Double Bill 2: Here in my car, where I'm safest of all...

Double Bill 2: Here In My Car, Where I'm Safest Of All

Cinema can do wonderful things. It can show us the most fantastical, otherworldly places, take you to strange, wonderful lands and galaxies far, far away. It can also show you the real world through a different set of eyes, present stories about real world situations and make you relate to a story or character. It can also show you the insides of cars for 90 minutes and make them the most exciting places in the world. Two criticisms levelled at today's double bill picks are that 'nothing really happens' in the films. While this may be kind of true (please keep reading...), I disagree with it as a criticism, because for today's film picks, tension is the driver rather than plot!

Locke (Steven Knight, 2013) and In Fear (Jeremy Lovering, 2013) hail from different genres and tell different stories but share some cinematic DNA. Each of these films is a masterclass in tension in that they begin with real situations and spin stories from there; granted In Fear evolves into a horror-morality play but the films are so effective because they originate from real and relatable situations. Both are also fine examples of limited location films; yes, both of these films pretty much take place inside a car.

There's a skill to setting a film entirely in one setting. Hitchcock explored the idea successfully with Rear Window, Rope and Lifeboat, and Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men is a peerless piece of drama which uses its 2-room setting to ramp up the tension for the titular characters and audience alike. The skill is in using the surroundings to maximum effect. In Fear is set almost entirely in a car, so much so that the effect of the characters leaving the car is quite unsettling when it happens: the safety is gone. Have you ever been lost on a country road? Felt like you're going round in circles? The rising panic which comes with every glance at the dwindling petrol gauge? In Fear taps into these elements and basic fears of the unknown. Close ups and unusual camera angles are used, adding to the claustrophobia while giving the impression of being watched from somewhere. The unfolding and climax are satisfying and don't completely resort to horror cliché. For me, this is high praise in a genre ridden with it.

Locke is one of those films which is impossible to recommend via a plot description: a man drives his car through the night, makes 36 phonecalls (source: IMDB. I didn't count them) and, er, well that's about it. But the effective thing about Locke is that Tom Hardy's Ivan Locke is going through real, life changing events, the kind that happen to people every day. There is very little heightened or exaggerated about Locke and that's why it works. Shooting the car from every possible angle, employing every conceivable use of reflected road lighting, and a tour de force of restraint from Hardy, this film is a tough, tense watch despite nothing really happening. Ivan Locke is a good man, trying desperately to atone for an error, to make things right even though he knows what it will cost him. Every other character is a voice on the phone, but each is sketched with just enough of a person behind them to make them matter. Top marks to national treasure Olivia Coleman for making us love her without being able to see her.

So both films are exercises in (kind of) one-location suspense, in tension derived from the unknown possibilities of the Irish country roads, and the known realities of the M6. Locke's integrity and humanity draw us to him, as does the believable relationship between In Fear's protagonists (fine work from Alice Englert and Iain De Caestecker), meaning we relate to them and care about what happens to them. Through this, the films manage to make something as simple as car journeys into pure cinema. I'd recommend Locke first and In Fear second, purely for that final couple of frames. Does she or doesn't she?

DOUBLE BILL 1: The Trouble With Tom, Dick and Harry

I love spotting patterns in films. There's often a degree of connective tissue between certain works of art and film is no different. What I'm going to do with these posts is suggest some double bills, some of which may not seem entirely obvious but for me share some thematic or stylistic DNA. Some may seem completely obvious to the point where you'll wonder why I've bothered writing it at all, but I'll have enjoyed pointing it out so it's really a win for me. What I'm going to avoid is two films by the same director or sequels and series. For example, Casino has a lot in common with Goodfellas in terms of narrative structure, stories of men getting in over their heads, hubris etc. because that's really obvious to me, or anyone with a passing knowledge of Scorsese. Ditto, I won't suggest Die Hard followed by Die Hard 2.

