On the Waterfront (1954)

Posted on March 30, 2014 by badblokebob

2013 #104
Elia Kazan | 103 mins | DVD | 1.33:1 | USA / English | PG

So much more than one famous scene, On the Waterfront is a movie about a magic jacket, which causes anyone who owns it to stand up for what’s morally right even in the face of oppression, but also to suffer badly when they do.

OK, that’s not what it’s about. But you keep your eyes on that jacket and, I tell you, it may as well be.

The story, based on a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles, is actually about corruption in the dock worker union of New Jersey, with Marlon Brando witnessing what happens to those who attempt to blow the whistle, but deciding to do so himself anyway. Rather than a hollow issue-driven morality play, it becomes a tense and engrossing character drama in the hands of director Elia Kazan, screenwriter Budd Schulberg, and a capable cast. The latter includes Karl Malden as an initially quiet priest who resolves to stand up and fight the system too, even if he can’t persuade many workers to do the same; Lee J. Cobb as the self-serving man at the top, bitterly clinging to power ’til the last; Rod Steiger as Brando’s brother, part of the corrupt union architecture, but driven to protect his family at the sharp end of the wedge; and Eva Marie Saint, making her screen debut as the potential love interest, whose brothers was murdered doing the right thing but nonetheless persuades Brando to do the same.

The only potential downside to this comes if you dig behind the scenes. Kazan was one of those who testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities during its 1940s and ’50s witchhunt for Communists in Hollywood, naming eight men who were later blacklisted. If you consider the film to be Kazan’s answer to critics of his actions (as it “widely” is, according to Wikipedia), then presumably Brando is meant to be Kazan, calling out those who are doing ill to good hardworking Americans. But many a great film has been made with poor motive — just because Kazan thinks what Brando’s character does and what he did are the same thing doesn’t mean we have to. Even then, the issue of Kazan’s testimony is not so straightforward: a former Communist himself, he faced the end of his career if he didn’t testify, and the names he gave up were already known to the committee. The controversy dogged him for the rest of his career, though: when he received an honorary Oscar in 1999, several notable audience members refused to applaud.

While subtext is undoubtedly a meaningful thing, and using one situation to comment on another is a tried and true way of presenting an argument or criticism, I’m not a proponent of offhandedly dismissing work(s) just because we don’t agree with the actions or beliefs of the person who made it. On the Waterfront is a powerful film, exemplarily made by skilled craftsmen. Whatever Kazan was trying to atone for with its message about standing up to bullies in defence of what’s right, the sentiment is true. And you don’t need a magic coat to do it either.

On the Waterfront is on TCM UK tomorrow at 10:45am.

It was viewed as part of my What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 12 for 2013 project, which you can read more about here.

World War Z: Extended Action Cut (2013)

Posted on March 21, 2014 by badblokebob

In the weeks leading up to its theatrical release, it was already known that World War Z was going to be an almighty flop. An unscrupulous movie studio had taken a cult novel and thrown away everything but the title, alienating its existing fanbase. They’d spent a fortune making a movie in a traditionally R-rated genre that, if released at R, could never make its money back, and if released at PG-13 would never attract an audience. Then they reshot the entire third act, pushing the budget through the roof and ensuring the resultant film would get critically mauled. A fanbase snubbed, an impossibly huge budget, a genre/rating disconnect, and unavoidably poor reviews to come — World War Z was going to flop, and it was going to flop hard.

Then it came out, and became the highest-grossing film to star Movie Star™ Brad Pitt, and the highest-grossing original film of Summer 2013, and made nearly triple its budget worldwide, and even got fairly good reviews. Maybe I was reading the wrong sources in the run up to its release, or maybe it really was that rarest of things, perhaps even unique: a movie hype-resurrection that was less zombie and more phoenix.

The film sees Pitt’s retired UN investigator called back to duty when a rapidly-spreading plague, which turns people into zombie-like rabid creatures, breaks out around the globe. With his family in tow, he escapes an over-run Philadelphia and ends up with what’s left of the US population on a small fleet of ships, before jetting off around the world on a hunt for answers and, hopefully, a vaccine. Cue large-scale action sequences as director Marc Forster aims for an apocalyptic sci-fi/action epic rather than the zombie genre’s usual stomping ground of claustrophobic supernatural scares.

That, at least, is something different. The first half-hour races through stuff we’ve seen time and again: zombie attacks, humans turning on humans as they loot supermarkets, etc. Here the zombies are of the 28 Days Later-style speedy variety, all the better for creating blockbuster action sequences, such as a huge chase through crowded streets, or a running fight up the stairways of an apartment building. This is where the PG-13 certificate shows through (even though this cut is technically unrated in the US, the fact both versions received a 15 over here is telling): there’s little focus on violence or gore; which is fine, but won’t satisfy the more blood-hungry genre fans.

