jpt27 Reviews

The Island (2005)

This movie has a lot going on upstairs.

[8/10 · 10 September 2009]

Underneath the explosions and slo-mo camera, underneath the obligatory mugging of the lead couple, underneath the rather cheesy pop culture references, is a movie that has (perhaps accidentally) found something incredibly profound to say about society and the way we live. It got behind my eyes and made me wonder, which is not something you would expect from a Michael Bay movie.

So you all know the plot by now; in the near future, clones are grown in underground facilities as spare parts for their owners, and fed a story about the rest of the world being contaminated. The one thing that keeps them going is the dream of winning the lottery, where the prize is going off to live on The Island - a paradise, the only uncontaminated place left on Earth.

What is this saying about life for the average blue collar Joe? We are, essentially, spare parts for the ruling class. When we break, or become problematic, we get thrown away. The point of our very lives is to be ground up into the machine that services the super-rich. Everybody dreams of becoming rich themselves - winning the lottery of life - and getting to escape forever.

Or you can take the path of the hero, which involves getting smart and finding out the truth of this artificial prison - and the impossibility of winning life's lottery, perma-rigged by the owners.

Four years it has been since I saw this movie, and I still have trouble coming to terms with how true that message is. Will I ever 'win the Lottery' and get to escape from the death chosen for me at birth? The movie also manages to score a few surprisingly not-dumbed-down points about issues like stem cell research and the rights of the unborn. At one point, a character says "I want to live. And I don't care how." If living for another fifty years meant killing another man by shooting him yourself, few could bring themselves to do it. But what if the other man only existed because you created him, and he technically owes you his life as well? The film then throws us another curve ball by revealing that one clone's creator is in a coma, and unless the clone dies, the owner will too. Abortion for medical reasons, anybody? Does anyone under any circumstances have the right to decide if another lives or dies, especially if the the other has no voice? The movie then goes on to evolve the life-or-death scenario above with increasingly selfish reasons for killing your clone. Being able to live for another fifty years yourself is one that most people could eventually justify to themselves ... especially if the decision could be made on your deathbed. Using a clone to birth your baby because you are infertile yourself is an interesting one - could you warrant creating one new life by sacrificing another? But what about if you are a football player who needs new legs to save your career? Or a model who needs new younger-looking skin? At what point in the above scenarios do you draw the line? I give the movie additional points for ending with dual nods to the audience. Of course, the clones eventually find out the truth about their world and escape to freedom. But the fact that this scheme was allowed to go ahead in the first place, and that the movie deliberately sets itself very much in the real world, seems to suggest that if such a technology were to become available today ... then yes, people would do it. And they wouldn't care how.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Decidedly mixed

[4 March 2007]

If you're going to see this film, then doubtless you'll have already seen Shaun of the Dead, and probably Spaced, the three having more similarities than differences. So you have a reasonable idea of what it's going to be like, and if it'll be your thing.

I think this film is a bit of a mess. Structurally, it's gapingly flawed. The opening third turns into more like the opening two thirds, hence the entire film has to take place in the last thirty minutes or so. It can't decide whether it wants to be a comedy, a cop action thriller, a horror movie, or a late night Sunday TV drama.

Basing a film around police in England is difficult, because everybody hates them, especially after the de Menezes shooting. These ones they try to make appealing by having them mostly goof off all day and eat ice-cream. This merely makes us hate them more.

Others have commented on the lack of laughs in the movie. It's completely true. They seem to have just forgotten to put the jokes in there. I can only assume they went for a 'funny in a difficult to describe way' feel, and ended up with a film as limp and dead as a mattress that's just been pulled from the bottom of the ocean. What we're seeing is more of an animated storyboard with full script to come.

Oh, and Timothy Dalton is very miscast as the lead villain. You end up feeling sorry for him. His every look and gesture seem to say "Remember me? I played James Bond once. I was unnverving and disturbing. I was critically acclaimed for it. Now here I am running a rural supermarket. I'm worth more than this." Overall, my argument here is with the director, Edgar Wright. Shaun of the Dead worked well, so it's surprising to see another film of his bungled so incompetently. Having a hit and being Brit cinema's next big hope always seems to be the kiss of death, condemning your next five projects to be overblown, Yank-pandering confusothons. Just ask Guy Ritchie.

Independent Lens: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) Season 8, Episode 22

Enron: The Dark Side of Us All

[16 December 2006]

If a more profoundly disturbing film than "Enron: The Smartest Guys in The Room" comes out this decade, I don't want to know, let alone see it. That this all happened so recently and so vividly will give me quiet moments for some time to come.

Three angles of thought that are brilliantly explored by the film:

1)How good at lying are you? There are times every day where I have to tell a few white lies to my friends, family, coworkers, even my girlfriend. But watching characters like Jeffery Skilling and Ken Lay orchestrate an entire business, bricks and mortar, from nothing but smoke and mirrors, is like watching a man defy gravity.

Watching Ken especially, when addressing nervous investors or suspicious accountants, is enough to give a social psychologist a career. The way he manages to combine fact, fiction, conjecture, energy and plausibility to utterly subdue any audience is like watching an evil sorcerer mixing up his ingredients for a magic potion.

