2009. The year when Christian Bale lost the plot (as did Terminator: Salvation), Star Trek was re-born, Harry Potter continued to financially bulldoze every other film out of its way and the decades old question of whether or not the graphic novel Watchmen is actually unfilmable was finally put to rest (It is.) James Cameron returned to feature film-making with the over-hyped, underwhelming but undeniable box office champion Avatar and 3-D started to look like it's here to stay. Put simply, it’s been a rotten year for films. Many appeared to be so bad they simply had to be avoided so, for example, there’s no Dance Flick, Hotel For Dogs or Bride Wars on this list, although I have no doubt they would be here if I could summon the will to watch them. (I can’t.) Of course it wasn’t all bad, though I wonder how many of the ten best would have made the list in a stronger year. Regardless, here is my choice of the ten best and ten worst films I saw in 2009.
THE BEST.
1. DOUBT
One of the very few films of this year’s awards season deserving of its place, Doubt deftly examined notions of prejudice and the devastating consequences of gossip and assumption within a compelling story set in the Catholic Church of the 1960s. Superb performances by its three leads, Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams and a fantastic script by John Patrick Shanley based on his play, made Doubt escape its theatrical origins to become one of the first great films of the year.
2. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
I’ve become very sceptical of internet buzz over the years but for once all the talk was justified. Let The Right One In is a relationship film masquerading as a horror movie, but don’t be fooled; there are some brilliant and genuinely frightening moments of horror in the film. The two children are fantastic and this film and another further down the list are tied for my “favourite final scene of the year” award. Vampire movies are enjoying a new lease of life (See what I did there?) but this stood head and shoulders above the rest. Atmospheric, unconventional and absolutely brilliant.
3. ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL
It was a choice between this and The Cove for the documentary spot but, despite writing for an environmentally aware magazine, I had to go with Anvil for its warmth, charm and hysterical lack of self awareness on the part of the ageing rockers who had a fleeting taste of mega-stardom and then lost it again. It’s like Spinal Tap never happened but what’s great is that you are completely onside with the band, willing their dreams to come true along with them. Anvil was undoubtedly one of the funniest, most enjoyable films of the year.
4. MOON
There were several points in Moon where I expected it to go off the rails, to take the predictable route, to lose its way and it never, ever did. Ambiguous, sombre but never pretentious, Moon continued the current resurgence in intelligent science fiction and boasted a great central performance from Sam Rockwell. Hugely atmospheric, thanks in no small part to fantastic cinematography by Gary Shaw and an evocative score from Darren Aronofsky’s regular composer Clint Mansell, Duncan Jones’ debut film launched what, based on this evidence, should be a long career filled with great films.
5. DISTRICT 9
District 9 wore its genre influences on its sleeve and had a political agenda that was about as subtle as Katie Price. But it makes this list because it was smart, fun, funny and exciting, basically everything that the $200 million mega movies claim to be and rarely if ever are. Newcomer Sharlto Copley excelled as the blindly faithful company man whose journey (both emotional and physical) gives him greater insight into the “prawns” who have come to Earth. An alien invasion movie where the aliens aren’t actually invading and the humans are the bad guys, District 9 was probably the best genre movie of the year.
6. UP
I have to confess a certain prejudice towards animated films. No matter how much people try and convince me they can be enjoyable for adults, I find it difficult to escape the fact that I’m watching something that’s aimed at people 25 years my junior. However Up was a really fantastic piece of work. A wonderful story, funny, genuinely touching, brilliantly written and directed, Up was considerably better and more mature than most films this year that were supposedly aimed at people my age.
7. A SERIOUS MAN
The Coen Brothers’ ability to diversify is typified by their last three films, No Country For Old Men, Burn After Reading and now A Serious Man. Low key, intelligent, funny, enigmatic, the story of Larry Gopnik watching his life disintegrate around him as he wonders why, entertains and infuriates (in the best possible way) in equal measure. I liked the film from the start but in my review I wondered if it would grow on me even more and, even though I only reviewed it a few weeks ago, it already has. This is the second film tied for my favourite final scene of the year.
8. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
Paranormal Activity would have been a great film to "discover", to sit and watch with no pre-conceived ideas, as the film cannot quite bear the weight of all the hype. That said, it is easily the best pure horror film of the year and one of the best horror films in a long time, psychological in a way that stays with you and arguably becomes more frightening when you return to your own house. One of those "how has this not been done before" ideas, the film piles on the tension as ordinary couple Micah and Katie set up a camera to record the strange and terrifying goings on in their house. The finale is less than satisfying but the journey is well worth your time. Slow burning, tense and genuinely scary.
9. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
If someone had told me at the start of the year that a Spike Jonze film would be on my ten best list I would not have believed them, yet here it is. Emotional, imaginative and affecting, its lack of narrative is more than made up for by a surplus of character and emotion. The story of Max, a young boy clinging to childhood as he views both his impending adolescence and the changes within his family as sources of enormous fear, Max's adventure with the Wild Things, strange creatures who personify different elements of Max's personality and struggle, is refreshingly lacking in typical Hollywood "life lessons" and is instead honest, melancholy and very touching.
10. 2012
Every time I think of that limo outrunning California falling into the sea behind it, it makes me smile, possibly the only special effects film of the year to do so. The various stories are terrible, the dialogue is atrocious but a great cast powers through to make the moments in between the mayhem just about tolerable. Of course, it's the mayhem that got everyone to the cinema in the first place and on that front 2012 delivers in spades. Earthquakes, tsunamis, an aircraft carrier plunging into the White House, Hawaii buried under rivers of lava, a tiny plane dodging crumbling buildings... 2012 had it all! Undoubtedly one of the best films of the year.
HONOROUBLE MENTIONS
Milk, The Wrestler, Hunger, Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (More animation! What’s wrong with me?!) Angels And Demons (So bad it’s good), Drag Me To Hell.
AND THE WORST.
SIGH...
1. THE READER/REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
A Kate Winslet double bill of doom that represents everything that’s wrong with the awards season, these two films screamed “I’M IMPORTANT”!!! but neglected to tell us why. Revolutionary Road had precisely nothing new to say on its subject of American suburban decay in the 1960s and The Reader, despite having a couple of interesting ideas, seemed to be trying to set a record for the most boring film in history. If it didn’t quite make it, it came very close.
2. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
David Fincher and Brad Pitt were coming off two of the best films of their careers, Zodiac and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford respectively, but both were undeserved financial flops. So what better way to get back on speaking terms with the box office than with this queasy, namby-pamby, three hour snoozefest in which Brad Pitt ages backwards and the audience wishes it could. Another Oscar contender in one of the worst Oscar line-ups in recent years.
3. KNOWING
The advertising campaign for Knowing promised a twist that would blow your mind. SPOILER: It didn’t. ANOTHER SPOILER. It’s utter crap. Once upon a time Nicolas Cage was a credible actor, but that was a long, long time ago. Knowing actually starts reasonably okay in a campy, silly kind of way but it quickly derails and plummets down the ravine in a flaming mess of weird hair, strange teeth and a truly awful script.
4. X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE
A bad Summer got off to a shocking start with this bargain basement blockbuster. The story of how Logan came to be Wolverine was covered reasonably thoroughly as I recall in X-Men 2 but apparently not thoroughly enough so off we went again with Colonel Striker, adamantium claws, blah blah blah, wake me up when the whole mess is over. Boasting computer effects apparently achieved with a Commodore 64, the only consolation was that there was simply no way the Summer could get any worse…
5. TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
…Oh, right. A hideous, hideous, hideous cinematic experience, it’s really saying something when unremitting racism can emerge as the least of a film’s problems. The most blatantly cynical film I think I’ve ever seen, Transformers 2 elevated crass commercialism into an art form. Rather than cluttering up the multiplexes, this film needed to crawl under a rock and die.
6. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
Quentin Tarantino is a film maker with nothing to say which is why every film he has ever made, including this one, is a “homage” (“rip-off”) to other films in which every character speaks in exactly the same way (i.e. like Quentin Tarantino) and spends hours talking about nothing. This is not a film about the joy of cinema as some have argued, it is two and a half hours of adolescent, inane, rambling nonsense. I don’t care how popular it was, I hated this film.
7. ORPHAN
There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to include Orphan on this list. It contains a twist so staggeringly implausible that, not only does it have to be seen to be believed, really, it just has to be seen. The sheer guts it takes to come up with this ending, much less deliver it with a straight face in the manner in which it does is impressive. The previous 90 minutes is a complete waste of everyone’s time but that twist when it comes… Well let’s just say that, for all the wrong reasons, it should go down as one of the greatest endings in cinema history. Orphan is the one film on this list worth watching but only if you like to watch bad films in an ironic way and have the patience for a whole lot of nothing before reaching the punch line.
8. GAMER
Gamer pretends to make a serious point about the voyeuristic nature of modern society. Naturally, it does this in the most lurid way possible, stopping every now and then to tell us how culturally bankrupt we all are as it leers at yet another pair of breasts. Charisma bypass Gerard Butler runs around killing people in ludicrously violent ways and that’s about all there is to it. Tedious and deeply depressing.
9. LAW ABIDING CITIZEN
Hey look, it's Gerard Butler again! I thought about having a Butler double bill in the same way that I have a Winslet double bill but these films are so unforgivable, they deserve seperate places on the list. We have the success of 300 to thank for the fact that, not content to simply star in dreadful films, thespian Gerard Butler is now in a position to produce dreadful films for himself to star in. I went in hoping it would be so bad it's good and instead it's just baaaaaaaad. A crap premise, an appalling script and a twist to rival that of Orphan, Law Abiding Citizen bludgeons you across the head with stupidity and tedium. It's also further evidence that, Oscar or not, Jamie Foxx is actually not very good.
10. 2012
Exactly as above, except in the last sentence substitute"worst" for "best".
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Push, 12 Rounds, The Taking of Pelham 123, Jennifer’s Body, too many to mention
Wednesday 30 December 2009
Thursday 17 December 2009
Avatar Review
God I hate being right...
