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shepgeek · 6 years ago

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Deus Ex Machina in Films

Spoilers for Slumdog Millionaire, Jaws, Angels & Demons, Contact and Signs.

If a tale is worth the telling, then should it not be extraordinary?

From our very origins, where stories of gods and monsters were told around a flickering campfire to our modern multiplexes, it has been the stories of the most dramatic shifts in people’s lives that we long to hear. These tales bring with them an inherent problem: should the piece prove to be too fantastic, too far removed from what we can connect with, then the spell is broken. Suspension of our disbelief is only a part of this, and often a film may cause a snort if it takes a dramatic step too far, or when the mechanics of an author making a story fit can be readily sniffed out. This magical balance, of spinning a yarn but never yielding the sense that the tale itself has a fundamental ring of truth to it, has plagued storytellers for centuries and the term “Deus Ex Machina”, dating from Aeschylus, has come to be associated with this issue in the modern cinematic age.

Meaning “God from the Machine”, it refers to when a story takes a contrived turn. In Ancient Greece, there would be a literal contraption that would lower actors playing the Gods into the theatre and such divine interventions would often allow direct solutions to whatever dramatic tangle the characters found themselves in. The fine line between this dramatic “Get out of Jail Free” card and writing resolutions that thrill and inspire audiences has ensnared storytellers for millennia. Modern audiences will complain when a film hits moments of what feel like implausibility, despite the entire picture up to that point involving a man who can talk to fish or a Prime Minister courting a tea lady. The moments that shunt audiences out of the experience of watching a film are both fickle and, of course subjective and, since no storyteller sets out to leave themselves open to this vulnerability, there is seemingly no way to protect your film from it, hoping instead that a crumbling of verisimilitude never manifests.

This is different from implausibility or fantasy. Films go to huge lengths to make the audience invest in a story: the reason Jaws is held up as one of the finest the medium has to offer is not due to the convincingness of the shark but how much we have invested in the three lead characters, and the shading to make them and their worlds real to us over the first hour of the film demands our investment such that, when a 25 foot plastic shark finally leaps from the water, our terror is welded to theirs. Our human biology is a problem here, since the idea of the extraordinary is what inspires the very best stories but is undermined by our animalistic understanding of coincidence. In evolving our way to the top of the food chain, we have learned to spot patterns and are built to learn from mistakes in order to thrive, so that if an extreme event happens it is programmed into us to be intrinsically suspicious. Phrases such as “truth is stranger than fiction” are accepted truisms, and yet some films are criticised if they rely too much on remarkable events, despite this often making them the stories worth telling. The logical response would be that nobody would want to see a film in which one of the other double-O agents dies in the attempt at saving the world: show us instead the spy that survives ludicrously improbable traps to win the day.

Slumdog Millionaire is a fascinating example of this contradiction and is based around the concept of a penniless boy appearing on the world’s most famous TV quiz show. What happens, however, is far from a typical appearance and the boy, who has no schooling, is in fact using the show to search for his lost love. Along the way he is asked questions that he happens to know the answers to, with the film flashing back to explain how he would know each of these facts. Statistically this is an interesting approach: given that there are hundreds of thousands of people who must have appeared on a version of this quiz over decades, one of them would have to be ranked as the luckiest in terms of the questions they happen to have been asked and, therefore, would not their story not be the most compelling? There is an intriguing idea within the film of defining intelligence as being asked the questions that we happen to know the answers to, but the role of chance in shaping a person’s destiny can prove divisive in audiences and it is this friction that blurs the line upon which audiences’ readiness to accept the story we are spun is founded. Slumdog Millionaire is ultimately not that interested in the mechanics of this since the boy himself is not motivated by the money, using the show playfully to up the dramatic stakes and revealing more about the characters involved, but the boldness in using such a unusual framing device is relatively rare.

We can take a certain amount of improbability in our stories but the dangers of invoking anything beyond chance are arguably greater, and whilst there are many examples of outrageousness in the plotting of modern films there are few, if any, whose audacity in terms of confronting these shades of grey are as remarkable as 2009’s Angels & Demons. Having made a career from inferring conspiracies around artistic and historical fact, Dan Brown’s book is adapted by Ron Howard and builds to an unforgettable climax. A series of grisly murders are investigated by symbologist Robert Langdon and escalate to a finale in which a priest detonates an antimatter bomb in the skies above Vatican City, bailing out of his helicopter with a parachute at the last minute. We soon learn that said priest had, in fact, planned both the murders and the bomb (stolen from CERN) in order to get himself elected as Pope. As preposterous plotting goes, this is pretty much as far on a limb as even the most ridiculous of Hollywood thrillers has gone but there is something to be said for the gusto and straight face that the film commits to in bringing it to a screen. What makes it completely outrageous, however, is the concluding scene, where a kindly cardinal thanks both Langdon and God. As an atheist, Langdon demurs, but the cardinal replies that, given the remarkable nature of what has happened, how could this be anything other than God’s plan: a literal use of Deus Ex Machina in the modern cinematic age!

Angels & Demons’ approach is far from unique, although perhaps not in terms of sheer nerve. Raiders of the Lost Ark’s denouement also sees the God of the Old Testament wipe out the villains (The Big Bang Theory delighted in pointing out that, for all of Indy’s heroics, he plays no role in actually saving the world) whilst the Eagles in the Middle Earth films have a strong whiff of godliness to them. The moments when a storyteller is clearly fumbling for a way to get themselves out of a sticky corner will now be increasingly exposed online, whilst even knowing moments that try to poke fun at the fourth wall have a tendency to get lynched, such as Ocean’s 12’s set piece where Tess Ocean (played by Julia Roberts) bumps into actor Bruce Willis (played by Bruce Willis) and is then coerced into saving the day by pretending to be actress Julia Roberts, whom Tess apparently resembles. The only moments when such brazenness can be allowed are when a film dives wholeheartedly into the silliness, such as the moment in Life of Brian where our hero is saved from falling to his death by some convenient passing aliens.

Many films dance around this fault line in fiction but M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs chooses to confront it by forcing each viewer to reflect on their own choices in terms of how they each decide to see the world. Following The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, narrative twists had become the director’s trademark so the marketing of the film was stealthy, with the only knowledge circulated that the film was centred on the frivolous phenomenon of crop circles. Audiences who had been thrilled by Shyamalan’s first two films came expecting to find another sting in the tale and, whilst they would have that expectation met, for many it was not in the manner in which they were expecting.

From its propulsive opening credits, which musically and visually invoke Saul Bass and Bernard Herrman’s work for Hitchcock, the film casts a macabre spell, introducing us to a close family broken by bereavement. As enigmatic shadows, ominous animal behaviour and melodramatic news reports seem to imply that the world may be on the verge of disaster, the film spends our time focused on this household who is living as if Armageddon has already happened. Far from casting a morose tone, however, the focus is very much on their love and support for each other and the film is surprisingly funny, with a dryness and drollness that invites you to emotionally invest in them and their world to a huge degree, with various idiosyncrasies cleverly painted in to seemingly deepen their credibility, as is the norm for this genre. Charisma was always Mel Gibson’s strongest suit but, in this film, he uses it sparingly behind an expression of a man whom life has utterly defeated; a minister who has abandoned his faith after the cruel and arbitrary loss of his wife. His performance as Graham Hess is incredible and, in one scene, he processes rage, humanity, forgiveness and sorrow within the space of a few seconds. Joaquin Phoenix plays Graham’s brother Merrill, an honest and simple man whose awkwardness belies a gently painted integrity, whilst Cherry Jones also adds considerable emotional heft as the kind and empathetic local Sheriff: the world these characters inhabit, whist harsh and simple, makes it clear that these people are good-hearted and worthy of our empathy.

Shyamalan takes what would be the hugest event in human history and focuses upon the least significant of locales. He called Signs his “most popcorn” movie and takes many cues from Spielberg, with the juxtaposition of ordinary with extraordinary, a cast of children and a troubled, failing father (literally and professionally) all Amblin tropes, and the film is notably produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. As the eeriness builds with the aid of an impeccable score from James Newton Howard, the crop circles increasingly seem to be the work of alien visitors. Throughout the film however, there is a mischievous sense of ambiguity and the film continuously undermines this fantastic possibility: Shyamalan plays on the audiences’ expectations with masterful sleight of hand, continuously teasing us with the prospect of a narrative twist that we are all trying to spot ahead of time, knowing all the while that, whilst we focus on this, our attention remains away from the ace he has hidden up his other sleeve. Everything we see seems to be developing this potential alien threat, but the film is subtly sowing very different seeds and Shyamalan uses a full array of tricks to keep our attention away from his final intentions. The most memorable of these is where Merrill watches a blurry Brazilian news report whilst hiding inside the cupboard under his stairs. This simple scene is edited to creepy perfection and, as the announcer intones “what you’re about to see may disturb you”, we share Merrill’s ghoulish excitement at finally discovering the truth behind the mystery. The reveal of a creature looming for a split second, out of focus but stalking us with predatory malevolence is one of cinemas great shocks: simple, matter of fact but unexpectedly stark. As Shyamalan tears away the ambiguity, this extraordinary image pays off the patient teasing shown by the film up to this point and, crucially, keeps us frightened for this family and what this all might mean for them.

Set almost entirely set around the family’s farmhouse, the key moment of the film comes as Graham attempts to comfort an alarmed Merrill. Gibson is shot in shadow throughout the film but with a light from behind the camera reflecting in his pupils, keeping the whites of his eyes prominent and obscuring our view of his lost soul. Graham’s speech about two truths and the choice we have in how we interpret the world appears, on first viewing, to be a charismatically sad mission statement of how Graham’s faith has been lost although, as we soon discover, he has not stopped believing but has moved away from his God in rage at the loss of his wife. Graham tells Merrill that we always have a choice to either interpret the world as a confluence of happenstance or as the plan of a deeper, bigger force. Shyamalan brilliantly undercuts this hugely significant moment with an immediate distraction, as Merrill recounts his experience of once narrowly avoiding getting vomited on by a pretty girl, but the scene is of fundamental importance to the whole purpose of the film. There is a way to read Signs as Shyamalan viewing himself as the god of his own worlds, with the characters he writes bending to his will (and his subsequent film, The Lady in the Water would see him develop this idea to memorably baffling effect) but the message of this film is centred on choice. When Graham is at his lowest ebb in the final reel, he does not appeal to God but simply repeats “not again” and, eventually, “I hate you”: he has failed to disavow himself of his faith, despite trying walk away from it. Graham spends the film in a purgatory of his own making and one reading of the piece is that of a man beset by demons on his way back to the path, which is finally triggered in the film by an emotive Last Supper. Shyamalan himself comes from a Hindu background but attended a Catholic school and the film wisely stays far from any one dogma, always ultimately returning to the choice of the individual to read the world as they see it and Shyamalan invites us to do the same with his film.

In the final act, Graham has an epiphany that all the events of his life are coalescing in this single moment: his brother’s failed baseball career, his wife’s death, his son’s asthma, his daughter’s habit of leaving glasses of water everywhere: all of these factors converge simultaneously and with specific purpose. This extrapolation, whilst fantastical, only involves the joining of a handful of dots and the film never demands that the audience agrees with Graham: we have the choice ourselves to view this confluence as coincidence or as part of a wider plan. This is the genius of Shyamalan’s film, to make a film about faith, call the film “Signs” and then conceal the entire purpose of the film within an alien invasion. Another outstanding film about faith, Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, has a similar denouement, where the lead character is forced to make a choice about whether they can believe what has happened to them but Signs does not repeat the only error of that film, where the audience is privately told what really happened.

As Signs concludes, we are left alone with our own choice to make and this is what many viewers objected to, feeling that the contrivances were too silly, or maybe that water would be an unlikely vulnerability for invading aliens (despite the definitive text on this, War of the Worlds, invoking a common cold for the same dramatic purpose). I can sympathise if a viewer felt they were promised plotting to resolve the tale and it must be conceded that ambiguity from a story is dangerous if it comes as a surprise, but the conceit, showmanship and storytelling guile in making this twist thematic instead of narrative makes it, for me, Shyamalan’s masterpiece. He plays it with astonishing skill and total assurance.

We all always have a choice of how to accept what the world presents us with, and the gift of a great storyteller is to blend the meeting of the extraordinary with characters to ground our interest and our emotional investment, whilst simultaneously building a world which audiences can recognise as real. Such alchemy is so delicate, so complex that this makes a potent reminder of why so many films miss that mark, but the reality that so many storytellers have it in them to keep reaching for this delicate balance is the reason why we will always keep coming back to that campfire, waiting to be enveloped in a new, fantastic tale.

#signs slumdogmillionaire jaws contact

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shepgeek · 6 years ago

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The Terminal

Often neglected as a frivolity lurking within Steven Spielberg’s CV of blockbuster hits and historically significant dramas, The Terminal is, in many ways, quite atypical. Sentimentality has always been the stick that Spielberg’s critics reach for whenever they seek to beat him and this film certainly has such a surface. It reunited Spielberg with Tom Hanks, who also had taken praise and criticism for Forrest Gump, another film which can be dismissed for depicting an idealised America but whose narrative also treats its kind and earnest hero with unrelenting cruelty. The Terminal was minimally marketed, with its poster depicting Hanks with his jaw jutting out comedically and, whilst the reception was positive, there was a feeling of uncertainty to what the film was intending to say. Looking back at it there is, from the start, a clear seed of concern at what America was becoming and a resulting film which seems on the surface to be a fluffy romcom but picks steadily at our modern perceptions of America and the wider west. The Terminal is a film of contradictions and extremes: from the hugeness of the set (built to scale) to the smallness of the story, the protagonist and antagonist are utter opposites and, whilst the film has a feelgood veneer it consistently makes interesting and challenging dramatic choices. It is certainly funny throughout and is not afraid to resort to some moments of unabashed clowning, but the script has a sharp satirical edge, consistently nudging the fourth wall with knowing dialogue that combines writer Andrew Niccol’s cynicism with Spielberg’s positivity. These ingredients juxtapose to forge this overlooked film’s greatest strength and, over the five films that Spielberg & Hanks have worked together, this piece is the only one not to receive awards recognition despite its containing many prescient themes, a deftness of storytelling focus and, yes, at its heart, a story about how a good and earnest man keeping his promise can prevail.

The film begins as audiences might have expected: Viktor is a bumbling, innocent presence who is soon intercepted and cordoned off, bluffing blankly through English he plainly does not understand and then covered with smashed crisps as his predicament, based famously around a true story, is explained to us: a military coup in his home country makes him “unacceptable” to the US, incapable of returning home but unable to be waved through the doors to New York without immediate arrest. The opening is playful but marked by a sudden smash into reality when Victor learns of the coup and his panic is played completely straight, as he desperately but hopelessly begs for volume on the TV screens above his head that casually show pictures of the destruction happening in his home. Spielberg gives this scene considerable emotional wallop, as his camera pulls back to reveal Viktor perversely alone in a packed, indifferent crowd. This is the stuff of nightmares, as Viktor begs passers by who cannot understand him and are apathetic to his horror as a child innocently spins on the edge of the frame. When he finally finds a screen with volume, his lack of a first-class ticket leaves him marooned outside the lounge, his agony blurred by the glass doors separating him from us, from first-class. There is no humanity on display from anyone other than Viktor in this moment and it makes it clear to the audience that, whilst this film will have comic edges, it will not be a comedy.

