Cube (1997)

Posted on December 14, 2008 by badblokebob

2008 #83a
Vincenzo Natali | 87 mins | DVD | 15 / R

I’ve seen Cube a couple of times before, but, as I’ve watched it again immediately before taking on the two heavily-criticised sequels, I thought it might be worth throwing in my opinion on the original too.

Cube has a deceptively simple concept — a sci-fi/horror/mystery in which six strangers are trapped together trying to escape a series of cube-shaped rooms, some of which contain deadly traps — but within that it pulls a lot together. The major element, arguably, is the mystery of what the cube is — where is it, who built it, how does it work, why are those people there, is there a way out? Some of these questions are answered but, crucially, not all of them, and it’s partly due to this, ironically, that it’s a satisfying experience. In its series of careful, measured, necessary reveals, the film strikes a perfect balance between what it lets the viewer know — and the revelations are expertly paced throughout — and what it keeps hidden, either for the viewer to deduce or interpret for themselves, or simply because one doesn’t need to know.

Within the cube and its mystery there are the characters. Depending on your point of view they’re either well-drawn sketches interacting realistically in an unrealistic situation, or archetypes representing different facets of humanity, or simply chess pieces to move the clever construction — of both plot and setting — forward. At times the movie does work like a slasher-horror, picking off characters one by one, but after a few grisly deaths it rather transcends that. The scenes where characters debate and argue aren’t quite as engrossing as when they’re puzzling over the cube, but nor do they drag. Not all the performances are good — Maurice Dean Wint in particular lets the side down for much of the film — but the character arcs are never less than believable and well considered.

Cube manages to effectively juggle gruesome horror deaths, sci-fi mysteries, an awful lot of maths (don’t worry, you don’t need to understand it) and character-based drama. It’s a brilliant low-budget (not that it shows) understated film, which seems to have been somewhat forgotten these days, probably under the weight of the two widely derided and unnecessary follow-ups. But that remains for me to see. Whatever they may be like, everyone interested in the more intelligent end of the sci-fi spectrum should see Cube.

For a brief overview of the Cube trilogy, please look here.

What makes a film a film?

Posted on December 8, 2008 by badblokebob

What makes a film a film? I don’t mean “as opposed to a book”, or “as opposed to a pile of rubbish”; but rather, “as opposed to a TV special”, or different to a direct-to-DVD movie — indeed, is there a difference?

This is the sort of thing that’s bothered me for a while, mainly thanks to the Radio Times. The Radio Times’ film section frequently features reviews for things they label as “US TVM” — translation: an American TV Movie. Not everything falls into this category. The 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie (the clue’s in the title) was just listed as a TV special, as was the recent one-off episode of 24, Redemption. Why are these different to other feature-length made-for-TV one-off dramas? The former was a British co-production, perhaps, but the latter wasn’t. The latter is part of an on-going series, made between seasons, however. But then, one-off editions of other (older) series have been reviewed as “US TVM”s, so why are they different? It’s not even a hard rule in that instance, as some old series have their feature-length episodes screened as a matter of course among other repeats.

On a different tack, what about Paul Greengrass’ excellent Bloody Sunday, simultaneously screened on Channel 4 and released in cinemas? Or more recently, Ballet Shoes — just part of last year’s Christmas schedule in the UK, but it received a limited late-summer theatrical release in the US. So is that a film, or ‘just’ a TV special? Is a cinema release the key? Well, no — at least as far as the Radio Times are concerned — because Ballet Shoes wouldn’t now feature in their film review section were it repeated, while those other “US TVM”s will continue their circulation. [2015 note: A few years after I wrote this, Ballet Shoes was indeed repeated, and not listed as a film. Whenever Bloody Sunday is on, the Radio Times list it as a film.]

Is length the issue? Clearly not — look at the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmeses, some of which struggle to make the hour mark, a running time that Midsomer Murders or Poirot tops with every new episode.

And all this without even considering direct-to-DVD movies!