Even as he testifies before a Congressional committee, with the facts of the case plain for all to see, Kenneth Skilling somehow manages to come across as utterly implicit to any wrongdoing; a man of utter integrity, conscience and responsibility. It struck me that he can do this easily because it's all he's ever done in a career spanning twenty years.

The people who control our society are at almost identical points in their career arcs to Ken Lay. They know all the unpleasant facts and realities of their business and yet must present the image of a football team that just can't stop winning. At what point in the history of our society did honesty become such a vanishingly rare commodity?

2) Conspiracy Theory - Or Not? The way Enron twisted and controlled the Californian energy market was straight from a conspiracy theorist's wet dream. Except that it really happened.

No sensible citizen would ever believe that the system would allow energy traders to shut down power plants with just a phone call to drive energy prices up. Except they did. It's impossible that the authorities would allow a company to divert huge amounts of electricity to ghost towns to distort the market further. Except it happened. We as a society seem to be victim's of Occum's Razor. We refuse to believe there could be unbelievable levels of conspiring behind seemingly transparent amenities. If nothing else, Enron shows that if there's a will and a motive, there's a way, and a profit to be made.

3) The Bullies have Taken Over The Playground. Enron is, at heart, a lesson in how we can allow the most unbelievably amoral behaviour to happen if we believe it's in our personal best interest to do so. (Put another way: if you can't beat them, join them.) The most striking scene, for me, in the whole film was watching the stunned energy traders wander out of Enron's trading floor after bankruptcy was declared. All are shellshocked, some are in tears. All begin to weave their sob stories, how they were the fall guy, how they didn't know what was going on etc etc. The film, by that point, is suggesting a different story.

The Enron scandal was allowed to happen because many hundreds of professionals from many different trades operating at many different levels, some very junior, could see (or sense, or at least suspect) a fraud happening. Yet they shut their mouths because they wanted their cut, or wanted to protect their jobs and livelihoods in a tough industry. History has another well documented example of an entire nation who were swept up in a practice which they must have known was not right, but allowed to happen because they were afraid to speak up. Could such a thing be happening in America today? How have we ever let ourselves believe that what's good for the economy is good for us? Have we been bullied into silence? Are we really any different from the auditors who were so easily deceived at Enron?

4) And a final thought - think of the many thousands of traders who are now looking for a new job with 'Enron' stamped permanently on their resumes. It'll be interesting to see how the jobs market treats them. In theory they should never work in the industry again, but I get the feeling that more than one company wouldn't exactly mind having people aboard who know how to bend rules and break the occasional neck to protect their share price.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

Not another teen movie comment.

[3/10 · 9 April 2005]

MY RATING: **/***** Contains sexuality and extremely unfunny jokes, that some viewers may find depressing.

What sucks more than anything else is that my whole review of this film can be summarised in just one line of what James Berardinelli said: "This movie understands the concept of a spoof, but not a satire." A lot of new shows seem to be doing this. They understand that it's funny these days to be slightly post-modern, being a comedy/actioner/whatever whilst simultaneously mocking the incredulity of its own events.

But they don't understand that unless there's a good movie behind it all, then it just all turns into tedious, random, almost hurtful jokes that ultimately make you wish you'd rented something else. If the writers clearly don't care about the material, why should you? '

Not Another Teen Movie' is a spoof of twenty years worth of teen movies. The plot is chopped together from the various classic teen conundrums that have enchanted us over the last two movie-going decades: the bet that backfires, the ugly duckling story, the horny high schoolers and their attempts to get laid etc.

The problems in this movie start from the minute the titles roll. I get the feeling the script was written by a bunch of guys remembering the most famous scenes of all the teen movies they had seen, and saying "Hey guys! I always thought it would be funny if instead of going to the prom with Jenny instead of Katalin, he ... farted in her face and threw a used condom in the face of her strict religious mother! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!" Hence, Not Another Teen Movie is basically one scene repeating itself over and over again for ninety minutes. We'll be presented with an instantly recognisable scene, either by use of similar-looking actors (the American Pie sketches did this a lot) or memorable dialogue (for example the Bring It On spoof about being in a 'cheerocracy.') Then something crude will happen, more often than not involving oral sex and/or more oral sex. Or the disabled, or issues of discrimination. Ha ha ha.

Such an approach might have worked if the screenplay could have been kept tight, with a small number of memorable characters. Instead, Not Another Teen Movie makes a mission of trying to visit every teen movie that was ever released. Think you're a film buff? Think again. To understand even half of what's being spoofed, you need to have seen more films than Roger Ebert. Too often, the audience is dumped into a scene that makes absolutely no sense at all to the uninitiated. And yet other movies that were primarily spoofs, such as the excellent Airplane! and Naked Gun series, avoided this problem altogether by coming up with witty, original material, and putting in a movie reference whenever the opportunity obviously presented itself.

Nonetheless, the makers of Not Another Teen Movie have certainly put together something that will make idiots laugh, and in turn bring in more idiots see it. It's just a pity that beneath the fart jokes, it's so cynically, desperately unfunny.

Akira (1988)

Landmark Japanese animation that opens boundaries and minds.

