2012 (2009)

Posted on June 23, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #60
Roland Emmerich | 158 mins | Blu-ray | 12 / PG-13

It’s the end of the world, and Roland Emmerich feels fine. The “master of disaster (movies)”, as I’m sure someone (probably himself) has labelled him, here attempts the biggest disaster of them all — as I said, it’s the end of the world.

2012’s end of the world occurs courtesy of messy CGI. I’ve seen better graphics in current-generation computer games than some of the sequences here. And there’s too much of it. Letting Emmerich’s imagination — and budget — run rampant means there’s an assault of imagery that’s just too much for one film. It makes other disaster movies look focused — at least The Day After Tomorrow, for example, was just about everything freezing; here, cities fall into giant earthquakes, supervolcanoes destroy whole National Parks, and numerous other things that I can no longer even remember take their digital toll.

Put these two facts together — the poor effects work and the overabundance of ideas — and it means much of the imagery fails to impress. It either looks too fake to even begin to accept, or there’s too much going on to consider processing it, and long before the end the sheer number of massive disasters means the viewer stops being impressed by them. Even Emmerich no longer seems impressed: instead of granting huge moments the lingering wide shot they deserve, he rushes past with nary a thought — “someone said they’re about to crash into Everest, you don’t need to actually see it”.

In spite of this, one or two moments are still visually spectacular. The plane escape from a crumbling city — sorry, the first plane escape from a crumbling city (there are many) — produces a couple of incredible shots of Los Angeles disappearing into the earth, the heroes’ light aircraft dodging subway trains that burst from above them and… that kind of thing. I’ve forgotten the details, there were too many.

2012 is the very definition of spectacle. The problem is not only that Emmerich overdoes this, but he also seems to think we might care about the characters. One has to accept that such subplots are inevitable in this kind of film, even when not a single one offers something new, but they’re given too much coverage. Rather than a sketchy portrait of a separated couple who eventually get back together, or a man who has to accept he can’t save his father, or what have you, 2012 serves up multiple lengthy scenes about each. They don’t make us any more sympathetic to the characters, their familiar clichés don’t add any more depth than a brief allusion would, they just make a long film even longer — it’s closer to three hours than two for Christ’s sake.

Despite the lack of decent characterisation, actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor are endlessly watchable anyway. I personally wouldn’t count John Cusack in such an elite bunch, and certainly not Danny Glover, coming across a bit “we couldn’t afford Morgan Freeman” as the US President, but a couple of the cast members hold the screen well enough.

The film is low on credibility throughout, then, but it finally loses any it may’ve clung on to near the climax: earthquakes big enough to swallow cities, volcanoes huge enough to obliterate states, tsunamis tall enough to crush islands… all of this we can accept — but when a mass of plebs hammer at the doors to be allowed on the humanity-saving arks, it’s the one run by Russia, China and Japan that first heed the call to allow them on. Yeah, right.

Still, thank God they scrapped the twee alternate ending, where Adrian’s father is somehow saved and the President’s daughter has some big congratulatory thing with Jackson. Though it didn’t escape my notice that the film does end with a line about the lead character’s 7-year-old daughter no longer needing nappies. Not exactly the expected final note of optimism for the future of humanity. Next time there’s a contest for “worst final line of a film ever”, this is surely a contender.

That aside, 2012 has some good bits. Heck, even the plot isn’t too bad — in its own way, for this type of super-epic sci-fi disaster movie, even if it’s a bit like the love child of The Day After Tomorrow and Knowing — but it far outstays its welcome with repetitious action sequences and dull characters. Speeding things up, aiming for an entertaining running time rather than one that screams “suitably epic!”, might’ve helped spice things up. On the other hand, you do get more or less what you’d expect from the film. No one’s going into this thinking they’re getting a deep character piece — it’s great big spectacle all the way, and while it’s not the greatest big spectacle ever, it delivers something close enough to prevent it being the ultimate disaster of a movie — but it’s not the ultimate disaster movie either.

It’s a CGI-focused visually epic spectacular built on a story that lacks an original plot or real characterisation. Sounds familiar… Ah yes: Avatar. I’m sure those who loved Cameron’s Oscar-loser will get something from 2012 too.

Knowing (2009)

Posted on June 19, 2010 by badblokebob

2012 #54
Alex Proyas | 121 mins | Blu-ray | 15 / PG-13

This review contains spoilers and made-up words.

Not many people seem to like Knowing. Quit the opposite, in fact. I must confess, I’m not really sure why. I can read their reasons, of course, but I still thought it was a decent film. Solidly entertaining even, I’d say.

At its heart is an intriguing mystery. Arguably this conquers all. There are attempts at giving the characters depth — Nic Cage’s wife died, his son is autistic; Rose Byrne’s mother was mad; etc — but these are more about giving them a reason to care about the plot than making them three dimensional human beings. But that’s not necessarily a problem — I’d suggest if you’re watching a film like Knowing with the intention of focusing on the characters rather than the mystery then you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.