Perhaps it’s not a scientific rule-driven process, but just a “feel”? But that’s rubbish too — I’d wager 24: Redemption is at least twice as cinematic as most of the ’80s “US TVM”s awarded a proper film section review. Maybe it’s production method, then? But Redemption was produced as an individual piece, outside of the series’ production — much as a ‘proper’ 24 movie would’ve been, though surely with a smaller budget. So too was the Doctor Who TV movie, and obviously all one-off UK productions are made in a similar vein. And many of them, like Ballet Shoes, are surely just a theatrical release away from being a ‘film’ rather than a one-off TV drama, aren’t they? Perhaps it’s stylistic conventions — production company logos at the start, for example. But that seems a tad arbitrary to me, and plenty of independent films dispense with such.

Or perhaps, in this modern world, IMDb is the decider — whether it has that little “(TV)” after the title or not (it does for Ballet Shoes and 24, but not for Bloody Sunday). But then, why are the people at IMDb — and, we should remember, most of their content is user-generated anyway — any more qualified to decide than you or I?

It’s all down to the individual then, is it? Perhaps. If I declare 24: Redemption a film and review it as a numbered entry in 2008, would anyone care? But would it mean that, ‘morally’, I should go back and review Ballet Shoes as part of 2007? Or last month’s Einstein and Eddington as part of 2008? Or afford any of the countless other feature-length TV specials I’ve seen in the past two years the same treatment?

I don’t have any answers here, just more questions. I’m not going to go back and review Ballet Shoes though. Nor am I going to add Einstein and Eddington, or this Christmas’ The 39 Steps when it comes around. I may well count 24: Redemption, though [I did]. I don’t have Sky, so as far as I’m concerned it may as well be direct-to-DVD, especially in its extended DVD-exclusive form.

And direct-to-DVD movies definitely still count… don’t they?

Gasman (1997)

Posted on December 8, 2008 by badblokebob

2008 #76a
Lynne Ramsay | 15 mins | DVD | 15

“Gritty”, “realist” and “indie” are just some of the stock terms that immediately jump to mind when watching this short, which directly enabled Ramsay to make her first feature, Ratcatcher.

Films with such words attached are not automatically to my liking, but Gasman succeeds in using the associated techniques to tell a simple story of complex emotions and meaning for the characters involved. There are times when its documentary-like style is indulgent — the opening goes on too long, for example, and some shots seem deliberately obscure — but it also relates the story effectively and produces a few beautiful views too.

Even cleverer is the use of sound: there’s virtually no dialogue, so the occasional half-heard splashes, often amongst background chatter, are all the more telling. Mostly this is in a subtle fashion, though the key phrase that reveals all is both pretty blunt (though not inordinately so) and repeated an awful lot in a very short space of time.

Gasman is not wholly successful, then, though it does have an interesting story with a strong ending, dialogue-free, that both completes the plot and leaves you wondering what happens next.

This short is available on the DVD Cinema16: British Short Films, as well as the Criterion Collection and Pathe/Fox releases of Ratcatcher.

Mamma Mia! (2008)

Posted on December 6, 2008 by badblokebob

2008 #81
Phyllida Lloyd | 104 mins | DVD | PG / PG-13

If you listen to the critics, no one liked Mamma Mia. If you listen to the public, everyone loved it. It’s the highest grossing British film of all time at the UK box office — at last count, just over £400,000 away from being the highest ever* — and was still playing on the big screen at hundreds of locations the weekend before its DVD release.

Mamma Mia! is the first feature from director Lloyd, who also directed the original stage production — and sometimes both facts show. She doesn’t always quite know what to do with the camera, the choreography is often aimed at a theoretical audience rather than the camera position (a pet peeve of mine), some shots are over-simplistic, others over-done, and there’s a bit of “point and shoot” too, missing opportunities that would be obvious to more experienced film directors. It’s never atrociously directed — at the very least, the scenery looks stunning, and is put to much good use — but it does the job and little more.

