I Saw a Film

I saw a film in recent times,

with quite a cast

and reputation.

You might have seen it publicised

and met with praise

and celebration.

I saw a film

and here’s my say…

I saw a film and I admired

the quite impressive

undertaking.

It wasn’t perfect, but that’s fine

the cast alone

is fascinating.

Anne Hathaway proves she’s a star

and comes with

batteries included.

Hugh Jackman doesn’t go too far,

he takes the scenery

and chews it.

Russell Crowe’s taken a beating

for his vocals sometimes grate.

I must say it didn’t phase me,

but I understand the hate.

I’ve never been much of a fan

of this musical

before.

I guess Tom Hooper was the man

To change my mind,

my tune, my score.

Some hate the cinematography

Because of all the

different close-ups.

Nothing…really…rhymes with cinematography!

Nor with Saha Baron Cohen.

MOVING ON…

The cast all stepped up to the plate

Though the film dragged

in the middle.

I saw a film I now shall rate

the film I saw was

…great.

– Opera Over!

How many science fiction films have you seen? I don’t mean just the “pew-pew” Star Wars kind of science fiction, I mean real science fiction like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Wall-E, Silent Running, The Clonus Horror, Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, Westworld, Solaris, Sunshine, Moon, etc. I’m sorry, is that list too long for you? Don’t worry, you can see all of them at once by watching Oblivion. Plot:

“A veteran (Tom Cruise) assigned to extract Earth’s remaining resources begins to question what he knows about his mission and himself.”

IMDB

Identity and memory issues are a common theme in almost all science fiction stories. The exploration of the external inevitably leads to an epiphany of the internal. It’s an idea that recycles again and again throughout this genre, like a track set on repeat. Fine, I can handle being in familiar territory, but Oblivion doesn’t even make a minimal effort to distinguish itself. If you have any knowledge of sci-fi films from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, it will likely bore you.

That being said, it’s quite a pretty movie. The landscape shots, backdrops, costumes, and general production design look like they were all created by Apple. The fluffy lightness of Tom Cruise’s day-to-day technology contrasted with the rusty barren wasteland he is exploring makes for a great visual, but again…it ain’t new! The visual effects are as good as any recent film I can think of, and I have it on good authority that the sound design is “amazing”. Personally I couldn’t distinguish the loud droning crashes and hums from any of the Transformers sequels or recent Star Wars abortions, but maybe the sound-tech savvy person I saw it with knows something that I don’t. The M83 musical score suits the budget, grand and sweeping, and the cast generally impresses. I wasn’t disappointed with the acting from Mr. Cruise or indeed anyone else. It’s nice to see Andrea Riseborough in a big film, and truth be told she’s probably the most impressive thing on screen. Her character’s unrequited infatuation for Tom Cruise reaches a sad peak at one point in the film, and almost makes you care.

By the way, Cruise plays a character called Jack Harper mere seconds after inhabiting Jack Reacher. I look forward to his next preformance as…Jack Jumper, followed by Jack Archer, Jack Scratcher, Jack Offer, and Jack Shit. Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I’m here all week!

The final sin this movie commits is, whilst being utterly predictable and unoriginal, it also somehow manages the impressive feat of being completely confusing. Once the plot began to take a few twists, I sat back and waited for a moment of necessary exposition that never graced my ears. There seems to have been a scene in this movie where someone stood up and explained what the underlying conspiracy was…but it was cut out. That’s the best explanation I can come up with. The only other option is that I was too dumb to understand it, and we all know that can’t be it. Right? Right?

In the end it all becomes clear, but only right at the end. Expect a lot of “Ey?”, “Huh?”, and “What?”s along the way.

Oblivion has a fitting title, engaging musical score, decent performances, and typical ideas. It is a collage of cliched moments. Only the blissfully ignorant will fully enjoy it.

– Rant Over!

So last night I took another trip down “film history” lane and watched a movie new to me but old to the world. It was Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. I had only vaguely heard of it before and seen occasional parodical references to it in TV-shows like Spaced. It turns out to feature one hell of an intriguing premise:

“A paranoid and personally-secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that a couple he is spying on will be murdered.”

– IMDB

I find it to be an interesting twist on the material, as most surveillance-centered movies tend make the main character the victim of an invasive conspiracy rather than the perpetrator. Gene Hackman’s character, Harry Caul, is an uncomfortable cog in a possibly malevolent machine. He has one very distinct achilles heel; he cares. In a world where both the bugging-equipment and it’s users exhibit the same cold moral vacuum, Harry is different. It makes him likeable to us, but also catalyses his own erratic behaviour and gradually consumes him over the course of the film.

A lot of movies dive into the subject of paranoia and attempt to place the audience into the characters shoes, but I can’t remember the last time I saw one as effective as this. As the plot thickened I found myself wishing that Harry would stop caring and just go home. I guess that means that I’d be a pushover in the same situation, but damn it his world becomes so scary! Because of Coppola’s strategic use of editing and camera placement, we find ourselves not knowing whether anything Harry suspects is fact or fantasy. Repetition plays a large thematic role in the film, and spreads of every corner of the production. Camera moves are repeated continuously in an untypical way until they produce a new meaning in your mind, very much mirroring the way Harry plays his recorded conversations over and over again until he experiences the same phenomena.

Very little, and one could argue nothing at all, came off as arbitrary in this film. It’s an example of very precise craftsmanship, and should be on every wannabe filmmaker’s “to watch” list. I’m certainly glad I saw it, and it has been stirring in my mind since last night. Did I understand what it all meant? No. Did I like it? Yes. Is it slow as fuck?

….yyyyeeaah! It’s a very stagnantly paced film, but not a stagnantly told one. The first hour may very well put you to sleep (as it did to a viewer beside me), but the second had me curling up my toes. There is one moment, very reminiscent of The Shining, that got to me in exactly the way Coppola must have intended. I was properly scared! If you stay with The Conversation till the end, you will be too.

– Rant Over!

Hello world! It would seem that Cinema-Rant has risen from the grave after weeks with no internet connection. It’s taken a hard toll on me, can you tell?

What have I done in the mean time? Well, I could bore you with all the responsible day to day activities that I’ve definitely done because I’m such an independent adult…or I could tell you about the money and time I’ve pissed away in the cinema. What a Sophie’s Choice!

Of course we’re gonna stick to the movies, and zombie movies at that, because we just had the world wide release of World War Z!

That’s right, the zombie pandemic has hit globally once again. Keep an eye out for this genre, I think it’s gonna be big one day.

For the first time, however, we have Brad Pitt in the center of it all. Has Brad Pitt ever been in a zombie movie before? My savant-like knowledge of film trivia (in other words a scroll down the pages of IMBD) tells me that…no, he hasn’t. That is, unless you stretch the criteria and count Meet Joe Black or Interview with the Vampire. Beyond that, the pouty blonde has never before faced down swarms of the undead like he does in this film.

There are those who like zombie films, and those who love zombie films. I love zombie films, and as such I have very high standards. I’ve seen all the classics and many of the obscure titles. My favourite is Zack Snyders 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake and my least favourite is George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead. Both Romero’s epic original trilogy and the modern reinventions like 28 Days Later offer thrills and chills that heat my blood into a frenzy. I won’t have any slamming statements against the genre as a whole, it’s an entertaining and intelligent reflection on the internal destructive forces of human society. But this film…

…is also a great addition to the zombie lore! (Mwaha! Didn’t see that coming, did you?) Nothing I saw or heard about this movie impressed me beforehand. It looked cheesy, overdone, clichéd, and generally plotless. I won’t tell you to bother watching the trailer, because it’s horrible. Go into this movie completely cold and you’ll have a whale of a time…like I did:

Perhaps that’s overstating it a little, but this movie has a lot of great moments! In fact, the word ‘movie’ is a misnomer here. What you’re given is a continuously escalating series of nail biting “last minute escape” sequences.

There is no real plot to speak of, just a series of struggling locations around the world which Brad Pitt has to visit on his search for “patient zero”; the origin of the zombie virus. Each time Pitt lands in a new country, he’s welcomed by a successfully isolated group of survivors. As zombie lore dictates, however, one bite is all it takes to start the domino effect. With a human-to-zombie turnaround rate of mere seconds, one infection instantly becomes a hundred. If I had to discern a theme from this steroid-fuelled undead free for all…it would have to be “panic”.

The writers attempted to create a central drama by introducing Pitt with his perfect nuclear family, but does anyone care? No! In fact the filmmakers seemed to give up early on anyway. I never felt a great urge to explore his, or anyone else’s, backstory. All I knew was that when a zombie broke into the crowd I sat up and repeated “get out now, get out now, get out now, go, go, go, get out!” followed by a relieving “Jesus, that was close!”. World War Z gives you the same feeling as playing British bulldog with lethal consequences. Bombastic tension and frenzy of the purest kind! Expect little and receive a lot.

– Zombie rant over!

I want everyone to know that I really do love movies! I wouldn’t write a uselessly unprofitable and opinionated gray blog about them if I didn’t. I hope every film I see will leave me speechless by the end. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s the wrong kind of speechless. Strangely, almost every new film I’ve seen in the last couple weeks has been shockingly terrible. I’m not talking about tiny quibbles here, I’m talking amateur effort and an outrageously failed craft. In addition, someone I know mentioned to me that Cinema-Rant almost always praises movies instead of ripping on them. I guess that’s fair criticism, I have given a lot of “Great” final scores and glowing recommendations in a row. So without further ado, it’s time to introduce you to my recent… Unlike other movie marathons, this one is entirely coincidental. Every one of these films is one that I, and others with me, just happened to sequentially watch and subsequently loathe. There is no theme, genre, cast, crew, or franchise to connect them. The only thing they have in common is how despicably disappointing they were. Ah, the Millennium trilogy! Universally loved? Well, not as long as I’m around. I liked the first film, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (or Men Who Hate Women, which is the original Swedish title), and was certainly interested in seeing the remaining two episodes. The Girl Who Played With Fire has a great main character, a first-rate poster, and all the great setup of the original. So then why is it so terrible?

I’m sorry Noomi Rapace, you were good in it but even you couldn’t save this shitquel (that’s a term I am now patenting, “shitquel”).

I’m sure these books work well as what they originally were…books! As films, however, the sequels leave much to be desired. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo left us with a ‘will-they won’t-they’ question mark after treating us to a tense and complex character-driven whodunnit. This film is just a whole bunch of nothing. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist almost never meet throughout all of it. The acting, outside of the main stars, is horrendous. An uninteresting, un-involving, badly acted, terribly shot, rottenly directed waste of time…and I bothered to watch it on BluRay.

So to help ease the pain of that horrible experience, I and my fellow film watchers popped in the next high definition hopeful.

The quotes on the cover of Warrior compared it to Rocky. “That’s unfair” you’re saying, “Rocky is a classic”. Yes, but they say Warrior is just as good. According to some reviewers it’s “Superb…raw and relentless…mesmerising”. Well, that was their reaction to it. Mine…?

Honestly, it was almost vomit-worthy. This film wants to be deep, real, and gritty, but it fails on all counts. The setup is about as staged as any film I’ve ever seen.

“Two brothers from a broken home both compete in a cage fighting tournament.”

BORING! It’s clear from the beginning that they’re going to fight each other in the final round. Ergo, you already know the outcome of every fight leading up to that. The whole time watching it I was hoping for the plot to twist into some bizarre and interesting place, but alas it remained on course to Predictaville. Sure, the actors did an admirable job of bringing these paper-flat characters to life and making the dialogue believable, but a turgid script that clearly thinks it’s a masterpiece makes for one hell of a failure on screen. It would be less hurtful to engage in the tournament myself than watch this piss again.

