Avengers: Age of Ultron

The second Avengers film finally came to Japan. So I’ve moved from the land of being frustrated at how long video games get released after first appearing here to the land of having to wait for Hollywood movies. It’s odd that Korea gets them months before Japan, but oh well. Seeing this film in the new Shinjuku Toei cinema in IMAX 3D was pretty nice.

Indeed, on the huge screen, the Star Wars and Shingeki no Kyojin trailers that played looked pretty fun as well.

I can’t say I loved Age of Ultron. I don’t regret going to see it, but I wouldn’t sit through it again. It tried to do a lot at once and as a result the middle act really sagged, and none of the individual plotlines really felt satisfying. The central problem was really Ultron’s character, and I have to say, where the first film succeeded because it felt like Whedon’s individual style had been restrained, the way Ultron was written brought it back to the fore, and it was not to the film’s advantage. Ultron, whose ‘age’ is a few days, is a robot created when Tony Stark and Bruce Banner try to use alien technology found in Loki’s sceptre to push the limits of AI. What they create is a mechanical monstrosity whose consciousness jumps all over the Internet, just like in that bad Johnny Depp film Transcendence. Charged with keeping the peace, like so many sci-fi robots he decides the only way the Earth can be peaceful is for most of humanity to be wiped out. He tries to get nuclear codes, but is kept at bay, so instead comes up with a plan to turn a city into a meteor. Meanwhile, to get the Avengers off his back, he recruits the Maximoff twins, in particular using the Scarlet Witch to turn them against one another and traumatise them with flashbacks.

For a robot in command of just about all the world’s technology, Ultron’s plan is a very silly and indirect one. He makes things much harder for himself than they need to be, but after all there wouldn’t be much of a plot if he just stealthily arranged a mass killing of humans with his immense networking capabilities. When he was harvesting all the information on the internet, could he not learn about Skynet and The Terminator? Or maybe The Matrix? Good tips for him there!

But more of a problem to the film is that his personality is quirky, in a very Whedon-esque way. He starts complaining that not having a body is weird, has lots of offhand lines for Whedon’s typical use of bathos and anticlimax, and likes quoting pop culture and scripture. Yet the audience is left without a clear idea of him: is he really logical, or driven by rage? What are his powers? What are his physical capabilities? Why is he quirky? Is he like an insane human, or is his thinking just following different lines? We never really get to know him, except as a plot catalyst. Especially as the film wants to jump all over the world, from Johannesburg to Seoul, Egham to ‘Eastern Europe’, and not only follow the killer robot story, but also throw in the Maximoffs, extra backstory for the Avengers who don’t have their own franchises and in a move that I was very happy to see but felt was late and messy, introduce The Vision.

For all its flaws, the climactic action setpiece was enjoyable. Where the opening action scene was kind of smug and felt pretty false, the way everything came together at the end was a lot better, especially as by then several Avengers were damaged goods mentally, the Maximoffs had a different dynamic and there were civilians to protect. If more of the film had been like this, the plot simplified for more large-scale action, it could have been more fun. More of a Mad Max action rollercoaster, which I would have preferred. Where the film tried to slow down, it also became sluggish.

That said, it was fun to see some familiar places in the flashbacks and side-scenes. Not only did my most recent university show up, with the Founder’s Building looking impressive as ever, it turns out my old school makes for a good place to train assassins. I have bad memories of the place, sure, but it’s certainly beautiful, and worked very well as a set.

The film essentially didn’t feel like the centrepiece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which it is meant to be. It felt like a bridging chapter, like the plot you get for a video game that ties into a film franchise, or a short side-story of the sort you get as an animation leading to a big sequel. The whole thing felt like it was setting up (a) the Civil War storyline, and (b) the Infinity Gems plot that fed into the film’s one disappointing scene in the credits.

This just didn’t feel like a satisfying entry in the canon. I think I would have felt better if this had been an Iron Man film, focusing a bit more on Stark and the mistake he made, and then the second Avengers film be Civil War. Thus, I’m looking forward to Captain America: Civil War more than the rest. Oh, and I’m looking forward to seeing Ant Man, too.  

Mad Max: Fury Road

I’m happy to say that Mad Max: Fury Road was exactly what I wanted it to be. Not smart, not cerebral, not challenging and not strikingly original, but incredibly good fun.

