The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

Posted on December 16, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #66
Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell & Tim Whelan* | 102 mins | TV (HD**) | U

The Thief of Bagdad is, in many respects, one of the forefathers of the modern spectacle-driven blockbuster, packed with innovative effects designed to dazzle the viewer. One can only imagine how incredible the special effects looked to a 1940 audience. Today the flaws are obvious, but, surprisingly, not by much.

There are too many enchanting sequences to mention — the ginormous genie, the flying mechanical horse, the giant spider, the toys, the flying carpet… Models, huge life-scaled props, matte paintings, early blue screen — all this and more are put to use beautifully. The ingenuity of the effects work contains more artistry and charm — and, frequently, more excitement — than the bland, wannabe-perfect CGI we’re force fed today; and, because of this, and in spite of being almost 70 years old, the sense of wonder remains. It doesn’t matter that it’s not 100% believable — in fact, that’s almost the point: the child-like ability to suspend one’s disbelief and accept the fantastical seems to be the message of the film (or, at least, one of them).

All of this is emphasised by the cinematography. This is one of the earliest films to use Technicolor and use it it does. Everything is vibrant and lush, vivid and otherworldly; especially to the audience of the time, I should imagine, not accustomed to foreign holidays and endless TV travel shows as we are today. But the film’s world is a heightened version of reality and, as with the effects, the fantastical style means it doesn’t really date. Wish You Were Here has nothing on this.

The story itself has a bit of everything: romance, fantasy, action, adventure, humour and, no doubt, more. The cast are up to the task, with John Justin swashing his buckle Errol Flynn-style as dethroned prince Ahmed; Conrad Veidt perfect as slimily evil vizier Jaffar “the usurper”; Sabu suitably valiant, amusing and clever as a peasant hero; and Rex Ingram making a memorably self-centred genie. If Disney fans think some of this sounds familiar, it must seem obvious to anyone who’s seen Aladdin that The Thief of Bagdad was a major influence on the 1992 animated classic.

These days, The Thief of Bagdad may be something of an acquired taste — some viewers will struggle to engage their sense of make-believe enough to accept the rough-round-the-edges effects and fantastical storyline — but that’s their loss, quite frankly. For those of us with some imagination to spare, it remains a magical experience.

* Although only these three are credited on screen, six directors were reportedly involved. The others were producers Alexander Korda, Zoltan Korda, and William Cameron Menzies. ^

** Though listed by the Radio Times as being in HD, the D didn’t look particularly H to me. ^

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Posted on December 8, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #63
Kerry Conran | 102 mins | TV (HD) | PG / PG

If the Indiana Jones series was a bit more sci-fi (even than Crystal Skull, that is), it might be rather like this. First time writer-director Kerry Conran evokes ’40s cinema serials more thoroughly than Lucas or Spielberg ever dared with a globe-hopping tale of a mad scientist’s giant robots doing all sorts of damage in a quest for… well, that would spoil the ending.

In the telling, Sky Captain is every inch a Boy’s Own adventure, packing every facet of that genre of storytelling into its brisk running time. There’s secret bases, ray guns, giant robots, flying aircraft carriers, snow-bound Himalayan treks, creature-infested secret jungle islands, huge underground bases, space rockets, planes that are also submarines, tree bridges over impossibly deep gorges… If it’s part of the genre, it’s probably here, and all finally executed with ’00s-level special effects. In some respects it does move between set pieces and locations in an episodic fashion, but then that’s more a trait of the films it emulates — i.e. episodic serials — than a flaw in Conran’s plotting.

Still, some might view Sky Captain as little more than an exercise in filmmaking — it was one of the first movies to be shot entirely on blue-screen, around the same time as Sin City and a couple of others. There’s more to it than that, but it’s also hard to ignore the style this creates. The shooting process is far from perfect if one were trying to recreate real life, but here the whole look is so stylised that it hardly matters. The period setting is nicely evoked, combining myriad influences into an intricately realised retro-future style, coupled with a lovely sepia sheen over everything. It’s beautifully lit, while individual shots and editing are frequently reminiscent of a style from the ’40s (and earlier). Again, Conran is being deliberately evocative of films of the period, rather than a modern film set then; more La Antena than Star Wars.

