Chicken Little (2005)

Posted on April 13, 2014 by badblokebob

The director of Disney’s woeful The Emperor’s New Groove re-tells the well-known centuries-old folk take about a chicken who became a middle school baseball champ before foiling an alien invasion.

This was Disney’s first foray into computer animation in their main movie canon, in the wake of Home on the Range’s failure and Pixar and DreamWork’s CG success. It merely proves the fault was not with their traditional animation, but with their storytellers.

Occasional bright spots of humour are the only relief in this cheap-looking childish ‘adventure’, only notable as the “first film released in Real D’s digital 3D format”.

The UK network TV premiere of Chicken Little is on Channel 5 at 3:25pm.

It featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2014, which can be read in full here.

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long.

The Box (2009)

Posted on April 8, 2014 by badblokebob

The writer-director of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales applies that same schtick to a combined adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story Button, Button (previously adapted into an ’80s Twilight Zone episode), and the life story of his parents.

It’s almost Christmas, 1976, when a mysterious package is left on the doorstep of teacher Norma (Cameron Diaz) and her NASA employee husband Arthur (James Marsden). It contains a box with a button, and that afternoon Arlington Steward (Frank Langella, with a chunk of his face missing thanks to CGI) visits to explain what it means: if they press the button, someone they don’t know will die, and Norma and Arthur will receive $1 million cash; or they can not press it, and nothing happens. They have just 24 hours to decide.

It’s an intriguing “what would you do?” premise, which Matheson apparently lifted from a psychology class discussion scenario. I believe that’s about the extent of the short story too, which is all of six pages long — not exactly feature-length. Kelly has bulked it up by expanding the characters, who are now based on his parents to an almost freakish degree, and a massive back-end extension (the short story accounts for 30 to 40 minutes of the two-hour film) that heads deep into the same “what the…?” territory that he mined in his previous directorial efforts.

In the case of the former, Kelly’s dad really did work at NASA, his mum really was a teacher, and she really did have a foot disability, for which Mr Kelly Sr. and his NASA chums really did engineer a kind of prosthetic to help her resultant limp. What a nice tribute to his supportive parents and their devotion to one another, eh? At the start, perhaps, but by the end of the film you may be wondering what the writer-director’s subconscious wants to do to his ma and pa…

As for what that plot entails… I shan’t spoil it. Suffice to say it’s better explained than the ending of Donnie Darko and infinitely more comprehensible than Southland Tales, even though mysteries and questions remain. That’s fine in my book (I loved Donnie Darko), but the story that leads to said inconclusions isn’t all that. To boil it down, it takes a story that was fine at its short length, and attempts to add all kinds of explanations and expansions that just feel needless. It’s B-movie schlocky.

In fact, The Box is at its best when it almost embraces that genre side. There are some fantastically creepy sequences; genuinely discomforting lo-fi scares. They’re not inherently undermined by the plodding dramatic sections or the kooky sci-fi wobbly bits (or even the bizarre, oddly dated, slightly uncomfortable thematic reading suggested by who always presses the button), but they leave the unnerving parts to function as isolated instances of quality horror moviemaking rather than a consistent mood or tone.

What could function well as an indie-level thriller is further undermined by abundant, therefore costly, CGI. Whether that’s Langella’s facial disfigurement (what could’ve been make-up is actually a complex array of tracking dots, green face-paint, motion-control cameras, and so on; all used merely to place him in simple dialogue scenes), or wide shots of ’70s Virginia, with a computer-adjusted skyline, computer-animated cars, and computer-painted snow. It’s not that the effects work is poor (though don’t look too closely at those cars), but that it screams “this must be special effects!” when you don’t want such distractions.

For all that can actually be ignored, Diaz’s performance sadly can’t be missed. On the evidence of this, she should stick to the lowest-common-denominator comedies and comedy-action movies that made her the one-time highest-paid Hollywood actress (she may still be for all I know, but films like this aren’t the reason why). Maybe it’s not her fault, maybe it’s the inconsistent and inexplicable Southern accent she’s been landed with. The only reason for it is that Kelly’s mother has one, but the only favour it does Diaz is as an excuse for her generally poor acting. At least the rest of the cast are up to scratch — in fact Marsden, who I can only recall as stick-in-the-mud Cyclops in the first three X-Men movies, is practically a revelation.

