made it on the weekend, prepared and happy, but honestly—I was disappointed. It wasn’t as consistently funny as their other films, and getting from point A to B did occasionally cause the movie to suffer from dead time. The addition of certain people for the sake of cameos—Jane Lynch’s waitress for one—seemed to serve no other purpose than to have everyone in the audience hiss “Glee!” at each other. Graeme and Clive make some dick moves, like crashing into people’s cars and kidnapping an unconscious woman; they also didn’t have much of a background to work with apart from Clive being an aspiring author and Graeme drawing pictures. What are their home lives like? Are they in the US because they’re skipping child support or murder charges back in England? Despite being infatuated with Pegg and Frost personally, I couldn’t quite bring myself to get attached to them in Paul. Moments of tension arise, like when Clive confesses the reasons behind his anger to Paul, but then everything is defused and the movie goes back to its slow burn.
Of course it is a comedy, and they are talented writers, so I’d be wrong to imply there weren’t some pretty great laughs in Paul. While Seth Rogen’s weed-soaked slacker schtick is a bit tired, Paul himself is such an amicable dude you’re invested in seeing him return home. The realisation of the extent of Paul’s fame—the reason he looks like all the alien pictures around is because they look like him—is good fun, including an amusing phone call conversation with a certain famous director. Ruth’s turnaround from hardcore Christian to wide-eyed believer involves her getting up to all the things she missed before, including cursing at everyone in sight. And like in their other movies, Pegg and Frost do inspire a kind of cosy, comforting hilarity because they’re such everyday flawed and entertaining people who keep getting into comedic scrapes that happen to get caught on camera. Discovering who Paul’s nemesis The Big Guy is, and the final scenes of the movie, are both clichéd and unpredictable, cheesy and perfect. And as Clive, Frost, who can sometimes in these movies be that kind of pain in the arse friend that’s good for an occasional laugh but you wouldn’t actually want to introduce to that attractive potential spouse, steps up and makes the two heroes finally on par when it comes to likeability. Wouldn’t mind seeing Nick Frost be the one who gets the girl for once, though.
In summary: go in with less fangirl hope than I did, and it would Meet or possibly Exceed Expectations, but as it stands, it’s Below Expectations. That still makes it a good movie, because I was aiming high, but it can be slow in points. While I can’t fault Greg Mottola’s directing, I can’t help but wonder if usual Pegg/Frost cohort Edgar Wright would have added that hyperactive excitement and extra edge that those boys deserve. Extra points go to Frost’s long hair, but points are taken off for Pegg’s. And one star extra for making an alien movie—because, frankly, there should be more, and now I’m compelled to go have a Mac and Me/Explorers movie night and sigh theatrically about my childhood.
So if you’ve noticed a lack of shouting from me on your Google Reader feed lately, it’s because I’ve been away – to Vancouver, Yellowknife (it’s in Northern Canada, far enough that I got to see the Northern Lights), New York City and Toronto. It was a blast, and yes, I’d love to be on holiday for eternity, but I’m pretty happy with my life (and that includes you, faithful reader) so I’m just as stoked to be home. And you’ll be pleased to know that I didn’t forget my sworn oath to bleat about movies to the sighing masses, and I watched some movies on the plane (Yes Man: perfectly adequate and Zooey Deschanel is a doll; Gulliver’s Travels: funnier than expected though seriously Jack Black is always so reprehensible, am I right?; The Tourist: not actually the worst movie ever, but I picked the twist and Johnny Depp looks like he has a tiny little face next to Angelina) and I even went to see a flick in NYC. Before I go on about the film, let me say that the cinematic experience itself was a bit of a surprise: while I could still have the popcorn there (alert: buttered popcorn never has actual butter) the floor sloped up, not down, which was a bit distracting, and the aisle was in the middle instead of along the sides, which meant instead of sitting in the middle of the row, aka the whole POINT, I had to sit TWO CHAIRS TO THE SIDE. I know, I know. America, right? Totally backwards.
Source Code is the newest movie directed by Duncan Jones, the genius behind mind-bend Moon. In it, Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal, apparently pronounced Jill-en-hall for those who, like me, are perpetually worried about saying it wrong) wakes up on a train to find a beautiful girl named Christina (Michelle Monaghan) having a conversation with him that he doesn’t understand. After stumbling about, angry and confused, the train explodes and he wakes up again—this time strapped in a chamber and understandably freaking out. He is a military pilot, trying to figure out what happened to the crew he last remembers flying with, but Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), the rushed officer on the other end of his audio feed, is in a hurry to get him back on that train. Because someone blew it up, and there is going to be yet another attack, and the only way to fix it is to get into the mind of someone who died on that train, and figure out who planted the bomb. The Source Code is a system that will let you back into the last eight minutes of someone’s life, and Colter is the right person for the job, and now under command to figure out what happened. But as the minutes tick over and he keeps getting blown up and becomes distracted, by Christina’s loveliness, from his arguably more important task of saving an entire city, he wonders if there’s a way he can change not only the future, but the past, too.
Source Code is just as flat-out great as Moon; it’s the kind of movie you’ll leave feeling glad you’ve been at the cinema. It’s well-shot, beautifully acted, perfectly paced, and an interesting idea, even if you’re like me and your eyes glaze over as soon as science harder than Mentos + Diet Coke = BAM is involved. Despite the fact that Colter has only about fifteen total minutes of conversation with Christina, you want them to shack up. The tension is high not only because the fate of Chicago is in Colter’s hands, but because we—and Colter himself—are kept in the dark about certain aspects of this investigation, so in a panic are the military hoping to catch the bomber in time. Goodwin, and the limping Dr Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), don’t have time for elaborate exposition, so just as something is unveiled, we’re back on a train with eight minutes left. And finding a bomber on a train full of suspicious people and jerks is just about as hard as you’d imagine.