A friend of mine asked me a few weeks ago what I thought Avatar would be and I suggested that it would be two hours of nothing characters moping around a planet followed by forty minutes of a battle I didn't care about. And guess what?! Make yourselves comfortable folks, this one's gonna be a long one!
Before I continue, let me make a few things clear. Firstly, I have nothing against Avatar, no wish to see it fail, no wish to see James Cameron fail, I'm watching it as a film like any other. Secondly, I'm a big fan of much of James Cameron's work, though really his best work has come early in his career and a gradual though absolute decline is further evidenced by what I watched today. Thirdly, the story is the least of Cameron's concerns and so it's going to take up the least amount of space in this review. Quick synopsis: Jake Sully is a marine paralysed from the waist down, he goes to Pandora, becomes a Na'vi through the Avatar programme (tying his consciousness into a Na'vi avatar body and therefore free to roam the planet and become one of them) he falls in love with Na'vi girl Neytiri and abandons his human roots to "go native"and join the Na'vi in fighting back against the technologically superior human invaders. If that story sounds familiar, it's only because you've seen it a million times already. Before Avatar, Titanic was my least favourite James Cameron film by a very long way. Now, I'm not so sure.
Here's the problem. This is a film that has created and is in the process of perfecting new film making technology. It's a film that's meant to end the "3-D debate" and lest there be any confusion regarding the outcome of that debate, the verdict is "it rules!" This film is the herald of a new era in film making. It's a new dawn, a new age. Years from now, when mind bending 3-D spectaculars are par for the course, we'll all look back at Avatar and say, this is the film that started it all and I was there. Sure it's quaint now (Remember when you had to wear 3-D glasses?!) but without it we wouldn't be where we are today. This is what the film and its much talked about production process is screaming and you can be damned sure it's what Cameron is thinking. This is his legacy to film making. He's a pioneer, cutting his way through a new frontier, fitting given that Avatar is basically a frontier movie. Avatar's disclosed budget is around $270 million. Industry insiders have specualted that it's considerably north of $300 million and, if certain rumours are to believed, taking into account the many years of R&D, this film has cost close to $500 million. Has 20th Century Fox spent this much on the story? The characters? Absolutely not. Cameron's last film grossed $1.8 billion for the same studio so he is in a position to make some demands. I believe Cameron genuinely wants to further the technology of film making and so, having seen the more modest developments made by the more modest budgets of, for example, the Lord of the Rings trilogy (I mean that completely relatively; neither the final $200 million budget of Return of the King nor the technological advancements of the trilogy as a whole can be regarded as modest) he has secured a massive investment in new technology, to bring cinema to a place where it can weather the illegal downloading storm and provide photo-real CGI environments, characters and creatures in 3 dimensions. This is what he has promised Fox and this is what they have spent the money on. This is the film that started it all and now everyone else is only going to reap the benefits. I started this paragraph by saying here's the problem, and after a lot of set up, finally, here's the problem. Assuming for a moment I'm not interested in what it took to get it to the screen, in how much it cost, in what it's offering film makers for the future, what is Avatar, a stand alone film, offering me? What am I getting from it? The answer is very, very little.
Dances With Wolves, Dune, Last Of The Mohicans, The Mission, Ferngully, The Last Samurai... all of these films (and more) share two things in common with Avatar. 1 They're all considerably better. Yes, even The Last Samurai. 2. Those films were borrowing stories and story elements in their day. What does that say for an "original" story coming 20 years later? Avatar is cliched beyond belief, trite and incredibly sanctimonious. A technologically cutting edge $3/4/500 million film is telling me how nature will prevail in the face of technology. A tough lesson to swallow. The references to real world events are horrendously heavy handed, to the point where the final attack by evil military man Stephen Lang is described as a "shock and awe" campaign. Worst of all though is the Na'vi's connection with nature, their laughably mystic "oneness" with the flora and fauna exemplified in those moments when they all hold hands and sit chanting around the tree of life. Seriously, this happens. Twice. This is not "classic" story-telling as Cameron has argued, it's a juvenile appropriation of the native American culture with a view to generating cheap emotion.
Weirdly, the biggest plus point is the 3-D. I'm a complete sceptic when it comes to 3-D but there is no denying that Cameron uses it to tremendous effect in Avatar. Gone are the hokey "things poking you from the screen" days of 3-D. Cameron uses it to surround you in Pandora's lush vegetation and wildlife. You believe in the place, you believe this environment. In that respect the 3-D is as immersive and transportive as everyone is saying it is. But the film as a whole is not immersive, no film this dull can be. And when you take the 3-D out of the equation, so when I have the opportunity to watch it on DVD or Blu Ray for example, what is going to entice me back? The big screen, 3-D experience just about makes Avatar worth a watch once, but it is only story and characters that make a film worth repeat viewings and I can safely say I will never watch Avatar again. I think that the worse a film is, the more 3-D helps. So watching Up, I completely forgot about the 3-D. Watching Avatar, I was incredibly grateful for it. The motion capture technology is also very impressive, the movements of the Na'vi feel completely real and their faces are tremendously expressive. More generally, the CGI works to mixed effect. In terms of the environment, it is undeniably stunning. You really do forget that Pandora is almost entirely digital. Everything from the trees to the water is rendered on a computer and, in close up and in 3-D, it needs to be photo-real and for the most part it is. The various animals never look like anything other than digital creations and the Na'vi are never photo-real, despite Cameron's promises. Bright blue and feline, the design of them felt naff from the first time we saw them and watching the finished film, they still feel that way. You do accept them after a while, but in the way you accept an animated film for example. You don't believe it's "real", you accept it in context. Personally I never felt transported to another world in the way that, for example, the Lord of the Rings films made me feel. I believed the world certainly, but I was never particularly awed by it. Flying dragons, blue monkeys, variations on a rhinoceros or a wolf, there isn't anything particularly fresh or interesting in these ideas, most are variations on things we have on our own planet. Added to this the fact that the Na'vi are thinly veiled Native Americans and, for all its pretensions to "other-worldliness", the world of Pandora suddenly feels incredibly familiar.
By the time the big battle comes, it's too little too late. There are some spectacular shots to be sure, the frame is filled with marines and dragons and Na'vi and warships and, in 3-D, it looks amazing. But there is no resonance to any of it and, given how long we've spent wandering around that bloody planet, it feels very short by comparison. Not just that but I'm fairly sure I've seen another film, made over twenty years ago, that cut between different battles occuring simultaneously on a jungle planet... Oh right, it's called Return of the Jedi. Also, the way in which the battle resolves is the biggest cop out, "get out of jail free" piece of writing I've seen in a film in a very long time. It's all coming back to the writing. Cameron has never been a particularly strong writer but his best films have great set up to them in the script that his directorial abilities can then pay off in the finished film. Aliens is still the best example of this and remains his best film as far as I'm concerned. Terminator also does this very well, as does Terminator 2 to a slightly lesser extent. Those early films were not built on giant budgets and forced Cameron's creativity, which he has in undeniable abundance. He knows that a film with no characters or story is just a soulless enterprise, which is why he and the cast are constantly paying lip service to that as they promote Avatar, reassuring us that the James Cameron who made us care about Ripley's relationship with Newt in Aliens has made us care for Jake Sully's dilemma about whether to follow orders or join the Na'vi in Avatar. That is the James Cameron I'm interested in but it is not the James Cameron who showed up to make Avatar. Cameron keeps telling us how he has spent 10 years getting Avatar to the screen. Surely in those 10 years he could have found some time to work on the script? A week maybe? Even a weekend?
I feel like a broken record, but there is simply no substitute for a good story and good characters and there never will be. It's a lesson I feel the cinema will never learn. There are no technological advancements to be made with books. All they have ever had to sell them, and all they will ever have, is a story and it's on that story that they stand or fall. Theatre is (or at least can be) more technologically based, but theatre too ultimately comes down to its story. Why can it not be the same for cinema? Why, with all the possibilities now available to it, is a medium as potentially powerful as cinema squandered so repeatedly, used as nothing other than a fancy light show? That Avatar has been announced as a film that is changing the face of cinema just throws its many flaws into an even brighter light because if we have taken several steps forward technologically then we have taken an equal number backwards with regards to the stories we're telling. I really wanted to be wowed by Avatar, really wanted to be taken on a great adventure, but in the presence of unremitting cliche and trite storytelling, this is simply impossible. The visual effects and 3-D give it an extra couple of points but make no mistake, this is a bad film. See Avatar once for the 3-D and get everything there is to get from it because ultimately, a turd with diamonds on it is still just a turd.
5/10
A friend of mine asked me a few weeks ago what I thought Avatar would be and I suggested that it would be two hours of nothing characters moping around a planet followed by forty minutes of a battle I didn't care about. And guess what?! Make yourselves comfortable folks, this one's gonna be a long one!
Before I continue, let me make a few things clear. Firstly, I have nothing against Avatar, no wish to see it fail, no wish to see James Cameron fail, I'm watching it as a film like any other. Secondly, I'm a big fan of much of James Cameron's work, though really his best work has come early in his career and a gradual though absolute decline is further evidenced by what I watched today. Thirdly, the story is the least of Cameron's concerns and so it's going to take up the least amount of space in this review. Quick synopsis: Jake Sully is a marine paralysed from the waist down, he goes to Pandora, becomes a Na'vi through the Avatar programme (tying his consciousness into a Na'vi avatar body and therefore free to roam the planet and become one of them) he falls in love with Na'vi girl Neytiri and abandons his human roots to "go native"and join the Na'vi in fighting back against the technologically superior human invaders. If that story sounds familiar, it's only because you've seen it a million times already. Before Avatar, Titanic was my least favourite James Cameron film by a very long way. Now, I'm not so sure.
