The Karate Kid

Mad Science Time! Come with me, as we descend into my secret underground laboratory. There, we will perform a an experiment of hideous evil upon Mr Will Smith. Using the Anti-Charisma Ray, we will strip Mr Smith of all his charm and style. Obviously, as Mr Smith is a pretty charming guy, this will reduce his size significantly, leaving him a four foot tall irritating smartarse. I shall call my creation "Jaden Smith" and unleash him on the world, as revenge for all the shit the world has given me over the years.

Seriously, this kid is the fucking pits.

So, this kid, who goes by the name "Dre" in the movie, for fuck's sake, has to move to China with his mum, for no adequately explained reason. His mum allegedly works for a Detroit car company, who have relocated her to Beijing for no adequately explained reason.

So, having just arrived, Dre goes out into the park, tries to act like a big man, tries to chat up a local girl who's playing a violin, and is set upon by a gang of lads led by a kid called Cheng who has the cold, dead eyes of a killer. Cheng proceeds to beat the living shit out of Dre. I like him already.

Anyway, this is otherwise just like the original Karate Kid, so these dudes continue to make Dre's life a misery, and Dre continues to whine about it. Eventually, a local handyman steps in to sort it all out. Fortunately, the local handyman is Jackie Chan, which leads to the only halfway good bit of the movie. Though actually, there's nothing all that fun about watching Jackie Chan beat up six teenagers. They're horribly outclassed, and but for the fact that they won't learn and back down, it's practically child abuse.

So, anyway, to rescue Dre from their revenge, they visit the dojo these kids train at, and the challenge is laid down, Dre vs all of them in a tournament in a month, so long as they leave him alone while he trains.

Cue training montage. Much of which takes place on a suspiciously deserted section of The Great Wall of China. This is the bit where you would hope that Dre would cease to be a self-important little snot, learn some humility along the way, but, no, he doesn't. And then onto the tournament where the evil No Mercy Dojo try and cheat their way to the win, with the intention of permanently crippling the kid on the way. Again, I can't really fault them on this.

So... no, I hate this film. Jackie Chan's real strength is in physical comedy, and we get none of that here. Jaden Smith is dreadful, and they only way he could make a film better would be by dying just prior to filming starting. The rest of it is terrible, terrible cliche and stereotype. Chinese Girl With Disapproving Father. Evil No Mercy Dojo Who Hate Western Devils. Training Montage. Random, Pointless Cameo From Local Landmarks. School With No Ability Whatsoever To Prevent Bullying Of The Most Open And Violent Kind. Bleah. There are only two things to enjoy in this film. First, some of the cinematography is nice. Second, Jaden Smith gets brutally beaten up a few times. Only not really.

The thing is, annoying as he is, nobody could (or at least should) gain any satisfaction from watching bullies beat up a smaller kid. Imagine you're back at school, and you see a bunch of vindictive little thugs beating up the annoying kid in your class. And you don't help. You tell yourself that you're afraid to, that you'll get beaten up yourself, and so you couldn't help anyway. But really, you know that it's because you don't want to help. And you feel sick with yourself, because that makes you just as bad as them. That's how this film makes me feel.

In reposting these reviews, I noticed my review for The Day The Keanu Stood Silently Staring At People, and am pleased to see that I've been consistent in my derision of Jaden Smith.

Toy Story 3

Really, remarkably good. Everyone knows Toy Story, so no real recap is necessary. In this installment, Andy, their owner, has grown out of his toys, but is keeping them out of sentimental attachment. He's going off to college, and has no real idea what to do with them. He's going to stuff them up in the attic, but by a series of misunderstandings, they end up donated to a playgroup. Life isn't a bed of roses there, and so they resolve to escape, and make their way home.

This setup makes it three kinds of film, and it's a great example of each. Firstly, it's funny, it's a really good comedy. This isn't your animated film for the kids that has a few gags for the adults to stop them gnawing their own arms off in boredom, it's a snappy, intelligent script full of laughs from start to finish. Second, it's a great action film, full of death defying stunts. Finally, it's a surprisingly poignant drama about abandonment, moving on with your life, and those you leave behind. I hear that quite a lot of grown men cry at the ending. I didn't, of course. Those 3D glasses were just making my eyes water.