Now I’d be cautious of reading many reviews for this movie, not just because my opinion is the only important one (which it totally is) but because I actually had a fairly crucial plot point spoilered for me a few weeks ago, which they (I can’t quite remember who) threw so casually into the review I assumed it was known from the start, but it really was not at all. The movie can get quite mind-bending at times, too, as is to be expected once quantum physics get involved, so I could be partially grateful for having that one thing ruined so I knew what was going on for once instead of being too confused to finish my popcorn (a dire situation.) And look, you do have to have a certain level of faith in a movie that doesn’t really explain how you can really get into someone’s mind eight minutes before they die. I understand the concept of parallel universes with different outcomes, but at the end, you may have a few questions the movie didn’t quite answer. But then, you might have not been an English student like me who spent all of Science drawing penises in the margins of her textbook, and maybe it will all be clear. Along with the more physics-based quandaries I had, I also wondered why there was no mention of, you know, actual police work involved in finding out about the bomber. Was this really the only plan the government had? Was no one checking security footage? And the ending needed more sirens. Etc etc. It’s okay though; most movies give me questions that really are only asked by pedantic people like myself, and Source Code left me with a general feel of goodwill so I can’t really criticise it.
Gyllenhaal does a fine job channelling a more Jarhead role than a Prince of Persia one, and Monaghan, despite trying to pass as twenty-eight in this film (she looks amazing, but thirty-five), is as sweet and funny as you could want. The small amount of peripheral characters on the train (college students, comedians, nurses, all who have interactions with Colter over the course of the movie that range from scary to funny) and outside (the military, and Colter’s estranged father) give the movie some extra emotion: more people whose outcomes you care about. Whatever Duncan Jones does next, I’m sure whoever his father is will be proud.
In summary: Exceeds Expectations. A great film, much fun to be had, kind of smart enough to make you feel like your brain is working while blockbustery enough to just be entertaining. I mean, avoid seeing it in America if you possibly can (I personally recommend Hoyts Victoria Gardens, but that’s just me.) It’s so good you should tell your other parallel selves to see it too. Then you can all leave yourself emails discussing it, right? Augh, I broke my brain again.
At the beginning of Rango, a few owls kicking around in mariachi gear and wielding instruments start singing laments to our lizardy hero, who, they declare, will inevitably die. It’s a bit confronting for a kids movie, and just to go off on a small and not really movie-ruining spoiler, isn’t true: by the end, they confess they meant it in the we’ll-all-die-eventually kind of way. At the beginning of Limitless, Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is standing in a dapper suit on the edge of a building’s balcony about to fling himself off and pondering what happened to get him to this point. And then we go back to the start of the story and, in a small but not really movie-ruining spoiler, when we get back to him on the edge of his balcony, he changes his mind—it’s not the end of the movie at that point and there’s still plenty of danger to follow, in case you were wondering. But honestly, what is it with movies at the moment where they feel the need to signpost the fact that there is a threat to the main character? Of course there is going to be some kind of drama, that is the whole point of films. But all these flicks where we’re supposed to assume the main character dies, only to have them not actually be dead—it’s frustrating. No, of course I didn’t want Rango to die. (Note I am less vehement about Bradley Cooper.) But just stop it, film industry, okay? We’re perfectly capable of sitting through the start of a movie knowing there’s action to come, and we don’t need it pointed out. That’s what ads are for and frankly, we’ve already paid for our tickets at that point, haven’t we?
With that rant over, now to get into Limitless proper. If you’ve ever heard the old trope about how we only use 20% of our brain and the other 80% is just lying around letting us knock over glasses of water because we’re uncoordinated, this plotline may be of interest. Struggling writer Eddie is moping about with no motivation and a ponytail (that’s how you know he’s downtrodden, apaprently), and has been dumped by his straightlaced girlfriend Lindy (soon to be Sucker Punched Abbie Cornish). At this low point, he meets up with his ex-brother-in-law Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), who used to deal drugs in his past and has now come up in the world, so to speak—the drugs he now peddles are worth $800 a pop. Against his better judgement, he accepts a single pill from Vernon—and suddenly that other 80% of his brain is firing on all cylinders. And one pill—you’ll be shocked at this—just ain’t enough. Despite the minor blip in the radar that is Vernon turning up in the next scene with a bullet to the head, Eddie secures a stack of pills and then becomes a kind of SuperEddie, all-round genius, social networker, lady puller and stockmarket genius—all of which happens, obviously, only after he loses the ponytail and gets a nice suave haircut. But such a fabulous drug doesn’t come without its consequences, and along with a loan shark and a creepy stalker, the awesome solution starts to screw with his sanity.
Limitless is actually pretty good. What couldn’t be entertaining about seeing someone know everything, learn languages in hours, take over the stockmarket and have photographic recall of everything in his past that he has ever seen, even briefly? It taps into everyone’s dream of what you could achieve if all your brainspace wasn’t taken up by useless facts like Hey There’s That Guy From The Bourne Supremacy etc.
