Attack the Block (2011)

Urban city vs outer space

This British comic science-fiction thriller kicks off with an exciting opening scene. Young nurse, Sam (Jodie Whittaker), walking home alone along dark inner city streets, is menaced, then mugged by a gang of masked teenage "hoodies" from a big tower block, a crime interrupted by the nearby crash-landing of an extra-terrestrial. While investigating the crash, the gang leader, Moses, is attacked and slightly injured, and in the resulting hubbub, the nurse escapes. After triumphing over the extra-terrestrial, the gang return to their tower block, little realising that this is only the beginning of their troubles.

The tower block scenario is very well chosen: as civilian combatants in an alien invasion story, members of an inner city teenage gang are hard to better. They will already be battle-ready and will be able to lay their hands on weapons of some kind. They will also be used to handling challenges themselves, rather than calling on police and other officials. The rationale behind the invasion is very well thought out and credible, and the way informed exposition is brought in is clever. The script is admirably lean, with a running time of only 84 minutes.

The character arc for the main protagonist, Moses (John Boyega), is great. The nurse, Sam (Jodie Whittaker), functions in part as an avatar for the audience's developing point of view of these teenage gangsters.

Fast-paced, funny, quite frightening, this film succeeds as a window into the world of teenage gangs, and as a comic science-fiction action thriller.

---

• Director: Joe Cornish
• Writer: Joe Cornish
• Starring: John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard, Luke Treadaway, Jumayn Hunter, Nick Frost, Danielle Vitalis, Paige Meade, Michael Ajao

---

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 6 Oct 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

Monkey Business (1952)

The quest for the recaptured vigour of youth, that holy grail for the middle-aged and elderly, is at the heart of this wonderfully fun light-hearted comedy that showcases the brilliance of Cary Grant's comedic skills, and reveals that Ginger Rogers too was not only nimble on her pins, but also a very gifted comedienne.

Grant's character, Dr Barnaby Fulton, a chemist, works at a laboratory where they are trying to develop an anti-ageing, vigour-restoring product, a kind of whole-body viagra-type drug. Grant's aged, overweight boss, Mr Oliver Oxley (Charles Coburn), seems to have a personal stake in the speedy resolution of this product, connected to the person of his private secretary, Miss Lois Laurel (Marilyn Monroe), whose considerable personal charms outweigh her lack of secretarial skills.

But Barnaby's research has hit a roadblock. As the story begins, his mental preoccupation with "the formula" is showcased with some nice absent-minded professor style business, that also allows his relationship with wife Edwina (Rogers) to be shown as very solid and loving, with she being very understanding. It also allows Hank Entwhistle (Hugh Marlowe) the family friend and old flame of Rogers' youth to make his appearance.

The next day, in the lab, there is some excitement as it seems one of the experimental subjects, an elderly chimpanzee, is exhibiting extremely uncharacteristic youthful behaviour, and Mr Oxley, with Miss Laurel in tow, gets quite excited, till it is revealed to be a false alarm. Barnaby goes back to the drawing board, re-mixing his formula, but a young chimp, who has been observing him, concocts its own formula, to taste, and pours it into the water cooler stand, where it becomes mixed with the only drinking water available in the laboratory.

So begins a series of joyously comic set pieces where first Barnaby, then wife Edwina, then Barnaby and Edwina together, drink increasingly greater amounts of the formula, washing it down with water from the cooler, and mistakenly ascribing the effects to Barnaby's formula. In each case, it is an excuse for the actors to indulge in progressively more juvenile behaviour, much to the delight of the audience. Grant and Rogers are both fit and agile, and are impressively up to the physical demands of their roles, where they have to act and speak as much younger people. One imagines that the actors must have really had fun playing these parts, and the transformations are a joy to watch.

The conceipt of this 1952 film, with adults acting as children, is reminiscent of Dennis Potter's horrific comic psycho-drama "Blue Remembered Hills" (1979, part of BBC TV's "Play for Today" series), where adults play themselves as children, and sometimes the children they are playing choose to play at being adults, resulting in multiple levels of interpretation.

Never work with children or animals, film-makers are told, but Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers worked with both here, and emerged unscathed. Grant has such a great way of looking nonplussed and exhibiting his mental processes in physicality, and acting the character straight, not tongue in cheek.

Saw this film on 12 May and again on 3 August, with equal pleasure. My hesitation about awarding the film a very high mark is that it is lightweight in theme. On the other hand, it is perfectly executed.

References

• Wikipedia: Blue Remembered Hills

---

• Director: Howard Hawks
• Writers: Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, I.A.L. Diamond
• Starring: Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn, Hugh Marlowe, George Winslow

---

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 21 May 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Evolution Becomes Revolution

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a very well-realised and thrilling prequel to the stories of the well-known "Planet of the Apes" science fiction film series of the late 1960s / early 70s, featuring a compelling performance by the lead actor (Andy Serkis), through the magic of "motion-capture" digital replacement technology, as Caesar, a chimpanzee with increased intelligence.

Any film presents its makers with a number of challenges, most commonly, to develop a compelling story peopled with interesting credible characters played by actors of talent and skill. In this prequel to the first film in the original series, Planet of the Apes (1968), the filmmakers had a number of special challenges. One was to come up with a credible scenario laying the groundwork for the tale of a lost astronaut, George Taylor (Charlton Heston), who discovers an upside-down world dominated by intelligent, talking apes, where humanoids exist as low status low intelligence non-speaking animals. Another challenge was to find a suitable alternative to the hairy costumes, clumsy facial prosthetics, and stooped postures of the human actors playing the apes in the original series of films, which at the time were good enough to garner an honorary Oscar for special make-up, but which to modern eyes, used to hyper-realistic computer-generated effects, would be hopelessly inadequate at suspending disbelief. [On the issue of make-up, despite the ground-breaking portrayals of apemen by talented mime actors in Stanley Kubrik's superior "2001: A Space Odyssey", released the same year, their achievement got no Oscar nomination for make-up, possibly because, as writer Arthur C Clarke speculated, the Academy members didn't realise the performers were not real apes.] A final challenge was to develop a wider theme, subtext or moral, without which any story is only an locally significant event.

