Gig review: Every Time I Die, Newcastle Riverside, 19/12/16

The last time Buffalo’s favourite sons were in town it was the day after the Paris attacks, and the gig provided some much needed catharsis with a night of solidarity and overwhelming positivity. It was a truly special show.  Tonight, they returned, touring a much stronger album, and without the tragic backdrop.  The question being: would they have them same impact without the emotional circumstances.

Up first is Albany, New York’s Drug Church; a band about whom I knew nothing.  Melding the kind of melodic post-hardcore kind of stuff that made Poison The Well and Handsome so good, to some straight up punk aggression, they were bloody impressive.  Singer Patrick Kindlon’s stage banter was priceless and endearing, and his performance was by turns trance-like gesticulations, and looking like a man having an argument with somebody who wasn’t there.  Brilliant.  Drug Church offer melodies, textures, riffs and screaming; I knew nothing about them but I was suddenly very curious.

Next up are ’68.  Never heard of them either but I later found out that the lunatic on guitar and vocals was Josh Scogin, formerly of Norma Jean and The Chariot, both of whom are/were ace.  The two-piece are doing exactly what Royal Blood should be doing on their next album, assuming of course they want to alienate and frighten any indie fuckwit fans they've picked up.  Setting their stage with drummer and guitarist facing each other and not the crowd, they are strange from the off and get weirder as they go on.  They sound not unlike The Melvins’ fuzzier moments, and Scogin offers an impressive range of screams and one-handed guitar technique.  It’s mesmerising stuff and has the audience baffled and hooked in equal measure.  Special prize for best stage banter, too: “I’d like to thank each and every one of my friends… for being in my band.”

Every Time I Die seem incapable of half measures.  Incapable of dialling it in.  Incapable of anything less than full throttle.  A new album every couple of years, most of them ace, heavy touring and a frightening level of intensity at every show.  8 albums in, they now have a wealth of material to choose from and tonight’s set draws heavily from this year’s Low Teens.  Opening with savage new song ‘Glitches’, which gives way to ‘We’rewolf’, at which point singer Keith Buckley invites the audience up onstage.  They oblige and from that point on, the show is barely controlled bedlam.

While we get a lot from Low Teens, including brilliant single ‘The Coin Has A Say’ and the slower-paced Southern Rock of ‘It Remembers’ (Buckley doing an admirable job of Brendon Urie’s melodic chorus), the band know that the older songs still get the moshpit going.  ‘Floater’ causes some serious chaos and ‘Bored Stiff’ kicks off a circle pit which stops only for the audience to join in with the refrain “Hey there! Girls! I’m a cunt!”  The sleazy gutter-punk riffs of ‘The New Black’ are as fun as ever and slot in nicely alongside new songs like the off-kilter ‘Fear & Trembling’ and riff driven ‘Religion Of Speed’.

ETID are tight as you would expect, having kept the same lineup for a while now, with guitarists Jordan Buckley and Andy Williams (also a wrestler, scarily huge) totally in sync with one another.  Keith Buckley spends much of his time being mobbed by enthusiastic fans trying to sing along into his mic.  He welcomes this and encourages them, and creates a community atmosphere where fans routinely hug each other between songs, and always stop to pick up fallen moshers (of which, there were many…), and the stage is simply an extension of the moshpit.

I’m up on stage with them for the last few songs, including the multi-tempo groove of ‘No Son Of Mine’ and closing number ‘Map Change’.  It’s an exhausting and exhilarating night on which I discovered two new bands, whose names I will look out for in future, and a band who never lets me down stayed true to form and didn’t let me down.  It’s a year in which I’ve seen Pearl Jam and Therapy? live but this band would give anyone a run for their money.  I often wish more people would take notice of them, but you have to wonder whether a larger venue would have the same magic, because that’s exactly what tonight was.  Even thought I was kicked in the head by a crowd surfer.

Film Review: Victoria

A few months back, I was stood in the Tyneside Cinema foyer accompanied by two things: a pair of idiots (who, for the purposes of this introduction, count as one thing), and a large promotional stand for Sebasian Schipper’s Victoria.  One idiot asked the other “have they made a film about Victoria Beckham?” to which the other simply shrugged, acknowledging the possibility, and therefore suggesting that they didn’t think this was a ridiculous idea.