[9/10 · 29 March 2005]

'Akira' is an astonishingly influential film, easily as much so as cinema's touchstones Citizen Kane and Pulp Fiction. Its impact is made more difficult to judge, though, given that it was made more than sixteen years ago, and didn't make an initial impact outside of Japan. Oddly, this made its influence even more profound, benefiting from 'word of mouth' and the influx of cheap VHS at the end of the Eighties. It's also gained enough of a following to warrant being digitally remastered, at a cost of over US$1 million, as a 'Special Edition,' which I am basing these comments on.

Rather than suffering the humiliation of being advertised, Akira filtered, like a software virus, into the bedrooms of what would become Generation X. Hollywood began to sit up and pay attention after teens began abandoning the pap of the day like Last Action Hero, and started seeking out something different, dissident, and Akira finally had its audience. Japanese animation now has a firm presence in our media, and so many paths lead back to the cultural genesis of Akira. Finally, its role in the history of film was cemented with the release of last year's mega-hit, the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix. Without Akira, there is no Matrix, and with no Matrix, you have to wonder how very different Western cinema would be today.

So what is Akira? It's a Japanese animated film, an adaptation of 2,000 pages worth of graphic novel by Katsuhiro Otomo and set in the futuristic world of Neo-Tokyo. Rebuilt from the ashes of World War 3, it's a technological dream of neon, computers and soaring science, mated to the social nightmare of corrupt politicians, a rampant military and an oppressed working class. Add to this the rise of a powerful breed of psychics (or 'psionics') capable of various degrees of telepathy and telekinesis, and somehow linked to a top secret military project known as Akira, and Neo-Tokyo seems ready to explode. You can almost feel the heat, the sweat, and the grime, courtesy of the borderline-masochistic attention to detail in every frame of every scene of animation.

Akira is all about hyper-reality, which later became known as bullet time. Animation, and more importantly imagination, allows impossibly kinetic and 'free' camera movement. The style rams home every car crash, explosion and death defying stunt. It's not the easiest film to watch in one sitting, nor indeed, at all, but you'll come away knowing where the inspiration behind so many late Nineties blockbusters came from. More importantly, you'll appreciate how mediums come to influence other mediums, and barriers such as language and culture can be hurdled with ease.

It's not just an action-fest either. The main arc of the story is that of Tetsuo, who begins developing psychic powers but doesn't understand what is happening to him or the responsibilities that come with such godlike power. This opens the door to some genuinely moving scenes of film-making endeavour and artistic triumph, as Tetsuo wonders if he is losing his mind and eventually lashes out against anyone and everyone. The standout scene in the whole film, for me, should be mentioned about here. Whilst under observation in a hospital bed, Tetsuo hallucinates being attacked by childhood toys. Dreams and reality are folded into each other and so it remains for much of the rest of the film. Horizons peel away and reality itself seems to disintegrate, fragment after animated fragment, as Tetsuo battles his way to downtown Neo-Tokyo and prepares to face Akira, whatever that may mean.

The only other character developed to this level is his best friend Kaneda, who in a number of small, well-judged scenes, comes across as bright, breezy, confident and heroic, and on hand to reason with Tetsuo. No matter what point Tetsuo's powers escalate to, and no matter how much he is wanted by the police and the military, Kaneda just wants his old friend back, and it is this hope of redemption which gives the film its emotional backbone.

Other strengths include the intelligent use of sound. A minimum of scoring is used: mostly Japanese drums and percussion, and some voices during dramatic parts. More interesting is the use of silence, absolute flat silence, during key moments. It fits in very well with the themes of psychic/telepathic powers, and in a more general way, the vivid hyper-reality of the film's delivery. Put it this way - when you dream, you dream in a silence of implied words, and Akira knows this too.

I thought the dialogue was excellent too. The street kids have catchy and sardonic street lingo ("Tetsuo's our friend! If anyone's going to kill him, it should be us!") The military are represented by a titanic general whose lines have gained a certain amount of hilarity during translation ("You hedonistic fools! Can't you see it is utterly pointless to fight each other!") I found myself eagerly awaiting the next punchy exchange between players, which is something that Hollywood has been missing recently. In seven out of ten films I see, the dialogue is truly awful. How difficult can it be to get two people to talk naturally?

'Akira' is not for everyone. In the first twenty minutes we have strong language, an attempted rape and the kinetic carnage of a fight between rival biker gangs. Some will simply not tolerate this in an animated movie which is, despite all efforts, going to be viewed by younger children. Even if you can stomach the unsavoury content, you might be beaten by the sheer oddness of Japanese culture. (They certainly have an unhealthy obsession with seeing Tokyo laid to waste.) But if you can skip over these points and see the overall genius of Akira, you may just appreciate Akira's place on the pantheon of modern culture.

Monkey Dust (2003–2005)

Utterly original, compelling, and most of all, messed up.

[17 March 2005]

'Monkey Dust' contains the most ****ed up humour you will ever see broadcast on terrestrial television. It's one of those rare moments where you wonder if the grey-faced executives who OK'd the show's production knew quite what they were letting themselves in for. At least South Park was barefacedly crude.

Monkey Dust could have easily been great art, although luckily for us audiences, the creators have used their undeniable artistic flair and creative verve to sacrifice the art and wring the carcass until comedy comes splitting out the sides. This is comedy so messed up, so deeply deeply wrong, that most of the laughs come without the need for punchlines. It's very rare for a show to create situations which are just inherently funny. Monkey Dust has them like pearls on a string.