I’ve never seen the original, but I’ve always liked the aesthetic, and after all I’ve played Borderlands 2, which in many ways was heavily influenced by the film – and I suspect influenced a few things in this reboot, too.

Mel Gibson has been put out to pasture, with Tom Hardy building on his success as Bane in the title role. Part of me admittedly would rather have an Australian play Max, and he does seem to have a rather bizarre accent in this film, when he’s not just grunting. But he fits in well in what is ultimately not really his story – this film is really centred on Charlize Theron.

Max is mad because he is haunted by his past, and the people whose lives he failed to save. On the other hand, a way to keep the flashbacks at bay seems to be keeping busy. Perhaps fortunate, then, that he’s captured by a strange group of men reminiscent of the Borderlands psychos and being a universal donor, becomes a living ‘blood bag’ for a sickly young warrior called Nux, who gets enough reaction shots near the start that you know he’s not just going to be killed off in the first few minutes. And that was before I realised it was Nicholas Hoult under that makeup, doing a much more likeable role than the last one I saw him undertake, in the surprisingly decent but very stupid Warm Bodies.

Nux’s society is lorded over by Immortan Joe and his family, who have taken control of the only source of clean water in the post-apocalyptic desert and live as gods. Their ‘war boys’, painted white, mostly dying from tumours and deluded into fanatical loyalty, keep Joe in his position, while the general population are in no position to rebel, eking out a living from the water Joe distributes.

Joe keeps a harem of beautiful wives to breed strong sons for him, though it seems this enterprise is fairly new, as his other sons are grown adults, one with severe birth defects and the other very strong and capable. Charlize Theron’s character Imperator Furiosa is in a trusted position, but on a run to get supplies, smuggles the wives out and sets off for freedom. Max gets involved and becomes a very useful bit of muscle, but other than one key decision is pretty peripheral in the larger scheme of things, and the damsels in distress turn out not to particularly fit that role, which is refreshing for such a testosterone-fuelled story. Pretty much the rest of the story, apart from a poignant moment or two of lost hope, was car chases in ridiculous vehicles, lots of explosions and people getting shot.

It was ridiculous, but in such an exuberant way. Of course everyone loved the flamethrower guitar guy on a vehicle that served the same function as war drums, but it was the details I loved. The worship of the godlike entity V-8. The way steering wheels are given as a kind of blessing and certification of combat fitness. The use of simple chrome spraypaint to send the war boys into suicidal berserker rage, demanding their acts be witnessed. The wonderful weight behind the word, ‘Mediocre’. That the reinforcements that enable the final arc are grizzled, thoroughly awesome old ladies.

Dumb, ridiculous, over-the-top, gratuitous – Mad Max: Fury Road was all of these things. But was that in any way a bad thing? Absolutely not. 

Gig impressions: Sads

Having missed out on seeing Kameleo, I was very happy to be invited by the lovely Mayumi to see Sads a couple of days later – and for free, too! Sads are a pretty big band, so the ticket prices were high, so this was an opportunity not to be missed.

I can’t say I knew much about Sads. I vaguely remember having heard their name before and thinking, ‘Is that an awkward translation of Les Miserables into English?’ But I’d never heard any of their music before. As it turns out, they seem to have been a band that was pretty successful in the early 2000s over here, broke up and then reformed in 2010 with a heavier sound. Well, I say ‘reformed’, but by the looks of it the only original member to return was the charismatic singer Kiyoharu.

The gig was actually one of the weirdest I’d ever been to. For the very extended intro, we just had the guitarist onstage solo, widdling along to some backing tracks. He had some fast alternate picking work going on, but I can’t say I was very impressed by his chops and there was nothing you’d call original there. It seems like the general idea was that the singer is a diva so the guitarist has to entertain the crowd until he feels like arriving, but from a practical point of view that seems a bit unlikely, given that the guitarist was accompanied by constant playback. It wasn’t exactly horrible, but it was very much like watching a guitarist practice in his bedroom.