Another much-discussed feat of technology is the resurrection of Sir Laurence Olivier as the film’s villain. Unfortunately, his brief appearance is underwhelming. Perhaps we’ve become too accustomed to modern technology resurrecting deceased actors for ‘new’ performances (not that it happens that often); but then again, what was done with Oliver Reed for Gladiator — four years before this — seemed more impressive than the small amount of hologram we see here, even though the digitally created shots were equally brief. It’s a shame, because using Olivier for this key role is quite neat, certainly better than casting a glorified extra. In fairness, then, it’s a part so small that very few appropriately-big names would agree to it, which perhaps permisses resurrecting Olivier after all

Among the real performances, the acting is a bit flat. Perhaps this is deliberately in-keeping with the emulated style, though Jude Law is always this bad so maybe not. Similar comments could be made of the screenplay, if one were being unkind. What it does manage is a good amount of humour — an essential part of the genre, as any Indiana Jones fan will tell you, but it’s by no means guaranteed in these over-serious times (thankfully, the likes of Star Trek and Transformers are occasionally breaking down this barrier to fun).

Breaking free of any self-imposed period constraints, Conran also produces a few exciting action sequences, such as a plane chase through the streets of New York. It’s incredibly hard to create spectacle these days, but Sky Captain occasionally manages it. There are also lots of fun little references to other things for the keen viewer to pick out. 1138 crops up, inevitably, but my favourite is some dialogue lifted from Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds.

Sky Captain is a healthy dose of retro-styled fun. Perhaps that makes it an acquired taste, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.

My review of the proof-of-concept short that inspired Sky Captain can be read here.

Ripley’s Game (2002)

Posted on November 20, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #67
Liliana Cavani | 106 mins | TV | 15 / R

Matt Damon is back as… Oh, wait, no he isn’t — he’s turned into John Malkovich.

Not quite — there’s no reasonable way Ripley’s Game can be considered a sequel to Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley. Though it’s adapted from a later novel in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley series (previously filmed as the Dennis Hopper-starring The American Friend, incidentally), the action is relocated to the present day, and it’d be a pretty hard sell to believe Matt Damon would grow up to be John Malkovich.

Despite the acclaim of Minghella’s effort just three years earlier, and a cast that includes recognisable faces such as a Ray Winstone, Dougray Scott and Lena Headey alongside Malkovich, Ripley’s Game snuck out with barely anyone noticing, including going straight to TV in the US. There are surely reasons for this, reports of a problematic shoot probably among them, but the neglect is undeserved. In 2006, Roger Ebert saw fit to include it in his Great Movies list, though other critics are less favourable (the Radio Times, for one handy example, rate it just three out of five). While Ebert is in my opinion overselling the film by including it in a list of the best films ever made ever, it’s certainly an above average, consummately made, and constantly entertaining Euro-thriller.

Perhaps the difference in opinion about the film stems from one, arguably crucial, sticking point: the Radio Times criticises the humour included in the murders and thriller sections, viewing it as a failure of director Liliana Cavani; conversely, Ebert approves of it, praising them as appearing somewhere “between a massacre and the Marx Brothers”. There’s undoubtedly more to the diverging opinions than this, but it’s at least emblematic. I’m inclined to agree with Ebert: these sequences do have tension — not the most one’s ever experienced in a thriller, but enough — but they marry the humour to it, leaving you chuckling on the edge of your seat.

For the most part the story keeps moving, twisting and turning in sometimes unexpected directions. Other films would happily take the first half-hour or so of this and stretch it to a whole feature, but screenwriters Charles McKeown and Cavani — adapting from Highsmith’s novel, of course, so the credit lies with her — take the premise further and in new directions. It’s not flawless, with the climax by far the biggest let down: Ripley and Trevanny hole up in the former’s villa, preparing for a veritable war as Ripley anticipates goodness-knows how many men to turn up. When it’s only two, it seems more believable than a whole army of mafia goons descending on the relatively insignificant pair, but it’s also distinctly anticlimactic after the hype. Still, at least the story has a final twist up its sleeve.

Malkovich may be a fairly respected actor, but to me he’s always seemed detached, flat, or mannered — often all three. Here, he’s still all three, but it suits Ripley’s unusual character down to the ground. His dry wit and incessant matter-of-fact delivery craft a quietly sinister, stalking nature, aiding the character’s believable unpredictability — that is to say, you’re never certain what he’s going to do next, but when he does it’s not surprising. I’ve never read a Ripley novel (there are five) nor seen another Ripley film (there are four), but Malkovich’s performance fits so perfectly I have little doubt this is precisely how Ripley should be played.

Among the rest of the cast, Ray Winstone is landed with a role he could play in his sleep, Lena Headey is perfectly fine as an unremarkable wife, and Scot Dougray Scott plays a none-more-plummy Brit. Unfortunately this accent sometimes seems to be the main focus of his performance, and it occasionally falters when he gets highly emotional, but it’s not really a problem… though it is rather odd to hear if you’re familiar with how he normally sounds. His character, Trevanny, is primarily a pawn in Ripley’s titular amusement, leaving Scott with only a passing hint of the character arc with which the role could have been gifted.