Bradley Cooper, king of Alpha Male roles, barely convinces at the start when Eddie is a slouchy deadbeat, but (gasp) does wonderfully as a smooth operator when high, and then alarms completely with his third haircut. Abbie Cornish is fairly restrained as Eddie’s staid love interest, but it makes for a convincing and interesting scene later on when she refuses the drug despite knowing what it could do for her. Robert De Niro turns up as finance wrangler Carl Van Loon, keen on Eddie’s newfound stock knowledge and his insight on a merger with another company. Rounding out the major players is professional lowered brow Andrew Howard as Gennady, the man who lent Eddie a hundred grand when he was starting out and now wants in on the altered reality.
It’s exciting, every new situation doused in a hearty amount of pop culture—see Eddie’s fight scene, his talents gathered from television and Bruce Lee flicks—and pretty non-stop entertainment-wise. As the scope of the drug’s hold becomes clear, and the unnerving problems arise, you are nervous for Eddie and his tenuous grip on reality. Good sound, great action, cool idea—it’s what action movies are supposed to be.
In summary: Meets Expectations. It doesn’t exceed them because it is the right kind of entertainment from a blockbuster action film, but still has its flaws—the finance stuff does dull the excitement maybe a touch, even though you see why he’s doing it. The movie then has the monetary concerns of Inside Job plus the skewed-reality thrills of The Adjustment Bureau, a fact that maybe only I see because they’re two of the more recent movies I’ve seen. Actually, coupled with the similar intro of Rango, maybe there are just no new movie ideas. Anyway, there is also a frustratingly unsolved crime and a sense at the end that you’re not sure whether Eddie is a poor schmuck caught up in things beyond his control or an A-grade asshole straight out of The Hangover, which, god forbid, is about to spout a sequel. Still, there are some genuinely nifty moments in it, one involving a pool of blood that made the whole audience squirm (you’ll know it when you see it), and it sure holds you in thrall. Anyway, everyone should have to go see a film directed by a guy called Neil Burger, just to stick it to the people who probably bullied him at school.
Despite initial reservations, about fifteen minutes into this movie I turned to Chris and said, “I am enjoying this movie.”
Half an hour later I whispered to him, “No, I’m really enjoying this movie.”
And by the end, a big happy smile on my face, I declared to everyone within yelling distance: “WHAT A GREAT MOVIE!” and then attacked the poor cinema attendant with my full-force Good Movie Beam and actually, cheesily, thanked him.
The Adjustment Bureau. The Bourne-type posters, with ex-Bourne Matt Damon hanging onto Emily Blunt’s hand as they are mid-run, make you think it’s going to be some sock-em smackdown movie. Instead, it has much less bloodthirsty action than you’d expect and more talking and romance, yet despite that midly depressing description, still manages to be completely entertaining. Damon is David Norris, running for the New York senate, and about to blitz the election with a huge lead. After a picture is leaked of him after an unfortunate mooning incident, he is in a bathroom preparing his losing speech when he discovers a beautiful young ballet dancer, Elise Sellas (Blunt), hiding from security in one of the toilets. One hypercharged conversation later, they are making out on the sinks and thus their relationship begins.
Fate seems to have brought them together, especially when he meets her on a bus again the next day, but in reality fate is a team of guys in hats who do their best to keep the world on the correct path. This is the Adjustment Bureau, who know that Elise and David must be kept apart and do everything in their power to manipulate their relationship. While they sneak mysteriously around in their fancy headgear, freezing time and fixing people’s thoughts, our two heroes want nothing more than each other.
This movie works so well because of Damon and Blunt: their chemistry is stronger than a year eight science lab accident. If you weren’t emotionally invested in their relationship the film would fall completely flat, but right from their first chat you are cheering the two of them on. Damon makes a speech about how his team hired a seven thousand dollar consultant to determine how scuffed a politician’s shoes should be; Blunt dunks his phone in his coffee when it rings too much; they are, honestly, completely hilarious. Their angst at being apart becomes your angst. David’s anger at the Adjustment Bureau is justified and it’s all you can do not to boo them when they appear on-screen with the books they each hold, dictating the future of the world. When one of the Bureau takes pity on the beleaguered couple, you are delighted.
In stark contrast to recent action flick Unknown’s constant fighting, this has a very satisfying lack of danger to the public on the whole, with few car chases and limited strangers getting pushed over and no one getting shot by the bad guys, whose power remains solely in their hats. Not to say it doesn’t have an edge—one particular crash jolted me right out of my mellow complacency—but I have lost a little faith in action movies after Unknown and it was good to see something that still held the excitement level of a thriller without having to watch some pointless carnage. And this is from someone who likes pretend carnage: Machete is still my favourite movie of 2010, and possibly of all time.
With Terrence Stamp grey and ominous as Bureau member Thompson, and rather attractive Anthony Mackie as Bureau turncoat Harry Mitchell—not to mention the cameo appearances by the likes of Jesse Jackson and David’s amusing interview with Jon Stewart—the casting choices round out nicely. The cinematography does the movie wonders, following the characters at pace and making the fun action—the Bureau members can go into a door in one place and careen out of a door on the other side of town—easy to follow and super enjoyable. The only bone I have to pick is with the soundtrack: unnecessary twee in places and invasive in others, it became something noticeable rather than a backdrop to what was really happening on screen. Still, not enough for me to do anything more than note; I won’t be writing a strongly worded letter to director/screenwriter George Nolfi or to the estate of Philip K Dick, whose short story “Adjustment Team” this was based on.
In summary: Exceeds Expectations, is a total blast, and you’ll secretly wish for Damon and Blunt to ditch their respective partners and hook the hell up. It is much better than the other ballet-related flick of 2011 (*cough*BlackSwanwasstupid*cough*). Also, anyone who walks past you wearing a hat will be in immediate danger of getting crash-tackled to the ground with you yelling, “I AM A MASTER OF MY OWN FATE!”