As for that mystery — that, 50 years ago, a schoolgirl wrote down the dates and casualty numbers for every major disaster since — it’s well handled, mostly. No one is easily convinced of it, until there’s evidence; a logical point, but not every film in this kind of genre has bothered with such things as reason and logic. One could reasonably question what counts as a major disaster, if the sheet of paper she filled looks long enough to get all those numbers down, and other such technical queries, but that seems like needless nitpicking.

Cage’s desperation to stop the disasters he knows are coming leads to several sequences of proper cinematic awe. The scenes that depict a pair of devastating accidents show off some spectacular effects work. Perhaps it’s not photo-real perfect, but I found it more engaging than many films that poured most of their effort into crafting outstanding CGI. I suspect this is the skill of director Alex Proyas and his teams of animators and editors, constructing angles and shots that convey these disasters impressively. The single-shot plane crash is a particularly striking sequence.

I remember the ending being one of the film’s more controversial aspects; I certainly recall some taking umbrage with it. Again, I don’t really see why. It fits; it’s seeded throughout. Maybe they wanted something supernatural? Maybe they were Christians objecting to the scientification of their myths? Maybe atheists objecting to the religisifying of aliens and broadly scientific concepts? Or maybe they were just viewers who missed the little — and big — hints that mean every element of the ending flows quite naturally from what we’ve seen so far. It doesn’t tie everything up in a neat little bow, but none of it precludes the audience from filling in the gaps with their own thoughts and theories.

I will accept, however, that the very last shot is arguably a step too far and a little cheesy.

Not many people seem to like Knowing. Quite the opposite, in fact. I must confess, I’m not really sure why. I can read their reasons, of course, but I still thought it was a decent film. Solidly entertaining even, I’d say.

Pixels (2010)

Posted on May 26, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #40a
Patrick Jean | 3 mins | download

Pixels falls somewhere between a commercial and a CGI showreel, albeit one with a definite narrative and a dizzying amount of fun.

The plot is simple: characters and graphics from old 8-bit computer games escape and run riot over New York City. We’re talking Space Invaders firing on real streets, Tetris blocks crashing onto buildings, Donkey Kong hurling barrels from the top of the Empire State Building, Frogger hopping across a road of real traffic… For people of A Certain Age (a little older than me, it must be said) it’s an explosion of nostalgia, but everyone can be impressed by the CGI on display. My personal favourite is the effect of Tetris blocks on that building, but I won’t spoil it here.

Rather than just being a high-concept showcase, director Patrick Jean relates a story. It’s slight and dialogue-free, true, but then this is only two-and-a-half minutes long and, really, is a showcase more than a fully-fledged film. Considering the film’s point — a series of videogame-inspired vignettes — a narrative is virtually unnecessary, but tying them together with one anyway is a pleasing touch.

The visuals and execution of the humorous premise easily hold the attention for the brief running time, however, and I’m sure the former are set to do the film’s real job proficiently — i.e. win One More Production lots of work.

Pixels can be watched in full on the production company’s website.

A feature-length adaptation is released in the US tomorrow, 24th July 2015, and in the UK on Wednesday 12th August.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

Posted on May 4, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #16
Dave Filoni | 98 mins | Blu-ray | PG / PG

The Clone Wars can boast an awful lot of firsts within the Star Wars franchise: the first animated Star Wars in cinemas, the first not to feature Frank Oz as Yoda, the first not to open in May, the first not to have a text-crawl intro… It’s also the first not to open at number one at the box office. None of these facts are likely to endear itself to die-hard Star Wars fans. I’m not one, but it did little to endear itself to me either.

Things go wrong immediately. For fans, the Warner Bros. logo is horrendously incongruous (so I’m told — the original six films were all released by Fox), but for even the casual viewer there’s something seriously odd within minutes: no opening text crawl! This is meant to be Star Wars? Instead, a chunk of exposition — which sounds exactly like the opening crawl would, and so has clearly been designed to replace it — is read over a montage of the events it describes. Do they think children can’t read? In fairness, I’ve been to Star Wars screenings where there were children young enough that parents were having to read the crawl to their kids… but considering the live action films are “kids’ movies” too (as Lucas was so keen to remind us when everyone hated the prequels), surely what’s good enough for them is good enough for this?

Omissions such as this could be forgiven if more important aspects went well. But they don’t. The script is so good it could’ve been written by George Lucas himself. There are too many weak dialogue exchanges to even consider listing them, but Ahsoka’s habit of calling R2-D2 “Artooey” is memorably grating. Much of the voice acting is just as bad, with James Arnold Taylor’s Obi Wan accent particularly off-centre. Catherine Taber’s Padmé impression is probably the most convincing of the lot and, coincidentally sharing the same scenes, Corey Burton’s Truman Capote impression as Ziro the Hutt is entertainingly obvious. Count Dooku doesn’t particularly benefit from the involvement of Christopher Lee, but at least Samuel L. Jackson is vaguely recognisable lending his actual voice to Mace Windu. Most of the cast deliver the kind of performance you typically find in kids’ cartoons — i.e. not all that good, no doubt due to the pressures of producing as many episodes as possible as cheaply as possible. Dubious line readings abound, though in fairness this may be down to the awkward lines they’re forced to deliver.

