Cowboys and Aliens

I feel sort of "If that's all the effort you're going to put into the film, I'm not going to put any effort into reviewing it."

On paper, it sounds good, and on trailer, it even looks pretty good. Daniel Craig wakes in a Western desert, with no memory of who he is and how he got there, with a weird alien looking wristband, and a stinging arsehole*

He heads into town, only to find that the identity that he has quite forgotten is that of a notorious outlaw, and he soon finds himself in trouble, and under arrest. He's to be transported to trial somewhere, when all hell breaks loose, as lights appear in the sky, and UFOs start blowing the shit out of the place and kidnapping people. The wristband turns into a gun, and Daniel manages to shoot one of the (surprisingly small) UFOs down; the rest of the UFOs scarper with their captives.

The townsfolk find that since the downed UFO's pilot is bleeding and escaped on foot, they can track it, they put together a posse to go after them, and with a wince each time the horse jolts his poor punished ass, Daniel Craig rides along with them.

And they head off into the wilderness, run out of script and enter the land of Who Gives A Fuck. Really, everything I just said above was pretty cool and awesome, and found its way into the trailer, and everything else afterwards is just a bit of a drag. There are characters here, most notably Harrison Ford as a grizzled old ex-military guy, and it's not them that's at fault. It's that they have basically fuck all to do. There is a reason for this.

The aliens are fast moving, and live off screen, only appearing for brief moments of RAH JUMP IN YOUR FACE! They aren't interested in anything other than gold and Daniel Craig's arse, and have no dialogue, either among themselves or with the humans. In short, they are practically absentee bad guys. They're not even interesting in the Alien From Alien and Aliens sense, of being a bit mysterious and their lifecycle and habits being part of the puzzle of what's going on; they're just a bunch of uncommunicative gold miners and bottom-troublers. They are a blank area where the plot ought to have been.

As such, the thing just sort of ends with a badly shot, badly thought out, mess of a gunfight, which in principle has something to do with everybody working together in some kind of plan, but that's so because they *said* it was so, rather than there being any visible evidence of that happening.

Then the film ends and you can go and do something else. I quite enjoyed that bit.

Overall, I would say the problem with this film is that if you're going to make a film with a crazy premise, you've got to keep piling on the crazy, and really explore the outrageous thing you came up with, not just say "Well, we have cowboys and we have aliens. Job done, let's have lunch."

* There is no direct evidence in this film that Daniel Craig's character has been anally probed, but it's an entertaining thought, and one of the few suggested by this film.

Conan The Barbarian

I'll break this down for you. This film is about 10% dialogue, 10% carousing in bars, and 90% Sheer And Utter Fucking Mayhem. Mathematically minded people might question how that adds up, but the thing is, there's times when there's Carousing In Bars and Dialogue happening at the same time, there's times when there's Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem and Dialogue happening at the same time, and even times when Carousing In Bars, and Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem are happening at the same time. It should be noted that when Dialogue happens at the same time as something else, you'll be doing quite well to catch it. There are occasionally times when the dialogue gets to happen all on its own, but there's always the spectre of Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem looming large, ready to jump in at any time.

So, what plot can be gleaned. The hero of the piece is a guy called Khalar Zym, who, with his daughter, is on a desperate quest to save his wife from the fate that an uncaring world has bestowed on her. Obviously, most people think that he's the villain, because his wife was put to death for being an evil sorceress attempting to enslave the world, and Zym's quest is to reassemble a forbidden bone mask with necromantic powers, reactivate it with the blood of a pure and innocent girl, raise his wife from the dead, and with the knowledge thus gained from her sojourn in the afterlife, become a god and dominate the world forever. But I think he's the hero. It's all for love.

Anyway, Zym is tirelessly working his way through the barbarian tribes, slaughtering villages left and right, until he finally catches up with the last piece, hidden in the village run by Conan's father, Ron Perlman. (Ron Perlman, I think, has long since forgotten that what he does for a living actually involves acting, or at least, tells the movie makers that acting costs extra. So for all intents and purposes, Ron Perlman pretty much *is* Conan's dad.) Despite a valiant (and Sheer and Utter Fucking Mayhem filled) defence, the village falls, the mask is completed, and Conan is pretty much the only survivor, having had to watch Ron Perlman die a nasty death. Skip forward to Conan's young adulthood, and having sworn vengeance, Conan finally gets on the trail of his tormentor, having run into one of the distinctive novelty henchman than Zym goes around with, and getting the information that he needs from him. Zym is apparently now pretty much the unquestioned Lord of the whole continent, which kind of suggests that Conan is not the World's Greatest Detective.

Anyway, Zym has his objective (become god), Conan has his objective (kill him and smash everything). Game on.

I may have given the impression there that there's some plot in this film. Well, there's not. It's pretty much just that, and the rest of it is killing. The overall impression I got was of one of those DVDs you can get which is are just a long sequence of skateboarding mishaps; no plot, just a series of wince-making spills. Most of the time, there's no particular need to remember why we've got to this point of the plot; we have, and now there shall be violence. With that in mind, with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek, this is quite a fun bit of nothing. I think it'd be best watched in the company of friends, on DVD, with the understanding that it's OK to generally comment and take the mickey out of it throughout.