Or that could just be me. Sorry, general public.
If Tron: Legacy has taught me anything, it’s that we are now entirely spoiled when it comes to special effects. For all of Avatar’s faults, it showed just what CGI can do—and that’s pretty much everything, and with an extra dimension just to show off. So when you sit down to watch T:L, armed with your popcorn and the stupid happy smile you have on when you know you’re going to see a splashy neon actioner scored by Daft Punk, it is pretty much impossible to not be disappointed. Not by the action—the special effects in those were plenty amazing—but from the first moment Jeff Bridges rocks up, in a sappy prologue set a few years after the original Tron, you lay eyes on his youthfully digitised face and it’s all you can do to not storm off in disgust, throwing your popcorn at the projectionist and harrumphing right out of the cinema to lecture whoever was unfortunate enough to be working the candy bar at the same time.
Sam Flynn is a twentysomething brat, heir to his father’s huge tech corporation and a habitual prankster, driven to destroy the very company that pays for his bizarre car-garage home next to the river and forks out for his bail whenever he gets up to mischief. One day, a strange page (as in, those technological whatsits that no one uses now that there’s mobile phones) sends Sam to his father’s old arcade, where he stumbles upon ancient, eighties-era technology that does what it did to his father nearly thirty years ago and sucks him into a digital world. (Frankly, looking at dot matrix printers and clunky hardware and thinking that it created anything more elaborate than Tetris is a bit of a stretch, but that’s because I’m naive.) Captured almost immediately by the digital police squad, he is thrown unexpectedly into the fight of his life—and his father’s life, too.
Tron: Legacy has some stunning action scenes and despite my indifference to dance music in general, Daft Punk’s soundtrack is incredible and I am suffering some serious internal struggle over whether to download a couple of the songs or quit whining and just buy the whole album. The lightcycle fight, reminiscent of the original 8-bit Tron game, was great fun. Garrett Hedlund, as Sam, looks a little like Christian Bale but actually did a pretty good job despite being barely on my radar before right now. Olivia Wilde, as the older Flynn’s mysterious sidekick Quorra, has great makeup and sufficiently otherworldly eyes. And everything else about this movie is terrible.
Maybe I would have been able to overlook the slab of ham otherwise known as Michael Sheen’s ridiculously overdone club owner Zuse, the improbable fight victories, the heavily foreshadowed helmeted-foe twist and the forced, biblical plotline (Man creates world! Oh look, everything’s gone to shit. Better not do anything about it then, unless of course my son’s involved). Maybe I could have forgiven all of that if it wasn’t for one thing: Young Jeff Bridges. His digitally altered face is one of the worst things I have seen in cinematic history. As both the flashback Kevin Flynn, relating the story of the original Tron to his young son using figurines of himself and his cohorts, and as CLU, Kevin’s digital counterpart who—as doppelgangers always seem to do—has turned evil, he is a uninsured trip into the Uncanny Valley, his face devoid of texture and life, all the pixels of which seem to have been sent straight to his constantly moving hair. If he was in a video game, you’d consider him a great likeness, but this is a real movie, populated otherwise by real people, and as soon as he is next to them he looks completely fucking ridiculous. Maybe if they’d budgeted for an extra million dollars and made him spot-on realistic in the opening scene, you could buy the idea that he looks weird in the digital world for some digital reason, though no one else suffers from this ailment but him. The filmmakers could have made up some technological term to explain it away and I would have totally bought it. But I couldn’t. And basically, that poor effects work—especially when coupled with the rest of the film’s seamless CGI—ruined the entire movie, hands down.
The whole story is a bit ridiculous, and the action and plot so far-fetched, that sometimes I felt like Garrett Hedlund looked like he had fallen out of another, more serious movie, in which he played the straight man, and into this barrage of Bizzaro-Disney neon. He does his best, but is ultimately let down by poor scripting and awkward conversations with CLU, who appears to have suffered the ill-effects of a Botox jab. The movie probably would have been much better had they marketed it as a lengthy video clip for Daft Punk’s new album, and that way I would have completely excused any shoddy effects.
In summary: Below Expectations, in that I expect that a movie made in this day and age will look great, especially when that guy made Monsters in his bedroom and it looked a zillion times better.
If you hadn’t seen the posters or read about the plot, a movie with a name as subtle as Monsters could be understandably visualised as some kind of schlock horror film that may be either taking the piss out of horror (a la Scary Movie) or perhaps actually just some big, stupid monster flick about aliens that no one will go and see (except that mantle has been taken by Skyline at the moment.) Having read about Monsters’ guerrilla shooting style, the minimal budget, the frisson of excitement surrounding it in Empire magazine and the fact that the lead couple are, in reality, married, I was interested to see how the film would go. So, on a Saturday night in a movie theatre filled with twelve-year-old boys who were undoubtedly disappointed in the lack of boobies, we went to the flicks to see what would happen.
The film has a nicely original starting point where we are not witnessing the Attack of the Monsters, or How America Beat the Monsters with One Guy and a Well Placed Bullet, but how society is going seven years after octopus-like aliens have landed on Earth via a space probe that broke up in Central America. That area has been cordoned off as the Infected Zone, and with great big walls erected on both the Mexican and US sides of the zone, the creatures are kept isolated. There are occasional attacks outside the zone, and the film begins with the destruction of a hotel in Mexico and the unexpected pairing of attack survivor Sam (Whitney Able) with Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), a photojournalist pressured by his boss—Sam’s father—into helping her get home to safety. The course of a monster movie escape never runs smooth, however, and the seemingly quick journey home becomes an unnerving trip right through the Zone itself.
