I have now seen The Book Of Eli twice (don't ask) and, in terms of reviewing it, it's no bad thing. On my ten worst films of the year list is Orphan, a film that pulled a gloriously, hilariously, shamelessly stupid last minute twist out of absolutely nowhere. The Book Of Eli contains a reveal that, while not quite as moronic, is definitely in the same ballpark. If Orphan is actually on the playing field then The Book Of Eli is selling the hotdogs in the stand. What's funny is that, watching it for the second time, I could see all those moments where directors The Hughes Brothers tried to plant a clue, tried to play fair with the audience, and one or two I would concede are pretty decent. The problem is that to properly play fair you would have to be considerably cleverer film makers than the Hughes Brothers, but, really, what they're trying to do is so implausible that I genuinely struggle to imagine a way of pulling it off. I so want to talk about it but I couldn't spoil the surprise!
Denzel Washington is Eli, a lone samurai wandering the wilderness in the aftermath of nuclear holocaust. He is carrying a book and to talk properly about the film I need to say what the book is. It's fully revealed before the half way mark and the trailers have all but given it away anyway but stop reading now if you don't want to know... Okay?... Right...
Denzel is carrying the last remaining copy of the Bible. The war was started on religious grounds and the survivors made sure that every remaining copy was destroyed. This is quite a stretch, quite a big ask of the audience but, given what's to follow, it's one of the easier things to swallow in the film. Anyway Denzel is on a quest, heading east, taking the book to a safe place. Denzel has an old fashioned Ipod, running off what looks to be a car battery, and when he loses power he wanders into a town to recharge it and get supplies. The town is run by evil Carnegie (Gary Oldman in full on villain mode) who has teams of bandits roaming the land looking for... you guessed it, a copy of the bible. You see Carnegie knows how powerful the book is, knows how, if he has it, he will be able to control not just one small town, but the whole WORLD! Mwa ha ha ha! Carnegie and Eli face off, Eli escapes and Carnegie, who will risk and sacrifice anything and anyone to get the book, chases him with his army of disposable henchmen.
The Book Of Eli has two things going for it. Firstly, this core idea of the corrupting influence of religion, its ability to control the masses, and how a survivor of nuclear armageddon wants it for those purposes, is a strong one. In a film that didn't cost $80 million and without big name stars, this could have been a really compelling, character driven and subtle story. Instead, in one corner we have Saint Denzel and in the other we have Evil Oldman. Part of the problem is the casting. You don't have Gary Oldman as your villain and then tie him down. You want to let him loose, let him chew up the scenery, but in so doing you lose any of the potential grey the story might have had. Similarly Denzel does big, broad emotions and here he is playing GOOD! Ultimately what happens is that, the central notion isn't really explored with any great significance or depth and you end up wondering what might have been. The second thing the film has going for it are the fight sequences. I'm no great Denzel Washington fan but he is surprisingly adept at dispatching bad guys with a sword. The Hughes Brothers make the great decision not to cut those fights with lightening speed. Indeed, Eli's first encounter with hijackers on the road in which he takes on 6 or 7 men, one wielding a chainsaw, occurs in one sustained shot from quite a way back. The choreography is great, Denzel has clearly put the work in and is convincing, and the directors know that they just have to sit back and let it happen. In these times of action sequences being edited like the editor is taking Speed for his ADD, it's refreshing and feels strangely new.
But the film as a whole is really quite dull and the tone of the whole thing is so lugubrious, so humourless, each frame, everything from the music to the cinematography, demanding that you take it with utter seriousness and total sincerity as if it were the very book its titular character is carrying. If you're not really going with the film, as I wasn't, this makes the whole thing fall on the wrong side of laughable. Part of this problem lies with Denzel. It's not that he's bad, and as I said, in terms of the physical stuff he's excellent, but he's just so... earnest. "I walk the Earth. I carry my book. I pray every day. I'm Denzel, you will take me seriously" Any film asking me to take it this seriously needs to earn that and, in the end, The Book Of Eli doesn't. It's a half baked genre movie with some good ideas, a couple of great fights, long stretches of nothing, WAY too many slow motion "Denzel looking cool while walking" shots and a truly hilarious ending. It also contains one of the weirdest shots I've seen in a film in a long time and the strangest shot of Denzel Washington I think I've ever seen where, not only has he had his beard shaved, but his whole head has been shaved too and he is dressed in an ankle length, snow white robe... Unintentionally funny.