The first challenge is well met, with a scenario involving the use of apes as experimental subjects in a search for a cure for Alzheimer's disease, a brain disease that progressively strips away the memories and thinking abilities of its victims. Dr Will Rodman (James Franco), is a scientist at a commercial medical research laboratory in San Francisco, California, trialling a genetic therapy to cure Alzheimer's, delivered by modified viruses, with a personal interest in the results, as his father, Charles (John Lithgow), under nursing care at home, is in an advanced stage of the disease. When one of the test subjects, a female chimpanzee, apparently suffers violent side-effects from the treatment, Will's boss, Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) stops funding for that research line and orders all the test subjects destroyed. Will and his assistant, Franklin (Tyler Labine), cannot bring themselves to kill a baby chimpanzee, delivered covertly by the primary test subject. Will makes the fateful decision to rear the cute little infant in secret at home, despite warnings from his girlfriend, veterinarian Caroline (Freida Pinto), that after they grow up, chimpanzees are too dangerous to keep as pets.

The second challenge, of finding a way to portray the apes, is also very well met, using "motion capture" ("mo-cap") technology, where actors, wearing special suits and facial makeup, act the parts as normal, and then are digitally replaced by artificial substitutes, in this case, apes. Andy Serkis, notable for his performances as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings series (2001-2003) and King Kong in the Peter Jackson remake (2005), plays Caesar, the chimpanzee Will takes home from the lab, both as a child and as an adult. This is in fact the lead role of the film and brilliantly played in an Oscar nomination-worthy performance (giving the Academy an opportunity to redeem itself for (controversially) previously omitting Serkis from acting nominations because of the total replacement of his body by a computer-generated animated character). To be honest, for the first half hour or so, I was not entirely convinced by the digital rendering of the apes shown, but subsequently, as I got to know the characters, either the computer graphics got better or I grew more accepting, because I lost that feeling and became totally caught up in the stories of the apes. The issue I think is primarily with regard to the rendering of faces. Our critical faculties are so strongly developed that the tiniest deviation from absolute authenticity in the rendering of a face is punished by causing our minds to "jump the shark". Apes are not human, but ape faces, particularly chimpanzee faces, are complex enough or human-like enough to betray slight inaccuracies or infidelities. James Cameron's Avatar (2009) did a little better, I think, in its portrayal of human-like faces, fooling my brain from the very first meeting with the Na'vi aliens. In any case, this "mo-cap" technology is astounding in potential. It looks like, in the near future, filmmakers will have sufficient resources to create computer-generated human beings that are absolutely indistinguishable from real human beings, though whether that will be a good or bad thing is another question. Will we see digitally cloned James Deans and Marilyn Monroes in multi-film franchised sequels, e.g. Rebel Without A Cause or Some Like It Hot, part 2?

The final challenge for the filmmakers was one of theme, subtext, moral. The original Planet of the Apes had a strong racial metaphor, reflecting conflicts within American society between different ethnic groups. It also had the concept of reversing roles between humans and (some) animals, showing people in cages, so allowing the audience to consider animal welfare from the point of view of the animals. Ape society was largely indifferent to human rights, and the "good apes" were two research scientists, who were especially kind and considerate towards humans. Science and scientists are the allies of the human protagonist, against the formalised ethnic stratifications, and the fossilised faith systems, of ape society.

In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the moral is the more familiar trope of the dangers of science, the Frankenstein theme: science is a powerful but dangerous tool. Typically, scientists, attempting to improve our world by conquering death or extending life, accidentally create the conditions to unleash a disaster or produce life-threatening monsters. Terry Gilliam explored similar animal rights / medical research themes in "Twelve Monkeys" (1995) and Splice (2007) has scientists secretly raising an experimental subject at home.

On reflection, I would say that the true underlying genre of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is that of the prison movie, though of course in this case the prison inmates are not people but apes. As in any prison movie, we see how and why our central character, Caesar, came to be imprisoned. Though a gifted individual with a loving family, he is an orphan from a very different ethnic background, and as he grew older, his home life became more troubled, and there were quarrels with the neighbours and episodes of rage and violent behaviour. During the incarceration phase of the movie, the audience's feelings of identification with the central character may be increased by injustice, such as sub-standard accommodation or food, maltreatment by authority figures, and difficulties with other inmates, including the issues of social hierarchy (pecking order) and cliques (gangs). If he is lucky, there will be a special supportive friend and visits by close family. Much free time is spent remembering past idylls, and holding on in expectation of future release from incarceration, though if that dream is dashed, other avenues may need to be explored. Milos Forman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" (1975), for instance, has quite a similar story arc.

Amendments:

Changed the phrase 'the heroes were two research scientists' to 'the "good apes" were two research scientists'.

References

• Wikipedia: Planet of the Apes (1968 film)
• Wikipedia: 2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
• Wikipedia: Andy Serkis
• Wikipedia: Avatar (2009 film)
• Wikipedia: 12 Monkeys
• Wikipedia: Splice (film)
• Wikipedia: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film)

---

• Director: Rupert Wyatt
• Writers: Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver (premise from La planète des singes by Pierre Boulle)
• Starring: Andy Serkis, James Franco, John Lithgow, Freida Pinto, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, David Oyelowo, Tyler Labine, David Hewlett, Jamie Harris

---

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 18 Aug 2011
• Where seen: Cinema
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

A fascinating adventure into the unknown!

