Oblivion

Nothing to do with The Elder Scrolls, the film Oblivion is an epic post-apocalyptic sci-fi that it is no surprise was based on what was going to be a graphic novel by Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski. It has a whole lot of visual appeal, some decent performances and some great action sequences, but it was very much lacking in soul and had a twist that was far too obvious, telegraphed from very early on by tell-tale signs like ‘our memories were wiped’ and ‘in two weeks our mission will be over and we will rejoin the rest of humankind’, which set warning bells ringing after having seen the likes of Moon and Cloud Atlas and, indeed, having played Portal. And I must say, Moon did a lot more with the idea.

Tom Cruise’s character lives in a very clean, glassy futuristic apartment with his lover/coworker, maintaining drones to protect huge machines that are taking the water from Earth for a mass migration to Titan. Scrabbling on the surface and trying to capture him are the ‘scavs’, aliens who have lost the war that destroyed the moon and killed most of the human population. Everything changes, of course, when a beacon set up by the scavs brings down a ship with another survivor.

In the end there are many twists but also many plot holes. Why don’t the scavs just take their masks off when the drones aren’t around but Tom Cruise’s character is? How did the flight recorder found in the sleep capsule record things after the capsule was detached. And most pressingly, if Morgan Freeman saw the thousands he described pouring out, presumably all of whom were needed in active service, where are the rest at the end?

But the main problems are not plot holes – they’re really that between the exciting sequences are long stretches that get tedious – without really likeable characters to carry them forward, despite Tom Cruise’s remarkably youthful looks at half a century old. Too much is clinical and detached, including Morgan Freeman who until his last scenes is doing a totally unnecessary take on Morpheus from The Matrix – a clear influence here.

For some, the lush visuals, nice use of classic rock (Procul Harem!) and the impressive CG will carry the film. Others will find it tedious. But I really doubt any will get emotionally invested, or consider it a masterpiece. 

Iron Man 3

Tony Stark may have become ever more annoying in the Marvel comics, essentially being the antagonist of Civil War and providing most of the many low points of Avengers Vs X-Men, but as this last part of the trilogy shows, his films continue to be the best of all Marvel’s big-screen adaptations, and his anchoring presence in The Avengers make it much more palatable.

That film’s presence here is somewhat oddly incorporated in a series of anxiety attacks that actually make Stark much more vulnerable and sympathetic. The existence of aliens and gods hasn’t entirely transformed the Marvel Movie Universe, but it has certainly affected Stark, who can’t sleep and spends his time tinkering with new suits. Meanwhile, the terrorist threat of The Mandarin begins to put pressure on the American government and faces from Stark’s indifferent party-boy past begin to come back to haunt him.

The film manages to adapt from the Extremis storyline but makes its own distinct and complete statement. It does a lot in its run time, and paces it all excellently. You have the huge explosions and suits of armour flying about shooting things. You have thrilling rescues of people falling from thousands of feet. You have helicopters blowing up buildings and damsels in distress. But you also have Stark having to deal with mental illness, bonding with a random kid, regretting his past and having to deal with putting those he loves in danger. You have James Bond-style infiltration. You have brilliant comedy, including scenes with grunts that come from the Whedon school of humour yet do not jar like his similar lines do. You have an utterly brilliant way to use Sir Ben Kingsley and the Mandarin character that will no doubt have some comics purists gnashing their teeth but is brilliant for this film and the post-Bane superhero world, with the ever-current terrorists-sending-videos-and-making-threats paranoia of the States both used and subverted. And in a concession that just about manages not to be patronising, you get the damsel in distress solving everything. Everything you want from a blockbuster, and more.

The film wraps up a little too neatly, and though I was thankful that it didn’t just ignore the possibility of Stark using a miracle healing formula to deal with that shrapnel in his heart, the epilogue felt very artificial, especially as we all know there’ll be more from the Avengers yet and the film appends a very Transformers the Movie ‘Tony Stark will return’ anyway.

Guy Pearce does a brilliant turn as a man transformed over the course of 13 years, and both Jon Favreau (director of the first two films) and Gwynyth Paltrow doing a lot in limited screen time. And the naturalistic acting of Ty Simpkins, with all the ums and ahs and gabbled lines of a Downey Jr, will very possibly lead to a long and accomplished career. James Badge Dale puts in some gangster swagger, but he has an edge that makes him very compelling to watch. Of course, Stan Lee makes his appearance, and it’s one of the funniest yet, and they get Mark Ruffalo in for a silly stinger scene at the end.

I have to say, though, it does seem to me that this Christmassy film ought to have been released at Christmas. 