The show, half an hour long, comprises a series of interlinked sketches, with returning characters competing with one-off spectaculars. I like shows like this; they have an ongoing sense of when the comedy has been fully developed. The animation is done in a kind of new-wave, post - computer graphics style, a good blend of hand drawn and computer animation. Different studios worked on different sketches, and so there's a lot of variety in the half hour.

And now for the content. Monkey Dust has been described as Little Britain's older, edgier, criminally insane brother, and that's not such a bad way of summarising it. Both shows deal with everyday situations going on around the British Isles, and however mental the comedy may be, we're really laughing at the fact that what's being shown is not so very different from reality. Three flagship characters include a nameless elderly paedophile and his attempts to groom young girls on internet chat rooms; Steve the First-Time Cottager, whose attempts to lead a flamboyant homosexual lifestyle are hopelessly at odds with his modesty and shyness (the first time we see him he is reading a self-help book called Yes! I Can Gobble Off A Complete Stranger;) and my personal favourite, Ivan Dobsky the Meat Safe Murderer. Ivan was an friendly, innocent Liverpool lad before he was locked up 27 years ago for a crime he did not commit. Campaigning celebs have finally got him acquitted, unaware that police and prison brutality have turned him into an utter, utter psychopath. "Hullo I'm Ivan Dobsky the meat safe murderer, only I never done it, I only said I done it so the police men would take the rat out of me anus." Monkey Dust works so well because not only have they found comedy in the most unlikely of places, but because they even went looking for it in the first place. Occasionally the humour hits hard when a sketch begins with picturesque domestic bliss, because you know that in about thirty seconds time the rug is going to be pulled - hard. It also runs the risk of alienation when it makes fun of characters who closely resemble you and your friends. But the show never goes for a cheap gag, and that's admirable in a post- 'Friends' world.

If you're after some dark comedy which is going to stay with you for a unconsensually long time, then Monkey Dust might just be the gimp suit that fits.

50 First Dates (2004)

Masterpiece, overlooked by many because of anti-Sandlerism.

[13 November 2004]

MY RATING: *** / ****

Contains extreme battle violence and tentacle rape. (Maybe.)

'50 First Dates' tells of an unusual romance being played out in beautiful Hawaii. Adam Sandler plays Henry, a marine biologist (I love Hollywood) who has no problem with the ladies. He falls head over heels in love with Lucy (Drew Barrymore,) who ever since a car accident a year ago, loses all memory of what she did that day. In other words, Adam's going to have to meet her and make her fall in love with him each day like the first day. Ouch.

Adam Sandler comedies are unique in that I have hated every single one of them for the first ten minutes, and then I somehow 'tune in' to the humour and end up enjoying the movie. 50 First Dates has other familiar Sandler elements, such as Rob Schneider doing things no other star would possibly want to add to their credentials, and other scenes involving post - Farrelly brothers grossout gags (any comedy these days involving a walrus is going to have it vomiting or ejaculating or both.) These don't get in the way of the film's purpose, though, which is surprisingly spiritual.

Analogies have been drawn between this and Groundhog Day, and that's not such a bad comparison. This film is Groundhog Day in inverse, that is, only one character is living out the same day of her life over and over, and nothing she can do about this will make a difference tomorrow. 50 First Dates is masterful in its exploration of this premise. We grow to understand the rules of this game much like we would a new sport. In fact, I grew to understand it so well that I had a very confused couple of hours immediately after the movie readjusting to the real world. I love that feeling.

As we grow more confident of our grip on the ideas presented, the film uses this device to ask some seriously deep questions about human relationships. How we'd react if such an unusual situation arose, and how we'd let our humanity save the day. Henry gets to have a unique insight into both himself and the woman he loves by seeing that every day he finds something new and wonderful to love about her. Many couples' favourite memories are of their first meetings. Ever stop to wonder why that is? You won't after you see this. Some might call this Paul Ver Hoeven syndrome, after another famous director whose films explore moral problems that don't really exist yet, but I think 50 First Dates treads the line between fairy tale and drama with verve and intelligence.

Of course, the film relies on us believing that Henry and Lucy could really fall in love every day, and Adam Sandler - Drew Barrymore give fine emotional performances, especially Sandler, who's more known for his distanced, slightly vicious characters. In 50 First Dates he wears his heart on his sleeve, and is all the better for it. Barrymore has the easier role to play here - her situation is so unusual that nobody really knows how anyone would act in it - but nonetheless we see what has rocked Henry's world. The supporting cast are up to the job too, despite being slightly lumbered with standard quirkiness (the camp bodybuilding brother, the old sea dog father, the I-don't-know-how-to-summarise-her colleague.) The choice of location is perhaps too postcard-perfect to really give the romance credibility, but watching dolphins and sunsets so beautifully photographed can hardly be constituted as a 'mistake.'

All in all, I rate 50 First Dates very highly. It forced me to think deeply and quickly, and in today's movie industry, such a mental workout is rare without having to go to your local independent picture house and put up with your ten-a-penny artistic geniuses. I have to take off one star from the perfect four to reflect the disappointing ending, and that it is, at the end of the day, an Adam Sandler film. Sorry Adam. You came so close to eliminating my shadows of doubts.