There is a simplicity and rigour to this story, from the novel by the great Richard Matheson, that makes it a classic of "What if?" science fiction, in this case, what if you found out your body was shrinking, that you were getting progressively smaller?

The script is very tight, swiftly introducing the young businessman at the centre of the tale, Scott Carey (Grant Williams) and his wife, Louise (April Kent), sunning themselves on the deck of a borrowed motorboat, apparently without a care in the world. No sooner does Louise go below decks than a strange metallic cloud envelopes Scott, at the time to no apparent ill effect. Later, however, Scott begins to physically shrink in size, maintaining all his relative proportions, but getting smaller.

The scripting for this is very nicely done, as the principals struggle with the symptoms of the phenomenon. At first, everyone tries to find natural explanations: Scott blames his clothes, Louise focusses on his reduced appetite, and their doctor suggests that previous records were wrong or that it's just an extreme case of the height reduction we all experience over the course of our day, as gravity compresses our vertebrae. When the change becomes so significant that acceptance becomes unavoidable, the medical experts are brought in and a battery of tests done, trying to find an explanation, and a cure.

Along the way, most of the key questions that come to mind in such a scenario are touched upon, if not always resolved. As a man got progressively smaller, would he be able do his job, and even if he could, would he be allowed to keep it? Without a job, how could he pay his bills? As he got smaller and smaller, what would he do for clothes? Would he be able to maintain independence in a world full of devices designed for full-sized people? Speaking of large people, what kind of relations would he be able to maintain with his normally-sized wife? Would he perhaps fit in better with the kind of people who never grew tall?

For a film made over half a century ago, the special effects are really pretty good. As Scott gets smaller, his size becomes determined relative to his surroundings. It's amazing how something as simple as using oversized furniture and household objects can provide sufficient visual cues. Likewise, his hold on existence becomes more precarious, and the dangers inherent in his surroundings become more apparent. Increasingly, his world becomes a battlefield, with disasters that to people of normal size are nothing more than minor nuisances, but to him are dangerous puzzles to solve, and life-or-death challenges to overcome, including duels to the death with ferocious household pests. My wife, who suffers from arachnophobia, had to leave the room during the final reel.

The two special effect giveaways are the rather obvious back projection during the duels with animals, and, despite good tonal matching, the tell-tale lack of a shadow for Scott.

The theme, like that of "I Am Legend", Richard Matheson's 1954 novel of the last man on Earth battling alone against a world of zombies, is essentially one of alienation and loneliness, with Scott being removed progressively from normal human interaction, involving loss of relations with professional colleagues, loss of relations with all normal-sized people, loss of status as a civilised human being resulting through a series of accidents in him being thrown back into a primeval life-or-death survival mode, like a miniature caveman beset by privations, natural disasters and monstrous predators. Even with a group of social outsiders like circus midgets, he can find no lasting refuge. The story can be seen as a parable of alienation. The novel, according to Wikipedia, investigates his relations with other people with a much harsher, less forgiving view of society.

The performances are fine. In the title role, Williams is well up to the physical exertions of the part. He could be said to lack the charisma of a more major actor, but in a way his very anonymity helps to increase the credibility of the performance. The supporting actors are good. But all in all, the story and the script are the most important elements, and they are top notch.

---

• Director: Jack Arnold
• Writers: Richard Matheson, Richard Alan Simmons, based on the novel by Richard Matheson
• Starring: Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, Paul Langton, Billy Curtis

---

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 30 July 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, Formatted using TextWrangler, posted from my MacBook Pro

The best science fiction movie...

Over on the Linkedin website, in the Movie Addicts discussion group, Michael Gericke posed the question "Science Fiction - What's the best movie?" Although it's not a movie commentary as such, I'd like to re-post my answer here, somewhat amended.

As the notion of "best" here is clearly subjective, it's not really possible to arrive at a definitive answer. That given, my vote would go to Stanley Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), probably the most far-reaching SF movie ever in ambition of ideas and brilliance of technique, though its intellectual "coldness" may put many people off.

My second vote would probably go to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) which was hugely influential and which I can watch again and again. As well as the brilliant scenes where replicant androids are tested for emotional responsiveness, I especially love the scene where Deckard, using speech navigation on his home computer, finds a crucial clue in a photo, zooming in beyond all belief.

Here are some other contenders, organised by topic:

• Best noir-inflected: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville;
• Best robots/androids: Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running, Paul Verhoeven's Robocop, John Cameron's The Terminator / T2, and again Ridley Scott's Blade Runner; Brad Bird's The Iron Giant;
• Best aliens: Robert Wise's The Day The Earth Stood Still, Nicholas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth, Ridley Scott's Alien, Steven Spielberg's E.T,, Close Encounters of the Third Kind;
• Best action-packed: Andy & Larry Wachowski's The Matrix, James Cameron's Aliens and The Terminator / T2, John McTiernan's Predator, Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall, John Carpenter's The Thing;
• Best social satire: Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Stanley Kubrik's A Clockwork Orange;
• Best paranoia: Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris
• Best humour: John Carpenter's Dark Star, Stanley Kubrik's Dr Strangelove;
• Best special effects (at the time): Jack Arnold's The Incredible Shrinking Man, Stanley Kubrik's 2001, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park; James Cameron's Avatar

N.B. I referred to an excellent book: The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies, John Scalzi (2005)

Source Code (2011)

Make Every Second Count.