In between the poor dialogue there are plenty of action sequences. The first battle is a bit dull: masses of troops just firing at each other, until the bad guys suddenly decide that actually they ought to retreat because of the cannons — cannons that have been firing on them throughout. At least the repeat performance ten minutes later features some tactics and diversions. Later fights are better, though not by a huge amount. There are certainly a fair few, though there’s little real variation between them. The big battles and space dogfights are adequate, if lacking in focus, but the lightsaber duels miss the heft of their live-action equivalents, animation robbing them of the physical skill involved in a real sword fight (even if those in the prequels involve a fair degree of CGI themselves). The much-trumpeted vertical battle is a great idea that’s competently executed, but the change in perspective is too little used — apart from the odd moment or shot, they may as well be progressing slowly on a horizontal plane.

All of these sequences are scored by stock-sounding ‘epic action music’. Kevin Kiner’s music is nothing like as original or distinctive as John Williams’ work on the main series. Other than re-using some of Williams’ themes, it’s a rather generic action score — perfectly pleasant for what it is, but not particularly memorable. A slight remix of the main Star Wars theme gives the opening a distinctive air… as if the Warner Bros. logo, war talk over the Lucasfilm logo, and lack of text crawl didn’t do the job by themselves.

The animation itself is certainly stylised, which annoys some, but then it’s not billed as an Avatar-esque “it’s real, honest” style, or even the lower level achieved (if one can call it an achievement) by Beowulf. It’s surely a sensible decision — look how far from real Beowulf turned out to be on a feature budget and timescale, and when you’re churning out a weekly series (as this was always intended to be) such aspirations as photo-real CGI are far too lofty, not to mention expensive. Personally, I quite like the style. The painterly textures are slightly odd, but probably preferable to flat slabs of colour, while the cartoonisation of the cast (allegedly inspired by Thunderbirds) fits the lightweight tone and keeps things visually interesting. Besides, as noted, the visual style is the least of the film’s problems.

It may sound like a piece of trivia that this was originally conceived as three episodes of the TV series that now follows it, but where the breaks would fall is disappointingly clear — note, for example, that at around 25 minutes the first battle is won, Anakin resolves himself to teach the Padawan he previously objected to, and Yoda arrives to kick off the next part of the story. It could only be more like the end of an episode if credits rolled. It’s also the apparent need to fit two or three action sequences per episode that keeps them coming at regular intervals in a film which sticks three back-to-back.

There’s an overarching plot, thank goodness, which is immediately established… before being put on hold for half-an-hour while the events of what-would-have-been-episode-one play out: a battle that isn’t particularly significant in itself and has absolutely no relevance to the rest of the story, immediately betraying the three-episode origins. After that’s done the main plot resumes in two clearly-divisible chunks — the precise moment of the second transition isn’t as obvious as the first, but which subplots belong to which half is. Maybe the story joins are invisible to those who don’t know the production’s history or something of narrative structure (i.e. normal people), but they were blatant to me. It particularly shows in the final act/third episode, as the story switches from epic battle sequences to some out-of-nowhere political wrangling and lower-key lightsaber-based confrontations.

Although it has high-quality animation, a largely cinematic scale, particularly in the battles, and direction that isn’t as obviously TV-only as some TV-bound productions, The Clone Wars still feels like watching a compilation of TV episodes rather than a film in its own right. It’s partly the episode structures that remain unconcealed, partly the shortage of real voice talent indicating a lower budget, partly the relative insignificance of the story — it just doesn’t have the epic quality that imbued all the other Star Wars films. Not every film has to be an epic, even ones set within the same universe/storyline, but by wheeling out all the main characters and then showing them complete just one moderately low-key mission, The Clone Wars does feel like a single instalment of a TV series and not an appropriately-scaled cinematic experience.

This might’ve made a pretty strong set of opening episodes to a half-hour TV show, and I hear the series has gotten quite good as its first season progressed. If that’s true, it’s a shame such a weak beginning will have put so many off giving it a go, because as a standalone film The Clone Wars falls far short.

Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone. (2007/2009)

Posted on April 26, 2010 by badblokebob

aka Evangerion shin gekijôban: Jo / Evangelion New Theatrical Version: Prelude

2010 #41
Hideaki Anno, Masayuki & Kazuya Tsurumaki | 101 mins | Blu-ray | 12 / PG-13

When I (first) reviewed Watchmen, I commented that it was hard to divorce my opinion of the graphic novel from my opinion of the movie, so faithful was the adaptation. That’s as nothing to this, though: Evangelion: 1.11 (also known as Evangelion: 1.0 and Evangelion: 1.01, slightly different versions of the same thing) is a retelling of the first six episodes of the highly-acclaimed anime TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion, using the original animation and voice cast to recreate the story.