It’s after this that things, as noted, turn from claustrophobic to post-apocalyptic. The storyline feels moderately fresh, showing us the global scope of such an outbreak, rather than how a global event impacts a small group of people. I believe this is the closest the film gets to the spirit of the novel (which I’ve not read, so take that comparison with a pinch of salt). However, what’s new to the zombie genre isn’t necessarily new in any other respect, and by the time we get to Jerusalem and the characters are again being chased through crowded streets, it begins to feel a tad repetitive. Some of the sequences work well though, particularly a zombie outbreak on a passenger plane.

The re-shot final act is a breath of fresh air. Apparently the originally-filmed version was yet another epic battle, which has been switched for a more tense creep around a semi-abandoned research facility in… Wales. Yep, a big budget Hollywood action movie climaxes in the middle-of-nowhere in Wales. I quite like that. It’s a Wales populated by a Londoner, a Scotsman and a Spaniard, but still. I say “more tense” because this is far from the most nail-biting zombie film you could see. The finale is a nice change of pace, and does work as a climax in spite of the bombast that precedes it, but these are zombies as teen-friendly action movie menace, not adult scare-inducers, so don’t except to feel much fear or surprise.

As to the extended cut, it adds only about seven minutes… but there are 121 differences. I can’t even be bothered to read that properly, never mind recount it. There seem to be myriad tiny extensions to all the action sequences, many of them literally lasting a fraction of a second — someone watched this really closely! I can only presume this is actually the original cut, which was then trimmed for the sake of the MPAA to create a theatrical version, because who would consciously go back to add so many little bits? Some are even described as “very unnecessary extension”s by that summary. Other moments do expand on character, though in a subtle fashion (looks like the attempted rape of our hero’s wife, and the murder of one of the wannabe rapists, previously got the snip), or do add to the gore — clearly, it’s too much for a PG-13, but certainly within the realms of a 15. I can’t imagine any of it makes a great deal of difference to the overall experience, however.

Generally, World War Z is a competently entertaining blockbuster. It moves pleasingly fast, with characters quickly and lightly sketched rather than lingered on — not to everyone’s taste, and I imagine some will find it emotionally cold in the way so many recent spectacle movies are. There’s perhaps room for more, particularly from Daniella Kertesz’s Israeli soldier, who is nonetheless somehow the film’s most appealing character; but I don’t think it was the filmmakers’ aim to make us feel the characters’ plight, but instead to show the scope of a worldwide disaster. It does that pretty well, even if the occasionally-CGI zombies prove to be an I Am Legend-style plasticky distraction, especially when coupled with impossible swooping camera shots — it’s better and more effective in the sections where there’s a grittier feel to the camerawork and practical zombie make-up.

As it lacks the social subtext or extreme gore that the two branches of zombie fandom most value, I don’t think WWZ will find an enduring place in genre-fans’ hearts. As an epic summer action blockbuster, however, it largely passes muster.

World War Z is on Sky Movies Premiere this week, starting today at 4pm and 8pm. It’s also available on Now TV, where the running time suggests it’s the extended cut.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)

Posted on March 5, 2014 by badblokebob

Based on a novel by Morton Freedgood (writing as John Godey), previously adapted into a classic ’70s thriller (and a forgotten ’90s TV movie), The Taking of Pelham 123 (aka 1 2 3, aka One Two Three) concerns the hijacking of the titular New York Subway train (that being the 1:23pm from Pelham) by a mysterious gang of men (led here by John Travolta) who begin negotiating with a regular-joe train controller (played here by Denzel Washington) for money in exchange for the lives of their hostages.

As with most remakes, the need for this film to exist is questionable. Reportedly the original novel tells the story from the perspective of more than 30 characters, “keeping readers off balance because it is unknown which characters the writer might suddenly discard”, but the 1974 film focused in on the relationship between the hostage taker and the de facto lead negotiator. This film emulates that dynamic. While Denzel Washington and John Travolta are both actors who veer between competent and great, and so could theoretically match the performances of Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw in the earlier film, unfortunately they just don’t. Compared to the memorable characters created before, here the acting is crushingly adequate.

The writing doesn’t help, with stapled-on backstory additions that promise development and twists but ultimately go nowhere. Even the minor part played by the hostages is lesser here. In my review of the ’70s version I commented that I didn’t think they had enough to do, but that film did have a pleasing element of the hostages being more unlikeable than their captors. None of that here, where the captives are either even more unnoticeable, or heroic off-duty military types. So far so standard.