The 3D deserves a mention, I think, because this is the first film I've seen that I think uses it intelligently. "Up" was quite good, but the only time you really noticed it was when they were going "look, look, this thing's flying right at you!" which is the only thing 3D has really had going for it since they invented it. Here, we're seeing scenes such as when our heroes are trapped, apparently without hope of escape, in the incinerator of a rubbish dump. The scene has a presence to it that I'm sure is because of the immersive nature of 3D, and it's a more nailbiting, edge of the seat moment than you'll find in any film of recent years. It's a subtle use of 3D that I think conveys suspense in the same kind of way Hitchcock used music, to draw you in. There's some really, really clever filmmaking going on here.

Overall, I don't see that Toy Story is a series of kids films anymore. There's a (possibly pretentious) argument that these films are magical realism fantasies, like Michel Gondry makes. Sure, kids can enjoy them, but if you're willing to accept that these films are about a bunch of toys, then there's really nothing purely for kids about them.

Excellent film, go see it.

Inception

Here's a thing. This is one of those films that it's maybe best not to know too
much about before you go in. So, in a way, I don't want to review it, I just
want to tell you to go and see it. If that's good enough for you, z out of here
now, and go see it.

If you're still with me, I'll have a crack at recommending it without going
into too much detail.

It is the near future, much like our own era, but for the fact that among other
techs, there is a tech which allows people to share dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio
is a thief who is the acknowledged master in the field of stealing information
from people's heads by using this tech to enter into a dream with them. He is
hired by Ken Watanbe, a powerful corporate type to perform an inception. An
inception is a difficult process whereby you introduce an idea into someone's
head, thinking that it's their own. Cillian Murphy is a guy whose dad controls
a company that's on the verge of a world energy monopoly, and who stands to
inherit. They want him to break up the business empire when he does. The
problem is, inceptions are thought to be impossible. Only DiCaprio reckons it
can be done, and for the price on offer, is willing to try.

For this purpose he recruits an Ocean's Eleven style band of master
dreamthieves, including a young girl prodigy new to the whole experience, to
break into Cillian Murphy's mind and convince him that he's decided to do this.
Complicating the matter is the fact that DiCaprio is Fucked Up, With Issues,
and these Issues bleed into the dreams sabotaging stuff.

So, on the one hand, this is a sort of cross between a crime caper movie and
eXistenZ, and on the other, its a bit Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

It's directed by Memento director Christopher Nolan. Which is technically the
same guy as The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, but it's the former guy
we're mostly discussing here. In that it's got all that good, chinstroky "what
the hell is going on here" stuff, alongside a pretty taut action thriller.

Talent wise, you've got all the support you need, with Joseph Gorden-Levitt,
Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Pete Postlethwaite, and so forth, all
doing what they do best, with all the material they need to do it with.

If I have one criticism for the film, and really, I *don't*, it's that it makes
up some rules for itself about how dreams work which a) I'm not sure make any
sense, and b) they then maybe don't actually obey. On the other hand, maybe
they do, and it's me that needs to see it a couple more times.

I will be seeing it a couple more times.

Predators

OK, so, the reboot has landed. Written and produced (but, crucially, not
directed) by Robert Rodriguez, this is essentially a sequel to Predator,
parallel to Predator 2 (in that nothing in either, essentially contradicts or
relies on the other), and basically ignores the whole AvP thread.

The basic concept of this film is that Predators kidnap a bunch of extremely
badass humans, drop them in a game reserve on another planet, armed with their
usual weapons, and then hunt them down one by one. The rollcall of badasses is
your typical run of Blackops Merc, Jungle Sniper, Yakuza Assassin, Gangster
Enforcer, Russian Spetznaz, etc... They all get together, broadly recognise the
need to work together, and set themselves the task of tracking down whoever
kidnapped them, and (once it becomes obvious that we're not in Kansas anymore)
nicking their spaceship. Later on we run across Larry Fishburne, who's been
stuck here for about ten years, and has gone pretty loopy.

Overall, the odds are nine humans vs three predators, and it's basically quite
even. The plot basically comes as no surprise; both sides are hunting the
other, in a jungle. Midway through the movie, Larry Fishburne lays some
exposition on us which clues us a little more in to Predator culture, but only
inasmuch as what he's been able to glean by being hunted by them.