Return of the Son of the Revenge of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes

There's too many "of thes" in this film.

So, James Franco is a scientist who works in a science company owned by a guy who hasn't the faintest idea how science or companies work. He's working on a compound that can encourage tissue regeneration in the brain, and his tests on chimps show several years of good results. They're showing off the product to some investors, when one of the chimps gets a bit cross, escapes, and scares some investors. So the whole product has to be destroyed, all the science thrown away, all the chimps put down and the chemical that obviously works has to be re-researched from scratch. No, I don't know why either. Me, I'd have given the product a new name and relaunched it three months later.

Anyway, while they're killing off all the chimps, we find that the reason the chimp who went ape (see what I did there?) went ape was because she had just given birth to a baby, and was protecting it. Which is why she broke out of her cage and went on a rampage, leaving the baby in the cage. Obviously. Not sure whether I'm more surprised that the chimp got pregnant while kept caged on her own, or that the scientists working with her failed to notice that she was pregnant. Anyway, this baby chimp is rescued and taken home by James Franco, where he raises it, finding that it has better than human equivalent cognitive abilities in some areas. The chimp is named Caesar, and as he grows, he finds that the world isn't fair, that he's always going to be treated like an animal despite his human level intelligence, and things kind of progress from there, with Caesar's dissatisfaction with his lot and James Franco's desperation to get the drug working so he can treat his father (John Lithgow) who's rapidly declining with Alzheimers.

This is a film with plenty of good SF ideas in it. Most notably, if you made an animal more intelligent, what would it be? Not a human, but not an animal either. Which of course leads to the more general animal rights question, how should we treat animals in general, even if they haven't the intelligence to present a coherent objection to their treatment. And that's the good bit of the film; we're with Caesar all the way through, and his treatment at the hands of humans is pretty outrageous, while being reasonably believable. The CGI creating Caesar is pretty impressive, and you can see Andy Serkis's performance shine through. (Having said that, I don't think he actually looks much like a chimp.)

Sadly, where it all goes wrong is towards the end, as the ideas run out before the film does, and we're treated to a scene of a gang of apes attempting to cross a bridge to freedom, and a bunch of humans trying to stop them with a roadblock. It's a pretty embarrassingly dumb scene, and it breaks the spell pretty much, altering the stance of the human protagonists from merely thoughtless, to actively idiotic.

Worthy of note, is the sad, sad fate of Tom Felton, who after being one of the best known characters in fiction for the last ten years or so, is now reduced to the status of a guy who shovels primate shit for a living. He even ends up losing a wand duel with a chimpanzee at one point. Tragic.

Super 8

Remember 80s films set in small town America? Sure you do. They were the best. The Lost Boys, Back To The Future, The Goonies, Gremlins, all that sort of stuff. Big city is where all the important 'stuff' happens, but in the little corners of America, when nobody's looking, that's where the magic is. I've never been quite clear on whether this is supposed to make people in small town America feel that their life is magical too, or just massively resentful that not only are the big cities more interesting, there are also small towns out there that are more interesting than theirs too.

Anyway, we're back in small town eighties America, as established by a young kid at one point amazing an adult with his new Walkman. This particular small town is home to a kid called Joe, whose mother has just died. His father is a local Deputy Sheriff, who's never been a particularly close father, and who doesn't know how to cope with his son without his wife. Joe, therefore, spends a lot of time on his own, or with his friends, who are led by his best friend Charles, who is a would-be director, and who has co-opted Joe to do his make-up and special effects, his other friends as actors, and together the lot of them are going to make a zombie movie.

They're out filming one night (having snuck out of their bedroom windows as all good American kids seem to do) at the nearby train station, which is scene to a massive train derailment. And during this derailment, something escapes. The Air Force turn up, seal off the scene, and we find that it was an Air Force train, and they were transporting something. Then there's a series of weird disappearances of people and property in the town. The Air Force claim it's nothing to worry about, but Joe's Dad and Joe and his mates aren't buying it, and so independently of each other, they decide to find out what's what.

So... we know the genre, we know it well. Is it any good? Well, yes, it really is. I mentioned four pretty big movies at the start, and this film can easily take its place alongside them. Top marks really go to the ensemble cast of kids; They're all really good. All of them. Three very classy performances from Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning and Riley Griffiths (the latter being a great performance and a great role, in that he's the fat kid of the group, but rather than the chocolate guzzling comedy relief, he's pretty much the leader, and a serious guy.) And the writing for them is pretty top notch too; these roles are written as real kids, not the kind of monstrous creatures of pure wit and sarcasm which pass for kids in many movies today.

The direction's great, there's a proper sense of mystery and menace, and the gradual reveal of what's going on throughout the film is fast enough that you don't find yourself getting bored, but gradual enough that there's enough left for the finale.