Here's the problem. This is a film that has created and is in the process of perfecting new film making technology. It's a film that's meant to end the "3-D debate" and lest there be any confusion regarding the outcome of that debate, the verdict is "it rules!" This film is the herald of a new era in film making. It's a new dawn, a new age. Years from now, when mind bending 3-D spectaculars are par for the course, we'll all look back at Avatar and say, this is the film that started it all and I was there. Sure it's quaint now (Remember when you had to wear 3-D glasses?!) but without it we wouldn't be where we are today. This is what the film and its much talked about production process is screaming and you can be damned sure it's what Cameron is thinking. This is his legacy to film making. He's a pioneer, cutting his way through a new frontier, fitting given that Avatar is basically a frontier movie. Avatar's disclosed budget is around $270 million. Industry insiders have specualted that it's considerably north of $300 million and, if certain rumours are to believed, taking into account the many years of R&D, this film has cost close to $500 million. Has 20th Century Fox spent this much on the story? The characters? Absolutely not. Cameron's last film grossed $1.8 billion for the same studio so he is in a position to make some demands. I believe Cameron genuinely wants to further the technology of film making and so, having seen the more modest developments made by the more modest budgets of, for example, the Lord of the Rings trilogy (I mean that completely relatively; neither the final $200 million budget of Return of the King nor the technological advancements of the trilogy as a whole can be regarded as modest) he has secured a massive investment in new technology, to bring cinema to a place where it can weather the illegal downloading storm and provide photo-real CGI environments, characters and creatures in 3 dimensions. This is what he has promised Fox and this is what they have spent the money on. This is the film that started it all and now everyone else is only going to reap the benefits. I started this paragraph by saying here's the problem, and after a lot of set up, finally, here's the problem. Assuming for a moment I'm not interested in what it took to get it to the screen, in how much it cost, in what it's offering film makers for the future, what is Avatar, a stand alone film, offering me? What am I getting from it? The answer is very, very little.
Dances With Wolves, Dune, Last Of The Mohicans, The Mission, Ferngully, The Last Samurai... all of these films (and more) share two things in common with Avatar. 1 They're all considerably better. Yes, even The Last Samurai. 2. Those films were borrowing stories and story elements in their day. What does that say for an "original" story coming 20 years later? Avatar is cliched beyond belief, trite and incredibly sanctimonious. A technologically cutting edge $3/4/500 million film is telling me how nature will prevail in the face of technology. A tough lesson to swallow. The references to real world events are horrendously heavy handed, to the point where the final attack by evil military man Stephen Lang is described as a "shock and awe" campaign. Worst of all though is the Na'vi's connection with nature, their laughably mystic "oneness" with the flora and fauna exemplified in those moments when they all hold hands and sit chanting around the tree of life. Seriously, this happens. Twice. This is not "classic" story-telling as Cameron has argued, it's a juvenile appropriation of the native American culture with a view to generating cheap emotion.
Weirdly, the biggest plus point is the 3-D. I'm a complete sceptic when it comes to 3-D but there is no denying that Cameron uses it to tremendous effect in Avatar. Gone are the hokey "things poking you from the screen" days of 3-D. Cameron uses it to surround you in Pandora's lush vegetation and wildlife. You believe in the place, you believe this environment. In that respect the 3-D is as immersive and transportive as everyone is saying it is. But the film as a whole is not immersive, no film this dull can be. And when you take the 3-D out of the equation, so when I have the opportunity to watch it on DVD or Blu Ray for example, what is going to entice me back? The big screen, 3-D experience just about makes Avatar worth a watch once, but it is only story and characters that make a film worth repeat viewings and I can safely say I will never watch Avatar again. I think that the worse a film is, the more 3-D helps. So watching Up, I completely forgot about the 3-D. Watching Avatar, I was incredibly grateful for it. The motion capture technology is also very impressive, the movements of the Na'vi feel completely real and their faces are tremendously expressive. More generally, the CGI works to mixed effect. In terms of the environment, it is undeniably stunning. You really do forget that Pandora is almost entirely digital. Everything from the trees to the water is rendered on a computer and, in close up and in 3-D, it needs to be photo-real and for the most part it is. The various animals never look like anything other than digital creations and the Na'vi are never photo-real, despite Cameron's promises. Bright blue and feline, the design of them felt naff from the first time we saw them and watching the finished film, they still feel that way. You do accept them after a while, but in the way you accept an animated film for example. You don't believe it's "real", you accept it in context. Personally I never felt transported to another world in the way that, for example, the Lord of the Rings films made me feel. I believed the world certainly, but I was never particularly awed by it. Flying dragons, blue monkeys, variations on a rhinoceros or a wolf, there isn't anything particularly fresh or interesting in these ideas, most are variations on things we have on our own planet. Added to this the fact that the Na'vi are thinly veiled Native Americans and, for all its pretensions to "other-worldliness", the world of Pandora suddenly feels incredibly familiar.
By the time the big battle comes, it's too little too late. There are some spectacular shots to be sure, the frame is filled with marines and dragons and Na'vi and warships and, in 3-D, it looks amazing. But there is no resonance to any of it and, given how long we've spent wandering around that bloody planet, it feels very short by comparison. Not just that but I'm fairly sure I've seen another film, made over twenty years ago, that cut between different battles occuring simultaneously on a jungle planet... Oh right, it's called Return of the Jedi. Also, the way in which the battle resolves is the biggest cop out, "get out of jail free" piece of writing I've seen in a film in a very long time. It's all coming back to the writing. Cameron has never been a particularly strong writer but his best films have great set up to them in the script that his directorial abilities can then pay off in the finished film. Aliens is still the best example of this and remains his best film as far as I'm concerned. Terminator also does this very well, as does Terminator 2 to a slightly lesser extent. Those early films were not built on giant budgets and forced Cameron's creativity, which he has in undeniable abundance. He knows that a film with no characters or story is just a soulless enterprise, which is why he and the cast are constantly paying lip service to that as they promote Avatar, reassuring us that the James Cameron who made us care about Ripley's relationship with Newt in Aliens has made us care for Jake Sully's dilemma about whether to follow orders or join the Na'vi in Avatar. That is the James Cameron I'm interested in but it is not the James Cameron who showed up to make Avatar. Cameron keeps telling us how he has spent 10 years getting Avatar to the screen. Surely in those 10 years he could have found some time to work on the script? A week maybe? Even a weekend?
I feel like a broken record, but there is simply no substitute for a good story and good characters and there never will be. It's a lesson I feel the cinema will never learn. There are no technological advancements to be made with books. All they have ever had to sell them, and all they will ever have, is a story and it's on that story that they stand or fall. Theatre is (or at least can be) more technologically based, but theatre too ultimately comes down to its story. Why can it not be the same for cinema? Why, with all the possibilities now available to it, is a medium as potentially powerful as cinema squandered so repeatedly, used as nothing other than a fancy light show? That Avatar has been announced as a film that is changing the face of cinema just throws its many flaws into an even brighter light because if we have taken several steps forward technologically then we have taken an equal number backwards with regards to the stories we're telling. I really wanted to be wowed by Avatar, really wanted to be taken on a great adventure, but in the presence of unremitting cliche and trite storytelling, this is simply impossible. The visual effects and 3-D give it an extra couple of points but make no mistake, this is a bad film. See Avatar once for the 3-D and get everything there is to get from it because ultimately, a turd with diamonds on it is still just a turd.
5/10
Sunday 13 December 2009
Where The Wild Things Are Review
I have to confess that for me, a little quirk goes a long way. In recent years Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry have emerged as the principal merchants of quirk, creating films that are much beloved as offbeat classics. Much of what they produce leaves me somewhat cold but Where The Wild Things Are had completely the opposite effect. It's definitely "arty" in the more populist sense of the term and possesses much of Jonze's dreaded quirk but it's a warm, heartfelt, melancholy reflection on that time when childhood is on the verge of disappearing as adolescence and adulthood loom large, as well as the fear and uncertainty that accompany that change.
Max Records plays Max, a young boy without a Father whose Mother (Catherine Keener) is seeing a new man (Mark Ruffalo in a strange, basically one-scene cameo) and whose sister has already moved beyond childhood into the next stage of her life, wanting to spend her time with her friends rather than with her brother. As the film starts, she and her friends have taken a snowball fight with Max too far, destroying his play fort and hurting him in the process. Later on, Max's fear of the change happening within his family manifests in a terrible argument with his Mother, culminating in him biting her on the shoulder. He runs off, comes across a boat, sets sail across the ocean and finds an island inhabited by enormous furry monsters, the eponymous wild things. Through his relationships with them, in particular with their leader Carol (voiced wonderfully by James Gandolfini) Max comes to understand some of what he's feeling but he never "learns life lessons" in that awful, mawkish Hollywood way. Indeed, Max never articulates what he goes through and it's we the audience who, as adults, can understand it on his behalf and articulate it for him. It's this relationship between audience and film that makes Where The Wild Things Are as moving and affecting as it is. We know what he's feeling because we've all been there and watching the creatures act out the various aspects of Max's life and personality, we and he come to greater understanding of the situation he is in and the way in which he copes with it.
The Wild Things themselves are a truly fantastic creation, all actors in suits with CG used sparingly to bring greater expression to their faces. The cast are uniformly excellent with the aforementioned Gandolfini, Catherine O Hara and Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose standouts. Max is a child who loves play fighting, running and jumping around, and he brings this physicality to his relationship with the creatures. They being considerably bigger than him, there is danger inherent in much of their interaction but the emotional danger of not fitting in here, in the same way that he doesn't fit in at home, is even greater again and so Max throws himself into each and every moment with relish. The pain of these encounters is never shied away from, much to Jonze's credit. Incidentally, Jonze began his career on the TV show Jackass, directing the various stunts and insane dares and much of the physical scenes in the film are weirdly reminiscent of those moments on Jackass when characters would dress up in bear suits and fight each other!