To put that another way: as a retelling of the first quarter of the original series, reconstructed from the original animation elements, some may wonder what the point of You Are (Not) Alone is — why not just re-watch the series? And how well can six episodes of a TV series work when stuck back-to-back as a film? To be frank, I’m in no position to accurately compare the content of the film and the original episodes, as I last (and first) watched them about three years ago. I can say that some of this is very familiar — one is certainly aware it’s the original elements re-appropriated — while other bits I suspect may have been drafted in from later in the series, and others I’m certain are actually all-new.

Despite some animation tweaks, other things go unchanged, occasionally making the future-set story seem already dated. A line mentioning cell phones, in an attempt to cover why Shinji is bothering to use a phone box, is a new addition I swear, while he also listens to a (digital, at least) cassette player rather than an iPod (other MP3 players are available, naturally). It’s not a major flaw — unlike, perhaps, the fact that the “covert” and top-secret Nerv organisation has great big signs plastered all over town and everyone seems to know about them — but, still, maybe a new bit of animation to replace the tape-playing close-ups would’ve been nice.

The original episodes run around 2 hours 20 minutes total (including all titles, trailers, etc) so edits have been made, but it’s intelligently done. Despite the time since I watched the series I’m aware of where some episode breaks fall, so it’s hard to accurately say how it hangs together as a film to a newbie, but it seems to me that it does rather well. It throws you in at the deep end a bit, but then so does the series. It’s a non-stop opening 25 minutes, a relentless onslaught of information and action, before the pace lets up a little. The pace is surprisingly good throughout, a well-considered balance between action, character and mysteries. Anno and co have retained some of the original’s light and shade — this isn’t just a plot recap, but includes some of the humour and character-based subplots. These elements are still the most trimmed, but there’s enough retained that they work in the context of the film. Indeed, it’s been so skilfully done that an uninformed viewer might even accept it was originally created as a film.

The pros and cons of the series remain. Shinji is alternately interesting, perhaps even complex, and a whiney little irritant. Here he has a character arc at least, suggesting he may be more sufferable next time out. His relationship with Major — sorry, Lieutenant-Colonel — Katsuragi, important in the series, seems to have an even greater focus here, providing a key emotional through-line for the characters. Some of the philosophical bits survive too, feeling as pretentious as ever, but — like the occasionally OTT humour — have been reduced by the need to hit a feature-length and still pack the story in.

As best I can tell the English voice cast is entirely the same as the TV series. Though I presume they’ve all been re-recorded for the film, your opinion of their work is unlikely to be changed. I don’t mean this specifically as either criticism or praise, just that there’s nothing to distinguish between this and the TV version vocally.

One thing that worried me was that this would feel less like a standalone film and more like Part One of a much longer story, primarily because I recalled episode six being ‘just’ another big battle — an action sequence, certainly, but no more of a climax than any of the other fights. I don’t know if I’ve misremembered or if work has been done to place a heavier emphasis on it here, but it is unquestionably a Big Climax — an all-or-nothing finale, bringing together the plot, most of the subplots, and a Threat To The Whole World. There’s still a “To be continued…” — not only literally, but quite clearly in a raft of unresolved subplots — but it fits as an End Of Act One, much as does the end of, say, Fellowship of the Ring.

Another factor thrown up by the TV-series-to-feature conversion is the image quality. An HD big screen is a mixed blessing here. On one hand, it looks great on Blu-ray, with crisp lines and solid colours, the result of re-filming, colouring and CGI-ing the original animation elements rather than using the finished TV shots. On the other, such clarity sometimes shows up a lack of detail in the original animation — these elements were created for 4:3 mid-’90s TV, not a hi-def (home) cinema — and the solid colours and money-saving techniques (for example, showing something static rather than a lip-synched (ish) mouth during conversations) can remind the viewer of cheaper TV roots. Perhaps I’m being overly critical though, because much of it does look fabulous; at the very least, the thorough ground-up rebuild means it looks better than the TV series ever will, never mind has.

Ultimately, You Are (Not) Alone works satisfyingly as a film. Arguably it has a slightly unusual narrative structure or slightly unsophisticated animation, but it works much better than you’d expect from six TV episodes stuck together. With introductions, character arcs and a suitably important climax, it even functions as a standalone film, in a similar way to Fellowship or other trilogy/tetralogy/etc first instalments.

Plenty of mysteries remain at the end: who are Seele? What is the Human Instrumentality Project? Why does Shinji’s father hate his son but smile whenever he sees Rei? To mention just a few. They’re not allowed to over-dominate this story, but they let the viewer know that, while You Are (Not) Alone functions as an entertaining standalone tale, there’s a lot left to be revealed and investigated. It’s enough to make one scurry back to the series for answers, though the three movies still to come promise whole new characters, plots and a — frankly, much-needed — brand-new ending. After two misfires (one in the series, one in a film), hopefully Anno can provide something truly satisfying this time.