The Box should have been a film we all discussed for years to come, its “what would you do”-ness providing an Indecent Proposal for the 21st Century (as other reviewers have suggested). Sadly the water is muddied by a series of crazy twists and out-there revelations, which sometimes pay off in atmospheric individual sequences, but overall feel… wrong. With Donnie Darko Kelly showed an overabundance of promise. He’s still not fulfilled it, but does present moments of brilliance that suggest we shouldn’t give up hope yet, and which render The Box at least watchable. For that, my score errs on the side of generosity.

The UK TV premiere of The Box is tonight at 11:20pm on BBC One.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Posted on April 7, 2014 by badblokebob

The Desolation of Smowg-not-Smorg begins in the same way the preceding part of the Hobbit trilogy ended: with a glaring logic hole. After the giant eagles carried our band of heroes many miles away from the party of orcs that have been stalking them — but not all the way to Erebor because… um… — we begin Part 2 with our heroes being chased by… that party of orcs that had been stalking them. You what now?

Unfortunately this is a sign of what’s to come: the ensuing 160 minutes (shorter than An Unexpected Journey, but feeling far longer) are littered with odd and borderline-nonsensical decisions. Thus we have a film that skips briskly past some parts of the novel it’s adapting, but later throws in massive new subplots all of its own. Unlike some audience members, I don’t have a problem with the very idea of Jackson embellishing this tale in its telling, but rushing parts of Tolkien only to find room for new asides strikes me as an odd choice.

And there is an awful lot of stuff in the film. If the first instalment was indulgent in setting up the adventure we were about to embark on, this middle part is restless to the point of distraction. It buffets us from action sequence to action sequence with barely a chance to catch our breath. Rather than making time fly, however, this has the unfortunate side effect of making everything feel much longer than it actually is. However, I accept that this may be “Two Towers syndrome”: a film that left me clock-watching the first couple of times, but which I eventually came to accept and enjoy on its own merits.

It’s my understanding that the originally-planned (and shot) two-part version of Jackson’s Hobbit adaptation was transformed into a trilogy by, essentially, taking what was to be film #2 and splitting it in half. That might explain why individual sections are allowed to go on so long here: to bulk up the running time to the kind of epic proportions audiences expect from a Middle-earth movie. Anything less than two-and-a-half hours isn’t going to cut it. But when your climax is a battle between a giant dragon (cool!) and a small army of dwarves (kick ass!) around a deserted underground city (hell yeah!), but my main thought afterwards is, “God that went on a bit”, then you’ve failed at something.

The other headline action scene is the dwarves’ river-based escape from an elf city, pursued by both elves and orcs, who fight each other over and around the river even as they chase our heroes. It’s a visual cacophony; a whirling dervish of elements that becomes hard to follow, much less enjoy. We’ve come a long way from the grounded realism of Helm’s Deep — this is full-on, cartoon-style, obviously-computer-generated bluster. This extends right to the climax: while most of the dwarves are having a runaround with Smowg-not-Smorg, Legolas fights some orcs — well, quite a few orcs; which is rather my point: it gets numbingly repetitive. Less can definitely be more, a lesson the filmmakers must have forgotten by this point.

The already hefty cast is padded out further here, several of the additions battling against strange new accents, particularly Evangeline Lilly’s elf warrior(ess) Tauriel, though at least Lee Pace’s elven king is supposed to be haughty. Meanwhile, Luke Evans’ Bard is as Welsh as the actor’s name suggests, which is a little bit of a surprise. But then the dwarves’ accents have all the rest of the UK covered, so why not. Benedict Cumberbatch sounds like Benedict Cumberbatch playing ‘big’ as Smowg-not-Smorg. It feels like this should be an iconic villain performance but, while good, I found it somehow lacking. Expectation may be scuppering him; maybe I’ll warm to it on future viewings.

Yet for all that, the most surprising thing, at least to anyone not versed in the original story, is where the film ends. Clearly there’s more tale to get through, but not two-and-a-half-hours’ worth, surely? Co-screenwriter Philippa Boyens has said she “got a shock when the audience got a shock” about where this part ended, adding that “if you can imagine what transpires next and what’s coming, it’s quite a huge chunk of storytelling.” I’ll take her word for it for now.

One thing you can’t fault these films on is their production design and the craft in bringing it to life. During production the studios were a 24/7 operation, dismantling, building and re-arranging sets overnight to be ready for the next day’s shooting; while the prosthetics department had to work continuously, and at a 98% success rate too, just to keep up with demand. I suppose that’s what happens when every actor in a large ensemble cast has at least some small thing stuck on them. As with Lord of the Rings before it, this is a fully-realised world, with Laketown being perhaps the most impressive setting… but then maybe that’s because I know they essentially built it for real, and I alway feel that’s more impressive than rendering a ginormous hall in a computer.