That largely irrelevant paragraph highlights the only major problem with Victoria and that’s the largely innocuous title, which suggests a period drama rather than an experimental German thriller.  Schipper’s remarkable film is constructed as one uninterrupted shot, lasting 2 hours and 18 minutes.  Long takes are nothing new; Spectre, Children Of Men, Snake Eyes and Touch Of Evil feature some of the best examples.  Films constructed as ‘one shot’ are really nothing new either: Hitchcock’s Rope is effectively one shot, despite the technical limitations of the time (reels of film lasting about 10 minutes necessitated hidden edits), with the macabre touch of the camera showing the point of view of a corpse.  More recently Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark provides a 96-minute one-take history lesson contained within St. Petersburg’s Hermitage museum, and Inarritu’s brilliant Oscar winner Birdman was constructed from several long takes, although hidden edits were required for time lapses and the essential weirdness of some scenes.

While those films are impressive, they are either contained within one location, or broken up by edits, which would allow those pesky actors to review their lines or take a breather.  No such luck with Victoria.  Stylistically, this is probably closer to Gaspar Noe’s real-time-in-reverse Irreversible, which uses a shaky, hand-held, God’s POV approach.  While Victoria is less likely to give you nightmares, the long take is both its biggest selling point, and a potential albatross around Schipper’s neck, and the necks of his cast.

Filming in an uninterrupted shot surely presents several challenges, but the biggest of these, dramatically speaking, is the absence of time lapse edits. These would normally allow the audience to absorb details of character relationships, make assumptions about what’s gone on in the meantime (i.e. they have a date, cut to a month later and they’re living together).  Victoria takes its time to build relationships between Laia Costa’s eponymous heroine, a Spanish girl new to Berlin, and the group of four local guys she meets, particularly between her and Sonne (Frederick Lau).  This takes approximately 40 minutes of screen time and while the film never feels particularly long, I did at times wonder where it was all going.  However with hindsight, this slow build is essential for what happens later: if the relationship and attraction between Victoria and Sonne & co is not fully established for the audience, it would be much harder to accept her willingness to go along with them to commit a crime.

The technical ambition of Victoria is simply staggering.  While it is relatively simple in scope; a few Berlin streets, rooftops, cars, and a hotel room, the planning, rehearsal, and sheer concentration required to pull it off is nothing short of amazing.  This would count for nothing if the film didn’t work, though, so it’s pleasing that Schipper has pulled off both a technical marvel and an engaging story to boot.  Victoria herself is down to earth, a little naïve, and eminently likeable.  We buy into her relationship with Sonne and just buy into her willingness to help his group with some seriously shady dealings.

The film at times wears its influences on its sleeve, despite the originality of the concept.  While probably influenced by Gaspar Noe’s hand held style, there are nods to American indies like Richard Linklater or Larry Clark, whose willingness to let the characters breathe often pays dividends.  European breakouts such as La Haine and Run Lola Run (understandable since it starred schipper) also come to mind, particularly the former, with Vincent Cassel’s manic energy recalled by Franz Rogowski’s ne’er do well character, Boxer.

If I have to complain, and I don’t but I will anyway, it’s that the near-constant switching between English and German is a little distracting, but it made sense that a Spanish girl in Germany would try to use a widely spoken language to get by.  So even if you’re not a fan of subtitled films (get over it, will you!), Victoria is well worth a look: at times exhilarating, emotional, exhausting and deeply suspenseful.  Hardcore film fans will marvel at the achievement, and for everyone else it’s a couple of hours well spent in the company of a cool character and a great plot.  Definitely not Victoria Beckham, then.

Mission: Imposspielberg Vol. 4 - Pirates and Dinosaurs

Having watched it again recently, I remember loving Hook when I was a kid.  With the benefit of hindsight and fully developed critical faculties, I can only mostly agree with my younger self.  It’s a big budget, Wizard Of Oz-style reworking of the classic J. M. Barrie tales and as a concept – the grown-up, career-focused Peter has forgotten his time in Neverland but must return there to save his kidnapped children – is genius.