Artificiality abounds. Shining mirrors and lights dazzle seductively the but the effect gradually becomes oppressive. Spielberg repeats specific shots and camera moves along the same corridors invoking a feeling of the unwavering inauthenticity familiar to anyone who has done shift work. He also often places the camera low to the ground, so that 20% of the shot becomes ceiling, with squares of brightness caging the characters from above. Muzak twinkles in the background behind the noises of the crowd and the shuttling of the airport signs which move everyone else onwards except Viktor, quietly and subtly sapping the viewer. There is a clear irony behind the product placement since, as with Minority Report, the oppressive nature of their ubiquity undoes what companies must have hoped would be association with some feelgood Hollywood stardust- indeed many companies actively approached Dreamworks asking to be present on set when news of the film got out. The terminal itself is a mirage of a consumerist paradise, a glimmering wall of capitalist promise. Viktor is told from the start that “There’s only one thing you can do here: shop” with the implication that they are talking about the country as a whole. There are numerous nudges of from the script in this way, with Viktor complaining to Amelia “I can’t go out with you”, or for his friends to be wondering who this mysterious stranger is leading to Gupta’s observation that “This guy is here for a reason and I think the reason is us.”

The satirical sharpness to the film is fully manifested through its antagonist, Frank Dixon. Played with an understated predatory callousness by Stanley Tucci, he is introduced as a God from the start, cordoned off and surveying the domain of which he is the absolute ruler. He immediately demonstrates his intelligence and an outstanding instinct for spotting the worst in the people, but his lack of ability to see the best is ultimately what comes to define him. As Viktor tries in vain to find a moment’s rest at the end of his traumatising first day, Spielberg cuts to the masters of this universe chatting with nepotistic blitheness about buying boats. The Terminal is potently set in New York and brings to mind the oft-quoted poem mounted on the Statue of Liberty that reminds how America was once built upon “…tired…poor…huddled masses yearning to be free”, but the following line of the poem has arguably greater relevance to this film: “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Viktor’s own tempest leaves him marooned upon a bureaucratic technicality, with New York’s golden glow tantalisingly out of reach although, as we will ultimately learn, his purpose here is always to visit: Viktor only ever seeks to be a guest, never a resident. Already sharply clear about how America (and, to be clear, these accusations could equally be applied to our country as well as the West as a whole) has moved away from its roots, the degradation of Dixon that follows is unnerving and, by the climax of the film, he is unravelled and left as a petty, embittered figure.

On the face of it Frank is living the American Dream: he is witty, sharp, ambitious, very hard working and believes that this entitles him to the rewards that his society demands that these skills accrue. The film’s greatest impact comes from contrasting the lengths that pursuing these desires to the exclusion of his fellow man can corrupt and degrade Frank in comparison with Viktor’s quiet and simple truths. Frank is warned, twice, that leadership means setting an example and having empathy for the world he inhabits but ignores this advice on both occasions, and the leadership that the US still enjoys in the world politically would seem to be the the target of this message: Frank is motivated by what he can get, not who he can be. His perfect world obeys clear rules and, despite his complete mastery of those rules, he is undone by a buffoon in a dressing gown, refuses to compromise his ego and ultimately is enslaved by certainty in his own flawlessness. It is inconceivable to Frank that anyone would not ultimately bend to his will and, as Viktor’s quiet and innocent resilience refuses to yield, Frank’s underlying bigot starts to become more steadily revealed. Is Frank how Spielberg really sees America- devoid of empathy? That would seem an unlikely extrapolation, but the film certainly has space to investigate the dualities of the role 21st century America has in the world.

Frank sees all of the people as fish in his river, to be added to his collection. He is often trapped in small rooms, taunted by the pictures of life beyond this box of his own making. Spielberg loves playing with screens, frames & reflections and is clearly having fun with this character’s rigidity: there are many shots where Viktor unexpectedly enters the frame, often to Frank’s exasperation, whilst the moment where Viktor senses the traps which Frank has set for him and starts to use the cameras as a way to stare back is when the momentum shifts in his favour during their chess match. The grin from that point on Frank’s face becomes increasingly fixed and Tucci’s performance becomes slowly but steadily dehumanised to the point where he is left being casually cruel and, finally, openly monstrous, dedicated to thwarting Viktor for no reason other than his own pride. By the end of the story Frank is visibly savouring the idea of crushing Viktor and it is a chilling depiction of a man utterly consumed by hubris. Far from the profound evil that Spielberg has shown with many faces in his films, Frank is a memorable and troubling antagonist for our times, ending his journey obsessed, morally bankrupt, disobeyed and defeated although, it is significant to note, he does get his promotion.

If Frank is a bleak reflection of what the west might become, the friends Viktor ultimately makes show what it can still be. A vibrant, multicultural cast of characters show him small moments of kindness (the casting of a young Zoe Saldana as a Trekkie is a wonderful piece of serendipity) with the exception of the elderly and aggressive Gupta, whose pride at managing to hide from the world and live a life of what he realises is insignificance is ultimately transformed by Viktor’s example. Kumasi Pallana was 86 when this filmed this role and he twinkles with a weary sadness and raw, angry honesty. He brings a refreshing originality to the film, juggling deadpan beside the lead couple in a beautifully silly flourish. Spielberg loves moments in his films where something completely ordinary is brought smashing against something utterly extraordinary, and the final image of Gupta stopping an enormous 747 with his mop is the director’s most distinctive shot.

The middle act of the film is arguably the least compelling dramatically as Frank connects with and attempts to woo an American sweetheart. Amelia, played with fragility by Catherine Zeta Jones proves ultimately to be unattainable as, like Frank, she too is trapped by her unwillingness to move away from the limits she has placed on herself by what she feels she needs to make her happy. Like Victor, Amelia is introduced in standard romcom way via a pratfall but her story also goes to far less familiar places. If the writing device of her love of history books feels a little forced, it reveals a character who appreciates Napoleon but whose favourite story is about how he tried to poison himself. Amelia’s self-loathing makes the character credible but gives Zeta Jones little to develop or much for us to invest in as her journey takes her around in a circle, and ultimately she finds herself more of a prisoner to the terminal than Viktor. As the film’s other American lead character, she is another clear example of the difference between what others expect to see in her and what is projected over who she really is. The film was reshot to remove a happier ending and their relationship ultimately proves bleak. Despite Viktor’s almost preposterously romantic courtship as he tries to help her “rewrite history”, he can’t convince her to join him in the real world. The “destiny” Amelia speaks of was shown to us in one of her introductory shots; the callous married lover waiting for her at the end of the unwavering escalator.

Viktor himself is equally unwavering- the journey he goes on is to illuminate others. His musical theme, conjured with John Williams’ customary and seemingly effortless genius, is a toe tapping, purposeful and optimistic Slavic dance, played with a jazzy elegance by clarinettist Emily Bernstein. Tom Hanks brings enormous charisma to our hero, filling Viktor with the earnestness that has become Hanks’ defining movie-star quality. This is what I suspect Spielberg wanted from the film: honesty, charm, courtesy and optimism facing up to a cynical world and, ultimately, optimism winning out. There are many most interesting comparison pieces to this film but one would definitely be Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray is forced to live in the same day repeatedly. As in that film, there come advantages to having been given almost unlimited time as Viktor’s key victory comes when he uses his newly acquired mastery of paperwork to save a frantic comrade from this American microcosm. Viktor, in his time in the terminal, picks up the perverse rules to surviving in it and, despite having completely missed the nuance of such technicalities earlier in the film, embraces them to help a despairing traveller who is holding a knife to his own throat in a potent and horrifying image of desperation. Frank is outraged at being outmanoeuvred using his own rules, it marks the moment when both characters are publicly revealed. Viktor inspires honesty in everyone he encounters but, significantly, he does learn how to play the game, becoming a myth within the airport and a symbol that the film coalesces around.

The final rebellion is thrilling but, once Viktor crosses into a postcard NYC, it is notable that his only thought is of home. His motivation was always simply to keep a promise to his late father (a hugely significant theme in almost every film Spielberg has made) and it is fitting that, at the climax of the film, after everything he has put up with, Viktor is not taken in by any more shining lights, this time those of the big apple itself.

The Terminal shows us who we are in danger of becoming and who we should aspire to be: it is a film with a strong humanist message that deserves wider appreciation.

#spielberg

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shepgeek · 6 years ago

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It was the Summer of ‘96

The UCI at Kinnaird Park, Edinburgh was a 12-screen multiplex which stood outside of the city throughout the 1990s. Edinburgh has a rich history of wonderful old cinemas, with the Filmhouse and Dominion seemingly still thriving, but they were a considerable trek into town and a multiplex was something completely new to the capital. As the 80s ended, shiny new laser-adorned centres appeared on the fringes of the city and it was genuinely exciting when a curious new outdoor retail park appeared promising to change how shopping worked. The mysteries of this enormous cinema complex, flanked as it was by a bowling alley and a Mexican restaurant (what the hell was a “fajita”?) and boasting a preposterous number of screens were impossibly glamorous. When it opened in 1990 the first film I saw there was Nuns of the Run, but later that summer there followed Back to the Future part III, The Rocketeer and Gremlins 2. I was sold on the place and, throughout my teens, it became my cinema of choice and so, when I returned home from university in the summer of 1996, it felt obvious to try for a 10-week summer job there.

My previous summer had been spent working in a hotel, resenting every second spent in thrall to the management’s penny-pinching, living in dread of being asked to serve soup at weddings and, on one memorable occasion, flooding a storage room: in short I had not been a good fit. Getting the job at the UCI proved alarmingly easy and, on day one, a couple of the older and longer-term workers proposed a welcoming trip to the bar besides Asda for what proved to be an alarming number of tequila slammers in our lunch hour. These guys were a mixed bunch- some of them comfortable in their own skins and mischievously keen to mess with new blood (I am pleased, although not proud, to report I held my booze that afternoon) but there were others that were clearly resentful of us swanky summer students. Those gents held 5-star badges, having made it up the ladders to the highest level of subordinate but marooned short of management and, for us 1-star newbies with our air of cheerful short-term frivolity, I can, in hindsight, see how annoying and privileged our attitudes must have felt. It led to unrelenting surliness from a few, lifting growls only when delighting in handing out the crappiest jobs possible, but beyond that they rarely held much tangible sway. All employees also got a pass card entitling us to half price at the nearby McDonalds, something which, after watching Super Size Me, must have affected the longer term workers and probably took a year off my own life expectancy. A group of about half a dozen similarly intentioned students banded together to give an air of demented fun to working there that summer and my trips to any multiplexes were forever changed by having to don the black waistcoat, turquoise clip-on bowtie and flashlight.

Beyond the ticket office at the entrance, there was a large central food court leading to two avenues symmetrically with screens 1-6 to the left and 7-12 to the right. 6 and 7 were the big ones and would be sold out almost every evening, with the entire place packed out on Friday and Saturday nights: if you ever had that final shift you could expect to be locking up at about 2am. In the central hub there was a main food counter in front of you, with an ice cream vendor on the right and the pic’n’mix and computer game area to the left and it soon became clear which was the station to avoid. The pic’n’mix room was tucked into a corner, so if you were manning it you faced hours sat alone in a circular snug filled entirely with sweets to be kept company only by the unrelenting barrage of the arcade games’ yelling at you in a loop of their demo modes: “ITS RACHEL, DAUGHTER OF THE PRESIDENT OF SERCIA!” The hours there were long and draining and, on one occasion, I tried to lift the grim monotony and took the bags of change from the till to see if I could teach myself juggling. I managed about 10 minutes before the camera in the corner of the room tipped off a manager who fired up the walkie talkie to order me to stop dicking about. What was often worse was actually getting a customer, as frequently it would be a kid whose parents had blithely waved them towards the room with permission to “get yerself some sweeties”. I would watch with dread as a child visited scoop after scoop and, despite the numerous signs making the hefty pricing clear, the reaction when I weighed the final submission would often be incredulous anger from the parent. I couldn’t disagree but that didn’t seem to help much either. Still, it meant that, come the end of the day, there were always a few bags left over that irate customers had refused to pay for, which we divided up between us but the quality of cinema pic’n’mix has remained so low for the 2 decades since that I can’t stomach the stuff to this day.

By far the best job was working as an usher, which I managed to sustain for almost the entirety of my time there. Usher’s jobs were vaguely defined and generally had to just keep everything flowing, so if a life size cardboard cutout of Billy Zane dressed as The Phantom needed building, then we’d do so. We were tasked to open each screening, manage any queues, seat the customers if it was busy and then open the doors at the end, tidying up any litter which was left and taking that to the compactor. Beyond that we were to wander round the screens, ostensibly to check that everything was working fine and each day would start with a slip of paper issued to all detailing every start & end time for all showings across the 12 screens throughout that day. This “checking” duty was the best part of the job but it was a luxury than only could be indulged when we were less busy and generally only during the afternoons. The job was simple and trouble was rare, although I did make one big cockup when I allowed in a party of kids with some accompanying adults but didn’t twig that the birthday boy was carrying a helium balloon, which he then let go and it blocked the projection, casting a massive silhouette of Bert from Sesame Street onto the screen. The showing had to be stopped as we messed about with the aircon to try & blow it to one side and the final solution involved a ladder and a pencil on a brush. Aggressive behaviour from the public was similarly rare and the only problem I ever experienced consisted of three guys who pitched up to a bafflingly scheduled late-night showing of Flipper whist completely arseholed and magnificently bellowing the theme song on a loop throughout the show. As there was nobody else in there with them, we left them to it and all we needed to do was gently wake them come the end of the screening.

Littering was far more of a problem, with the worst cases being when someone dropped a drink on the downward-sloping floor which led to puddles of stickiness that spread everywhere when the audience went to leave. You’d also periodically get a couple of kids overfilled on sweets & fizzy drink barfing it all back up, which was always fun, so the trick was to work out when the tidying of a particularly bad screening was due to finish and then volunteer to open a screening that began immediately beforehand: my mastery of spreadsheets allowed me to dodge plenty of pukers. Even without occasional vomit, the mess was always considerable, and I still don’t understand why people feel that, once the light goes down, that all bets are off in a cinema, with some punters leaving mystifying amounts of carnage upon exiting. Some would try to sneak in messy food from outside and, on one cleaning, I picked up what I assumed to be a sweets wrapper but turned out in actuality to be a condom. What made it worse was that the screening concerned had been about half full. Given how long it took to clear each screen, the end credits to each film became our accompanying litter-picking soundtrack to the summer, and David Arnold’s score to Independence Day remains a personal favourite. Once we had filled our bags of rubbish (the trick being to take your time in doing so), we had to then dump them into the compactor, an ominous machine round the back of the complex which, given its daily diet of coke, nacho cheese, popcorn and ice cream, had an aroma of profound horror which I will never forget, nor will I the images of the mysterious brown goop which oozed around its base. It had its uses though- I remember that the compactor was the only safe place to hide undisturbed to listen to my AM radio as penalty shoot-outs defined Euro 96.

We also had to keep an eye out for kids trying to sneak into 15 certificate films, something that the ticket office often picked up but that parents would try to subvert by buying tickets for their children and then buggering off. I fondly recall one set of lads who were plainly aged between 8 and 12 who were desperate to get into The Rock. After firing questions at them about their birthdays and watching them desperately struggle with the arithmetic, we suggested they swap their tickets for The Hunchback of Notre Dame and, when the littlest lit up at the suggestion, we declared this the final proof that they were definitely under age. They genuinely were furious with the lad, convinced that they had come tantalisingly close to actually making it in.

Aside from pic’n’mix, working on the food counter was the least fun shift and I managed to avoid this for almost the entire summer till one of the 5-star badges noticed and dobbed me in. There was nowhere to hide when you were front and centre and what surprised me most was how many customers completely switched their brains off. This is perhaps to be expected: you go to the cinema because you don’t want to have to think, but suddenly you get faced with a myriad of options and offers. By far the most frequent request from a customer was simply for “some juice”, to which I’d have to reply “certainly- would you like Irn Bru? Diet? With or without Ice? Small, medium or bucket? Upgrade to a meal deal?”. More clarification just annoyed everyone- I still believe that nobody ever likes buying food at the cinema. There were plenty other spectacular brainfarts from the public though- one customer asked how many scoops of ice cream they would get in a treble cone, whilst another, in a moment that still baffles me to this day, queued up to ask “What do you get in a packet of minstrels?” Swallowing the instinct to reply “minstrels”, I hesitatingly offered “Er, small chocolates in a crispy shell?” and the gent, in what I can only imagine was mortification at the ridiculousness of his own question, thanked me and immediately moved away.