So my first suggestion for a double bill is this: American Beauty (Sam Mendes) and Fight Club (David Fincher, both 1999)

Two brilliant, meticulously constructed films from a year which brought us many brilliant films (The Matrix, Toy Story 2, Magnolia, Being John Malkovich, Eyes Wide Shut, The Insider) these two films stand out for me as portraits of modern masculinity and the problems therein. They approach this subject in different ways but the theme is the same: these are films about the emasculating effect of the modern world, about a loss of male identity, and in an industry of unchallenged male dominance and misogyny, cries for help.

American Beauty depicts the castrating effect of suburban family life through Kevin Spacey's defeated protagonist, Lester Burnham. His is a world where, having fathered a child, he has no function other than to earn money so more stuff can be bought. I'll state here that his wife is an equally fascinating portrait of an ambitious woman smothered by suburban life but that's not really the focus here, so I'm afraid she won't get much of a mention, but she also won't get the blame. Fight Club's 'Jack' sees Edward Norton playing another man with no purpose. Single, 30 years of age and with a meaningless, cynical job which contributes nothing to the world Jack, along with Lester starts as a man with whom a lot of the audience can identify. Nothing defines them other than the places they live and the stuff they own. Their achievements are not medals won nor a house built, they are the carpet, sofa and fridge-freezer. Two scenes summarise this for me: Jack walking though the interactive Ikea catalogue, and Lester's wife interrupting an intimate moment because he's about to spill beer on the sofa. Consumers and facades, not men, or as Tyler Durden suggests “We got no great war, we got no great depression.”

Ever woken up and just thought, what is the point of me getting up today? I know I have. Most days I would rather stay at home and do something I enjoy (like sit and write about films) than go to work. Well in that respect, these films operate as fantasies as well as commentaries on modern masculinity. It's highly unlike that anyone reading this will take it upon themselves to blackmail their boss, willingly quit to go work in McDonalds, start taking drugs and working out in the garage while trying to screw their teenage daughter's best friend, or start a boxing club which mutates into an ironically well regimented anarchist syndicate. But we enjoy watching the heroes here reject their identities, even if one of them does so through an imaginary friend, and just do what feels right. Where romantic comedies or dumb action films offer escapism on another level, probably for a different audience, I would argue that these films offer wish fulfilment fantasies for men who are very self aware. Both, for example, feature brilliant 'I quit' scenes.

However, on another level there is a ridiculousness about what Lester and Jack get up to. There is something inherently childish about deliberately getting into a fight or quitting work to play with a remote control car. Neither can sustain a relationship with a woman on anything other than a sexual level, so infantile and incompatible are they. Are these guys supposed to be role models? If so, then the studios producing these films (and bear in mind that one of them was Fox) are advocating a breakdown of society, starting with the XX chromosome. Perhaps, then, lessons can be learned about the folly of tearing away the masks that make our assumed identities by looking the films' endings. Both tragic and violent to differing degrees, the deaths of Lester and Tyler Durden can be read as conservative; that the world will not allow the rebel to flourish, or quite hopeful and liberal; that a man can overcome his limitations, his 'place' and either enjoy or change the world.

Two of the closing images, of Lester's face reflected perfectly in his own blood, and of the financial institutions being (bloodlessly) destroyed, are eerily beautiful for very different reasons. I suppose these reflect the filmmakers' differing viewpoints on the world. Fincher's arguably more cynical, that something must be destroyed in order for there to be creation. Mendes tells us that there is beauty everywhere in the world if we only stop what we're doing long enough to find it. I'd suggest watching American Beauty second; you'll probably get a better night's sleep.

Terminator: Genisys

Proving James Cameron's Law Of Diminishing Returns

I went to see the new Terminator film a few days back. Not because I thought I'd be seeing a new classic. Not really out of a great desire to see an exciting new entry in a film series (or franchise, if you will) that I really enjoy. It was more a morbid curiosity, having spent probably too much of my youth glued to the untouchable first two films. The concept, the excitement, the iconic characters, the sheer brilliance of the wacky idea of a time travelling assassin robot. Yes, the third and fourth instalments have been misfires but surely this time they'd get it right. I left, to put it mildly, disappointed with what I witnessed.