The pain on display is emotional as well as physical. Indeed, if there is an overall feeling to the film it's one of sadness. This is a truthful depiction of what it means to be a child clinging to childhood and every happy or funny moment the film has is completely earned as a result. What gives the film further honesty is how Max is just as capable of inflicting pain as he is of receiving it. I mentioned earlier how Max has his snow fort destroyed by those bigger than he. Later on, he is embroiled in a dirt-clod fight with the wild things and inflicts a similar pain on one of his new friends who is as undeserving of the indignity as he was. Also, Max discovers the bones of previous guests to the island, something that gives great ominosity to the rest of his stay with his new friends, especially in those moments when Carol lets his temper get the better of him, in exactly the same way that Max does.
There are many tiny moments in the film that reveal a great deal about character. When Max has his fort destroyed for example, he goes into his sister's room to exact retribution and discovers an old present he made for her, presumably some years ago, that she keeps in her room. As he is destroying it, we get a real sense of the relationship they once had that Max now misses, but also of the relationship that is still possible for them when Max catches up with her and enters adulthood himself. The film is barely 90 minutes long which is good as there is very little story here, something that usually bothers me. But this film is built less on narrative and more on character and relationships, in the way I've just described, as well as emotion and tone and in those ways it works tremendously. Sentimental but never schmaltzy, nostalgic but never contrived, Where The Wild Things Are is without doubt my favourite of Spike Jonze's films.
8/10
Max Records plays Max, a young boy without a Father whose Mother (Catherine Keener) is seeing a new man (Mark Ruffalo in a strange, basically one-scene cameo) and whose sister has already moved beyond childhood into the next stage of her life, wanting to spend her time with her friends rather than with her brother. As the film starts, she and her friends have taken a snowball fight with Max too far, destroying his play fort and hurting him in the process. Later on, Max's fear of the change happening within his family manifests in a terrible argument with his Mother, culminating in him biting her on the shoulder. He runs off, comes across a boat, sets sail across the ocean and finds an island inhabited by enormous furry monsters, the eponymous wild things. Through his relationships with them, in particular with their leader Carol (voiced wonderfully by James Gandolfini) Max comes to understand some of what he's feeling but he never "learns life lessons" in that awful, mawkish Hollywood way. Indeed, Max never articulates what he goes through and it's we the audience who, as adults, can understand it on his behalf and articulate it for him. It's this relationship between audience and film that makes Where The Wild Things Are as moving and affecting as it is. We know what he's feeling because we've all been there and watching the creatures act out the various aspects of Max's life and personality, we and he come to greater understanding of the situation he is in and the way in which he copes with it.
The Wild Things themselves are a truly fantastic creation, all actors in suits with CG used sparingly to bring greater expression to their faces. The cast are uniformly excellent with the aforementioned Gandolfini, Catherine O Hara and Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose standouts. Max is a child who loves play fighting, running and jumping around, and he brings this physicality to his relationship with the creatures. They being considerably bigger than him, there is danger inherent in much of their interaction but the emotional danger of not fitting in here, in the same way that he doesn't fit in at home, is even greater again and so Max throws himself into each and every moment with relish. The pain of these encounters is never shied away from, much to Jonze's credit. Incidentally, Jonze began his career on the TV show Jackass, directing the various stunts and insane dares and much of the physical scenes in the film are weirdly reminiscent of those moments on Jackass when characters would dress up in bear suits and fight each other!
The pain on display is emotional as well as physical. Indeed, if there is an overall feeling to the film it's one of sadness. This is a truthful depiction of what it means to be a child clinging to childhood and every happy or funny moment the film has is completely earned as a result. What gives the film further honesty is how Max is just as capable of inflicting pain as he is of receiving it. I mentioned earlier how Max has his snow fort destroyed by those bigger than he. Later on, he is embroiled in a dirt-clod fight with the wild things and inflicts a similar pain on one of his new friends who is as undeserving of the indignity as he was. Also, Max discovers the bones of previous guests to the island, something that gives great ominosity to the rest of his stay with his new friends, especially in those moments when Carol lets his temper get the better of him, in exactly the same way that Max does.
There are many tiny moments in the film that reveal a great deal about character. When Max has his fort destroyed for example, he goes into his sister's room to exact retribution and discovers an old present he made for her, presumably some years ago, that she keeps in her room. As he is destroying it, we get a real sense of the relationship they once had that Max now misses, but also of the relationship that is still possible for them when Max catches up with her and enters adulthood himself. The film is barely 90 minutes long which is good as there is very little story here, something that usually bothers me. But this film is built less on narrative and more on character and relationships, in the way I've just described, as well as emotion and tone and in those ways it works tremendously. Sentimental but never schmaltzy, nostalgic but never contrived, Where The Wild Things Are is without doubt my favourite of Spike Jonze's films.
8/10
Sunday 6 December 2009
The Box Review
Richard Kelly is a man with ambition. He's determined to pose questions and make you think. He has themes and ideas that fascinate him and is highly literate, cramming all his influences into his films with decreasing levels of subtlety. It's this talent and intelligence that make The Box as infuriating a cinema experience as it is. It should be provoking and intriguing but ends up being very unsatisfying. After the cult success of Donnie Darko and the abject failure of Southland Tales, Kelly has attempted something more mainstream. Or at least he's pretending he has.
James Marsden and Cameron Diaz play Arthur and Norma Lewis, an ordinary couple mired in financial difficulty. A disfigured and mysterious stranger, Arlington Steward (played with understated relish by Frank Langella), arrives and gives them a wooden box with a button on the top. If they push the button two things will happen. Someone they don't know will die and they will receive one million dollars. The moral dilemma is played out in the first twenty minutes or so, after all what kind of film would we have if they didn't push the button. The rest of the film deals with the consequences of that decision, offering an ever deepening conspiracy and increasingly bizarre happenings with the townsfolk turning into extras from Village Of The Damned with nosebleeds, the babysitter not being everything she seems and Arlington Steward being revealed as the victim of a lightening strike he may or may not have even survived. Amidst all of this, the couple try and understand exactly what it is they have gotten themselves into and how they can extricate themselves from it.
This is one of those films that suffers from unfortunate and misleading marketing. The trailers all played up the central notion of the mysterious box and suggested the film is a thriller. One suspects this is how Kelly originally pitched it and got the money to make it, as that core notion (coming from the short story by Richard Matheson) is a highly marketable one. But where the short story ends, Kelly is only getting started and he uses the premise basically as a springboard to launch into his own flights of fancy. Much of the first half lives up to the marketing and plays like a straight thriller. A really great score by members of Arcade Fire helps generate menace in otherwise mundane scenes and the cinematography and production design, while perfectly capturing the 1970s setting, work hard to create a sense of unease. The problem however is that there is very little actual unease present. Many of these early scenes clunk along due to pedestrian writing and unconvincing performances by Marsden and Diaz. More problematic still is the fact that many of the film's attempts to create mystery and intrigue fall on the wrong side of naff and laughable. There are a couple of terrific moments, a man standing just out of shot looking in the kitchen window, or particularly when Steward announces menacingly that another couple that the Lewis' don't know will soon be made the same offer as they, implying that they could become the victims of the next people's decision to push the button. But by the time you have the old Granny staring at Cameron Diaz at a wedding rehearsal dinner in a manner that's supposed to be creepy but is actually kind of hilarious, you're very far from unnerved. And that's long before you're completely sick of the nosebleeds.
The second half of the film veers into science fiction territory and the moral dilemma the box presents turns out to have much larger consequences. It's clear from the start that something is going on and those complaining that the second half comes out of left field have not been paying attention. Not that I can really blame them. There is only so long, only so many times, you can cut to a strange, seemingly random (except that it clearly means something and so isn't random and therefore, oooh what could it mean?) shot and expect the audience to say "Oooh what could it mean?" It comes down to the age old problem that I simply didn't care about the characters enough to care about their predicament, even as their predicament takes on ever larger significance. This problem renders the ending, which completely hinges on our attachment to the characters, pretty much impotent. Indeed by the time the ending arrives, you can't help but get the sense that what is happening matters way more to Kelly than it does to any of the characters. When so many films don't even bother trying, it's always good to see one attempt to inject meaning and multiple layers into its story. But it's that story that must come first; get the basics right before adding the complications and a lot of the time The Box fails on its most basic levels. Scenes merge into each other, particularly early on, and the editing is often disjointed with many scenes seeming truncated. This seems to result from the structure and story not being completely in place in the script. Yet running alongside this is the feeling that Kelly has made pretty much the film he wanted to make, particularly when it comes to the ideas of philosophy that permeate the film. It's a strange fracture that persists throughout the entire running time. Also, when you get into this kind of territory, there are ultimately only so many explanations for what is happening. And you can't help but feel that this ground has been well and truly covered before.
I'm starting to wonder if Donnie Darko was something of an anomoly, that Kelly may not even realise what made that film connect with people in the first place. The Box ultimately frustrates but, for me, there is never a sense that it could ever have been that much better. Perhaps working from someone else's scripts, Kelly may have greater success as he is forced to interpret a story that isn't his. As it stands, what we have is a film with good moments and points of interest buried in a lot of tedium, one that attempts to test our humanity and personal and collective morality but ends up merely testing our patience.
4.5/10
James Marsden and Cameron Diaz play Arthur and Norma Lewis, an ordinary couple mired in financial difficulty. A disfigured and mysterious stranger, Arlington Steward (played with understated relish by Frank Langella), arrives and gives them a wooden box with a button on the top. If they push the button two things will happen. Someone they don't know will die and they will receive one million dollars. The moral dilemma is played out in the first twenty minutes or so, after all what kind of film would we have if they didn't push the button. The rest of the film deals with the consequences of that decision, offering an ever deepening conspiracy and increasingly bizarre happenings with the townsfolk turning into extras from Village Of The Damned with nosebleeds, the babysitter not being everything she seems and Arlington Steward being revealed as the victim of a lightening strike he may or may not have even survived. Amidst all of this, the couple try and understand exactly what it is they have gotten themselves into and how they can extricate themselves from it.