It’s also classic Spielberg fodder, with the sense of childlike wonder and awe seeping through every frame, the broken family unit at the forefront, and in Robin Williams’ Peter Pan, his ultimate man-child: a fully-realised Roy Neary or an overgrown Elliot.  Material and director seem like perfect bedfellows.

His visual flair is there to see throughout most of the film, with some of his usual invention surrendered to the slapstick and sensory assault, and the massive Hollywood stars on display.  The food fight scene remains a wonderful Spielberg moment; at once a visual treat and an emotional uplift as Pan start to believe who he is.  Likewise, the final sword fight is loads of fun, complete with a lump-in-the-throat “I believe in you” moment.  Spielberg seems to love shooting Dustin Hoffman’s titular villain, with neat visual cues and images in many of his scenes. One shot, of multiple reflections of his preening face, shows the director asserting some personality in the face of overwhelming material and cast.

Indeed, many of the best moments are from Hoffman’s pantomime scenery-chewing.  He’s absolutely brilliant; larger than life in a larger than life movie.  But the film undoubtedly belongs to Williams.  Of the other major stars of the time, nobody else could have nailed the multiple aspects of Pan’s character: work-absorbed suit taking his family for granted; fish out of water Pan-in-denial; fully realised joyous superhero Peter Pan, fully grown but smiling like a child.  Tom Cruise would have played him smug, Kevin Costner too all-American, Tom Hanks would have played a rehash of Big, and Nicholas Cage would probably have played him as Elvis.  Just thank fuck Jim Carrey hadn’t been discovered at this point.

Ultimately, Hook suffers from being a product of the 90s, with the Lost Boys, who feature too many broken-doll clichés (a fat one, a stuttering one, one dressed like a grown up, weird twins; it’s a child-friendly commune from a Mad Max film), are intensely annoying throughout.  The 90s were littered with nonsensical slogans designed to sell t-shirts (“Cowabunga”, “Don’t have a cow, man”, “Bodacious” et al) and Hook’s screenwriters seem to want to add gibberish like “bangarang” and “crowing” to the mix.  Add skateboarding and the hilariously awful diet-punk Rufio (Dante Basco) and parts of the film seem dated in ways that Spielberg’s older fantasy films don’t.

That said, Hook is still loads of fun, thanks to fully committed turns from the leads, including Maggie Smith, who sells the mythology with absolute conviction.  The film works nicely as a meta tribute to Williams’ life; a story about a man whose inner child, his real, true self, is worn away and made hard by exposure to the real world.  Unfortunately, Williams could never find his happy thought and fly away.

Remember the scene in Jurassic Park where they first see the grazing dinosaurs on the island? Every time I see that scene I’m 13 years old again.  It’s pure cinematic magic.  Made a time where special effects envelopes were being pushed with the likes of Terminator 2, The Abyss, and even Forrest Gump, this could easily have been all effects and no substance.  A phenomenon on its 1993 release, Jurassic Park’s power has diminished not even slightly by subsequent quantum leaps in effects technology.  So while the films still looks stunning for the most part, the real power is in the performances and those moments that nobody but Spielberg manages to eke out.

Dr. Grant (a typically brilliant Sam Neill) and Dr. Satler (a typically brilliant Laura Dern) see a brontosaurus majestically eating a tree, Spielberg places us directly in their shoes; we share their awe, their wonder, and their childlike glee.  Spielberg masterfully balances moments like these (the sickly triceratops, the park gates, the sneezing diplodocus) with moments of peril and sheer terror.  We share their awe, we share their terror.

Having assembled a brilliant cast, but one less showy and starry than Hook, Spielberg assembles his pieces around Michael Crichton’s board.  The two leads forming a classic Spielberg faux-family with two cute kids, along with the effortlessly entertaining ‘Chaotician’ Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and idealistic, misguided park creator John Hammond (Richard Attenborough, playing God).  That Hammond is basically God gives his character a touch in that he’s resurrected the dinosaurs, and also a nihilistic undertone, given the carnage that ensues because of his actions.

Dr. Grant has the best arc, the narrative moving him from uncaring child-hater to father figure.  Like most Spielberg heroes, he’s not quite a hero; an expert, but as scared as one would expect and reliant on improvisation.  Spielberg is back on fine form here, too: he remembered that monsters are scarier when you can’t see them; he creates classic moments (tremors on the water, climbing the electric fence, “clever girl”); and he cranks up the tension like few others can.