Monsters is not really about monsters, though you will see them and be scared. Monsters is allegorical and sentimental in equal parts. Mexico and the United States have erected enormous walls on either side of the Infected Zone, but that hasn’t stopped the aliens from breaching the defences and getting all up in society’s face. The high walls themselves are a perfect vision of terror, and supply some of what was, for me, the most chilling moments in the film. Seeing Mexico’s giant wire fence was genuinely spooky, like when I was eleven and watching Jurassic Park and waiting for the T-Rex to sidle up to his giant electric fence and eat his goaty breakfast. You kind of wanted one of the aliens to come up to the fence, all tentacles and spiky legs, tentatively touch the fence, get zapped and then run off, yelping, just to dissipate the fear of that giant structure. The reality of walls between societies is not lost on anyone, with the horrors of war made clear. Kaulder points out to Sam—who is appalled by his photography at inappropriate times—that her father pays fifty thousand dollars for a picture of a kid killed by an alien and nothing at all for a picture of a happy child.
The sentiment lies in the relationship between Sam and Kaulder, one that is by turns spiky, playful, and tender. It is easy to forget the pair are a real couple despite the chemistry they share; they seem genuinely annoyed by each other at times and then newly excited in others. It is quite sweet watching them get closer, as the slightly jerky but amiable Kaulder does his best to impress engaged rich-girl Sam, and all done with only a vague script and a large amount of ad-libbing. When Kaulder makes Sam laugh it is uplifting, and when they huddle together in fear you hope desperately that they survive. A cheesy moment in a hotel room, where a David Attenborough-type documentary on mating plays in the background while Sam and Kaulder are trying to work out where their relationship stands, was a little forced, but the rest of their scenes felt uninhibited by constraints.
It really is a movie about adapting: watching people adapt to new people and experiences, no matter how shocking or horrific; watching the world adapt to these new alpha critters on the food chain; adapting enough to a new life to be able to appreciate the beauty of the monsters themselves. The casual, documentary feel to the camera work lends itself to lots of close-ups of faces and brings the raw emotion of the characters to the fore. It also enables lots of soft-focus and outright fuzziness, especially when it comes to gore; most of the worst scenes are tempered by photographic haze. It makes the scenes both awful in what they don’t show but also more palatable for the teen market (and there was a six-year-old in the cinema, which was pretty unnerving, though he seemed more bored than scared and mostly sang to himself in the corner and ate chips.)
The music is lovely, and the scenery is mind-blowing at times and eerie in others; lush forests, amazing landscapes, hidden treasures amongst the trees, destruction, husks of buildings, rusting planes. What is most amazing is that this entirely professional-looking movie was made on a budget of only $200,000, which, well, isn’t an amount to sniff at, (grumble about housing prices) but in film terms, it can be the cost of a single explosion. Few of the cast are actors, just given an outline of the scene and filmed from there. It makes the film so much more natural and believable, a down-home gritty reality instead of a shiny surreal world that $500,000,000 will get you. (Yes Avatar, I’m looking right at you and shaking my head, sighing.) Director Gareth Edwards also wrote the story, was the cinematographer, and did the special effects himself—an A+ effort when you see them. The critters themselves are possibly not as perfectly lit as they could have been if another zero had been whacked onto the budget, but are still believable, completely incredible and, as they occasionally make their own light source, forgivable.
Less forgiving is the one irritating monster movie flaw that Jurassic Park 3 started with that stupid dinosaur that ate the mobile phone: creatures sneaking up silently behind someone to deliver a shock but spending every other moment walking around the land causing the earth to shake and bone-chilling thuds to be heard from miles away. Hundred-metre-high octopi are not the same as the bad guy in Scream. They cannot sneak. They do not need to sneak. They have the upper hand. Eight of them, even. (Boom-tish.)
In summary: Exceeds Expectations. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great three-and-a-half star movie that is touching while still being scary enough to be a proper, pacy monster movie.
Since Christopher Nolan shipped out his first trailer for Inception, where cities folded upon themselves and gravity became skewed, everyone has been waiting in anticipation for the release of what could be the biggest blockbuster of the year. Nolan was the man behind the money-printing new Batman franchise, after all, and Inception starred everyone’s favourite Brylcreem user, Leonardo DiCaprio. And with sold-out sessions during opening weekend and everyone gossiping about it wherever you turn, the movie seems to be very well received.
Dom Cobb is an extractor—someone who can break into people’s minds and steal their secrets. He is employed by one company to find out the secret inside the mind of corporate businessman Saito; Saito, however, has a different agenda for him, and wants Cobb to plant an idea in the head of a rival—otherwise known as inception—instead of taking something out. This complicated task means Cobb has to assemble a crack team to help him out (cue It-people Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, amongst others) and delve deeper into the world of the dream than ever before. Of course, when you’re dealing with people’s subconscious, then problems are bound to arise. Perhaps like Cobb’s dead wife Mal, who is part of the reason behind Cobb taking on this final, potentially dangerous task in the first place.