Source Code is an intelligent suspenseful science fiction thriller with a clever script and excellent performances.

The premise of the story, like an updated version of Groundhog Day (1993) for the attention deficit generation, repeatedly casts the central protagonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) back into a single 8-minute period of time on a speeding train. Groundhog Day's weatherman Phil Connors' comparatively leisurely 24 hours are compressed into the high pressure intensity of Gyllenhaal's character's situation, and the minor misadventures and personal tragedies punctuating small town life in Punxutawney are upgraded to kick-ass action sequences and life-threatening explosions.

Like Gyllenhaal's character, the audience is thrown right from the very start of the film into a very confusing situation, and a large part of the fun for the audience is working out, in parallel with him, why he is there and what the heck is going on. Like Groundhog Day, more fun is then had exploring the parameters of the situation, introducing permutations, and learning how to "game" or otherwise exploit the situation.

Without dropping any specific plot spoilers, and without getting into questions of strict scientific legitimacy, I can say that for me the story develops and concludes very satisfyingly. Geeky types like me, familiar with the standard tropes of time travel fiction, will probably see a key plot revelation coming quite a long way off, but the difficulty of avoiding a degree of predictability is a problem common to all popular genres and not a major criticism.

If there is anything that doesn't work so well for me, it is a recurring story thread of a person Gyllenhaal's character needs to contact. Somehow, this seemed tacked on, not intrinsic but as if it was intended to manipulate the audience's sympathies.

As for the performances, the film stands or falls primarily on the performance of Jake Gyllenhaal, and he carries the role with ease, combining a character of intelligence and sensitivity with a believable potential for physical action and even violence. Vera Farmiga also impresses as Goodwin, ably intimating her character's internal conflict between personal empathy and strict by-the-book professional competence. Within a narrow range of rather repetitive dialogue, as Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson pointed out in their review, Michelle Monaghan keeps her performance fresh and apparently spontaneous.

I don't mean to make too much of the similarities with Groundhog Day, as this is quite a different film, in a way more similar to Tony Scott's fun but somewhat less compelling Deja Vu (2006). Beyond the confines of the story itself, looking at the character arc, and even the morals of the stories, one has to say that Groundhog Day has far more to give and far more to say than either Source Code or Deja Vu.

Groundhog Day stands the test of repeated viewings, remaining delightful. If Source Code can achieve that, it will have done very well.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 17 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Cinema
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• Filmspotting #342

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendment: Added ranking image.

Groundhog Day (1993)

He's having the worst day of his life... over and over...

This is a wonderfully entertaining romantic comedy in which a clever fantasy premise is exploited to the full by a really sharp script, supported by exemplary performances, and underpinned by a subtext of real substance.

The film poses the question, "What would you do if you got stuck in a time loop, and were condemned to relive the same day, over and over again?" Would it be a curse or a blessing? Scriptwriters Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis take obnoxiously jaded TV weather reporter, Phil Connors (Bill Murray), with accompanying producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman, Larry (Chris Elliott), and drop him into small-town hell. For Phil's fourth year running, he is being sent to report from the otherwise unremarkable town of Punxutawney, Pennsylvania, on the February 2nd tradition of using a burrowing animal, the eponymous groundhog, a sort of over-grown hamster, to predict the weather, and the accompanying goofily energetic celebrations that grip the townspeople.

February 2nd, our first day in Punxutawney introduces us, at least tangentially, to most of the characters and locations that we will be revisiting in the rest of the film. Phil, painted as a cynical pessimist, a "glass is half empty" kind of guy, dismisses the enthusiastic Rita as "fun, but not my kind of fun", cold shoulders the rather nerdy Larry, and sneers at the small town antics of the townspeople and their ignorance of more fashionable ways of life in the metropolis. Forget about being able to get an espresso or cappuccino, they don't even know how to spell the words!

The following morning, Phil is subjected to a second performance of the previous day, but finds that he is the only person aware that the day is repeating, in a kind of nightmarishly extended deja vu. As he continues to wake up, at 6.00 a.m. morning after morning, on the same day, February 2nd, he goes through the full gamut of responses to the situation, ranging from scepticism, confusion and disbelief to panic, stoicism and darkest despair, all to no avail. Although he can behave as a free agent, no matter what he does, he can't escape this loop in time.

Quickly figuring out the parameters of the situation, Phil realises that when time loops, effectively, there are no social consequences, no retribution for selfish, immoral or illegal actions, and he begins to "game" the system. This aspect of the film is highly entertaining, as day-by-day, Phil cynically accumulates knowledge in order to exploit other people and gain material things and experiences, and various scenarios mutate and extrapolate in different ways, some of them laugh out loud funny. It is only when he realises and tries to win his heart's desire that his system breaks down, and things get very interesting.

The cinematography is not flashy, but in some scenes the visuals and audio are used in quite sophisticated ways to subliminally enhance the emotional impact, with the filmmakers subtly distorting spacial dimensions and/or soundscapes. For example, to create an eerie "deja vu" effect when Phil returns to Gobblers Knob, the little park with the bandstand, the music is slightly distorted with a chilling echo effect. Later too, when in extreme close-up the clock numerals on Phil's hotel alarm clock change from 05.59 to 06.00 a.m., the audio effect is amplified, heightening the dreadful inevitability Phil feels. And apparently the dimensions of Phil's hotel room were changed to increase feelings of claustrophobia and alienation.