Evangelion 1.11 is out on DVD and Blu-ray today.

Deja Vu (2006)

Posted on February 23, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #24
Tony Scott | 121 mins | DVD | 12 / PG-13

This review contains spoilers.

Denzel Washington and Tony Scott have now served as star and director (respectively, as if you didn’t know) on four films, with a fifth on the way. As director-star relationships go it’s hardly Scorsese-De Niro or Burton-Depp, but I’m quite a fan of Man on Fire and I remember Crimson Tide being pretty good, so one can’t complain. (This whole “regular director-star relationship” thing had higher significance in my head. Anyway…)

Deja Vu is about a terrorist attack that Washington’s character, an official from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (a natural combination only in America; known as the semi-logical AFT for short), isn’t really investigating. But he is a bit, because otherwise the story wouldn’t get started. Once it does, he gets recruited by Val Kilmer to the FBI team that are actually investigating the disaster, and they reveal a mysterious bit of kit to him… which some other review has probably already spoiled for you, so I will too: they can see precisely 4 days and 6 hours into the past.

How can they do this? Well, somewhat surprisingly, screenwriters Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio (and, one must suspect by extension, Ted Elliott) have bothered to string together a selection of scientific concepts you may have heard of in order to explain it. Essentially, it’s an accidentally-created wormhole. It has loads of rules. I won’t explain them. The most significant is, you can’t send stuff back through it; you can’t change the past. And by “rule” I mean “thing set up to add dramatic tension when it comes time to contradict it in the third act”.

Deja Vu’s timey-wimey plot is quite fun, in some ways. Massively over-complicated — no one will blame you for switching off as the “how it’s done” technobabble washes over you; if you just accept this is all possible within the confines of the movie’s universe, there’s enough investigative thrills to sustain proceedings — but, if one does pay attention, a lot of it makes sense. Well, enough sense. It becomes a bit unravelled toward the end, unless you choose to believe this even more complicated theory, which uses a scant array of clues from the film — plus the desire/need to explain the plot logically — to come up with a cohesive theory that covers all kinds of stuff happening before the film even begins.

…so, I was meant to be explaining why it’s fun. Well, there’s a car ‘chase’ that takes place in both the past and present simultaneously, allowing Scott to indulge in some of his usual cars-flipping-for-no-reason show-off-y-ness (who doesn’t love a car flipping? Especially if it then explodes!) There’s also lots of narrative hoop-jumping, with plenty of clues littered through the first two acts that are paid off in the third. One of the film’s saving graces is that Scott, Marsilii and Rossio don’t spell most of these out for us — Washington doesn’t get up and say, “oh, that explains how the ambulance got here and then the building exploded and he must’ve cut your fingers off because you scratched him and [so on through numerous other minor semi-relevant clues]”; the audience are allowed to think all of this for themselves. Which is nice, because it’s obvious, but blockbusters too often just state the obvious these days. But I suppose when your central conceit needs explaining several times in lengthy dialogue scenes you assume the audience will be paying enough attention to catch the regular complications of standard film-narrative construction.

Deja Vu is kinda nonsense, then, albeit nonsense that some people have put a lot of thought into trying to explain. In spite of this, I quite enjoyed it — Washington is always likeable, the rest of the cast are up to the task of arranging themselves around him, and the connect-the-dots narrative is suitably engrossing. Factor in that Scott has toned down the visual trickery he pushed to eyeball-melting extremes in Man on Fire and Domino, and you find a half-decent sci-fi-ish thriller-blockbuster

It’s also the second film I watched in as many days featuring Friends’ Adam Goldberg playing the character he always plays in a story decisively set in New Orleans. Déjà vu indeed.

BBC One have the UK TV premiere of Deja Vu tonight at 10:35pm.

Despite the sustained objections of my spellchecker, this film is not called Déjà Vu (on screen). I know, I’m a pedant.

Frankenstein (2004)

Posted on February 22, 2010 by badblokebob

aka Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein

2010 #22
Marcus Nispel | 84 mins | DVD | 18

First, a little note on that aka: technically — and, I believe, legally — no such title is attached to this project. However, the initial idea was developed by Koontz and, after he left the project, adapted into his Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series of novels. Despite the ‘creative disagreement’ (or whatever they chose to call it) that led him to walk away, the film retains significant similarities to the first book. More on these in a moment.

So, this version of Frankenstein is a made-for-TV movie/series pilot (that’s taken six years to find its way to British TV, apparently — in case you didn’t know, the series wasn’t picked up). According to the blurb on my DVD, it’s a “contemporary retelling of Mary Shelley’s gothic horror classic”. I guess no one in the publicity department actually watched it. In actuality it’s more a sequel to Shelley’s novel: Dr Frankenstein has somehow survived to the modern day and emigrated to New Orleans, where he continues his experiments, while his original monster, now going by the name Deucalion, has tracked him down in the name of justice. Or something. Maybe they should’ve just started from scratch… then again, look how that worked out.