The songs themselves don’t need discussion (everyone knows what they think of Abba) but it’s worth mentioning how they’re choreographed and how they come about in story terms. Some have been brilliantly staged (Mamma Mia itself, but especially Does Your Mother Know), though others are flat and awkward (The Winner Takes It All doesn’t win anything as far as I’m concerned). Equally, some emerge naturally from the story (Chiquitita, Money Money Money), while others feel shoehorned in (again, The Winner Takes It All). For others still they seem to have just given up forcing them into the plot, leaving them to be performed by a musical act: Super Trouper, which at least is vaguely appropriate to the juncture it appears; and Waterloo, which is tacked on during the end credits, though at least is amusingly done.

The majority of the cast were clearly chosen for acting skills rather than singing ability, not that it’s done the film many favours. Pierce Brosnan was unfairly singled out by critics for poor vocals, but he’s no worse than several others. On the other hand, Julie Walters is as much of a riot as you’d expect, right from her first line, and earns the lion’s share of the laughs. For any bored male viewers, there’s always Amanda Seyfried, with her often bouncy pair of friends — played by newcomers Rachel McDowall and Ashley Lilley (why, what did you think I meant?) Every cast member is clearly having a ball, so much so that some forget to do more than read lines aloud; but it’s occasionally infectious, the frequency of infection being directly proportional to how susceptible the viewer is to this genre of music and this genre of film.

It may go without saying, but the more you like Abba the more you’ll like Mamma Mia. Conversely, the more you hate them the more you’ll hate it. (Extra stars can be added or subtracted at the end depending on which side of the fence you fall.) It’s therefore easy to see why audiences — especially British audiences — have lapped it up, while the critics have been fairly damning. On the other hand, the often clichéd first-draft-level script and occasionally ungainly first-readthrough-level performances don’t help things any. Luckily it very rarely takes itself too seriously, and consequently is often hilariously funny. Though it attempts both, it clearly works best when being a camp and cheesy comedy rather than a serious romance/family drama. One especially weak note, in my opinion, is the subplot awarded to Colin Firth’s character, who turns gay almost out of nowhere. It’s not a bad idea for a subplot, especially in a film based on Abba music (not that I’m applying any stereotypes here), but it’s poorly executed.

Mamma Mia! never aimed to please the critics, or even your regular movie-goer. Instead it sets its sights firmly on Women Of A Certain Age who can remember Abba from first time round, and students who perhaps listen to them in a more ironic way nowadays. In that sense, it’s clearly an unmitigated success. As camp as a row of tents, disliked by critics, loved by audiences: Mamma Mia! is everything you’d expect from Abba.

* In the interests of fully-correct information, I feel I should point out that Mamma Mia! has now [December 28th, 2008] overtaken Titanic at the UK box office. (BBC News) ^

Fist of Legend (1994)

Posted on December 4, 2008 by badblokebob

aka Jing wu ying xiong

2008 #77
Gordon Chan | 99 mins | TV | 18 / R

I found myself watching Fist of Legend unintentionally following this year’s Children in Need appeal. The significance of this piece of trivia is that I watched it on TV, which means I had to watch it dubbed. Apparently, “it is regarded as one of the best martial arts films of all time, and almost universally viewed as Jet Li’s best” (thank you Wikipedia), but the dub does its utmost to obscure this.

Putting the audio aside (for the moment), the film has a lot to recommend it — primarily, the fights. At 2am, after seven hours of near-solid TV watching, it was these that drew me in. I’m no expert on martial arts, but I do like a good fight (on film) and Fist of Legend serves up plenty of those. In fact, there’s approximately one every five minutes, an impressively high ratio that consciously — and very pleasingly — fulfills what you want from this kind of film. This quantity doesn’t seem to have damaged quality either: all are generally impressive, but there are some particularly good ideas floating about too, such as a long fight where both participants are blindfolded.

There’s a plot too, which includes a few surprisingly surprising twists and an interesting undercurrent of Japanese/Chinese racial tensions thanks to the setting (1937, during a Japanese occupation of Shanghai). This adds an extra level to what could otherwise be a stock revenge plot.