Speaking of alienation, Brian Aldiss, one of the later breed of science fiction writers mining inner space (people's psyches) rather than outer space, successfully created an objective rationale for alienation in the short story "Man In His Time" (1965). The idea in this story is that planets have their own time zones and that planet-hopping astronauts may return to us physically but remain separated from us temporally, even, in the case of the protagonist of this story, finding himself experiencing everything an awkward three minutes ahead of his wife and colleagues. Likewise, Groundhog Day is an elegantly realised externalisation of inner space through a time-travel or alternate dimension paradigm, encapsulating the whole breadth of human emotion and attitude to life. For all that it is a comedy, at its centre, I would say Groundhog Day is a story about human depression and despair and our responses to that human predicament. The title has entered the vernacular as short-hand for a tedious repetitive (working) experience.

Turning to the performances, Bill Murray puts in a great performance, typically minimal, and credible across a wide range of character traits, from warm-hearted and loving to coolly obnoxious to clinically depressed. I hadn't given Andie MacDowell much credit, but on second thoughts, she is an excellent foil for Murray, and functions as the story's moral and emotional compass, guiding the audience via her reactions to Phil. As Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson said about Michelle Monaghan's performance in Duncan Jones's similarly themed Source Code (2011), MacDowell is able to overcome the inherent difficulties in a role with a lot of repetition, keeping her performance feeling fresh and spontaneous.

It is not only the leads who give good performances. A host of actors with small roles provide outstanding supporting performances. Stephen Tobolowsky is gorgeously obnoxious as the insurance salesman and Marita Geraghty is stunningly ditzy. Given only the verbal equivalent of post-it notes, Angela Paton, Brenda Pickleman, Robin Duke and Rick Overton, to name but a few, are all brilliantly effective in making their points.

Exceptional films like this remind us that, like good dramas, good comedies turn out to be about something substantial. I tell my students that we can derive two morals from this film: 1) It's up to you what you make of your time (your day) on earth, so spend your time wisely; 2) If you want to win a person's love, you need to make yourself loveable.

Postscript (30.05.11): I've been reading "How to Read a Film" by James Monaco, and this has reminded me of the filmic writing of Alain Robbe-Grillet. It occurs to me now that the literary equivalent of Groundhog Day is Robbe-Grillet's novel "Jealousy" (1957), in which the same scenes are revisited again and again, with new twists and false trails and dead ends and backtracks and insights, in the mind of a man suspicious that his wife may be having an affair.

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 14 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• Filmspotting #342

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Corrected "Quickly figuring out the parameters of situation" to "Quickly figuring out the parameters of the situation". Added ranking image.

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

There's one in all of us.

Where the Wild Things Are is rather like a live action version of Pixar's Monsters Inc (directed by Pete Docter, 2001), with some insightful dramatic parts, some laugh out loud fun and funny parts, but also some parts that are quite dark in tone and rather scary for under 10s.

When the film came out I remember there was some doubt as to whether the presumed target audience (kids) would take to it. Checking Wikipedia, they have a quote from the director that 'his goal was "to make a movie about childhood" rather than to create a children's movie.' In a home viewing context, with most of the cast running around in big "silly" animatronic monster suits, I thought it would be touch and go as to whether my 10-year old son would suspend his disbelief, but he watched till the end, laughed quite a lot at times, said he enjoyed it and would give the film 4.5 out of 5 stars.

The initial setup introducing the 8-year old boy, Max (Max Records), is very insightful, showing things from his point of view, exploring how lonely life can be in the winter holidays for a kid in a modern single-parent family, with no friends evident nearby, no siblings to spend time with, and a mother busy with work or boyfriend. Max Records is very convincing as a normally imaginative boy pretty much left to his own devices, who sometimes puts on his wolf costume and goes a little wild and crazy, like jumping on the kitchen counter and howling. In the heat of the moment, he goes further than that here, does something that causes him to need to escape the home environment, to flee to the country of the Wild Things.

The way Max travels to the country of the Wild Things is different than in the book, where the voyage is clearly and artistically psychological in nature, but it still works pretty well. A key question is how the filmmakers are going to tackle the monsters themselves. At first glance, seeing the direction they'd taken, using costumes with big heads, and animatronic expressions, like the Jim Henson creatures, the casual viewer might well be apprehensive, but as the story progresses, the monsters turn out to work very well, in large part due to the strength of the storyline, and the strength of the characterisation. So that by the end, the fate of the Wild Things is quite moving, and by the very end of the film, it had even got a little dusty in there.

In the book, which is very short, whatever else they may be, the monsters are an expression of Max's psyche, an outlet for the wild, wicked side of his character. In this film version, the monsters are that too, but from the very outset, they clearly have lives of their own that apparently exist independently of Max. To my mind, the monsters go beyond representing Max's wild imaginings, and are in a way more his imagining of the sort of virtual extended social network, extended family or group of friends that he might appreciate. The group of monsters that Max happens upon reminded me most of a small commune of aged hippies or community of artists, who have their own long-standing issues, especially relationship issues.

Because one thing that Max seems to be missing, that could help during times like these when he's burnt up or used up relations with his closest relatives, his mother and sister, is a deficit or lack that Kurt Vonnegut highlighted in his book Slapstick! or Lonesome No More (1976), and that is extended family (and friends and neighbours). Many of us in the west, perhaps especially in the USA, live in small tight family groups, nuclear families. And that's just not enough, Vonnegut points out, for animals who until recently evolved in tribal societies with lots of adults to pick up the slack when nuclear relations go sour or when those people need a break.

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 16 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

It Came from Outer Space (1953)

From Ray Bradbury's great science fiction story!