As noted earlier, there are numerous tales of problems on set, not least the multinational cast coping with a multinational crew in multiple nations, culminating in Cavani leaving towards the end of shooting and directorial duties being fulfilled by Malkovich. But as many have noted before, happy sets can produce dreadful movies and unhappy sets masterpieces, and while I don’t quite share the view that Ripley’s Game is entirely the latter, it certainly errs more in that direction than the other.

High Society (1956)

Posted on September 30, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #54
Charles Walters | 107 mins | DVD | U

Cole Porter-scored musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, which is probably most famous for featuring Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and being star Grace Kelly’s final film before becoming a princess.

Despite rarely singing, Kelly is by far the film’s standout element — it’s easy to believe three different men would be vying for her affection, but she also gets the chance to show the greatest range of any cast member. Admittedly it’s shades of comedy rather than a full awards-worthy display of ability, but she carries the film beautifully. It’s no wonder her husband-to-be, Prince Rainier of Monaco, objected to her appearing in movies when she played roles such as this: a divorcee who at one point allegedly sleeps with another man on the eve of her wedding to a third is surely no role for a princess. (Turns out she didn’t sleep with him, mind.)

Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra are more-or-less themselves as the male leads, though the sole song they perform together, Well, Did You Evah!, is one of the film’s best — despite being a late addition from a previous Cole Porter musical after it was realised Crosby and Sinatra didn’t have a number together. Louis Armstrong also plays himself, literally, and brightens up the screen whenever he appears. His band’s duet with Crosby, Now You Has Jazz, is another of the film’s highlights.

Despite being adapted from an acclaimed play and film, the plot feels like a relatively slight contrivance to link together a couple of songs — alternately of the Romantic and Comedic variety — and some farcical humour with a romance-based thread. That the right people end up together is no surprise — so little surprise, in fact, that the story doesn’t even bother with such trivial things as making the final entanglements come together believably.

No matter. It’s the journey to the inevitable conclusion, through a few comical scenes and a few decent tunes, that makes High Society a perfectly pleasant dose of entertainment.

High Society is on TCM UK today, Saturday 4th April 2015, at 4:15pm, and on Sunday at 9:35am.

The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)

Posted on June 24, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #30
Randall Wallace | 132 mins | download | 12 / PG-13

From the off it’s clear that The Man in the Iron Mask is not going to go well. It’s an adaptation of a tale of the Three Musketeers, so naturally is set in historical Paris… where everyone has a different accent and very few of them are French. It is, to be blunt, a horrid mishmash — much like the whole film.

Wordy political intrigue tries to coexist with broad comedy which is squashed against swashbuckling adventure. The latter two could co-exist, but the film feels like it wants to be the former and so suffers for it. The comedy jars too much to be effective, while instances of unintentional comedy unfortunately provoke more frequent laughs. It should at least be able to swash buckles effectively — these are the Three Musketeers after all — but entirely fails to achieve this until the climax. The plot, semi-faithfully adapted from one of Alexandre Dumas’ original novels, offers a level of complexity to which the film clearly aspires, but the adaptation and acting struggle to match it.

The majority of performances are marred by overacting — John Malkovich, especially, is woefully miscast, while Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t appear to give a particularly good performance as either Louis or Philippe. In DiCaprio’s defence I suspect this is actually the script’s fault, because he manages to clearly differentiate the two when they are silent or pretending to be the other — it’s when they open their mouths that it all goes wrong. Gérard Depardieu is fine as the comic relief, though that relief is tonally misplaced, while Gabriel Byrne makes an interesting d’Artagnan — there’s nothing at all wrong with him, and yet he doesn’t feel quite right. Which leaves just Jeremy Irons among the main cast. He fares the best of the lot, even getting the occasional scene or speech that is genuinely quite good, though it’s clear he is far better than the material. To be fair, the same is also true of everyone else.

For all this, The Man in the Iron Mask is more disappointing then bad. The Bastille-set climax is occasionally brilliant and never less than entertaining, delivering on the film’s swashbuckling promise in a copious fashion. Throughout, there’s the occasional good scene — or even just a decent line of dialogue — and you can briefly understand what inspired such quality actors to sign on.

Something went wrong somewhere though, and the obvious culprit must be writer/director Randall Wallace. The story’s good, but that’s Dumas’, while the adaptation’s weak — and that’s Wallace’s. The actor’s are good, but battle the poor script — and that, obviously, is Wallace’s. They don’t seem to have been given any significant direction, they’re not helped by an uneven tone, and even the cinematography falls short, failing to make the spectacular locations and costumes look suitably beautiful on screen — and we know who’s ultimately in charge of all that too.