At this point I was over home-media. So much to be gutted about, false praise and broken promises. It was time for me to go out and see something big, bright, and epic. I needed something that would deliver what it promised, but was also part of something with a decent track record. I needed an interesting episode of a proven franchise with credible names at the helm. I chose to go see…

I’m speaking to you as a fan of Superman Returns from 2006, so now you know where I’m coming from. I thought Brian Singer’s Superman sequel was a beautiful addition to the series. I didn’t really see a need to go all Batman Begins with it, but I guess that’s what we do with everything nowadays. Christopher Nolan producing it was a good sign, and I’m not someone who completely hates the director; Zack Snyder. Fine, if we have to explore Superman’s origins yet again, we will. Roll it!

Alright, we’re a minute in and I’m already worried. The dialogue is like something out of Thor, but terrible. The style is begging to be taken seriously but flunking right out of the gate. All I want at this point is to leave Krypton and get to earth ASAP!

Oh no, Michael Shannon…what are you doing? What’s with all the emoting? This is so not the role for you. You’re not scary, you’re silly! Please no more, no more! Oh, yes…thank goodness, we’re on earth.

Oh jesus, it’s worse! Superman’s backstory is no different than anything we’ve seen before, but the filmmakers are acting like it should all be a surprise to me. Oh crap, it’s told in the worst kind of flashback form. Oh hell, the effects are awful. Almost none of the actors are committed. The story is ridiculous. The plot is so stupidly convenient. Terrible extras! Corny lines! Useless additional characters I don’t care about! Shaky, blurry green screen effects that give me a headache! Soap opera blocking…

Thank heavens it’s over! That was by far the biggest let down of them all. It turns out that making Superman into a Dark Knight-esque noir story simply doesn’t work. The fact is, Superman is inherently silly. It’s not that you can’t explore his backstory or internal struggles at all…but there’s a wrong and a right way to do it. Man of Steel, for starters, is nothing but exposition. We are shown Superman’s backstory in typical modern-cinema gritty flashback fashion, and then…it’s explained to us by the characters. What? No thanks, I’ve already seen it. In fact it’s worse than that, I already know who Superman is and where he came from. It’s one of the most famous comic book histories, so why do I have to listen to an hour of Russell Crowe telling me about it?

In fact if you miss Man of Steel at your local cinema, you can easily pick up the CD, it’s all in there.

Not only is the dialogue cheesy, flat, and useless, but the plot is ultimately offensive. Thousands of people die! No, scratch that, millions of people die! You know that little thing that happened at the beginning of the millennium, what date was it exactly? Oh yeah, September 11th 2001! Well, I present you with June 10th, 2013; the day Superman had a quarrel with General Zod and slayed a quarter of the worlds population. Superman is supposed to save people, not let a genocide happen while he’s beating up an alien and then say “could’ve been worse”. Then at the end they have the audacity to let Laurence Fishburne deliver the line “he saved us!”. Did he not read the whole script? Did Zack Snyder simply lie to this man on set? Entire cities are levelled, planes crashed, and satellites thrown out of orbit. I sure hope Superman can turn back time like in the first movie.

There is no romantic buildup between Louis Lane and Superman, so when the inevitable kiss happens (don’t you dare try to tell me that was a spoiler) it came off almost as forced as sexual assault. Then there is a “cute and romantic exchange” which is so badly written and unbelievably awkwardly delivered that it made me push my eyeballs slightly into my skull, even if just to remind me that something more painful could happen to them.

Finally, we’re left with the only satisfactory shot of the movie. I won’t give it entirely away, but it’s the clothesline shot you’ve seen it in the trailer. It is a nice little flashback moment that works on account of its simplicity. I really liked it, and if I could cut this movie down from two and a half hours to fifteen seconds, those are the fifteen seconds I would choose. It’s just a shame that I had to sit through so much self-important blockbuster nonsense to get to it.

There is an attempt here to create an identifiable flawed hero character out of something that has previously been played for laughs and corny romance. I will give it a few points for that. Yet, I find its clear desire to cash in from the now-standard Christopher Nolan style to be cynical and cheap. Cheap, if you ask me, is not an aesthetic you want to associate with a 225 million dollar expenditure.

– Rant Over!

Brace yourselves, for a storm is coming. I’m about to address religion. Well, sort of…

Darren Aronofsky’s Noah is about to hit cinemas, and is due for release here in Melbourne on March 28th. Obviously I haven’t seen it yet and one shouldn’t judge a movie just based on a poster and a premise. Still, the whole concept of this film bothers me. I’m an atheist, sure, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy films with religious stories, religious themes, or even some religious messages. I like Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture, M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. The problem I have with this one, however, is entirely factual.

The story of Noah and the Great Flood is not history. It’s not fact. It’s nothing. It amounts to no more than a fable or a fairytale, like Red Riding Hood. I have no problem with fictional films, of course, so long as they are clearly fictional.

When I watched the trailer for this bilge, I couldn’t believe my eyes. What struck me the most was how Aronofsky and the producers have decided to set the film not in any historical setting that we know of…but in Bibleland. The whole thing appears to have been shot inside Ken Ham’s “Creation Museum“. Where is this tribal European world where people walk around speaking modern english and wearing burlap sacks? Darren, what the fuck? Let me show you something:

See that juicy red slice of jelly pie? See the number on it too? That’s the percentage of U.S. Americans who think the Noah’s Ark story is actually true!

That’s right, it’s not all fun and games anymore is it? With a significant majority of the American public believing that this myth either does or should reside in college textbooks next to chapters on The Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt, I strongly suggest that making a 160 million dollar feature film about it with no clear and resounding declaration of its historical inaccuracy is, at best, irresponsible. I don’t honestly care about how moving the story of Noah is, or how allegorical it may be with modern environmentalism. All that literalist Christian audiences seem to see is the American film industry embracing the same ignorance that they already cling to and it ends up effecting things like this:

That’s the percentage of Americans who reject the theory of evolution in favour of something else, typically creationism, as the origin of man.

It’s unbearably depressing to see human ignorance dissected in front of you like that and usually you have to sit back and go “hey, people are stupid, what you gonna do?”, but in this case Aronofsky has provided me with a specific target to aim for.

Do not do this kind of thing! Making a film like this with no connection to the real world, packing it full of symbolism and inferred messages, and then expecting the average cinema audience to get that it’s not meant to be a factual event is so fucking stupid I can’t even begin to describe it. I know that you, Aronofsky, know it’s not meant to be taken literally, but an alarming amount of people out there aren’t intellectually positioned to understand that. You think I’m being arrogant, elitist, and condescending?

How about now?

Most people do their work, pay their taxes, buy their groceries, and then kick back expecting the TV to take over and tell them about the rest of the world. It’s not a judgement I’m making on them, it’s simply understandable behaviour from the common man who is too busy to spend time analysing what’s fact or fiction. It’s up to you, the makers of entertainment, to not needlessly lead them astray.

I know that Darren Aronofsky is an intelligent man, and doubt that he’s especially religious himself (if religious at all), so I expect this film to be less of a preachy Bible epic and more of a sweeping character piece with frequent memorable and arresting images. Yet, what worries me is that if this film is sufficiently successful it may cull back an era where religious thinking is in the mainstream rather than peeled off into the fringe to die a natural death (as it should be).

Luckily for me and those likeminded, the film seems to have already run aground in some waters (lame pun intended). Not because of any secular or anti religious criticism…but because of other religions. Noah has thus far been banned in Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, which is not good news for a film which likely has the greatest chance of success amongst a religious audience. The filmmakers pleaded, therefore, for an opportunity to screen the film in front of everyone’s favourite hippy Pope Francis, all in an attempt to give it the official Vatican seal of approval and hopefully open the door to the most hardcore of catholic christians. Indeed, people seem to forget that the biggest threat to the expression of their own beliefs is not atheism, but theism.

Enough of that, though. I have two antidotes to this singular but persistent problem. This is the first:

Many people will already know this, but Cosmos is back on television for the first time in 28 years! For those who are unaware, the original Cosmos was and still is the most famous and financially successful scientific series ever to premiere on the small screen. All the show ever consisted of was astronomer Carl Sagan talking about and illustrating our current collective knowledge of…well, everything. It was fact, it was science, it was truth. Sounds dry, I know, but he infused it with such love and passion that it became the most watched series on American public television for the next ten years. Now, it’s been resurrected and reinvented by Family Guy creator Seth McFarlene, with an equally charismatic new host; cult science hero and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Oh, and it’s fucking awesome!

McFarlene “spared no expense” putting this thing together, with state of the art CGI, animation, and a powerful theatrical score from film composer Alan Silvestri. Cosmos is by far the most cinematic learning experience you can get your hands on; a show that (if you’ll pardon the poetic licence) speaks as much to your heart as it does to your mind. Never have math, chemistry, biology, or physics been this exciting!

My second antidote to stupidity is a weird little under-promoted film called Mr. Peabody and Sherman. I recently went to see this by myself at my local cinema, surrounded by nearly a hundred tiny children high on sugar and adrenaline…and I had a lovely time!

Based on the original cartoon Peabody’s Improbable History from the 1950’s and 60’s, you’d think a movie about a genius talking dog and his adopted human son traveling through time and meeting historical figures would be nothing but lame. Not at all! It’s absolutely brilliant. This movie is so funny, but at the same time manages to be educational. There are sharp jokes and intentionally blunt “dad” puns that play to both younger and older audiences. Along the way, you’re treated to a thick collection of historical trivia and even corrected on several of your commonly held historical misconceptions, making it something akin to a feature film version of a Q. I. episode.

Here’s a mere 62 second clip in which you get the specific date of the Trojan War, a plot point that spoofs the Trojan Horse, references to Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Agamemnon, Diomedes, Menelaus, and a hilariously weird depiction of Odysseus.

For more historical figures, like Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, Tutankhamun, Vincent Van Gogh, and Einstein, followed by a host of inspired gags at their expense, please do go check out Mr. Peabody and Sherman at your nearest cinema. Better yet, bring along any young child you can…that you know. Don’t, like…grab one off the street or anything. Hell, go see it twice, while intentionally boycotting Noah.

– Rant Over!

Last time we met, I put up a poll to see if the readers of this blog would vote for me to plug myself into Transcendence or dodge it like a radioactive bullet. Simply put, I was placing my fate in your hands. That phrase turned out to be appropriate in more ways than one…as the amount of people who voted could literally be counted on one hand.

Well, one should never look a gift horse in the mouth. Thank you to those 5 people who voted so unanimously for me to go and see Transcendence. I bet you’re dying to find out if I stayed true to my promises in the face of democracy, yes?

Alright, no need for me to be coy. I saw Transcendence this morning and can now say that…I get it. I understand why the film was so ill received. That doesn’t mean that I completely hated it, nor did I like it…in fact I don’t think it’s even a good film, but I’m glad I saw it.

Let me explain:

Transcendence is what happens when you take a first time writer, slap on a first time director, and give them 100 million dollars to play with. I think the blame of Transcendence‘s failure lies more with Jack Paglen’s droning dialogue than it does with Wally Pfister’s style and grasp of the actors, but the result is clearly a messy bag of honourable intentions either way.

As someone who’s looking for a way into the film business myself, Transcendence now stands before me as a glaring example of the one and only path to the top…from the bottom.