Every film I've reviewed this month has had the same line. "It's not terrible, it's just not that great." And guess what? I've seen worse, I've also seen considerably better. I feel that I am way overdue a genuinely great film. Come on 2010, surely you're better than last year?
5/10
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
The Road Review
I find myself in an interesting, and lamentably rare, situation when it comes to The Road. I've actually read the book. I do read more than those first two sentences would suggest, honest! It's also one of my favourite books but I did try and approach the film as objectively and with as fresh a perspective as I could. The fact that it's directed by John Hillcoat, who directed The Proposition, gave hope. Cormac McCarthy's book drips with atmosphere and menace and The Proposition is one of the most atmospheric and tonally interesting films of the last few years. A good match then, perhaps. What struck me when watching The Road was that, a huge part of what made me love the book was not what it was about, but how it was written. Of course the film doesn't have the benefit of McCarthy's terse prose and so what you are left with is the narrative of the book which, to the best of my memory, is actually adhered to pretty faithfully by writer Joe Penhall, a narrative that is somewhat slight and episodic.
Viggo Mortensen plays the man, Kodi Smit-Mcphee plays the boy. Both are struggling to survive in the aftermath of an unamed apocalypse, travelling south along the eponymous road to the coast, avoiding those survivors who would use them for food and occasionally bumping into Robert Duvall or Guy Pearce who must surely be a shoe in for Best Supporting Fake Teeth at this year's awards season. And that's kind of all there is to it. As I said, that's all there is to the story of the book also, but the narrative deficiencies take centre stage in the film. Central to the story is this relationship between man and boy and both actors do well, Viggo in particular looking dirty, haggard and gaunt having presumably thrown himself method style into the role. The problems arise as the boy constantly pesters his Dad about who is good and who is bad. Rather than leading to an interesting grey area of survival in which no one is necessarily good or bad, we have the man and boy who are good because they don't eat people and the cannibals who are bad because they do. The boy questions his father's way of protecting them even as they are being attacked by those who would harm them and the theme loses any weight and believability as a result. Yes he's a child but all he has ever known is the apocalypse, all he has ever known is danger, dread, hunger and fear, so shouldn't he be savvy to his world by now? Shouldn't he understand the consequences if they don't defend themselves at all costs, violently if that's necessary? This adds a level of immaturity to either the character if it's deliberate or the script if it's not and either way I found it problematic.
What is most surprising however, is that I expected the film to assault me with its atmosphere and tone and it really didn't. Whereas The Proposition was relentless (to the point of being problematic to many critics but not to me) The Road actually becomes somewhat tiresome at times. Lots of washed out colours, plenty of grey, but nothing ever changes and at a certain point I found myself desensitised to the whole thing, apathetic when I should have been on the edge of my seat. There are some flashbacks to life before the apocalypse, with Charlise Theron playing Viggo's wife, "the woman" presumably, and these work to mixed effect. They provide a break from the unremitting grimness of the present but they don't inform the character of the man and storywise they could happily be excised and nothing would be lost.
I feel like I'm coming down pretty hard on The Road. I don't feel like this is a case of "I loved the book and you ruined it with the film", the problems are there on the screen. Like many of the films I've seen recently, The Road isn't terrible, it has much to commend and enjoy. I just found myself struggling to understand the point of it, what it was I was supposed to take from it. I've waited a few days to write this review as I haven't been sure what I thought about the film and I'm not sure I can articulate it even now. I guess my advice would be, read the book.
5-6/10
Viggo Mortensen plays the man, Kodi Smit-Mcphee plays the boy. Both are struggling to survive in the aftermath of an unamed apocalypse, travelling south along the eponymous road to the coast, avoiding those survivors who would use them for food and occasionally bumping into Robert Duvall or Guy Pearce who must surely be a shoe in for Best Supporting Fake Teeth at this year's awards season. And that's kind of all there is to it. As I said, that's all there is to the story of the book also, but the narrative deficiencies take centre stage in the film. Central to the story is this relationship between man and boy and both actors do well, Viggo in particular looking dirty, haggard and gaunt having presumably thrown himself method style into the role. The problems arise as the boy constantly pesters his Dad about who is good and who is bad. Rather than leading to an interesting grey area of survival in which no one is necessarily good or bad, we have the man and boy who are good because they don't eat people and the cannibals who are bad because they do. The boy questions his father's way of protecting them even as they are being attacked by those who would harm them and the theme loses any weight and believability as a result. Yes he's a child but all he has ever known is the apocalypse, all he has ever known is danger, dread, hunger and fear, so shouldn't he be savvy to his world by now? Shouldn't he understand the consequences if they don't defend themselves at all costs, violently if that's necessary? This adds a level of immaturity to either the character if it's deliberate or the script if it's not and either way I found it problematic.