The Man in the Iron Mask desperately wants to be better than it is — it’s a great tale, packed with politics and swashbuckling, and this particular version has the high calibre cast to pull it off. But both are left floundering by a writer/director who isn’t up to either task — poor dialogue, a gyratingly uneven tone and lacklustre direction abound. A missed opportunity, and all the more disappointing for it.

Solaris (2002)

Posted on June 13, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #13
Steven Soderbergh | 94 mins | DVD | 12 / PG-13

When Andrei Tarkovsky adapted Stanislaw Lem’s thoughtful science fiction novel in 1972, it took 165 minutes. When Steven Soderbergh did it 30 years later, it took just over 90. Lem hated them both, stating that he didn’t write about people’s “erotic problems in space”, but for those concerned with what the film is about rather than what it (perhaps) should have been about, it seems that an abbreviated running time is no barrier to loading any adaptation of Solaris with a weighty thoughtfulness.

Everyone knows Solaris is a sci-fi film — the title sounds that way, for one thing, and George Clooney in a space helmet on the cover certainly does the rest. It’s a shame that’s so well known, because if one came to this version cold it would take a good few minutes before there was any inkling it wasn’t just a drama. The underplaying of the scientific elements may have angered Lem, but Soderbergh uses them to create a backdrop to the emotional story he wants to tell — Solaris the sentient planet was the point of the novel, as far as Lem was concerned, whereas to Soderbergh it’s a device to explore relationships and grief.

In doing this the film merrily mixes genres: it looks very much like it’s Science Fiction, all futuristic TVs and space station settings, and there are a few scientific concepts touched on; but it’s also a Romance, occasionally; and a Drama about coping with death, amongst other things; and an ‘arthouse’ film about notions of God and memory and reality and humanity; and there’s a huge chunk of Mystery in what the hell is going on; and there are a couple of moments that wouldn’t be out of place in a Horror film… About the only conventions Soderbergh doesn’t bother with belong to Action-Adventure, which as the normal stomping ground of big-name sci-fi certainly makes for a change.

It’s likely this that explains its low rating on IMDb and the like. A slow pace and obtuse storytelling that leaves plenty of gaps for the audience to fill is not the experience implied by an advertising campaign showing a Space Movie starring Movie Star Heartthrob George Clooney. Obviously it doesn’t fulfill these expectations, and will likely have still been too slow and difficult for even more viewers. (As it makes for a slow hour-and-a-half, I wonder how they would feel if told there’s a version over an hour longer.) The question is, does it also deserve such a low rating from those ‘clever’ or accepting enough to ‘get’ it? That depends on your perspective. It’s either Deep and Meaningful, or a bit Pretentious and Pointless. In this respect it’s highly reminiscent of The Fountain (or, rather, The Fountain is reminiscent of Solaris) — an unusual sci-fi/romance angle, slow pace, and ambiguous to the last. As one character says, “there are no answers, only choices.”

Soderbergh’s direction, plus the performances of Clooney and Natasha McElhone on which the film relies, do have the power to hold you, but only if you’re prepared for — and, more importantly, open to — the sort of experience Solaris offers. Undoubtedly not for everyone.

Insomnia (2002)

Posted on June 10, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #33
Christopher Nolan | 113 mins | DVD | 15 / R

This review contains minor spoilers.

Between becoming a Geek God with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and coming to everyone’s attention with a stunning more-or-less-debut that managed to elbow itself right up into the IMDb Top 10 (that’d be Memento — obviously, it’s slipped since), Christopher Nolan directed this: an American remake of a Norwegian police thriller, and the only one of Nolan’s five major films not to be on that be-all of film quality, the IMDb Top 250 (the fifth is of course The Prestige, while Begins is the lowest at #106.) So is Insomnia a forgotten classic robbed of a spot, or just a footnote to the rest of Nolan’s superb career?

These days, there’s a murder mystery/thriller on the TV most weeks — heck, most days thanks to the abundance of repeat-laden digital channels — and so a film attempting one can’t just settle for the usual array of clues, suspects, interviews and twists. Insomnia looks like it’s heading down this road early on — an interview with the victim’s boyfriend in particular could easily slot into any episode of Midsomer Murders or what have you — but soon does what’s required of any film entering this territory these days: it provides more. Most obviously, despite the early plot and stylistic conventions, this is not a “whodunnit”: the killer’s identity is revealed around the halfway mark (assuming you haven’t already guessed it from the opening credits) and from then on the film gradually moves into murky moral territory, quickly leaving behind those early trappings for a set of more complex noir-ish moral conundrums.