Based on a story by the great lyrical SF writer, Ray Bradbury, this low budget but interesting aliens-on-Earth thriller is dated, but at only 81 minutes well worth a viewing for SF fans, and could work well in a double bill with Don Siegel's superior The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). And like Body Snatchers, often viewed as a reflection of contemporary Cold War paranoia, this film could be seen as an expression of Americans' fear of the Red Menace, the personification of the unknown other from a strange land. Hollywood was in the grip of an FBI and governmental witch-hunt for Communist sympathisers in the few years leading up to this film, with many unlucky writers, directors, actors, musicians and others being blacklisted from working in the movie and TV industries.

The story, set in small-town Arizona, USA, begins with science writer, John Putnam (Richard Carlson), and fiancée, schoolteacher Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush), investigating a large meteor crash. Descending alone into the crater, Putnam discovers that the meteor is actually a crashed space craft. He examines some strange tracks he finds outside the craft, little knowing that he too is being observed by an off-screen presence within the space craft. Other people, including a local newspaper reporter, arrive at the scene, but before anyone else can see anything, the space craft is hidden by a massive land-slide.

Can Putnam convince others of what he has seen, and what he suspects (that non-Terrestrial life-forms are on Earth)? What is the reason for the mysterious sounds on the telephone wires outside town? What is to be made of the disappearance of certain townspeople and the strange behaviour of others?

As I said, the film is dated, and the theme of alien visitation has been pretty thoroughly explored in the almost 60 years since this film was released, but it's still a fun watch. The script is intelligent (Wikipedia says "it is said Ray Bradbury wrote the original screenplay and Harry Essex merely changed the dialogue and took the credit"), and takes some interesting turns that resonate very ironically with a Red Menace paranoia reading. The acting by the leads, Carlson, in particular, and also Charles Drake as the local Sheriff Matt Warren, is very good. The weak link in the chain is the special effects, which at the time were probably rather poor, and for 21st century eyes are decidedly ropey though not without their own kind of kitsch charm.

Funny how so many movies in this period, in order to signal reliability in a male character, give him a pipe, even if, like Putnam in this tale, the character uses it only as a prop, never actually smoking tobacco in it. Funny too, how, although Putnam is characterised as a lonely intellectual seeking the solitude of the desert, he seems to be able to greet almost everyone in town by their first name, and everyone seems to know him.

• Rating: Matinee
• When seen: 8 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home, on iPad
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invasion_of_the_Body_Snatchers
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist#The_Hollywood_Ten
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_from_Outer_Space

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Inception (2010)

Your mind is the scene of the crime.

Some controversy about this film, some saying it's brilliant, others that the plot is too confusing or the overall emotional impact is lacking, that it's emotionally cold.

I would say it's very good in the SF action/thriller genre, like Total Recall (1990) or The Matrix (1999): a lot of action, chase scenes, fight scenes and special effects, structured with a clever dream-within-dream story-line, nicely written, including some great action scenes, especially the brilliant fight scenes with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which I've heard were done pretty much "in camera". Other special effects were good, but not that mind-blowing, given the precedence of The Matrix, etc. Michael Bonner remarks on: "zero gravity fights in a hotel corridor, an assault on an artic fortress and a car chase through a dreamed city".

I was apprehensive about Inception because of the director's previous film, The Dark Knight (2008), which I took a real dislike to: a film with lots of cool machines, speed, action, but without heart, a perfect film for Top Gear-loving lads. I would say that Inception is an emotionally cold film: plot, not character-driven. The stakes, as others have pointed out, are not very personal: corporate espionage, for God's sake!

For all the hype about Inception being an intelligent blockbuster that doesn't dumb down a challenging plot to accommodate lazy audiences, in the end, for science fiction fans, it wasn't that challenging at all. The tropes were fairly standard in the genre of science fiction; I didn't have trouble following the plot, and I saw the final end twist coming a long way off. In toto, although it's true that the film does feel fresh, in reality, it follows the standard action thriller template, with quieter scenes alternating with noisy kick-ass action sequences.

The characters were pretty standard too: fine, but not very memorable. De Caprio was good, as was Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe (the latter superb in Letters from Iwo Jima, 2006). Not quite sure why Ellen Page was used, she was fantastic in Juno (2007), but seemed a bit out of place here. Shame Lukas Haas, very effective in Brick (2005), was not used more.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 8 Aug 2010
• Where seen: Cinema
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Added label for actor Lukas Haas. Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Delicatessen (1991)

A futuristic comic feast

Surreal expressionistic vision, as in The City Of Lost Children (1995), surprising and interesting in its fantastic story and weird visuals; enjoyably so. The Radio Times compares the vision to that of David Lynch or Terry Gilliam.

The protagonist, Louison (Dominique Pinon), is an unlikely but engaging and endearing character. The other characters are amusingly grotesque.

There are some very funny moments, such as when the butcher and wife's love-making is echoed by everyone in the building; also, when the protagonist and the butcher's wife test the bedsprings in a synchronised rhythmic dance-like sequence, echoing the previous love-making sequence; and when Louison comes to tea with the butcher's short-sighted daughter, Julie, who decides not to wear her glasses.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 2 May 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

The City Of Lost Children (1995)

Where happily ever after is just a dream.

Like an unrestrained French Terry Gilliam. Very unusual and original in almost all aspects: characters, story, production design. Outlandish and bizarre characters framed in hallucinatory closeups. Fantastical often industrialised settings. Interesting tropes from science fiction: clones, living brains, trained fleas with tiny artificial proboscises injecting victims with killer serums.

The two leads, Perlman's strongman and the girl, Judith Vittet, are very compelling. Ron Perlman of course great in Hellboy (2004). Vittet like a young Audrey Tatou. Even Perlman and the girl's relationship a bit iffy, a future legitimate romance, or if now, with paedophilic overtones?