Evil Dead (2013)

1981 isn’t that long ago, but The Evil Dead is certainly dated. The remake may feel a little redundant, but it’s going to bring horror fans in and put bums on seats, that’s for sure. A bit of a cult classic, the original is perhaps better-remembered than it deserves, but I understood the motivation and the financing behind the reboot.

Unfortunately, with the quirky humour replaced by a po-faced refusal to acknowledge how the plot (ancient evil unleashed by affable young people in a secluded cabin thanks to vague evil magic in artefacts) has become cliché enough that it underpinned Cabin in the Woods, and the attempts to scare replaced by post-saw attempts to make you cringe with the visceral depictions of extremely painful acts, it mostly just felt dull. I’ve always found torture porn on the lame side, and if there’s no underlying psychological element, which here was at a bare minimum, it’s just not very interesting.

And the character types were not very likeable. I’m not going to like a drug addict, a jock, a geeky stoner guy, a firm female doctor-type and a token girlfriend unless they’re more than those archetypes, and none of them are. There was more of interest in the 2-minute prologue than in the entire remainder of the film, and the fact that when ancient evil is truly unleashed it gets only to the car park is truly anticlimactic. The only smile that the film raised was also the grim shaking-my-head sardonic one that came from realising deaths were coming in the least politically correct order possible.

Really, I couldn’t have expected much more than this. They couldn’t exactly throw out the entire plot. But I certainly expected to be much more entertained than I was. 

The Book of Mormon

(Not a film, but eh, I don't have a theatre blog)

Much of the buzz about The Book of Mormon is that it’s got a lot of buzz. You won’t get tickets without booking six months in advance. That’s part of the whole mythos it’s created. Well, I got lucky – a Facebook message from a schoolfriend saying a ticket was spare if anyone wanted it, so I waited all of two hours to get the hottest ticket in town.

And it was well worth the price of admission, and the genuine waiting time too – from beginning to end, it was incredibly enjoyable, and funny enough that I don’t want to do a plot summary in case any little detail of the brilliantly funny story is spoiled. Suffice to say it’s very much in the South Park vein, a few degrees away from the extreme crudeness and out-and-out surrealism of similarly-themed episodes, but also has its own strong identity and voice.

Throughout, much like Parker and Stone’s other musical ventures, there are gentle parodies of other musicals and musical styles. The hand of Avenue Q guy Martin Lopez is apparent too, and I felt like the momentary appearance of a big monster head was a nod backwards. Nothing is quite as good as the Les Miserables parody in Bigger, Longer and Uncut, and the general pastiches of rock musicals, showtunes et all work better than the direct derivatives of The Lion King and Annie, but the fact is that the writers are absolutely brilliant at making their songs funny – not counting sad refrains, every single musical number had at least one huge laugh, several of them being the very first line.

I paused to wonder in the interval why it is that I love the parody and pastiche here, but hate what Joss Whedon does and found it didn’t work in Eric Idle’s stage production Spamalot. After all, Parker and Stone are poking fun at musicals, and have a certain way of being able to stand above criticism by saying ‘Oh, it’s parody’. They can go over the top, have their actors overact and their songs lack taste because it’s comic exaggeration based on expectations, which rather makes hard criticism seem to miss the point. But the difference is, I think, affection. These imitations don’t sneer at what they poke fun at, they make an earnest and convincing attempt to recapture the same thing and do it right. They don’t sarcastically push camp and silly tropes away, but make use of them in a loving, amused way. That seems to be the distinction.

What The Book of Mormon emerges as is a warm tribute to a rather silly American institution, with odd-couple humour and Parker and Stone’s appealing skewering of naivety in the face of a world with problems that happy-clappy proselytisers seem to have no conception of – but they are strong with characters, too, and both the leading characters, while they go off on their own individual paths, end up likeable and deeply flawed. The Ugandans are not a politically correct representation of a people – of course not! – more a collection of others who have an innate noble-savage superiority to the clueless white kids who want to teach them about God, but they also get most of the best moments, especially a King & I-like moment towards the end, and I suspect ‘Hasadiga Eeboway’ will enter pop culture in some way or another. None of the characters are exactly detailed, realistic character studies – nor meant to be – and it works perfectly that way.

Analyse it however you like – the bottom line is that this is brilliantly funny stuff, and masterfully executed. Add in an ensemble that put anyone who’s ever been on X-Factor to shame, inventive costumes and sets and a very accomplished orchestra and you have…well, a show that deserves all the awards and attention it’s getting! 

Oz, the Great and Powerful

Whether Disney’s last foray into the world of Oz was a success or not is a bit of a tricky subject. Return to Oz was a bit of a flop, but has been rehabilitated by history somewhat, and now has a cult following for its creepiness and 80s aesthetic.