The film is a little more cerebral and less city-destroying action than the trailer makes it out to be. Cities aren’t constantly being adapted and spun around—in fact, DiCaprio’s Cobb explains early on to architect Ariadne (Page) that it’s just not done. The shifting of gravity pertains only to that hotel corridor sequence you’ve already seen in the preview, and nowhere else. There’s other action, sure—car chases, avalanche-filled snow drama, people getting all shot up in very pretty places—but it’s a more standard brand of action than the goosebump-inducing ads led you to expect. I also felt that the special effects fell a little flat—it’s not really that they were bad, but just that they were limited to a small scope. When the city folds up and around, a panoramic view of what it’s like to really be there would have been exciting, but never came through. When a dream starts to collapse—and thus, the world around it—debris flew everywhere but felt very pasted on and not like actual debris from an explosion/implosion. Okay, so a) it’s a dream, stop being picky and b) when were you last in an explosion anyway, Fiona? But that’s just how I felt; that the special effects were not good enough, and were underused.
In a movie set largely in a subconscious state, some problems I have with the movie can be can be answered with but it’s a dream, or can be reconsidered later as not a problem but maybe a hint. Because a lot of the movie is ambiguous, I can’t say for sure whether some of my discontent is a deliberate move by the filmmakers, which, after consideration, is actually a plus. As I went into the film I was willing to believe that going into the dreams of others is possible (though they never actually explain how it’s done) so I wasn’t going in cynical of everything. Still, some questions remain.
It’s possible to have a dream within a dream, and the gravity of one state of your dream affects the next—you’re airborne in one, then you lose gravity in the next. But then why not the next level of dream again, if you’re still weightless? Also: why is Cobb the only character whose subconscious has issues? Dreams can be heavily populated yet the only threat is Mal (Marion Cotillard); I feel that with seven people in the same dream at one point, there should be unloving mothers and bitter ex-lovers popping around every corner. How prevalent is the action of people deliberately getting into their dreams? Is there a pleasure industry based around it or is it mostly underground? For a two-and-a-half hour movie, less time could be spent tracking every moment of a laboured action sequence and more time spent fleshing out the real world, in order to give us the kind of emotional attachment to the characters that is needed to care about a movie.
The individuals themselves are characterless, with the only people developed in any way being Cobb himself and the subject of the inception, Robert Fischer Jr (Cillian Murphy). No one else has any background at all—no families, flat personalities, no individual flair—that is ever mentioned, leaving them as a major part of the story yet people you can’t become attached to. Ariadne appears to be there solely to pry into Cobb’s emotions and deliver forced expositions to the audience about his subconscious (though Gordon-Levitt’s Arthur has been with him longer and must know all this), probably because she is the only girl on the team and we all know that females are made up entirely of women’s intuition and the need to spy.
With the major threat in the movie being the worry that Cobb will be unable to plant the idea, which means Saito will not be able to wave his magic wand and offer Cobb the redemption and freedom he so desperately needs, it was surprising that they offered another level of tension by explaining that playing around with dreams can (and will) go wrong, thus putting the entire team in danger as well as Cobb himself twice over. Instead of causing edge-of-your-seat tension, I found it really pained watching them try and time all the dreams to come together exactly, as it dragged out far too long. The dramatic action sequence towards the end was where they could have shaved some time for character development, being that is was the part when Chris had to rush off to the bathroom, leaving for five minutes where the only thing that happened was my whispered, “more of the same.”
The problem is that Nolan took a bunch of one-dimensional characters, gave them a morally suspect job to do, put them in danger and expected you to care. The major peril is not getting killed (though getting injured is apparently still painful) but the risk of losing track of how many dreams you have been in, or whether you are in a dream at all. Frankly, by the end, when the action was at its peak, I was getting a bit bored with the overdone dramatics and instead thinking about poor Leonardo DiCaprio starring in all these movies about alternate states of being (Shutter Island, The Departed, now this) and being very confused when he wakes up in the morning.
There are more questions (why doesn’t Fischer recognise his rival Saito, why doesn’t Michael Caine get more screen time because he’s excellent and I love him) but you’ve probably understood by now that I didn’t really like the film. About halfway through I whispered my suspicions about the ending to Chris, in a surprise twist where I actually correctly spoilered the film instead of him. Basically, I’m here to accuse the blockbuster of the year of being boring, predictable, and soulless, though it was not really all that bad—after all, I stayed for the whole thing and there are much worse films out there. I’ve given it a thorough telling-off and hope that Nolan pays attention for next time. (If you’re reading this, dude, two things: 1) don’t let Christian Bale near a camera ever again, and 2) one chaste peck on the lips does not sexual tension make.)
The notion of a new Predator movie may inspire thrills in many, but the idea didn’t really fly with me straight away. I’ve seen the original Predator, which was good, and Aliens vs Predators, which was laughable, and that’s it. But then I heard that it was being made by Troublemaker Studios, which is owned by Robert Rodriguez and—well—that was it. I had to see it. Rodriguez is one of my heroes: a man who, with his talent for making solidly fun movies without budget blowouts, could probably have done Avatar for forty-six dollars and a six pack if James Cameron had bothered asking. So with the movie out yesterday but me at work, I barrelled towards the cinema for the first Friday showing, armed with popcorn and the stupid, adoring smile reserved only for Robert Rodriguez. And all he did was produce the thing.
It’s the story of eight people who are dropped from the sky with nothing but a parachute and the weapons they were last carrying. They’re all fighters—mercenaries, yakuza, soldiers, murderers—and despite being naturally wary, they band together to try and figure out what’s going on. It soon becomes clear that they are on another planet and that something is hunting them. Whatever could it be? Oh, yes, Predators, that’s right.