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991)

Amusing film from a more innocent age.

[11 November 2004]

What is a great film? Something that is truly timeless, or something which is a classic of its genre? Obviously, no-one's pretending "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead" is a great film (no great film has a title of more than three words. Think about it) but nonetheless, one does get to see how a film handles its composition of several genres rather than one. It's the best strategy towards greatness, and I hope to see this attempted more frequently.

"Don't Tell Mom..." is at an interesting cultural crossroads. It's basically the last of the Eighties high-concept comedies: the same broad category as films like Big and Crocodile Dundee, where the whole film comes from the pitch. However, we get to see shades of Wayne's World-esquire Generation X teen movie, especially in the character of Rob, and unfortunately the short-lived genre of 'kids acting in grown-up situations and delivering ever-so-amusing grownup lines.' John Hughes was the master of this style of film-making, and there's definitely shades of his work in here, most noticeably the setting of a film largely within a family house.

First of all - the pitch. Kids left at home for summer with babysitter. Babysitter dies and kids must fend for themselves with as few people let in on the secret as possible. From this moment on, the film was always going to go about the format of throwing its naive, brattish teenagers in the real world at the deep end and extracting as much amusement as possible from their sinking-or-swimming.

The screenplay starts to thin at this point. Of the five kids in the house, only two are feasibly old enough to work, or indeed to learn any sort of life lesson throughout this experience. The plot then follows Sue Ellen as she stumbles her way into a job and up the corporate ladder (the script is devoid of jokes at this point, but I kept watching because Christina Applegate is a surprisingly good actress.) Everything from this point is a misjudgment - it's virtually scrawled across the screen that Sue Ellen is getting some life lessons and becoming a young adult. The film could have done without the 'boyfriend' storyline though - it's without doubt the saggiest part of the film.

More interesting is the Kenny storyline. Younger brother Kenny goes from being a hopeless layabout stoner with no inkling to as what he wants to do in life to a man with a plan. Lack of screen time prohibits us from truly understanding why, but we do get an insight into the film's message - the real world is about sacrifice. Kenny must throw away his carefree existence if he wants to become a man.

Sure, this film has faults like pearls on a string - the annoying smaller children who eat up screen time and contribute nothing but an unbearable cuteness (and they're not even that cute: they steal money from their mom's purse - twice.) Sue Ellen's corporate life is shown as patronizingly simple, but that's a fault of all movies in general, you can't have clever successful people as the heroes because the audience feels intimidated. The other major fault I'm going to point out is the chronic lack of laughs. About the biggest giggle was David Duchovny's horrendous yellow shirt. But "Don't Tell Mom," much like its characters, has an innocent, naive charm about it, and if you can put aside your critical mauling instinct, it won't be the worst two hours of your celluloid life.

Keep your eyes peeled for a throwaway reference to Big.

The Football Factory (2004)

Underinspiring but still interesting.

[16 October 2004]

MY VERDICT: **/*****

The logic resulting in the production of this film is not hard to follow. The scathing social satire and searingly counter-cultural Trainspotting was a brilliant British film. The flash-talking, fast-plotted, gun-wielding, hard-brawling Lock Stock was a good British film. So why not combine aspects of both? Predictably, the result is a mess, but flashes of good film-making keep the viewer interested for the 1 hour and 20 minutes or so of football 'n' fights.

The opening sequence closely follows the Trainspotting format. A narrator, later we discover called Tommy, delivers his criticism on how we live our lives and how he has found excitement and meaning by flying right off the rails. The soundtrack moves from one Brit hit to the next as we are introduced to his gang in some snappy montages. Again, the Trainspotting skool of film-making isn't so much an influence as a screenplay, storyboard and script.

Soon, we get to know the gang, and learn that the love of their lives is violence, especially (but not exclusively) surrounding their football team, Chelsea, and particularly focused against their arch-rivals Millwall. I was preparing myself for some gruesome violence as geezers started drinking pints and looking for a fight. And then, the film ... just ... chickens out. A film which is supposedly about football violence should, um, contain some football violence maybe, but Football Factory becomes a film version of one of its thugs - all bluster and intimidation, and no bite. Supposedly hard-hitting action sequences have soap opera-like qualities. Never do we seem to see a fist connect in anger, or teeth shatter, or bones crack. Just some bad pantomime blood and incompetent camera-work. This inadequacy seriously undermines the film's impact - it fails to pump up the audience to the next big fight, and thus has no discernible pace. Just scenes, shots and cuts.

Instead, the focus of the film falls (rather disastrously) on the uninteresting, homogenous characters. With a sigh, I realized this wasn't going to get any better, and began to take mental notes of names, story lines etc so I could at least follow the plot. Tommy and Rod are the central duo, the thugs with brains, imagination, and perhaps the insight that will lift them out of this life. Bill is meant to be the ultra-nasty psycho - Robert Carlyle in Trainspotting was clearly what they were trying to emulate - but some unconvincing acting gives him all the terror of a particularly in-your-face door to door salesman. Zebedee is there for exposition on the cocaine-fuelled lifestyle that all youths supposedly lead (is this true? I was a teenager for years, and I never remember being offered cocaine.) There's also an organised violence ringleader, although I don't have to worry about his name because he brings absolutely nothing to the plot at all.