Otherwise, the film can be characterised as Tony Scott’s extraordinarily expensive take on a relatively straightforward story. Believe it or not, they pumped $100 million into this movie. Watching the disc’s making-of material, it becomes apparent how they managed to spend so much, but it remains strikingly needless. There was a tonne of research into how something like this might go down for real, including hiring former gang members for some of the supporting roles. Such attention to detail doesn’t come over on screen, the film still feeling like a Movie-Land thriller rather than a real-world drama. There was also a lot of Doing It For Real, including much filming in active subway tunnels. A headache to organise, and I’m sure an authentic experience for the cast and crew, but is the result on screen any better than they would’ve got from doing it on a soundstage? The makers clearly think so. I’m not convinced.

If those behind-the-scenes decisions are lost in the final film, then you can’t miss Scott’s whizz-bang direction. It’s the same grab-bag of visual tricks and ticks that dominated the latter stages of his career — jerky cutting, weird saturation, step printing, anything that makes the film look like it’s been massively over-processed. For me this extreme style sometimes worked (Man on Fire, Beat the Devil, even the unloved Domino), but, on balance, he probably went too far with it too often. Applied here to such a meat-and-potatoes tale, it feels like they’re trying to jazz it up because it can’t sustain itself otherwise.

Thing is, it can. Just about. There’s nothing special here; nothing to make modern audiences look back on it fondly in decades to come, as many do to the ’70s version. For fans of the genre, though, this is a solidly adequate experience.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is on Film4 tonight at 9pm.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Posted on February 25, 2014 by badblokebob

2013 Academy Awards
5 nominations — 1 win

Winner: Best Sound Editing (tied with Skyfall)
Nominated: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing.

I was going to, in the run up to this year’s Oscars, post a series of reviews looking back at last year’s Best Picture nominees. Unfortunately the viewing for that didn’t really come off (February’s been dismal all round, as you’ll find out in a few days in the monthly update) — but I did manage one, and here it is:

The writing and directing team from The Hurt Locker reunite for another perspective on the last decade-and-a-half-(almost)’s ‘War on Terror’. They set out to make a film about the CIA’s decade-long failed search for Osama bin Laden… and then he was found, immediately leading the film to be restructured as the story of the CIA’s decade-long successful search for Osama bin Laden.

The film focuses on Maya (Jessica Chastain), a fresh CIA agent in Pakistan who, in 2003, latches on to a piece of information about a messenger. No one else has much interested in this lead, but she pursues it for the next however-many years, most of the time getting nowhere — until eventually it results in something concrete…

Zero Dark Thirty feels like a dispassionate film, a characteristic that has debatable merits. The goal is clearly to present an objective, fact-driven account of how the CIA eventually found their most-wanted target, but how successfully it does that has been called in to question multiple times: there were those who felt it justified the use of torture, and those who claimed its facts were all wrong. On both these facts, any one viewer’s mileage might vary. I don’t think it defends torture, but nor does it condemn it — just as bad, in some people’s eyes. Do the agents in the film get information from torture? Some — but by no means all, and the quality of what little they did get is queried by other characters. I don’t think the film is pro-torture, but by trying to be objective and not really criticise the torture and torturers either, it doesn’t go in the direction some would wish it did.

As for the veracity of the facts, I have no idea. Nothing seems implausible. And when condensing eight years of a manhunt into around two hours of screen time, of course some details will be lost, or truncated, or slightly modified to support the flow. I think those who allege the film is poppycock are accusing it of more than minor tweaks, but nonetheless, that’s inevitably part of the process. What’s perhaps most interesting is it hasn’t whitewashed the facts to make a film that feels like A Movie — this isn’t a relentless thriller-shaped eight-year chase, but a more methodical, occasionally messy, real-life-like quest for information.

For me, that worked. It takes a little time to get going, to settle down into its rhythm and to let us identify the important characters, but once it does that, it’s suitably gripping. Not in a nail-you-to-your-seat way like, say, a Bourne film, but in an ever-more-engrossing fashion. It can feel a bit like watching a drama-documentary, however, because there’s very little investment in the characters. There are maybe two or three brief scenes in the entire thing where we’re invited to identify with these people, or even consider them as people, with emotions beyond the methodical drive for information. Some people will hate that, but I don’t think Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal really want us to focus on the human toll of this almost-never-ending investigation, they just want us to follow what happened. The focus is on how it was done, not the people who did it.

This carries through to the final half-hour (or so), which is a near-real-time rendition of the Navy SEAL mission to invade bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. The unit assigned to the task turn up and get on with it — like the rest of the characters, they are no more than sketches. I read a review that asserted this is where the film’s focus should have been — on who these men were, what their home lives were like, on their training for the mission, and what effect it had on them after. All of which are valid points for a film, but that’s not what Zero Dark Thirty is trying to be.