Until we found out how to switch the DVD to French audio with English subtitles, we watched in the default audio setting of dubbed English which definitely spoilt the first half of the movie.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 4 Feb 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: added year of release to the film "Hellboy". Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

The Thing from Another World (1951)

Where Did It Come From? How Did It Get Here? WHAT IS IT?

Given the vastness of the observable space, with potentially habitable rocky planets like ours being spotted ever more frequently by astronomers, it seems increasingly likely that we are not the only intelligent beings in the universe. So, one day, we should not be too surprised to receive extraterrestrial visitors. The big question is whether the intentions of such visitors would be friendly or hostile.

Many (probably most) fictional treatments of alien visitation assume hostile intent: conflict breeds action, and action sells cinema tickets. So most aliens encountered in movies are of the bug-eyed monster variety, whereas the kind of benevolent visitors epitomised in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. (1982) are comparatively rare.

Despite being released in 1951, six decades ago this year, The Thing From Another World retains its interest in large part because it locates the two conflicting outlooks on alien visitors, optimistic and pessimistic, within two communities of professionals, scientists and military personnel. The scientists, not surprisingly, put highest value on the potential for gaining knowledge. Equally unsurprisingly, the military assign higher value to security concerns. The stage is set for a credible conflict of interest.

The main action takes place at a remote Arctic outpost, where a small group of scientists and a small group of US Air Force personnel investigate a mysterious crash landing on the ice. The remoteness of the location and a long-lasting blizzard combine to block radio communication and to prevent anyone physically entering or leaving the area, effectively isolating the groups from the rest of the world and allowing the action to unfold in microcosm. The people on the ground are forced to be entirely responsible for their own decisions.

As for special physical effects, these are used sparingly. The main strategy, pioneered by Jacques Tourneur in Cat People (1942), according to Wikipedia, and adopted subsequently by Steven Spielberg in Jaws (1975) and Ridley Scott in Alien (1979), to name but two, is that of limiting audience access to detailed views of the "monster" until near the end of the film, if at all. Instead, the use of darkness, shadows and backlighting to create stark but simplified silhouettes, the use of sounds suggesting actions taking place off-screen, the use of character reaction shots, all force the audience to fill in the blanks with their own imagination, producing a result superior to almost any visual effect.

There is a wonderful scene at the crash site, where only a curved black fin emerging above the ice betrays the presence of a submerged spacecraft, and the audience has to take on trust the excited descriptions of the men milling about on the surface. Then, at the orders of Doctor Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite), the chief scientist, the men spread out and stand above the edges of the craft, and with no special effects at all, the size and shape of the craft is perfectly illustrated and the audience's imagination given full rein to fill in the missing details. Throughout, the black and white cinematography is crisp and beautiful.

According to John Carpenter, director of the 1982 re-make "The Thing", quoted in Wikipedia, it was Howard Hawks, billed as the film's producer, who really directed the film. Comparing this film to Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (1939), a film also about pilots, I can well believe it. As evidence, Carpenter cites the signature male camaraderie amongst the Air Force personnel, extending even to the visiting reporter but excluding the scientists, none of whom seem like "regular" joes. Another similarity is the rapid-fire naturalistic dialogue characteristic of Hawks' work, such as the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938).

I read somewhere that Hawks, master of the male-female romantic leads combo, had to wait decades for the arrival of its ultimate incarnation, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, in To Have and To Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946). In The Thing From Another World, the Air Force captain and the scientist's assistant are not Bogie and Bacall, but the female lead, Margaret Sheridan, lights up the screen in her few big scenes, in particular, her introductory scene. If the male lead, Kenneth Tobey, fine but unremarkable, had been someone with more charisma, Jimmy Stewart, say, or Glenn Ford, it would have lifted the film to great heights.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 6 Mar 2011
• Where seen: Home, on iPad
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Starman (1984)

In 1977 Voyager II was launched into space, inviting all lifeforms in the universe to visit our planet. Get ready. Company's coming.

Heart-warming story of a visiting alien, knocked out of the sky by the trigger-happy US military, far from his rendezvous point three days hence, who takes the form of a dead man, press-ganging the man's grieving widow into chauffeur duty, as the US military machine gears up to track him down.

Excellent portrayal of the alien by Jeff Bridges, cleverly making it seem as if he is inhabiting a body whose workings are unfamiliar to him.

In a film underpinned by sentiment, Bridges manages to win our sympathies without falsely anthropomorphising his character. Karen Allen gives a luminous performance of a woman torn by contradictory feelings of attraction and repulsion. Good supporting performances by Jaekel as the head of the US military task force, and by Martin Smith as the SETI specialist.

Along the way, there is some fun to be had of the "stranger in a strange land" variety, with Bridges having to cope with a variety of new human experiences.

Parallels with the more common type of "alien" in the southern states of the USA are there for those who wish to see them. Bridges and Allen travel in the margins of society, hitching rides in the back of trucks and riding the rails at night like illegal immigrants who have just snuck across the border: a transient procession of diners, truck stops, motels, long dusty roads. The people they meet are the salt of the earth: generally kind (especially the waitresses), without thought of personal gain, though sadly not without a proportion of thick-headed red-necks.

Religious parallels are also present, but are included tastefully and appropriately, serving the story.

Special effects are relatively few, interestingly, strength of plot and acting performance being the primary sources of credibility.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 22 Feb 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Splice (2009)

She's Not Human... Not Entirely.