Aside from the gunfire coming from the arcades, the background noise was provided by a loop of trailers firing from tv screens above our heads. You soon became immune to them, but it is interesting to note that the films which were pushed by the studios the most were those who faded fastest: I can vividly recall the music and dialogue for trailers to Phenomenon, Chain Reaction and Escape from LA.

In the quieter moments between the puking, seating, endless litter picking and outbreaks of sheer silliness (“Nacho, Nacho Man” was often sung ), came the moments of sheer pleasure: sneaking into the films. Under the auspices of “just checking everything is OK” I would creep in for 15 or so minutes and see films in patchwork, sometimes going a week before I had caught every scene and made sense of what was going on. There were rare evening staff screenings for the big blockbusters whilst the projectionist checked that everything was working, but the joy came from discovering films I’d never heard of that often nobody else seemed keen to watch, such as Mr Holland’s Opus, The Truth about Cats & Dogs, Stealing Beauty & Happy Gilmore. Also that summer’s huge tentpole releases saw some really great films to sneak snippets of, with the original Mission: Impossible the early hit that was later outdone by the behemoth of Independence Day, which packed in audiences and left thousands leaving the cinema with wide, knowing grins. The Rock, Hunchback of Notre Dame and From Dusk Till Dawn were each excellent, and I still have a soft spot for Ben Stiller’s darkly comic The Cable Guy. Twister was flimsy but spectacular, The Nutty Professor not my cup of tea (but hugely popular) , whilst Eraser was always a laugh to sneak a moment from.

Once I’d consumed a film, I later realised that the greatest joy came from not watching it over again but watching the audience from the back of the screening and I memorised the timing of key scenes for each film so that, when I got the schedule for the day, I could sneak in to see how a new audience reacted: there is nothing quite like the sight of hundreds of people all simultaneously rocketed a foot into the air by a good jump scare. My absolute favourite was the Langley break-in scene in Mission: Impossible, at the precise moment that Tom Cruise’s rope gives way to leave him dangling millimetres from a floor which he absolutely must not touch: the gasping sound made by the audience was that of vibrant, vivid excitement and different every time. My love of cinema was essentially absolute by this stage, but these moments cemented it.

The UCI was torn down but rebuilt as an Odeon in 2008 in what is now called Fort Kinnaird, but it remains the student job I remember most fondly, even compared to the following summer which I spent in a video shop. My favourite moment came towards the end of the summer, when the Edinburgh International Film Festival was up and running in the city’s more venerable cinematic venues. There had been rumours of celebrities being spotted at the UCI before (I was gutted to miss out on Sylvester McCoy nipping in to see The Rock) but we got sudden notice of a very special event that we were to host in a matter of days. Sean Connery was both a patron of the EIFF and a legend of the city and his newest blockbuster, Dragonheart, was the opening film for the festival. Connery, however, had noted that the movie was a family film and that it was a bit daft having all the bigwigs come along just to marvel at a then-novelty CGI dragon, so he suggested a “family premiere” the following morning, where Edinburgh families could come and see the film for free and we were designated to be the venue. That morning there was a buzz about the place and people had swapped shifts to be there: I was one of the few who had been lucky but, to my horror, the grumpiest of the 5- star badges had been put in temporary charge of the ushers for the day as the managers were distracted by the multitude of other considerations and the sudden exposure of their cinema, and there was no way he was going to let the summer students anywhere near this. I was given the duty to supervise the essentially empty screens on the opposite side from where the hubbub was building. I was gutted but snookered and will never forget the moment when the main boss, who was visibly frazzled, spied us and, confused to find us underemployed, threw us Film Festival T-shirts and told us to get to screen 7, now. Once we had the shirts on our backs the 5 star badge never got a look in as Connery swept past us in a blaze of charisma, dealing effortlessly with the family who had been sat in the front row and attempted to monopolise the Q&A.

“Are you James Bond?” asked a kid’s voice.

“Well, I wash onesh Jamesh Bond but now thatsh played by another actor.”

The same hand shoots straight back up: “But you sound like James Bond.”

Connery milked the laughter, said “So doesh the Dragon”, made a quip about independence and nipped out of the Fire Exit.

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shepgeek · 6 years ago

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To Boldly Go

When the great film trilogies are listed, the back-to-back run of Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home are rarely mentioned. For starters any franchise from the 1980s, where roman numerals were thrown about merrily, will bear suspicion of artistic scepticism. Indeed, it wasn’t until JJ Abrams’ reboot that the idea would even be considered that any film from this franchise might be taken seriously as a piece of cinema rather than a routine trip for Paramount to milk their cash cow. Star Trek was considered niche entertainment for nerds with occasional nostalgic crossover appeal; something to be acknowledged as popular to a degree but rarely held up as anything like the best of what the medium has to offer. In these three films, however, there can be found huge creativity, bold authorial choices, and a keen sense of storytelling momentum based around a compelling and hugely resonant central theme. Within the genre, the films could hardly be more different from each other: Wrath of Khan is a peerless adventure, blending themes of obsession and revenge with adventure and duty, heavily inspired by the swashbuckling tales of 18th century naval adventures. The Voyage Home, on the other hand, is a prime example of the 1980s fish-out-of-water comedy subgenre. Bridging them is the film considered the least of the three but, whilst it is perhaps the most conservative in terms of scale, the propensity for The Search for Spock to be dismissed as “an odd numbered one” masks the moments where it comprehensively masters what the entire franchise was all about. With its operatic brio and earnest embrace of famous science fiction tropes, director Leonard Nimoy’s The Search for Spock is an underrated film in an underrated trilogy and, 35 years on, hiding within it is a 20-minute sequence which, for this writer, remains the defining moment within the entire franchise.

Within the film it is quickly established that the crew have a chance to do right by their fallen comrade, but have been ordered in no uncertain terms to keep away from his resting place. For Kirk, permission is not a luxury he has ever particularly sought and, from the moment he growls “The word is no: I am therefore going anyway”, the film releases the melancholy of its mournful opening act. Sporting a magnificently implausible leather collar, not enough is made of just how good Shatner is in these films. His impudent charisma led us to genuine heartbreak in the previous chapter and he sustains Kirk’s unimpeachable authority with effortless ease. We can see our hero struggling, failing, learning but never yielding, but to see his plan through he needs his crew, leading to why the scene that follows soars: it is the definitive instance of the Enterprise crew working as one. The dramatic stakes are unusually low in this film: there is no universe to save this time, just one man. The gentle inversion of Spock’s “needs of the many” axiom is honest and maybe a little unsubtle but certainly compelling, and a theme throughout the film of what we do for those who matter the most to us is precisely what elevates this franchise above its peers. Those who dismiss Star Trek as frivolous miss this central pull: each crew is always based around this core camaraderie, an ensemble of characters whose loyalty inspires. The Search for Spock is dramatically least compelling of the trilogy but emotionally the most resonant.

The crew plot to steal back their battered starship in what becomes, atypically for the franchise, a set piece. This segment has the feel of a caper to it and eschews visual fireworks for a steady and patient escalation of the stakes and an intensifying focus on the faces of the actors to build the drama: we know what this crew is risking here and we become desperate for them to succeed. On paper what follows is simply some light levels of banter, a few sweaty brows and the Enterprise reversing out of a garage and yet it is imbued with such an epic scale for these characters that it swells the heart. The heist itself has a giddy sense of fun to it, of propulsive excitement: composer James Horner uses an eclectic percussive string instrument (a cimbalom) to set this feeling, but it builds slowly and steadily. The choice to gradually intensify the scope throughout a longer set piece was not out of character for the time and, one suspects, borne from budgetary restrictions, but certainly it would be unimaginable to find such patience in a modern blockbuster, and even the most recent and honest tribute Star Trek Beyond overflows with startling visuals during its own action beats.

The pace of the escape is determined in part by the choices made by previous directors Robert Wise and Nicholas Meyer, as Trek had already decided that, instead of the buzzing, kinetic spitfire battles of the Star Wars films, these ships of the line would be enormous stately galleons. Harder to manoeuvre, they add an epic scale to even the smallest of lines: “One quarter impulse power” is followed soon after by an “Aye Sir”: this is, after all, the finest crew in the fleet. There are other advantages as ILM’s gorgeous models have aged exceptionally well, bringing a physicality that later CGI struggles to recapture, whilst the elegant iconography of the famous ship is amplified by Nimoy’s of framing it from differing scales.

As the heist develops it allows the crew to quietly shine. Long reconciled to be left supporting the core leads from the side-lines, Nimoy recognised that the whole film would greatly benefit from using his castmates to add shading around the edges, and he spends snippets of time on the Enterprise crew, implying in his director commentary that he had to defend this choice, one assumes, to Shatner. Whilst Kirk remains his old gung-ho self (only a single punch of a security guard is needed) Nimoy gives Sulu, donning what appears to be a cape, a moment of nonchalant badassery, notably showing us Kirk’s reaction of impressed surprise. The message is simple- nobody messes with our heroes and McCoy repeats this to Uhura in a similarly authoritative beat moments later. The caper crackles with its own history and our heroes (and the script) are visibly enjoying themselves here: McCoy’s smile as his friends break him from his jail is magical, whilst the dialogue is peppered with jokes and callbacks to the Kobayashi Maru, or Spock’s revenge on McCoy “for all those arguments he lost”. The final flourish is the addition of an antagonist: the film sets up the USS Excelsior as a new and improved Federation prototype (an idea which is immediately offensive) and their priggish, pompous captain is instantly hissable. Nimoy knew better than anyone that TV sets were awash with talented actors who had more depth to be exploited, casting Taxi’s Christopher Lloyd as his villain and using Hillstreet Blues actor James Sikking here. Sikking does an incredible job with a small part, immediately making Captain Styles a startlingly slappable presence. After being bruisingly insensitive to Scotty (writer Harve Bennet’s lists Scotty’s reply as his favourite line in the film), when we see Styles aboard his titanic ship he is blithely filing his nails and taking a no-look grab of what appears to be a redundant space cane. Styles is not the only example of how the storytelling detail and colour in this section, with a janitor looking on agog as the Enterprise makes her exit, building a sense of scale, opportunistic adventure and disbelief that Kirk, the Federation’s greatest hero, was going rogue. Styles’ final decision, calling out Kirk (by name, not rank) gives the scene’s final punchline a pleasing rush of schadenfreude.

The final ingredient to this section cannot be overestimated as James Horner’s score develops cues from his Wrath of Khan score (namely Battle in Mutara Nebula & Genesis Countdown- two of the finest cues in 20th century film composition) to lend colossal weight to the enormity of these actions for our heroes. A 91-piece orchestra escalates his two primary themes to a gloriously triumphant conclusion, as Horner deploys the French horns blasting at the limits of their range, a joyous trademark of that composer and an enormous final flourish as the Enterprise finally clears her docks.

Throughout this short set piece, we see Star Trek in a perfect microcosm. Everything that it remains most loved for is perfectly conveyed in this sequence by the script, the direction, the performances, the editing and the composition via an emotional core of considerable heft. When Kirk smiles to say “May the wind be at our backs” and Alexander Courage’s famous fanfare salutes them back, the loyalty and camaraderie of this family is cemented.

It ends as Kirk takes his Captain’s chair; unwavering, resolute and with his crew at his back as the bridge lighting shifts, purposefully.

“Aye Sir.

Warp Speed.”

#startrek

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shepgeek · 6 years ago

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The Problems with Prequels

Minor spoilers for Star Wars Saga and the MCU

The business of modern cinema rests on cracked foundations.

All studios scour the horizon for their next franchise, a golden ticket to bring audiences back over years, even decades to come, but how can they find a new saga without creating something original first? Current trends imply that only mega budgeted blockbusters can make it to the one-billion-dollar threshold, and since no studio is keen to take a huge risk on an unproven story, remakes are the current default. That well, however, is already starting to run dry and, even when a new story catches on, another paradox soon follows: in any sequel, how can the second most interesting day for these characters be as compelling? Change the DNA of your property too much and you risk losing what made it special to everyone, but keep too closely to the progenitor and the repetition diminishes the original and erodes the sequels until you are left with a stale caricature and an exhausted resource. In recent years the MCU has changed this picture by never telling any particular overarching story, but instead creating vivid characters with verisimilitude to build momentum towards the moment when they can all parade across the screen together. Hollywood has tried to ape this model but the circumstances of the MCU’s birth have proven to be singular and, as Marvel starts to reach towards television, there is a sense that change is needed there too over the coming years. There is one option which many studios and artists therefore become drawn to and it is interesting that the MCU is exploring this in its next film, Black Widow. Prequels are neither a new idea nor are they unique to this format: C.S Lewis built his saga of Narnia books around The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, retroactively tying decisions and characters into the continuity he had already established: a process now known as “retconning”. For modern auteurs, this urge to extend the universes which they have already built complements a studio’s yearning for more and has led to many recent film series, of which one left an enormous legacy.

George Lucas had made one prequel in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, although little was made to distinguish Indy as an earlier version of what audiences had already loved in Raiders of the Lost Ark and, indeed, one key joke depended on events which were yet to transpire for him. Given that Indiana Jones had been Lucas & Spielberg’s American answer to James Bond, a franchise blithely indifferent to continuity, this was a prequel in name only and, when Lucas felt that the tech could deliver his vision of the Old Galactic Republic, his Star Wars prequel trilogy was conceived. The Phantom Menace casts a long shadow for many reasons, not least because it was and will surely remain the single most anticipated film in history. Given the internet’s infancy, global audiences were sparingly teased and, when combined with a 15-year gap since new Star Wars had been in the cinema, it led to a campaign that no film can hope to match. This was an audience who had been accustomed to showing patience for their stories, when it would be almost a year from when any film moved between cinema and home video and more years before television premieres- the idea of the emergence of a complete saga was sensationally exciting. That The Phantom Menace proved to be such a disappointment to many may well explain why the word prequel tends still to evoke negative impressions, but the reasons for this disappointment are interesting, complex and resonant 20 years later.

Where it was character (and Joseph Campbell’s storytelling archetypes) that drove Lucas’ original trilogy, the prequel trilogy finds its author in love with his universe, where the detail is almost overwhelming. Without the strength of those narrative pillars, however, but with the need to sow the seeds of Anakin’s ultimate downfall, Lucas is left playing with thinner characters. As before he cast well, with Liam Neeson’s unflappable maverick building a twinkling chemistry with Jake Lloyd. Ewan MacGregor is hugely charismatic, although his Obi-Wan Kenobi is very different across the saga, shifting from loyal student to frazzled parent to avuncular mentor. Padme begins as an ethereal child queen and only later evolves to become a glassy logician, flummoxed by having fallen deeply in love. Padme is honest to a fault, never reconciling her meticulous nature and passion for diplomacy with her doomed romance, making a pointed comparison with the sassy dynamo her daughter will become. Her blind belief in the Republic mirrors her faith in her husband and as both are steadily stripped away she is always interesting but rarely compelling: a feature common to all three films. The characters are who Lucas needs them to be, not who we want them to be, not least because he is perhaps loath to mirror and diminish what worked so well in the original trilogy.

After two decades The Phantom Menace remains visually stunning and shows off Lucas’ storytelling flair, with Ian Macdiarmid’s Palpatine steadily building into one of cinema’s great villains: look for the scenes on Coruscant for how he minutely licks his lips or how he is positioned to block the Queen from the camera. There is also the most thrilling and visceral lightsaber fight in the entire saga, the triumphant pod race and John Williams at his peak, complementing the astonishing Duel of the Fates with casual moments of genius such as his major inversion of Palpatine’s Theme at the final celebration. None of this, however, can detract from the storytelling decisions which run counter to the original trilogy to provoke the ire of purists, setting a pattern that would be abundant across the industry in the following years. The focus on politics remains stodgy but the choice to lean into the comedy is the most divisive element. JarJar Binks remains a character who is enjoyed by those who began their journey here but often despised by those who felt that their most precious story was being infantilised. This was compounded by the prominent role that Lucas gives to chance in Episode I, especially in the final act, whilst Anakin’s bristling petulance builds a wall between him and the audience in all three films. This is a trilogy where the villains always win and features possibly the single oddest romantic interlude in cinema: Anakin speaks of agony and torment when addressing Padme and he is permanently emotionally tortured to some degree. The films are deeply interesting and made with arguably greater storytelling flair, but, in seeking to avoid repetition with the original trilogy, they are not stories that compel us to care as deeply for those upon whom they centre.