When we see the mission executed, it feels like a well-researched and detailed recreation of what happened — who moved where and when, how the building was entered, who got shot, etc — rather than asking us to identify with what these characters are thinking or feeling. Nor does it really seek to elicit too much emotion from the audience — it’s not forcing events into a standard action sequence template, with split-second cutting and a thudding soundtrack; it’s not trying to create tension and excitement, or at least no more than is inherent in the real events. I think Bigelow is borderline documentarian in her aims throughout the film, here as much as anywhere else. Clearly some people find that cold, or at least it leaves them cold, but I think it works. Would it be a better film if it came loaded with a greater exploration of the characters as people, or with a depiction of the events in more regular Thriller terms? I’ll let you know when someone makes that film.

The one other criticism I do agree with is that we don’t see enough of the SEALs’ preparation. They built a full-scale replica of the compound and trained on it — was that not worth putting on screen? I know this is the story of Maya and her investigation, not the SEALs and their assault, but I think a bit of time could have been spent on that fascinating aspect of the raid. On the bright side, there’s a sequence where our characters collect their still-in-development super-top-secret stealth helicopters from Area 51. Yes, really. I guess that must be true, because without the reality-claim of the previous two hours it would come across as Independence Day-level sci-fi!

I imagine debates about the moral stance and veracity of its facts will continue to dog Zero Dark Thirty, as well as the question of whether its too emotionless. For me it nonetheless made for an effectively modern and realistic take on the spy thriller.

In the UK, coverage of the 86th Annual Academy Awards is on Sky Movies Oscars from 11:30pm on Sunday 2nd March 2014.

Macbeth (1948)

Posted on January 23, 2014 by badblokebob

2013 #79
Orson Welles | 103 mins | TV | 4:3 | USA / English | PG

Twelve years on from his innovative, acclaimed, career-bolstering ‘Voodoo Macbeth’, and with the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast and films like Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and The Lady from Shanghai now under his belt, Orson Welles tried to interest Hollywood in something they’d only attempted a handful of times since the advent of talkies: a Shakespeare adaptation.

“Tried to interest” and “attempted” are not inapt phrases here. After failing to elicit interest in an adaptation of Othello, Welles switched to pitching the ever-popular Macbeth as “a perfect cross between Wuthering Heights and Bride of Frankenstein,” interesting Republic Pictures because of their desire to move from producing low-budget Westerns to being a prestige studio. The end result was Welles had to shoot his film in just 23 days for only $700,000. The end result was a movie that struggled against Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, released the same year, and for which poor critical reception led to nearly 20 minutes of cuts and the remainder being dubbed to change the actors’ accents.

Restored in 1980, the original version is a compromised but interesting adaptation. Welles has chopped and changed the play, cutting scenes, transposing others, assigning speeches to different characters, even creating new ones. This array of modifications scandalised critics at the time, though nowadays it’s much more common for film (and stage) versions of Shakespeare to mess around with the text as needed, usually to make the works a manageable length. Macbeth is one of the more sensibly-sized plays, however, though I suppose this is the legacy of Welles’ 23-day schedule.

The low budget and quick schedule affect the film across the board, for good and ill. There’s much dramatic staging, with grand sets and doom-laden lighting. The shadow-drenched cinematography may well be a result of the cheap production, but the resulting effect is marvellous. Indeed, all the camerawork is great. There are some striking long takes, including the majority of the night of the murder occurring in one long unbroken shot. The costumes, on the other hand, look like a ragtag bunch of Past Clothing from the studio’s store… which is because they essentially were.

Welles chose to have the cast speak with Scottish accents, which unfortunately end up a bit squiffy. I suppose it’s an attempt at authenticity at least, and if you don’t allow them to bother you then they won’t bother you. I certainly wound up not noticing them after only a few minutes. In spite of that, many of the performances are quite strong. Of their era — they can be a little stagey and histrionic, lacking the subtlety we might expect today — but good. The dialogue was pre-recorded for the sake of the schedule, with the actors miming their lines on set. Seems like a ridiculous idea, and no doubt had an effect on performances, but I only noticed it once in the entire production.

Much of the score (by Jacques Ibert, after Welles failed to secure Bernard Herrmann for contractual reasons) is appropriately atmospheric, but at one point it goes all Comedy. Macbeth himself is hardly in possession of all his faculties at that point, acting like a drunkard; but rather than make the sequence appropriately sinister (it’s in this state that he orders the execution of Banquo and Fleance, for example), it plays up the silliness, which is a shame.