So, that just leaves the soundtrack. The English audio is at least as bad as you’d imagine, and a reminder — if one were needed — about why dubbing foreign language films is so hated. Whatever the qualities of the film itself, the clichéd dub script and flat voiceover performances, awkwardly delivered to fit the actor’s mouth movements, make the film look cheap and poorly done. On the bright side, the main villain has an amusingly gravelly “I am playing a villain!” voice.

If you can look past the rubbish dub (which I should imagine is even easier on DVD, what with turning it off), Fist of Legend is very enjoyable. However, with the action being the primary source of pleasure, those who don’t like martial arts movies may want to imagine a lower score.

The Cable Guy (1996)

Posted on December 3, 2008 by badblokebob

2008 #79
Ben Stiller | 88 mins | download | 12 / PG-13

The best thing I have to say about The Cable Guy is that the opening titles were very well done.

The second-best thing I have to say is that a subplot featuring director Ben Stiller as a faded-child-star twin-killer is very neatly integrated into the film, seeming utterly pointless until it has a near-vital role in the climax. That’s a pleasing piece of writing/editing right there. Unfortunately, the point this seems to be aiming at — that TV rules our life too much, that we’re too addicted to it, etc etc — is not only old hat, but also rendered meaningless in this instance by the lack of impact: TV goes off for the night, and one guy picks up a book. Oh, wow. And to top it off, thanks to an unnecessary final beat, it seems Jim Carrey’s titular character hasn’t actually learnt the lesson we thought he had.

Incidentally, The Cable Guy is a comedy, though at times it seems to wish you’d forget that so it could be a psychological stalker thriller. Perhaps that’s what it had wanted to be — for one thing, there are surprisingly accurate predictions for the future of telecommunications, although their coming true may simply have killed another joke (“play Mortal Kombat with a friend in Vietnam!”) — until someone realised the idea was too silly to be taken completely seriously. How funny you find the end product will depend on whether you like the style of comedy Carrey employed in the early & mid-’90s, and whether you can stomach pointless asides that don’t do anything for the plot (final act freaky nightmare, step forward). There’s little else to engage interest — Matthew Broderick’s pseudo-protagonist is, perhaps, too nice and too eager to please, and the go-nowhere romantic subplot — his main action aside from being Carrey’s straight man — has all the depth and shape of something from a cookie cutter.

More fun than the jokes, actually, is playing Spot The Pre-Fame Comedy Star. Eyes open for young-looking turns from (in ease-of-identification order) Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Janeane Garofalo, and Kyle Gass. And Eric Roberts randomly shows his face too, not that that’s relevant to anything.

The Cable Guy is rated 12, or PG-13 in the US, which may also be the last ages you’d enjoy it at.

In case anyone’s wondering what’s happened to #77 & #78… Despite spending 23 months carefully posting reviews in order (well, the first two months are actually a bit of a muddle), it’s now December and I’m a few behind, so I’ve decided to throw numerical sequence to the wind and just post reviews as & when I get round to completing them. The main reason for this is to help drive things forward so that I can actually end 2008’s posting by December 31st, rather than having it drag on into 2009 and overlap with Year 3. I’m sure no one will really mind. Or care.

Eternal laziness of the dreamless blogger

Posted on December 1, 2008 by badblokebob

11 months down, 1 to go… 81 films down — it should’ve been at least 92.

It’s fair to say 100 Films hasn’t gone quite as smoothly this year as it did last, where I made it to 100 by the start of September and meandered on to a final total of 129. Rather than being in the luxurious position of just watching as much as I like to see how far I can get, I have 31 days to see 19 more films to even hit my basic target.

“Oops.”

I could reel off a list of excuses — the effort I’ve tried to put into writing much longer reviews, having an undergraduate degree to complete, starting work on a postgraduate degree, actually getting a job over the summer… but there’s also plain old laziness — yeah, isn’t watching a film such a lot of effort?

…no?