Is it perfect? No, sadly. It's J. J. Abrams, and as with Lost, he's really good at building a mystery, but not really good at endings. There's a sort of satisfying ending which mostly explains all, but leaves you with a bit of a "oh, so that's that then" reaction. I suppose in many ways, whether you like this film is based on whether you judge a film on the last five minutes (which isn't always the wrong response), but if you feel that a great film can have a merely average ending and remain great, then you'll probably think this is a great film.

The Devil's Double

It's well known that Saddam Hussein had body doubles, who he maintained to send in his stead into dangerous situations. At some stage, it is claimed, his son, Uday decided that he would also like to have one, and so recruited Latif Yahia, someone he knew from school who was said to look just like him, as his own. Latif didn't want to do this, for all sorts of reasons, but was forced to, under threat of violence towards himself and his family. Being kept close to Uday in this way, he had a ringside seat for Uday's crimes.

In this film based on these events, both Latif and Uday are played by Dominic Cooper, and it's Cooper's performance that you really want to see the film for. In that Latif is a serious, fair minded man, and Uday is a twitchy, out of control psychopath, with enough personal power to do as he likes. And while not only is this a dual role, but also a role in which one of the roles is of a man impersonating the other man, you are left in no doubt at any time which you're looking at. It's a pretty masterly physical performance.

There are a couple of serious flaws, though. First, it doesn't really ring true. There's a romantic subplot, which doesn't feel right. The portrayal of Uday as an inadequate man, jealous of the upstanding man he's forcing to be his pet is a compelling one, but feels like it might well have been added on. And if you're of a suspicious mind as I am, a quick Wiki seems to suggest that some of the events allegedly witnessed by Latif actually occurred before Latif was recruited. Overall, I just didn't get a ring of truth from the film. Serious questions have been raised as to whether any of it is true, or whether Latif Yahia is just a fantasist.

The reason for cinematic embellishment might well be the second flaw: Uday is of little significance. Now, I would be the last person to suggest that for instance Hitler was anything other than among the worst humans to ever live. But his actions had undeniable historical significance, and resonate today. Hence, a film like Downfall has a purpose. Uday, however, was nothing more than a raping murderer, and remembering his existence serves little purpose other than to remind us the dangers of allowing anyone too much power. The film, then, is just a plotless sequence of grisly acts on his part, with Latif standing mute witness - mute, I suspect, because I couldn't personally think of a thing I'd want to say to Uday other than "Die, you utter arsehole."

So, yes, this is a film that's long on performance, but pretty short on plot, because it's effectively the biopic of a man whose life served no purpose whatsoever, told from the perspective of a man who may well have never really met him.

The Big Picture

A French film whose original title was "L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie" or "The man who wanted to live his life", which while a bit clunking in English, is a better and less trite title than the one they've come up with.

So... Paul Exben is by any reasonable standard, apparently a very successful man. He's a successful lawyer, has a beautiful wife, lovely kids, lovely house, everything is just about perfect. However, not all is as it seems. He's a lawyer because he was pressured into giving up his dreams of being what he wants to be really, a photographer. And he's supposedly a great photographer, but traded all that in for the big money, and fills his house with all the fancy photographic kit money can buy to compensate. His wife (in what seems to be an unreasonable double standard) seems to resent him for a) having gone out to be a bread winner so she can concentrate on her writing, where she feels like a trapped failure and wants to give up on her artistic ambitions, and b) having given up on his own artistic ambitions. So much so that she's conducting an affair with a guy who's basically what Paul would have been if he hadn't sold out, a struggling photographer.

The domestic drama comes to a sudden end, when there's a bit of a calamity. Without saying what, Paul is suddenly in a position where he looks guilty of a very serious crime, and decides he has to cover his tracks and disappear completely. Which he does, disappearing off to somewhere in the former Yugoslavia (Montenegro, I think, but details are sketchy), where he begins a new life with a new identity, and begins to live the life he always wanted really, as a professional photographer, a life which comes to have meteoric success, which threatens to put him under the light of publicity, and expose his identity.

It's a great film. Romain Duris puts in a great performance as Paul, whose calm, self assured exterior gradually unravels as the film goes on; there's never a visible jarring change of character, yet by the end, Paul is quite a different man than he was at the start. The film's beautifully shot, lots of lovely vistas of the Adriatic coastline, which links well with the films theme of artistic photography (though at one point, I did find myself thinking that the cinematographer was clearly much better at framing a shot than Paul himself.) And ultimately, it's one of those films that makes you reflect on your own life, and what it would take to knock you out of your rut; there's times when you think maybe Paul is overreacting, whether he even needs to run, or whether had it all been left to come out he'd have been exonerated. But then you realise, he *wants* to run. And that made me at least reflect on what might be needed to jar me out of a safe existence, and if I had to run, where I would go, and how I would live. And if a film can inspire that kind of navel-gazing introspection, it's clearly got a lot going for it.