For a variety of reasons, stemming from both the production situation and Welles’ creative choices, this is a flawed film. That said, its successes outweigh its problems to create a memorable adaptation that is justly regarded as one of the more significant films in Welles’ oeuvre.

The Falcon in Hollywood (1944)

Posted on January 20, 2014 by badblokebob

After leaving his New York base to investigate some co-eds, travel out west, and visit Mexico, the Falcon takes a well-earned vacation to the moviemaking capital of the world, Hollywood. But naturally trouble finds him there too, in the shape of a villain he once put away, his girl, a mistaken handbag, a cocky cab driver, a troubled film production, and — of course — murder.

By this point you should know what you’re in for with a Falcon film: a solid murder mystery plot with some light fun and mischief on the way to its solution. In this one, the plot is actually quite simple to follow for quite a while, making a change from recent Falcons. It’s still an engrossing enough mystery, but clearly told. But then someone throws a bunch of extra suspects and machinations into the mix and you’re left to fend for yourself, as ever.

Highlights here include a sassy sidekick taxi-driver played by Veda Ann Borg, who makes for playful comic relief alongside star Tom Conway. Though an array of the girls here are repeat performers (and as we’ll see most of them again, I’ll get into that then), Borg isn’t one of them, which is a distinct shame. Another memorable guest star is John Abbott as the movie’s producer, who quotes Shakespeare at the slightest provocation — even when he’s alone.

Stand-out sequences include a bit where the police detectives move through a crowd of suspects, all relaxing near the pool on a location shoot, while outlining each one’s possible motivations, essentially to their face. It’s a simple sequence, not exactly high on drama or humour, but there’s a pleasant structural touch to it. Or the finale: the Falcon is, as ever, drawn into the case by a mysterious woman… but by the end he has four of them grouped around him!

With the series’ usual mix of mystery and humour firing on all cylinders, coupled with what I suppose you’d call an insider’s take on the movie business adding some additional charm, in Hollywood is certainly amongst the Falcon’s better outings.

* As with the vast majority of the Falcon series, The Falcon in Hollywood hasn’t been passed by the BBFC since its original release. Nonetheless, it’s available on DVD, rated PG. ^

Man of Steel (2013)

Posted on January 17, 2014 by badblokebob

When Doctor Who returned in 2005, eager to find a new mainstream audience, can you imagine how well it would have gone down if it spent the first six or seven minutes on an alien world where old men with silly names wearing strange costumes argued about politics? Fastforward the best part of a decade and, buoyed no doubt by the various scales of success enjoyed by the likes of Avatar (strange alien world, silly names) and Game of Thrones (arguing about politics, silly names), that’s exactly how Superman reboot Man of Steel chooses to spend its opening 20 minutes. (In percentage terms, “6 or 7” is to Doctor Who’s brisk 45 minutes as “20” is to Man of Steel’s indulgent 143.)

Produced by Christopher Nolan and other creatives behind the uber-successful Batman reboot The Dark Knight Trilogy, this is intended to do a similar thing for Superman: a present-day, real-world relaunch. Which begins with a huge sequence on a crazy alien world. Well done, chaps. And that’s before we get into the merits of grounding clean-cut Boy’s Own all-American hero Superman in our ideologically complex modern world. Is that what Superman is? Based on critical and fan reaction to Man of Steel, your mileage may vary — some seem to find it fresh and invigorating, others a betrayal of what this archetypal superhero is meant to be.

Personally, I find it a valid thing to attempt. Rather than take the Superman mythology as read, here Nolan and co — including screenwriter David Goyer and director Zack Snyder — have tried to imagine what would really happen if an alien baby with incredible powers arrived in our world. So Clark Kent hides his abilities, goes on a trek around the world to ‘find himself’, and when he’s uncovered there’s mass media and military interest. Which is pretty accurate, I think. If some guy started stopping oil rigs collapsing single-handed, or flying around the place, the military’s hardly going to sit back and go, “oh OK then”.

Snyder emphasises this “it’s real!” tone with grainy handheld cinematography, which I’m sure is consciously designed to look like a ’70s independent drama. It’s also designed to mask a simple fact: such presentation details and a languorous first half aside, this is a pretty standard blockbuster. Shoot it with clean digital visuals and cut the “finding himself” segments back to a brisk first act and you’d have a completely standard array of big punch-ups and faintly ludicrous plotting. It’s interesting how much a ‘gritty’ sheen (as it were) can persuade people that what they’re watching is revolutionary across the board, but really it’s just a different way of presenting your common-or-garden blockbuster content.