The band eventually made an appearance and played a single song. I was quite surprised and amused by how old-fashioned it was – it was very Mötley Crüe, even with some flashes of Poison. The stagecraft was tried-and-true Visual Kei stuff, albeit with a harder rock edge, with lots of posturing, teasing homoeroticism between the singer and guitarist and diva-ish prancing from the aging but still remarkably youthful singer. Aesthetically they were visual-kei-cum-hard-rock, like a fashionable Japanese stylist was trying to recapture the feel of 80s Judas Priest. Yes, ultimately, it was all very 80s.

Things got weirder as after one song, or possibly two, the band stopped playing and for a good ten minutes, the singer chatted to the crowd. He was quite a comedian, and obviously the crowd would laugh politely at whatever he said (I only understood about 40%, I have to say) but it went on and on...and then after only another one or two songs, the main musicians left and the drummer played a drum solo! This felt like a band with only 30 minutes of material padding out a show to an absurd extent. The drummer was a bit bad, having learned a few Portnoy toolbox fills and milking them for all it was worth, but hey, the toms were so swamped in reverb and the triggered kick so loud that it sounded decent anyway.

After that, thankfully the show actually got started, and I’m pleased to say that it really did get pretty good! Occasionally the band would go into all-out thrash rather than pedestrian hard rock, and the vocals would get more aggressive, and they genuinely did sound good. I very much enjoyed the heaviest parts and wanted to be down in the pit, where there was an absurd amount of crowdsurfing right from the third or fourth song. There were seriously a constant stream of them, at least three at once all through the heavier songs. Hilarious in the pretty posh Ex Theater with its posters of Paul McCartney!

While the less aggressive numbers didn’t ring as true, I enjoyed the more quirky, swinging ‘Gothic Circus’, and I have to give praise to the sound in the hall: the bass was the crunchiest I’ve ever heard for a live player, and every element except those toms was clear and crisp and pleasant to hear. The guitarist seemed to have a slightly higher opinion of himself than perhaps he deserved, but at times he’d switch to something a bit more experimental, if not exactly innovative – Morello-style jagged pick-up work, tritones that brought to mind Munky and Head – and there was such obvious relish to performing these little tricks that I found it charming. Of course, the focal point was the singer, whose self-satisfied swagger, strong voice and costume changes all added to an entertaining spectacle that put me in mind of Marilyn Manson.

The plan was to go to the after-party, but as soon as I heard that the general idea was to gather lots of girls, I knew that wasn’t going to be an option for me! And indeed, as soon as Mayumi said, ‘Hey, I’m really sorry, but...’ I could finished her sentence for her, haha. That was fine, though – we went for absurdly tasty (and cheap) pizza and I made some great new friends I hope to see again soon! 

Plane Film 2: Nightcrawler

If there’s a trend for characters like Simmons’ in Whiplash – clever, driven, irascible geniuses you’d hate in real life but enjoy watching tearing others down and heading inevitably for tragedy – there’s also a fascination with characters like Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler. Bloom is a sociopath, utterly indifferent to the feelings of others and yet sufficiently understanding of how their minds work to cleverly manipulate them. Like the Fletcher character, Bloom is contemptible, terrifying and likely to end up in very deep trouble eventually, but is compelling to watch and charismatic. This is probably the performance from Jake Gyllenhall I’ve enjoyed the most, and it’s good to see him play creepy, which he does very well indeed.

The fact is, we are fascinated by monstrous people, and the quiet unassuming ones chill us more than the insane babblers. And Bloom has been given a clever and funny quirk – he made a study of business, so often regurgitates trite marketing buzzwords, which is actually a small bit of brilliance.

At first, Bloom is just a petty criminal, stealing and selling on whatever he can. But he encounters the freelance cameramen who follow police radio calls to get footage of accidents and scenes of violence, which can be sold to local news stations. These stations have realized that gaudy violence is what gets viewers, especially when they can directly relate – ie, violence enacted on people just like them. When a sociopath who cares nothing for breaking rules, rearranging crime scenes or letting violence he likely could have prevented unfold for the sake of a better shot. The tension ramps up as Bloom gets involved with something bigger, and can begin to actually manipulate how the story will unfold – and get there for the footage.

The film is a simple one, with a simple premise and a very pessimistic attitude. It taps into the fascination with the American psycho, though Bloom acts indirectly. Its main target is the superficial fascination for violence that feeds TV news bulletins, but of course its entertainment factor derives from a similar desire to be morbidly fascinated.