Jurassic Park is easily the equal of his 70s and 80s masterpieces, matching the nerve shredding tension of Jaws with the childlike awe and wonder of Close Encounters.  It’s wish fulfilment gone bad; it’s every child’s dream played out like a nightmare.

Mission Imposspielberg, Vol 3: Grails and Planes

Having made film after film of capers, adventures and blockbusters for kids, Spielberg’s output took a more serious turn in the mid 80s.  Whether an effort to be taken more seriously as a filmmaker or just to try his hand at something a little different (hell, Scorsese made a musical in the late 70s), the results are not the sort of films that you turn to for something reliable on a Saturday night, but the quality remains high.

His 1985 Alice Walker adaptation The Colour Purple marked a departure from anything he’d done before.  A mostly very serious film with some essential flashes of levity, this covers 30 years in the life of the abused and downtrodden Celie Johnson (Whoopi Goldberg and Desreta Jackson), from her forced marriage to ‘Mister’ Albert (a monstrous but slightly comical Danny Glover), the forging of her friendships, and her eventual emancipation.  Covering such a long period, it’s an oddly meandering film with a loose narrative structure, but it features some wonderful emotional payoffs.  The moment where Oprah Winfrey’s defeated, almost catatonic Sofia breaks her fugue state and lays down some home truths is nothing short of beautiful, and if Celie’s family reunion fails to bring a lump to your throat, I would recommend checking your pulse.

Grown up Spielberg is still fun and recognisably Spielberg, with some wonderful grace notes, his trademark visual flair used where appropriate, and an uplifting very deserved happy ending.  One or two things didn’t set well with me: despite his moment of generosity, I didn’t think that Albert had earned enough sympathy for redemption, but the film stops short of demonising him; and Quincy Jones’ score has not aged well.  In fact, there are times in the film where it borders on twee and threatens to step on the toes of the brilliant drama.

Keeping things literary and serious, Spielberg went for J.G Ballard adaptation Empire Of The Sun.  Probably the second best film of the 80s to feature the word ‘Empire’ in the title, it’s a brilliant movie, often meandering and without a traditional cause-and-effect plot.  It’s typical Spielberg fare (fractured family unit, centred around a child character coming of age/losing innocence, strong sense of awe and amazement throughout), despite the heavy subject matter.

A story about a boy (Jim – a brilliant, 13-year-old Christian Bale) who is separated from his parents as Japan invades China, and follows his experiences to the end of WW2.  Obsessed with aviation, he admires the Japanese fighter pilots despite being the enemy, and in a heartbreaking climactic scene, shows how a child’s naivety can build friendships on opposing sides.  This is classic Spielberg, showing a more serious side of his work which was not widely acknowledged until Schindler’s List 6 years later.  Empire has some truly spectacular moments, on par with anything he’s done before or since; the scene where Jim is separated from his parents is brilliantly orchestrated chaos, and the sequence where Jim watches the U.S. bombing of the Japanese airbase from the roof of a half-destroyed building is nothing short of spectacular.

Opting to return to familiar territory next with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Spielberg brought his most popular character back for (what we hoped was) one last adventure.  After seeing Temple Of Doom falling a little short of the high standards set by Raiders, the ante is well and truly upped for Indy’s third film. Again using a well-known religious artefact as a Macguffin, the juggernaut plot takes in one classic set piece after another.  A young Indy intro gives us some pleasing insight into the events that made him the character we know, as well as establish his relationship with Henry Jones Sr. (Sean Connery).  Spielberg is clearly relishing putting Indy in all kinds of peril as snakes, a lion, a rhino, and grave robbing goons all have a go at him but we see the origins of the whip, the phobia, and the hat in the process.  After a brief stop for exposition courtesy of the villainous Julian Glover (kind of a weak link in the film, but that’s nitpicking on my part) we are then treated to the Venice catacombs (with rats starring in the obligatory disgusting animal sequence) and boat chase, Austrian castle and motorbike escape, the airship escape, the German tank fight (probably my favourite part of the film) before the final holy grail sequence.  Thanks to Monty Python, anything that now involves the holy grail will do well to avoid any unwanted humour, and the final sequence with the 900 year-old knight and skirts very close to being silly, but Spielberg manages to keep the tone just right and the unpleasant death of Glover’s Walter Donovan is up there with Raiders’ melting Nazis.