Thanks to Koontz leaving the project midway through its conception, it’s difficult to accurately explain the relationship between the novel and the film. This isn’t an adaptation, certainly, but nor is the novel a mere novelization. Most of the official comment on the novel/film relationship is along the lines of this, taken from the current iteration of the book series’ Wikipedia entry: “Koontz withdrew from the project over creative differences with the network, and the production continued in a different direction with similar characters and a modified plot.” Perhaps this is what Koontz would like viewers/readers to believe: that the novels are his undiluted vision, while the film most certainly is not. Well, don’t believe him.

Watching the film having read the book (a couple of years ago), this feels like a faithful adaptation. It comes with the usual caveats of condensing a c.400-page novel into a sub-90-minute film — certain elements are foreshortened, others tweaked, others abandoned — but in terms of the primary plot, the characters and their actions, it’s all incredibly close to the series’ first novel. I hesitate to say “exactly the same” when I’ve not read it for years, but it wouldn’t surprise me if whole scenes and dialogue exchanges match perfectly.

What this also means is that the film suffers from some of the novel’s flaws, when taken as a standalone work. Dr Frankenstein — now Dr Helios, for what it’s worth — is introduced but remains a background figure, only peripherally connected to this episode’s serial killer plot. In this its intentions as a pilot couldn’t be clearer, and with an ending that’s part cliffhanger, part “the story continues”, it’s as clear as in the novel that this is far from over. Other than there not being a TV series or any sequels, that is. (Though if you want to know what happens, there are already two further novels — and three more planned — that continue the story.)

The film itself isn’t badly produced. Marcus Nispel’s direction seems heavily influenced by Se7en, all dark and grainy and very, very brown. Even the title sequence, with its juddery extreme close-ups and pulsating grungy soundtrack, feels borrowed from Fincher’s masterpiece. The cast are fine: Michael Madsen and Adam Goldberg play the same parts they always play, Parkey Posey leads well enough, and as Deucalion, Vincent Perez is… adequate. Thomas Kretschmann’s Helios is the closest the film comes to an outstanding performance; knowing the events of books two and three, one almost longs for sequels to see Kretschmann’s cooly dominant Helios disintegrate as Everything Goes Wrong.

All things considered, Frankenstein is probably best viewed as a compromised curiosity. It’s certainly not a wholly satisfying experience in itself, but those interested in Koontz’s series may find it a nice way to test the waters without having to plough through a whole novel, while those who have read the novel may find it interesting to see one part of the story committed to film. Or, of course, they may find it irritating that it’s not how they imagined. I fall into that middle category; those with no interest in the books or who hold them too dearly may wish to knock a star off this score.

Five have the UK TV premiere of Frankenstein tonight at 11:25pm.

The World of Tomorrow (1998)

Posted on December 31, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #69a
Kerry Conran | 6 mins | Blu-ray | U

Before Sky Captain, there was this: a six-minute reel, shot, edited and, er, special-effects-ed, by Conran on an amateur basis over four years, demonstrating the production techniques and storyline he had in mind for a feature-length homage / reimagining of ’40s cinema serials.

We’re used to incredibly impressive home-crafted effects-laden films these days, but keeping in mind this was finished 11 years ago, it’s quite impressive. Judged now, it’s clearly the very early days of such composited digital filmmaking, lacking some of the complexity and flair we now see. What it does still suggest is that, given a full budget, such an idea has potential, both in terms of the method and the retro-sci-fi ’40s-serial-style story. Certainly, in my opinion, it did produce a very entertaining film in exactly that vein.

In comparison to its big brother, nearly every shot is exactly duplicated in the final film. In fact, most don’t look much more primitive here. The resolution’s lower, it’s perhaps a bit jagged round the edges, and it’s in deliberately dirtied black and white rather than the glowing sepia-hued colour of the feature, but it shows the concept worked from the off.

The World of Tomorrow isn’t a great film in its own right — indeed, as the closing captions suggest, it’s really an extended trailer / proof of concept for something bigger. In the latter regard it shows all the requisite promise, and thankfully someone in the industry noticed too.

Jumper (2008)

Posted on December 31, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #76
Doug Liman | 88 mins | Blu-ray | 12 / PG-13

In honour of Jumper’s central conceit — that certain people can instantaneously transport themselves to any other point on the planet — I will conduct this review by jumping about through paragraphs I wrote without bothering to link them properly. (Also done in honour of my laziness.)

Jamie Bell’s character, Griffin, is much more interesting than Hayden Christensen’s lead, but he’s also amoral — from a storytelling point of view (at least, a mainstream one) he needs a controlling influence, which is why he’s reduced to supporting and he’s-a-bad-boy-honest Christensen is the film’s focus point.