The second problem faced by any prequel is in the retconning stemming from the knowledge that everyone knows where the film must finish, and so excitement is fundamentally reduced. Knowing the destination robs a story of its potency and, in prequels, this is a requirement. Ridley Scott’s recent Prometheus films illustrate this as well as the studio pressures placed on major releases. Throughout interviews, it became increasingly clear that Scott was deeply invested in returning to the universe which he had helped to create and was artistically motivated to tell more stories centred both in theme and content around the nature of creation, but his Fox bosses were simply after some films containing the Alien. In Alien: Covenant the xenomorph itself felt almost superfluous whilst both that film and Prometheus tied themselves in knots to hint towards the established Alien films without explaining very much of anything. The effect for some was a new disappointment: the feeling that something had been promised but not delivered. Taken alone, Covenant is a thrillingly nasty sci-fi take on The Island of Dr Moreau, but few were expecting this when they paid for a ticket. When the storytelling cranks into gear to get the plot mechanism to begin to align with that of Alien, the dramatic effect is perplexing.

The final problem prequels now face, however, furthers this issue into the very nature of authorship. Back when Scott and Lucas began, the process by which a storyteller settled on their final draft was private, and they had wiggle room for later should they need it. Looking back at Episode IV there is a clear sense that Lucas had decided that Darth Vader was Luke’s father but the rest feels like it was up for grabs: Luke and Leia’s kiss in The Empire Strikes Back is the clearest example that he had not fully decided to have them as siblings, but when later films came out any concerns over discrepancies would vanish into corners of 80s fandom. In the modern era, however, everything needs its own website, and everything must immediately make sense. In The Phantom Menace Qui-Gon’s early line about “the living force” has since been assigned colossal significance and the extended Star Wars universe spills over with such speculation, much of it considered canon. In “A Certain Point of View”, a recent anthology of short stories built around background characters, there are many wonderful illustrations of this, including Yoda’s incredulous reaction to Obi-Wan choosing to bring him the dreamy and unfocused Luke to train instead of his super confident badass sister. This is to say nothing of the role that fan fiction takes in any of the world’s great franchises and it brings into focus any prequel’s final curse: anyone who loves these worlds, when presented with a definitive ending point that the story must land upon, will have either thought up many routes there themselves or read about possible versions of that story and so whatever the storyteller picks will be tinged with disappointment.

In consuming more of our favourite stories, we unravel the mystique of the storyteller, reacting with fury if ever it appears that they are just making this up, which, of course, is exactly what they always are doing and always were. Most in the audience do not want to see what is behind the curtain and, for those that do, they demand a surprise be waiting. Filmmakers, however, think of an idea first and then spiral outwards from it, inventing details to fit the direction in which they wish to head. That is not, however, how they ultimately will tell the story, but this process is dangerous once the universe is already grounded and inevitable in a prequel. The freedom they once had is greatly diminished even though, from their perspective, this is always how they have worked. J.K. Rowling ‘s “Magical Universe” (a clunky title for an author so gifted in nomenclature) is the one remaining major cinematic prequel franchise still in play and it is currently struggling with many of these issues. Where the first Potter book is exemplary in setting up almost implausible levels of detail for the six that followed, the Newt Scamander films have a more meandering tone which has been accused by some of the familiar flaw of being more interested in the world than the people. From this criticism and reduction of our storytellers, further problems emerge: Rian Johnson’s superb The Last Jedi had the courage to make bold new choices but was targeted by trolling campaigns, whilst the final season of Game of Thrones (a show based years of expert teasing and the joy of speculation) was inevitably cast as a failure when the infinity of possible directions it could take was finally reduced to one. Modern audiences demand that details are foreshadowed but grumpy if specific payoffs are not met. We seem increasingly desperate for more of our stories but are yet increasingly less satisfied with what we receive, and one wonders where the next turn in our storytelling will take us. Our narrators have seen their power reduced in this medium and are exploring new ways of keeping us sat in the dark, waiting to be told a good tale.

The Star Wars prequels have defined how we consume modern blockbusters and, for any franchise that follows, these three problems of repetition, retconning and the abundance of scrutiny have left franchise entertainment facing an uncertain future. Black Widow, then, becomes hugely interesting as it faces these problems, not least because, as with Solo, we have just seen and made our peace with the title character’s final destination. Given that emotional resonance, does anyone care what happened in Budapest?

#prequel starwars mcu blackwidow

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shepgeek · 6 years ago

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Film Review of 2018

Plenty to enjoy this year, although I missed out on Bohemian Rhapsody (which seemed to take everyone by surprise), A Star is Born (due wanting to watch it with my wife although the odds of us both being free on the same evening diminish by the year!), Bad Times at the El Royale & The Predator (although a few people I respect really hated that).

Also worth a shout out were a cluster of films I enjoyed despite critical indifference (or, in some cases, drubbing) such as Solo (a fun, if slight, Star Wars B-side), Crimes of Grindewald (intricate and compelling, despite its flaws), Red Sparrow (with an incendiary & furious central performance) and Venom (a surprising, irreverent celebration of losers). A glance at 2019 reveals little that looks too giddily enticing, although Shazam looks like a lot of fun and there are four trilogies which I am eager to see completed (Glass, How to Train Your Dragon, John Wick & episode IX): perhaps leaving the way open to newer ideas lurking in the gaps.

Happy Hogmanay!

10) Aquaman

A thoroughly unapologetic, whole-hearted hug of a movie, throwing everything at the screen with gusto the like of which I’ve seldom seen. The cinematic embodiment of a geek yelling “I LOVE THIS AND ITS AWESOME AND I DONT CARE WHAT ANYONE THINKS”.

I did too.

9) Shape of Water

Ah, that other fish film. Beautiful, sad, bold and brave.

8) Outlaw/King

A fearless telling of the tale of The Bruce from my childhood history lessons. Composed, resolute, and containing restrained performances that mix in assured directorial flourishes. Little chunks of humour and a bittersweet edge make this a truly Scottish film that also features both Captain Kirk’s chopper and Aaron Taylor-Johnson screaming “Wha’s my fuckin’ name?” right before beheading some guy, so something for everyone, really.

7) Mary Poppins Returns

A warm, respectful and earnestly uncynical playabout within a truly beloved play box, exploring new dynamics inside the same exact frame. A lesser companion piece that nevertheless is loaded with both heart and artistic craft.

6) Ready Player One

A gleeful celebration of the rise of Geek from their very own Commander in chief. Funny, thrilling and with sparks of wisdom dancing around genuine silliness, this deserved more respect.

5) Three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

A film like no other, that seamlessly shifts from the tragic yet perfect final day of a kind, family man to its protagonist kneeing successive teenagers in the groin. As a comedy about loss that centres upon cancer, suicide, rape and murder my only complaint was that it felt at times like more of a thought experiment than a film, but there were moments of gobsmacking artistry contained within it.

4) The Post

I have a sneaking suspicion that, in the years to come, this is the film that we will look back on the most. No fireworks, just a delicate, patient, dignified and clear message about the power of freedom to express your opinion, in myriad forms.

3) They shall not grow old

A documentary which it was impossible to take one’s eyes off. As the stoicism contained in these men’s eyes and voices makes the horrors of their world even harder to imagine, the shift into colour & widescreen as the war becomes real to them all was a truly unforgettable moment.

2) First Man

No director has found a way to finish their films as consistently as perfectly as Chazelle and, the enormous weight brought by both lead actors to the wordless final scene was the single finest moment of cinema I saw this year. Outstandingly crafted storytelling.

Film of the Year: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

You can’t be a proper film geek without having a Coen Brothers as your film of the year at least once. Maybe you can’t be a super-geek without picking the one nobody else seemed to spend much time examining but I feel I am fully entitled to such an indulgence.

Throughout their work, the Coens have played with many of the core themes this film also embraces, but only via this portmanteau have they found a way to congeal them all in way to encompass all of life’s cruelty, chaos, pain, stark beauty and silliness with their own inimitable fatalistic panache. Their world is inexplicable, at the whim of chance, coldly beautiful, ominously dangerous and always changing, heading towards a final reminder that all, in the end, must account for their journey. In many ways, it is the film of 2018.

#film 2018

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shepgeek · 7 years ago

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Infinity Chore

Warning- FULL SPOILERS

“And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain,

he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer."

I really should know more about Alexander the Great, given his name is both my middle name and also my Son’s first name. I know he was a warrior, who, in certainty of his own righteousness, killed lots of people and I wonder if the film makers held him in mind for their main character here? That quotation seemed an apt place to begin reflecting on Infinity War, since the main takeaway from a first viewing will surely be that final unexpected revelation that Thanos is, in fact, the hero of this piece. Indeed the very final promise that “Thanos will return” was probably my favourite moment in the film, staying true to its convictions right till the death. I saw this film on its opening weekend at a sold out IMAX screening where hundreds of residents of Britain’s second biggest city gathered to create a pre-screening atmosphere of almost tangible excitement. Upon leaving, however, I experienced a genuinely remarkable mood that was unlike any other I have ever felt before. One boy in his early teens was incredulous when talking to his Mother, sounding confused by his assumption prior to the film that this was meant to be the “last one”. Another lad (aged about 6, so why he was there was anybody’s guess) responded to his Father stating that the story “clearly wasn’t finished” replied simply with: “yes it was, Thanos won.” The Dad then went on to say “well obviously there will be another” before moving beyond my hearing, but I think this boy understood the film perfectly and just as Kevin Feige intended. Indeed when I look again at the Alexander quotation, it puts me more in mind of Feige- Marvel have stood at the summit of blockbuster cinema for a decade now and have crafted hit after monster hit from material that, when it was famously put up for sale, was not deemed worthy of any interest from the major studios. Their triumph was stupendous, their legacy assured and now, when faced with the problem of having exhausted their own source material, they have hit on this film as their remarkable solution and yet, although such a genuine surprise feels it should be rewarded, the more that time passes since I saw the film, the less I like it.

Legacy

Why would anyone rewatch this film 10 years from now?

I wonder what its legacy will be, apart from on how spoilers are managed. Upon leaving the cinema I was mightily impressed by the artistic courage to suddenly punch an audience in the balls, but found that hard to reconcile with the feeling of having just been punched in the balls. This film feels less of a story than an animated flowchart, with a screenplay not unlike a lego manual, sequentially assembling (natch) the characters via increasingly desperate battles but, unlike the first Avengers film (with its witty lightness of foot and themes of family, power and righteousness) there is little broader storytelling afoot. It feels like Marvel knew that the audience demanded of them to make this colossal unification film and, in so losing their ability to control the story, have opted for a conveyor belt of CGI and one liners to culminate in the final mega meta twist. This would work pretty well as a comic, but the lack of both thematic and character development (I struggle to recall anything approaching an arc in anyone except, at a push Gamorrah & Nebula) undermines the emotional impact.

Who would revisit this film then? I’ve always been a fan of Thor, especially in Branagh’s wittily pompous opera which, for my money, was cheaply discarded for goofiness in the flippant and messily indulgent Ragnarok. Here, however, the God of Thunder is used to glue franchises together, veering within minutes from devastated holocaust survivor to pompous wisecracker, and manages only a faded caricature. After having his entire social circle casually terminated earlier in the year, Thor then swiftly loses his best friend (who, bafflingly, chooses to save the Hulk instead) and brother in order to add dramatic weight that is almost immediately squandered when another hero immediately enters stage left. Any Thor fan, therefore, who is looking for a nostalgic blast 10 years from now is not going to seek it here, but would rather turn to any of his other films and, this argument can readily be applied to the entire roster. I also really enjoyed the cinematic debut of Dr Strange, but here he treads water throughout to ultimately act so stupidly and stupendously out or character in order to allow the villain to win, he is either a complete moron or, more likely, is playing a Dumbledoresque long game that, ultimately, will render this entire film moot so, either way, there is no point in coming back to it. Each other character has their finest hour elsewhere in the MCU, so this film, with its dusting of story and character, must stand on its visuals which, whilst stunning, are not significantly more stunning those of other Marvel films. If you’re an Iron Man fan then his better work is in any of his standalones, and Cap gets to have a beard but almost literally nothing else- the stage is so crammed that nobody has space to actually do anything. I loved the sad and strange Banner/Romanov relationship in Age of Ultron but, worse than ignoring it, that core relationship is reduced to a camp “Awkward!” gag, and it even looks like Johansson and Ruffalo never even managed to share a set, never mind a scene. The film simply has no space for the sad, strange or interesting: “Ladies and Genelmen, next up to the plate, put your hands together for Rocket Racoon!” Infinity War does spark when it wrestles two great actors into the same shot, which it only really manages twice. Vision and Scarlet Witch’s vignette in a gorgeously shot (although curiously sparse) Edinburgh comes closest to giving the film a heart, but even actors of this quality need space and the CGI carnage is never far away. There is also joy in Strange & Stark’s bickering (entirely understandable since the film makers know that they are the same bloody character) but then it leads only to that baffling denouement. The film offers us a picnic of dozens upon dozens of insubstantial slices of fun, but there is always are more nourishment to be found in any of their previous works. As I run through the metaphors, this film is thus reduced a queue: 150 minutes you have to sit through in order to get onto the next ride, an infinity chore.

Trolling

When our myriad of heroes is reduced to a parade, the villain is then given considerable focus and, whilst the performance is terrific, his master-plan seems to be based on eliminating the perils of overpopulation which, considering space is infinite (and in it there exists a time travel stone which would solve this issue!) the nonsensical choice to kill half the universe completely undermines the pathos that Josh Brolin works so hard to sell. Maybe Thanos’ nihilism is borne of those at Marvel longing to rein in uncharted growth of the MCU which has stretched beyond their own control- perhaps Feige isn’t Alexander the Great but Thanos himself! Regardless, the film adds fuel for a long-held blockbuster bugbear of mine- can we not get some plain evil instead of conjuring increasingly daft motivations for villainy? DC certainly now have a great opportunity now to steal a march and simply portray Darkseid as a gleefully sadistic arsehole. On DC, it is saddening to read stories about “fans” who troll Marvel, howling about conspiracies and I am worried about adding fuel to so paranoid a fire, but I simply cannot get past the fact that I much preferred Justice League to Infinity War. In that flawed film, the clear failures can at least be (mostly) compartmentalised into a weak villain and a wobbly upper lip, but it knew to allow its characters to breathe, to be who they should be and even grow a little. Infinity War allows each of its heroes to simply process across the stage for their mandatory 5 mins of plot-serving quippage to then get hooked from the wings.

Maybe this is just me, as a 41 year old nerd, finally reaching superhero overload. Or has my affection for the career of Joss Whedon and his original Avengers films, coupled with my fanboy credentials firmly planted on the DC side of the divide allowed me to use a downer ending and as a lighting rod to indulge my Marvel frustrations? I have to acknowledge this possibility but, for me, there is little between this film & X-Men Apocalypse- for different reasons, both are overstuffed puddings with little to emotionally hang on to. Infinity War isn’t a bad film, but it is an empty one which left a sour taste in my mouth.

The End?