Spielberg manages to create a really messed up family unit (Indy, his dad, the buffoonish Sallah, and the childlike Brody) and provides a much better female character than he did in Temple with Alison Doody’s treacherous Elsa.  It’s better than the predecessor, never going to live up to Raiders but The Last Crusade is still cracking entertainment, and really should have lived up to it’s name.

I don’t remember having seen Always before.  Despite being a lifelong Spielberg fan, it’s just not about anything I’m interested in.  A story about a pilot (Richard Dreyfuss) who dies fighting a forest fire, and then pretty much stalks his girlfriend (Holly Hunter) from beyond the grave, it always (see what I did there?) struck me as saccharine and schmaltzy.  And I was kind of right.

Dreyfuss is brilliant in Always, as he frequently is.  He brings an everyman humanity and sense of humour to a part that would maybe seemed better suited to Richard Gere or Kevin Costner at the time.  Dreyfuss nails it: the scene where, as a ghost, he professes his undying love to an unhearing Hunter’s is earnest and powerful because of him.  Hunter is also great, as she normally is, in a role that makes her at once love interest and independent, highly competent pilot.  Also great is John Goodman, whose comic relief makes the film much better and less twee than it could have been.

That said, Always is not a great film.  A remake of 1943 Victor Fleming film A Guy Named Joe, it tells a tale of a man who has to let go of his past in order for his soul to settle.  In this respect, it’s almost an anti-love story. A few of his nifty trademark gracenotes aside, there’s not a massive amount of his visual flair at work here and few truly memorable scenes.  The whole thing seems to have been shot in various degrees of soft focus, too.

So maybe this is just Spielberg’s romantic side coming out to play for a while; maybe it’s just his tribute to a more innocent time. Ultimately though, the 80s, arguably the decade that was kindest to his career, both started and ended on relative low points for him.  But Spielberg at a low point is easily the match for most directors on their best day.  Except for 1941. Never 1941.

Film Review: Jack Reacher - Never Go Back

Star power doesn’t work any more.  There was a time not so long back that branding a film’s poster with ‘Starring Julia Roberts’, ‘Starring Tom Hanks’, ‘Starring Bruce Willis’ and so forth was enough to guarantee at least a moderate hit.  These days, franchises and recognisable properties are more important than the stars themselves. Those three have all endured struggles of late and today’s big stars are often in favour of doing odd, challenging films rather than guaranteed hits (see DiCaprio in The Revenant or Brad Pitt in The Tree Of Life).

Tom Cruise was easily at the top of that list for a time but looking at his C.V. for the last ten years, anything approaching a hit for him as been an existing franchise or based on something that’s already popular.  It’s a shame, because Live, Die, Repeat and Valkyrie weren’t half bad.  Star power has waned so badly that I know people who would actively avoid a film because of the star.  Normally, that star is Tom Cruise.

Disobeying the law of diminishing returns, the Mission: Impossible franchise goes from strength to strength, with the last two films probably the best in the series.  Never Go Back sees Cruise attempt to cement a second franchise in the public eye, with Lee Child’s ex-military drifter Jack Reacher now looking like his new pet project.  Reacher is already a popular character, with 19 published novels, but it helps that the film is really good too.

2012’s Christopher McQuarrie-directed Jack Reacher was surprisingly good.  On paper it was a seen-it-before thriller; an ex-army hard ass working outside the law to solve a crime, the project nothing more than an ego boost with a hilariously miscast short-arse star playing 6’5” Reacher.  Well paper counts for shit and the film boasted intrigue, action and a surprisingly brutal turn from Cruise.  It did respectably well and Cruise, staying on board as star and producer, hired The Last Samurai director Edward Zwick for Reacher Round 2.

A more complicated plot involving shady arms deals and conspiracies among Generals is not the film’s strong suit, neither is a 2^nd act slowdown, with Zwick often getting too bogged down in details.  However when Never Go Back does well, it does really well.  Grouping Reacher with Cobie Smulders’ tough Lieutenant Turner and a 15 year-old kid (Danika Yarosh) who may or may not be his daughter is a smart move, adding emotional stakes and some welcome peril to somebody other than Reacher himself.

