Monthly Archives: December 2008

The Blues Brothers (1980)

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2008 #99
John Landis | 142 mins | DVD | 15 / R

The Blues BrothersCult comedy musical, with a more-than-healthy dose of the surreal, about two brothers on a mission from God, here watched in the extended DVD version (full details at IMDb). Maybe this is why it takes a while to get going — the first hour or so could do with a kick up the proverbial — and has a tendency to sprawl like an unruly first draft.

On the other hand, its insistence at being random, crazy, and incessantly silly throughout is beautifully anarchic. There’s an array of fabulous cameos — Ray Charles! Aretha Franklin! and Carrie Fisher, feeding the anarchy with her ludicrous attempts to kill one of the titular pair. While there were fewer songs than I’d expected, they’re all classics rewarded with infectiously fun performances. Then there’s the climactic car chase, which surely challenges many more serious examples for pure excitement value.

And any film which sees Neo-Nazis jump into a river to avoid being run over has to be good.

4 out of 5

The Blues Brothers is on ITV4 tonight, Friday 26th September 2014, at 11:35pm.

(Originally posted on 24th January 2009.)

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

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2008 #94
David R. Ellis | 101 mins | DVD | 15 / R

Snakes on a PlaneYou don’t get much more high-concept than “snakes on a plane”, a mission statement of a title if ever there was one. It certainly captured the imagination of online geekdom, who knew everything they wanted just from those four words and famously launched a viral marketing campaign for a film they’d not seen. Ultimately, it’s for that reason it will be remembered, because without the evocative title and the reaction it provoked this would be forgotten quicker than Samuel L. Jackson can utter his Oedipal expletive-laden catchphrase.

The best thing one can say about Snakes… is that it lives up to its B-movie title. Once it gets going it throws lots of gory fun at the audience, like a snake in a microwave, or entirely gratuitous shots of people trampled in panic (which sounds distasteful, but in the context of the film is more amusingly squelchy). It even manages the horror movie’s obligatory gratuitous sex/nudity — courtesy of the Mile High Club, naturally. That’s not to mention the plot, in which a gang release snakes onto a plane (did you guess?) in order to kill an FBI-escorted witness. As assassination plans go, it may just be the barmiest ever, and delightfully so.

However, the plan is flawed — in storytelling terms at least — because snakes don’t actually do much. They drop from ceilings, they slither, they bite… and then you’re pretty much done. When the legless beasties eventually turn up it’s quite good… for a couple of minutes. But a couple of minutes do not a feature film make, so every length-inflating trick is whipped out to boost the running time. The first crime is an irritatingly long opening: a seemingly endless preamble reveals what crime the witness witnessed, why he’s being transported, and how villainous the villain is — but all the average audience member wants is to get on that plane!

But when they finally board there’s a series of establishing scenes to get through. There’s even a full version of the safety demonstration — no one likes the safety demo normally, never mind in a film! This bit at least serves to introduce an array of characters ready to be killed, but as few of their stories go anywhere most should have remained faceless victims. These scenes on the plane feel like the opening, and may have been less interminable if they weren’t preceded by all that needless preamble. It’s especially pointless because, by the time the plane inevitably lands, the makers seem to have forgotten they introduced a villain in the first place.

In between, those snake ideas (drop! slither! bite!) run their course sharpish, so the viewer is treated to an array of stock Plane Disaster Movie scenarios. An investigation on the ground! Something needs fixing in the hold! A non-pilot has to land the plane! Chopping 10 to 20 minutes wouldn’t hurt any — it should be short and efficient — or, instead, putting the same screen time to better use by bringing a resolution to the villain. Normally the plane landing would be a perfect point to end — you want snake-based slaughter, and then you want out — but after the persistence in setting other stories in motion those really ought to be finished.