This is one of those films that suffers from unfortunate and misleading marketing. The trailers all played up the central notion of the mysterious box and suggested the film is a thriller. One suspects this is how Kelly originally pitched it and got the money to make it, as that core notion (coming from the short story by Richard Matheson) is a highly marketable one. But where the short story ends, Kelly is only getting started and he uses the premise basically as a springboard to launch into his own flights of fancy. Much of the first half lives up to the marketing and plays like a straight thriller. A really great score by members of Arcade Fire helps generate menace in otherwise mundane scenes and the cinematography and production design, while perfectly capturing the 1970s setting, work hard to create a sense of unease. The problem however is that there is very little actual unease present. Many of these early scenes clunk along due to pedestrian writing and unconvincing performances by Marsden and Diaz. More problematic still is the fact that many of the film's attempts to create mystery and intrigue fall on the wrong side of naff and laughable. There are a couple of terrific moments, a man standing just out of shot looking in the kitchen window, or particularly when Steward announces menacingly that another couple that the Lewis' don't know will soon be made the same offer as they, implying that they could become the victims of the next people's decision to push the button. But by the time you have the old Granny staring at Cameron Diaz at a wedding rehearsal dinner in a manner that's supposed to be creepy but is actually kind of hilarious, you're very far from unnerved. And that's long before you're completely sick of the nosebleeds.
The second half of the film veers into science fiction territory and the moral dilemma the box presents turns out to have much larger consequences. It's clear from the start that something is going on and those complaining that the second half comes out of left field have not been paying attention. Not that I can really blame them. There is only so long, only so many times, you can cut to a strange, seemingly random (except that it clearly means something and so isn't random and therefore, oooh what could it mean?) shot and expect the audience to say "Oooh what could it mean?" It comes down to the age old problem that I simply didn't care about the characters enough to care about their predicament, even as their predicament takes on ever larger significance. This problem renders the ending, which completely hinges on our attachment to the characters, pretty much impotent. Indeed by the time the ending arrives, you can't help but get the sense that what is happening matters way more to Kelly than it does to any of the characters. When so many films don't even bother trying, it's always good to see one attempt to inject meaning and multiple layers into its story. But it's that story that must come first; get the basics right before adding the complications and a lot of the time The Box fails on its most basic levels. Scenes merge into each other, particularly early on, and the editing is often disjointed with many scenes seeming truncated. This seems to result from the structure and story not being completely in place in the script. Yet running alongside this is the feeling that Kelly has made pretty much the film he wanted to make, particularly when it comes to the ideas of philosophy that permeate the film. It's a strange fracture that persists throughout the entire running time. Also, when you get into this kind of territory, there are ultimately only so many explanations for what is happening. And you can't help but feel that this ground has been well and truly covered before.
I'm starting to wonder if Donnie Darko was something of an anomoly, that Kelly may not even realise what made that film connect with people in the first place. The Box ultimately frustrates but, for me, there is never a sense that it could ever have been that much better. Perhaps working from someone else's scripts, Kelly may have greater success as he is forced to interpret a story that isn't his. As it stands, what we have is a film with good moments and points of interest buried in a lot of tedium, one that attempts to test our humanity and personal and collective morality but ends up merely testing our patience.
4.5/10
Saturday 28 November 2009
Paranormal Activity Review
Paranormal Activity arrives with a massive weight of expectation, a weight that it cannot quite bear, especially in the final few moments where, not really knowing what to do, it drops the ball pretty badly. This wasn't the original ending, apparently various endings have been in flux for a while, but more on that later. For the most part Paranormal Activity is very effective, tense, sparse and very scary.
The story is well known by now. Micah and Katie are a normal couple living in a normal, suburban house. As the film starts, the pair have been experiencing strange disturbances in the house so Micah has bought a camera to document what's happening and that footage is what makes up the film. It's the "found footage" genre of horror film that goes all the way back to Cannibal Holocaust and, most famously, The Blair Witch Project. Paranormal Activity's trump card is that now-famous, locked off shot in the bedroom, wherein Micah and Katie have gone to bed for the night and the camera films them as they sleep. It plays on very base, primal fears to great effect as we watch increasingly creepy events occur around people at their most vulnerable. This is one of those "how has this not been done before" ideas and writer/director Oren Peli squeezes as much tension from it as he can.
What's great about the film is the way it uses what are ostensibly haunted house cliches, banging doors, televisions and lights coming on of their own accord, misplaced objects, and makes them work tremendously. Why they work comes down to two things. Firstly, it's not a haunted house movie. Without spoiling anything, the presence in the house is not a ghost and its objective is much more personal than simply haunting a building. As well as writing himself out of the "why don't they just leave the house" plot hole, this ups the threat and horror in even the most mundane of scares. Secondly, these things work because of that single, sustained shot. Its lighting and composition make you, the viewer, scrutinise every corner of the frame, every shadow and movement, and because of its stillness, any event that happens, no matter how small, has enormous impact. Peli knows that by having the central concept that he does and by putting time and effort into how that shot is composed, he has done 80% of the work and is now free to play with our fears and expectations. The other asset of good horror is the soundtrack and, as much as Paranormal Activity relies on simple visual scares, so bangs and bumps coming from somewhere within the house provide many of the jumps and help sustain the tension. Indeed, the footsteps of the unseen entity approaching the bedroom become increasingly ominous and frightening as we understand more of what it wants.
The two actors, using their own names in the film, are perfectly fine. Micah goes from scepticism to desperation as he tries to be the "man of the house", looking after his girlfriend and sorting out the problem. This notion of the masculine need to control and be in control is interesting and watching it play out adds some character depth to the film. This need manifests in him almost antagonising the entity at times which eventually grates on the nerves and, as he is doing it with the woman he supposedly loves pleading with him to stop, he actually becomes somewhat unsympathetic. The climax of this is when he uses a Ouija Board. Early on, Katie invites a psychic to the house to help them and Micah mentions a ouija board. "Do NOT use a ouija board" the psychic tells him in no uncertain terms. Of course at that moment, we absolutely know he will use one and guess what?! This works to mixed effect. Character wise, it works to turn you off Micah. There is then an overt scare with the ouija board which, for me, is the least effective in the film. However, when the entity communicates with Micah, it gives him a name and the pay-off when he discovers who the name belongs to and then further when we discover what the entity was telling him by giving him that name, is truly disturbing and one of the best moments of the film.
Which brings us to the ending. Had I not been so tense throughout, I would have had a bad feeling that the film might blow it right at the end. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens. Peli has apparently experimented with different endings at different screenings. Descriptions of those endings are freely available online and I'm sure they'll end up on the DVD. Pretty much any of them sound better than the one we're presented with. When Paramount bought the film, they made a few adjustments, most of which are okay, but this ending is also theirs and, by basically being nothing more than a cheap, unearned shock, it goes against the slow build and emphasis on atmosphere and sustained tension that the film has worked so hard to maintain up to that point. It doesn't ruin the film but it is a definite let down after everything that has come before.
All the trailers have shown members of the audience screaming in terror and the film arrives in the U.K. marketed as "one of the scariest films of all time." Is it THAT good? Probably not. But it's frightening, tension filled and without question the scariest film this year. If you're a fan of Saw (one through six) or the Hostel films, then maybe this is not for you. But if you like your horror psychological, subtle and insidious in a way that makes you question your assumption that those strange noises you've been hearing are just the pipes rattling, then Paranormal Activity is a must see.
7.5/10
The story is well known by now. Micah and Katie are a normal couple living in a normal, suburban house. As the film starts, the pair have been experiencing strange disturbances in the house so Micah has bought a camera to document what's happening and that footage is what makes up the film. It's the "found footage" genre of horror film that goes all the way back to Cannibal Holocaust and, most famously, The Blair Witch Project. Paranormal Activity's trump card is that now-famous, locked off shot in the bedroom, wherein Micah and Katie have gone to bed for the night and the camera films them as they sleep. It plays on very base, primal fears to great effect as we watch increasingly creepy events occur around people at their most vulnerable. This is one of those "how has this not been done before" ideas and writer/director Oren Peli squeezes as much tension from it as he can.
What's great about the film is the way it uses what are ostensibly haunted house cliches, banging doors, televisions and lights coming on of their own accord, misplaced objects, and makes them work tremendously. Why they work comes down to two things. Firstly, it's not a haunted house movie. Without spoiling anything, the presence in the house is not a ghost and its objective is much more personal than simply haunting a building. As well as writing himself out of the "why don't they just leave the house" plot hole, this ups the threat and horror in even the most mundane of scares. Secondly, these things work because of that single, sustained shot. Its lighting and composition make you, the viewer, scrutinise every corner of the frame, every shadow and movement, and because of its stillness, any event that happens, no matter how small, has enormous impact. Peli knows that by having the central concept that he does and by putting time and effort into how that shot is composed, he has done 80% of the work and is now free to play with our fears and expectations. The other asset of good horror is the soundtrack and, as much as Paranormal Activity relies on simple visual scares, so bangs and bumps coming from somewhere within the house provide many of the jumps and help sustain the tension. Indeed, the footsteps of the unseen entity approaching the bedroom become increasingly ominous and frightening as we understand more of what it wants.
The two actors, using their own names in the film, are perfectly fine. Micah goes from scepticism to desperation as he tries to be the "man of the house", looking after his girlfriend and sorting out the problem. This notion of the masculine need to control and be in control is interesting and watching it play out adds some character depth to the film. This need manifests in him almost antagonising the entity at times which eventually grates on the nerves and, as he is doing it with the woman he supposedly loves pleading with him to stop, he actually becomes somewhat unsympathetic. The climax of this is when he uses a Ouija Board. Early on, Katie invites a psychic to the house to help them and Micah mentions a ouija board. "Do NOT use a ouija board" the psychic tells him in no uncertain terms. Of course at that moment, we absolutely know he will use one and guess what?! This works to mixed effect. Character wise, it works to turn you off Micah. There is then an overt scare with the ouija board which, for me, is the least effective in the film. However, when the entity communicates with Micah, it gives him a name and the pay-off when he discovers who the name belongs to and then further when we discover what the entity was telling him by giving him that name, is truly disturbing and one of the best moments of the film.