Wally Pfister himself has proven that the way to become a great cinematographer in Hollywood is to cut your teeth on simpler grain. Decades before he rose to the Oscar stage and collected his award for Inception, Pfister learnt his trade not by working with Morgan Freeman and Christopher Nolan, but by working with this:

Porn! Well no, it wasn’t strictly porn. It’s a soft core genre called “Erotic Thriller”, which straddles the line between story and sex. Crime and tension are supposed to be the bread and butter of the plot, but in the end everything just serves to ferry us from one love scene to another. When Pfister wasn’t making his money shooting exposed anatomies, he took up these projects:

Yay, crappy horror movies! I love these things! Even better, they’re straight-to-video Goosebumps-esque horrors. There was The Unborn, about an in-vitro fertilization attempt gone…evil (trailer here). Then we had Amityville: A New Generation, also known as Amityville 7 (trailer here). Following this we got The Granny, about a family finding out that their inheritance-hogging grandmother is actually an evil undead zombie (trailer here). Wrapping everything up was Stepmonster, which…kind of speaks for itself (trailer here).

The point I’m trying to make is that everyone, especially Wally Pfister, started out crawling through the muck. They weren’t born geniuses. Maybe you can find the odd exception to the rule, like Quentin Tarantino, but usually the evidence is clear.

Transcendence is another one of those films; a first attempt at directing by someone who’s trying really hard! It should, and I think will, be re-evaluated as such.

The difference here is that Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. stupidly gave Wally Pfister too much money! Typically, with a large wallet comes less creativity. Economic movie making is something that must be learnt at the barrel-end of a tight budget. It forces you to make up for a lack of star quality and expensive CGI with a stripped-down effort of exciting, and perhaps even exploitative, story-telling.

I can only hope that this outcome will not deter Wally Pfister, or Jack Paglen for that matter, but that they can instead learn from this. Next time start off with a smaller budget and rather substitute some narrative excitement. Hopefully in the future you guys will have a big hit that provokes a profitable response from the audience and delivers all the same messages and ideas that you’re clearly interested in sharing.

For now, however:

– Rant Over!

If you’re a fan of Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, Ted, or the recent reimagining of Cosmos, then you are a consumer of the ever-expanding media empire of Seth MacFarlane. With five more or less successful TV series under his belt, two more in the works, and his writer/director stamp on the highest weekend-grossing R rated comedy film ever made, Seth doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon and is considered a self-topping show business entrepeneur.

But last weekend this rich talent ran into a problem.

MacFarlane’s latest work, the 40 million dollar spoof western mouthful A Million Ways to Die in the West, has potentially flopped commercially and definitely failed critically. Why? It just isn’t funny enough (according to everyone whose opinion matters). The premise and cast, however, intrigued me and I therefore went and saw it.

It…isn’t great, if I’m being honest. There is an enormous amount of unfunny excrement and flatulence humour present here and it savagely undermines what could potentially have been a very uniquely observational comedy about a thusly untapped hilarity goldmine. The central joke at the heart of the film is, as the title reveals, the precious fragility of life in the otherwise overly romanticised Western setting. That, you should know, is a funny idea and is explored brilliantly. The jokes, as hit and miss as they already are, unfortunately suffer from a poor sense of comedy editing. What you get is a two hour long modern Family Guy episode, with jokes that drag on way longer than they should (Peter vs. The Chicken, anyone?). If you’ve seen a recent slice of MacFarlane’s most famous cartoon show, you’ll know what you’re in for; not lethal belly-laughs exactly, but a lot of…

Prepare your brain for a lot of “I see what you did there!” moments and your mouth for a lot of smirking half-smiles. Perhaps it’s true, we’ve finally all gotten over Seth MacFarlane. He just can’t make us laugh any more. So what’s my final score?

Why do I find myself defending so many of the films that people typically hate? Am I just a stubborn contrarian? No, in this case it’s something I can explain.

I fully admit that this movie did not make me laugh anywhere near as much as it clearly hoped it would. However, there are an enormous amount of other things to enjoy here even if the comedy doesn’t strike you right. There are beautiful classic visuals, a sweeping celebratory score, and a wonderful amount of “blink and you’ll miss them” cameos. I literally mean “blink and you’ll miss them”. Seth MacFarlane has swept together posse of hollywood friends and used them as background extras, the joke being that in any given crowd scene you’ll randomly notice…say…Ewan McGregor. It reminded me a lot of how Tim Burton spent almost his entire budget for Mars Attacks on rounding up the most noble award-winning actors he could find and making them spout the most ridiculous drivel in a silly over-the-top comedy about a 1950’s style alien invasion. What is that if not worth the price of a ticket?

Undeniably, though, this movie gets my approval for how much it reminded me of classic Mel Brooks comedies. The obvious connection that everyone has made is with Blazing Saddles. Sure, they’re concerned with the same place and time, but Blazing Saddles orbits its jokes around racism as depicts very broad comedic characters. To me A Million Ways to Die in the West is most aesthetically and substantively reminiscent of…

It may sound foolish to compare a western parody to a Robin Hood parody, but believe me when I say that I’m not wrong. From the glorious opening credits with the warm waltzing main theme music and colourful cartoony font to the lovingly choreographed musical dance numbers about “moustaches”, I was brought right back to the feeling of this 1993 VHS jewel.

Watching Robin Hood Men in Tights was never a ridiculously funny experience to begin with, as the jokes sometimes made you laugh and otherwise made you groan, but the childish silliness and cheesy commitment of everyone involved just made you love it. Well, that’s how I felt with A Million Ways to Die in the West. It’s far from the funniest thing you’ll ever see, but is crafted by someone who clearly grew up watching and admiring the same material you did. It’s a cutely old-fashioned comedy film that happens to contain a lot of 21st century crudeness. Want proof?

After the film was over I turned to see who my fellow movie-goers were. It wasn’t 19 year old Gavin who lives with his mum and his pregnant slapper girlfriend Lilly; both die hard fans of The Hangover movies cause they’re “like so funny and shit”. No, they were all 45 years of age or older. Many of them were likely retirees on a day out with their significant other, and every one of them beamed with joy after sitting through 2 hours or semen stain jokes and pedophilia gags. I love that, and will thusly forgive any humour shortcomings that the movie otherwise has.

Give Million Ways a try. If you love Robin Hood: Men in Tights, especially, it would be a mistake for you to miss it.

It’s been a few months since I saw Interstellar, (I know, I’m extremely late to the game with this one, but I’ve been rather busy lately…and then there was Christmas…and New Year’s Eve…anyway, the review’s here now). Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s not exactly an indy gem, nor is the director an unknown experimental auteur. Goodness no, this is Christopher Nolan, arguably this generations most famous and beloved filmmaker, venturing into deep space and even deeper time in order to provide us with one of the more thrilling, provocative, engaging, breathtaking, spectacular, and by the way…expensive…visions of of the universe ever presented on screen.

Or…not.

Well, in case you do live under a rock, let’s at least give it a proper introduction:

“A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in an attempt to find a potentially habitable planet that will sustain humanity.”

– IMDB

Interstellar is, so far, the worst movie of 2014. As I’m writing this it’s January 2015, but I have a lot of last years movies to catch up on before the Oscars hit in February. Hence, I cannot definitively say that it will end up being the worst movie of 2014, but it remains unchallenged.

Yes, you read that correctly! Interstellar is not just a bad Christopher Nolan film, it’s a plain ol’ mouldy cheese-chunk of a movie. To do this right, we have to discuss:

Impressive? Heavens yes! Infallible? Hell no!

Let me lay the cards out on the table. I am a fan of Christopher Nolan! In fact, I’m a big fan. I think you’d have to be a deeply cynical and cinematically negligent toad in order to dismiss the seismic impact this man has had on filmmaking in the last decade. He, in contrast to most of the industry around him, has focused his steely eyes on smart filmmaking. Instead of pandering to easily satisfied mouth breathers, Nolan has consistently tinkered together complex contraptions that require genuine engagement from the audience. He dragged the world into the cinema by their collars and made them appreciate true quality. In order to do this, while simultaneously bringing in the cash, he has had to dance strategically with the devil. With Batman Begins, Nolan found a way to weave his own personal obsessions into the body of a blockbuster, and it completely worked. Since then the budgets have grown steeply and it is now impossible to imagine a Nolan film made for less than $ 100 million.

As for me, I’ve almost always found flaws in his patterns. Here’s how the Nolan-verse appears to me:

And as you can see, most of his films only nick greatness but do tend to deliver. Interstellar is so much worse than usual, but why? Two words: Emotional vacuum!

Christopher Nolan is an icy-cold filmmaker. Like The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, “his heart remains three sizes too small”. Love, amity, romance, and family are four notions that all exist in dimensions outside his universe. The man cannot, to save his life or anyone else’s, make an emotional film. Did you feel yourself tearing up when Rachel died in The Dark Knight? How about when Mal flung herself pointlessly from a building in Inception, or when Julia drowned in The Prestige? I know you didn’t because I didn’t, and I’ve never met anyone who has. Nolan repeats one trick that he’s convinced himself works: (A man) – (the woman he loves) = (sadness). He’s been getting away with it for years, but no more!

Traumatic loss only works if you build it correctly. It’s not enough to have Leonardo DiCaprio talk about how much he loved his wife…I need to love her too. I need to see that ‘special’ thing they had on screen, enough to identify with it at least. And as a mechanic surveying the broken wreck that is Interstellar, I say “well, there’s your problem.”.

I could write a thesis on how ineffective the drama in this movie is, and that itself would probably be a more emotionally involving text, but for now let’s cut straight to the hollow heart of it.

Nolan claims that Interstellar was primarily inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. That’s a lie. Aside from some trippy VFX shots and silent space moments, there’s almost nothing there to remind us of Kubrick’s epic. It appears, on the other hand, that someone has handed Chris a dusty little DVD of Robert Zemeckis’ Contact from 1997.

Contact centres around a little girl whose father passes away from heart failure. She then grows up to become a scientist at SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Life) and eventually locks onto a signal from outer space, possibly from an alien civilisation. Plot-wise the movie then dives into all manner of discussion surrounding the psychological, political, and religious implications of such an event, but thematically it is just about a little girl searching across the heavens for her long lost father.

Contact is a lovely movie that’s, most importantly, heart-felt and warm. Interstellar cheaply steals all of it’s core concepts and reproduces them poorly.

At the center of Interstellar we have Cooper and his daughter Murph. The two are supposed to have a unique bond, and I’ll admit that in the beginning I was onboard with that idea, but it wouldn’t last long.  (Incidentally, Cooper also has a son who he apparently doesn’t care about at all.)

Cooper, with the help of a magical dimensional phenomenon that spells out coordinates in the dust on Murph’s bedroom floor (yes, it’s that stupid!), finds a now-secret NASA space program. This future NASA group, lead by Michael Caine, have scraped together the last of earths resources to send a mission across interstellar space through a wormhole and save the human race from extinction. Wouldn’t you know it though, they haven’t bothered to nominate a pilot! Argh! Oh well, no worries, Cooper is conveniently a brilliant ex-pilot who knows everything that’s necessary for the mission (yes, it’s that stupid!).

So he weighs the inevitability of never again seeing his children against seeing some trippy space shit and decides after about 2 minutes that he wants the trippy space shit. Utterly heartless and totally unbelievable, but away we go. Next thing, we’re in space with Anne Hathaway, and it’s at this point that the crew decides they should explain to Cooper what a wormhole actually is (yes, it’s that stupid!). 5 minutes later they go through it and we get an IMAX experience that, truth-be-told, will have you at hello. It’s an extremely short lived high however, before Nolan decides that he wants to yet again play with time subjectivity.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Cooper and the gang land on a water covered planet where time passes more slowly; one hour on the surface equals seven years everywhere else. They have some trouble and one of their crew is lost. This leaves them with a vote of whether to leave and continue the mission or search for the missing man…

Except that…this makes no sense. If one hour of planet time constitutes seven years of universe time, then they can in fact have their cake and eat it too. Leave, finish your mission, and then travel back to save your man within seven years and he’ll only have been floating around in water for an hour. Hell, do it in less than 2 and he’ll only have to twiddle his thumbs for 20 minutes.