That feeling of frustration is what the departing audience at my screening were exuding- weary irritation that we would all have to return a year from now, cash in hand, to sit through the same procession of CGI only now with an actual ending. We now have to wait for everything here to be undone and, once this undoing has happened, there will be even less of a reason to rewatch this film. I feel for the directors, who can certainly bloody make this stuff visually sparkle, but this barely feels like cinema to me- it’s a comic event issue with a surprise downer ending, so ‘Catch next issue to find out what happens next! With added Brie Larson!’ But it is not 4 weeks at the newsagents where we have to wait, and even if this franchise does get the final chapter and character resolutions we hoped for this time out, my sympathy and patience has been basically spent. Cap, Tony & Thor deserve a hearty send off but I can probably live without it, and the ghastly fear of using the Infinity Gauntlet to start everything all over again with a reboot would close the door completely.

As someone who has long complained about not being surprised by Marvel films it is fairly rich for me to ignore that I certainly got a big one this time out, but this film offered nothing new apart from the requirement to come back for the next instalment, which exiting parents were audibly grumbling about. This risks looking like corporate greed, leaving the customer dangerously close to feeling cheated. Once the dust settles, I am sure that those who have flat out loved this film series are likely to find Infinity War thrilling (certainly other reviews seem to back this up) but even they are unlikely to come back to the film repeatedly in the long term. After dozens of hours I simply I no longer care enough about all these characters to feel invested any more. As Marvel have run out of stories to tell and worlds to conquer, they have played their final joker with astonishing courage and gleeful conceit but, once it hits the table, they are left with an audience that is as best exhausted and at worst annoyed. I like the idea of the audacity of this film, but suspect that the decision to have the villain triumph was not borne of courage and creativity but instead came from an exhaustion of originality.

Coda

As a teacher and a cinephile I spent a few moments in each of my classes last Friday urging any students who love stories to see this film on the opening weekend, to celebrate it with a huge audience and suck up the atmosphere. In my showing I detected a collective flatness midway through the film- the jokes were not landing as heavily as you’d hope and you could feel that everyone was saving their emotional investment for the denouement. The perplexed incredulity as the lights went up, therefore, makes me regret my promotion of the value of a shared cinematic experience to my students via this film and, at a time when cinema is fighting to lodge inside the inboxes of the next generation, I do not think that this film has helped.

One final memory: as a lad I had some friends round for my birthday party and, as a treat, I asked if we could watch the Beastmaster, which we had rented as a family previously and I had loved. We did this for 2 birthdays running but, on the third year, my Dad came back with a different fantasy film (the name escapes me), as the Beastmaster was already booked out on loan. I and my friends sat down to watch this substitute and I remember only 2 things about it. Firstly, it was rubbish, but we seemed to enjoy laughing at it. Secondly, it finished on a pointless cliffhanger with “to be continued” filling the screen as the hero trudged into the horizon. Bollocks to that, we thought, and went outside for a kickabout.

Avengers: Infinity War

5.5

#infinitywar #mcu

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shepgeek · 7 years ago

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Cinema 2017

A thoroughly enjoyable year of film, with the Blockbuster market notably stronger in its output.

Lurking just outside my top 10 were four gems: Paddington 2 was a beautiful echo of its progenitor as, albeit for very different reasons, was John Wick 2. The Death of Stalin made me guffaw & wince in equal measure whilst The Big Sick is a charming, original and very funny look at what love does to people.

Others films I liked included Justice League, which was far from being the megaturkey that the press were so keen to carve open. Though containing flaws (I have never previously typed: “invisible moustache”) it was an unexpectedly fun couple of hours, including the closest I’ve seen a film to getting the character of Batman right on the big screen (although the affectionally bananas Lego Batman Movie ran this a close second on that front). Split was a nastily schlocky surprise, It a compelling if episodic slice of old fashioned horror and the Disaster Artist was a slight but warm love letter to creative failure.

Little else notably caught my fancy and, although I enjoyed Marvel’s output, I am becoming incrementally less enthused with their final product. I felt that both Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Thor: Ragnarok were little more than diverting stocking fillers and, whilst I can admire Logan, I did not enjoy its ‘Elsewhere’ take. Deciding to be confrontationally bleak & in doing so, changing the characters so greatly, broke any previous investment I had in them. Beauty & the Beast was pretty but pointless, but I saw only one full-on clunker, as the death of Universal’s Monster Franchise that The Mummy heralded was fully justified.

The not inconsiderable double whammy of Netflix & age is gradually whittling away my annual totals, and this year I sat down to a film (only) 92 times. 24 were at the cinema, with 29 of the films releases from 2017 and 46 being films I had not seen previously. I’d love to have seen Score: a film music documentary but a British release remains elusive, although I will catch up on Free Fire, Molly’s Game and, just because I’m curious, Geostorm as soon as I can. I would like to have seen Moonlight but never found an evening where I could say “Oh, I know what I fancy tonight…” - sorry. I also let Blade Runner 2049 slip past, given that both the original and Arrival rank high on my list of films which, although everyone else loved, I found pretty but a bit empty.

As 2018 approaches, I am curious over some of the films on the horizon, although I must confess that neither Infinity War (apart from the Spider-lad, I’m not that fussed any more) nor Solo (just…why?) get me giddy. A year approaches with no projects that have me chomping at the bit (RP1 excepted), leaving open a greater chance for me to be surprised somewhere along the line? I hope so. For the record, here is my list of the top 10 most anticipated films of 2018.

Early Man Nick Park is a genius.

Game Night I just laughed a lot at the trailer- looks like a silly surprise.

Ready Player One Spielberg cuts loose- this looks wonderful.

The Incredibles 2 Obvs.

The Irishman Pedigree.

The Meg Statham Vs a Giant Prehistoric Shark? Yes.

The Post Spielberg, Hanks, Streep, Boom.

The Predator I ♥ Shane Black.

Venom Potential for something genuinely interesting.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix The finest comic book film franchise goes into space? I’m there.

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Top Cinematic Moments of 2017

5) The Keys (Get Out)

4) “No More Catholics Left” (T2: Trainspotting)

3) Ride to the Prom (Spider-Man: Homecoming)

2) Luke & Yoda (Star Wars: the Last Jedi)

1) Over the Top (Wonder Woman)

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Top ten films 2017

10) Get Out

A gloriously trashy modern horror with some indelible imagery. You have to go with it at times and some of the comedy does not quite settle, but a remarkable new voice in film is clear.

9) Kong: Skull Island

A hugely enjoyable monster romp with a lovely sense of the macabre. Probably the most beautiful film of the year.

8) Spider-man: Homecoming

A freshness not felt in most other superhero films, which was as welcome as it was surprising. There was a huge amount of fun to be had, but the car-bound conversation between hero and villain as the pennies finally drop was electrically acted and sharply directed.

7) Alien: Covenant

A terrifically told ghoulish tale of doomed faith wrapped up in a Xenomorph.

6) Wonder Woman

There are problems with the pacing, but the joy of seeing the character brought to life with such vivacity is exhilarating. The sole shot of Diana refusing to accept the rules of war and to defiantly stride into (of course) No Man’s Land, holding up her shield to the impending barrage was the definitive, indelible cinematic image of 2017.

5) T2: Trainspotting

A film made by old men for old men about old men, but still capturing that same grimy anarchism and improbable feeling that hope can reside even in the most wretched of circumstances.

4) La La Land

A love letter to the joy of musicals, told with enthusiasm, courage and panache.

3) Dunkirk

An immersive cinematic experience, drilling bleakness into your bones only for British grit to demand that hope boldly rises from the embers at the very last.

2) Baby Driver

The moment I realised what was happening with the opening credits, a large warm grin crossed my face as I knew that I was in the hands of a master storyteller who had crafted precisely the film he wanted me to see. It may be thematically slight, but the dazzling wit imbued into the marrow of the script, the performances and the choreography are positively joyous. I was sure it was to be my film of the year, right up until…

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Film of the Year: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

(Full review- Spoilers)

I flat-out loved this film and am gobsmacked by the reaction it has accrued over the past month. Given how my first viewing of Episode VII was tinged with disappointment at how the film differed from the one I had dearly hoped for (see 2015 review), I know something of how some fans may have felt. Back then I didn’t, however, consider trying to mobilise the internet to have it struck from canon, although maybe I just lack imagination or ambition. Maybe, however, I’m finally a grown up. What we have been given by Rian Johnson is a luxurious film which is resplendently skilful in having its cake and eating it and, when it paints key players from the new generation as tantrum-throwing petulants or naïve jocks following only their own testosterone, it is no wonder that millennials may not embrace some parts of this reflection. I am not immune as my own childhood hero, Luke Skywalker, spends most of the film consumed by his own guilt in failing to live up the expectations he set for himself in his life- hardly a cosy message for our generation but, when Poe whines “I want to know what’s going on”, the message comes back clearly: it is not just about you, it is about us all. The Last Jedi was everything I wanted from The Force Awakens (the Goldeneye of Star Wars films- a slick Jive Bunny medley of greatest hits) with its boldness, poetic grasp of wider themes & clear fundamental handle on what makes Star Wars so special; characters you love being challenged, saving the day in cool battles and a smattering of silly creatures. With lightsabres. After having my socks completely knocked off upon first viewing I was worried about whether I’d love it as much when seen through the eyes of my own children who now, at last, can see a Star Wars film in the cinema without me worrying about the tone. Where recent films in this franchise have been made for people in their twenties and up, this film has, to my utter delight, been made for children first, as it once was and should always be. They loved it too, for many similar reasons and many different ones, but this film united us all in, not simple nostalgia, but a new hope, as the film’s wonderful final shot promises.

It gives me huge pleasure to write that the best new film I saw in 2017 was a Star Wars movie- here’s 4 things the film explores to explain why.

1) �� WHAT IS LEADERSHIP? WHAT IS HEROISM?

Too often, there is a perception that the way to enrich a successful film franchise is to “go darker.” Often, this just means a grimness (such as, say, opening your film by torching an entire village) but this adds little more than bleaker visual content which is going to be less suitable for a family audience. The Last Jedi is rare in not attempting “darkness” of this ilk but, instead, addressing a far scarier central idea: Are Goodies always Good and Baddies always Bad? Gung-ho Poe learns (the hard way) that whilst “blowing things up” is crucial to winning a war, true heroism and leadership, embodied by the initially sinister purple herring of Admiral Holdo, requires more and, if anything, Dameron in his hubris initially acts in a way that weakens the Resistance. His arrogance at feeling that he alone knows how to win the day is only undone when he is confronted by Leia and the greatest narrative impact of Carrie Fisher’s sad passing is to deny us a final chapter of Leia’s mentoring of Poe. Fisher is terrific here, with a sadness and sparkle that culminates with her re-union with Luke that left me in pieces. I imagine that Leia too will have passed her rank onto Poe before the start of Episode IX which will probably have to open at her funeral? Poe is now ready to lead and when he recognises that a heroic run at the AT-ATs is the wrong move, he embraces Leia’s lesson. Poe has learned the familiar lesson that needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and, in the final scene, Leia is now following him- Poe ready and only now is the rebellion reborn. Laura Dern has little screen time in which exude noble wisdom (which she can do for breakfast) and her apology to Leia at having to bear the loss of her own imminent sacrifice was skilfully handled for what had to be a minor character. Both Finn and Leia see that sacrificing your life for a worthy cause is deeply noble, but sacrificing your heart by being the one to then have to carry on the fight is the harder path. Fighting what we hate but saving what we love is one hell of a strong message in a film with Wars in the title and the message is clear: seeming like a hero is easy but actually being one is not. This is a good moment to mention Benicio Del Toro’s DJ (“Don’t Join”?), the anti-Solo who emerges in the film’s murky middle. Unlike in the prequel trilogy, where all morality was intentionally obfuscated by the Emperor, it is clear now which side fights for the light and yet characters are now being presented with the choice of whether to either sign up, run away from it or to take profit in it. These are subtle themes but show children that the adult world is scary not because it is full of evil people, but it is scary because you must make your own choices and then live with them, especially when they are painful or when they fail (see 3). DJ’s final line when told by Rose that he is wrong (“Maybe.”) is chilling, real and final.

Leading the villains from now onwards is Kylo Ren, whose character was compelling in Force Awakens but listless. Here he moves forward with startling purpose and his surprising arc contains greatness in both concept and execution. I’ve spoken before over the irksome ubiquity of the “every villain believes he is the hero” storytelling trope from where Ren certainly originated, but his mirrored choice from Return of the Jedi provides one of the film’s greatest moments. Snoke makes nearly exactly the same mistake that The Emperor did but with one key exception: he overlooks not the conflict in Vader but Ren’s total embrace of the Dark Side. Here we have a villain who knows his own mind. He doesn’t think he is the hero, he simply does not care about the concept of heroism whatsoever.

Finally, whilst shouting out for unashamed unwavering villainy, a nod to Mark Lewis-Jones. Having the First Order contain echoes of the British Empire (as with Wrath of Khan, the number of naval parallels here are significant) is a sensible choice, but Captain Canady’s ultimate expression of contemptuous disdain for his younger minions and his own demise was a thing of real beauty.

2) YOU KNOW, FOR KIDS

Despite the script exploring more sophisticated ideas, the soul of the piece remains intact, namely that these stories are Fun. Made for adults to enjoy, but made primarily for children to love. Comedy has always been central to this saga and The Last Jedi embraces this by tying the feelgood rush of nostalgia with a nimble wit and, in the magnificent Porgs, the apex of avian silent comedy. My daughter received one for Christmas- a gift that was as warmly embraced as it was catastrophically ill judged when it became clear that my son is now desperate for one as well! I never had any problems with the Ewoks and loved every second of these earnest balls of fluff.

Luke’s subversion of “reaching out” led to the finest joke of the year (“That’s the force”), whilst Hux proves to be a magnificent straight man beneath veneer of a sneering privileged jackass. Poe “waiting on hold” is fun, but the look Ren gives Hux as he redundantly repeats his leader’s orders was magic. This humour within the story and not around the story is what Star Wars does best, and is elevated by moments of spine tingling nostalgia that serves (but does not drive) the film. R2’s return to immediately hurl abuse at Luke is perfect and the emotive pull of Leia’s hologram and Luke’s small wink to 3PO left me beaming.

I was never a Han Solo guy, you see (shocker). I was a Luke Guy. My son loves Luke first & foremost too and, heading into the film, my main concern was that Luke would go dark. This is teased in the film but stays true to his soul. Mark Hamill has unjustly received much-publicised trolling (online & in some media) for initially fighting against Johnson, only to realise that the path he takes ultimately elevates Luke to that of a true legend. This is exemplified in his defining moment as Luke, now almost mythical, calmly strides out alone to face the First Order’s arsenal. It is resplendently shot, scored and played.

3) LOSS, FAILURE & LEARNING

As mentioned, our heroes make errors in the course of the film (Poe, Rose & Finn) but it Luke who embodies this the most. Perhaps this is why some fans were upset- in our hearts we hoped that, at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke had already ascended & learned all he needed to know to become a true master. Sadly, for those of us now a wee bit greyer, this hubris is something we all face. Age brings wisdom but the wheel is always turning. Luke has learned that the force does not belong to the Jedi alone, and for them to claim it as such was vanity. He finds himself alone with his own legend; he has the power but cannot guarantee he won’t make more mistakes. This self-doubt is complemented by the shame borne when he moves to strike Kylo Ren (looking at his mechanical hand only to see a shadow of his father). His retreat is not, in his eyes, a surrender, but an attempt to break the wheel by removing himself from it entirely. His indulgence and failure to move forward (or, as his former pupil puts it more sinisterly, to “Kill the past”) shows that teachers always have lessons to learn, something I also have learned the hard way (although perhaps not as hard as Luke!). All teachers fail as surely as their students will, and allowing them space to embrace that lies right at the core of my profession. As the film gracefully puts it: “We are what they grow beyond. That is the burden of all masters”. I’m currently writing a research project on how to develop independence in children and I will be quoting this film in it - I did not see that coming.