I haven’t picked apart everything that’s wrong with the film (what purpose is there switching from one made-up-for-the-film orc general to another?!), but then nor have I praised everything that works (there are some quality actors in amongst all that crashing and banging). It seems a fair few people liked this Hobbit instalment more than the first; the best explanation I can find is, “because it’s got more action”. Far be it from me to accuse other film viewers of being shallow, but… really? I genuinely enjoyed An Unexpected Journey as a return to the beloved realms and peoples of Middle-earth. The Desolation of Smowg-not-Smaug has some of that, and the charm of introducing us to new parts of the world too, but it’s drowned out by so much aimless noise. Here’s hoping it improves with repeat viewings and/or the inevitable extended edition, because this time I nearly slipped down to a lowly 3 stars.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK today, Monday 7th April, and in the US tomorrow.

My review of the Extended Edition can now be read here.

The concluding film, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is in cinemas from December 12th in the UK, December 17th in the US, and a whole host of random dates everywhere else.

The Next Three Days (2010)

Posted on April 6, 2014 by badblokebob

If someone you loved was locked up for decades for a crime you were sure they didn’t commit, how far would you go to get them out? That’s the premise of this methodical thriller from writer-director Paul Haggis (of Crash, of course), based on the French film Pour Elle.

Those with even a very basic grasp of French (like me) may spot that translates literally as “For Her” (though the English releases call it Anything for Her), which is why Russell Crowe does what he does: his middle-class idyll is shattered one day when police storm into his house and violently arrest his wife (Elizabeth Banks), in front of their small child, for the murder of the boss she argued with the night before. (This, incidentally, is the least plausible part of the entire movie — there’s no need for the police to storm the house like that, and in real life they wouldn’t. Well, American police might, I suppose. But I still don’t believe it.) The evidence is stacked against her, and her explanations for it sound a little far-fetched. She’s convicted, sent down… and when all legal means of appeal are exhausted, Crowe sets about planning a prison break.

This setup is, in my opinion, a really good one — though I feel kind of biased as the basics have crossed my mind as a good basis for a plot long before this or Pour Elle existed. Thing is, it’s inherently quite a daft concept: prisons are (rightfully) incredibly secure places — no ordinary Joe is breaking anyone out of there in a couple of weeks. By rights, a film of this ilk should probably be a Taken-esque slightly-OTT action-thriller, with a protagonist who either already has a “particular set of skills” or implausibly learns them (maybe over a longer period of time) before putting in motion their crazy scheme.

Haggis’ film is a mix of that, in its final act, and an attempt at depicting a serious, plausible, realistic version of what might happen if a regular, intelligent guy set his mind to such a task. Except it’s not really plausible that he’d get very far. Nonetheless, the film takes its time going through the motions of how Crowe might learn and practice the skills required, fund the enterprise, formulate his plan… Some have described this as dull, but I think it actually works. It’s a different kind of film to a pacey prison-break actioner, but if you were crazy enough to try this in the real world, of course you’d start by looking up “how to” articles online, by finding the authors of “how I escaped” books, by trying to buy a gun on the black market and messing it up, and so on.

According to Haggis, the French film is actually quite American-styled, a fast-paced thriller, which he chose to expand out. I’ve not seen the original so can’t say how he’s done that, but the implication is that the detail of the planning, and of the characters’ regular lives, has received more attention. A subplot with Olivia Wilde is a pointless aside that only explains itself once it throws a spanner in the works during the climax, but the scenes with Crowe’s parents pay off thanks to an excellent near-wordless supporting turn from Brian Dennehy. Best thing in the film, easily.

Running him a close second is the all-action final half hour or so, when Crowe (spoilers! but not really!) finally stages the actual escape. It’s a long time coming, but we’re paid off with a pretty fantastic long-form action sequence. There’s genuine tension about whether they’ll pull it off or not, and along the way we’re treated to a few nice flourishes in his plan. There’s a fair degree of silliness still, though, so at least that’s in-keeping with the rest of the movie.