I doubt that Oz the Great and Powerful will get the same treatment, for while its reviews, too, are mixed, and while I enjoyed it, it was very simple and straightforward, and lacks the quirkiness of a cult classic.

But I would still call it a good, enjoyable film that does what it’s meant to do. In similar territory to Wicked, but much more canonical and much less subversive (ignoring the musical adaptation I haven’t seen), it serves as a prequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (and The Wizard of Oz). The wizard comes to Oz as an ordinary illusionist (and womaniser), is taken as a leader, at first is impotent and unable to stand up to the witches who largely rule Oz as he finds it – and who he stirs to transition from string-pullers in a largely benevolent realm to vicious tyrants – but with help from his close friends comes up with a plan to use spectacle and illusion to become the Wizard. Which is exactly what I hoped for an exactly what I got.

That said, I was a little worried for the first half. OZPINHEAD himself is hard to like, a scoundrel and a shameless breaker of hearts, and the way the plot is established is extremely lazy – it’s a prophecy that takes Oz from any random person to potential Wizard, and the one who sees him arrive just happens to be one of the most important people in the country, apparently out for a stroll alone in some random deserted area.

It really changes when Oz meets the little China Girl, a tiny girl made of porcelain who is a neat mixture of classic refinement and modern affection for forceful girls – and let us not forget this is a film no feminist test is going to find wanting, even if it’s the male who is at the centre, saving the day. Finding the little broken girl is a turning point for the character – he has to become responsible, and he has someone who believes in him. He has been sent on a frankly daft mission by the Wicked Witch of the East (in disguise, of course), who uses the opportunity to make a Wicked Witch of her sister – and if the transition from black and white standard-definition to widescreen (techni)colour wasn’t enough of a nod to the first film, the green skin, broom and sibling relationship here (none of which was in Baum) make it clear this is intended more as prequel to the famous film than the famous book.

Oz’s companions may be no Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion (all of whom are obliquely referred to in some way), but the China Girl, cowardly monkey and, indeed, Glinda all serve a purpose and offer comic relief. Everything is a little slow until the very end, but the payoff is most certainly worth it.

There’s perhaps not quite enough heart here, and it’s all a bit clinical and by-the-numbers. True quirkiness seldom makes it through Hollywood rewrites these days, so don’t expect it. But accepting it as a product of its time and enjoying it as something simple and accessible, it is certainly to be enjoyed.  

Cloud Atlas

Like so many films these days, released in the UK months and months after the US, it may be easy for an audience in this country to forget that Cloud Atlas was eligible for Oscars - and completely ignored by the Academy. That, along with extremely polarized reviews, will no doubt lead to this film being considered an ambitious but ultimately failed project, despite easily making back its mammoth budget and having some very prominent critics raving about it.

It most definitely split audiences, in a way that the book didn't split its readers, and while the cause of this is primarily structural and derived from expectations about how the cinema will tell stories, ultimately it boiled down to the problem that I found with Cloud Atlas and also Mitchell's Ghostwritten, but wasn't present in Number9Dream - the fact that there really isn't a nice substantial connection between these different stories, only echoes, and that isn't quite enough to satisfy. That said, the screen adaptation quite wisely steered clear of the book's tendency to play with reality by making you think that the characters in previous stories are fictional - here, at least, they are all real even if they later inspired a fictional biopic.

It's unsurprising, but the film ditches the symmetrical structure of the film to cut between the six stories repeatedly, losing linearity in favour of an overall progression, faster pace (in a very long film) and quicker start - it's not easy for readers to be confronted with several chapters of Melville pastiche, but book readers are likely to be more patient than cinemagoers. It's also quite the feast for the eyes when six different films in different styles are intercut, often very beautifully juxtaposed. Of course a lot more is lost in concession to a cinema audience - the nuances of language, references to Nietzsche and Nabokov, the shock of child rape, side-references to Mitchell's earlier books - but there is plenty gained too, from visual spectacle to a more visceral depiction of just how unpleasant Sonmi's story is.
And the main problem here is that the film is confusing, especially for non-book readers. Blockbusters are not meant to be confusing, and 'is there actually any real connection between these stories beyond birthmarks and cursory mentions of previous stories?' looms a bit too large for this to have been a success.

But as one who knew that would be the case, I enjoyed it immensely. Having the actors recur not only means they all get a stab at playing extremely against-type (Tom Hanks as thuggish Irish writer? Hugh Grant as brutal savage murderer in warpaint? Hugo Weaving not only as a mocking phantasm of the mind, an Agent Smith-type assassin and a callous slave-trader, but best of all as a very, very scary woman? Sign me up) but each of them also gets to balance their hammy minor roles with a more moving and heartfelt main part. This is a film any actor must have loved to be in, and even if some of the attempts to make someone of one race look like someone of another are a bit disastrous, the style shifts are endless fun and this can truly be said to have it all - period drama, sci-fi chase scenes with lots of explosions, savage tribes in the jungle, gentle comedy, tender love, high art, political commentary...the only slight miss-hit was not having the 70s section a bit more like the trashy pulp story it was supposed to be. The fact that the San Francisco scenes were shot in Scotland is a bit of a revelation!