In brief, the plot follows the gang on the buildup to a particularly bruising clash - Millwall versus Chelsea, and particularly how Tommy begins to get cold feet about his thuggery and starts considering his options. This isn't helped by some heavy-handedly (almost bludgeoningly) symbolic dream sequences. I quite liked the film-making device of giving no warning or visual clues to as what was a dream and what wasn't. It's not put to an ultimate good use though, much like the rest of the handful or so of original ideas in the film. I like the dope-smoking old men though.

So is this worth viewing or not? Certainly, it's got more to chew on than another awful CGI-overkill-marathon like Van Helsing or Catwoman. But don't expect it to truly open your eyes to another world, or indeed, still be with you a month later.

Kalifornia (1993)

First two acts were great, but the third let it down. Badly.

[21 April 2004]

For its first 90 minutes or so, Kalifornia looked to be one of the best character studies ever committed to film. I was almost breathless in admiration to as how the filmmakers had captured so vividly the social and mental divides, summing to a world of difference, between the two couples sharing a road trip with the theme that united them being serial killing. And then in the last thirty minutes, it's as if they let Beavis and Butthead write and direct. I have never seen a film promise so much and deliver so moronic, so idiotic, so bitterly disappointing a finale. Imagine if The Godfather was true to Francis Ford Coppola's vision for the first 2 1/2 hours ... and then the Corleone family morphed into super cyber soldiers and flew around the city with jetpacks and machine-guns, shooting all the rival families and then blowing up the White House and declaring themselves rulers of the world. It's that stupid. Don't say you weren't warned.

Blackball (2003)

Best left as an unexplored curiousity

[19 March 2004]

MY RATING: **/*****

-------------------------------

British cinema has had a difficult time deciding in which direction to go as of late, unsure of whether to pursue working-man comedy dramas such as The Full Monty or Oscar-friendly period pieces such as Mulholland Falls. About a year ago I saw the trailer for this when I went to see The Matrix Reloaded, and remember thinking: This looks like a very average British comedy. Renting it only confirmed my suspicions in the downward direction.

The plot outline is, well, pretty much the same as every other sports comedy you've ever seen: talented youngster with firey temper gets his shot at the big time but the fame is too much and the shady characters many. The game this time is bowls.

The basic problem is the main character, Cliff, played with basic proficiency by Paul Kaye. He's the most unlikeable, spoilt brat of a sportsman you could ever wish to see heading up a film. We see him constantly angry, with a chip on his shoulder bigger than a GM spud, and throughout the film he doesn't seem to grow or change for the better at all. He's the Robbie Williams of bowls. As we grow to despise him more, our sympathies transfer to the supporting characters, who are so formulaic they might as well just have edited footage in from Rocky, The Mighty Ducks and Major League. Some jokes work quite well (Johnny Vegas always raised a laugh) but some fell flat as only poor British sitcoms can. The Diet Coke sequence was excruciating.

Filmmaking mistakes are, unfortunately, frequent, and so many times was my head turned away from the screen and my forehead being slapped that I missed half the film and also developed concussion. There's a bizarre joke involving The Matrix which makes so little sense in the context of anything else that it would have seemed at home in, well, The Matrix. Unnecessary exposition fills scene after scene. Do we really need to know that Ray Speight's day job is a driving instructor (and do we really need four scenes of him doing this?) Who decided that Rick would try to start a relationship with Kerry - Martin "I Directed 'Gigli'" Brest?

On the plus side, the script is consistently peppy, James Cromwell is a superb actor and brings emotional complexity to a narrowly-written part and also manages to navigate his way through a few sequences with awful, almost Lucasian dialogue. You'll know them when you see them. Other stars of the show include a random supercar thrown in for an eye candy break, the 2002 TVR Tuscan if I am correct, and also some reliable British talent including Tony Slattery and Jon Snow.

Ultimately, the film fails because of the fundamentally silly premise of the film - it's just too ridiculous to imagine bowls becoming the new rock'n'roll. But at least your money will be wasted in a British rather than American direction, and that's a noble thing.

The X-Files (1993–2018)

My experiences with The X-Files.

[5 February 2004]

I remember it well. It was early spring of March 1995, and I would have been twelve at the time. I was talking to a casual acquaintance of mine named Dean during woodwork class. He was raving on and on about a fantastic programme that he had seen a few episodes of on BBC2 (obscure British channel that show very marginal things.) The premise of the show, he explained, was that two FBI agents were assigned to work on cases that defied rational classification; that involved ghosts, poltergeists, aliens and other such weirdness, and were filed as the X-files. It was shown on Tuesday nights, which was coincidentally that very night, and so I thought: Well what have I got to lose. Sure enough, 9pm comes around and I flick on the tinny television in the corner of my room. 45 minutes later and I am curled up in the foetal position, rocking back and forth and gibbering with delight. I had just seen the most intelligent, dynamic and downright terrifying show I ever had or ever will watch, and the next day at school me and Dean signed a kind of pact that we would watch the show for as long as BBC2 cared to show it. What made this extra-special was that this was 'our thing.' No-one else had heard of it, and it defined our friendship. Although the show eventually became massively popular, it still contains sacred bites of my childhood, such as the episode with the luminescant green bugs that are only visible at night - that was truly terrifying. I also owe the X-files the greatest 3 weeks of entertainment of my life - the three-parter involving the underground box cars and the secret mine with "files, lots of files." When was that - 1997? Oh how the years fly by. Things change, and though me and Dean became and stayed the best of friends we eventually stopped watching the show and moved on to better things. I think it became too confusing in the end, and to understand it all you needed to know relevant bytes from every episode. I think it would be better if it could remain as the kooky, edgy show it was in the early years - that's the way it will remain perfect in my memory.