Thing is, for all my love for the idea, it’s ultimately quite a silly concept. As much as we might dream of rescuing our innocent loved one from a life of torment behind bars, if it came to pass in reality, the vast majority of people would immediately realise it was an impossible dream. By trying to treat it plausibly, The Next Three Days is on a hiding to nothing — for all the realism of how Crowe begins his research and planning, there’s the downside that this slow-paced plausibility turns some viewers off; and when we do get the eventual escape, it’s an “in movie’s only” adrenaline-provoker that said viewers wanted all along. The film pretty much can’t win.

Finally, there’s an attempt to keep uncertain the truth about Banks’ culpability. Haggis never wanted that question to be answered — Crowe believes she’s innocent, even when she confesses to his face, and that’s what matters. I don’t think Haggis is a filmmaker who can resist answers, however, and for all his assertions that her innocence/guilt is left ambiguous, by the end I think you can be pretty darned certain which it is… which kinda makes all the previous attempts to leave it open feel hollow, especially the ones that side with the untrue.

The Next Three Days ends up as a solid thriller, with a methodical pace that will kill some viewers’ interest, but which conversely provides a depiction of detail that will hold the attention of anyone who’s ever pondered what they’d do in such a situation. The finale is largely worth the wait, at least, even if everyone will wish Haggis had skipped over a few longueurs while getting there.

The Next Three Days is on Channel 5 tonight at 10pm.

Trance (2013)

Posted on April 4, 2014 by badblokebob

Ambiguous endings used to be anathema to film audiences. They wanted things tied up in a pretty little bow, thank you very much; all the conflicts resolved and all their questions answered. Then the likes of Mulholland Drive and Donnie Darko came along and made vague join-the-dots-yourself endings fashionable — to the point where I’ve read several reviews of Trance that criticise it for having a final act that answers too many questions and clears things up too thoroughly. There’s no pleasing the masses, is there.

In fairness, people perhaps had a right to expect a head-scratcher. The plot description sounds like one: following an art heist, the guy who took and hid the painting (James McAvoy) has amnesia, so his gang’s leader (Vincent Cassel) takes him to a hypnotherapist (Rosario Dawson) to try to dig its location out of his subconscious. Cue a mindbending blend of what’s real and what’s hypnotically induced, right? Kinda like an art house Inception. Mix that with the fact this is an indie-scaled production (though it’s released by 20th Century Fox and Pathe), from a director known to push boundaries, with a choppily-edited self-consciously-confusing trailer, and the bizarre “this isn’t for you, multiplex-goer” poster, and you can see why people expected something that was left-field to the bitter end.

In the Blu-ray’s special features, Boyle comments that “it’s more classical than you might expect.” He’s talking specifically about the cinematography (and he’s right, but more on that later), but he could equally be talking about the entire movie. Though it has a storyline that blurs the line between what’s actually happening and what’s happening inside a character’s head (or is that characters’ heads?), the overall tone and style — particularly of the climax — is actually quite Hollywood. It’s Hollywood jazzed up with storytelling trickery, a quirky score, dashes of extreme gore and surprising nudity (that it’s not an 18 is somewhat surprising); but underneath all that it’s not a million miles away from your run-of-the-mill thriller.

That said, there’s nothing wrong with taking something standard and dressing it up all fancy-like. The film I often cite as my favourite ever, Se7en, is actually a bog standard police thriller when stripped to its storyline’s base elements, but the skill applied to it by filmmakers like David Fincher, Andrew Kevin Walker and Darius Khondji — not to mention the cast! — puts it on another level.

Trance is a tricksier film than that, though. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be, but that’s assuming you only want a film to be about its story. Here, it’s also about the games that are played in telling the story. As Dawson tries to access McAvoy’s memories through a kind of guided meditation, the film switches between the real world, the ‘dream’ world, and the character’s memories at will. Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle made a conscious decision not to denote these different states in any way — there’s no switching to black and white for dreams, for instance; nothing to definitively tell you which state you’re in. And this is a good thing, because when you need to know you can tell, and the rest of the time… well, the film’s playing with you. That’s the point. What is real and what is a scenario McAvoy’s being talked through? Are these memories what happened or the product of an addled mind?

It’s a complex experience that demands your brain power to navigate it successfully. Even when answers come, there are bits you might need to retrospectively piece together for yourself. There’s nothing wrong with a mystery film that answers its own mysteries, and I don’t think Trance disappoints in what those revelations are. Are they predictable? Everything’s predictable, if you predicted the right thing. Do you have to re-watch it to make sense of everything, or confirm it all for yourself? Not especially — it’s not The Sixth Sense, but I imagine there’d be value in watching it again knowing what every character is really up to.