Al Pacino’s detective, for example, is a man under pressure — not just from the case, nor the usual clichés of a messy divorce or alcoholism, but from a pending Internal Affairs investigation that may or may not be justified, and an incurable bout of insomnia brought on by the Alaskan summer’s lack of night. The pressure mounts, he makes bad decisions (which I won’t spoil here), and even if the use of these plot points was merely that they occurred it would have offered something above the norm. Hillary Seitz’s screenplay pushes it further however, digging far deeper than usual for the genre into debates about the morals of police work, what seems acceptable and what is acceptable, and perhaps even what should be acceptable. The ending may seem to offer a Hollywoodised “everything’s set right then” denouement, but while it’s true that the plot is neatly resolved the considerations raised are not so easily ignored.

Cast-wise Insomnia fares pretty well. When it was released, around the same time as the excellent One Hour Photo, everyone was amazed at Robin Williams turning in a pair of non-comedic performances. The quality of them both makes it seem only natural now however, leaving that amazement as a distant memory. His turn as novelist Walter Finch here may owe something to Kevin Spacey’s John Doe in Se7en — indeed, Nolan seems to explicitly reference that film in locations such as the corridor of Finch’s apartment building — but isn’t as lowly as an impersonation. Hilary Swank offers able support as wide-eyed young cop Ellie Burr, while Pacino does a good job portraying the confusion induced by lack of sleep, aided by some effective camerawork, editing and sound design.

In the end, the main damage done to Insomnia is inadvertently by its director: while it is undoubtedly above average for a murder mystery/thriller, its relative straightforwardness pales in comparison to the work Nolan’s done before and since. However, as with every Nolan film so far, I found my perceived enjoyment increase the more I’ve thought about it since. It may not be objectionable that Insomnia hasn’t made it onto that IMDb list then, but if it is a footnote to Nolan’s career it’s a significant and enjoyable one.

BBC One are showing Insomnia tonight at 10:45pm.

Star Trek (2009)

Posted on May 11, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #24
J.J. Abrams | 127 mins | cinema | 12A / PG-13

It’s Star Trek, Jim, but not as we know it.

Sorry, but as someone who isn’t actually much of a Trek fan I couldn’t resist that. I’ll try not to include any more. In which case, it’s set phasers to thrill (sorry) as the crew of the Starship Enterprise boldly go (sorry) back to the big screen, hoping to relaunch the ailing franchise to live longer and prosper (sorry). The crew look younger than ever and there’s a heavier dose of action to boot — why, it sounds like it might almost be fun! In which case, beam me up Scotty! (Done now.)

“Fun” is certainly the buzz-word for this incarnation of Trek: it’s all action, special effects and spectacle, without a single scene of uniformed elderly people sat debating ethics. Though some ethical issues circle the plot, they provide character motivation (or excuse) rather than any kind of debate. While the average blockbuster crowd won’t mind this — and nor will critics, apparently — the universal praise this reboot has received may become somewhat baffling. Clearly claims that it’s “great science fiction” are misattributed — it’s great action-adventure in a sci-fi setting. Perhaps an easy confusion to make, but an irritating one nonetheless.

But I digress. The emphasis is very much on spectacle throughout, with wide shots of future cities, starships, alien planets and battles, all shining and designed to be as awe-inspiring as possible. No element of the film remains untouched by this desire: the Good Guys and Bad Guys are clearly delineated — no shades of grey in this gleaming white Universe; the jokes are all entirely upfront, almost to the point of slapstick; everyone’s very young and pretty; and the majority of female characters (there aren’t many) are gratuitously in their underwear at some point too. It all makes for a huge contrast to the dark-as-we-can blockbusters that have been doing the rounds for the last few years (and will be as much as ever this summer) — it makes Iron Man look serious. This is completely appropriate for Trek as originally conceived: the original series was Kennedy-era optimism, all about equality, exploration and peace; perhaps then this is the first film of Obama-era optimism — lots of young people defeating overwhelming terrorist odds.

With all its bright, optimistic youthfulness, it has the feel of a PG-rated family-friendly blockbuster, which might lead one to wonder about the meaningfulness of the “12” certificate now that it has an “A” attached. The answer undoubtedly lies in the action sequences (not the underwear — there’s nothing worse than Princess Leia’s bikini, and that’s rated U. Not that it would be today.) It’s unfortunate that the opening U.S.S. Kelvin sequence is the film’s best, though the rest don’t suffer by comparison. While nothing else is as individually memorable — though parachuting onto the drill tries very hard to be — it’s all of a good enough quality and, crucially, moves by fast enough that you likely won’t notice.

There’s a plot too, believe it or not. It’s actually quite complex, but is pushed along in big chunks of exposition and those breezy action scenes, meaning most won’t notice the strain writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are under to make it all work. Sadly they didn’t quite pull it off: there are some glaring plot holes, the worst being a huge blob of coincidence fuelled by convenience halfway through that barely makes any sense. This icy planet — or The Planet of Convenience, as I feel it should be called — features the giant red monster seen so prominently in the trailer. It will come as no surprise that it’s designed by the bloke who came up with Cloverfield’s beasty, not only because it looks almost as foul but because Abrams resolutely keeps the same crew around him at every level. But it’s an irritant to those looking for a cohesive story, starring in an unnecessary action sequence that stinks of both “oh, and a big nasty monster would be cool” and “no one will buy this coincidence, let’s hide it in an action sequence with a distractingly ugly monster!”