Acting wise, everyone’s just fine. Christensen is perhaps not the most convincing rebellious hero ever, but that’s as much the script’s fault as his and he’s a heck of a lot better than in either Star Wars prequel. Jackson could be a decent villain in his sleep, though Roland could perhaps do with a little more menace to live up to his reputation, while Rachel Bilson is a likable (read: pretty) enough love interest. But it’s Jamie Bell who — once again — really stands out. Why he isn’t heading up his own franchise yet is a mystery. (Oh, wait.)

The beginning is at times a little dull. Considering the film barely crosses the 80 minute mark before the credits roll, early on it feels like there could be a little more excitement and drive. The second half almost makes up for it. Budget is plastered across the screen in incredible action sequences that show off the promise of the concept to good effect. Griffin jumping a double decker bus at Roland is a particular highlight. The jumping car chase, on the other hand, is visually neat and a good idea, but also entirely pointless — for one thing, it’s not actually a chase (no one’s pursuing them), and they do it for no reason other than the sheer hell of it. It’s a shame, because it would’ve been even better given a proper place in the story.

The rules of jumping and the world they exist in seem incompletely thought-out; or, at best, inadequately explained. They go on about having ‘jump points’ or something, but then seem to be able to jump about at will, so what are these points? What’s their significance? Their use? How are they established?

Liman also blows a potential twist — that David isn’t the only one who has these abilities — too early in an attempt to flesh out Jackson’s villain. It’s a good scene in its own right and does serve a purpose, but story-wise it would play better after Bell shows himself to David. As it is, his ability to mysteriously follow David around is not so mysterious, his reveal more “and?” than “oh!”

Bourne-esque final scene… except more Supremacy than Identity, so while Liman is copying, it’s unfortunately not from himself.

Jumper is promising rather than accomplished. In the same way many view X-Men as necessary character introduction and setup for X2, so Jumper appears intended as a primer for the sequels Liman and co have (had?) planned. It may reduce you to thumb-twiddling at times, but there’s enough on offer to make a follow-up desirable.

(Originally posted on 8th February 2010.)

Avatar [3D] (2009)

Posted on December 20, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #89
James Cameron | 162 mins | cinema | 12A / PG-13

Avatar is The Film That Changed Cinema. The past tense can safely be used, despite the film only having been out a couple of days — it doesn’t matter if we like it, filmmakers and Hollywood executives have decided it’s the artistic and commercial way forward, and so it shall be. It barely even matters if people actually go to see it; not that it’s in much danger of flopping, coming in the wake of years of extreme hype and numerous sycophantic reviews.

What’s almost more irritating than that, however, is that it’s actually quite good. Flawed, unquestionably, and probably undeserving of the volume of advance praise heaped upon it, but far from a disaster.

It’s too long, for one thing. The end of Act Two feels like the end of the film… until it insists on going on for goodness-knows how long (my watch stopped working, I couldn’t check). It might not be so bad if it didn’t take its time getting to this point. Swathes of it feel like a dramatised nature documentary, only this time it’s about a fictional alien world. Talk of Cameron having created a fully-realised, living, breathing ecosystem are over-egged: there’s a half dozen creatures, at most, and their only relation is that they have these weird tentacle things in their hair that allow them to connect up to one another, like nature’s own biological USB. Maybe he knows who eats what and when and how and mating rituals and all that jazz, and if he does we should be thankful it’s not plastered all over the screen, but the creature creation/world realisation here isn’t anything beyond Jurassic Park.

The story itself isn’t bad. It certainly has an epic quality, which at least justifies the running time, though it’s a collation of elements from elsewhere. Of course, such things can be said of most stories these days, but with Avatar it seems even more obvious — a bit of Aliens here, a bit of The Matrix Revolutions there, a bit of An Inconvenient Truth for good measure, and so on with countless other recognisable tropes. The sin Cameron commits is that he mostly does it in quite a clichéd manner — it’s not just that you have seen it before, but it feels like you have too. Even the learning-to-fly bit, much praised in some quarters, reminded me of something else: slightly-rubbish TV miniseries Dinotopia, of all things. And don’t get started on the dialogue — “Try not to think of anything. That shouldn’t be too hard for you.” Dear God, how many times have we heard that line?

Towards the end Cameron does pull a few things out of the bag, mainly involving who gets killed and who doesn’t. Mostly, the story is a framework to allow the visual spectacle and an ecological/anti-war message. It’s as subtle as a nine-foot-tall blue alien. From crystal clear uses of familiar phrases like “shock and awe” and “hearts and minds”, to unconcealed references to our dying planet, Cameron attempts to criticise both American military tactics (invade, crush the locals…) and the destruction of the planet (…take all the natural resources for ourselves, no matter what the cost). It’s not that the message is wrong, it’s just that Al Gore did it with greater subtlety in a 90-minute lecture on that specific subject. From the outset, the military — specifically marines, of course — are quite clearly The Bad Guys Here, which is a refreshing change from the man who brought us Aliens. Quite what the American public are/will make of this outright criticism of both its military and energy consumption remains to be seen.