Snakes on a Plane is as much of a B-movie as the title implies. This seems to be what disappointed some when it was finally released, yet at the same time is clearly the vibe the makers were going for all along. Perhaps a greater problem is that it still sounds like such a good — snakes released on a plane to kill someone? That’s utterly loopy! It should be crazy and great! But it’s treated with too much seriousness, as if the makers are struggling to convince us this is actually a plausible notion in the real world — which it patently isn’t.

Nowhere near bad enough for the infamous “so bad it’s good” classification, nor good enough to rise up on genuine merits, it is instead largely unremarkable though passably entertaining. Perhaps it should’ve been left as just a title.

3 out of 5

Channel 4 are premiering Snakes on a Plane tonight at 10pm (hence why it rises above the eight other still-unreviewed films from 2008 today).

(Originally posted on 17th January 2009.)

Swing Time (1936)

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2008 #100
George Stevens | 99 mins | TV | U

Swing TimeSwing Time is, I’m told, widely hailed as the greatest of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pictures. The plot isn’t especially captivating, one of the stock variations on “boy meets girl” that still serve rom–coms to this day, but that’s not the main reason these films are so loved.

That, of course, is the song and (especially) dance numbers. I can’t say I recall any of the songs now, but the dances are suitably impressive. Particularly memorable is an early number where, after Astaire accidentally gets Rogers’ dance teacher character fired, he shows the proprietor how much she’s taught him in the last ten minutes, winning her job back. Trust me, that makes far more sense on screen than in that pathetic explanation. Elsewhere, Astaire blacks up for a dance to Bojangles of Harlem. These days one might wonder why he had to black up, or consider the concept faintly racist, but clearly it was acceptable for the time and in no way detracts from the skill on display.

One interesting note is some story similarities to Sideways — yes, Sideways, the recent Oscar-winning indie comedy about love and wine tasting. Whether Swing Time had any influence on that (made almost 70 years later), or it’s just a huge coincidence, I don’t know, but there are several reminiscent moments throughout the engaged-man-and-buddy-find-love-in-far-off-location-(then-accidentally-let-truth-slip) plot.

I haven’t seen enough Astaire/Rogers films to declare whether this is their best or not, though personally I preferred Top Hat. In the same way the plot of some action films doesn’t matter one iota so long as the fights are good, so the story here is irrelevant beside the quality of the dancing — and that, at least, is exemplary.

4 out of 5

(Originally posted on 9th January 2009.)

A final push…!

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So today is the final day of 2008, and so the final day of this blog’s second year. And have I made it to 100?

Not yet.

A quick look at the coming soon page reveals I’m up to #97 — only three films to go, with 24 hours left. I didn’t think that would be the case: as little as 10 days ago I’d given up on making 100, thinking to hit even 90 would be an achievement. But with a bit of motivation I’ve nearly done it at the final hurdle (which I think is an incorrect reversed metaphor, or something).

December’s turned out to be pretty good throughout, actually. While I may’ve managed just 7.4 films a month (on average, obviously) in the year’s first 11 months, I’ve already watched 16 in the last 30 days — and that’ll be 19 if all goes well. If I could keep that up all year round I’d be closer to 250 Films in a Year! (Don’t worry, I’m not crazy — next year’s aim is still just 100.)

Additionally, this year’s In Retrospect and Full List (for last year’s see here and here) will now appear by 4th January, all being well, which gives me time to factor in the final few films.

24 hours, three films. Sounds easier than it is, I’m sure.

2008’s summary posts will be republished in November.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

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2008 #92
John Lounsbery & Wolfgang Reitherman | 71 mins | DVD | U / G

The Many Adventures of Winnie the PoohHaving finished 2007 with Piglet’s Big Movie, it feels somewhat appropriate to round off 2008 (almost) with Disney’s first Winnie-the-Pooh feature.

The Many Adventures… is actually compiled from three shorts made in 1966, 1968 and 1974, with some new linking material. I don’t know if these shorts were produced with any great expense, but there’s occasional evidence of what looks like cheap animation. It’s not that it’s not smooth or fluid, but rather the attentive viewer will often spot sketch marks around some lines, or flashes of other bits not properly erased. Perhaps it was deliberate, considering the sketchy style of the backgrounds, designed to evoke the original illustrations, but I sometimes found it distracting.