The plot does impress in one regard however: it is incredibly entrenched in the intricacies of Star Trek continuity and history, yet all this manages to slip by amiably and accessibly. It’s so at pains to explain why this new-look Trek is completely different from canon yet absolutely a part of it that it runs round the houses tying things together and explaining away inconsistencies that only knowledgeable Trekkies will care about. This is impressive because, in spite of it, it feels like a Fresh New Trek. Perhaps this is why the fans have embraced a film that looks like a multiplex-pleasing reboot: they feel catered for with Spock Prime (as the credits would have it), the complexities of time travel and the references back to the other Trek universe, offering up a whole load of new things to integrate into already-bursting continuity manuals, meaning the lighter action-adventure stuff is permissible too.

Technically speaking, the film is a mixed bag. The design work, for example, is great. While the Romulan ship is your typical Big Bad Semi-Organic Alien Vessel, seen a lot in every space opera TV series of the ’90s, the Enterprise is clean and bright and rather different. After years of Alien-inspired grime throughout sci-fi — even attempted in Star Trek with the submarine-like vessel at the heart of prequel series Enterprise — the new-look USS Enterprise is all bright white and vibrant colours. It’s custom made for plastic toy playsets in fact; or, to be slightly nicer, “these are the voyages of the Apple iEnterprise.”

On the other hand, the cinematography is frequently irritating. While many of the CG shots present a graceful view of the space spectacle, most of the time they need to put the damn camera down. It doesn’t need to be jiggling about all over the place during dialogue scenes — Kirk and Pike in the bar post-fight is an especially irritating example — and it would be nice to see what’s going on in the action scenes. Of course, they manage to provide a nice clear shot when the ladies are in their undies. Cynical? Never. DoP Daniel Mindel has confessed that he tried to get in as many lens flares as possible, and you can tell — it comes across like it was shot by someone who’s only ever worked on digital, then upon switching to film accidentally created a lens flare, thought it was pretty, and decided the film would be better if there was one at literally every opportunity. It wouldn’t.

The cast and handling of multiple characters are both less problematic. The way the young crew is brought together is more than a tad contrived, but with seven major characters to compile in a Very Young Crew origin story it’s not an easy task. Certainly, this way is much more exciting than if they were simply assigned the job at an appropriate age and bonded on their first mission — which would undoubtedly have been the plot of Old Trek’s origin movie. The focus is clearly on Kirk and Spock; mainly the former, but his character arc is little more than a standard genius-rebel-comes-good one, whereas Spock’s battle between two cultures and within himself allows Zachary Quinto a lot more to do. Chris Pine makes a good Dashing Hero, balancing the heroic action and broad humour with aplomb, but it’s Quinto whose acting chops come the closest to getting a test. Wisely, neither chooses to copy their original counterpart, which allows them to breathe as characters rather than impersonations.

Most of the leads follow the same strategy to good effect; while Anton Yelchin (as Chekov) and Karl Urban (as Dr ‘Bones’ McCoy) come closer to doing impressions than anyone else, they still make good their own versions. Winona Ryder is a piece of odd casting though, aging up for a tiny role as Spock’s mother. At least Jennifer Morrison’s equally tiny mothering role can be put down to the fact that, while she’s very recognisable to any House fans, she’s playing her own age and isn’t a movie star. Ryder is. Or, perhaps, was.

Unsurprisingly, Simon Pegg’s incarnation of Scotty is an awful a lot of fun. There’s nothing like enough of him, and a sequel will only benefit from an increased Scotty presence from the very start. Though Pegg gets the lion’s share of the best comedic bits — possibly due to his experience and talent in the field — he only turns up to add lightness at the point everyone else begins to get Very Serious About The Plot. Before that there are plenty of jokes flying around, including several that actually require memory — a rare thing in a film focused on spectacle — paying off earlier gags you didn’t expect would receive a payoff. The level to which the film is internally referential and interconnected is again to Orci and Kurtzman’s credit. As noted, the humour brings a nice lightness to proceedings, something missing from the darker-than-dark treatment most franchises offer these days.