All this is realised through unrelenting CGI. It’s very good, but here Avatar falls victim to its own hype once again, because it’s still not 100% perfect. Perhaps it’s the closest yet seen — it certainly remains consistent throughout — but nothing had me wondering if they’d perhaps used prosthetics in addition to the CGI, as Davy Jones did at several points during Dead Man’s Chest, and I remain convinced that wonderful modelwork, as seen in the likes of Lord of the Rings, is still an unbeatable tool for creating convincing environments. Some will argue that we remain unconvinced of the alien creatures’ authenticity because we know they can’t be real, but some occasionally exhibit the plasticky shine of CGI or the jerky movement of motion capture. The Na’vi are certainly a step up from Robert Zemeckis’ dead-eyed humans in The Polar Express or Beowulf, but are they that much better than Gollum? Or even Jar Jar Binks? (In terms of the competency of the effects, I hasten to add.)

It’s hard to resist flaw-spotting with Avatar after reading so many praise-filled reviews. At the risk of sounding like one of those irritating people who sits at their keyboard declaring “ah-ha, I’ve realised something all you professional reviewers weren’t clever enough to see!”, I think this is in part due to the final act. Avatar has a stonking finale, from a huge Apocalypse Now-styled 9/11-echoing moment of destruction, to a thrilling and epic final battle (albeit interrupted by a mass of unwelcome pace-challenging plot). These sequences excel on almost every level, from visual wonder to the odd spot of emotion. And this is what your final impression of the film is, which can banish memories of the crawl through the middle, replete with those niggling flaws. I won’t be surprised if DVD/Blu-ray reviews commonly lose a star, robbed as it will be of the huge screen spectacle and reviewers forced to remember what they had to sit through to reach the big climax.

Oh yes, and Avatar’s meant to be convincing us that 3D is the future, isn’t it? And actually, 3D is quite nice. This is the first time I’ve seen a film in RealD, so I was pleased to discover how perfectly it works. No ghosting that I noticed and minimal discomfort even after such a long film, so from a viewing point of view I was happy with it. It adds depth to the image as well, rather than throwing things in your face — this too was pleasant. As I’ve noted on previous 3D reviews, this depth can bring a scene to life… not in the sense that you believe it’s genuinely happening behind that screen in front of you, but it does liven the images up.

What it doesn’t do is improve the storytelling — but then, what does? Some actors in a black box can convey a story wonderfully — look at Dogville, or any number of theatre productions — you don’t need sets, or costumes, or CGI, or even music or any number of other things we associate with the film experience. You could lump 3D in with these, or you could say it’s even less necessary — sets, costumes, and all evoke a time and place and create a realistic world in a way a black box doesn’t, but what does 3D bring to the table? It’s purely about spectacle, in the same way CGI or helicopter shots or using IMAX usually are. And that’s fine. But directors who’ve expressed an interest in shooting a ‘normal’ domestic drama in the format may be overestimating its import.

But for all the derivative plot, blunt message, cheesy dialogue, thrilling action, spectacular imagery, pretty good CGI and debatable 3D, Avatar may have a greater problem in gaining anything like widespread acceptance. It’s set 145 years in the future, on an alien world with floating mountains and other such fantastical elements, where a significant chunk of the story centres on a group of nine-foot-tall aliens (who fall in love and kiss, much to the loud derision of a group of 13-year-old boys in my screening) in a weird alien jungle with prehistoric-like alien creatures, and semi-scientific religious imagery and plot points that I haven’t even touched on… It’s pretty hard science-fiction, to put it simply. It’s not the accessible historical romance/disaster of Titanic, it’s not the real-world-styled action-based superheroics of The Dark Knight, it’s not an accessible adaptation of a widely-loved book like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter… One could go on in this vein through all the highest-grossing movies of all time.

Instead, it’s the cover art from a pulp science-fiction/fantasy novel or short story magazine writ large with the budget required to pull it off, and it’s that for almost three hours. For every SF/F-loving sycophant there’ll be a member of the general public who thinks it’s a load of old tosh. The truth is somewhere in between, as ever, but I won’t be surprised if the style of Avatar’s business is closer to Watchmen than Titanic. (I don’t think this is too delusional, incidentally. It will perform more strongly than Watchmen, obviously, because it has that all-important PG-13 certificate in the US and a helluva lot more hype in the mass media. But I remain convinced it won’t manage to be a phenomenon to rival Titanic or The Dark Knight, or The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter or Pirates of the Caribbean or Star Wars.)

Avatar is a significant film. Thanks to the hype and importance attached to it, by both Cameron and the industry at large, this can never be taken away from it — even if we’ve heard its story before, seen 3D before, seen effects as good before. I don’t believe The Future Of Film is riding on it as much as some would claim — after all, so convinced are They of its status as a hit that an endless stream of 3D movies heavy on CGI have arrived ahead of it and will continue for years after. In itself, it’s quite entertaining and probably deserves to be seen on the big screen. But, as expected, it’s not the revolution that was promised.

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