Within minutes of the start, my eyes were rolling at retcon and re-cast trickery (Kyle Reese's burned Polaroid of Sarah Connor...) and some abysmally portentous scripting (John Connor's uninspiring inspirational pre-war speech). I didn't enjoy the film much: it looks ropey in places, a poor, convoluted plot, bad dialogue and worse acting made it hard to like, but faced with an attempt to post-mortem the film to my wife and colleagues, I found it hard to explain why I was so disappointed. I've managed to come up with something. While Einstein's theory of General Relativity makes time travel extremely difficult, what I'm calling James Cameron's Law of Diminishing Returns makes attempts to recreate past cinematic glories almost as unattainable.

It's probably fair to say that my expectations were lowered by the trailer and I should mention that I have a general lack of faith in re-boots, remakes, re-hashes and Hollywood's current trend for safe bets. But on the superlative strength of Cameron's The Terminator (1982) and T2 (1991), part of me wanted this to be brilliant. Given the director, stars (some of them) and the promise of fresh new ideas, I was convinced that this had potential. I'm going to suggest here that when following up a classic film, mediocre is a greater sin than execrable. For some sequels, stripped of the key creative personnel (writer, director, sometimes stars), expectations are brought down so low that when the series falters and vanishes, nobody seems to care. Examples include the later Hellraiser, Highlander and Crow films, the Psycho, Exorcist and Jaws sequels and Robocop 3. Hell, for me even the remakes of Robocop and Total Recall, with Paul Verhoeven's wonderfully perverted cynicism replaced by franchise-sniffing studio opportunism, didn't make me want to buy either, even for a dollar. I just didn't care about them so their failure meant nothing to me.

Far worse than this is where creative talent is still in place but gets it so very very wrong; this is where it really hurts, because it feels like something you believed in is being diminished by an inferior product. I would cite Spiderman 3, Jurassic Park 3, X-Men 3, Terminators 3 and 4 (seeing a pattern here?) and Indiana Jones 4 as examples. Although all but Spiderman featured new directors to the franchises, there was still a degree of continuity, be it in casting or even just in a general respect for the original plotting or mythology. When something you really enjoy, even love, is followed up with something that just doesn't pass muster, it hurts.

So here lies the problem with Terminator: Genisys: while some of the creatives are missing they have been, on paper at least, well replaced and there is still a lingering public interest in the series to warrant interest and expectation. And there's also the Arnie factor. Such an iconic role will always draw attention. Arnie. Playing the T-800 again. He's going to say the line, he's going to face something harder than him but he's going to win. Please let it be good. Put simply, Genisys is crippled by the success of its predecessors. Ironically, hamstrung by history.

Not only are we lumbered with another colon: subtitle (I suppose a '5' would seem daunting to an audience and also conjure associations with the Rocky film nobody talks about) but also a new cast to get our heads round. The film doesn't expect a huge knowledge of previous instalments (3 and :Salvation are wisely ignored), and although it helps to already know the characters, I get the impression the producers would prefer you to forget. So poor are the new actors' interpretations of Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), they bare little resemblance to the cherished performances of Linda Hamilton and Michael Beihn. While talented Method actor Hamilton brought a humanity and believability to Connor's arc, all Clarke brings is cheekbones and her best 'troubled' face from Game Of Thrones. Jai Courtney is a terrible actor who brings almost nothing to make us like Kyle Reese. He's also so freakin' built that we never really get the sense of inferiority that Beihn had when going up against Arnie back in 1984.