What is most surprising however, is that I expected the film to assault me with its atmosphere and tone and it really didn't. Whereas The Proposition was relentless (to the point of being problematic to many critics but not to me) The Road actually becomes somewhat tiresome at times. Lots of washed out colours, plenty of grey, but nothing ever changes and at a certain point I found myself desensitised to the whole thing, apathetic when I should have been on the edge of my seat. There are some flashbacks to life before the apocalypse, with Charlise Theron playing Viggo's wife, "the woman" presumably, and these work to mixed effect. They provide a break from the unremitting grimness of the present but they don't inform the character of the man and storywise they could happily be excised and nothing would be lost.
I feel like I'm coming down pretty hard on The Road. I don't feel like this is a case of "I loved the book and you ruined it with the film", the problems are there on the screen. Like many of the films I've seen recently, The Road isn't terrible, it has much to commend and enjoy. I just found myself struggling to understand the point of it, what it was I was supposed to take from it. I've waited a few days to write this review as I haven't been sure what I thought about the film and I'm not sure I can articulate it even now. I guess my advice would be, read the book.
5-6/10
Up In the Air Review
What am I missing? Why don't I like these films? Up In The Air arrives with glowing reviews, solid if unspectacular box office, Oscar buzz and the promise of Gorgeous George being, well, gorgeous presumably. At least on that level Up In The Air doesn't disappoint. It's the third film from Jason Reitman after Thank You For Smoking and Juno. I REALLY have to avoid turning this review into a Juno rant. If paragraphs stop suddenly, it'll only be me putting the brakes on yet another "why Juno is actually terrible" tirade.
I'm doing it already. Okay, back to Up In the Air.
Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man whose job it is to fly from city to city and inform unsuspecting employees that they have lost their jobs. Bingham is world class at his job. Soothing, calm, understanding. But he is empty inside. Becoming one of only a handful of people ever to clock up ten million air miles is his life's ambition. People and relationships weigh him down and the few days he spends at home are the unhappiest of the year, preferring to live his life in airports and hotels. When fresh faced company hotshot Anna Kendrick blusters in with a new scheme to do the firing remotely, eliminating the need for Clooney to travel the country, he is enormously threatened and is ordered by slimey company boss Jason Bateman to take her with him to show her how firing people is done and what it's all about.
There has been much talk in recent years about Hollywood studios bastardising "Indie" cinema, popularising it, packaging and marketing it and serving it out as an apparently high brow alternative to their mainstream fare. Up In the Air is the very epitome of this phenomenon, a film every bit as mainstream and, in all honestly, as hollow and empty as the Summer special effects movies. Getting Clooney to do the film is crucial for two reasons. Firstly, on this same point, it gives the film cache. "George Clooney is in it? It must be political and have something to say."Secondly, it means that a thoroughly unlikable character is now made more palatable to a broad audience and the awards voters. This notion is undeniable and transparent and is completely against the ethos of genuine independent cinema which as a result makes it the most compelling point in the argument that films like this do not represent genuine independent cinema and are merely low(er) budgeted Hollywood, mainstream films. Up In The Air isn't the worst film ever made. It just isn't particularly good and its pretensions make its ultimate emptiness all the more apparent.