Cruise seldom gets the credit he deserves as an actor.  Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut and maybe Interview With The Vampire aside. Now aged 54, his matinee idol looks are starting to fill with crags and this lends him a roughness and maturity which suit Reacher down to the ground. He nails the comic timing and emotional moments when he needs to.  He can still do the action beats, too, and more convincingly than, say, Liam Neeson, whose perennial ‘ageing hard man’ roles seem more motivated by money than they are interest in the material.  Never Go Back sees Reacher up against an effective villain in Patrick Heusinger’s nameless assassin. Heusinger adds shades of humour and menace to a character which you otherwise would have seen in at least 4 of the Bourne films, giving Reacher something to work against which he didn’t really get from Jai Courtney or Werner Herzog in the first film.  The Big Bad here is played by Robert Knepper of Twin Peaks and Prison Break fame. This doesn’t quite work: since Knepper is so associated with playing bastards there’s no way he could conceivably play a virtuous character.

My only other gripe is with the ending, which, after a satisfyingly brutal (for a 12A-rated film) fistfight, wraps things up in too neat a package which borders on twee.  With this film, Jack Reacher is becoming established alongside the outside-the-law, one man army sub-genre that includes the likes of Bourne, Taken, John Wick and The Equalizer.  That said, there are parts of this that feel a little familiar but not enough to spoil it.

A couple of minor issues aside, Never Go Back is a more than solid thriller. And in a time where audiences seem less and less adventurous, flocking to familiar properties again and again, there is room for another franchise if they’re as well made as Reacher’s two outings.  Cruise is clearly invested in the project and has made sure that the standard remains high despite the change in creative input.  The title may say never go back, but I personally hope that Jack Reacher will return.

Film Review: War On Everyone

I’m a fan of John Michael McDonagh’s first two films so it was very much the strength of the director that drew me to War On Everyone.  The Guard and Calvary both boasted strong concepts, a thematic identity, well drawn central characters and bittersweet touches.  There were also highly literate and McDonagh’s fledgling voice spoke with a pitch black sense of humour.  They were both distinctively Irish; the setting as important to the story as any event onscreen.

Why, then, he’s chosen to relocate to Albuquerque for War On Everyone only adds confusion to a fairly confused film.  I didn’t dislike the film per se, I just couldn’t find a lot to like, and I tried really hard.

War On Everyone is a parody on the buddy cop genre, with trope after trope thrown in and masterfully undermined.  Some of these are overt and some are nicely subtle, so you feel like you’ve seen them before: a wealthy British villain who breeds horses; a flamboyantly-dressed androgynous henchman; wipe edits aplenty; a shooting gallery sequence; an run-ins with the chief who’s “taking heat from above…”

Whether it’s deliberate or not, McDonagh has dropped the ball on one crucial matter: his two leads are both playing the Bad Cop role.  Alexander Skarsgard and Michael Pena, fun as they are, play cops who are, respectively, terrible and slightly less terrible.  It’s like teaming Riggs with Riggs.  While admittedly this would prevent the horrible softening of his character that takes place after the first Lethal Weapon, but without Murtaugh’s grounding influence there is no character dynamic.  The leads are both good and do what they can to bounce off each other but when they’re both criminals, with approving families, much of the dramatic tension is gone.

The other issue with the film is really no fault of its own, but the timing isn’t great.  Recent cinematic history has given us some cracking examples of parodies and spoofs on the buddy cop genre, all of which were funnier and more keenly observed than War On Everyone.  The wonderful Hot Fuzz set the bar as high as it’s likely to go, taking every genre convention you’re likely to see in an L.A.-set blockbuster and transplanting them to rural England.  The extremely knowing 21 Jump Street and self aware sequel 22 Jump Street were completely stupid but squeezed the genre for every laugh. My personal highlight: the homoerotic undertones of the buddy genre are revealed in a riff on the lobster scene from Annie Hall.  McDonagh’s own debut The Guard, billed by one reviewer as “Lethal Weapon meets Father Ted”, offered its own spin on buddy cops and did a really good job of it, too.  His desire to revisit the same turf again is strange to say the least.  The Albuquerque setting, too, is strange; it feels like even a cursory nod to Breaking Bad was needed in order to secure the funding…

McDonagh’s voice, so prominent in his first two films, is at once both muted and overwhelming here.  The Guard and Calvary focused on two men, both flawed authority figures, and their importance within the community; they are two films which spiral towards death.  While it’s admirable that War On Everyone deliberately does the exact opposite, it’s also not as clear what McDonagh’s getting at.  Just telling a story about two corrupt cops shaking down criminals for money before eventually discovering a conscience simply isn’t enough after what he’s done before. 