The script tries (weakly, I suppose) to mitigate the retcon changes by suggesting that by messing about with time, they've created a different time stream where all previous bets are off: so far, so Back To The Future 2 (“all bets are off”, the Sports Almanac, geddit? Ah, nevermind...). But while the first two films (and 3, I suppose), despite their sci-fi trappings, were fiendishly simple cat-and-mouse chase stories, Genisys (pain in the arse to type, by the way) throws in new timelines, new Terminators, characters with fuzzy agendas, and jettisons timeless San Winston practical effects in favour of cheap, weightless CGI. That this is the 2^nd reboot of the year which didn't look as good as the 1990s predecessor is another debate for another day. There is so much going on and there are times when the sense of threat is lost. The film opens with mankind's victory over Skynet and goes on to a battle-ready Sarah Connor and 'Pops' (Arnie's T-800, finally drained of all threat) dispatching Terminators with relative ease. They then go on the offensive with a jerry-rigged time machine and some hideously convoluted plotting designed entirely to allow the film to take place in a contemporary setting.

Plot holes generally don't bother me. I can forgive them as long as they don't upset the drama. I'm not one of those morons who thought The Dark Knight Rises was ruined by the question “How did Bruce Wayne get back into Gotham...?”, I just accepted that he had to for the film to have a climax. Time travel films, with the possible exception of Primer (Shane Carruth, 2004) are by nature littered with plot holes. What I can't forgive is poor plotting. Not until the introduction of Jason Clarke's John Connor/T-3000 did I feel a sense of threat in Genisys. On his arrival, I had no idea what his purpose as a Terminator was; he just seemed to want to protect Skynet and offered no direct threat to anyone but Arnie's T-800. The film tries at times to be a protracted chase much like 1 and 2, but we don't really get a sense of who is chasing what, and for what purpose other than 'Skynet' as a giant MacGuffin.

Sarah Connor's story arc was originally brilliant: weak-willed waitress becomes hardened survivor, never loses her maternal instinct but has to rediscover her humanity and choose not to kill Dyson in T2. She's a fascinating character, who develops and changes. In the hands of Emilia Clarke, she's reduced to pretty, shouty, just plain dull and has no arc whatsoever other than by the end of the film she's kissed a boy. Perhaps I'm being unfair to Clarke, who isn't given a lot to do, script-wise and perhaps just looks wrong. Either way, some baffling time hopping aside, her story boils down to tooling up and going to blow up a computer factory. We are never really encouraged to care or truly take her side.

It's not, however, a complete (plastique) bomb, which was my original point. There are several redeeming features, the tragedy being that they're all so half-baked and under-developed. Director Alan Taylor, having made Thor: The Dark World light and fun, manages to pay homage to the original films with several visual nods. Reese's arrival in 1984 is impressively recreated shot-for-shot (although modern digital photography lacks the grungy, dirty feel of James Cameron's cheap film stock). There are several nods throughout, which raise a smile and distract from the mess: Reese's arrival in 1984 and department store escape is neatly subverted, as is the T-800's “Wash day tomorrow, nothing clean...” sequence; the design of the detonator is the same as the one from T2; the T-800 endoskeleton attacking Reese with a pipe harks back to T2's climactic smackdown; even the positioning of its arm as it 'dies' harks back to the end of The Terminator, although Genisys doesn't have the balls to go with “You're terminated, fucker.”

Also worthy of credit are some quite touching moments including one between Connor and a young Kyle Reese, and the way they finally work out how to beat the T-3000 (magnets can do anything!), although the final victory is preceded by an awful fight between Arnie and Jason Clarke's respective terminators, which lacks the drama and impact of the slower-paced scrap in T2. Genisys also has an impressively epic feel, and you don't come away feeling short changed as you did with T3. The writers have admittedly come up with some decent ideas and wisely avoided reference to T3 or Salvation which presumably just didn't happen. Arnie is also given some nice moments of comic relief, which further dilute the character from what it began as, but offer some needed levity.