I will concede that this isn't for everyone. If you worry you don't understand some greater unifying theme rather than just going 'Clearly there's no great intention to make bolder connections', you will probably get annoyed searching for it. But if you can love a film for its self-conscious artifice, you are to my mind getting this one right.

Django Unchained

Tarantino’s latest offering is, like Kill Bill, a pastiche, albeit a little less direct. This time, the melting pot contains three things: spaghetti Westerns, blaxploitation and Deep South plantation drama – which after all isn’t the Wild West. It is very much a wish fulfilment fantasy, drawing many comparisons with Inglorious Basterds for being a bit of bloody catharsis for the great ills of the history of White civilisation, championing one of America’s underdogs. It’s a long way from the cleverly disjointed, extremely character-focused, nuanced and snappy early Tarantino works that are what made him great, but those aren’t the sorts of films Tarantino makes any more. He makes sweeping epics with lots of self-conscious nods to filmmaking and bold stylistic statements that have fallen out of mainstream direction, and has a whole lot of fun with them. The result tends to be something that consciously can’t be called great, but is extremely entertaining to watch and contains unforgettable ideas, superb characters and performances and flashes of absolute brilliance.

Django is a slave given the opportunity to escape his cruel fate by the grace of a white man. Well, that’s how some critics are spinning things, but let’s be fair – this isn’t a story that could be told about the era without that level of facilitation. This white man is another outsider – a German immigrant, very possibly but by no means certainly a German Jew (who can after all be nationalistic and like the same things as Wagner did), who masquerades as a dentist but in actuality makes his living as a bounty hunter. He needs Django because Django can identify some marks for him. So good at it does Django prove himself that they partner up for a longer term, and the charismatic German is sufficiently moved by Django’s search for his wife (named after Brunnhilde) to offer to help him. Unfortunately, she is now the property of one of the most merciless slave-owners in the South.

Much of this works brilliantly. The dehumanized black man gets to rise up to kill the abusive slavers if they have a price on their heads – though one harrowing scene at a farm gives shades of moral grey. The good doctor’s way of doing things is very flamboyant, letting people think he is simply a deranged murderer before he reveals the truth. There’s also a brilliant comedic scene where a proto-Klan argue about the difficulty of seeing out of their white hoods. It’s all very comic book, even slapdash. There’s almost a wilful lack of attention to details and continuity – witness the amount of beer going up and down in the glasses, or bullets making a clinking sound as they land in snow. That doesn’t even seem to be the right year for the Civil War. But this is self-conscious filmmaking, constantly drawing attention to itself. Look at these faded stars, given the Tarantino treatment. Listen to this original Morricone composition, with all that spaghetti Western heritage. Yes, if I want to, I will just slap words on the screen for exposition, and have a 70s-style theme song.

It’s not a well-plotted piece, it makes a point of its unoriginality, and really it should have ended at its false end. If the intended message was that you can save a whole lot of bloodshed and misery if you swallow your pride and admit you’ve lost when you’ve lost, as the good doctor could not, that got a bit lost. As soon as Django killed the Australians who could have helped him (including a pot-bellied Tarantino doing a rather odd accent and drawing attention to himself, without a director to tell him to do it better), it became clear that this wasn’t about a good moral message and Django was no good guy: to get his way, he would slaughter everyone, including one defenceless woman who had done nothing but been born to the same mother as the bad guy and, I suppose, failed to totally overhaul the entire social order of her day, who he could easily have let go. The puddle of blood grows huge as Django’s revenge is completed, and while Tarantino is of course known for his violence, I missed the meaningful blood and suffering of Reservoir Dogs.

But for all it was imperfect, it was of course fun, as mediocre comic books are fun, and there were undeniably fantastic performances. Django himself will win no Oscars, but Christoph Waltz’s Doctor Schultz is in with a shot, and Samuel L. Jackson as an Uncle Ruckus type with a real sharp edge behind the scenes was fantastically-played. Much to praise, then, but not a whole lot to keep praising after the layers have been peeled back, very possibly in some horrific torture scene.

A question that persists: if the workers know it’s an act, and the massa knows it’s an act, who does Samuel L. Jackson’s character do the Uncle Tom performance for? Only guests? Isn’t that…really annoying and silly for those in the know?