Yoda’s arrival, when it comes, is magnificent, as is his final lesson; my classroom wall already is adorned with “The Greatest Teacher, Failure is.” Yoda’s giggling dance of impish glee as he torches the ancient Jedi tree in front of a gobsmacked Luke (“Miss you, I have!”) is a wonderful touch and rightly calls back to Empire Strikes Back (did they use a puppet here?) Hamill is wonderful in this scene and, in all honesty, should by rights be up for the Supporting Actor awards. To take a character which has dominated your entire life and then to deliver a performance of this depth and vulnerability is not something I expected. Luke’s final exit (evoking Han with a “See ya around kid”) and then smiling into the twin suns was perfect: “Not sadness. Not pain. Peace & Purpose.” We never stop failing and we never stop learning. Not even Luke Skywalker.

4) THE FUTURE BELONGS TO EVERYONE

So to the profiteering planet, where the film did appear to lag on a first viewing. I remember reading criticisms of the “2 boats” scene in The Dark Knight, with the counterpoint being that it was actually the soul of the entire film captured in a microcosm and I feel this applies here as well. This film is for everyone and not the elite, as it is the slaves who end the film that will ultimately provide “the spark which will light the fire.” A simple but powerful message, it is not only what the film says but what it itself embodies, hence the negative reaction from viewers of a certain disposition.

Rey continues to intrigue and starts the film out of her depth, grasping for an authority she does not yet have. She demands Luke teaches her (even translating Chewie for him!) but, by the end, has seen what the cost of doing the right thing can be, earning her place as a the first of the new Jedi. Her vision in the cave with the finger clicks without beginning or end show her who she truly is; she is simply Rey and has to live up to whatever she chooses that to mean. Where Luke saw a new Vader when he had his vision in Empire Strikes Back, Rey sees only herself. You don’t need heritage to be a Jedi, you just need to Force to be with you. Rey has yet to explore her own darkness (she did go straight to that cave) and this needs to be explored in Episode IX but Rey has no destiny to avoid; she makes her own choices. This is bold and courageous, leaving the viewer to, as Rey does, draw their own conclusions, in a creepy scene that tells the story using light, sound & stillness - I bet George Lucas loved it!

I am not trying to argue that the film is flawless; as mentioned the middle section needs to be anticipated to be fully enjoyed and there is a bit of a narrative vacuum as, on the galactic scale, little has actually changed by the end of the film: all the pieces are now in place for the final act to come. It can be argued that the surprise move to dispose of Snoke so quickly does reduce his menace, but in doing so Ren is elevated from the brattish “child in a mask” he was in danger of becoming to something potentially terrifying: a soulless psychopath who exists only to try to turn Rey into whatever he has become. The storytelling chops of JJ Abrams are about to be sorely tested, as how this can remain the “Skywalker Saga” is hard to imagine. Certainly, after the emotional escalation that this film delivers, the story needs to match it (I, for one, would love to see the return of Palpatine!). Also the emotional climax between Rey & Ren at the end of the second act means that the viewer has to go through an emotional reboot before a lengthy third act, but this too is not an issue on a repeat viewing. Viewed as Episode VIII of IX, the true climax of this story is Luke & Leia’s final conversation, when her hope finally wavers & he arrives to rescue her for one last time. At this moment John Williams gloriously leitmotifs in their theme from Episode IV - that man is just astounding. Luke & Leia’s final goodbye with the line “No one’s ever really gone” would have had resonance anyway, but it now hangs mournfully both inside and outside of the story.

Rian Johnson has made his own film: it is complete, and it is outstanding. Watching it a second time with my children was a joyous experience- my Son entranced with his hands on his head as Rey makes his fateful choice, my daughter punching the air as the Falcon swoops in and the Tie Fighter Attack cue kicks in. They were lost in pure storytelling and it was wonderful. The film concludes in a way no other Star Wars film has, as slave children play (“Luke Skywalker- Jedi Master!”) and one wanders outside to gaze longingly up at the heavens and dream. That is what these films did for us decades ago and what it does again for the children of today. I can count on one hand the number of films I have been to which ended in spontaneous audience applause but this film is one. Johnson has put the franchise exactly back where it needed to be and I am very excited to see what he does when given a piece of paper with only one restriction to meet, those most magic of cinematic words:

A long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far, Away…

#film2017 starwars thelastjedi

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shepgeek · 8 years ago

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Film Review of 2016

Disappointments

Since everyone seems so keen to dispatch 2016 asap, let’s start on the downers!

2016 has definitely had its occasional moments but we seem to be fast converging on a generic blockbuster soup. The year was littered with blockbusters which had both impressive visuals and charismatic performances but also had nothing new to say, beyond sticking a franchise marker in the ground (Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts, Ghostbusters, Kung Fu Panda 3, Warcraft, Jason Bourne, The Magnificent Seven & even the largely over-praised Civil War). Whilst all of these films passed the time well & were basically enjoyable, there is the ever-increasing whiff of missed opportunity around the primary Hollywood fare. Less successful were Independence Day: Resurgence (distracting but pointless) and X-Men Apocalypse - an uneven, florid and unexpected misfire, although nowhere near as far behind Civil War as was generally made out.

Meanwhile, over in the DC Universe, Warner Brothers kept fumbling what should be their easiest win. From a low start, Batman vs Superman fades badly on repeat viewings (even the ballyhooed Special edition). There are definitely no problems in their casting department and I remain a fan of Cavill; his mournful look in the courtroom is played magnificently. Ben Affleck’s Batman was expertly portrayed but bore almost no resemblance to the essence of the character that I for one love, delivering in his place a psychopathic fascistic jackass who was a far cry from the world’s greatest detective. How we’re supposed to root for him then or in the future is a mystery - I would honestly take Clooney’s portrayal over this. Poor Affleck - he delivers what he is given magnificently; blame the architects and not the builder. Gal Godot’s cameo keeps me hopeful that Patty Jenkins may just save the whole damned thing with Wonder Woman next year, but Warners are certainly running out of strikes. The idiotic shambles of Suicide Squad was only barely saved from one-star dreck by the huge charisma of Will Smith & Margot Robbie, and whatever spark the concept started with seemed produced and edited into manufactured oblivion. To make it worse, DC’s TV shows remain such charming and silly fun: I wonder how much appetite standard audiences still have for the upcoming JLA films.

Arrival came trumpeted with massive critical heraldry but I was greatly disappointed. I found it derivative (Torchwood: Children of Men with the pilot & finale of DS9) and, as with The Martian and Interstellar, flirted with scientific ideas (which film reviewers mistake for “intelligence”) only to discard them for woolly sentimentalism. Only Zemeckis’ Contact reigns supreme in this expanding genre of science storytelling and, even though the performances in Arrival were compelling, the film (albeit decent) left me greatly frustrated.

Another smash hit that I did not care for was the Secret Life of Pets, a tedious and rambling Toy Story knock-off (though my daughter loved it so what do I know?) but nothing compares to the real disappointment of the year- Swiss Army Man. My take was this: a smug, cold, flimsy and empty experience, it became the first film I’ve walked out of. Ever. In fact I did so about 5 minutes before the end, since I knew exactly where it was going and was so disengaged that it was only going to annoy me. I should add that I do like very much that the film exists and I could imagine friends and reviewers whom I respect loving it (as many did) but it bounced off me completely and ultimately left me irritated and even a little angry.

Moments

In the midst of an uninspiring year for cinema, there were still a few moments which blazed through the repetitive fug & reminded me how joyous cinematic storytelling can be. Spielberg’s BFG had many such notes, from the visual poetry of the Giant silently twirling through the shadows of London to the childish joy of the whizzpopping Queen. Other moments of delight included the moment of “Hang on - are they doing this? - oh Yes They Are!” when the Beastie Boys’ bassline kicks in during the final act of Star Trek Beyond and, whilst The Revenant may have been a tad indulgent, the bear attack had me yelling at the screen. Any scene featuring Flash the Sloth in Zootropolis was laced with comedic genius whilst our arrival in the city, combining Shakira’s perfect pop with gorgeous animated depth and colour, was magical. Ryan Gosling’s masterclass of toilet gunplay clowning in The Nice Guys was only topped comedically by the rampant and prolonged genius of the game of “Would that it were so simple” tennis in Hail Caesar! But narrowly pipping that for my cinematic moment of the year though, was Lord Vader himself.

I feel conflicted over Rogue One as ultimately it is yet another film which exists because it can, not because it needed to. To note the lack of comment about the unsettling fake Peter Cushing (squarely in the uncanny valley) after the shrieking which greeted the prequel trilogy’s “Dodgy CGI!” headlines perpetuates the accepted myth that those films are disasters to discard but I see little difference. Rogue One is another three star entry to the saga; I’d put it on a level with Attack of the Clones in terms of quality, ahead of Phantom Menace. Disney have a whole Galaxy to explore but choose to sustain the increasingly weird trend of aping preceding classics with an echo instead of trying out a new voice. Quite what Joss Whedon made of the final act is anyone’s guess: “the feisty rebels fight their way past a space armada (losing comedy relief Alan Tudyk along the way) to climb a radio antenna so they can send out the message to topple the evil empire” rang a few bells with me anyway. Rogue One also felt choppily re-edited (what was with the psychic space octopus?) whilst the new characters didn’t really land at all. Indeed directly after leaving the cinema I (and all of my party) struggled to name any of the characters (Erm…. Jinn, the moustache guy, the blind guy, his mate, the pilot, Forest Whitaker, the funny droid, the small thing that looked like a testicle…). Despite this problematic emotional deficit we were treated to some glorious set pieces and nicely pitched beats, but when Darth Vader’s lightsaber illuminates his terrifying visage we are treated to a moment of cinema as resplendent in its awesomeness as it was shamelessly gratuitous. After my considerable mithering about not being able to share Star Wars with my children last year it was almost a relief to see such a grim conclusion (No Way is it suitable for under 10s) but it makes me return to my wondering of who Disney are making these films for. Episode VII is rumoured to be “darker” still; where is the cheerful space-fairy-tale where we all started? Eventually they’ll stray too far from Lucas’ indelible first film (still the finest of the lot, for me) and step back cinematically but they run the risk of increasingly diluting the specialness of the whole thing. The fun “Star Wars Rebels” TV show fills a bit of this gap but even that has clouds of doom in the background (although seeing Chopper & The Ghost in Rogue 1 was a nice touch). Maybe after the sad loss of Carrie Fisher last week now isn’t the time to whinge about gloom in the Star Wars Universe, but I feel that my love for the franchise is certainly starting to be tested.

The year in numbers

Number of films seen: 93

Way down on other years- I blame box sets).

Number of ***** films released in 2016 : 0

This happened in 2011 too, but I’d normally expect at least 3.

Number of 2016 releases seen: 32

About par for the course.

Number of cinema trips:29

Again about my average: I’ve been to the cinema 188 times in the past 6 years.

Number of new films seen:51

I’m improving here, which pleases me.

Most anticipated for 2017

Baby Driver

Edgar Wright’s films are ace (except that one which I don’t mention since people shout at me).

La La Land

This looks gorgeous and I thought Whiplash was sensational.

Logan

I like everything about how this looks.

A Monster Calls

Original storytelling! Yes!

Paddington 2

Obvs.

Star Wars Episode VIII

A New Hope?

T2: Trainspotting

Hugely exciting- these film makers have only grown more talented in the past 20 years.

20 years.

Gods I’m old.

Thor: Ragnarok

My favourite Marvel franchise goes comedy-space loopy. Has the potential to be my favourite of them all.

Wonder Woman

I love this character and I want my daughter to as well. Get this right DC. Please.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Missed during 2016 but would like to have seen:

Allied, the Big Short, Finding Dory, Midnight Special, Money Monster & Passengers. I also did not see either Room or Spotlight, because I was never in the mood for the grimness of either. Look, I’m busy and I’ve turned 40. Can you tell?!

Top 10 films of 2016

Bubbling Under: The charming and colourful Moana and also Kubo and the Two Strings were superior family fare whilst The Jungle Book was an immersive treat.

10 The Revenant

Technically stupendous but also oddly emotionally detatched and often needlessly arty- truly great cinema puts storytelling before craft and allegory with the latter drawn from the former (if it can) and I felt that, despite the stupendous cinematography and artistry on display, that beauty was sacrificed for emotional or narrative strength- certainly for plausibility. I’ve had these issues with Iñárritu before, but there is no denying the fact that this remains a remarkable piece of cinema.

9 Deadpool

Actually a bit more sharp than I’d first realised and a clever piece of programming, but still not what it could be if it halved the budget and really cut loose.

#driveby

8 10 Cloverfield Lane

The main problem is the name (It has nothing to do with the 2008 film and I was always waiting for them to tie together), but the claustrophobia and paranoia are immersive, shocking and unpleasantly tense.

7 The Hateful 8

A trifle indulgent at times, but a terrific theatrical experience.

6 The BFG

Not as comedic as you’d think, with a pervasive melancholy vibe of loneliness, guilt and regret emitting from the screenplay, lead actor and the director. It takes a while to get going and doesn’t aim for huge emotional sweeps, but the patient craft of Spielberg is clear to see. The BFG is lovely filmmaking with a real gentleness at its core and it will only grow in reputation over time. Also features explosively farting Corgis.

5 Star Trek Beyond

The best Blockbuster of the year I was surprised and delighted to see how much it grew on repeat viewings. This warm and witty love letter was assembled at huge pace but it made for a thrilling piece of cinematic escapism. A considerable improvement on its predecessor, the highlights were the pairings of the characters, especially Spock & McCoy. They did fudge the character of Kirk a little in order to both complement the story’s main theme & provide a suitable reflection in the villain and as a result Kirk is, paradoxically, the least convincing part of the piece but, after a terrific and assured finale and beautiful grace note for the 50thAnniversary, the films ends perfectly with the whole crew, as it should.

4 Hail Caesar!

Another film that gets better the more you think about it, Hail Caesar! loves movies almost as much as its protagonist and this feels like one of the Coens’ more personal films. Their goofy wit is littered throughout it and it nods to cinematic tradition constantly, including some wildly unnecessary set pieces which spectacular and as fun as there are knowingly indulgent.

3 The Nice Guys

Quintessential Shane Black it may be, but his voice is so distinct and entertaining that a film with this level of charisma is hard to take against, no matter how familiar the ingredients might be.

2 The Man who Knew Infinity

A truly delightful surprise, I was expected this to be a guilty pleasure (given my love of Maths and knowledge of the subject matter) but instead I was treated to a terrific piece of film making: quiet, earnest, substantial, well acted and gracefully told. Seek it out! It may appear like a generic biopic but the subtle exploration of Ramaujan’s talent and his faith and the search for absolute truth in both Mathematics and Religion that connects him to Hardy (along with circumstance) is well rendered. It is certainly considerably superior to the Imitation Game.

1 Zootropolis

So Disney has eclipsed Pixar- that Lassiter dude certainly knows what he’s doing.

I’m pretty amazed to see this as my film of the year, as it is a kids’ film, a cartoon. And yet, when I look back on everything I’ve seen over the past 12 months, it is the one film which made me smile the most and it continues to grow on repeat viewings (which my children beg for). It is kind of expected that incredible colour, imagination, design and wit are de rigueur in these films but not only does Zootropolis get all of these ingredients exactly right, it sneaks in small hints of profundity. After a year in which unsavoury debates have been poisoned by irrationality, this film, without every threatening to be preachy, gently illustrated to my children exactly the message I needed them to see. The core of the film concerns how we can get judged by what we are, not who we are or what we do and even both protagonists, who are wildly different, fall into this trap during the course of the story. Judging a book by its cover is in our DNA but reflecting on how we process this instinct is something that struck a chord with me, long after my first viewing. Concepts of “Them and Us” are challenged directly but without ever lecturing or straying from the narrative or the wit. The film is subtly layered both narratively (themes of exclusion and lack of purpose are examined through deft comedy) and visually (a quick rewatch of the final 10 minutes allowed me to spot nods to Speed and The Empire Strikes Back) and the music and humour are hugely pervasive. It is no masterpiece but is certainly the film I needed in 2016.