The notion of a guy talking the talk in a job where empathy is crucial not actually having genuine emotional empathy towards others is an interesting one. I haven't read the book so I can't comment on how well it works on the page. The problem onscreen though is that, this idea slowly comes to represent the film as a whole. Up In The Air doesn't make a genuine connection, at least it doesn't with me, and I felt that I was being played the whole time. A few funny moments and Clooney's charisma and charm make you go with it while you watch it but, stepping out of the cinema to assess what I had watched, I found myself with little to say because there's very little substance. What makes it worse is that, director Reitman intercuts interviews with people who have actually lost their jobs in real life. This comes off as a very cynical way to give the film weight and make it seem as if it's offering a commentary of some kind on our current economic crisis, which it isn't. And of course there's the dreaded "alternative indie music" soundtrack. This has really come to represent a certain kind of film in my mind, a kind of film I just cannot abide. Jason Reitman is the new Cameron Crowe, just with less schmaltz and slightly more credibility, and the perfectly placed but sledgehammer obvious indie songs coming every 3 minutes with "wounded" singers asserting that karma won't let them down no matter what Annie said when she broke their heart, or whatever emotionally contrived crap happened to conveniently rhyme with the last line, only underscores this further. I don't believe the songs, I don't believe the film, there is actually nothing being said here but the packaging is top notch.
The film isn't terrible, it's just nowhere near as good as it wants you to think it is. Up In The Air is better than Thank You For Smoking and WAY better than Juno, although it is definitely cut from the same cloth and suffers from exactly the same problems. That is also faint praise given that immersing one's head in acid is better than watching Juno...
PARAGRAPH ABORTED - JUNO RANT DETECTED.
5/10
I'm doing it already. Okay, back to Up In the Air.
Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man whose job it is to fly from city to city and inform unsuspecting employees that they have lost their jobs. Bingham is world class at his job. Soothing, calm, understanding. But he is empty inside. Becoming one of only a handful of people ever to clock up ten million air miles is his life's ambition. People and relationships weigh him down and the few days he spends at home are the unhappiest of the year, preferring to live his life in airports and hotels. When fresh faced company hotshot Anna Kendrick blusters in with a new scheme to do the firing remotely, eliminating the need for Clooney to travel the country, he is enormously threatened and is ordered by slimey company boss Jason Bateman to take her with him to show her how firing people is done and what it's all about.
There has been much talk in recent years about Hollywood studios bastardising "Indie" cinema, popularising it, packaging and marketing it and serving it out as an apparently high brow alternative to their mainstream fare. Up In the Air is the very epitome of this phenomenon, a film every bit as mainstream and, in all honestly, as hollow and empty as the Summer special effects movies. Getting Clooney to do the film is crucial for two reasons. Firstly, on this same point, it gives the film cache. "George Clooney is in it? It must be political and have something to say."Secondly, it means that a thoroughly unlikable character is now made more palatable to a broad audience and the awards voters. This notion is undeniable and transparent and is completely against the ethos of genuine independent cinema which as a result makes it the most compelling point in the argument that films like this do not represent genuine independent cinema and are merely low(er) budgeted Hollywood, mainstream films. Up In The Air isn't the worst film ever made. It just isn't particularly good and its pretensions make its ultimate emptiness all the more apparent.
The notion of a guy talking the talk in a job where empathy is crucial not actually having genuine emotional empathy towards others is an interesting one. I haven't read the book so I can't comment on how well it works on the page. The problem onscreen though is that, this idea slowly comes to represent the film as a whole. Up In The Air doesn't make a genuine connection, at least it doesn't with me, and I felt that I was being played the whole time. A few funny moments and Clooney's charisma and charm make you go with it while you watch it but, stepping out of the cinema to assess what I had watched, I found myself with little to say because there's very little substance. What makes it worse is that, director Reitman intercuts interviews with people who have actually lost their jobs in real life. This comes off as a very cynical way to give the film weight and make it seem as if it's offering a commentary of some kind on our current economic crisis, which it isn't. And of course there's the dreaded "alternative indie music" soundtrack. This has really come to represent a certain kind of film in my mind, a kind of film I just cannot abide. Jason Reitman is the new Cameron Crowe, just with less schmaltz and slightly more credibility, and the perfectly placed but sledgehammer obvious indie songs coming every 3 minutes with "wounded" singers asserting that karma won't let them down no matter what Annie said when she broke their heart, or whatever emotionally contrived crap happened to conveniently rhyme with the last line, only underscores this further. I don't believe the songs, I don't believe the film, there is actually nothing being said here but the packaging is top notch.
The film isn't terrible, it's just nowhere near as good as it wants you to think it is. Up In The Air is better than Thank You For Smoking and WAY better than Juno, although it is definitely cut from the same cloth and suffers from exactly the same problems. That is also faint praise given that immersing one's head in acid is better than watching Juno...