Finding Nemo (2003)

Strangely poignant, strangely haunting, strangely unbalanced

[4 December 2003]

I saw Finding Nemo about four weeks ago (oddly, the British cinema release came seven months after the States, and almost coincided with the US DVD release) but haven't felt inclined to post until rumours began that it was going to be nominated for Best Picture. My initial impressions were: Yeah right. But the more I dwelt on it, the more I thought about my impressions of the film, I realised that it had just a legitimate a claim as something like Seabiscuit. My first impressions weren't fantastic, I must say. The first fifteen minutes or so were rather unsettling - the (SPOILERS) extermination of Marlin's family in the first scene of the film, the slightly tragic and psychological relationship between an overbearing Marlin and his son Nemo, and the slightly restrained depiction of underwater life - danger, we are reminded, is constantly all around - showed us instantly that this is no McDonalds-tied Disney secretion. This is something that director John Lasseter wanted to make into a proper film. This element of darkness and family tragedy is held erratically throughout the film, represented onscreen by Nemo's deformed fin. We have various encounters with nasty sea creatures including a bunch of effette yet unstable sharks, and a soulless killing machine of an Angler fish. The theatre that develops when Nemo is imprisoned in a tank full of fish who are slowly losing their minds is deliciously unpleasant as well. However, Pixar (or whatever forces influenced the script) copped out of making a truly daring work of art by shoehorning in the requisite number of 'Talk to the hand' and 'I love you guys' style jokes which, however much work has obviously gone into them, feel like a clash with Lasseter's vision. Dorey is an excellent sidekick, although I feel the adventures that her and Marlin get into are a series of interchangeable sketches rather that something with an overall meaning. Okay, enough with the dark side - let's praise something. The animation is flawless as always, it's always good to see people pushing the boundaries of what they thought they could do. The jokes are actually funny - Dorey especially is quite a novel comic device, and the voice performances were excellent all round. Somebody definitely had a love for the 'feel' of marine life, the slightly parched and washed out timbers and the ruggedness of the oceangoing fish. It was also pioneering to integrate the fishes' world with the human world; thus the film distances itself from something like The Lion King. Overall, the elements work enough to guarantee at least a four-star rating from any critic without some ongoing Disney vendetta. Pixar so desperately want to break with Disney so they can make the films that they, rather than Disneys' creditors, would like to see made. Yet they would have the same problem as they have here - too wide an audience: fidgeting toddlers to college jocks to knowing parents to film buffs. Pixar need to offend, and they passed up that opportunity in Finding Nemo.

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

Well that wasn't very good.

[3/10 · 6 November 2003]

{SPOILERS}

I think the fairest way of summing up Reloaded is to imagine director Andy Wachowski sitting down in an empty theatre to watch the first running of the completed Revolutions. Two hours pass. The credits roll. Andy thinks "Um ... it was better in my head."

Revolutions disappoints. It doesn't deserve a manic slagging off like some comments are doing, but what is does deserve is a few kicks up the backside for screwing up the chance to create the most memorable movie of the decade. The first cracks appeared as the reverse-gravity fight broke out outside the S+M bar. I remember thinking - Guns. Pillars. Acrobatics. What could be more embarrassing than the Wachowskis ripping off their own movie? Failing at it, that's what. They could have done so much with this scene, but it falls over itself in a heap of gunfire, bodies and techno beats in exactly the opposite way that the pillar fight in the first Matrix succeeded. I've seen video games that exploit bi-directional gravity so much better - anyone remember the mindblowing Aztec levels from Serious Sam?

Then they talk to the Merovingian (sp?) His face is there, his charisma is there, his accent is there, and yet someone seems to have taken his script away. All his delightful wordplay from Reloaded is gone, and he says something along the lines of 'Blah blah I am totally irrelevant in this movie and I think the audience are working this out too. Get me the Oracles' eyes.' Trinity: 'No.' Merovingian: 'Oh sod this, here's Neo, now get out my bar.' Also, I was surprised to see Persephone back by his side. Wasn't this the woman that betrayed you and nearly killed you in Reloaded? At least put her in handcuffs or something. There's plenty of them around. Then we get the embarrassing Mexican standoff which is very silly indeed, and making the people wear Gimp suits didn't exactly highten the drama.

Most of the film concentrates on the battle for Zion. And here's the problem - we don't care. Because the sides are using such silly weaponry and tactics, it's very difficult to take the drama seriously. For example - the mechanical frames that the soldiers strap onto. Who designed them so the cockpit would be left completely open and the pilot completely exposed? And the Sentinel's tactics aren't much better either. They swarm around in these incredibly tight masses. I remember thinking - A simple World War II flak cannon could make a hundred thousand kills in about three minutes against this lot. Of course, movie buffs could counter this argument by saying Well it's Hollywood isn't it and it's all dramatic licence. True, but I'd imagine as the suffering people of Zion scraped the remains of some poor sucker out of his robot suit they'd think We really, really should have put more thought into this. The battle for Zion descends into a sort of rendering exercise for the CGI programs involved.