This may be a cheesy way to finish the year but the lyrics to the (frighteningly) catchy main song from Zootropolis contains a message for Film Producers (despite being sung by an alarmingly sexy gazelle):

“I want to try everything, I want to try even though I could fail; I’ll keep on making those new mistakes.”

I’ll take more Swiss Army Men every now and then if it leads to more Whiplashes. Let’s hope to see cinema trying everything in 2017.

Happy New Year!

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shepgeek · 9 years ago

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Cinema 2016 part I

January-March 2016

In the Cinema:

Minor Plot spoilers

The Hateful 8 **** 8 (natch)

And Then There Were None re-imagined as a gory western: it is hard to resist Tarantino when he’s being this cheeky. I was underwhelmed by Django Unchained but felt that this was QT kicking back & telling his favourite kind of shaggy dog story, where horrible people do horrible things to each other & bask in their amoral turpitude. The film is definitely highly self indulgent but Tarantino doesn’t care (neither did I) and its sheen is so polished that it lures you into ignoring its lack of depth (some have read it with racial & social profundity but I reckon that is wish fulfilment). There are some moments of inelegance, not least Tarantino’s traditional cameo which feels terribly jarring. On this, there is a clip of Hitchcock describing a hypothetical film scene where two men chat about nothing: he then asks you to imagine then the scene replayed but with the audience first shown that there is a bomb under the table, giving the whole affair a totally different tone. In Hateful 8 we have Quentin’s version of this, where he freeze frames & adds his own voiceover yammering “OK so there is a Bomb under the table, but who put it there? Back to the movie!”. He knows what he is doing and, whilst this makes his own voice (literally) clear, it irked me a little & was one indulgence too far when it sucked me out of the story he was, up until that point, telling (to my mind) artfully. Others have complained that the relentless horribleness of the characters was a problem but this was fine with me, as I guffawed alone in my audience of fairly silent & elderly peers during an afternoon screening. Walton Goggins is a genuine revelation amongst a starrier and talented cast, but I left contented but with the slight feeling that I should rewatch Reservoir Dogs. Not for everyone, but a blast of pure cinema which started the year on a welcome note.

Zootropolis **** 8

I like this the best of the recent Disney resurgence: vivid, funny, warm and honest with a good hearted message about tolerance, limits & stereotyping that all children would understand without ever being felt that they were being preached to. The exuberance of the entry to the city is one of the most vibrant scenes I’ve seen on the big screen in a while.

Deadpool *** 7

When you throw away 75% of the rules of comics, it makes the 25% you cling on to all the more visible. Surprisingly formulaic, I don’t think Deadpool was as either as ballsy as it thinks it is or as it needed to be, especially in terms of progressiveness or punk storytelling. A teenage boy’s idea of subversion (Boobs! Gore! Swearing!) , it was ultimately very Hollywood and you can still see the safety buffers on the sidelines. That doesn’t stop it from being very funny at times and is clearly blessed with a terrific star who has stuck with it against long odds, but I wanted more of the loopiness seen when the hero starts hallucinating cartoon animals. Stop trying to have your cake and eat it, halve the budget to get the studio off your back & show us something really dangerous and truly bananas.

Kung Fu Panda 3 *** 7

It was clear that all of the best ideas from the wonderful first film have now been exhausted and, crucially, this third entry was neither as funny nor as charismatic as its predecessors. A film that exists because it can, it was, however, both sweet & pretty and both of my children came out glad for the trip.

Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice *** 6.5

So basically it just doesn’t ever quite work, mostly because I still don’t know why they’d fight & was not convinced that the film makers really did either.

Neither of the principal leads feel quite right throughout. I still hold that Man of Steel is a worthy, enjoyable & interesting new spin on Superman and was excited to see where they would take him next, but, following an interesting origin story, we seem to have fast forwarded through the parts which make him compelling to now leave him as a punchbag who is permanently caught on the verges of perplexity and fury. Unlike some, I felt that the Justice Court scene was terrific and sadness and weight that Cavill brings when standing alone at its conclusion was properly dramatic and moving. Throughout much of the film, however, the story & characters are put mostly aside for hugeness, brand development and spectacle and there is only so much you can take of being grabbed by the lapels and having the film scream how enormous and epic it is into your face, whilst Hans Zimmer parps away melancholically at the side. The narrative never feels organic (whilst all surprises have again been spoiled months ago by even the earliest trailers) and a clear storytelling voice is not present, which was not the case in MoS. I felt that film worked best when Cavill & Adams shared the screen and I think the same is true here. You root for Lois & Clark but there is little to hang on to and, worryingly, their relationship seems to be being farmed only for future exploitation in the cause of yet more doom. This brings me on to the weird prophecy/dream from the trailer and the subsequent cameo (which I’ll spoil here). When the lightning & yelling started and an unrecognisable masked face started hollering at Bruce (I reckon I caught about half of what he said) I thought, following the previous shot of his uniform, that this was Robin’s ghost warning of something. I couldn’t even tell he was wearing red in the 3D screening and, considering that I have a lego flash keyring & am a declared DC fanboy, then if I didn’t twig what was happening there then the film makers have a real problem with coherence. Indeed the words incoherent and joyless have been bandied about in the reviews and neither can be dismissed with any justification. I had few problems with the new Lex (although I always prefer menace to weirdness in villains) but having him as the only hint of lightness is an odd choice. Certainly this is not a film for the young and the weird Man-Bat monster could have put its rating up to a 15- certainly the marketing of toys based on this film to children is frankly disgraceful. To think they used to complain about Batman Returns!

As for Batman- well my first blog was a grumbling complaint that Chris Nolan had not properly nailed the character in my eyes, so it is unsurprising in that I felt this to be even more true here. I do know that many people love Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Rises” and I can see that the book contains great storytelling, but there is nothing in that interpretation of the characters which resounds for me. My Batman is the world’s greatest detective, whose defining characteristic (aside from his awesomeness) is his intelligence. This morally fractured reactionary doofus lacks the wisdom of any of his screen predecessors and his speech about percentages and “absolute certainty” is insane tripe. Batman would recognise such immoral grandstanding in any of his foes and the suggestion that it would consume him is never fully plausible- only a fool would look at Superman & see a foe, as proven by the simplicity of Bruce’s realisation of this late in the day. You can easily imagine the writers starting out with a logo, release date and notepad before asking “so why would they fight?” and this issue is never properly resolved. These two friends have always differed only along the spectrum of the question “does the ends justify the means?” and their conflict should always have been borne from Superman trying to stop Batman from going (arguably) too far in trying to keep people safe from an external threat. Perhaps setting the film just after Bruce had lost Robin would have helped make his stupor credible, but the barney is the whole reason that the films exists, and it shows. Poor Affleck- caught again with a brave, committed & charismatic performance in a role that isn’t properly crafted. I will continue to yearn for an assured screen Batman who ultimately is at peace with who he is and, after so many attempts, I’ve still never seen the character done properly on the big screen, aside from Mask of the Phantasm.

So where now? Wonder Woman could definitely be great- all she gets here is the chance to look cool and enticing. Superman is sidelined & underdeveloped. Batman is definitely not right. The Flash is currently being wholeheartedly nailed on TV so a parallel film doesn’t really excite. Cyborg & Aquaman- even after the weird plot hiatus where we watch Bruce watch (three fairly uninspiring) teaser trailers, does anyone really care about seeing them on the screen. If Darkseid is coming, the chuck in J’onn J’onzz and I’d be more interested. In the meantime we are left with a clear three star product- it is never terrible and contains some moments of greatness (especially visually) but it always feels dour, artificial and unsure of both its own story and its own audience. My favourite review came from howitshouldhaveended.com which ended on a positive note by suggesting that maybe this is the plan: that we are seeing our heroes at their “darkest before the dawn”. I still have hope for the heroes of my youth, but it has been dented.

Other films seen:

Big Trouble in Little China

8.5

****

I missed my train stop when watching it, gobsmacked. Resplendently Demented.

Brave

8.5

****

Underrated ginger Pixar charmer.

Casablanca

*****

Flawless.

Duel

9.5

*****

Spielberg was a genius right from the start. A remarkable deconstruction of 20th Century man.

Electric Boogaloo

****

Marvellous case file documentary on deranged 80s movie studio Cannon.

Empire of the Sun

****

A cold, beautiful reflection on the vivid horror of war through the destruction of a child's innocence.

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer

***

Despite being hated, I find that it has a weird cheesy charm.

Focus

***

Slick, slight con man drama with a couple of knockout scenes.

Gremlins 2

****

Loony cartoon mayhem which laughs at conventional sequels.

Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince

8.5

****

Still the best of the lot. Funny, too.

How to Train Your Dragon

*****

Simultaneously magisterial and personal, this is Dreamworks animations' finest hour.

Non-Stop

6.5

***

Disposable but not unenjoyable Liam Neeson airplane thriller.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

7.5

****

Just not as funny as I hoped, but with small moments of excruciating excellence.

Sky High

****

Rarely noted but really excellent Disney Superhero parody for children.

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

*****

Outrageousness fused with musical comedy dynamite and a dash of self-aware satire. Bears the touch of genius.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

****

Few seem to want to recognise any excellence here, although it's in plain sight- albeit in front of the occasional clanger.

Steve Jobs

*****

Like solving a really nasty differential equation, but in a good way (of course).

Theory of Everything

****

A little vanilla on the man, but still a heartfelt story of how love can ebb and flow.

Tomorowland

****

Stronger than I felt on first view, but it still feels like an ideal in search of a story.

World's End, The

****

Also better than I first thought, with a maudlin bite to the zippily directed sci-fi carnage.

#batmanvsuperman #deadpool #zootropolis #hateful8 #kungfupanda3

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shepgeek · 9 years ago

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2015 in Film

It has been a three-star year, really.

In total I’ve sat down to 116 viewings of 114 different films in 2015, 28 of which were trips to the cinema and 40 were of films I had not seen before. I’ve admired many films, liked a few, but loved only a couple. In particular there have been a procession of releases which have been widely and warmly embraced but left me a little disappointed – decent enough *** films which are unlikely to trouble my rewatch intray, such as Jurassic World, The Martian, Big Hero 6, Ant Man, Spy or MockingJay II. Even those towards the top of my list show aspects of the same issue- whilst I really enjoyed Inside Out & Mad Max, I felt neither were the masterpieces that I was reading about in the press and online. Am I losing my passion for film?! Unlikely, although when I look at the list of films I’m most anticipating from next year, there are not many to set my pulse ablaze:

Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice

The B.F.G.

Fantastic Beasts & where to find them

The Hateful 8

The Man who knew Infinity

Nice Guys

Star Wars: Rogue One

Suicide Squad

X-Men: Apocalypse

Indeed, in Batman Vs Superman, I feel a similar concern that proved evident in Star Wars- that the essence of Batman looks to have been polarised for the sake of massive dollar seeking mega-blockbusterlyness.

Fundamentally though, as my top 2 films showed, Cinema still has the power to raise the hairs on the back of my neck in a way no other medium can match and, whilst next year looks a little ordinary on paper, it is increasingly the films which I don’t see coming that have this magic touch.

Happy New Year!

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The following list is based on 32 films released in the UK in 2015, although I’d have liked to have seen Brooklyn, Steve Jobs, Sicario & Carol if they’d been on locally at a showing before 830pm! I was looking forward to Mortdecai too but must confess that its critical mauling put me off, whilst I was enjoying Shaun the Sheep at the cinema till one of my children took rather suddenly ill!

Top Scenes of the year

Honourable mentions to Spectre’s opening shot, Mad Max’s bananas finale & John Wick’s visit to the nightclub. Han & Leia’s reconciliation might have been up there too, but that was due to my love of the Original Trilogy.

5) BingBong’s sacrifice

The moment when Riley’s toddler funfair vanished into the abyss of her discarded memories was enough to get me going (as my little girl sat to my left, ignorant of her Father welling up) but BingBong was an emotional megaton bomb. I did have some problems with Inside Out but this simple, sentimental sacrifice of the most ridiculous of creatures is so undeniably powerful, you have to applaud through the sniffing.

4) Lavender’s Blue

Cinderella has a final act that is a shade too long, overcompensates for having cast Cate Blanchett by attempting to smooth her character’s edges and I didn’t really get what Helena Bonham Carter was doing, but when the film clicks the results are marvellous. An honest and earnest celebration of kindness, its finest moment comes riding the wave of Patrick Doyle’s superb score. At the moment when Ella arrives at the ball (an elevated burst of blue to the right of a glittering frame) Doyle pulls a moment of threefold musical brilliance. His use of Lavender’s Blue’s lilting melody works to raise the emotional stakes by itself, but also calls back to Ella’s deceased mother form the film’s start (who sung it to her as a baby) whilst also casting forward to our knowledge that she “shall be Queen.” A wonderful moment that encapsulates the whole of the story in just one cue.

3) Mjolnir

Joss Whedon’s impossible task in trying to surpass his first Avengers film remains a flawed, but fun ride. The highpoint is one of his delicious narrative bear traps: a moment that explains a crucial plot point (why should they trust The Vision?) in a witty manner which you never see coming, but feel you should have. In a film which became increasingly laboured (by necessity), it is a beautiful bit of writing and an elegantly simple beat which left audiences cheering and grinning.

2) The Solo

I’ve noticed that, in moments of high drama & horror, I don’t swear but instead emit an “Oh No” in a small voice. I’d only caught myself doing this previously when Steven Gerrard slipped but, although I make a point of never talking in the cinema, the reveal at the denouement of Whiplash knocked me for six as I found it escaping my lips in the darkness.

1) The Walk

I was the only member of the audience in an afternoon IMAX screening of the Walk and, for the 20 minutes when Phillipe crosses between the towers I was contorting in vertiginous horror. I have no idea how long actually the sequence went on for (it felt like hours) & the visceral nature of the experience meant I had no idea how Zemeckis was doing this to me, only that I needed the Frenchman to get the hell off the bloody wire & stop looking down. Right Now. Captivating storytelling at its purest, it was the most definitive moment of pure cinema in 2015.

Line of the year:

A toss up between Han Solo saying “That’s not how the Force works” and Ultron’s peerless “Oh, for Gods Sakes.”

Top 10 of 2015

10) Spectre

Bond is fun again, grand again and Bond again. Craig & Sedoux in particular were superb.

9) Star Wars Episode VII: the Force Awakens

I suspect I may have covered this one enough already. I admire it greatly, but yearned for more.

8) Ex Machina

A film that got under my skin a little- I was ill at home when I watched it but flashes of it came back to me in the weeks that followed. There is much in here about how society treats ownership (of technology, women and our own choices) and I look forward to a second viewing.

7) Avengers: Age of Ultron

It is not perfect but is still ahead of any other Marvel film excepting its predecessor and Brannagh’s Thor.

6) Bridge of Spies

Spielberg is my favourite director and every time I read get to more about him, I see more in his work- for instance his use of reflective surfaces for efficiency and eloquence of storytelling here is just wonderful. Spielberg’s later part of his career has led him to focus on America through difference lenses. Lincoln’s examination of cutting away the politics to the purity of the constitution is a clear example, but perhaps Bridge of Spies continues this in a different way. It has more in common with The Terminal, where America’s cynicism & bluster is what the more idealistic hero (Hanks, in both cases) has to ignore in order to help remind the audience of what the country’s ideals should stand for. Exquisitely crafted with moments of historic grimness standing besides almost goofy humour, it shows just what a chaotic melting pot the world was only a few decades ago. It also contains the best “German officer answering a phone” moment since Top Secret.

5) Inside Out

I expected more after the critical geyser of effusion and I think that the mechanics of the story are a little formulaic and vague in corners, but it carries such colossal heart & enormous emotional clout that resistance is futile.

4) Mad Max: Fury Road

Cinema’s greatest spectacle in 2015 is a roaring thrill of a film, stuffed with both visual and thematic substance. It did not move me beyond the visceral, but my adrenal gland got a thorough workout.