No, no, they leave and consider it a lost cause. Next up is Nolan’s favourite planet: “Iceland”.

Batman Begins, Inception, and now Interstellar all have major sequences shot in Iceland. Add to this that Insomnia and Man of Steel featured icy landscapes, and it becomes clear that Nolan likes his films to be as cold on the outside as they are on the inside.

Fine, polar surroundings or not, what matters is the story. On this ice planet we meet Dr. Mann, played by Matt Damon. He’s supposed to be a brilliant scientist, but then spontaneously turns “space-crazy”, tries to throw Cooper off a cliff, and attempts to leave the team for dead. Why? I’m not entirely sure. I think it’s something to do with starting humanity again instead of saving it…but I wouldn’t expect Nolan to bother setting up a logical motive. He’s space-crazy, what more motivation do you need?

So this extraordinarily brilliant scientist opens an airlock before docking and kills himself. Genius. Cooper, on the other hand, who needed the concept of a wormhole explained to him with a pencil and paper, puts every copy of the Guinness book of world records to shame and manages to dock with the erratically spinning spaceship by…trying really hard (yes, it’s that stupid).

With little to no fuel left, the only option remaining is to fly stupidly close to a black hole and use it as a sling shot. Instead, Cooper ejects halfway through and falls into it. Once again…genius. Instead to dying like every physics textbook tells us he would, he travels to the fifth dimension where he can traverse all of space and time simultaneously. He uses his new Godlike powers to tap out the dusty morse code in Murph bedroom and tells himself to “STAY” (YES, IT’S THAT STUPID!). At least it’s the end now, right?

Cooper helps Murph solve a difficult math problem that allows the population of earth to travel deep into space via a circular spaceship, then magically exits the black hole alive 40-odd years into the future.

He meets Murph, now a 90 year old Ellen Burstyn lying in a hospital bed, and has a totally empty conversation with her about what he should do with the rest of his life. He never asks about his own son, doesn’t broach the subject of what she’s done with her life, nor tells her anything about his adventures. He instead leaves to meet up with Anne Hathaway, who inexplicably has aged just as little as him despite not falling into the black hole herself. Finally, this three hour car crash ends with a triumphant “Directed by Christopher Nolan”.

Fuck you Christopher Nolan! I saw it at a midnight IMAX screening and it bored me into anger!

I can forgive the conveniently dumb choices made by conveniently dumb characters. I can overlook the poorly told plot and scientific jargon that even the actors themselves clearly didn’t understand. In fact, I can even accept that Michael Caine ages 21 years without changing his shirt (I didn’t even bother to bring that one up!). What I cannot abide by is the astounding lack of emotion. The relationship between Cooper and Murph could have been something special, but Nolan instead chose to focus on how cool Einstein’s theory of relativity is. Instead of using it as a device to progress the story, he makes it the story.

Contrast this with Contact, which understands that in order for a relationship to pay off it needs to be properly constructed. In fact, we spend less time with Ellie and her father than we do with Cooper and Murph, but care far more. Ted calls his daughter “sparks”, buys her a CB radio, and nurtures her optimistic curiosity about the stars. Her love for him is immediately apparent because you love him too, and their relationship invites you to observe fondly. Cooper, on the other hand, dismisses his daughter as an idiot when the script requires it and then abandons her for no genuinely good reason. Score!

No, you’re a bad parent because you abandoned your kid on a dying planet and lied to her about coming back knowing full well that the chances of returning were limited at best…and because you hate her. There’s no reason why the responsibility of flying the ship couldn’t have been passed on to someone else without children. You just wanted to see the stars, didn’t you Cooper? Didn’t you??!!

The point is that Nolan has taken a delicious sugar-coated bit of roast nutritious pork and turned it into spam. The musical score is interesting, but completely inappropriate for a film that doesn’t know whether it wants to suck you into challenging darkness or warm your heart with sappy sentimentally.

Put plainly; I didn’t like it, and if you do then you’re an idiot. In fact it’s worse…you’re a Nolanite!

Nolanites are a pernicious brainwashed group of Nolan-apologists who had their critical faculties flushed out by the combined power of The Dark Knight and Inception, and now provide Christophers films with positive word of mouth advertisement free of charge. They’re responsible for things like this:

Every review I’ve read or heard and every person I’ve spoken to has given Interstellar a “passable” review at best. Most were extremely disappointed. There is no conceivable way that it could settle at a 72% Certified Fresh on the Tomatometer. That number is highly suspicious, but this goes beyond muddying reviews. In 2012, professional film critics who panned The Dark Knight Rises were targeted with death threats from Nolanites. Christy Lemire, Andrew Urban, and Christopher Tookey hated the film, and were swamped with letters and comments warning them to tread carefully. Marshall Fine, of Hollywood and Fine, was not only threatened, but had his website flushed with comments and traffic until the server crashed. Remember, this was before any of the general public had even seen the film for themselves.

Luckily, the Oscars have not rewarded Nolan’s creepy cult-nurturing turd and merely threw him a few “better-luck-next-time” technical nominations. Ha Ha! Still, it raked in over four times its budget in profits, so there’s a good chance that he’ll commit the same sin again two years from now.

Chris, I know there isn’t a snowballs chance in hell of you ever hearing about this blog, much less reading it, but I can’t sleep at night knowing that I didn’t at least try to help you and your impenetrable ego bubble. DO NOT DO THIS AGAIN! You’re clearly not up to it. Shrink your budgets and focus on what you’re good at; cool nifty stuff. Leave humanism and love to better filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Richard Linklater. I can only hope that, in the years to come, Interstellar will be correctly viewed as the giant misstep that it is. Nolanites, like Beliebers, have to realize that they’re nurturing a cancerous tumour and one day will be blamed for it. If you want your favourite artist to remain great then you have to slap him around a little and let him know when he’s been a “bad dog!”.

“Bad dog, Nolan! Bad Dog!”

  – Rant Over!

I’d like to separate the entire world’s population into five categories.

A. People who are unaware of my last blogpost.

B. People who glanced at my last blogpost but didn’t bother to read it.

C. People who read my last blogpost but can’t be bother to check out any of the movies listed there.

D. People who read my last blogpost and want to check out the movies listed there but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

E. My peeps, eeeeyyy!

Categories A, B, and C consist of well over 7.3 billion people, but they were never my crowd anyway. They’re the ones that are interested in all those other “important” things like politics, science, education, career, and family. Boring!

If you’re a D or E person, then you’ve made it to the next round. Congratulations! There’s no prize, boo hoo, so what? Admittance is its own reward, right? You, my lucky lucky star, get to do MORE READING! Yay! Confetti!

Nawww, look at you all excited. Alright, so what’s on the menu for today?

Well, it’s partly a recap, really. An expansion, if you will, on the final act of my last article. If you’ll recall, I ended it by recommending Under the Skin as the best film of 2014. If you’ve seen it by now, then hopefully you’ll know why I loved it so much, but may find yourself wondering what kind of deviant mind could conjure up such a thing. Well, that would be…

Jonathan Glazer is a filmmaker I was unaware for a long time, but holy shit I’m certainly a devout follower now. The most amazing thing about this man’s career is how sparse it is.

First off, the man is clearly insane. Except he’s not “Hitler” insane, he’s more “Van Gogh” or “Kubrick” insane. Calm, collected, and articulate as he may be, his imagination and originality is incomparable.

Glazer started off doing Music Videos and TV Adverts with a heightened sense of style and artistry to them. They can all be seen on Youtube, and are…unique. Many of you will recognise his Sony Bravia Ad, below. Bright, beautiful, colourful and fun, but never more than an arms length away from sheer madness.

Did you see the random insert shot of the running clown?

See? Madness! And yet so majestic. That’s why I love him. He’s my favourite kind of auteur; teetering on the precipice of pretentiousness but never forgetting to entertain you. So what happens when you take all that twisted talent and apply it to feature films? This:

What you’re looking at is the Jonathan Glazer Trilogy! They’re the only three feature films that Glazer has ever made. Three wildly different plots within vastly disparate genres, there’s nothing else to link them besides the following; they’re all masterpieces!

Certainly!

While reflecting upon his work, I’ve tried to nail down what the most impressive thing about Glazer is. I think I’ve got it; he’s a master of tone.

The three films I’ve laid before you each have a very unusual but precise tone. Sexy Beast is half an art house film and half a geezer gangster romp. Birth is somewhat sweet, dramatic, mostly sad, and all kinds of creepy. Finally, Under the Skin plays with the uncanny void between all that is warmly human and that which is chillingly alien. I’ve never seen any other filmmaker blend the genre equivalents of oil and water so impressively well. I’m genuinely dumbfounded, because it shouldn’t be possible.

The best way to sell Jonathan Glazer’s directorial debut, Sexy Beast, is as a marriage of Donnie Darko and Guy Richie. I don’t have much love for british gangster films. I find that they lean heavily of cockney lingo, humourless profanity, and boring predictable violence. Sexy Beast puts all that on the back burner. It’s almost entirely set in Spain and features very few characters, worlds away from the typical Snatch ensemble meeting in darkly lit rooms and London alleyways. Best of all, there is a real artistic approach, and all notions of genre expectation are thrown to the wind.

“Ex-villain Gal Dove has served his time behind bars and is blissfully retired to a Spanish villa paradise with a wife he adores. The idyll is shattered by the arrival of his nemesis Don Logan, intent on persuading Gal to return to London for one last big job.”

-Synopsis

With an energetic cinematography that mirrors the style of Boogie Nights, Sexy Beast skips along and doesn’t waste a second. Straight to the point, we’re introduced to two actors playing very much against type. Ray Winstone, who is typically the very face of hardened “gangsterness”, plays Gary “Gal” Dove. Dove by name and dove by nature; he’s calm, considerate, and genial. Ben Kingsley on the other hand, who’s most famous role was Gandhi, plays an absolute roaring psychopath. Don Logan, gangster or not, displays the most unpleasant selections of traits ever assembled into one character. He shouts, swears, prods, rambles, and violently attacks people all in the pursuit of his goal; to bring Gal back into the crime scene. Most annoyingly, he’s stubborn and he loves to repeat himself.

Give Sexy Beast a go, but be prepared for a lot of “four letter words”. Also, ask yourself…why is it called Sexy Beast? There is an answer.

Remember Nicole Kidman before she became a wax statue? I do. In fact Birth may just be the last film she made while she was still completely human.

So, after Sexy Beast Glazer was no-doubt flooded with British-crime film scripts. A lesser artist (GUY RICHIE!) would have lazily repeated himself (GUY RITCHIE!) and never done anything else (GUY RITCHIE!) because they’d rather play it safe. Well, not this guy.

One day while working in his kitchen, Glazer had the vision of a little boy confronting a woman and telling her that he was her dead husband. After four years of development it became Birth.

“A young boy attempts to convince a woman that he is her dead husband reborn.”

– IMDB

Birth is probably the most accessible film on this list, so if you’re an unadventurous filmgoer then this might be the best place to start.

Unbelievably, Birth is even better than Sexy Beast. Since it’s totally different in every way it becomes hard to compare the two, but I know that I enjoyed Birth a lot more.

When the film premiered at Cannes, many critics booed and hissed at it. Several walked out of the screening in disgust. Why? Well, because on some level the film flirts with the concept of pedophilia. That’s not to say that the movie is in any way about pedophilia, but it certainly ventures into that dangerous area of discussion.