This is one relatively minor flaw in an otherwise brilliant adaptation, however. The film faithfully adapts several of the original stories, acknowledging its sources by frequently showing the action as illustrations within a copy of the book. This fourth-wall-breaking move may irritate some, but personally I loved seeing Pooh and co have to leap from page to page, or tipping the book sideways to free Tigger from a tree. Such moves seem tonally in keeping with A.A. Milne’s original stories and, even though some tales are abridged and some good ones left out, that spirit is always retained.

The characterisation is also spot on, producing an array of cute and loveable creations, none more so than Pooh himself. The gopher is an unnecessary addition, though the running joke about him not being in the book is very nicely done. And one can’t fail to mention the excellent songs, now as linked to the world of Pooh as anything from the original books — especially Tigger’s little tune, surely familiar to anyone who was a child in the last 30 years.

If some later Disney ventures have lost sight of the correct spirit for Pooh’s adventures, at least this original is a great adaptation. Bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, and, above all, fun fun fun fun fun.

5 out of 5

Wallace and Gromit in A Matter of Loaf and Death (2008)

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2008 #88a
Nick Park | 29 mins | TV | PG

Wallace and Gromit are phenomenally popular, as proven this Christmas Day when their latest adventure became the most-watched programme on British TV for three years (and that was just the overnights — ratings will rise when official figures are released in a couple of weeks). Not only that, but the TV premiere of their big screen adventure also made the Christmas Day top ten, a not insignificant feat. Popularity does not necessarily mean quality, of course, and in this case such figures come on the back of three popular shorts and a successful feature film. They were all extremely good too and, luckily, A Matter of Loaf and Death doesn’t let the batch down. (I feel there should be a better baking pun there…)

As ever it’s packed with inventive humour, both visual and verbal, and Gromit remains one of the finest silent comedy characters ever created. The amount of emotion and story that can be conveyed with a lump of plasticine is tribute to the abilities of Park and his team of animators. The rest of the creation is top notch too, not just in terms of impressive craft on characters and sets, but also in the use of lighting and camera angles to evoke other films while not losing the series’ individuality. If anyone still thinks stop motion is about a locked-off camera at a flat angle they are sorely mistaken.

Film fans will also delight in a slew of movie references, from a poster for Citizen Canine to an Aliens-inspired climax, and numerous even subtler ones in between. This is a feast that will undoubtedly reward seconds — and more.

If there’s one problem it’s that it’s too short. I don’t mean that in the usual “I just want more” way, but literally that it could perhaps do with being longer. There’s easily a feature-length story here, meaning it feels a little abridged as a half-hour short. It’s not rushed, thankfully, just not played out as effectively as it could be with double the running time.

The last three Wallace & Gromit adventures have each won Park an Oscar (and the first only lost out to Park’s own Creature Comforts). Will this bring the series’ fourth? It would certainly be deserved.

5 out of 5

The Aristocrats (2005)

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2008 #87
Paul Provenza | 85 mins | TV | 18

The AristocratsIt’s not unusual for films showing on TV to be prefaced with content warnings about language, sex or violence, but I don’t think I’ve ever previously seen one that feels the need to place such a warning after every single ad break. But if there’s one film that needs that treatment — or, rather, one film they could actually show on TV that needs that treatment — it’s The Aristocrats.

The Aristocrats is, apparently, an incredibly famous joke, well known to all comedians — and, generally, only told to each other, not to audiences — that is flexible enough for anyone to tell in their own way and still have it work. It’s also incredibly vulgar; in fact, the point is often to make it as vulgar as humanly possible. To explain much more would ruin the point of the film, which aims to expose and explain this cultish joke to the masses. Personally I’ve never heard of the thing, and for all I know The Aristocrats could be an elaborate Blair Witch-esque hoax — “oh yeah, all comedians know it”. Note this: the only people you’ll see throughout are comedians, and they all seem to know each other too.