The filmmakers have certainly bought into their own conceit, to a frankly laughable extent. The Blu-ray contains a featurette called All-Out Action, which the menu describes as follows: “The action in Man of Steel soars to new heights with a level of realism never before seen in a super hero film.” Hahahaha! Realism my arse. Once the action kicks in it’s positively comic book. Men are hurled around like rag dolls; Metropolis is destroyed in a huge flying punch-up, which just feels like a less effective re-hash of The Matrix Revolutions. There’s nothing wrong with comic book action in a comic book movie, in my opinion, but shooting it on desaturated grain-addled film stock with handshake and ragged zooms does not make your OTT computer-generated fight “soar to new heights with a level of realism never before seen”.

This is before we even get on to the morally divisive aspects of said fighting. Much talk focused on two elements (spoilers follow for the next three paragraphs): the large-scale destruction of Metropolis, and Superman killing Zod. Defenders say that destruction happens, that Metropolis was evacuated, and that Superman had no choice but to kill Zod to save innocent lives. Opposers say we don’t need to see so much disaster on screen (especially in the wake of other films, like The Avengers, showing similar city-level destruction), and that it’s out of character for Superman to murder someone in cold blood and it simply shouldn’t have happened. My view is split between the two.

As to the destruction of the city, I think the criticism is right. The city clearly isn’t evacuated before buildings start falling — it’s being evacuated, but no one even knew to start running before the Massive Machine Of Destruction (I forget what it was actually for) turns up and starts destroying things. People run into the streets as buildings fall on them. As a viewer, how can you miss that hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocents are dying? The cinematography makes it look like 9/11 — incredibly like 9/11, in fact. That was 12 years ago by the time of the film’s release, but is it OK to trade on such iconography in a blockbuster entertainment? Should we just ignore the notion that so many ‘extras’ are dying because, hey, it’s just a superhero movie? But aren’t we meant to be taking this as Real World, chaps?

The fate of Zod, on the other hand, is a different matter. I think it’s interesting to push heroes — heck, characters fullstop — in new and challenging directions. It’s all too easy to just avoid putting a character in a certain situation so you don’t have to see what they’d do; to give Superman an easy way to lock the villain up so he doesn’t have to make any other decision. But what if that isn’t an option? What if someone just as powerful is running around killing people at random; what if it’s within your power to stop him from imminently murdering a family with kids, but the only way to achieve that is to kill him? That’s the position Snyder, Goyer and Nolan put Superman in at the climax, and that’s the decision he has to make. Does he do the right thing? In fairness, I think that’s the debate the film is asking for. It’s not like Superman walks away fine with what he did, and I expect the idea is that his actions will have an impact on his values going forward.

There’s a lot else that Man of Steel plays with in the Superman legend besides the violence and cinematography. Some people will surely miss the bumbling Clark Kent, the burgeoning relationship with Lois Lane, and so on. These elements are eventually brought in, sometimes in a modified way, which makes it feel like they’ve been put in place — Superman Begins style — to be used in a sequel. Except we know the sequel is headed off in the Batman vs Superman direction, so how much ‘clumsy Clark’ we’ll get to see is questionable. I have to say, I don’t blame the makers going a new way — how do you compete with the Christopher Reeve classics? And if you try to emulate them, you end up with Superman Returns, which was a box office and critical success but for some reason is remembered as a failure in both regards.

A 21st Century reinvention of the oldest superhero is an interesting notion, and in some regards Man of Steel works; but those successes are regularly marred by superficial ‘innovations’ that don’t click. The final result is a standard blockbuster masquerading as something revolutionary; an adequate film that indulges itself, leading to a belief it’s something more, which is ultimately to the detriment of its audience.

Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009)

Posted on January 15, 2014 by badblokebob

From 1984 to 1994, a perfect storm of people and circumstances changed the face of animation forever.

So declares the title card at the start of this documentary, which covers how in just a few years Disney went from nearly shutting down its animation division to a period of immense critical acclaim and box office success, including the first animated movie to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

On the surface, it’s not a secret story. A significant part of the film is made up of contemporary news and documentary footage that clearly shows this was being covered at the time, and you can see more of the same just by looking into box office numbers and critical assessment. It’s also, to an extent, ‘race memory’ — we ‘all’ know of the Disney classics from earlier years, how this tailed off through the likes of The Black Cauldron, and then the renewed burst of creativity that began with The Little Mermaid and flowed through the likes of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, until (more or less) the end of the ’90s (before it all went wrong again, but that’s another story).

However, Waking Sleeping Beauty is told from the inside: director Don Hahn started out as an assistant director at Disney animation in the ’80s, graduating to producer by the time of Beauty and the Beast. With him he brings behind-the-scenes home movies and access to a stunning array of interviewees. Almost everyone who was anyone at Disney during that time is interviewed, either through archive footage or new audio commentary. It was a tough time, and while Hahn’s portrait is probably not quite warts-and-all, it comes damn close; for example, we get to see some of the caricatures the animators drew in disgust at their new boss, Jeffrey Katzenberg.