The final scene is a bit of a cheesy moment, one of those “aww look the whole gang’s together and they’re all friends” bits — for an American film that relies on optimism, it’s something that they managed to have only one. But it does hold the promise of more adventures to come, and based on the critical and box office success of this outing we’re sure to get them. The need to introduce so many characters here both drives the plot forward and restrains it — the former provides a lot of material, including all the stuff tying it to main Trek continuity, while the latter means any independent narrative is primarily a facilitator for the rest. Hopefully a sequel will suggest the latter is true and it’s not a reliance on the former that has provided this entry’s quality. Or, to put it plainly, “next time they better come up with a good plot”.

For an independent viewer, the over-zealous critical reception is Star Trek’s biggest problem: while it is certainly satisfying in some areas it’s also lacking in others, but it seems most of the world’s critics are closet Trekkies, able to seize upon an above-average film and hail it as the Second Coming. It will come as no surprise when I say it isn’t. I’ve never really got on with Star Trek and its solar system of spin-offs — which, I admit, may be Doctor Who-fan bloody-mindedness — but this I enjoyed, a little in spite of myself and the disproportionate adulation it’s received elsewhere. Rebooting a franchise in a way that appeases fans and pulls in new viewers is no easy task, but it seems safe to say that Abrams has done almost as good a job as Russell T Davies, even if only one of them remembered to hide some brains among the entertainment.

This new incarnation of Trek is bright, light and fun in the face of insurmountable odds — both from the threat in the film and from public perception. Despite the claims, it is not the Second Coming, but it is very good at what it does. In all these respects, it really is just like Obama-era optimism. Does it mean Abrams can relaunch the ailing Trek franchise? Why, yes he CAAAAAAAAAAAAN.

(Really done now.)

Star Trek placed 7th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2009, which can be read in full here.

State of Play (2009)

Posted on April 19, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #20
Kevin Macdonald | 127 mins | cinema | 12A / PG-13

This review contains minor spoilers.

State of Play is one of my favourite TV series of all time, a densely plotted thriller that packs every minute of its six-hour length with clues, characters, twists, revelations, humour and moments of sheer brilliance. It introduced me to James McAvoy and Marc Warren, both of whom are now leading men to one degree or another (and their appearance together in Wanted gave me a bizarre frisson of fanboy delight that’s unusual outside the realm of sci-fi/fantasy), and Bill Nighy, who was surely known before but has since gone on to even more. And that’s to ignore the fantastic performances of John Simm and David Morrissey, two of our finest actors, carrying Paul Abbott’s beautifully convulted plot through all its intricate twists to an inevitable but powerful conclusion.

Much imitated, though the imitators have either fallen short (The State Within) or been flat-out dismal (The Last Enemy), it therefore seems inevitable that State of Play has followed in the footsteps of Traffik and headed for the US big screen. In the process, it squishes six hours down to two and replaces the Simm/Morrissey dynamic with the filmfan-pleasing reunion of Brad Pitt as brilliant-but-troubled reporter Cal McAffrey and Edward Norton as wunderkind politician Stephen Collins. Y’know, in their hands, it might just work!

Except Pitt walked and Norton followed, hastily replaced by the unwaveringly grumpy Russell Crowe as Cal and the offensively inoffensive Ben Affleck as Collins. Oh dear, it’s not off to a good start…

Fortunately, State of Play: The Movie quickly turns out to be a good case for not judging a book by its cover — or, literally, a film by its cast. To be blunt, none are as good as in the original, but that’s the nature of the beast here — even a Pitt/Norton pairing would have struggled to achieve in two hours what Simm/Morrissey could in six. Helen Mirren fares best as editor Cameron, the Nighy role, though doesn’t have the screentime to make it her own. Crowe, Affleck and Rachel McAdams (in a beefed-up role as young reporter Della Frye) are all above average, but none come really close to the originators. Jason Bateman’s appearance as Dominic Foy is probably more than decent — certainly, other reviewers clearly unfamiliar with the original have hailed him as Best Supporting Oscar-worthy — but is as nothing compared to Warren’s creepy wimp in the series. When Collins breaks his cool and attacks Foy, the Affleck/Bateman version packs none of the punch of the Morrissey/Warren original.

But the real focus of this screen-to-bigger-screen translation is that complex six-hour story, condensed from 340 minutes to just 127. This three-fold reduction has been well handled by a trio of screenwriters, and perhaps their most noteworthy achievement is crafting a film that feels entirely like its own entity without sacrificing anything significant from the primary conspiracy plot. The relocation to the politics of Washington is unobtrusive, apparently not encountering issues like the Law & Order: UK writers did in converting across justice systems; as is the focus of Collins’ investigation, switched here from an oil giant to an arms contractor. Both quickly help give the film its own identity, while the latter also makes some plot points more straightforward — with such a shortened running time and so much plot to cram in, this is completely forgivable and works seamlessly. Unsurprisingly some of the depth and nuance of the six-hour version is lost in such an abbreviation, the adaptors choosing to cut characters (Cameron’s son, as played by McAvoy on TV, is a glaring omission for fans) and subplots (Collins’ wife barely features, but again only by comparison) rather than significantly abridge or rush the main narrative. It moves fast, but in a pleasant way — this is not an under-plotted or ponderous thriller.