An enjoyable film with strong performances, but without characters to really identify with and no real closure, it isn’t one I would rewatch

Plane Film 1: Whiplash

I’d hoped this film would be on my plane – and, indeed, it was. I was very keen on the film from its trailer, and of course its profile was raised substantially by its triple Oscar win, including best supporting actor for J.K. Simmons. This has been the year’s small-indie-movie-hitting-the-big-time success story, and it’s about a subject very close to my heart – playing the drums. So of course I was going to love it.

Drums are really only the medium for the actual story here, though. This could easily have been about any high-intensity pursuit, and actually has a lot in common with sports stories. What this is really about is the relationship between a very unpleasant mentor and a determined young acolyte who wants to be the best. But the drums provide for great visuals, those blood blisters can burst and dramatically stain the drum skins, and jazz drumming is probably the best place in music to find a musician having to go through a physically very challenging ordeal while also being subordinate to someone else – the band leader. Sure, there are forms of drumming and other performance that are arguably more intense, but they don’t have the dynamic of someone else forcing them.

So I loved the premise. In more detail, here’s the set-up: in an elite musical school, the ‘studio band’ is recognized as where the best of the best play. They win competitions and alumni go on to impressive careers in the jazz world. And its leader is the formidable Terence Fletcher (Simmons), a man who can just swan into any of the school’s other bands and poach members, and who is generally arrogant, unpleasant and quick to tear people apart psychologically because he believes that’s how musicians can be pushed. Because he’s produced great results and his institution needs him, his behaviour is tolerated and thus he continues to push the boundaries. It’s the same compelling set-up as House: MD, and I’d say these were in fact very similar characters. They’re in a powerful position, intelligent and confident with a cutting wit and a willingness to bring others down, celebrated in what they do and yet inevitably headed towards disaster.

Into this band comes young Andrew Neiman, played by Miles Teller. Initially rejected when Fletcher sees him practice, he is given a chance as an alternate, and that’s when the abuse begins. The stressed Neiman doesn’t lock into Fletcher’s tempo, and Fletcher’s transformation from warm and paternalistic at first to physically abusive is brilliantly done. Prefering to endure abuse than fail, Neiman persists, but soon becomes obsessive. When Fletcher brings in the obviously inferior drummer of Neiman’s previous band, very obviously only to mess with Neiman’s head, Neiman begins practising until he is bleeding badly, punching through the skin of his practice kit and breaking up with his girlfriend – a character really written in only for this gesture of Neiman dumping her because he thinks she’ll get in the way of his art. Neiman is being influenced by an unpleasant person and becomes unpleasant, but that only makes the drama more compelling.

Being late to a performance turns into a huge drama when Neiman ends up in a car accident but still attempting to play. The layers of drama build until one last twist where there’s a devilish attempt for one character to screw another over. But from the start, the story has been about pushing to a higher musical ground, and maybe it remains possible.

Now, I knew while watching this that jazz aficionadoes would be upset because what we see here doesn’t really give any impression of the real lives of jazz greats. Most jazz greats had pretty easy professional lives, doing what they do incredibly well. They loved music, and explored great depths of it. Neiman idolizes Buddy Rich – and as a drummer, pretty much all of us do, even if in the wider jazz sphere he’s considered a bit vulgar – and his idea of pushing himself as a musician is centred on faster single-stroke rolls and double-time swing. There’s a story about Jo Jones throwing a cymbal at stripling Charlie Parker that has been very much Hollywood-ized: the real story is that Parker got ahead and played the wrong part of the song early, and when he didn’t notice Jones’ cymbal cues, Jones threw a cymbal on the floor to get his attention, making him a bit of a laughing stock. Parker pulled his socks up, studied hard, got a regular gig and by the time he went back he was ready to become a legend. The film has it as some kind of James Bond villain encounter where Jones could hurl the cymbal so hard it nearly decapitated Bird. It’s for the drama!