As best I can tell, Waking Sleeping Beauty is only available in the UK through certain streaming services (I watched it on Now TV, which it has now departed; I believe it may have been on Netflix, but again isn’t right now), which is a shame. The US DVD is reportedly packed with nearly an hour-and-a-half of additional interviews and the like, which makes it an enticing prospect.

As Disney’s ‘animated classics’ continue to be successful (with Wreck-It Ralph and Christmas-just-passed’s Frozen the most recent entries) and the focus of their business, from merchandise sales to attractions at their ever-popular theme parks, it’s easy to forget that the animation legacy nearly died — several times. Waking Sleeping Beauty does an excellent job of showing us how close they sailed to disaster, and how the dedication and creativity of individuals who believed in that legacy stopped the ship from sinking.

Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

Posted on December 25, 2013 by badblokebob

When the first Kick-Ass was released back in 2010, one of the main stories was that it had flopped at the box office. That was poppycock: it opened at #1 in the US, and because it was made for just $30m it more than broke even in the US alone, eventually earning a total of $96m worldwide. It was an even bigger hit on DVD and Blu-ray, with an uncommonly large percentage of home entertainment sales being on BD, helping it earn even more cash.

Come the release of Kick-Ass 2 in September 2013 and the first film was suddenly referred to as a renowned box office hit. I guess the media have very short memories. And it made a good stick to beat the sequel with, when it opened at #5 in the US with just $13m. What a flop! Except it only cost $28m, has gone on to make just over that in the US, and has climbed to a total of $59.6m worldwide. Not close to as big as the first film, but even before the inevitably-successful DVD & Blu-ray numbers that’s a strong performance.

Will we see a third film? That certainly looks plausible. Should we? Well…

Written and directed by Jeff Wadlow, based on two comic book miniseries (Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass 2) by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., the movie of Kick-Ass 2 rejoins the characters a couple of years on. A wave of Kick-Ass-inspired costumed heroes now patrol the streets, though Kick-Ass himself, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), has more or less retired. Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz) still fights crime as Hit-Girl, hiding that fact from her disapproving guardian (Morris Chestnut). Meanwhile, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) wants revenge on Kick-Ass for murdering his father, but is being kept out of the way by his mother and the remains of his father’s mob organisation… until she dies in a freak accident, when Chris dubs himself “the Motherfucker” and sets about forming a gang of supervillains…

If that sounds like a convoluted setup, that’s kind of how it plays on screen too — and it’s only the start of it. This is a somewhat muddled second instalment, taking time to re-introduce us to various characters and follow all their stories. Whereas the first film introduced elements gradually as they came into contact with the central narrative of a schoolboy-turned-superhero, Kick-Ass 2 picks up each character when they’ve more or less gone their separate ways, then sets about bringing them together again. So rather than one straightforward thread that others naturally emerge alongside, here Wadlow must juggle three disparate tales from the start, before he eventually ties them together.

It feels a little meandering, then, as Kick-Ass joins up with a superhero team trying to do good, the Motherfucker gradually assembles his own team of villains, and Mindy tries to fit in as a regular high school girl. You can see the germs of good ideas here, but how well they function is debatable. Whereas the first film riffed on archetypal characters and plots from regular superhero movies, as such providing an entertaining deconstruction of the genre, the sequel doesn’t feel as focussed. The themes are somewhat familiar — superheroes leading to supervillains, as seen in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, or the assembly of superhero teams, as seen in The Avengers — but it seems these are coincidental similarities, not conscious points of reference, comparison, juxtaposition, or examination.

Wadlow is an inadequate replacement for the first film’s director/co-writer Matthew Vaughn. In fairness he’s working to an even tighter budget (in the deleted scenes, he reveals a whole 30-second action beat in the Hit Girl/Mother Russia fight was cut purely because they couldn’t afford a small patch of green screen replacement in one shot), but that’s not the real problem. There just aren’t as many gags, the action sequences aren’t as viscerally satisfying, the story meanders a bit in the middle rather than barrelling through like the first. In part this is the widely-identified fact that Moretz is now a teenager behaving like a teenager rather than the shocking/amusing pre-teen swearing like a sailor of the first movie, but it’s a more endemic problem than that. Whether it stems from Millar’s original comic or Wadlow’s treatment of it, I don’t know, but on the whole it feels less inventive, less vital, and consequently less exciting (though there are some good sequences) and less funny (though there are some proper laughs).