Which brings us to the ending. Had I not been so tense throughout, I would have had a bad feeling that the film might blow it right at the end. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens. Peli has apparently experimented with different endings at different screenings. Descriptions of those endings are freely available online and I'm sure they'll end up on the DVD. Pretty much any of them sound better than the one we're presented with. When Paramount bought the film, they made a few adjustments, most of which are okay, but this ending is also theirs and, by basically being nothing more than a cheap, unearned shock, it goes against the slow build and emphasis on atmosphere and sustained tension that the film has worked so hard to maintain up to that point. It doesn't ruin the film but it is a definite let down after everything that has come before.
All the trailers have shown members of the audience screaming in terror and the film arrives in the U.K. marketed as "one of the scariest films of all time." Is it THAT good? Probably not. But it's frightening, tension filled and without question the scariest film this year. If you're a fan of Saw (one through six) or the Hostel films, then maybe this is not for you. But if you like your horror psychological, subtle and insidious in a way that makes you question your assumption that those strange noises you've been hearing are just the pipes rattling, then Paranormal Activity is a must see.
7.5/10
Tuesday 24 November 2009
The Twilight Saga: New Moon: Why I Won't Be Reviewing It: Colon:
God, even that title is annoying.
Okay here's the deal. Yes I KNOW it's the biggest film of the moment. Yes I KNOW as a reviewer I'm supposed to watch everything, regardless of my own tastes and biases. Yes I KNOW they're all really buff and that's as good a reason as any to watch it.
Whoops! Eh, typo...
But I haven't seen the first in this "saga" and I can't bring myself to watch the second. I'm sorry, it looks insufferable. If you've seen it and you like it, send us an email and tell me why I'm wrong and why I should watch it. Otherwise you can listen to Mark Kermode give it a good review.
I hope my Editor-In-Chief doesn't fire me...
Okay here's the deal. Yes I KNOW it's the biggest film of the moment. Yes I KNOW as a reviewer I'm supposed to watch everything, regardless of my own tastes and biases. Yes I KNOW they're all really buff and that's as good a reason as any to watch it.
Whoops! Eh, typo...
But I haven't seen the first in this "saga" and I can't bring myself to watch the second. I'm sorry, it looks insufferable. If you've seen it and you like it, send us an email and tell me why I'm wrong and why I should watch it. Otherwise you can listen to Mark Kermode give it a good review.
I hope my Editor-In-Chief doesn't fire me...
Monday 23 November 2009
A Serious Man Review
Those Coen Brothers are a slippery pair. I've deliberately held off writing this review to let their latest film, A Serious Man, sink in a bit. My favourite of their films is Miller's Crossing with Fargo, No Country For Old Men and Raising Arizona all tied for second. Most of their films are good, very good or at the very least have something of merit in them. Indeed The Coen Brothers are uniquely consistent film makers and have been across a prolonged career. There is a particular category of Coen Brothers film that is somewhat enigmatic, Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn't There and now A Serious Man. I liked the film considerably more than Barton Fink or Man Who Wasn't There but it definitely shares a kinship with those two films.
Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a physics professor with a wife who wants to divorce him because she has got together with an amazingly pompous friend Sy Ableman, a son Danny who is less interested in school than he is in their television reception and getting stoned, a daughter Sarah who steals money from him to pay for a nose job, an unemployable brother Arthur (Spin City's Richard Kind) who has a cyst that needs to be regularly drained and who has taken up permanent residence on their couch and a student trying to bribe him for a better grade. As Larry's life slowly disintegrates around him, he asks the question, why. He doesn't get many answers. And neither do we.
And maybe that's the point. Bad things happen to good people and there is no order to it, there is no God who has it in for you, even if your Jewish heritage is telling you otherwise. Of course, if your Jewish heritage is correct and there is a God and you are a good person, why would He have it in for you? Larry goes to visit three rabbi for answers, each of whom is useless in their own particular way, and, with everything that's happening to test Larry, the film could be seen as a re-telling of the story of Job. Is the film actually about the so-called "Jewish curse"? The ending could certainly be read in that way. Or perhaps the point is simply to make people debate endlessly as to what exactly the point is. The Coens are pranksters and the fact that they generate this kind of conversation is as enjoyable to them as the story they are telling, which is not to ignore the fact that there is much in the film to debate. What further complicates A Serious Man is the fact that Larry spends its whole running time saying, "I haven't done anything" as if this were a defence against the bad things coming his way. He HASN'T done anything. Apart from consulting the rabbis, he continues to do nothing, even as God/fate/life/an ancient curse (seen in a wonderful prologue) throws more and more crap at him, and even when he does see the rabbis, he is completely unresponsive to their inability to provide the help he needs. The fact that he seeks help from others in the first place, rather than help himself, is telling and in the end one has to assume that his complacency is at least partially if not totally complicit in his downward spiral.
It's this angle that makes the character of Larry such an interesting one, and one of the Coen's best creations. What's great is that, even taking his lack of initiative as his biggest flaw, you don't lose sympathy with him. This is due in no small part to the fantastic performance of Michael Stuhlbarg who manages to retain dignity and humour in the character, even when you the audience (and apparently fate itself) are screaming at him to act, to do something, anything. This is true in a number of scenes, none moreso than the moment where Sy Ableman confronts Larry and tries to placate him with a bottle of wine. This is an incredibly tough line to walk and the Coens do it very, very well. Rarely does Larry succumb to the loss of control he's experiencing and, when he does, it's mainly in his dreams, a fantastic device that allows us into his psyche and to know he's suffering without having to endure the hand-wringing and histrionics of a lesser film. Despite the litany of disasters falling Larry's way, A Serious Man is also a very warm film, possibly their warmest to date. Many people have criticised the Coens for a somewhat misanthropic approach to making films, a criticism I totally disagree with. Amidst the horror of Fargo is the kind hearted cop Marge Gunderson, appalled by the senseless violence all around her. The beating heart of No Country For Old Men is not the opportunistic Llewelyn Moss or psycopathic Anton Chigurh but Tommy Lee Jones' Sherriff Ed Tom Bell. Miller's Crossing comes down to the loyalty Tom Regan (Gabriel Byrne) has for his mentor Leo and the chaos of Raising Arizona is perpetuated by Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter's simple and heartfelt yearning to have a family of their own. You can't have the good without the bad and just because you're not afraid to depict the bad and to make it very bad, doesn't mean you have it in for the possibility of good in people. With A Serious Man, they have taken their "good character" and put him centre stage. The question is why is he made to suffer and the answer is... well, that is entirely up to you.
This is their most low-key film since The Man Who Wasn't There, completely without fuss and refreshingly free of the glut of Hollywood a-listers they crammed into Burn After Reading. Those people troubled by the abrupt ending of No Country For Old Men are going to REALLY dislike this film. I found the ending touching, heartbreaking and, in a strange sort of way, it helped make sense of the story and bring everything together. This is not my favourite Coen Brothers film but I really enjoyed it and I have a sneaking suspicion it's going to grow on me even more. I'll be very interested to go back to it when it's on DVD and I wouldn't be surprised if I give it a higher score.
On that point, the fact that it's getting the same score as 2012 probably destroys any credibility I can ever have as a film critic. Let's just say that different films can be good in different ways. No? Hello? Anyone there? Come back! I haven't done anything!!
7/10
Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a physics professor with a wife who wants to divorce him because she has got together with an amazingly pompous friend Sy Ableman, a son Danny who is less interested in school than he is in their television reception and getting stoned, a daughter Sarah who steals money from him to pay for a nose job, an unemployable brother Arthur (Spin City's Richard Kind) who has a cyst that needs to be regularly drained and who has taken up permanent residence on their couch and a student trying to bribe him for a better grade. As Larry's life slowly disintegrates around him, he asks the question, why. He doesn't get many answers. And neither do we.
And maybe that's the point. Bad things happen to good people and there is no order to it, there is no God who has it in for you, even if your Jewish heritage is telling you otherwise. Of course, if your Jewish heritage is correct and there is a God and you are a good person, why would He have it in for you? Larry goes to visit three rabbi for answers, each of whom is useless in their own particular way, and, with everything that's happening to test Larry, the film could be seen as a re-telling of the story of Job. Is the film actually about the so-called "Jewish curse"? The ending could certainly be read in that way. Or perhaps the point is simply to make people debate endlessly as to what exactly the point is. The Coens are pranksters and the fact that they generate this kind of conversation is as enjoyable to them as the story they are telling, which is not to ignore the fact that there is much in the film to debate. What further complicates A Serious Man is the fact that Larry spends its whole running time saying, "I haven't done anything" as if this were a defence against the bad things coming his way. He HASN'T done anything. Apart from consulting the rabbis, he continues to do nothing, even as God/fate/life/an ancient curse (seen in a wonderful prologue) throws more and more crap at him, and even when he does see the rabbis, he is completely unresponsive to their inability to provide the help he needs. The fact that he seeks help from others in the first place, rather than help himself, is telling and in the end one has to assume that his complacency is at least partially if not totally complicit in his downward spiral.