What really hurts, though, is the ending. Neo makes a deal with the Matrix where he will defeat Smith and the humans will be left in peace. Instantly, the audience thinks - Where's my guarantee? Before long Neo is indeed fighting Smith, and is defeated. Smith says something like 'Surely your social etiquette and whatnot is just as complex and constrictive as the Matrix itself.' That was truly insulting to the audience to suggest what the Matrix trilogy was supposed to be all 'about' in a metaphorical way. Social etiquette?

Anyway, Neo is defeated and Smith tries to assimilate him, but it turns out that Neo is some sort of booby trap and Smith explodes. The film ends with the Architect and the Oracle finalising the truce. That, dear sirs, is when I ran out of patience. So all of the trilogy was just a game played between the A and the O and no-one had any choice or any chance of making a difference. How can I enjoy the first two films again knowing that? Of course war will break out again between the humans and the matrix, as the peace is not what a stable equilibrium, with neither side getting what they want.

Nobody likes to be jerked off and confused like this in a movie, and if you wanted to be clever then sorry Misters Wachowski but you have succeeded in coming across as antisocial and incompetent.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

To be honest, it's the songs that betray this movie.

[31 October 2003]

I'm not sure where this film went wrong. Clearly, it's a labour of love, and clearly there's more going on in each scene than there is the entire screenplay of most films ever made. So why isn't it a classic? I think it's the songs. Irrelevant, tuneless, lumbering and uninspired, they dominate the film's events and detract attention from the otherwise astounding spectacle. Danny Elfman has done some fabulous stuff in his time: Edward Scissorhands, Batman etc. But when his songs were thrown into the spotlight as they were here, they sadly failed on so many levels.

Save the Last Dance (2001)

Hilariously, spectacularly, cringingly bad

[2 January 2002]

Warning : contains spoilers, and damning criticism.

Save the Last Dance had me Save Up my Best Cusswords until I could leave the cinema and scream, partly with laughter and partly with shellshocked disbelief about how bad the film was.

First of all : the plot. A white girl (Julia Stiles) and a black man (Sean Patrick Thomas) develop a relationship. Why does this have to be such an issue? Sure, it's not one that's tackled in cinema very often, but due to a good reason: it's not interesting enough to hold up a film for 110 minutes, unless the acting is superb and the metaphorical/symbolic play is also well integrated. I bet you can guess how well Save the Last Dance accomplishes this. The story is so cliched that I found myself hedging predictions every quarter hour and smiling when they came up. Okay - so Sara has a big dance contest coming up. Oh my! She has suddenly split with her boyfriend the night before. Will she dance badly for the first half, and then will her boyfriend show up and transform the performance to an Olympic gold for the second half? Imagine an entire film full of this standard of storytelling direness and you're coming close.

The acting is about as good as it could be for two B-listers who look as though they are embarrassed to be there and are trying to secure their next role between takes. There is no heartfelt interaction between the leads, and incidentally, doesn't Sean Patrick Thomas look about five years too old for the role?

The moral of the film is cringingly condascending. It seems to be: Drugs are bad kids so don't take drugs, and gangs are bad kids so don't be in gangs. If you want to see a film that actually says something intelligent about a difficult issue watch Traffic. I am reminded of another film which tried to take on this entire black/white/gangs/drugs issue, Dangerous Minds, which also was an unwatchable disaster.

The characters are unintentionally racist. The black characters are Derek, with his criminal background, and his buddy Malakai who wears a big puffy jacket, backwards baseball cap and excessive jewellery, and drives round the 'hood fighting turf wars and pulling off drivebys. Why don't they just call the character Negro Jim and have him live in a wooden shack in Alabama, playing his banjo on the porch and shouting "Woman! Where's ma fried chicken." I'm sorry, but racial stereotyping to this degree is unacceptable in such a modern film. Did anybody else actually feel insulted?

What had me rolling in the aisles with laughter was the final dance scene at the end, where Sara is trying to get into some academy or other. The sequence goes on for a good five minutes and yet is entirely composed of around three hundred tiny, tiny clips about a half second long. Usually they show one arm movement, one leg movement, perhaps a half twirl, etc. I soon realised why it was filmed in this bizarre way - the actress, Julia Stiles, obviously could not dance for toffee (WHY CHOOSE HER FOR A FILM ABOUT DANCING?) and so they had to film the entire sequence in carefully coached one-second takes and laboriously edit it all together so it would play in time to the music. It all gives one flat, unemotive, lacklustre dance routine. May I remind you that the dance sequences were supposed to be the selling point of this film.

The other selling point is meant to be the soundtrack. I'm not going to quote the entire 'Why You Shouldn't Have Contemporary Hits In Films' macro but I will ask this: When was the last time a chart hit enhanced a film? I like to keep my music and my film separate. I also like to keep my face and my vomit bag separate, which is why I give this film two stars out of ten (at least it's short) and give it my Least Recommended Film of 2000 trophy.