Wadlow does make welcome changes to Millar’s notoriously nihilistic comic, however: instead of gang-raping Kick-Ass’ girlfriend, the Motherfucker can’t get it up (I guess because Kick-Ass isn’t dating his mother (ho ho!)); instead of murdering Colonel Stars & Stripes’ dog, he remarks that “I’m not that evil!”; and so on. The film version still has its points of offensiveness and some outré ideas, certainly, but the needlessly-harsh edge has been taken off, especially when it comes to punishing characters who are innocent. With the exception of Kick-Ass’ dad, but then that’s a superhero staple… just one that’s more violently executed here than normal.

The quality cast keep the film watchable at all times, and the tight budget doesn’t always stand in the way — some of the green screen work may be shockingly cheap, as seen in the van sequence ever since the trailer, but the action choreography of such sequences is still good — meaning that Kick-Ass 2 remains entertaining for fans of the first outing. But it isn’t as strong a production all round, and doesn’t exceed the original in any regard — indeed, any emotional investment in the characters (and there is some) is carried over from the first film’s groundwork — meaning that those fans may be entertained, but will also be a bit disappointed.

So is Kick-Ass 3 a good idea? Kick-Ass 2 does provide a kind of conclusion to the story… but it also leaves it wide open for more, not to mention that Millar & Romita’s third comic book miniseries (currently running) is supposed to be the definitive final act for the characters. It would be a shame not to see that completed on screen, but perhaps with more care in how it’s executed.

This review is part of the 100 Films Advent Calendar 2013. Read more here.

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Posted on December 24, 2013 by badblokebob

Disney’s 51st and/or 52nd animated classic (depends who you listen to) is, essentially, Toy Story with video games. Arcade games, to be precise. Turns out that all the characters from said entertainments hang out in the plug bar that powers them all, though behind-the-scenes they’re not necessarily like their characters — most of the villains are pretty nice guys, who have Bad-Anon (Bad Guys Anonymous) meetings to share their woes. But as the game he stars in reaches its 30th anniversary, Wreck-It Ralph has had enough of being an outsider, and when the other characters in his game imply he’ll be included if he can win a medal — which he can’t, because he’s a bad guy — he sets out into other games to try to get one.

Cue fun antics as our hero careens through various other games, right? Wrong. He goes to… two. OK, we see glimpses of a few more, and the Bad-Anon meeting takes place in Pac Man, but essentially he pops into one game to get said medal and introduce an apocalyptic MacGuffin, and then another for the rest of the plot. That latter game is Sugar Rush, a candy-themed cart racer. I’m pretty sure the production team must’ve spent the entire production eating candy for “research”, because the gaudy world and much of the film’s pace has all the idleness and restraint of a kid on a sugar high — i.e. none.

Unfortunately, despite the rarely-filmed milieu of video games, it’s all a bit predictable — like I said, it basically does with video game characters what Toy Story did with toys, both in terms of the story and its themes of acceptance. At least one wearing subplot had me involuntarily exclaim “oh get on with it!” out loud (and I was watching by myself). The pace rarely lets up, and at 101 minutes that becomes tiring. When it does give you a break, you kinda wish it would get a wriggle on, because it’s obvious where things are going and it’s wasting time getting there. Of course, most mainstream films (especially kids’ movies) are going to follow broadly the same arcs — however bad it gets we know the hero will win, etc — but the trick is to make you enjoy the journey, not long to arrive at the destination. I spent most of the third act almost drumming my fingers as I waited for it to get to the latter.

For fans of retro — and indeed current — computer games, there’s plenty of cameos and references to be excited about, both in terms of familiar faces (various characters from Sonic, Mario and Street Fighter, for instance, amongst many others) and clear riffs on other franchises and genres. I’m not really a gamer though, so while I recognised many of them (from the days when I did engage in such pursuits) there wasn’t exactly a thrill in it. I think that pleasure of recognition, and some almost in-joke-level bits, can lead certain viewers to enjoy the film more than it otherwise merits. That’s nice for them, but does nothing for the rest of us.

Wreck-It Ralph isn’t actually a bad film. There’s a fair bit of inventiveness with the concept, and the makers have worked hard to establish a world with rules (though your mileage may vary on how successfully they’ve done that), but it descends into a breathless, sugar-fuelled, reheated runabout. I imagine young kids will adore its colourfulness and its energy, and won’t be bothered by the over-familiar plotting and life lessons; but, beyond nostalgia for arcade gamers, I don’t believe it has huge amounts to offer a grown-up viewer.

Wreck-It Ralph debuts on Sky Movies Premiere at 1:45pm and 7:15pm today, and is already available on demand through Sky Movies and Now TV.