Of course, as the old adage favoured by so many teachers goes, “you’ve only let yourself down.” (I may be paraphrasing for effect.)

Still, 31 days! And 19 of them holiday-days! The end is in sight, and I might still make it.

Though, don’t be surprised if the reviews get shorter — it would be nice to complete 2008 within 2008 after all — and, if I do well, I may even get the final lists (see here and here for last year’s) online for December 31st.

Hey, a blogger can dream.

Clockwise (1986)

Posted on November 29, 2008 by badblokebob

2008 #76
Christopher Morahan | 92 mins | DVD | PG / PG

Clockwise, so I’m told, was written after John Cleese (who, I should point out, isn’t credited as the writer) attended Robert McKee’s famous screenwriting seminar. What this means for your average viewer is that Clockwise is expertly constructed. More importantly, it’s also very funny.

The first 15 minutes are a little dubious, but it soon becomes apparent that some of McKee’s principles are being followed (if you’re aware of them, of course) as this opening serves to establish the everyday life of Cleese’s character, headmaster Brian Stimpson. The point of this soon becomes apparent: when everything goes to hell over the next hour-and-a-quarter, the viewer can fully appreciate the impact on Stimpson’s existence. And all go wrong it does, in a manner that’s rather reminiscent of Fawlty Towers — not in the sense that Cleese is repeating himself, but rather that you could replace Stimpson with Basil Fawlty and merrily carry on along much the same path; though, I hasten to add (to this over-punctuated sentence) that Stimpson is not a clone of Fawlty, but he is prone to ending up in similar accident-and-misunderstanding-based farcical situations.

I imagine that Clockwise is less well known than it deserves because it is so very British. The humour — largely based around issues of punctuality, politeness, and social custom — is particularly British, as are the countryside settings and the finale set at a public school conference. And, in the first instance, everything goes so spectacularly wrong thanks to our wonderful language’s multiple meanings for the word “right”. From this point Cleese & co escalate the hopelessness of the situation beautifully (and very much in keeping with McKee’s ideas of good structure), gradually crafting more absurd events and dragging in more and more characters, most of whom come together in that finale. This final section perhaps goes on too long, with a rather inconclusive ending, and it lays on the anti-public school gags with a trowel — though that suits me just fine.

Some have argued that Clockwise is more like a series of sketches than a cohesive whole, but all the independent scenes are connected by a common goal, meaning very few (if any) feel genuinely out of place or inelegantly shoved in. The calm pauses between the comic scenes also allow it to remain hilariously funny so consistently — an all-out assault of comedy, no matter how good, can become rather wearing. Again, this ebb-and-flow is something the filmmakers may well have picked up from McKee.

While you could probably use Clockwise as a mini masterclass in applying some of Robert McKee’s structural principles, that’s thankfully not the be-all of it. Very funny once it gets going, this is one that fans of Fawlty Towers will likely especially enjoy — and, really, who with a sense of humour isn’t a Fawlty Towers fan?

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943)

Posted on November 27, 2008 by badblokebob

2008 #75
Roy William Neill | 66 mins | DVD | PG

The name’s Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, as Universal’s loose adaptations of Britain’s Greatest Detective deliver a low-key proto-Bond, 22 years before Goldfinger applied the same tricks to Britain’s Greatest Spy.

“How so?”, you might ask. Well, Holmes has been employed as a spy for His Majesty’s Government; it begins with an ‘end of the previous adventure’ almost-action sequence that would undoubtedly take place before the opening credits now; there’s a war-winning weapon at stake; a bit of globetrotting (albeit just from Switzerland to London); some double-crossing and side-switching; even a surprisingly nasty torture sequence; a nice race-against-time final act; and an equally-matched villain, with a secret lair, who has devised a clever death for our hero. So the lair is just a house with soundproofing and unbreakable glass, but that’s not a bad effort — I don’t think there are many volcanoes to hollow out in the London area. It may be Bond on a World War Two London scale, but the feeling is there.