The problem is that it's all just so half hearted and feels like to work of a committee rather than a visionary. After Cameron decided against making more films, every director has been a hired gun (Jonathan Mostow, McG and Taylor, none of whom are exactly auteurs) and the whole thing seems like it's been geared to franchise potential and not making a solid piece of drama. And without a solid grasp of what they want to do other than retain their option on the characters, the film suffers from a lack of focus. It may also seem like a perry and immature complaint, but the film has a bloodless, almost profanity-free 12A rating, which is clearly another move designed to broaden the audience as much as possible at the expense of visceral impact. The original was 18 rated on release, the sequel compromised to 15 to go with a bigger budget but still brutal enough in places to make you wince (the deaths of Todd and the 'identical twin' asylum guard). At no point does Genisys have a moment as dramatic as “Call to John now,” “Fuck you.”

So it's hard to take when a company gets its hands on something you enjoy and tries to cynically turn it into a moneyspinner. Lessons perhaps could have been taken from Jurassic Word, which turned creative control over to the relatively untested Colin Trevorrow but whose previous film showed the producers enough potential to be handed the keys to a massive franchise. It worked, and his film managed to be both reverential to Spielberg's original and bold and new at the same time. This mess, however, just makes you wish that the proclamation at the end of T2, that the future wasn't set, hadn't been true. They stopped Skynet, and with it any inferior sequels, when Arnie was melted down. On the strength of Genisys, “I'll be back” sounds like more of a threat than it ever did before.

The Counsellor:

Why a sure thing on paper was a dud on film.

Sometimes films just don't work. I'm sure this gives studio executives nightmares, after millions of dollars are invested in transforming paper into moving pictures. I'm also sure that at heart, studio execs, producers et al, aren't bothered about creating art or reflecting reality through the prism of the director's vision; they're bothered about turning a profit. Major movies are made by major companies, whose purpose is always to make a return on investments. The Counsellor (2013) must have seemed like a sure thing.

Executives must have been rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a film made by the reliable Ridley Scott (I'm being generous here; he hasn't exactly been on great form since 2003's Matchstick Men but remains a big bankable name) and starring some of the biggest names in the world including Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Michael Fassbender. The source material, a debut original screenplay by talented novelist Cormac McCarthy whose work has been adapted as recent successes in The Road (John Hillcoat, 2009) and particularly No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007). Even in terms of subject matter (a man who should know better, out of his depth in a drug deal set on the US-Mexico border) hit the Zeitgeist, echoing the hugely popular tv series Breaking Bad.

So how, given all that talent and cultural currency, did he film turn out to be such a dud? It's a slow paced, confused and confusing film that suffers from a dire lack of cohesion. Parts are painfully slow, parts are hard to follow and in terms of classical narrative cinema, characters are hard to like and motivation for their actions is fuzzy at best, and if you're looking for happy endings or resolution, well, you'd be better off with Spielberg.

One could argue that this is just a bad marriage of parts: a director who is off form adapting a script by somebody more used to working in the more expansive medium of literature. McCarthy's books tend not to follow a very concrete structure; his famed novel Blood Meridian in particular simply meanders from event to event with no meaning or purpose made clear at any point. It's brilliant, but not the sort of thing which would translate well to cohesive cinema.

Even given the likes of Fassbender, Pitt and Javier Bardem, the film struggles to find a 'hero', a protagonist even. Fassbender's eponymous (and nameless) Counsellor fails to convince us of why he does anything that he does. First introduced to us while giving head to the always-brilliant Penelope Cruz, he is clearly a man head over heels in love but soon in-over-his-head when, apparently to supplement his income to cement his relationship with Cruz's Laura character. Two problems emerge from this set up: firstly, the Counsellor is already a criminal defence lawyer and therefore surely not short of cash; and secondly, the film never establishes that his relationship with Laura is strained enough to necessitate resorting to a drug deal to provide an injection of happy capital. She is painted neither as a gold digger nor as unhappy; in fact, she appears almost repelled by Camron Diaz' predatory Malkina and her lavish lifestyle. The only remaining motivation for the Counsellor's actions is therefore a selfish one: he likes the high life and is willing to do something terrible to sustain it. Problems exist here as well: neither Fassbender nor Scott ever really sell his desperation, his greed. And if greed is his motivation, and therefore the root cause of the terrible events that ensue, then this film becomes a morality play, albeit one where the most immoral character ends up victorious.