So does it hold up? Well, it’s a physical impossibility for Robbo to make a terrible film, so yes. If you wanted to go see a movie about humans fighting Predators, then you’ll find all you want in it. Surprise deaths, gore, explosions, the chasing of something that can be virtually invisible. The cast is solid, including the likes of Rodriguez regular Danny Trejo, surprise tough guy Adrien Brody, and serial creeper Walton Goggins. There are moments of tension and drama, and while the humans are generally a reprehensible lot of killers, you still feel for them and don’t really want them to die. (Shocking spoiler: not everyone survives.) Brody’s Royce takes charge, along with Israeli Defence Force sniper Isabelle (Alice Braga) who supports him and also does all those womanly things like have emotions and get nauseous at the sight of an eviscerated carcass. They need to find a way off the planet, and with the help of an unexpected cameo appearance (not from Arnie, keep your panties on), they may have a chance.
Predators is a good movie that does what it says on the box. It’s formulaic, but it’s not B-grade, or too corny (though there are a few clichéd lines thrown in there, like “Storm’s coming. Better get to shelter” and “I can’t do it alone!”) and it’s well-made. The Predators are big and enormously-mandibled, but for me—who didn’t see Predator as an impressionable teenager but as a cynical adult—they just look like oversized people and aren’t that scary to me. I like to be frightened, and this movie had some jumpy parts, but I couldn’t help finding the Predators faintly ridiculous. At one point, a monster rips out a human’s spine with skull still attached, a serious and awful moment that seemed so overdone that I burst into giggles.
For a studio known for pretty fun and dependable special effects, one explosion looked far too fluffy and fake, which was a great shame, and another visual flaw came in the scene where our heroes are able to see the sky properly for the first time and the shot of nearby planets looks lifted straight from a motivational poster. Some of our humans aren’t developed enough as characters for us to do anything but say “ew” when they die. There are a few other flaws—why are there Earth plants on a different planet? why do they comment that the sun doesn’t move but then suddenly they’re in night? why do the Predators occasionally stand up and dither before making the kill, leaving nearby shooters able to get their targets carefully positioned?—but on the whole, seeing as you’re already buying into a plot where aliens farm violent humans to indulge their hunting habits sans pickup truck, the problems aren’t that large. All in all, the movie remains a satisfying bust-up on a beautifully rendered planet, and while it’s a bit carnage-by-numbers, it’s still absolutely worth watching, even if just to see Adrien Brody a bit nude and covered in mud.
Twelve-ish years ago I saw the movie Titanic about four times at the cinema. In my defence, I was only about fifteen and it was big, blockbustery, sappy and had a bit of nudity, and I’d promised a couple of different friends I’d seen it with them. Titanic has long been a source of anger between me and Chris, as he detests the movie and I think it’s okay. (These are the things we fight about. “It sucks!” “No, it’s passable.” “No, it’s terrible!” “Not that terrible.” etc etc.)
Last night I saw Avatar. Will I see it four times? I don’t think so. But then, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it all, as I thought the ads made it look quite boring. Still, when someone invited us to see it, I wasn’t opposed enough to say no, despite the ridiculous prices. Do you know how many theatres charge an extra dollar for the 3D glasses? I think it’s a bit early in the scene to presume the audience has a pair just lying around. Though, uh, we do now.
Part of me wishes I’d written a review as soon as I came home, though as it was a three-hour movie that we saw in the city at nine fifteen we didn’t actually get home until after midnight and I was not in the mood for making any kind of grammatical sense. My initial feelings towards Avatar were quite glowing, much more so than I expected. The ads cannot in any way convey just how beautiful this movie is; it’s embarrassing to admit, but there were times when the phosphorescent land lit up in front of me and I actually became quite emotional. The effects are flawless and the world James Cameron has created is absolutely stunning, realistic where it needs to be and fantastical in parts. I’m a big fan of fairy lights, and this movie was like a gigantic festival of them. It’s gorgeous. There’s no doubt about it: Avatar is the prettiest movie made this year, if not this decade, and the 3D is amazing. That was the impression I had when I left the theatre, basically, where I wanted to spin around the dark, empty streets and flap my arms in a giddy way.
Then of course I slept on it. When I woke the initial adoration had worn off, creatures weren’t flying just in front of my nose and the lights were no longer clear in my mind. I started to think harder about the movie, which I should never do.
Our Sam Worthington plays an emotionally void Marine called Jake Sully who joins the crew of a ship flying to the planet Pandora. Jake’s brother was a scientist who had a lot invested in the trip, but was inconveniently killed, leaving Jake the one to fill his shoes. For his brother had an avatar created; a version of himself made with the DNA of Pandora’s natives, the Smurf-coloured Na’vi. Sharing the same genomes as his brother, he can take over the avatar without any hassle. So far so flimsy, but it’s a blockbuster so you just kind of go with it.
The Na’vi are an uncomfortably beautiful master race; they’re all tall, ripped, skinny brunettes with adorably expressive kitty ears that go flat when they are having a Big Emotion, which is of course a lot. Jake expects to go in, help out his two fellow scientists, and get out. Shockingly, things don’t go as planned, and he finds himself involved more in the life of the locals than he ever expected. (You’re aghast that I ruined that twist, aren’t you?) What follows is an extended montage of him adapting to the Na’vi life, becoming entranced with hottie-slash-clan-leader’s-daughter Neytiri, played by scifi sexpot Zoe Saldana, recently seen as Uhura and smooching human Scrabble high-score Zachary Quinto as Spock in the super great Star Trek. Jake realises how close to the planet the Na’vi really are, which is upsetting as the people he’s there with have some less Kyoto Protocol-type ideas for the mineral rich planet. Will he side with the clichéd and cranky military man, or with the beautiful blue hippies?