This film updates the Frankenstein trope of man creating life to the present day, and poses the question of what would happen if instead of one man, the creators were a childless husband and wife team, incubating the monster from a foetus in an artificial womb. This is an interesting angle, allowing the film-makers to address issues relating to parenthood - especially, Polley's character being the prime mover, motherhood - and allowing for an unusually wide gamut of responses, ranging from revulsion to devotion.

A neat plot device allows for a telescoping of time, and the story develops swiftly.

The story, in toto, is clearly quite fantastic. In order to keep the audience on board, the characters of the protagonists must be credible enough to drive the plot forward in an apparently inevitable succession, as inevitable as a line of falling dominoes. This is achieved pretty well, partly by scripting in certain character attributes, partly through the great casting of beak-nosed thin-as-a-rake Adrian Brody as nerdy scientist, partly through the strong grounded but intense presence of Sarah Polley, whose character is the prime mover behind most of the key plot points.

For me, the actor Sarah Polley was in fact the main attraction. In the film Go, she was really something special, giving a brave bloody-minded completely unglamorous performance, the standout performance of the film. Her IMDB entry says she is "[b]lessed with an extremely expressive face that enables directors to minimize dialog due to her uncanny ability to suggest a character's thoughts..." Exactly: her intelligence shines through.

The monster, when it comes, is very well realised, especially later on in the film. This is a crucial point: if the monster lacks credibility, the film crashes. Fortunately, the FX are good, and the portrayal of the monster is one of the high points of the whole film.

Others have criticised the finale for being too action-oriented, and dumbing down from the intelligence of the majority of the film. Maybe, but the film's final coda is pretty smart.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 18 Feb 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Heartless (2009)

The darker it gets the more you see.

Like a British Donnie Darko - a psychological horror film where the reliability of the protagonist's POV is questionable. How much of what happens is a projection of the protagonist's imaginings and how much is objectively true?

A good true psychological horror story emerging from the protagonist's curiosity about the activities of hooded youth gangs with horrible masked (or not masked?) faces.

Interesting parallel between the reason the protagonist hides his face beneath a hood when out in public, to hide a prominent birthmark, and the reasons young hoodies choose to hide their faces.

Another theme is the question of evil: is evil consuming the world? What leads people to commit evil acts? Is intrinsic internal goodness sufficient defence against temptation?

Along the way, there are some events that stretch credibility somewhat, that we can choose to go with or not, to suspend our disbelief. But overall, the story evolves in a reasonably psychologically credible way.

This means that there's a lot of suspense, and fewer outright thrills, but that's preferable.

The performance by Sturgess is excellent, presenting a shy, inherently good and pure young man.

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 13 Feb 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

300 (2007)

Spartans, prepare for glory!

Based on a Frank Miller comic. Pretty good but not as compelling as Sin City. Fantastic visuals, especially the ravishing colour palettes used, and the gorgeous highly contrasted graphic scenarios, clearly owing a great deal to the powerful vision of the comicbook artists.

Some excellent action scenes. Good sound. Good performances by all. The casting is spot on, with Gerard Butler doing a Russell Crowe-alike performance as King. Lena Headey is very credible as the queen.

All in all, pretty good, it's just that it was all so macho and testosterone-charged and glamorous in its way, with much display of men's naked torsos and muscled stomachs and in general a great deal of rippling male muscles. Homo-erotic? Sure.

• Rating: Matinee
• When seen: 3 Oct 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven) (1946)

Neither Heaven nor Earth could keep them apart!

Interesting, but not compelling. Nice interplay between the fantastic and the prosaic interpretations of Niven's character's ordeal. Didn't believe the instant romance between Niven and Hunter, though it was a nice scene. Some nice set pieces where time stops.

Very English view of Heaven as a place of absolute civility but dull as ditchwater.

Notable use of British actors in American roles, with laughable accents and characterisations (the guys have to run about indulging in rough horseplay, the gals just have to wear a lot of lipstick and chew gum), including the leading actress, Niven's love interest, Kim Hunter, whose accent sounds incredibly English to present day ears. Didn't think that much of Hunter's performance, to be honest.

In the 3rd reel, some odd arguments by the prosecuting lawyer, a colonial American with a hatred of all things English.

Didn't find Roger Livesy nearly as compelling as the Filmspotting guys did in Colonel Blimp.

• Rating: Low matinee / high rental
• When seen: 4 Oct 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: corrected spelling of label "Emeric Pressburger" to "Emeric Pressberger". Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Sin City (2005)

There is no justice without sin.

Fantastic film version of a strong artistic vision of a dark, violent, sexy version of our world.

When Xanthe and I saw this in the cinema on release, after a steady diet of kids' films, this was a massive shock to the system which left us gasping.

The visuals are gorgeous and so well realised with the limited colour palette and the stunning from above night time snow and rain shots, so iconic.

Of course it can be seen as offensive in its gender stereotyping but it's all tongue-in-cheek, no?

Awesome performance by Mickey Rourke as Marv and by Bruce Willis as cop Hartigan.

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 29 Oct 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: added actor tags: "Jessica Alba, Benicio del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Elijah Wood". Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Enchanted (2007)

The real world and the animated world collide. This fairytale princess is about to meet a real Prince Charming.

Very enjoyable. Good story with strong positive underlying message about women's role in fairy tales, with Giselle (Amy Adams) developing from paper doll into a strong relatively rounded character.

Especially notable for Adams' performance, bringing credibility to a tricky role requiring sweetness and naïveté as well as inner strength.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 26 Dec 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted using Blogo from my MacBook Pro

Amendments: added actor tags: "Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Timothy Spall, Idina Menzel, Rachel Covey, Susan Sarandon". Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.