The central questions are; if a child came to you and claimed to be a deceased loved one, what would it take for you to believe them? If you did, would that even allow you to treat them the same, or love them the same? How could you recognise the person you loved and lost underneath all the superficial differences? How much of their fundamental characteristics need to remain intact for you to re-establish your personal connection with them? Finally, how well do you really know the person you love(d)? Might your own sense of loss be filling in the blanks for you because you need their return to be true?

It’s an interesting concept no matter which angle you come at it from, believing in supernatural occurrences like reincarnation or dismissing them with objective scepticism. I’m always a sceptic myself, but I loved the experience of not knowing where this film was going to land. Is he really her dead husband reborn? Could he just be a weird child? How could he know so much about his life? You’ll have to watch the film to find out.

One thing is certain, though. This kid is wickedly creepy:

“It’s me, Sean!”. *shivers*

Well, maybe he’s creepy, or maybe he’s just desperate to reconnect with his wife. Again, it all depends on what you believe about his claim, and your allegiance is bound to flip flop throughout the picture. This is due, in large part, to Alexandre Desplat’s emotionally acute musical score.

From the moment the movie starts, you know you’re in good hands. Glazer gives us a 1 minute and 48 second uncut shot of Sean running through a snow-covered park. I’d normally call this editing decision a self-indulgent one, except that it gives us apt time to reflect on Desplat’s overture, which plays through all of its peaks and lulls in order to tell us exactly what tone we’re in for over the next 90 minutes. Beginning with the flighty sound of ethereal flutes flapping like pigeons in the upper ranges, it later slips into warm comforting violins and ultimately confronts us with bombastic skeletal drums. It’s a lovely melodic introduction that filmmakers and musicians alike can appreciate.

Upon analysis, Birth is above all about loss. Kidman’s performance in the movie highlights one thing; while she may project and inject the artifice of closure…she has, in fact, never recovered from losing the love of her life. Worse yet, she probably never will.

I loved Birth. Most filmmakers couldn’t do much better, and that would be perfectly acceptable. Glazer, against all odds, can’t help but outdo himself. Ten years after Birth, he made what is clearly the best film of this decade as well as the last one; Under The Skin.

Oh, shit…you saw it, huh? Alright, no,  fuck it, if you didn’t like it then you’re just wrong! Let me forcibly educate you as to why, with a little crash course in film school:

Film was not always an art form. It was initially invented as a piece of scientific technology. It was not immediately recognised as a form of artistic expression, much less as a medium for storytelling. In its first incarnation, film was merely used to document reality and project it back to audiences for amazement. However, it gradually changed as artists were able to adapt it for other purposes, and probably made its greatest stride with the discovery of the “montage”.

We all think we know what the term “montage” refers to. Some may begin to hum the Montage song from Team America, while others remember the compressed training sequence from Rocky. That’s not, in full, what the word “montage” is referring to. “Montage”, in film terms, means the mere compositing of images to tell an overarching narrative. You may take it for granted, but your brain is actually doing a hell of a lot of work in order to understand the relationship between each shot in a movie. The fact that a movie can be intuitively understood says a lot about a human being’s ability to comprehend visual patterns. The question is, how much of the legwork can you let the audience do for themselves before the whole thing becomes confusing?

There are five types of montage; Metric, Rhythmic, Tonal, Overtonal, and Intellectual. I’ll let you look up the meaning of these on your own time, but they all hang upon the peg of what’s known as “The Kuleshov Effect”.

Lev Kuleshov was a Soviet filmmaker who experimented with the psychological effect of film on its audience. What he discovered was the hidden participatory element that the audience member brings to every editing decision a filmmaker makes. That might sound like mumbo jumbo to you, but it’s actually really fascinating when you understand it. Here’s how it works:

Kuleshov experimented by showing these three different sets of images to three different audience groups:

Three different mashups; a bowl of soup, a child in a coffin, and a beautiful woman, always followed by the same static shot of a man’s face.

Those who saw the “soup” version commented on how hungry the man looked, those who saw the child in the coffin remarked at his obvious sadness, and those who saw the beautiful woman were moved by how much the man appeared to be in love.

So what’s going on here? It turns out that this is the psychological phenomenon on which film editing is based. Firstly, as a viewer you are making the connection that the two shots are happening in the same local space and sequentially happening one after the other. It’s an assumption you will always make unless the filmmaker has made it clear, somehow, that they are separate incidents.  Then, you deduce that since the man is staring slightly off camera then he must be looking at the following subject. Then, you contemplate the effect of his observation on his mood and project that onto his expression. It’s even freakier than that. The girl lying in the coffin could just as easily be asleep, but the fact that she’s in a coffin gives your brain the signal that she must be deceased. The woman lying on the couch appears to smile, which is why the viewer sees a loving connection instead of a sad one. Then there’s the bowl of soup, which is full and not empty. Had it been empty, we may have deduced that the man looked satisfied with his meal.

This is what filmmaking is, and every single filmmaker should be trying to cut his or her film back to this basic concept. If you tell the story visually, and not explicitly through dialogue, it will be a more engaging experience for the audience and they will be able to have their own subjective impression of it…and that’s exactly what Under The Skin does.

“Disguising herself as a human female, an extraterrestrial (Scarlett Johansson) drives around Scotland and tries to lure unsuspecting men into her van.”

– IMDB

Under The Skin is a prime example of Jonathan Glazer’s trust in the power of the image. He never resorts to exposition in order to tell you what’s going on, but instead trusts you to make all the connections yourself. Beyond that, the film is exploring ideas of perception and how much the limitations of your perspective effect how you experience the world around you. The film begins with a very cold and distant tone, then gradually heats up as the protagonist changes.

It’s not a movie that you’ll likely be able to comprehend entirely upon first viewing, I’ll give you that. I can only hope that you appreciate how much this really is a master at work. Every frame, every moment, and every cut is painstakingly assembled and streamlined into this bare-bones collection of images. Many shots are held for a long time, but it’s all done in order to make you think about what you’re seeing and why Glazer is showing it to you.

As for Scarlett Johansson, I was already sold on her talent and artistic choices when she provided the ever loveable voice of Samantha in Spike Jonze’s Her. This takes it to a whole new level. She completely inhabits the role of Laura, the alien, by switching from an inanimate to an animate face whenever she’s approached by another character. Again, remember the Kuleshov effect, where the man’s face really didn’t do much at all, and yet we read so much into it. Johansson’s expressions are minimal, if existent at all. Counterintuitive as it may be, this is a very brave choice for such an accomplished actress to make. Doing so little shows an immense level of trust in the film and it’s director.

Also, she’s like totally naked…a lot.

If that’s the only way I can get you to see Under The Skin, then so be it. To those who are averse to nudity, however, let me also speak directly to you. It is in no way gratuitous and most definitely not sexist. There is at least as much male nudity as there is female nudity, and it’s all there for a reason.

But enough about the nudity, that’s so not the point. Under The Skin has had a very bittersweet reception. While those who have seen it have really loved it, most people have passed right by it. If you do have access to it and would like to check it out, I recommend that you get hold of the best quality version you can. The imagery in this film is extraordinary, and needs to be seen in it’s full glory, so unless it’s too much to ask you should be getting hold of a full HD copy. Remember what I’ve told you, also. Be prepared for 90 minutes of very challenging material, probably unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. Even if it doesn’t make for a good blockbuster, it’s a worthwhile education and above all; a participatory event. Don’t switch your brain off, switch it on!

This is a movie that I can only hope will grow its audience over a long time and become recognised as a grand work of art, just like Psycho and 2001: A Space Odyssey, or perhaps it will sink into the blackness and be forgotten by all but a few. Who knows? Well, I’ll keep telling people about it no matter what happens.

Above all, never forget the name Jonathan Glazer.

You’re bound to see it show up again!

– Rant Over!

So here it goes: A review 14 years in the making.

Three weeks ago I stood at the box office of my local cinema chain with a “1-free admission” ticket voucher in my hand. It was a Christmas present given to me by a Secret Santa at work and I’d held on to it until now so that, no matter what financial situation I found myself in, on June of 2015 I would have a guaranteed ticket to see Jurassic World on the big screen.

Do you see how seriously I take this shit?

So there I was, standing in line behind a group of teenage oafs who were poking and yelling “pussy” at each other, when a moment of divine intervention took place. First the yobbos asked for four tickets to “Mad Max: Fury Road” and I was relieved. Then the woman at the candy bar asked if they wished to see it in “Gold Class”. They declined, but the words danced on my eardrums and wouldn’t go away. “Gold Class?” I said out loud, and then suddenly realised that I was saying it to her. What happened? I didn’t even register that I was in the middle of ordering a ticket. The whole thing was an out-of-body experience. She charged me some enormous amount of money, but all I could think about was how little control I now had over my destiny. She gave me change for a $50 bill, but I don’t know who’s it was because I couldn’t remember handing it to her.

Now, bewildered, I’m in the Gold Class lounge and a waitress comes over to take my order. Order? Yes, order! In Gold Class they take your gourmet food order and bring it to you during the movie. I ordered a burger and a Lemon, Lime and Bitters…I think (that’s what I received later on, so it’s all I can deduce). I tried to cover up my “Why couldn’t I be rich instead of good looking?” T-shirt, so people wouldn’t think I was out of place. I’d never felt this much like Jack Dawson in the First Class of the Titanic. Back came the waitress with a smile; “You may go in now, Sir”.

To be honest, it does make sense. This is the movie I’ve been anticipating “for like forever like totally”! It’s the biggie, so why not make it a fully enriching experience?

It turns out that Gold Class is set up for couples, so the seats are placed two-by-two. They sat me down next to a pretty girl who was beaming with excitement about the movie. She was alone in a “couples” movie theatre, so how could she possibly have a boyfriend? I was alone, and I know I don’t have anyone significant in my life. Could this be the beginning of a Rom-Com romance? Maybe after the movie I’ll ask for her name and enquire about why she likes Jurassic Park. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll be an ultra-fan and we’ll walk along the shore exchanging stories about how much it means to us. My imagination is getting ahead of me, you say? Sure, but that’s what they said about putting a man on the moon and this could only be slightly less achievable, right?

The lights began to dim and the waitress arrived with my food. Sorry, not my food, it’s our food. It turns out that my future bride-to-be ordered a Lemon, Lime and Bitters as well. It was with her chicken burger, so not a beef burger like mine. Different, perhaps, but also complimentary. You might even say that “she completes me”. This could be a great moment for me, and a life changing day, but then…

The Gold Class, the burgers, the drinks, the beautiful woman beside me; none of it mattered after ten minutes of Jurassic World. There’s no way it could ever work out between us now, honey, because I will forever associate you with this film; a cold, cheap, rotten experience.

Where to start?

How about starting where it starts; with a terrible opening shot. Let’s play a game of “spot-the-difference”.

What’s different about these two images?

Answer: Everything!

The creature on the left appears as a tangible, fragile, newly moulded animal. The one on the right is false, slimy, and monstrous. That’s not what Jurassic Park is, or ever was, about. The moment this image faded up on the screen I knew that something was very wrong.

Unfortunately, I was expecting a film of quality with some effort and thought put behind it, like the original was. What I should have foreseen was a low-cost, quickly assembled, fashionable money-maker.

Jurassic World is a “Trendysaurus”. Instead of bringing us back to the glorious film franchise of the past, it shoehorns its most familiar elements into a new one and shamelessly capitalises off of them. It’s not just bad, it’s worse; corrupt!

Sorry, I’m ranting without specifics. I have to go through this bit-by-bit.

Is Jurassic World a bad film? No, not totally. As a random piece of Saturday-afternoon escapism, it’s just barely decent. Big monsters chasing screaming people, if that’s what you want then that’s what you’ll get. What you won’t get is any emotional attachment to those people.