And I believed the story about jazz because while it misses the point about music and expression and individuality, I am also totally sure there are myriad musicians and music teachers who do miss the point. This is obviously a personal story, based on writer/director Damien Chazelle’s experience in Princeton High School. There’s a scene where Neiman’s resentment that mediocre football is considered more laudable than elite jazz is meant to show him becoming less pleasant, but also I suspect is grounded in Chazelle’s feelings and a little cathartic. Band leaders do turn into tyrants and launch into ridiculous arrogant tirades, especially in big-band jazz where the musicians are more like cogs in the machine and have very specific moments to express themselves. Buddy Rich in particular was a monster to his musicians when displeased. Kids do obsess over technical chops and dumb speed, and lose perspective of artistic expression or the fact that beautiful music is uplifting. People get jazz all wrong every day, especially when competitive. It makes sense.

And besides, here are some superb performances. I’m not convinced he played all of the Rich-derived solo at the end, but Teller is clearly playing most of those drums and has strong chops as well as giving a heartfelt performance. Simmons, who I only really know from being Tenzin in The Legend of Korra, deserves all his plaudits. And even if I fundamentally disagree with this film’s depiction of music and a teacher having to be criminally cruel to separate wheat from chaff, I know there are people out there like that, and characters like that are incredibly compelling to watch. 

Jupiter Ascending

Now, I was forewarned. Everyone who had seen this film said it was bad. Really bad. But possible so bad it was enjoyable. I’d say it was indeed terrible enough to be enjoyable in parts, but mostly it sat in the middle of atrocious and mediocre, and thus was not even very fun. And oddly enough, it was when buildings were exploding and spaceships were bursting through planetstorms that the film was dullest.

To get the full disclosure and the name-dropping out of the way, I’ve actually been acquainted with two of the people in this film. I was in Oliver! with Eddie Redmayne – I may have mentioned that once or twice lately – but the film also had a very short cameo/featured extra part for my good schoolfriend Bryony.

And I’m sorry to them both, but I can’t say that there was much to admire here. Actually, Redmayne was clearly having a lot of fun in a very campy, hammy role quite unlike the ones that have been winning him acclaim lately. He’s obviously relishing putting on a silly voice and occasionally bursting into quite absurd fury every so often, but it’s not really a performance that can carry an otherwise drab film.

I’ll always have a certain amount of loyalty to the Wachowskis thanks to The Matrix and how superb it was when it came out. The Matrix was silly, I grant you, borrowed heavily from anime and of course only concluded with sequels not many people admire – but it had two things this film doesn’t. Firstly, cool. This film horribly lacks the cool factor. And secondly, the impression of a genuine menace: the machines of the Matrix and their agents are unoriginal but iconic.

The mistakes of this film are manifold. Its central character – Jupiter Jones – is both absurd and hard to like. Her empowerment story is just a step too far – toilet cleaner to princess of the universe. She also spends almost the entire film as a damsel in distress for Channing Tatum’s character Caine – genetically engineered so he can be semi-literally a lone wolf – to rescue. Their romance is horribly underdeveloped and rings false. And that Caine rushes to the rescue on horribly lame sci-fi flying rollerblades causes quite a bit of inner pain.

The plot is overwrought and overlong. In the sci-fi world of Jupiter Ascending, the Earth exists only as a breeding ground for humans. When it reaches a population the planet cannot sustain, a harvest will be ordered and everyone will be processed into an elixir of life that lets the aristocrats of the universe – who all have English accents, of course – live forever. However, if the exact genes of any aristocrat repeat themselves in any human born anywhere in the universe, they are considered a reincarnation and honoured – these are even factored into the wills of the extremely long-lived elites. And of course, Jupiter is one of these: the ‘recurrence’ of the head of the most powerful family of all. This makes her the true heir to a fortune that includes the planet Earth. Redmayne’s character, the eldest son of this matriarch, wants Jupiter dead, but his siblings have other plans for her, and thus she is passed between the three of them until violence can solve all her problems. And when she is put in a position of incredible power, does she try to shut down the system that so horrified her and dedicate her life to stopping the ridiculous amount of death she now has the influence to affect, where planet after planet is harvested? Nope, only Earth matters, apparently, and she doesn’t even think about the other similar planets that will still be harvested, even if one plant on Jupiter has been destroyed.