3) Birdman

A cold film which I admired immensely, this intense, strange and compelling piece lingers long after a viewing. I’m not sure what it was saying at times, but it was saying it beguilingly with incredible élan.

2) The Walk

Honestly I could hardly breathe.

1) Whiplash

Whiplash is that rarest of joys- a film where you come out of the screening with your heart pumping, thrilled at its artistry and desperate to tell everyone you know to go and see it immediately. I love it when cinema does this to me and even now typing “Not My Tempo” almost a year later has me shivering at the keyboard. Two stunning performances sit at the centre of this drama that asks what lies at the heart of excellence and profundity, offering no easy answers or pleasant truths.

A magnificent achievement, it was definitively my favourite film of 2015.

#2015 topten

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shepgeek · 9 years ago

Text

December & tFA

Star Wars Episode VII: the Force Awakens

A spoiler filled review

Well I say review- it’s mostly a therapeutic vent to allow me to make my peace with it.

“The only thing better than an exquisite meal is an exquisite meal with one flaw we can pick at all night”- Frasier Crane

Maybe this is going to be my geek version of a Mid-Life crisis. I suppose that many months of a magnificent trailer campaign built to such a level of excitement that Episode VII was always going to bring out a strong reaction in me. I’m far from alone in having Star Wars as the epicentre of my entire childhood and, whilst I am truly pleased to hear that the film made many feel young again, it left me feeling old.

The opening scene, where a community is attacked, rounded up & summarily executed on the whim of a monster immediately yanks the film from the adventurous tone forged in the 70s and 80s and sustained by the prequels. I accept that the world has changed and I generally welcome parallels of radicalisation in my blockbusters, but I was hoping for this Star Wars to transport us back to a more innocent time, to a more innocent feel. “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” is a magical start to any film and, whilst the sense of wonder is present in the piece, the horrors our heroes faced were too bloody, too grim. I’ve said this before & I will leave it be from now on, but the reason Star Wars is so beloved is because it hit us when we were 7. The title was never appropriate- the nightmare of actual war was always far removed from the saga. The Force Awakens will in this opening scene (and again in its finale) scare & probably isolate (to some degree) any child under 10. Record billions be damned- that was the wrong call.

So, in keeping with next summer’s trailers that preceded both screenings (where klaxons boom and apocalypses loom) what is left is a very modern blockbuster. One that is expertly crafted, visually resplendent, charismatic and very, very funny – always chasing the magic of it predecessors in a way that never quite aligns and, between the adult intensity of the film’s bleak bookends, does manage moments of the goofy charm, adventure and wonder that episodes IV, V & VI exuded.

The film is, to a degree, snookered by what is has to be- a blend of old & new that does justice to both. Unsurprisingly then, it soars when it ploughs new ground through its three main leads, all of who are absolutely outstanding. Daisy Ridley’s Ren is a wonderful heroine, combining Luke’s dreaminess and Leia’s uncompromising determination with a huge likability. This Mary Sue nonsense which is being reported says more about the internet that it does about her- she is our hero and destined, it would seem, to become the greatest Jedi of all so yes- she’s basically awesome at everything except perhaps accepting this fact. I enjoyed Finn as a character although more on my first viewing since he is quite a surprise- funny, honest, brave and loyal whilst fighting his cowardice: he seemed to be cut from the Ron Weasely cloth- something I was not expecting. I understand that the horrors of the opening are meant to give him motivation & a bridge between his choices and Kylo Ren’s but the bloodstain on the helmet is a significant step (albeit visually powerful & clever). When you change Stormtroopers from faceless baddies (I never, as a child, assumed they were even human under there) to children stolen from their parents at birth you make every one of their deaths an unnecessary question mark.

The third key player is Adam Driver as Kylo Ren who, for me, is the best of the three. The sinister crackle of his voice (clearer in the mix but fuzzier in its recording) is immediately sinister. The contrasts to Vader (whose melted mask now seems to be locked in a grimly perpetual silent scream) were adeptly handled. Ren’s lithe, petulant child has been radicalised by Snoke & stolen from his parents’ love, fed hate- filled lies and is crawlingly desperate to drive out the remnants of his own conscience in order to embrace his destiny. This is potent, relevant and dramatic stuff and is extremely well written and played, but again I come back to whether such thematic material is in the right place. Robbie Collin’s line that Ren represents the flip of the heroes of IV, V & VI, where youth rejected deeply ingrained evil, is right on the money. Ren is a superb and creepy villain who is brilliantly realised- I just wish he was in a different film.

This brings me to the film’s main problem- who is it for? Who will love this film completely? Episode VII feels like a Star Wars film everyone will like but few will ultimately love- I don’t see this film inspiring such devotion 30 years from now. Maybe this was necessary in any Star Wars sequel after all this time, although I feel Abrams’ Star Trek pulled it’s reboot off with far greater success. Whilst fishing for the broadest international blockbuster market the film also has to reach back to the cast of the Original Trilogy and service those characters. Original screenwriter Michael Arndt wrestled with this and the final decision to move Luke to the role of Macguffin is a wise one- if they tried anything else Luke would simply take over the film the moment he arrived. Some other solutions to the plotting conundrums are inventive in that when casting the interplanetary gravitas of Max Von Sydow, it just about allows you to not wonder where he got Luke’s map from.

So what is Episode VII then? A sequel? Remake? Remix? Reboot? Cover version?! Lucas talked of “rhyming” in his films- where character choices, framing shots, scene setups and lines resound throughout his saga (search for the Star Wars Ring theory for more on this- it is genuinely amazing) but the choice to not mimic, not homage, but to flat out replicate Episode IV’s plot is as surprising as it is unsuccessful. The decision has clearly been made to translate the plot of a New Hope in order to re-hit the identical story beats (plans vital to the future of the universe are stored in a cute robot, marooned on a desert planet, only to fall in the hands of a young dreamer who longs to escape & then does so aboard the Millennium Falcon, only to then be captured on a planet-destroying space station…) . I’ve written before about how modern franchises seem in love with continually inserting “jokes” to refer back to what were ultimately superior films, which only reminds me of why they were better whilst I’m watching. I do not understand this practice in any franchise and doing this not only with in-jokes (look! It’s the chess game again- I don’t care about that, I care about the people) but by replicating the entire plot it is definitely a poor choice- the film’s clearest flaw and even Lucas has spoken clearly of his surprise at this decision. In trying to be old and new simultaneously I feel the film looks for a compromise which is definitively neither and, in doing so, it undoes the happy ending of Return of the Jedi (which was, by the way, well won) in order to generate a new dramatic impetus. I suppose this is the most churlish of my gripes: that my heroes deserved more of a “happily every after”. Perhaps as an adult I should know that such things are rare, but as a child I dreamed of more for my heroes than a few good years before a child turns evil & galactic guilt abounds. The original trilogy has been slightly diminished by Episode VII, although it does pave the way for a (hopefully) greater final celebration to come, although probably not for my generation of heroes. Again- maybe I just need to accept my age & get on with it, but I stand by the complaint that the muddled slavish grasps at holding on to A New Hope’s structure is a big problem here- it holds the storytelling back, which is episodic and consequentially riddled with Deus Ex Machina.

I feel that Episode VII is a very well told piece of storytelling, but the story they’ve chosen is flawed, both in conception and in its ultimate structure. Consider the number of coincidences we have to swallow in order to keep the film moving & remember the clarity & purity of A New Hope: Poe’s convenient disappearance, the Falcon being in exactly the right place, Maz having Luke’s lightsaber, Artoo waking up right at the end. I could petulantly pick away here but each crank of the story feels like a decision taken solely to shadow the structure laid out by Episode IV. It is fine to invoke “The Force” for one or two of these coincidences but, to nick the film’s funniest line “That’s not how the Force works”.

There are other problems: some Abrams-inflected flourishes (such as the Rathtars & jumping to lightspeed inside a cargo hold) feel out of place and, for that matter, how the hell does Han Solo judge when to come out of light speed right at the millisecond before he splats into a planet?! He seems to just grab a lever! Phasma looks cool but is reduced to a cowardly grunt (who points the heroes in the direction of the room that happens to destroy the whole shebang). There are a few instances of when the film opts to tell us rather than showing us information in order for it to work- that Rey has inprinted on Han as a father or that Poe Dameron is “one hell of a pilot”. Indeed Poe never really makes a mark and, upon a second viewing, I realised I had entirely missed his final run on Starkiller base on my first viewing because I was desperate to get back to Rey vs Ren & didn’t need to see a Death Star being blown up- we’ve seen that before. I believe that Return of the Jedi’s great and rarely acknowledged pinnacle is the fact that its final 40 minutes collapse the narrative into three battles, all of which you care about greatly and the editing throughout that finale is amongst the finest display of the art across cinema. The Phantom Menace, for all its flaws, pulls this off very well too and better that the Force Awakens does in its final act. Starkiller base is another problem which the film does nod towards with Han’s line about just blowing them up, but it doesn’t really hold as a story point or as a credible threat. I’m still not sure what it was, actually- is it a star inside a shell? Or a star sucking planet? Inside a shell? I do remember reading one comment years ago sneering at George Lucas & suggesting he was going to add in Jimmy Smits looking up from Alderaan right before it gets nuked in a future Special Edition of episode IV, saying that doing so would be bad storytelling. At least we knew who Bail Organa was- the way in which the New Republic are dispatched here was a little rushed and held no real dramatic value.

The film is obviously gorgeous, with every scene crying out for a freeze-frame coffee table art book but it’s real heart comes from the saga’s greatest genius. John Williams is 83 years old and yet, in Rey’s theme, he amalgamates his previous work (do I hear a little echoes of the themes for the Force, Leia, Anakin & Vader?) into something haunting, melancholy, inspiring & beautiful. In fact, I’m now listening to “Scherzo for X-Wings” as I type this. I know of no finer artist working in cinema and the almost casual nature of his genius flattens me every time he writes another score.

Harrison Ford, of course, is unspeakably wonderful and provides the clearest bridge to that sense of easy fun that the original trilogy had in spades. Seeing him inhabit his most charismatic of roles at an older age was thrilling and he lifts the film (which is a bit of a problem considering he is a supporting character). I did get a little teary on three occasions but I suspect it was not the work of this film which earned my emotional response. The first occasion was when Han & Leia come face to face and then again at Leia’s reaction when Han falls. Their story resounds with me in a very old fashioned way and, whilst I can accept the sacrifices made to their happiness in order to drive a new story, it did break the heart of my 8 year old self. The emotional intensity of Han’s death is unequivocal (in one briefly flashed shot, whish feels longer, you see the saber running him through) and is, to my mind, too much for young children on the big screen. On a side note, now that I know how his story ends, I am even less interested in seeing a film about a young Han Solo played by another actor. Even with two writers as talented as Lord & Miller on board, the decision to push ahead with that film feels even odder now.

I have one last question mark over the film’s tone in regard to the pitch of the performances. Given the intensity of the content, the performances of the actors are certainly not underplayed. John Boyega’s performance, whilst hugely charismatic, has been pitched by Abrams at emotional extremes (watch him yell Rey’s name as Ren takes her) whilst the walking sneer of General Hux is let loose in his facist speech to the highest levels of camp. I don’t have any problem with this and, indeed, this is when I felt that the film was most in keeping with the original saga, but it contradicts with the more ominous modern blockbuster vibe that manifests elsewhere.

You can count me in, though.

Rey, Finn & Ren are characters I am very excited to see more of and I am excited about the DVD so I can pull about Rey’s force vision- I missed Yoda but apparently he is in there, whilst hearing the voices of firstly Sir Alec Guinness & then Ewan MacGregor with new dialogue is extremely exciting, hinting at a greater cohesion to come. Daniel Craig’s wonderful cameo should not go unmentioned either. Most thrilling of all is the promise of finally catching up with the hero of the entire saga and it is here where I welled up a final time- I cannot wait to see (and hear!) Luke Skywalker on the big screen.

The Force Awakens feels like an overture- flinging its best parts at you in an exciting and skilful way but ultimately focused on setting you up; it bellows with every fibre: “Star Wars is awesome! Now don’t miss the next one! ” Much is still left hanging, especially the question of who Rey is. This is a bit cheeky considering she is the main character and maybe we get a clue from her odd final embrace from Leia. Surely that moment holds more since it comprises two people whom we are left to assume have never previously met (although why Chewbacca, who has just lost his life partner walks right past the mother of Han’s child is a bit of a mystery- I felt Chewie needed more grieving, really).

To conclude, I find myself repeatedly drawn to the corners of the film which frustrated me and I find myself drawn to reviewing what I wanted it to be. Perhaps this is selfish indulgence: an eloquently channelled tantrum that the filmmakers have dared to not make exactly the film I wanted, when Star Wars was & always has been mine. Didn’t they know that? As a result much of what I’ve written here reads negatively although my general feeling towards the film is positive (honest).

I believe that its not in the same class as the Original Trilogy, but is ahead of episodes I & II & I’d put it on a par with Revenge of the Sith. The prequels, although clunky at times in their machinations and undoubtedly awkward in their dialogue, were always still Star Wars to me.

So basically I like it very much.

But I do not love it.

****

Also in December:

Back in Time *** 6

A gentle “making-of”style documentary which has little to say other than that Back to the Future is amazing, which we knew.

Bridge of Spies **** 8.5

Spielberg’s refined craftsmanship demands deeper reflection than I’m going to manage here but I’ll fancy a pop after a second viewing. His work remains mesmerising.

Cast Away ***** 9

Zemeckis’ gift for grabbing your attention is ever present, and the story can be read as a variety of allegories beyond its simple but compelling narrative. A really beautiful & surprisingly profound film, I not sure it gets the recognition it deserves.

Die Hard ***** 9.5

It is easy to forget just how funny Die Hard is- Paul Gleason’s peerless 80s jackass routine is but one of many delightful cameos. Every character is so well honed & so well cast whilst the setup is so pure that this, the most 80s of films, simply refuses to date. Magnificent.

The Good Dinosaur **** 7.5

A gentle, simple and sweet (if derivative) animated tale which comes alive in a moving chapter when the two orphans recognise elements of themselves in their travelling companions. This is the Pixar film that the critical consensus seems happy to discard but is nowhere near as far behind Inside Out as was made out. It definitely sets a lower bar than its heralded predecessor but does clear it does with ease and a little grace.

The Grinch ** 5

Despite the poem being charming and light, every element of this film was cranked up way too high for my liking. I’m a big fan of both the star and the director but couldn’t wait to exit the theatre- my children seemed content but indifferent.

It’s a Wonderful Life ***** 10

The older I get the more this becomes my favourite film. Joyful cinematic perfection that transcends all ages with charm, charisma, tragedy, truthfulness and optimism shining through every frame. When I win the lottery I’ll write the definitive book on this untouchable masterpiece.

Jupiter Ascending ** 5

A resplendent shambles, this feels like a 100 minute cut of a 200 minute film. I spent much of the running time baffled and it took me about 25 minutes before I realised that it was set in our present. The editing seems to have pruned all coherence and leaves only the action scenes, whilst any context to what seems to be going on is sometimes only barely inferred. The final act performs literally the same set piece within 15 minutes (Jupiter is kidnapped by a slimy space king & is duped into signing something until Channing Tatum’s Scarecrow/Toto rescues her on flying skates at the last minute) and many of the main characters’ presence, background or motivations are just ignored entirely. There seems certain to be a cracking film buried amid the incoherence and it seems clear that the Wachowskis were aiming for a light and even slightly camp epic, but this cut is utterly inaccessible. Probably the least successful film I saw released in 2015, its failures are spectacular and bold- I quite liked the film in many ways, but I couldn’t swear that it was any good.

Lucy *** 6.5

A real B-Movie throwback, complete with loopy science, explosions, nasty men being exploded & a sprinkling of pseudo-philosophy. It is bananas & I quite enjoyed it.

#StarWars

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