PARAGRAPH ABORTED - JUNO RANT DETECTED.
5/10
Friday, 15 January 2010
And The First Review Of 2010 Is...
Daybreakers!
Where has this resurgence in vampires come from? Is it just Twilight? Daybreakers is as odd film because, while ultimately it didn't work for me, there is much to commend and admire in it and it attempts to bring something new to the vampire genre whilst simultaneously adhering to many of its conventions. It also attempts to remind us that vampires are meant to be scary and not, you know, mopey. Yeah all right I haven't seen Twilight so I shouldn't comment.
Daybreakers is set in 2019, ten years after the vampire plague has wiped out 95% of humanity. Of course this lack of humans means a lack of food for the vampires who, despite ruling the world, find themselves faced with their own extinction. In one of the nicest elements of the film, we discover that vampires who are deprived blood devolve into Subsiders, underground dwelling, bat-like monsters who, as the film opens, are growing in numbers and becoming more brazen about attacking the "civilised", suburban vampires in their own homes, so desperate are they for blood. The crisis has resulted in scientist Edward (Ethan Hawke) working to find a blood substitute for the company that seems to control the world's entire blood supply, run by creepy Sam Neill. One night Edward runs into a band of humans, one of the last, and discovers that they may have found a cure for vampirism. This sets him on a whole new path, working with the humans who are constantly on the run from the vampire military who hunt them down and farm them for their blood.
The best thing about Daybreakers is the world that the writer/director Spierig Brothers have created. There is a tremendous level of detail in the way that the vampires have organised their existence and the way they use technology to help themselves. Darkened windows with roof mounted cameras on the roofs of their cars to allow day time driving for example, mirror our own use of technology for our own ends in a nice way. The devil, as they say, is in the details and there are numerous small moments that work well to build a sense of reality to the world of the film, a spoonful of blood in the coffee for example, or an early shot where Ethan Hawke pulls up outside a building in his car and we see him reflected in the rear view mirror. It's the kind of shot we've seen in films a million times but, being a vampire, he has no reflection so all we see in the mirror is a suit with no head attached. This sense of the world feeds into what Daybreakers is ultimately about which is a commentary on and reflection of our own mismanagement of natural resources. For the most part this works quite well. The Subsiders in particular can be read in different ways and the way they gradually grow in numbers and encroach upon the suburbs (and the way they are ultimately dealt with) is an interesting notion of what people who are sufficiently desperate can become. Also noteworthy is the refreshing use of practical effects and sets with CGI used to enhance and augment rather than create from scratch. Even the monsterous subsiders appear to be guys in suits and, far from being a criticism, that works really well to give them presence and menace.
The problem however is that, having come up with this interesting parallel and use for the vampire legend, having thought through and then built this world, the Spierig Brothers don't really know what to do with it and the narrative ends up floundering. There are bits and pieces of different stories that don't really resonate or even go anywhere, Ethan Hawke's difficult relationship with his brother or in particular Sam Neill's estrangement with his still human daughter for example. The way Neill deals with her when they are reunited and what becomes of her should be one of the films key moments and emotional high points but, because she is introduced too late and because the way the two characters are reunited is massively coincidental, it fails to make an impact. Also, the various stories serve to jostle and fight for importance as well as for our attention rather than working together to serve the overall narrative and the effect of this is that they all end up failing.
Ethan Hawke is an actor I've never had great afinity for. Not terrible by any means, but just kind of missing... something, I don't know what. This actually works to his favour when he's a vampire but mid way through the second act he tries the new cure on himself and succeeds in making himself human again, though I was hard pressed to tell the difference. Way more problematic is the normally wonderful Willem Dafoe who hams it up as "Elvis", a crossbow wielding ex-vampire with an atrocious Southern accent who feels like he has wandered in from a different film. Indeed, there is a sense all the way through that the film isn't quite sure where to place itself. The success of its world building and its attempt to say something suggest a film of some intelligence. Willem Dafoe's performance and the clunky action scenes that pepper the film do not. By the time the predictably bloody finale arrives, you're way too bored to be bothered anymore.
In the end Daybreakers is a mixed bag. Part of me feels that a sequel could actually be a good thing because, having established such an immersive, convincing world, they could then use it to tell a really compelling story. As it is, characters of little interest wander through that world with very little to do.