His style of dialogue doesn’t quite work here either.  Much like Kevin Smith, whose swathes of dialogue about Star Wars and weed went from fresh to tedious within about two films, McDonagh’s tendency towards philosophical ramblings is tiresome.  There were a few eye-rolling moments in his previous films: dialogue about Dostoefsky and Moby Dick from characters it didn’t really fit, did seem a little contrived. These were forgivable in the context of better films with stronger thematic content but War On Everyone often comes off as trying too hard to be clever: in one scene, Steven Soderbergh is described as “an auteur” rather than a director; a character discusses Pythagoras’ ideas about death; the climactic stand off is punctuated by a philosophical joke/riddle; and there’s a half-heartedly running debate over the origin of a quote.  None of this is really necessary: it adds little, and seldom fits the characters.  McDonagh should also realise that just putting an Irish character in a place you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see one doesn’t make him funny.  The net effect is that a decent film is speckled with pretention.

War On Everyone, however, is a very funny film.  There are some genuinely great moments and as a genre parody, the plot points are all well executed, your expectations both met and undermined in quite a satisfying way.  It’s such a shame that for his American debut, McDonagh has travelled so far from his roots while trying too hard to exert his identity, to the point where it feels forced.  A great cast tries really hard but unfortunately they’re on the losing side of this war.

Gig Review: Red Fang/Torche/God Damn, Newcastle Riverside, 04/10/16

There are times where you go see a band that nobody you know has heard of and some part of you thinks you’re being really cool for doing so.  People ask you who you’re going to see and you tell them anyway, knowing full well that they will neither know nor care about your answer but still, you cling to those cool points.  Finally you arrive at the gig, proud of yourself for having discovered a band so obscure that they can’t even sustain their own existence only to find that every member of the band are wearing t-shirts for even more obscure bands that you’ve never heard of, thus reminding you how thoroughly uncool you really are.

This was my experience of what turned out to be a really enjoyable gig.

Wolverhampton three piece God Damn are up first. They boast heavy, fuzzy guitar tones and killer grooves, the kind that Monster Magnet used circa Dopes To Infinity, but mix it up with elements of the dynamics of 90s alterative bands,  Think The Jesus Lizard playing Fu Manchu’s guitars.  They’re also really bloody good.  Playing with no bass player (guitar, keys, drums), they often switch instruments and make for a really exciting live prospect.  Keep it up, fellas.

Torche released one of the great underrated albums of the decade with 2012’s Harmonicraft and didn’t quite match it with the recent Restarter, but they’ve done enough to make me wonder why I didn’t discover them sooner.  Heavy, fuzzy, full of hypnotic grooves but Steve Brooks’ laid back, high-register vocals keep them accessible to the point where I’m surprised they’re not more widely known.  They play with minimum fuss but maximum impact, with impressive segues between songs even when the tempo shifts.  Some of their best tunes get an airing, including the brilliant ‘Sky Trials’, which crams an impressive array of riffs into its 78 second running time.

I’ll confess that I was at this gig more for Torche than anything else, but I like Red Fang and I was curious about how they’d sound.  About to release their 4^th album, the Portland four piece sound not unlike early Queens Of The Stone Age (before anyone knew who they were), mixed with some of Mastodon’s quirkier moments.  Considering how dense and thick Torche sounded, Red Fang sound a little tinny and hollow at first but this is soon addressed.  At times they look a little shy onstage; a bit of a problem for headliners.  Their stage set up is also strange: like Mastodon, vocal duties are shared between guitarist and bassist, but bassist Aaron Beam has a habit of fucking off beside the drum kit during instrumental breaks, which leaves a bit of a frontman gap and an oddly unbalanced space onstage.  It's distracting when a band member keeps buggering off to the back of the stage!