In all this talk of the plot, original writer Abbott should not be forgotten. While the film’s writers have naturally changed things substantially, much of it is surprisingly cosmetic: the essential cut and thrust of the main conspiracy plot remains, and that’s all from Abbott’s brain. Some of the series’ most memorable moments are intact too, though naturally they don’t quite stand up to comparison — the already-mentioned Collins/Foy beating, for example. Others are sadly lost entirely — my favourite bit of the whole series is when Cameron stops the presses to publish the best opening half-dozen pages of a newspaper ever (so good you would never see something so bold in reality), but that’s nowhere to be seen here. Equally humour is light on the ground, but a few intended laughs do stick through. Their number is quite well-balanced, and all pleasantly natural — aside from a few of Cameron’s one-liners there are no enforced “comedy scenes”, just amusing lines and moments that would be equally unobtrusive in real life.

Macdonald adds his own flourishes to the tale beyond the relocation and business focus. Aside from a slightly unusual obsession with shots of helicopters over the city, his most significant addition is a thematic strand on the potential demise of the newspaper in the face of TV and the Internet. As the story breaks, the explosion of news snippets — from TV, blogs, YouTube — are wonderfully handled, indicating the countless ways we consume news today — and how quickly a lie can spread once someone’s reported it as fact. Sadly these montages fall by the wayside as Cal and Della get deeper into uncovering the complex truth, the movie no longer having the time to indulge them. It’s a shame, because continuing this through every plot twist would’ve helped raise the film’s quality and individuality that little bit extra. Instead, some of the mood and tone they served to create slips a little as the story moves on.

Some reviews have criticised the ending, many going so far as to say it loses all its quality in the last 10 minutes with a dodgy final revelation. This worried me going in, but in fact it remains true to the series’ plot throughout. Perhaps some reviewers need reminding that they’re watching a thriller — you can’t really end with someone confirming what we’ve known for the past half hour, you need a twist. The one that State of Play provides is possibly surprising (I say “possibly” because there will always be those ready to cry “I knew it all along!”) and makes more than enough sense to justify itself. It doesn’t undermine what’s gone before in the slightest; in fact, if anything, it makes it that bit more plausible (unless you really believe huge 24-esque conspiracies are plausible) and casts new light on everything that we’ve seen. Just like the TV series did. It’s not going to be remembered as one of the great twists of all time, but it’s fit for purpose.

For me, the biggest misstep was an incredibly trivial one: the closing credits sequence. Shot in a bright style with relatively jolly music, it totally jars with the increasingly dark thriller just witnessed. The basic conceit of it — the printing of a paper — ties perfectly to the “death of the paper” theme, but its execution is lacking. Of course, when the credits sequence is the only major flaw in a movie (well, aside from the odd spot of clichéd dialogue, and a few moments when Crowe’s hair seems to be auditioning for a L’Oréal advert), you can’t complain too much.

As a fan of the original series, my thoughts ultimately come back to that. It’s a comparison the movie version would always have suffered under, and it’s to the credit of all involved that they’ve managed to create something that exists independently. Even to someone who loves the TV series, watching the film doesn’t feel like a highlights reel or awkward plot summary — it’s the best abridgment one could hope for, uncompromising in not dumbing down the plot, and still managing to add significant elements all of its own. If you remove the TV series from the equation, State of Play stands by itself as an above-average, intelligent and compelling thriller.

Just like the original series, it’s exactly the sort of thing I wish they made more of. Perhaps, if we’re lucky, Abbott will be inspired to revive State of Play 2…

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Posted on March 22, 2009 by badblokebob

2009 #2a
Billy Wilder | 117 mins | DVD | U / PG-13

Did you know that Some Like It Hot is a remake of a 1951 German film, Fanfaren der Liebe? I didn’t. Anyway…

The first (and last) time I saw Some Like It Hot was so long ago that, even when watching it again, there are whole swathes of the film I didn’t recall. How few clothes Marilyn Monroe wears, for one thing. I guess I was quite young first time. The only thing I did remember was enjoying it immensely; and, enjoying it again, didn’t want to skip the chance of handing it five stars in this pathetically brief review.

To be concise, it’s a very funny film even 50 years on. It rattles from situation to situation at an occasionally surprising pace, literally without a dull moment. Not that there’s anything wrong with slower old films, but its certainly spritely for its age.

And with it, a genuine classic. Never mind some — everyone should like it a lot.

Sorry for the pun.

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