5.5/10
Where has this resurgence in vampires come from? Is it just Twilight? Daybreakers is as odd film because, while ultimately it didn't work for me, there is much to commend and admire in it and it attempts to bring something new to the vampire genre whilst simultaneously adhering to many of its conventions. It also attempts to remind us that vampires are meant to be scary and not, you know, mopey. Yeah all right I haven't seen Twilight so I shouldn't comment.
Daybreakers is set in 2019, ten years after the vampire plague has wiped out 95% of humanity. Of course this lack of humans means a lack of food for the vampires who, despite ruling the world, find themselves faced with their own extinction. In one of the nicest elements of the film, we discover that vampires who are deprived blood devolve into Subsiders, underground dwelling, bat-like monsters who, as the film opens, are growing in numbers and becoming more brazen about attacking the "civilised", suburban vampires in their own homes, so desperate are they for blood. The crisis has resulted in scientist Edward (Ethan Hawke) working to find a blood substitute for the company that seems to control the world's entire blood supply, run by creepy Sam Neill. One night Edward runs into a band of humans, one of the last, and discovers that they may have found a cure for vampirism. This sets him on a whole new path, working with the humans who are constantly on the run from the vampire military who hunt them down and farm them for their blood.
The best thing about Daybreakers is the world that the writer/director Spierig Brothers have created. There is a tremendous level of detail in the way that the vampires have organised their existence and the way they use technology to help themselves. Darkened windows with roof mounted cameras on the roofs of their cars to allow day time driving for example, mirror our own use of technology for our own ends in a nice way. The devil, as they say, is in the details and there are numerous small moments that work well to build a sense of reality to the world of the film, a spoonful of blood in the coffee for example, or an early shot where Ethan Hawke pulls up outside a building in his car and we see him reflected in the rear view mirror. It's the kind of shot we've seen in films a million times but, being a vampire, he has no reflection so all we see in the mirror is a suit with no head attached. This sense of the world feeds into what Daybreakers is ultimately about which is a commentary on and reflection of our own mismanagement of natural resources. For the most part this works quite well. The Subsiders in particular can be read in different ways and the way they gradually grow in numbers and encroach upon the suburbs (and the way they are ultimately dealt with) is an interesting notion of what people who are sufficiently desperate can become. Also noteworthy is the refreshing use of practical effects and sets with CGI used to enhance and augment rather than create from scratch. Even the monsterous subsiders appear to be guys in suits and, far from being a criticism, that works really well to give them presence and menace.
The problem however is that, having come up with this interesting parallel and use for the vampire legend, having thought through and then built this world, the Spierig Brothers don't really know what to do with it and the narrative ends up floundering. There are bits and pieces of different stories that don't really resonate or even go anywhere, Ethan Hawke's difficult relationship with his brother or in particular Sam Neill's estrangement with his still human daughter for example. The way Neill deals with her when they are reunited and what becomes of her should be one of the films key moments and emotional high points but, because she is introduced too late and because the way the two characters are reunited is massively coincidental, it fails to make an impact. Also, the various stories serve to jostle and fight for importance as well as for our attention rather than working together to serve the overall narrative and the effect of this is that they all end up failing.
Ethan Hawke is an actor I've never had great afinity for. Not terrible by any means, but just kind of missing... something, I don't know what. This actually works to his favour when he's a vampire but mid way through the second act he tries the new cure on himself and succeeds in making himself human again, though I was hard pressed to tell the difference. Way more problematic is the normally wonderful Willem Dafoe who hams it up as "Elvis", a crossbow wielding ex-vampire with an atrocious Southern accent who feels like he has wandered in from a different film. Indeed, there is a sense all the way through that the film isn't quite sure where to place itself. The success of its world building and its attempt to say something suggest a film of some intelligence. Willem Dafoe's performance and the clunky action scenes that pepper the film do not. By the time the predictably bloody finale arrives, you're way too bored to be bothered anymore.
In the end Daybreakers is a mixed bag. Part of me feels that a sequel could actually be a good thing because, having established such an immersive, convincing world, they could then use it to tell a really compelling story. As it is, characters of little interest wander through that world with very little to do.
5.5/10
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
The Awesome & The Awful of 2009
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
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
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
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