That’s a credit to the actors as well as the filmmakers, incidentally. McAvoy and Dawson in particular give strong performances. The screenplay plays with our affections and opinions of them (and the other characters — no disrespect to third lead Cassel, who is also very good), but there’s a consistency to their portrayals, and an array of subtleties that are only properly revealed once we know everything, that is testament to a well-considered approach to the entire performance, as opposed to simply playing scenes in the way they seem to the first-time viewer.

Dod Mantle’s cinematography is also strikingly handsome. As noted, the film’s buzz had me expecting something akin to late-career Tony Scott, all jumpy and weirdly saturated and fragmented. Instead, as Boyle said, it’s actually very classical, but with a great eye. There are a number of shots which would look fabulous framed and hung on the wall, not least of the street outside Dawson’s flat at night, a restaurant next to intersecting train lines, and aerial photography of red-lit nighttime motorway junctions, looking like some kind of Rorschach test-esque psychiatrist’s tool.

By asking you to keep up through a plot and storytelling style that is deliberately twisty and confusing, but then giving you some pretty clear answers at the end, Trance seems to have pissed off a lot of people. Not so me. It’s an entertaining thrill ride and an intriguing psychological mystery wrapped up in one, provided you take it on its own terms.

Trance comes to Sky Movies Premiere from today at 9:35am and 9pm, and is also freshly available on demand through Sky Movies and Now TV.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Extended Edition (2012/2013)

Posted on April 2, 2014 by badblokebob

Few would deny that Peter Jackson’s extended versions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy are the definitive cuts of those films, restoring passages initially cut purely for time. Naturally he’s pulling the same trick with The Hobbit trilogy; but whereas Rings had condensed huge tomes, leaving material on the cutting room floor (or never filmed) even after the extended cuts, The Hobbit is a much slighter work; one that has already been stretched to breaking point by adapting it across three movies. In fact, as I noted in my review of the theatrical version, that already felt like the extended cut — how much more do we need?

Jackson thinks 12 minutes and 53 seconds, to be precise. That’s an extension of 7.6% — not very much, really, but is what’s there significant? The short answer is: not really. While watching I spotted one all-new scene, a few extra bits here and there, and there was at least one part that the Blu-ray’s scene selection says is new but I thought I remembered.

Fortunately, this Amazon review has us covered with a full list of 10 extensions. A couple of bits contribute to where things will go in The Desolation of Smaug, which seems moderately essential to me, though I suppose only if you’re managing to follow every subplot across all eight or nine hours (unlikely when watching once a year at the cinema, perhaps). There’s a couple of character-building extensions, a couple of extra songs, and more of the dwarves having fun (much to the elves’ displeasure) at Rivendell. There’s not as much extra time with the dwarves as I expected, though, with most of the character time still going to Bilbo.

I’ve read at least one review that says the longer version makes the film lesser; that the theatrical cut is definitely superior. I don’t hold any stock in that opinion. Extended, An Unexpected Journey is not a better film, it’s not a worse film, there’s just slightly more of it. I know some people think the first version was too long as it was, but an extra 13 minutes on something already that length is almost neither here nor there. That said, looking back over what was added in the wake of seeing the second film, I can’t help but feel that, when viewed as a trilogy, the little extensions that feed into events of The Desolation of Smaug (and presumably this December’s third film too) make the extended edition a marginally preferable version.

Also, I think that a second viewing improves the experience of the film, whichever cut you watch. I liked An Unexpected Journey the first time round, of course, but I felt even more at peace with it on the second— I was able to just enjoy it, rather than constantly be comparing its scope and style to Lord of the Rings, or trying to assess how well it measured up as a decade-later return to a beloved world. I was also able to appreciate just how good the performances are. Series stalwarts Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis are as good as ever (even with McKellen’s widely-cited unhappiness at having to work alone on a green screen for many of his scenes with the smaller characters), but newcomers Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage and James Nesbitt shine too. This is Freeman’s film to be the centre of attention, but Armitage and Nesbitt will have much more to do in the follow-ups, and the groundwork is nicely laid here.

For those who hated An Unexpected Journey, watching again in any form might not be enough to bring about a conversion; but for the less sure… well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say watching it again can be revelatory, but I think it could be pleasantly surprising. Whether you have the patience for an extra 13 minutes of it is down to personal preference. I think that, in the scope of the entire trilogy, several of those few short moments will ultimately pay off.

In case you missed it, my review of the theatrical cut can be read here.