Avatar feels a little like Aliens; bad-ass Marines, Sigourney Weaver waking up out of a stasis pod, mech suits that are used for battle, and, you know, actual aliens (though there’s less chest-bursting in Avatar.) As they share the same director, it’s hardly plagiarism, but amusing nonetheless. Mostly, however, Avatar suffers from having characters with no back story. Jake’s initial motivations are never really made clear, apart from that he wants to walk again, so when he goes from browfurrowed Marine to Gaia-worshipping Na’vi you don’t know if it was much of a leap at all. None of the humans are fleshed out at all, apart from excellent R Lee Emery impersonator Stephen Lang, playing the enjoyably hammy Colonel Miles Quaritch and basically personifying all that is evil about soldiers. Giovanni Ribisi plays against type to be an unethical corporate villain, in charge of mining the planet, playing golf in the office and joining the emotionally void. The Na’vi fare better, in that they are all new-age literal tree-huggers with obvious motivation, i.e. “Can you not destroy our home, please? Cheers.” Still, they remain mostly clichéd characters within that group. Also, at the beginning of the movie, you are shown about a dozen other Na’vi avatars that oddly never appear again, despite the big expensive fuss made of them. It’s a shame that the entire movie’s plotline is a bit stupid, with a heroic white man coming to save the natives in an unrealistic manner, and, alas, the unpleasant idea that a lot of people are heartless enough to kill the native population for the minerals they are on top of, the laughably named “unobtanium”. There’s a distinct lack of blood, despite the vast amount of violence, and an unscandalous sex scene (not least because they are pretty much nude all the time) that made me wonder if Jake had tried anything with Neytiri and had her say, “Whoa, what the hell are you doing with that thing? We hold hands to mate here, freako.”
Surprisingly, the movie’s length wasn’t an issue; I never felt bored, and it could have used another ten minutes of character development. All in all, it’s a blockbuster: big, silly, fun. It gains points for how amazing it looks, loses them for being pretty ridiculous, and rounds out as a pretty passable way to spend twenty bucks.
This little big movie has tiptoed into theatres as quietly as a moon landing hoax set in the Nevada desert. Chris had suggested we go see it, but apart from that I hadn’t even heard a word of it until two different friends trotted off to see it on the same day. As Chris unenthusiastically went with me to see Whip It a few weeks ago, I agreed to go with him to see Moon, directed and written by Duncan Jones. Jones is the son of David Bowie, a piece of information that I am somewhat reluctant to share because it has no real bearing on the film but I cannot deny my enthusiasm for a bit of non-salacious industry gossip.
Three years into his solitary posting on the moon as a mining company employee, Sam Bell is just a couple of weeks away from returning to Earth, and to his beloved wife Tess and young daughter Eve. His enthusiasm for this return is tempered only by the frustration he feels over the slow passing of time—and by the things he is beginning to see.
From the flash of a woman on the chair in the rec room to a figure he sees outside on the surface of the moon, he cannot believe what he sees, until a disastrous accident during the investigation of a malfunctioning harvester renders him unconscious—and then changes everything.
It’s hard to really explain much further without ruining the surprise, which actually occurs fairly early in the movie. The cast list is quite small, with, amongst not many others, Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell and Kevin Spacey voicing Sam's non-HAL robot companion, Gerty. Gerty is a chunky and cumbersome contraption who converses much like a human (or one of those finicky humans who likes to correct you, at least) and supplants this with a screen that shows his reactions through a series of emoticons. This may seem gimmicky but when, late into the movie, Gerty says something moving and his emoticon is a sad face with a tear, you actually feel quite emotionally connected to him. Gerty is full of surprises throughout the movie and I ended up coming home quite disappointed to find that the closest thing I had to a robot companion was a cat that had pooped in the bathtub and a pint-sized Wall-E that waves his arms around and says, “EE-VAH!”
Moon is a study in what we would become after three years alone in space, and what lengths the forces that sent you there would go to keeping you safe and happy and, most importantly, a functioning member of staff. It is also, in a way, the moving tale of a man and his enormous grey calculator. As Sam becomes more confused and frustrated with what is happening and it begins to dawn on him what is going to occur, it is a devastating moment for the audience when he drives out of the lunar base in his big grey Hummer and finds himself looking up at the full Earth. He starts to cry and wails, “I just want to go home!” and I swear if it was possible you’d jump through that screen to hold him if only you’d brought your spacesuit and didn’t have to worry about Total Recall head-explosions.
The exterior elements are not CG but are miniatures, little trucks rolling about on a little rocky set. To be honest, I’ve always preferred miniatures. CG has come a long way and on the whole looks fantastic, but I still think you can tell if something was really there, in front of the camera when it was recording. A set of three buildings and one truck on a grey landscape doesn’t take much but it looks perfectly spot-on, no doubt because so few of us have actually been there to say otherwise. The budget for this movie could have been tiny but it’s hard to tell, because Jones’ script is perfectly tuned and despite the limited characters and set options this movie is never boring and always compelling. Chris and I had an argument afterwards about whether humanity could reach the point where what happens in the movie could really occur—I say no, he says yes—so if you see it, I’d love to hear what you think. Do make the effort though; I think Moon is only showing in ye olde arthouse cinemas, but it deserves a general release, and I genuinely enjoyed it.