It is worth considering that casting is a problem with The Counsellor; it's possible that this is an ensemble that is just too, well, good. Fassbender, still riding a deserved wave of success, is just too damn likeable. He manages to find humanity in even the nastiest shits that he plays: Magneto feels like a rounded character in his hands; his Edwin Epps in 12 Years A Slave was remarkable: at no point was he a pantomime villain or anything less than human. Here, we simply don't buy that his character needs or even wants to do his first drug deal with a dangerous cartel. Whereas Breaking Bad's Walter White was driven by desperation and family, the Counsellor seems to be driven by a fondness for Bentleys, making sympathy difficult for an audience. Likewise, Cruz is never anything less than in love with him and loyal. That we like her makes the ending all the more horrifying and tragic, however it makes it hard for an audience to buy that the relationship would be threatened if he didn't become a drug smuggler.

Brad Pitt's Westray is less of a person, more a portmanteau of every seen-it-all-before, too-cool-for-this-shit character he's played since Ocean's 11. His frankly horrible death is surprising for two reasons: one, that he initially seems too inconsequential to have a whole sub-plot of his own, let alone hijack the main plot when Fassbender hits a dead end, and two, that Brad Pitt rarely dies on screen.  Much more successful are the gaudy, life-on-the-edge Javier Bardem, whose death is inevitable very early on, and the serpentine, Machiavellian Diaz, whose ultimate survival and victory leaves a cold, hollow feeling at the end.

The ending leaves something of an unpleasant bitter taste: following the violent unravelling of The Counsellor's plans, his failed attempt to negotiate with the (actually very reasonable-sounding) cartel boss Jefe (Ruben Blades, the coolest name I have ever encountered), the fate of Cruz's Laura is hinted at. In a neat plot device (which is unfortunately played twice, lessening the effect), Westray explains cartel methods of murder and revenge to The Counsellor; both of which then happen later in the film. We are led to think that this wholly likeable character is raped and beheaded (possibly not in that order) and the DVD highlights are posted to our hero in his grotty hotel room. He is a beaten man. Other than the stupidity of getting involved in drug trafficking to begin with, none of what transpires is really his fault; the series of betrayals and wrongdoings effectively punish The Counsellor for the actions of others, with no lesson offered other than “live with the choices you've made.” The final scene of Malkina discussing how she plans to invest her ill-gotten gains, apparently now free from cartel retribution, does not provide a satisfactory ending. Evil triumphs, good ends up headless in a landfill.

One could of course argue that it is admirable for filmmakers to take these risks, subvert expectations. We come in with a latent expectation of a happy ending and we don't get one. Surely its admirable that McCarthy and Scott set out to surprise and even disappoint our expectations? Well, yes it can be but much depends upon the execution. He film is muddled and hard to like. Scott shoots with a coldness and often makes the film hard to follow. The characters give us little to cling to either: the protagonist a debut drug dealer with fuzzy motivation and the antagonists are unknowable assassins, anonymous cartel cronies, the forces of fate, and Cameron Diaz.

My opinion is that Cormac Mccarthy's sparse, brutal prose simply didn't translate to film this time out, as a major mainstream movie. The Coens succeeded in making his work a black comedy, John Hillcoat, a gruelling post apocalypse road movie. Here, a straight glamorous thriller didn't work because our expectations as an audience were not addressed. We need to know why things are happening, we need cause, effect and motivation. We need to see evil punished or at least acknowledged, and we need somebody we can get behind and root for. We get none of this. In Blood Meridian, the loose structure and lack of causality for many of the events succeeds: the world is violent and violence is something that is not caused; it just is. In his screenplay for The Counsellor, violence is often a punishment for something that a character didn't even do and when working with a talented and well-liked ensemble, a mainstream cinema audience just isn't going to buy that. It's just a shame that what should have been a huge and very satisfying whole ended up being so much less than the sum of its parts.