It's this angle that makes the character of Larry such an interesting one, and one of the Coen's best creations. What's great is that, even taking his lack of initiative as his biggest flaw, you don't lose sympathy with him. This is due in no small part to the fantastic performance of Michael Stuhlbarg who manages to retain dignity and humour in the character, even when you the audience (and apparently fate itself) are screaming at him to act, to do something, anything. This is true in a number of scenes, none moreso than the moment where Sy Ableman confronts Larry and tries to placate him with a bottle of wine. This is an incredibly tough line to walk and the Coens do it very, very well. Rarely does Larry succumb to the loss of control he's experiencing and, when he does, it's mainly in his dreams, a fantastic device that allows us into his psyche and to know he's suffering without having to endure the hand-wringing and histrionics of a lesser film. Despite the litany of disasters falling Larry's way, A Serious Man is also a very warm film, possibly their warmest to date. Many people have criticised the Coens for a somewhat misanthropic approach to making films, a criticism I totally disagree with. Amidst the horror of Fargo is the kind hearted cop Marge Gunderson, appalled by the senseless violence all around her. The beating heart of No Country For Old Men is not the opportunistic Llewelyn Moss or psycopathic Anton Chigurh but Tommy Lee Jones' Sherriff Ed Tom Bell. Miller's Crossing comes down to the loyalty Tom Regan (Gabriel Byrne) has for his mentor Leo and the chaos of Raising Arizona is perpetuated by Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter's simple and heartfelt yearning to have a family of their own. You can't have the good without the bad and just because you're not afraid to depict the bad and to make it very bad, doesn't mean you have it in for the possibility of good in people. With A Serious Man, they have taken their "good character" and put him centre stage. The question is why is he made to suffer and the answer is... well, that is entirely up to you.
This is their most low-key film since The Man Who Wasn't There, completely without fuss and refreshingly free of the glut of Hollywood a-listers they crammed into Burn After Reading. Those people troubled by the abrupt ending of No Country For Old Men are going to REALLY dislike this film. I found the ending touching, heartbreaking and, in a strange sort of way, it helped make sense of the story and bring everything together. This is not my favourite Coen Brothers film but I really enjoyed it and I have a sneaking suspicion it's going to grow on me even more. I'll be very interested to go back to it when it's on DVD and I wouldn't be surprised if I give it a higher score.
On that point, the fact that it's getting the same score as 2012 probably destroys any credibility I can ever have as a film critic. Let's just say that different films can be good in different ways. No? Hello? Anyone there? Come back! I haven't done anything!!
7/10
Monday 16 November 2009
2012 Review
Surely I can't give 2012 a good review. Can I? I mean it's terrible. TERRIBLE. The characters are non existant, all notions of story have packed up and gone home and so much of the film is filled with saggy, soggy, drippy melodrama. Also, it's two and a half hours long. But it's a piece of depraved genius. At one point California is being destroyed in an earthquake that looks like it measures about a 350 on the richter scale and John Cusack outruns it in a limo. A LIMO! I can't help but feel that the sheer brilliance of that might have won me over.
The story, such as it is, concerns solar flares that are causing the Earth's crust to heat up and melt. This is the "science." Ah, science. Is there nothing you can't explain? This in turn causes uber-earthquakes that drag whole cities into the sea, mega-tsunamis that swallow up the Himalayas and volcanoes that erupt in Hiroshima-dwarfing nuclear explosions. The advertising campaign was built around the idea that this was all predicted by the Mayans but the film realises this is a waste of time and quickly dispenses with it altogether. I could talk more about the story, failed writer John Cusack struggling to reunite his family or conscientious Government scientist ("scientist") Chiwetel Ejifor trying to maintain his humanity amidst the terrible decisions being made around him, but what's the point? It's turgid, dreadful and clearly not the reason why anyone is going to see 2012.
Mark Kermode, in his scathing review of the film, talked about how it's another example of cynical Hollywood bean counters coming up with a film, the bottom line of which is the bottom line. This is possibly true of the studio and the executives greenlighting the film but I don't think it's true of writer/director (auteur if you will) Roland Emmerich. This is not a cynical film in the way that, say, Transformers or in particular Transformers 2 is. Emmerich is clearly in love with disaster movies and this is his magnus opus. I believe he genuinely cares that you're having a good time and this is the main reason that you stay onside with the film. He is now the undisputed king of the "man running away from looming disaster" set piece. John Cusack spends much of the film running/driving/flying away from earthquakes/volcanoes/floods. At one point he and his family are in an airplane that's screaming down a runway as the runway falls away into the Earth behind them. There is no threat, tension, logic or reason in it but you can almost see the glee on Emmerich's face as he comes up with stuff that he knows is outrageous but which he can't resist and he suspects you won't be able to resist either. He has the big action, the big cast and the ubiquitous dog in peril. It's worth mentioning that, while these sequences themselves are insane, he directs them superbly and, while the complete abandonment of plausibility might baffle, you always know exactly where you are within a given moment. This might seem like faint praise but watch Transformers 2 for an action film that has no clue how to direct its action. Also, to his credit, Emmerich is smart enough to cast credible actors who help sell this stuff. Chiwetel Ejiofor is one of Britain's best actors and it's great to see him get to take centre stage in a major Hollywood movie. John Cusack is dependably good, as is Oliver Platt, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover and Tom McCarthy, director of the brilliant The Station Agent. (We'll ignore Thandie Newton) The film definately drags in the middle (our heroes have to get from California to China) but by the time you reach the last act with its arks and tsunamis, which could almost be a film in itself, you're right back with it.
Disaster movies have to be silly. We know this because they've always been silly. Check out the posturing of McQueen and Newman in The Towering Inferno or the frankly bizarre relationship between Ernest Borgnine and his ex-prostitute wife Stella Stevens (as well as Gene Hackman's seemingly knitted on hair) in The Poseidon Adventure if you don't believe me. In my mind, there is no difference between the 1970s disaster films and 2012. Would Irwin Allen have made a film like this had the technology been available to him? Of course he would. Modern special effects have freed up a personality that knows no restraint and the result is 2012. Simultaneously appalling and brilliant then, I have to say that the brilliance wins out. Just.
7/10
The story, such as it is, concerns solar flares that are causing the Earth's crust to heat up and melt. This is the "science." Ah, science. Is there nothing you can't explain? This in turn causes uber-earthquakes that drag whole cities into the sea, mega-tsunamis that swallow up the Himalayas and volcanoes that erupt in Hiroshima-dwarfing nuclear explosions. The advertising campaign was built around the idea that this was all predicted by the Mayans but the film realises this is a waste of time and quickly dispenses with it altogether. I could talk more about the story, failed writer John Cusack struggling to reunite his family or conscientious Government scientist ("scientist") Chiwetel Ejifor trying to maintain his humanity amidst the terrible decisions being made around him, but what's the point? It's turgid, dreadful and clearly not the reason why anyone is going to see 2012.
Mark Kermode, in his scathing review of the film, talked about how it's another example of cynical Hollywood bean counters coming up with a film, the bottom line of which is the bottom line. This is possibly true of the studio and the executives greenlighting the film but I don't think it's true of writer/director (auteur if you will) Roland Emmerich. This is not a cynical film in the way that, say, Transformers or in particular Transformers 2 is. Emmerich is clearly in love with disaster movies and this is his magnus opus. I believe he genuinely cares that you're having a good time and this is the main reason that you stay onside with the film. He is now the undisputed king of the "man running away from looming disaster" set piece. John Cusack spends much of the film running/driving/flying away from earthquakes/volcanoes/floods. At one point he and his family are in an airplane that's screaming down a runway as the runway falls away into the Earth behind them. There is no threat, tension, logic or reason in it but you can almost see the glee on Emmerich's face as he comes up with stuff that he knows is outrageous but which he can't resist and he suspects you won't be able to resist either. He has the big action, the big cast and the ubiquitous dog in peril. It's worth mentioning that, while these sequences themselves are insane, he directs them superbly and, while the complete abandonment of plausibility might baffle, you always know exactly where you are within a given moment. This might seem like faint praise but watch Transformers 2 for an action film that has no clue how to direct its action. Also, to his credit, Emmerich is smart enough to cast credible actors who help sell this stuff. Chiwetel Ejiofor is one of Britain's best actors and it's great to see him get to take centre stage in a major Hollywood movie. John Cusack is dependably good, as is Oliver Platt, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover and Tom McCarthy, director of the brilliant The Station Agent. (We'll ignore Thandie Newton) The film definately drags in the middle (our heroes have to get from California to China) but by the time you reach the last act with its arks and tsunamis, which could almost be a film in itself, you're right back with it.
Disaster movies have to be silly. We know this because they've always been silly. Check out the posturing of McQueen and Newman in The Towering Inferno or the frankly bizarre relationship between Ernest Borgnine and his ex-prostitute wife Stella Stevens (as well as Gene Hackman's seemingly knitted on hair) in The Poseidon Adventure if you don't believe me. In my mind, there is no difference between the 1970s disaster films and 2012. Would Irwin Allen have made a film like this had the technology been available to him? Of course he would. Modern special effects have freed up a personality that knows no restraint and the result is 2012. Simultaneously appalling and brilliant then, I have to say that the brilliance wins out. Just.
7/10
Harry Brown Review
Why are British films always so bleak and dour? There is an extended scene in Harry Brown wherein Michael Caine (the eponymous Brown) visits two local gun and drug dealers on the pretext of buying a gun. This scene is grim to start with and gets progressivley more so, culminating in the video playing in the background of the two men having sex with the drugged out woman they keep on the couch. I have no reason to doubt that horror like this goes on in certain parts of the city but, just because you fill your film with the most awful things you can think of or have heard actually happened, doesn't mean you're necessarily saying anything interesting or important about them. And in the end, this is the problem that Harry Brown can't escape.
Michael Caine is Harry Brown, a retired ex-marine, recently widowed, living on an estate that is over run with crime and youth violence. When his chess partner and friend Len is viciously killed by a gang, Harry decides that enough is enough and goes about exacting some measure of justice. I mean revenge. Wait, which is it? Stories like these can be very problematic in this regard and this film, with its dubious politics and mixed messages, is no exception. Violence is awful. Except when it's justified. Stabbing a pensioner is horrific but wrapping barbed wire around a hoodie's neck is perfectly acceptable. Violence begets violence we're told but Harry Brown's murderous rampage has nothing but positive consequences. It's yet another film that demonizes every young person with his hood up and portrays the council estate as some kind of zoo for the depraved. Are some estates like this? Are there violent youths? Street violence? Of course the answer to these questions is yes but the simple fact is that we know this already. What else have you got to say? And the plain truth is that the film has nothing new to say. It's revenge fantasy with pretensions, nothing more.