I discussed the controversy (for a modern audience, at least) of this updated setting in my last Holmes review, and it’s even more abundant here — seeing Baker Street as a victim of the Blitz, and 221B surrounded by sandbags, is very odd indeed — but at least it employs several elements from a variety of Conan Doyle’s plots, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that, given his skills of deduction and disguise, Holmes would’ve been employed as a spy had he been ‘alive’ during the war. In fact, Holmes actually does some detecting this time, whereas in Voice of Terror he seemed to meander around a bit, and employs several disguises, even if some of them are about as much cop as one of those glasses-nose-and-moustache masks. Of course, it would help the mystery if its solution wasn’t revealed before Tobel (the inventor of the titular war-winning weapon) was even kidnapped, but you can’t have everything.

What lets the film down more is Lionel Atwill as a weak Moriarty, supposedly the film’s grand villain. It’s not all his fault — for one example of poor writing, Holmes deduces the final code after an accidental clue from Watson, while Moriarty gets it by clumsily spilling water over a copy, hardly displaying great powers of deduction — but he doesn’t compare to the scheming, cunning Moriarty we saw played by George Zucco in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. On the plus side, the ease with each Moriarty outwitted Holmes in that earlier outing made our hero look a bit ridiculous, whereas here Holmes gets to outwit his nemesis a couple of times, including a particularly nice denouement.

As with Voice of Terror, I enjoyed a lot of Secret Weapon in spite of its distinct un-Holmes-ness — it’s another pacey, exciting World War Two spy thriller. It’s better than its immediate predecessor on the whole, though a spot of miscasting nearly persuaded me to remove another star.

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)

Posted on November 24, 2008 by badblokebob

2008 #74
John Rawlins | 63 mins | DVD | U

Despite the success of their two Sherlock Holmes films (The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, both 1939), Fox decided the character was outdated and resolved not to make any more. Universal clearly disagreed, and the popular pairing of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce reprised their roles three years later for this, the first of twelve Holmes films the studio would make with the duo in just five years.

There’s more change afoot than just the logo at the start, however, as Holmes and Watson are dragged from their typical Victorian setting to London in the midst of World War Two. For a modern audience, who definitively associate Holmes with the Victorian era, this move seems virtually incomprehensible and sacrilegious; but Conan Doyle’s original Holmes stories take him as far as the start of World War One, so bringing the character another 28 years forward is little worse than, say, relocating the 1980 novel The Bourne Identity to 2002. Nonetheless, the filmmakers were aware of the problem even at the time, choosing to open the film with a title card that asserts Holmes to be “immortal… ageless, invincible and unchanging” in the hope that audiences would accept a then-present-day setting.

Whether the setting bothers you or not, the story itself might. The basic concept is a nice idea for a war-set spy-thriller, but not really for a Sherlock Holmes mystery. There are plenty of audience-pleasing applications of his ‘impossible’ deduction skills, such as the moment when Holmes concludes someone dislikes him based on the depth of footprints left in a carpet (never mind that the character huffily ignored Holmes when he came in), but the main plot involves a minimal use of these abilities. It’s also loaded with implausible elements — why would the Nazis waste bombs on empty fields (to disguise one plane going a different route) when they could have used them on genuine targets? Why are recordings shipped to Germany and broadcast back, rather than just broadcast from England? Worst of all, what’s going on with Rathbone’s haircut? The final twist is either genius or ludicrous, I’m not sure which; and the misguided reference to Holmes’ deerstalker (he’s promised not to wear it — why?) is, well, misguided.

It’s not all bad. As mentioned, the basic storyline is a good one, providing decent entertainment once it gets going; Holmes gets plenty of amusing lines, which manage to provide more genuine laughs than Watson’s incompetence; and there’s some lovely shadow-drenched photography — though the film’s even more drenched in patriotism, to the point of propaganda at times.

The consensus seems to be against me, but by the end I was quite enjoying Voice of Terror. It may be a Sherlock Holmes film in name only, but taken instead as a cheap spy thriller it makes for passable entertainment.

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