Chris Pratt plays Owen Grady, a Velociraptor trainer who doesn’t want to do anything with his Velociraptors. Seriously, he trains raptors for apparently no purpose other than how cool it looks. When the military comes to him and demands that he put them to use, he winces and cries…but what the fuck was he training them to be…pets? Never explained! Ugh!

Bryce Dallas Howard plays Claire Dearing, Jurassic World‘s operations manager. She has the impossible job of running a resurrected park that, two decades ago, failed disastrously and cost the lives of four people (not to mention the second attempt in the heart of San Diego that unleashed a T-Rex into the city). If I was her I’d take another job, but she instead doubles down and decides to mutate the dinosaurs into “more dangerous creatures”, thereby making another Dino-breakout a near certainty. How inspired!

This time we have two new children, both boys. I never got a handle on these kids. The little one cries a lot because his parents are getting divorced. The older one has a girlfriend who loves him, but can’t seem to stop staring at girls. I think he’s some kind of pervert, but of course the film never properly addressed this. We’re supposed to sense a broken relationship between them that heals throughout the film, but after 30 minutes of mutual disdain I just wanted to see them both inside the jaws of a large predator.

They were both really bland actors, too. Nothing interesting or distinct about either one. What a shame.

Jurassic Park had lovely characters that were each memorable in their own way. Sure, Lex sometimes became a bit unbearable with her screaming and crying, but she saved the other characters on more than one occasion with quick wit and mad computer skills.

Tim was a bit of a punching bag, and spent most of his time suffering bumps, bruises, and electric shocks. However, he did have a rather funny discord with Alan Grant and Lex. Both found themselves annoyed by his nagging antics, but (for better or worse) he was portrayed as a believable 8-year-old boy and you never hated him.

Alan Grant is, to all intents and purposes, the main character of an admittedly ensemble-esque film. The plot affects everyone but the story belongs to him. He is a man who struggles to tackle the responsibilities of parenthood. He sees no reward in fathering a child, much less raising one, and it is only by witnessing Lex and Tim in danger that he discovers the true depths of his paternal instincts. By the end of the movie he is not only protecting the children, but caring for them as well.

Ellie Sattler may just be the most underrated feminist character in all of genre cinema. To me she’s even more fascinating than Ellen Ripley, and I’ll tell you why. As the Alien series went on, Ripley was depicted as increasingly masculine. While she protected her loved ones and eviscerated the enemies who tried to destroy her, as any good heroine should, the filmmakers decided that the best way to represent this visually was to crank her testosterone level into overdrive. She cut her hair and rolled up her sleeves as a visual cue of empowerment and courage. That’s the low hanging fruit, if you ask me. The real trick is to give your female characters agency and resilience while still maintaining their femininity. We’ve been sold on the idea that strength of character necessitates a butch physique, and it’s the often unrecognised subtle misogyny that still persists in modern action-adventure literature. Ellie Sattler, however, was different. She never picked up a gun or even had to punch anybody, but instead held her own in heavy intellectual debates and willingly confronted danger when it was necessary. Did she scream and cry and times? Sure, like a friggin’ damsel tied to a train track, but remember that courage is not the absence of fear but rather action in spite of it. She was never sexualised or shamed, but could still tease and flirt with the men around her when she felt like it.

I certainly cannot say the same for Claire. She spends the whole of Jurassic World running around in high heels and then, when shit really hits the fan, strips down to a tank top. Upon reflection, the entire downfall of the park is because of her dumb behaviour, so you never gain any sympathy for her either.

Chris Pratt’s Owen feels like he’s been transplanted from a 1930’s serial movie. I struggled to find a single flaw in his genetic code. He’s strong, smart, conscientious, and somehow always correct about everything. Ian Malcolm may have been proven “right all the time”, but at least he was an arrogant asshole. It’s so boring to see a character with no pitfalls, and to make matters worse…he isn’t even any fun to be around. Pratt is given almost no funny lines or enjoyable moments. He just gives us his “blue steel” look every time something serious happens.

I could go on for hours about this, and I haven’t even brought up the lack of interesting supporting characters like John Hammond, Ian Malcolm, and Robert Muldoon.

I’m happy with the idea of finally realising Hammond’s original vision of a fully functional dinosaur theme park. It’s about time that we saw it come to life instead of just wallowing amongst the ruins from the first film. It also fulfilled my first request:

We’re back home on Isla Nublar for the first time in over 20 years and it feels great! The park is gloriously detailed, lives up to all my expectations, and even included a great many homages to the original. There’s a statue of Hammond, a fossil digging area, night vision goggles, jeeps, Dr. Henry Wu returns and Mr. DNA even showed up!

We were only given a fleeting glimpse at him, but he was there.

Yet, something is a little off. The whole park feels like it was designed by Apple. It’s a lot more futuristic than the original, which seemed more like an entrenched safari experience. This is clearly the new direction the filmmakers wanted to go in, bringing the entire concept into the 21st century.

So why did the original feel more authentic to me? It was simpler in construction and instead made use of the space that the island provided. The whole park could be operated by a tiny control room, and only two operators (though this was also a major factor in the park’s demise). The dinosaur paddocks were few, but gigantic. Constantly, the dinosaurs were a no-show. This not only gave it the relatable experience of touring a zoo, but also provided a slow and steady build up to the Tyrannosaur breakout.

Within 30 seconds of being in Jurassic World, we’re surrounded by dinosaurs. At times, the level of co-existence tips over into absurdity.

Am I really expected to believe that this falls within the constraints of Health and Safety? Look at this! What happens if someone paddles too close and tries to pat one of the Stegosaurs? Give me a single modern zoo that will let you riverboat with the Hippos!

While we’re on the subject, what the hell was this?

Is that seriously a crowd of children waiting to watch a T-Rex eat a living goat? How on earth is that not a massive controversy waiting to happen? Kids aren’t allowed into R-rated movies, but public mammalian execution is ok? “You must be THIS tall to watch the limbs come off”?.

Keep in mind that the “goat luring” in the original was merely a temporary attempt to present the endorsers with a definitive glimpse at the park’s most notorious creation. It was never meant to be implemented in the final design.

It’s not a major complaint, but this park didn’t feel like the original pitch. It’s been renamed Jurassic World, so i suppose that gives it a bit of room for fantastical deviation. Fair is fair, I just wish it had restrained itself a little.

The story revolves around the creation of the Indominus Rex, a genetically engineered hybrid. I wasn’t entirely sure what to think when I heard about this. On the one hand it is in keeping with Jurassic Park’s theme about “the arrogance of man”, but on the other hand it smacks of B-Movie horror.

Pretty soon, though, it became clear that regardless of the validity of the concept…the execution was going to derail the entire thing.

Colin Trevorrow has proved himself to be a good director with his charming first feature Safety Not Guaranteed. It’s a great little indy film that plays with the audiences belief and trust in different characters. Funny, believable, and emotionally captivating, Trevorrow’s merging of mumble core and science fiction ridiculousness made for a critically acclaimed debut…

…but he ain’t no Spielberg!

When Steven Spielberg made Jurassic Park, he already had Duel, Jaws, and all three Indiana Jones films on his CV. The man had action adventure and horror in his bloodstream.

At no point in Jurassic World did I feel any tension. There was no desire to hide anything from the audience. The Indominus Rex was plainly displayed in full sunlight mere minutes into the film. Boring!

Here’s a riddle for you: What’s the most influential moment in Jurassic Park? Here’s the answer:

It’s been spoofed a thousand times for a good reason; it works! It’s called foreshadowing, and is a way to intimidate the audience prior to the full reveal. The lack of this in Jurassic World tells you everything you need to know.

Spielberg wasn’t just the man who directed Jurassic Park, he was Jurassic Park. Without him the whole idea falls apart and becomes just another boring monster movie. Trevorrow has given us a modern dinosaur blockbuster, and that’s not a compliment.

Dinosaurs are chasing people in a Jurassic Park movie and I don’t even care about it! If you had told me that when I was eight years old, I would have branded you a liar. What a depressing thought.

More people are killed in Jurassic World than in Jurassic Park, and yet it feels like a less violent movie. There are only 5 human deaths in the original, but you can recall each one. Remember that poor schmuck whose job it was to open the Raptor enclosure? How about that darkly funny moment when the T-Rex smiles at a terrified Donald Genaro before lifting him off his toilet seat and shaking him to pieces? Will you ever be able to forget Muldoon thinking he got the upper hand on the Raptors, only to find himself face to face with his “clever girl”. The comedic irony and anticipation that went into these sequences meant that you really felt the “crunch” of that person finally being eaten.

The victims in Jurassic World are just chickenfeed.

I sat through the whole movie waiting for a single decent stunt. Hopefully someone was going to dangle over a cliff or climb up a tree before the credits rolled.

….nnnnnnope!

Instead we got a fiery helicopter crash and a massive Pterosaur attack. Apparently the scene is an homage to Hitchcock’s The Birds. Well, I do love The Birds. The problem is that it has no place in a Jurassic Park film.

It feels like something out of Dawn of the Dead or Battleship Potemkin. Crowd massacre sequences are hardly ever tense, they’re usually silly and a little fun. Because of that, they work beautifully for Piranha 3D…but again, not for Jurassic Park! What Jurassic World needed was a couple of nail biting sequences without dinosaurs filling the frame.

That being said, I was impressed by the slight nod toward Disney’s 1940’s musical cartoon Fantasia.

What about music, though? Was John Williams’ score still there? Yes, it was. In fact, my mother even said she enjoyed the film “because it still had the same music”, which goes to show you how powerful and iconic the original themes were.

I’m not that easily impressed. The majority of the score was completely altered into a generic action movie reinvention. The most recognisable musical moments were just injected, in their entirety, from the original trilogy. More importantly, Williams’ more subtle jungle themes were completely lost. People seem to forget that the original Jurassic Park was enriched with tribal drums and flutes. The Jurassic World score managed to keep the grand orchestral cues intact, but lost all the tropical underpinnings.

It’s a tough decision, but I’m ultimately disappointed with Michiael Giacchino’s unfulfilling soundtrack.

Enough about how it sounds, though, what about how shitty it looks?

I work with CGI, and even I’m starting to hate it now. Every creative problem is solved by throwing Visual Effects at it these days. Nothing looks real anymore, and Jurassic World stands as another example of why audiences need to be reminded that less is more.

Let’s play another game. One of these two original Raptors is CGI, and the other is an animatronic puppet. Can you tell which one was made in a computer?

Maybe you can or maybe you can’t (it’s the one on the left, by the way), but there isn’t really a glaring difference, is there?

Perhaps the blending of CGI and animatronics wasn’t entirely seamless, but it worked surprisingly well. It was more impressive, back in the 90’s, to see a gigantic Rex punching her way through the roof of a car because so much of it was actually real.

I grew increasingly annoyed while watching Jurassic World, because everything on the screen just looked like a bunch of ones and zeros. There’s no reason why Colin Trevorrow couldn’t have hired a production team to resurrect the animatronic T-Rex. He either didn’t want to or was advised not to. Regardless, it’s a wasted opportunity. Every one of the original fans would have thanked him for it and I’m sure younger audiences would been happy as Larry to see something different from what they typically get in an Avengers movie.

It’s not just about the over-saturation of CGI, though. The CGI itself isn’t even that impressive.

The amount of care that went into creating the world’s first photorealistic computer animation, back in 1992, was staggering. A handful of young entrepreneurs, experimenting with new technology, managed to convince Spielberg that CGI dinosaurs were within the scope of the picture. He signed off on the approach, but demanded that they deliver an impeccable product and wouldn’t take “new” for an answer.