There is something undeniably iconic about seeing Michael Caine in a buttoned up, black overcoat, staring into the camera. At 78, he seems to be still going strong and his place as one of the movie greats is assured. But, as much as I enjoy watching him, I never quite believe him in roles like this. I've always found him at his best in comedy, something he does much too little of. The film has been getting generally good reviews but I really believe this is because of the presence of Michael Caine. Harry Brown is the debut film of director Daniel Barber and there is undeniable confidence in much of how he directs the film. A big problem however is that scenes are pushed way past the point of interest, the scene I mentioned at the begining with Caine confronting the drug dealers for example, or a ludicrously extended section where every member of the gang is interviewed by the police. I suspect Barber thinks he is building tension in these scenes but they end up falling very flat. Supporting characters are very short-changed and any time Caine isn't on the screen, the film loses the only card it has to play.
Every year some new version of the "ordinary man takes the law into his own hands" film gets made. This year has seen no fewer than three with Clint's Gran Torino, Caine's Harry Brown and Gerard Butler in Law Abiding Citizen coming up in a couple of weeks. Harry Brown has been drawing comparisons with Gran Torino, comparisons I'm sure Daniel Barber is pleased with. I saw an interview with him in which he said that he would hate to think that his film would be compared to Death Wish, Michael Winner's 1970s exploitation thriller with Charles Bronson. If you ask me, Death Wish is the better film.
3/10
Michael Caine is Harry Brown, a retired ex-marine, recently widowed, living on an estate that is over run with crime and youth violence. When his chess partner and friend Len is viciously killed by a gang, Harry decides that enough is enough and goes about exacting some measure of justice. I mean revenge. Wait, which is it? Stories like these can be very problematic in this regard and this film, with its dubious politics and mixed messages, is no exception. Violence is awful. Except when it's justified. Stabbing a pensioner is horrific but wrapping barbed wire around a hoodie's neck is perfectly acceptable. Violence begets violence we're told but Harry Brown's murderous rampage has nothing but positive consequences. It's yet another film that demonizes every young person with his hood up and portrays the council estate as some kind of zoo for the depraved. Are some estates like this? Are there violent youths? Street violence? Of course the answer to these questions is yes but the simple fact is that we know this already. What else have you got to say? And the plain truth is that the film has nothing new to say. It's revenge fantasy with pretensions, nothing more.
There is something undeniably iconic about seeing Michael Caine in a buttoned up, black overcoat, staring into the camera. At 78, he seems to be still going strong and his place as one of the movie greats is assured. But, as much as I enjoy watching him, I never quite believe him in roles like this. I've always found him at his best in comedy, something he does much too little of. The film has been getting generally good reviews but I really believe this is because of the presence of Michael Caine. Harry Brown is the debut film of director Daniel Barber and there is undeniable confidence in much of how he directs the film. A big problem however is that scenes are pushed way past the point of interest, the scene I mentioned at the begining with Caine confronting the drug dealers for example, or a ludicrously extended section where every member of the gang is interviewed by the police. I suspect Barber thinks he is building tension in these scenes but they end up falling very flat. Supporting characters are very short-changed and any time Caine isn't on the screen, the film loses the only card it has to play.
Every year some new version of the "ordinary man takes the law into his own hands" film gets made. This year has seen no fewer than three with Clint's Gran Torino, Caine's Harry Brown and Gerard Butler in Law Abiding Citizen coming up in a couple of weeks. Harry Brown has been drawing comparisons with Gran Torino, comparisons I'm sure Daniel Barber is pleased with. I saw an interview with him in which he said that he would hate to think that his film would be compared to Death Wish, Michael Winner's 1970s exploitation thriller with Charles Bronson. If you ask me, Death Wish is the better film.
3/10
Jennifer's Body Review
I hate Juno. Juno is the worst kind of film in that, everyone who has seen it will tell you how good it is, and it’s not good. Not at all. Writer Diablo Cody has a fantastic central idea, a teenager carrying a pregnancy through high school, an idea that could really resonate and go somewhere interesting, especially in these times of Creationism and abstinence. But she absolutely squanders it. The script is immature, there are no consequences to any of Juno’s actions and the whole thing becomes a highly irritating, flippant, kooky love story with a soundtrack of perfectly placed, just released eight minutes ago, indie songs to sledgehammer home every emotionally contrived moment. Cody clearly understands what it’s like to be an American teenager and is able to convincingly sell that world. So it’s no surprise that Jennifer’s Body, Cody’s next produced script, once again portrays the American teenage angst and its natural home, the high school, in a manner that is at once completely convincing and painfully familiar. Jennifer’s Body doesn’t have that great central idea which, in a way, actually works in its favour because there is little to spoil. What it has in abundance is all the irritating stuff. It isn’t even really a horror film, even though it has been marketed as such. It’s a high school film with a demon. And I really don’t like high school films. Can you see where this is going?
Megan Fox is Jennifer, the object of every teenage boy’s hormonally fuelled desire. Mama Mia’s Amanda Seyfried is Needy, her best friend. Out at a bar one night, Jennifer is taken by a struggling band who will do anything to get famous, including sacrificing a virgin to Satan. Except that Jennifer is no virgin and so she ends up inhabited by the demon, feasting on the young boys at the school to stay alive. She is literally a man-eater. Get it? Needy is the only one who knows the truth and it’s up to her to stop the killings that ensue. It’s a neat idea to take the high school archetypes and use them for horror purposes and Cody certainly has a nice way with finding small character moments that ring true. Director Karen Kusama does an okay job and the two girls are both convincing. But it’s not funny, it’s not frightening and once again I found much of Cody’s writing very grating. People have knocked her dialogue for being stylised which is a ridiculous criticism. Dialogue shouldn’t be conversational in my opinion, it should have structure and purpose, like the overall story, and many writers, including two of my favourites, the Coen Brothers and David Mamet, write highly stylised dialogue. The question is how one responds to that style. That response is of course always subjective but, for me, I find Cody’s characters very annoying. “You’re so jello. You’re lime green jello and you can’t admit it to yourself.” Lines like this come thick and fast and make me want to tear my hair out, I don’t care how authentic they are to American teen-speak. It’s the Quentin Tarantino school of writing, where every character talks in hip, “quotable” but ultimately inane sound bites. And just because the lead singer of the band remarks that the only way to get noticed is to appear on a “crap soundtrack”, referencing the problem I mentioned about Juno, doesn’t mean you’re negating that problem. Moreover, in jokes are cheap and unfunny and Cody is guilty of employing them.
I realise this review has become a bit of a tirade against Diablo Cody but she is one of the few writers who, so far at least, manages to be highly visible in the finished film. And good for her. Such a feat is rare for a Hollywood writer. I have nothing against her personally and she can clearly structure a script and tell a story. But it’s style over substance and if that comes from Diablo Cody or Michael Bay or anyone else, it’s problematic. There is a current backlash against Cody, part of the reason for the film’s poor show at the box office Stateside. Again, I want to be as fair as I can be, and this backlash is unjustified and unfair. The people tearing her down now are the same ones that lauded her when Juno first appeared and their objections are pretty much worthless as a result. At least I’m consistent. I hated Juno from the start and I hate Jennifer’s Body now too. I was bored, irritated and if I hadn’t been writing this review I’d have left half way through. Diablo Cody does her thing and I guess that’s great for her and for whoever is interested. It’s not for me.
2/10
Megan Fox is Jennifer, the object of every teenage boy’s hormonally fuelled desire. Mama Mia’s Amanda Seyfried is Needy, her best friend. Out at a bar one night, Jennifer is taken by a struggling band who will do anything to get famous, including sacrificing a virgin to Satan. Except that Jennifer is no virgin and so she ends up inhabited by the demon, feasting on the young boys at the school to stay alive. She is literally a man-eater. Get it? Needy is the only one who knows the truth and it’s up to her to stop the killings that ensue. It’s a neat idea to take the high school archetypes and use them for horror purposes and Cody certainly has a nice way with finding small character moments that ring true. Director Karen Kusama does an okay job and the two girls are both convincing. But it’s not funny, it’s not frightening and once again I found much of Cody’s writing very grating. People have knocked her dialogue for being stylised which is a ridiculous criticism. Dialogue shouldn’t be conversational in my opinion, it should have structure and purpose, like the overall story, and many writers, including two of my favourites, the Coen Brothers and David Mamet, write highly stylised dialogue. The question is how one responds to that style. That response is of course always subjective but, for me, I find Cody’s characters very annoying. “You’re so jello. You’re lime green jello and you can’t admit it to yourself.” Lines like this come thick and fast and make me want to tear my hair out, I don’t care how authentic they are to American teen-speak. It’s the Quentin Tarantino school of writing, where every character talks in hip, “quotable” but ultimately inane sound bites. And just because the lead singer of the band remarks that the only way to get noticed is to appear on a “crap soundtrack”, referencing the problem I mentioned about Juno, doesn’t mean you’re negating that problem. Moreover, in jokes are cheap and unfunny and Cody is guilty of employing them.
I realise this review has become a bit of a tirade against Diablo Cody but she is one of the few writers who, so far at least, manages to be highly visible in the finished film. And good for her. Such a feat is rare for a Hollywood writer. I have nothing against her personally and she can clearly structure a script and tell a story. But it’s style over substance and if that comes from Diablo Cody or Michael Bay or anyone else, it’s problematic. There is a current backlash against Cody, part of the reason for the film’s poor show at the box office Stateside. Again, I want to be as fair as I can be, and this backlash is unjustified and unfair. The people tearing her down now are the same ones that lauded her when Juno first appeared and their objections are pretty much worthless as a result. At least I’m consistent. I hated Juno from the start and I hate Jennifer’s Body now too. I was bored, irritated and if I hadn’t been writing this review I’d have left half way through. Diablo Cody does her thing and I guess that’s great for her and for whoever is interested. It’s not for me.
2/10
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