So. Both sides are slowly winnowed down, until there's a final faceoff between
the last Predator and the last few humans. And then it's pretty much the end of
the movie, with the suggestion that, even if there's no sequel actually coming,
it's far from over. Predators aren't going to stop doing what they do any
time soon, and we aren't going to stop objecting.

So, really there are two questions; how impressively badass are our human
badasses, and what's the film like; you already know the plot, essentially,
because you saw Predator.

The badasses are a bit of a mixed bag. First and foremost, Adrien Brody is not
badass. It was an interesting decision to cast him, and I'm still glad they
chose him over, say, Vin Diesel. But really, this is a real mismatch for him.
He's supposed to be this ruthless, been-there-seen-it-killed-it merciless
killing machine, and he's just not. If they'd gone the Predator 2 route, and
he'd been a police detective who has to find his inner badass, then maybe. But
not this. There's a general weakness, exemplified by the Russian guy. Spetsnaz
troops have the reputation of being terrifying bastards. Whereas this guy's
just kind of heavy with a big gun. There's nothing particularly awesome about
any of them really. And it'd have been a better film if *that was the point*.
Or if they'd put together a cast of genuinely terrifying bastards.

The direction is also a bit meh. Plenty of potentially cool things happen, but
the direction just isn't there, so things that ought to have been cool action
setpieces just sort of happen. It starts out well enough, builds well until the
last 20 minutes, and then, if not exactly falling flat, sort of levels out and
continues in that vein until the credits roll.

So, overall... Well, I guess it could depend on your taste, but there's some
doubt in my mind whether this gets to be the third best movie with Predators
in, never mind the second. In that, pants though it may have been, AvP at least
had some nice sets in which the mayhem happens, and there's a bit more plot
going on. The script and performances are marginally better in this one and
there's nothing in AvP as entertaining as Larry Fishburne going Apocalyse Now.

All I can really say then, is that it's not particularly good enough in any
respect to put it head and shoulders over any of the other Predator film.
Though I've not seen AvP2.

Whatever Works.

You need to go into this film with a couple of things understood. It's a Woody
Allen film, of the old school. Beautiful, naive women are going to fall in love
with neurotic old men. Second, it's a Woody Allen film, of the old school. In
general, it's going to be true because it's funny, rather than true because
it's accurate to real life in any sense.

It is, particularly, a Woody Allen film, of the old school, because it's a
script that Woody Allen was going to film next starring Zero Mostel, and was
shelved because Zero Mostel died in 1977. So in one way, it's actually back to
an earlier, funnier time for Woody Allen. But in another way, it seems
bizarrely time-lost in that 70s New York commune of artists and intellectuals
who inhabited Woody Allen's early work, and in a way it seems as anachronistic
as those old films which had both dinosaurs and cavemen in them. There was a
big fucking asteroid that wiped out the 60s and 70s free love movement, Woody.
Didn't you hear? He really should have set it in the 70s and have done with it.

But, for all that, this was the film that, had history not gone the way it did,
would have followed up Annie Hall.

As filmed today, Larry David's in the central Woody Allen style neurotic Jewish
Guy role. This time as a genius physicist turned dropout who thinks the whole
world and everyone in it is stupid. He bumps into Evan Rachel Wood, who's a
naive runaway from Mississippi, and reluctantly takes her in, becoming friends
as she basically becomes a receptive audience for his nihilistic ranting. Then
more stuff happens, like her mother arrives from Mississippi looking for her,
and also gets swallowed up by the seemingly impossible to avoid gravitational
field of the New York arty intellectual scene. And so forth. Cue much
intellectual and emotional musical chairs, as we discover that in order to gain
happiness, we need to accept Whatever Works. As Larry David lectures us,
laboriously, to camera.

For the most part it's good, because mostly everyone in it is very good, and the
script is sparky and crackling like early Woody Allen films always were. Where
it's not so good is the occasional scene where you feel the delivery is off,
and maybe we could have used one or two more takes to get it right, and Larry
David in general, who's his Curb Your Enthusiasm self when he's in dialogue,
but who is occasionally required to reel off these long scripted rants, and
he's not great at it.

Still, if you liked Annie Hall or Play It Again Sam, this is another film by
Woody Allen in that vein, and you can't say fairer than that.