All these years later and we end up with animated dinosaurs that not only don’t look better than the original…they actually look a little worse.

And the reason is laziness. CGI is like McDonalds food these days, cheap and quick. Hordes of computer slaves are locked into a room and pressured into spitting out a large bouncy finished product that’ll keep the money flowing. The result is a cartoony Tyrannosaurus Rex which completely undermines the intended impact of the final scene.

Speaking of the final scene…

In the last moment of the film, a Tyrannosaurus Rex is released from captivity and used to fight the Indominus. The whole thing turns into a dinosaur pile-on as every large carnivore joins in and finally defeats the villain.

Ok, now I’m pissed! Why on earth is this the 3rd act of the film? The first Jurassic Park ended in a tiny battle between the Rex and the Raptors, but it was more of a short capper to a final scene rather than the scene itself. Jurassic Park is not Pacific Rim! If you want to make a movie about monsters fighting then make it on your own time. Keep your ugly Michael Bay hands off my favourite franchise! Not everything has to be a Transformers movie! They’re dinosaurs, for Christ’s sake, not Godzilla and Mothra!

Jurassic Park is about the de-extinction of majestic animals from a lost time. It’s about the exploration of that moment when you get to see what you’ve studied on paper your entire life standing before you in the flesh. Beyond that it’s concerned with the ultimate repercussions of it.

Jurassic World made no mistake by switching the focus to hybridisation. The fault lies in not exploring that idea properly. I want to see some discussion and development of it. How and why did this process occur? What are some of the details? What kind of parallels can be drawn to real life? None of these questions are even considered. The entire concept just exists as an excuse for more jagged chomping teeth.

In fact, if the movie has a theme at all, then it seems to be “the original is way better”. Ergo, it becomes a metaphor for its own existence. Why on earth bother making a derivative of a product that you yourself admit cannot be improved upon? It’s like making a new Playstation console and naming it the “Not Quite Playstation”.

I recently heard rumours that the script was written in two weeks. I don’t know if it’s true, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Spielberg seems to have let Trevorrow do his own thing, and that’s fair enough. I’ll tell you this much, though; I’m keeping my Jurassic Park Trilogy BluRay set as it is! There’s no way that Jurassic World is sneaking in there and turning it into a “ménage à quatre”. This thing lives or dies on its own.

A friend of mine text messaged me, after seeing the film, with a single line: “it has no heart”. Never was a truer word spoken. Jurassic World truly has no heart. It is a soulless entity. I don’t even feel like Trevorrow cared after a while. He’s already spoken about his refusal to direct the next one, so he must have finished this one with a gun pointed to his head.

The moment Bryce Dallas Howard showed up and spoke the words “Welcome to Jurassic World“ with that same clinical tone that a doctor uses when they diagnose your cancer…I knew. I knew that somewhere in time Jurassic Park‘s bones had withered away and been replaced by cold hard rock. De-extinction, is it possible? Evidently not.

Of course, this is just my opinion. Apparently I’m in the minority. Jurassic World has grossed well over a billion dollars worldwide and has already smashed the record for the biggest opening weekend ever. Telling people that it “has no heart” is proving to be futile.

I don’t believe for a second that it’ll be remembered fondly by anyone twenty years down the track, like the original has been, but a lot of people have paid through the nose to see it (including myself). I’m glad that the franchise still has a lot of juice, even in this age of superhero movies. I just wish it still had its character.

– Rant Over!

Why, hello! How nice it is to be back on the pages of Cinema-Rant again. I’ve been away for a long time, nigh on three months, but finally I have returned.

I know people were anxious for this blog to re-appear. I could sense it, as if millions of voices were crying out to me. For the last few months people have been talking about how hyped they are to see a new instalment. They were, naturally, worried that it wouldn’t deliver after having been away for a long time. There was a fear of too many childish jokes or boring explanations like some other posts have had. Basically the fans wanted a return to the original intentions. Of course, you’ll be happy to know that I’m bringing back all your favourite characters: a, b, c, d…the whole alphabet is back! But, there will of course be a few happy surprises. Some characters will have changed- in a good way, of course. Some will be edgier, some are bolder. The whole thing will, of course, be underscored with familiar themes. Finally, I’m making a decision to favour the practical whenever possible, with GIFs like this one…

…which I’ll use in order to hammer home the obvious jokes and spoon feed the audience. Let’s face it, anything else would just be impractical!

Oh, you want to talk about Star Wars? Well, ok, if that’s what happens to be on your mind, then I guess I can chat about it. I was going to talk about Alvin and the Chipmunks 4: The Road Chip, but let’s just do all the thing that you want to do.

 I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens several weeks ago, and there’s absolutely nothing interesting I can say about it. Everything I could possibly say has already been said. As a general rule, I try not to talk about big movies that everyone’s seen. Since The Force Awakens took over 1.5 billion dollars in three weeks, I’d say it qualifies…

…but then again…everyone’s talking about it! Even I’ve been talking about it ever since I saw it. I feel the urge to weigh in…but I can’t just give it a thumbs up or down. I need to write something more personal.

So, instead, I’m going to explain exactly why…

Until the very end of last year there were six Star Wars movies and I didn’t care about any of them. I didn’t hate them all, I just didn’t understand the obsession surrounding the franchise.

I remember seeing the original Star Wars (A New Hope) at a friend’s birthday party. They ordered pizza and pushed the mysterious VHS tape into the VCR without me having any idea what was going on. At the time I didn’t like pizza either, so it turned out to be a bummer of a party all-round. Wow, I was a grouchy kid, huh? Meh…hello world, I’m me, nice to meet you.

The next two hours I was subjected to a sappy mixture of soap opera tripe and goofy dad-jokes. I’m not even kidding, the first Star Wars is a terrible movie. It may very well be one of the worst scripts ever written. It’s like some fanboy finished reading Lord of the Rings and thought to himself “I can come up with names like that”. Everything about the original film that actually works is stolen from other, better, movies. Mostly it’s ripped right out of classic Japanese Samurai films like Yojimbo, Sonjuro, and Seven Samurai. Then George Lucas simply mixed that with a thick dose of Buck Rogers, while trying to outdo Tolkien in the “world creation” department. Boo! When your script reads like an index page you have failed at story telling!

Of course, I didn’t analyse it like that at the time. I just thought it was stupid. The ‘funny’ bits weren’t funny, the ‘tense’ bits weren’t tense. There was no ambiguity in the story, with good guys dressed in white and bad guys were dressed in black. The framing was flat and the camera hardly moved. Oh, and the script…by God, the script!

Exposition upon exposition! Nothing but dense explanatory dialogue and space-tech lingo so stupid that even Harrison Ford recalls telling Lucas “George, you can type this shit, but you can’t say it.”. It just went on and on and on…

I knew that it wasn’t the genre that kept me from liking it. I’d seen plenty-a-space movie and enjoyed them, including Starship Troopers, Independence Day, Armageddon, Lost in Space, Apollo 13, The Fifth Element, Starman, Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection. Whatever else may be true about that list, they were all clearly better than this silly Star Wars thing.

What I hate the most is the lack of internal logic. If the Jedi can use the force to push and pull things around, including people, then why do they bother with lightsabers? Every lightsaber duel seems to go on forever until one character realises “hey…why don’t I just force-push this guy?”. Also, why are mortal enemies sticking to good form? If somebody pulls out a glowing red laser sword, I’m just shooting that dark-hole right in his sith-eating grin. Indiana Jones understood this, why couldn’t Luke Skywalker?

While we’re on it, I hate the force! What the hell is it? Obi-Wan Kenobi says that it “surrounds us and penetrates us” like some sort of mystical orgy. It allows people to move objects telekinetically, read people’s minds, sense when something in the plot has changed, and…my favourite…lets living characters have conversations with dead ones.

I’ll tell you what the force is; it’s convenient! George Lucas invented the force as a narrative crane that can lift him out of the corners he paints himself into. If he needs one character to defeat another at a specific moment…well, then that character just uses the force. Want to bring another popular character back from the dead? Well, we’ll just shove him back onto the set as a ghost! Easy peasy story squeazy.

The children around me, at this birthday party, went nuts for it. “R2D2’s my favourite character! He says so many funny things!”, “Chewbacca is hilarious!”, “Ah, the lightsabers are vrooming, that’s so cool!”. These guys were literally being entertained by shiny objects and beeping noises.

I like to think that, even as a ten year-old, I had a somewhat more sophisticated taste in movies than that. Probably not, though. It’s likely that I just wanted to hate what everyone else loved. Whichever it was, these movies weren’t for me. Maybe it’s because they were old. They looked old and they sounded old, but then this thing happened…

Ah, yes! Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace. In spite of the ominous foreshadowing fact that no film should have two colons in its title, Episode I was hyped beyond belief. Everyone expected it to be amazing, and you know what…? So did I.

I saw the posters, then the trailers, and had to admit that it looked like a huge improvement. Keep in mind that I was 10 years old at the time. CGI anything was dazzling to me, so the pod racing sequence blew my socks off. The lightsaber battles were ten times faster and far more elaborate. The dialogue? The characters? Still shit. Colourful fun that I enjoyed and then immediately forgot.

I had no interest in seeing Episodes II or III, but each time I was dragged into the cinema by some random friend waving a glow stick and making ‘vroom’ noises. How could anyone care about this stuff? It’s so dumb that it borders on offensive. Worst of all, people complained about the prequel trilogy like it was somehow out of step with the original Star Wars. No, it’s not! There are just more characters and digital effects, but it’s as much of a snooze as Episode IV was.

So now we’re caught in a time loop. It’s deja vu of our deja vu! There’s a new Star Wars movie in theatres, and of course everyone’s gagging for it. Here we go…

In anticipation of The Force Awakens, I went back and watched the entire original trilogy from start to finish; A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

Empire is clearly the best one, because George Lucas didn’t write or direct it. It’s darker, moodier, funnier, and even has the guts to mutilate its main character and freeze its comic-relief antihero in carbonite. It features the two best moments in any Star Wars film; Vader telling Luke “I’m your father!”, and Han Solo responding to Leia’s “I love you” with “…I know”.

Obviously George couldn’t stand for this. He had to make it boring and stupid again, and did so in the way that only he could. Return of the Jedi may not be as bad as A New Hope or Attack of the Clones, but it emulates them like a really good tribute-band. It starts off with the Empire creating…a new Death Star! Great. Thanks George, it’s nice to have your originality back. It wasn’t enough to copy everyone else’s ideas, now you’re copying your own. We get to witness the face-palming moment when a blind Han Solo accidentally kills the best Bounty Hunter in the galaxy, Boba Fett, by unintentionally knocking him into the Sarlacc pitt. Then the last straw is when we’re introduced to muppet characters, called Ewoks, and have to spend the whole last hour watching them bring down the supposedly insurmountable Empire. It’s…a horrifyingly bad movie, and set the scene perfectly for George’s next three films – which were, to put it kindly, more of the same.

So how the Hoth am I meant to enjoy Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens?

Oh, Yoda, you’re always so wise and green. If wipe all shitty Star Wars from my mind, I can, maybe enjoy the new one, I will.

As it turns out, I didn’t even have to do that. This man did it for me:

J. J. Abrams is today’s Steven Spielberg…other than the actual Steven Spielberg, that is. Is it wrong that I keep having to remind myself that he’s still alive and making movies?

No one but Abrams makes movies with the magical Spielberg touch anymore. He’s the only one who seems to be able to capture that sense of cinematic love that leaps off the screen and into your heart. It makes sense that the master himself is Abrams’ most significant influence, and it shows in his early work.