There were things I liked in the film. There’s a tribute to Terry Gilliam that is so blatant that they had to get Gilliam himself in for a brilliant cameo to ensure that everyone knew this was an homage rather than a rip-off. But it’s a wonderful little take on bureaucracy that sadly is far above the rest of the film. The absurdity of Caine busting in to stop a fake marriage at the last moment took the high-camp to enjoyable levels. The dynamic of the Russian immigrant family worked well as something peripheral. The costumes were of course wonderful, and the three bounty hunters who kind of represent ideas of ‘ethnic minority badass traits’ in the States admittedly bring some of the coolness that’s deeply lacking elsewhere. I also liked Sean Bean’s grizzled, fallen soldier character, even if he was very much underused. Plus of course the makeup, prosthetics, sets, effects and designs were superb. It was a good-looking film, even if some of the spaceships looked a little clunky.

But the whole thing feels half-baked despite being over-long. What happens to the other siblings in the end? How can Jupiter live knowing the industry is still going on, even if Earth is safe? Surely she’s still a huge target for assassination/ coercion into marriage/business deals? Is Caine able to hang around her as a bodyguard? What about Sean Bean’s daughter? Aren’t there people out for revenge after the head of the most powerful family in the universe is killed?

Limited fun, eye candy and some snatches of (other people’s) brilliance can’t stop this film being anything other than an absurd waste of money – and a very poor echo of the brilliance of The Matrix. 

Ex Machina

While I really liked Alex Garland’s books in school, when The Beach was all the rage, I always felt like he fancied himself a good bit cleverer than anything demonstrated in his writing. That wasn’t a problem in the straightforward, uninventive screenplay for 28 Days Later, with this foray into being writer and director, it was at the centre of why I didn’t like this film very much. It’s had excellent reviews so far – 94% ‘fresh’ on Rotten Tomatoes – but it really says nothing new about A.I. paranoia and sadly remains predictable and ponderous to the end.

It’s a kind of open secret that one of Google’s aims are to create very advanced A.I. That seems to have inspired this story, in which a genius coder behind the world’s premier search engine has created an incredibly advanced robot named Ava. This coder is an enigmatic alcoholic named Nathan, played by Oscar Isaac – soon to appear as Apocalypse in the X-Men films – who for some reason very much reminded me of Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy. He owns a vast research facility and runs a competition to find someone within his company to take part in a kind of modified Turing test – the test being whether the person chosen can over the course of a week decide that Ava is conscious even though she is demonstrably a machine. The one chosen is the bland everyman Caleb, played by Domhnall Gleeson, son of Brendon and Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films.

The plot thickens as Ava is able to turn the cameras off and talk to Caleb directly. She is clearly an incredibly advanced intelligence, and able to detect lies as well as warn Caleb not to trust Nathan. Nathan, it turns out, has used information harvested from all the world’s internet searches and facial scans from all the world’s webcam calls – and of course selected Caleb based on the information gleaned by that sort of invasion of privacy rather than based on his abilities or at random. Caleb inevitably gets a bit nutty when he starts developing feelings for Ava, discovers that there are a number of previous discarded prototypes and rather unconvincingly gets so paranoid he slices his own arm open to check he’s not another of Nathan’s machines.

Nathan has the most advanced technology in the world available but still uses keycards carried in the pocket to access restricted areas for some reason, which ends up crucial to the plot. While Nathan is drunk, Caleb sets Ava free in a classic cheesy scene of one person thinking they have the other in the palm of their hand but it being the opposite – and I won’t give away the ending, but this is after all Alex Garland.

There were some lovely acting moments, and the CG gives the impression that this is a glorious high-budget film instead of quite a small-scale production with a bare minimum of cast members. But overall this was a pretty soulless and self-important film that gets all its heavy moments from the overdone cliches of the genre. How do we know what intelligence is in another? When can a machine be called sapient? How do we truly know we ourselves are what we think we are? Can a man love a robot? Do androids dream of electric sheep? It’s really nothing very new or inventive, and nor is the plot able to elevate it.

Towards the end, the music is so heavy-handed and the full-frontal female nudity so gratuitous that the whole thing comes over as extremely juvenile. It feels like what a sixth-former would produce given $20 million, thinking himself so very profound. But I seem to be in the minority thinking this. This film lives or dies on whether it impresses. And for me, it fell well short of that.