The second part of the trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug, is released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK next Monday, April 7th, and in the US on Tuesday 8th. I’ll have a review soon.

March 2014 + 5 Cancelled TV Series That Continued on the Big Screen

Posted on April 1, 2014 by badblokebob

I watched Gravity on the 1st of March. I didn’t watch another film ’til the 18th. Let’s see how this pans out…

March’s films

#13 Gravity (2013)
#14 World War Z (Extended Action Cut) (2013)
#15 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
#16 Chicken Little (2005)
#16a The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition) (2012/2013)
#17 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
#18 Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
#19 Union Station (1950)
#20 Mad Max (1979)
#21 Monsters vs Aliens (2009)
#22 Veronica Mars (2014)
#23 Legends of the Knight (2013)
#24 The Searchers (1956)

Analysis

Surprise!

March was set to be a bit of a challenge: I accumulated a deficit of four films across January and February, meaning I needed to be viewing at 150% normal necessity to get back on target; and I wasn’t going to sacrifice my annual Game of Thrones catch-up week just to accommodate some paltry movies, no sir.

So I feel a little pleased with myself that I managed to not only watch this month’s allocation of movies (for the first time since last October, in fact), but also that extra 50%. And all of Game of Thrones season three, of course.

Now, you may note that it’s the end of March — a quarter of the way through the year — and I’m not yet at 25 films. How can I be on target? Well, technically — technically — I don’t need to reach #25 until the start of April (thanks to February’s shortness, a day-by-day breakdown puts the quarter-way film on April 1st), so by making #24 at the end of March I am back on target. Technically.

That said, I’m more than 10 films behind where I’ve been for the past few years (2010, 2011 and 2013 all found me at #38 now, coincidentally), so that’s a shame. This year is shaping up to be a funny one though, so goodness knows what April will bring.

What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?

Squeezed in at the end there is The Searchers, this month’s WDYMYHS film, meaning I’m still on track with that too. Maybe it’ll all work out this year? That’ll be the day…

5 Cancelled TV Series That Continued on the Big Screen

Many TV shows have been remade for the big screen, often old favourites revived with all-new casts and a bigger scope. In fact, a surprising number have made the leap to the cinema with the original cast intact — all those infamous “the regular show, but in Spain” sitcom movies from the ’70s, but also successful shows where someone saw moneymaking potential just by doing the same thing but bigger.

Rarer, though, are TV series that were dropped but then, due to the dogged determination of fans and/or creators, found themselves with a large-scale reprieve. The following aren’t just any movies based on TV shows (like I said, there are loads of those), but specifically ones that were continued on the big screen — not rebooted, restarted, recast, or in any other way remade, but continued.

Veronica Mars
The recently-released inspiration for this list. An underrated series from the late ’00s, its creator and stars have tried to get a movie made ever since it was ditched. With traditional options failing, they famously turned to Kickstarter — and fans coughed up almost $6 million. Relatively strong limited-release box office and VOD chart positions suggest their wish for a sequel may be granted. Unlike:

Firefly
The modern marker of true TV success — DVD sales (they also led to a return for series like Family Guy) — saw Joss Whedon’s short-lived, beloved space Western revived for a lap of honour. Sadly it struggled to find a big enough audience there either, dashing hopes of a sequel. But at least we got one movie. One big damn movie. One day, I’ll tell you all about how I think it’s better than Star Wars…

Star Trek
Sci-fi fandoms lend themselves to this kind of list. Now that it’s a massive multimedia franchise, spanning half a dozen long-running TV series and twice as many movies, it’s easy to forget the original Star Trek was cancelled after just three years. The post-Star Wars movie world saw it rescued for the big screen. A bit like what J.J. Abrams is doing now, one might argue.

Police Squad!
The what now, you might ask? Police Squad lasted just six episodes in the early ’80s, but then they spun it off onto the big screen as The Naked Gun (hence that first film’s ludicrous subtitle) — which was obviously a success, because it spawned two sequels and people still go on about it. Apparently “many gags from the show were recycled for all three films,” which I guess is fair enough if no one watched your show.

Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks was a cultural phenomenon, and is widely attributed with revolutionising US network television thanks to its filmic style and long-running storylines. Too long-running, as it turned out, when audiences abandoned it after things got weird (the fact it was masterminded by David Lynch should’ve been a clue) and the driving mystery was kinda-solved. A prequel movie did little to clarify things. (Apparently. I’ve still only seen season one.)