J.J. Abrams is a classic 90’s filmmaker. The 1990’s is, as you might suspect, my favourite filmmaking decade. Most film critics would point to the 70’s as the greatest decade in cinema on account of the American New Wave, but I disagree. See, those who were making films in the 90’s are the ones who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. Ergo, you’re seeing a matured and considered selection from those earlier years. Think about Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, Alexander Payne, Guillermo Del Toro, David O. Russell, Spike Jonze, The Coen Brothers, Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, Gus Van Sant, Darren Arronofsky, Steven Soderbergh…and, of course, Christopher Nolan. They’re all filmmakers drawing upon the movies they watched while growing up.

Well, Jeffrey Jacob Abrams is the one who never got a shot; the runt who didn’t get the nipple. For his first 10 years out of College he worked devilishly hard as a writer and managed to sell a total of four film scripts. Of course, no one would give him a shot at directing, because he was just a little novice with some writing talent.

He eventually found his way into television, due to his parents being TV Producers, and began writing pilot scripts. He had a hit as co-creator with Felicity, Alias, and then finally Lost. As a show creator, you get the opportunity to direct the pilot of your show, and boy did Abrams grab that chance. I remember not liking Lost, but the pilot was great…until he crashed on that island.

Hah! Get it? Like an airline pilot?

Anyway- I don’t blame Abrams for making Felicity, Alias, or Lost; three shows that I don’t care about at all. It was all a journey of fate that would lead him to one day meet Tom Cruise.

Cruise watched Alias and immediately went about hiring Abrams as the director for Mission Impossible III. MI3 is the second best film of the series, and attracted a fresh new audience. Next in line was Star Trek, which desperately needed to be made lighter and sexier. J. J. reinvented Star Trek in a way that made my jaw drop. I could not believe how much I enjoyed “the voyages of the Starship Enterprise”. I became something resembling a Trekkie in about 2 hours. What the- ? How is that possible?

Then it all became clear…

J. J. Abrams is clearly fanatical about Spielberg. Super 8 was a direct homage to films like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Everything from the poster to the music score was pure tribute. Now I suddenly saw all the recognisable elements; the humour amidst the tragedy, the smokey lighting, the uplifting soundtrack…and best of all, a great story with enjoyable characters! Spielberg always loved exploring the relationship between parents and their children, especially the role of a father, and J.J. had been tuned into that all along…

Fast forward a couple of years, and Kathleen Kennedy (The producer of all Steven Spielberg films, who is now in charge of overseeing the next Star Wars Trilogy) announces that she’d handed J. J. Abrams the chance to write and direct Episode VII.

If memory serves correctly, the internet exploded with equal parts joy, fear, and anger. Some were simply not a fan of Star Trek or Super 8, while others didn’t like the idea of Abrams having the monopoly on both major space fantasy franchises. William Shatner called Abrams “a pig” for hogging all the “Star” films. That’s inappropriate! That’s not what pigs do, is it? Do they collect everything of a kind for themselves? I’d say a squirrel or a hamster is a better comparison.

When Disney originally announced that they’d bought LucasArts and were planning to make another Star Wars trilogy, I could barely hear it over my snoring, but this was different. I knew that when Abrams got the gig, it was Spielberg’s apprentice taking on the task. This is the chosen one, who was trained by the master himself.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Spielberg had directed A New Hope? Well, wonder no more. We have our answer…

Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens is a great film! I know that you already know that, but the fact that I’m saying it means more than you could possibly understand. Abrams has converted me; no mean feat. It’s like I’ve spent my whole life battling the light, and now finally I’ve seen the virtues in it.

Episode VII copies A New Hope almost beat-for-beat. The Empire, the Death Star, the meek orphan living on a desert planet- it’s all exactly the same…except it’s not. It’s better somehow.

The writing, the acting, the humour, the spectacle…it went from Hayden Christensen to Laurence Olivier. Suddenly I’m invested in the saga. Not only am I a Star Wars fan, I feel like it’s a shame that I haven’t been for all this time. I’m hoping, for my own sake, that Episode VIII doesn’t drag me back into the murky swamps of Dagobah.

J. J. Abrams will turn fifty years old in June, and he has arguably just become the world’s most successful director. The Force Awakens is well on its way to becoming the highest grossing film of all time. For the last forty years, that title has been swapped around by only three people; James Cameron, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. If Episode VII does as well as some are beginning to think that it will, then Abrams will become the fourth Jedi master. I cannot imagine a more fitting honour.

Whenever you next watch The Force Awakens, remember that it’s not just a Star Wars film…it’s a J. J. Abrams film.

-Rant Over

It’s been a long time since I did a review on this blog. I didn’t really start Cinema-Rant with the intention of reviewing films as they were released, mostly because I wouldn’t be contributing anything but my opinion. Opinions, as they say, are like assholes. Everyone has one, and there’s plenty on the internet.

But I recently saw Colossal, a film that I don’t think many people have seen. It’s been out for a couple weeks now and so far hasn’t even made back one fifteenth of its budget. It appears to be suffering from it’s hard-to-comprehend plot, which makes sense because when I explain it to people I always get this reaction:

I think it’s the kind of premise that’s very hard to pitch, but I’ll try it again. Are you sitting down? Alright, here is the plot of Colossal:

Anne Hathaway plays an unemployed alcoholic named Gloria, whose reckless behaviour causes her boyfriend to split up with her. With no means of financial support, she decides to move back to her hometown, where she meets up with a childhood friend named Oscar (played by Jason Sudeikis), who offers to let her work at his bar. Needless to say, this doesn’t improve her relationship with alcohol. All good so far?

Good. She then finds out that whenever she stomps through a playground at 8:05 in the morning, a giant monster attacks South Korea.

I know, believe me. There’s really no good way to drop that bomb. Anne Hathaway controls a kaiju monster in Seoul. Check out the trailer if you don’t believe me.

Now it’s my job to explain why Colossal works, and why it isn’t actually that unusual. In fact, it’s actually a very normal story. A ludicrous plot, sure, but a very normal story.

That might have confused you a little. In case you weren’t already aware of this, as I wasn’t prior to film school, plot and story are actually not the same thing. Plot concerns unfolding events, while story concerns character development. I’ll give you a simple example: What is Titanic about?

Well, yes Kate, thank you for your contribution. Titanic does concern the famous sinking of said ship, true. Specifically, it’s about the doomed relationship that blossoms between a rich first-class heiress and a poor artistic drifter upon the titular vessel (bookended, of course, by the subaqueous search for an invaluable diamond). But that’s the plot, not the story. What is the story?

It’s pretty simple, really. The story isn’t about disaster, nor class, and it isn’t even really about love. It’s about empowerment. It’s about strength, perseverance, whichever word you want to use to describe it. The point is that Jack first meets Rose as she’s about to pack it all in and kill herself, but by the end of the film he’s empowered her to say “I’ll never let go”. She’s a totally different person at the end of the film than she was at the beginning. He doesn’t save her, he inspires her to save herself. By the end she’s doing everything she can to “stay on the ship as long as possible”. Ergo, the ship is just a big honking, breaking, sinking metaphor for her life.

And that’s the key! Which characters change and which ones stay the same? Follow the path of the malleable one, and you will find the story. The best part is the relationship between the story and the plot. They run parallel to each other, but they also affect each other. When Jack wins his ticket to Titanic, it causes him to meet Rose and talk her out of suicide. This is the first step in her development as a character. Hence, the plot is changing the story. Much later, however, her new empowered state causes her to abandon her family and search for Jack as the Titanic is sinking. This is the story coming back to affect the plot. Back and forth it goes. You can map it out yourself from there.

Let’s do another one. What is Jaws about?

Oh my god, lady, you’re in the movie and you don’t even know.

No, Jaws is not about a man-eating shark. It’s actually about Chief Brody’s fear of the sea. He’s a city cop who’s been stationed on Amity Island, but he’s yet to go out on the water. The ocean is representative of danger, of uncertainty. All throughout the first half of Jaws, Brody is dodging risk. He constantly tells his children to avoid risky situations. In fact, it’s highly likely that the entire reason why Brody moved to the aptly named Amity Island is because it’s such a safe community, far away from the dangers of the city. When the shark appears, it simply constitutes a dangerous water-based threat that Brody cannot avoid. Once the shark kills Alex Kintner, a child who resembles his own, Brody can no longer seperate himself from his responsibilities and has to literally head out to sea himself in order to kill the shark.

Watch Jaws again with this in mind. Notice how Spielberg so often frames Brody with the ocean hovering over his shoulder, never easing up on him.

There’s really nothing special about this. It’s merely the first layer of film analysis. We can keep going. E. T. isn’t about an alien, it’s about divorce. Star Wars isn’t about lightsabers, it’s about lineage. The Shawshank Redemption isn’t about prison, it’s about institutionalisation.

Go on, you try it. Pick any movie you want and crack it open like a walnut. If it’s any good, it’ll have a clearly defined story at its centre. Have you ever wondered why some films are so basic and disposable? It’s because the filmmakers never bothered to outline what their story was and how it related to the plot. All they have is plot, and pure plot is boring.

Oh, right, I was supposed to review Colossal. Well, all Colossal does is blur the lines between the story and the plot. In fact, it pulls the story into the plot. Thus, we get a literal metaphor, appearing out of nowhere, and stomping through the plot of the film. We aren’t even really provided with a pretext, backstory, or any sort of internal logic. It’s so simple, so meta, so ill advised, and yet it’s kinda genius. It’s like an arthouse disaster-movie drama. When was the last time you watched one of those?

Gloria’s realisation that her actions cause widespread chaos on the other side of the world forces her to come to terms with the destructive nature of her behaviour. She has to understand that she isn’t just damaging herself with her obsessive drinking, but also others. Once you can see that the film is a commentary on the reverberating nature of poor choices and addiction, you’ll be able to understand the film. In fact, I think it’s crucial to your enjoyment of it.

As for the movie itself, I found the first half of Colossal to be messy. The script is clearly unfinished, to say the least. Much of the dialogue is trying too hard to be funny, and wastes a lot of time with redundancies and irrelevant tangents. It sounded, to me, like they had simply shot the first draft. I would have liked more fleshing out of the central idea and less jokey padding.

In its second half, however, Colossal takes a sharp left turn and becomes something much more enjoyable. I can’t spoil what happens, but it immediately ratchets up the tension and gives us a lot more to contemplate. The whole thing builds to a strangely satisfactory ending. I say strangely because it’s not relying on explosions and carnage, but somehow still manages to reach the dramatic pinnacle that’s required in this kind of film. I really loved the ending, and the more I think about it the more it makes the whole movie worthwhile. Some people don’t seem to have understood what it means, so just remember this as you watch it: the film is about characters being forced to come to terms with their own behaviour. That’s all I can say without ruining it.

Anne Hathaway does a surprisingly good job of playing a total wreck. It’s been hard for her to escape her clean-cut princess look. She isn’t quite as tattered in this as she was in Les Miserables, but she’s covering her face with her bangs and sporting oversized winter coats. She’s a fairly believable victim of her own neglectfulness.

Jason Sudeikis is perfectly cast, I think, in his role. He has one of the worlds most harmless looking faces, completely befitting a character who’s so helpful and giving. You’d never expect anything but kindness from him, and that’s exactly what the script has so much fun with.

Go and see Colossal. It isn’t a sequel, a remake, a reboot, or an adaptation. It ain’t a superhero movie or a Transformers film. It’s a totally fresh idea, the kind of thing that’s so hard to find these days. I saw it at the Cinema Nova here in Melbourne and I’m pretty sure it’s available all over America and Canada. As for Europe, this one might take a while to trickle out, but have a google and see if it’s screening somewhere close to you in the coming months.

-Rant Over!