Subject matter aside, there’s not much of a structure to the material presented. Mostly compiled from dozens of interviews, the resultant piece is a jumbled mix of comedians telling their version of the joke, comedians explaining variations on it (those whose telling completely changes it are the ones who succeed), comedians explaining why it’s funny, comedians explaining how it works, comedians explaining how and why it varies, comedians musing on the differences between male and female tellings of the joke…

On the other hand, even though there is a degree of repetition, there’s also a surprising amount to say about it — even by the end, when yet another comedian launching into their version has you reaching for the remote, there’s often another little titbit around the corner. In other notes: for British viewers, the biggest and most widely known names — Billy Connolly, Eddie Izzard — barely feature; for everyone, it features one of the worst ventriloquists I’ve ever seen; and a mime artist who singlehandedly makes the entire thing worthwhile.

The biggest problem with The Aristocrats — the film, not the joke — is quite a simple one: it’s about a single joke. Even the most meandering comedians tell several of those in an hour and a half. To compound the issue, said joke can vary so much as to defy a lot of comedy-killing “why’s it funny?” analysis. What you’re left with is repetitive retellings of a joke that, to be blunt, is rarely funny whatever you shove in the middle. It’s an insider’s film about an insider’s joke; for the rest of us, it rather over eggs the point.

3 out of 5

Madagascar (2005)

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2008 #89
Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath | 82 mins | TV | U / PG

MadagascarIt had been my impression that this summer’s sequel, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, was a weaker follow-up to a middling original. Clearly I was reading the wrong review, because Rotten Tomatoes offers a different consensus: “an improvement on the original, with more fleshed-out characters, crisper animation and more consistent humor.” Oh. So what of the original?

The characters may not offer great depth, but they serve their purpose well enough. The plot focuses on Marty the zebra, voiced by Chris Rock, who wants to escape to the wild, and Alex the lion, voiced by Ben Stiller, who doesn’t — but doesn’t have a choice when they’re whisked off half-an-hour in. This might leave David Schwimmer’s giraffe Melman and Jada Pinkett Smith’s hippo Gloria with little to do but support, but in an 80-minute kids’ animation you can’t expect an Altman-esque portmanteau.

The animation is better than I expected. At the time, the angular style looked cheap, like a step back from the realism-aiming work of Pixar and the Shrek team. It’s just stylised however, still allowing plenty of expression in characters’ faces and detail in their movements and the locations. It’s not a exceptional example of how brilliant computer animated films can be (unquestionably Pixar’s forte, especially in the likes of Ratatouille and WALL-E’s earlier scenes), but it’s better than some sparse and clunky efforts (such as Aardman’s Flushed Away).

Equally, the humour is above average. Large laughs may be sporadic but are there, particularly in a few moments that nicely spoof other films. Standouts include Planet of the Apes and American Beauty — clearly aimed at the adult audience who have been dragged along by the kids, have come expecting Pixar-level entertainment, or want to see what Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen can be doing in a family film. Plus there’s the penguins, a little band of wannabe escapees who thankfully aren’t overused, especially as the last few years have seen a severe overload of penguin movies (March of the Penguins, Happy Feet, Surf’s Up…) If there’s one element that could’ve been bumped up it’s the monkeys; on the other hand, like the penguins, they’re not done to death.

Madagascar doesn’t reach the highs of Pixar — no surprise there — but it’s at least nudging the ballpark. If the sequel’s better then I might even seek it out before it makes it all the way down to TV.*

4 out of 5

* I never did; and now it’s been on TV (several times), I still haven’t. ^

Enchanted (2007)

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2008 #80
Kevin Lima | 103 mins | DVD | PG / PG

EnchantedYou’ve probably heard about Enchanted: it’s the one that starts out as a traditionally animated Disney film, before The Normal Girl Who Will Marry A Prince is thrown into a Magic Portal by The Evil Stepmother and finds herself in present-day New York. It’s one of those concepts so good it just makes you think, “why haven’t they thought of that before?”

Thankfully, they pull it off. It’s very funny, riffing on many recognisable elements from Disney’s considerable library of classics, and manages to produce a number of catchy songs of its own. Amy Adams is brilliant in the lead role, managing to be infectiously sweet rather than sickeningly sugary, while Susan Sarandon has a whale of a time in her boundlessly camp (though disappointingly small) role. The rest of the cast are good too, especially a wonderfully vacant James Marsden as The Prince.

The plot is ultimately predictable, but no more than you’d expect considering the target audience — certainly, kids will likely go through all the requisite emotions, and it would probably be more disappointing if they did try anything truly shocking. Still, it’s crammed with more than enough fun invention and new ideas to make up for any unsurprising plot beats.

Quite simply, Enchanted is a fantastic concept, beautifully executed. A veritable success.

4 out of 5

Ultimate Avengers II (2006)

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aka Ultimate Avengers 2: Rise of the Panther

2008 #83
Will Meugniot & Richard Sebast | 70 mins | DVD | 12 / PG-13

Ultimate Avengers IISome things in life baffle me. Form dictates I now list a couple of humorous examples, but we’ll skip that and get to the point: why would you make a direct-to-DVD movie that has a subtitle on the box but not on the film itself? I can understand why titles get tweaked on cinema-release posters and/or subsequent DVD releases — for marketing purposes, say; or clarity — but why, when your title is going direct to the DVD stage, do the titles not match? And why does the box add the subtitle rather than remove it for on-shelf simplicity? I have no answers — it baffles me, remember — but this is the sort of thing I sometimes muse about. The sort of thing that most other people don’t even notice, never mind care about.

Insignificant title issues aside, the fact that (as of writing) 2,365 people have bothered to rate the first Ultimate Avengers on IMDb, while only 1,325 have bothered to rate this second, suggests many were so disappointed by the initial film they didn’t bother with the sequel. Which is something of a shame, because it’s a lot better. Problematically, it’s heavily grounded in the first, picking up several threads that were left hanging — enough so as to make that weak franchise opener required viewing, sadly.

Why’s it better? We’ll get the obvious out of the way: yes, it’s a modern genre sequel, so yes, it’s ‘darker’. In this case that means “more adult”, touching on issues you might not expect in superhero animation with such a low certificate — marital problems, survivor’s guilt, political isolationism, even vague allusions to alcoholism. None are dealt with in any great depth I should add, but it will likely please adult fans wishing for something more “grown-up”. There’s also a greater amount of violence, though much of it is implied, or just off screen, or against bug-like aliens. The animation still isn’t great, though at times seems improved. Equally, while both script and story are better — there’s no pace issue this time — there’s still plenty of clanging dialogue, and the adult subplots aren’t exactly subtly executed.

The climax also has its share of flaws. While most of the story is nicely balanced, it’s over-efficient in wrapping up, in the way that only animation seems allowed to be — for whatever reason, this exact story would comfortably fill a two-hour live-action version. The worst effect of this is that some points aren’t treated with their deserved weight — the death of a major character is so hasty and glossed over that I didn’t even realise it had happened until a brief shot of a memorial in the closing scene. On a less pressing note, the giant alien robots of the final battle leave the film just one leg (per robot) away from becoming a total War of the Worlds rip-off. But this tale is of American origin, so the aliens are defeated not by a clever plot twist, but by brute force.

Despite my attention to the film’s weak points there’s actually plenty to enjoy here, provided animated superhero movies are your thing. There’s more action than the first instalment, a more interesting story, more character development… Even if it’s done at quite a basic level it’s still adequately entertaining, enough that you might wish there was a third. An improvement then, if still flawed, but — ultimately — enjoyable.

4 out of 5

For my review of the first Ultimate Avengers, please look here. Live-action sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron is in UK cinemas from this Thursday, 23rd April 2015.