That said, they do play really well, offering a varied set but not entirely engaging or interacting.  Their brand of sludge/stoner metal is elevated above the pack by the band’s sense of humour and rock and roll sensibilities, with an emphasis on fun over bludgeon.  It’s the same problem that’ll stop Mastodon from ever reaching arena level: big bands need a frontman.  However, it’s unfair to reduce them to a few obscure musical similarities when Red Fang have an identity of their own but until one of them steps us the stage presence they’re unlikely to break out of playing venues this size. 

Overall this was a fun night, but one spent pondering how obscure one’s band has to be for a fairly obscure stoner band to wear on of your t-shirts. That I had to think about this proves that I am the least cool person you know.

Film Review: Don't Breathe (that's the name of the film, not an instruction...)

They call it ‘mumblegore’, apparently.  Taking some facets of the largely dull ‘mumblecore’ movement (naturalism, un-cinematic, a focus on the mundane) and applying them to the more insalubrious, supernatural and downright nasty aspects of life, it’s much more interesting than watching young, unemployed New Yorkers argue.  Like any good movement, people will rarely make a film to deliberately fit into it, and the aesthetic criteria at work are a little more vague than the more obvious movements; say, film noir, or the frat comedies of the early 00s.  With a focus on real situations, naturalistic acting and atmosphere over arterial spills, the ‘gore’ part of the name is often more pun than it is particularity.

The movement has produced some cracking films so far, with the likes of The Babadook, In Fear, Creep (not the one set on the subway), Kill List and It Follows all bringing interesting new ideas to the table at a time when mainstream horrors are deliberate throwbacks like Insidious and The Conjuring.  Fede Alvarez’ Don’t Breathe is a worthy addition to the canon, offering a great concept (amateur burglars bite off more than they can chew when they target a blind but resourceful war vet), jumps, almost constant tension, and some moments of genuine unpleasantness.  It also has a post-crash Michigan setting where the urban decay adds so much to the atmosphere and sense of isolation and desperation.

It starts badly.  We meet the three thieves mid-robbery in a scene which establishes the characters, all of whom are either flirting with or balls-deep inside cliché.  Daniel Zovatto’s Money (yes, he’s really called that) is all baggy pants, cornrows, expletive-spewing bravado.  If nobody else in the film had wanted to kill him, I would have done it.  Rocky (Jane Levy) is his girlfriend: horrible home life (abusive mum with swastika-tattoo boyfriend) but a little sister to save, she wants one last job to set her up for leaving it all behind.  Dylan Minnette’s Alex has a crush on her and facilitates the jobs while chickening out every few minutes.  For 20-odd minutes, I was getting both annoyed and bored at the same time.

I should have had more faith.  From the second their mark, played by an impressively cut Stephen Lang, sits up in bed and fixes a blind stare on Money as he creeps around the room, Don’t Breathe is a tension machine.  The predator is blind, so the burglars quickly become acutely aware of the sounds they make.  This careful manipulation of one sense is inspired.  The recent Lights Out tried to do it with, well, light, and it worked until the film started reading from the Third Act Textbook.  Don’t Breathe just plain works.  As soon as you think you’re heading for a seen-it-before climax, it throws a curveball made from a turkey baster and sample jar (yes, really). Any sympathies you might have had are rapidly questioned.

Alvarez exerts a demonic control over the audience, showing you details you’ll need to refer to later (a hammer, a padlocked room, a hidden gun, a crawl space between floors), evoking sympathy for Lang’s unnamed character before making him both terrifying and repulsive.  It’s largely set within one house and Alvarez by turns gives characters reason to leave, go back in, and then traps them within when they want to escape.  By this time, he’s done enough to make you like the characters just enough to give a sense of threat.

His hidden weapon is Lang.  A damaged combat vet and victim of personal tragedy, we know he’s sitting on a cash fortune and find out a lot more as matters unfold.  Lang’s performance, almost wordless for much of the film, is believable and complex.  You believe he has both the skill and motivation to kill; his blindness is played well, being both hindrance and advantageous to him as well as a nifty plot device; and when he does speak his voice sounds like a jagged chasm.  As monsters go, you begin to feel for him as well as being scared that he’d choke you to death for looking at his dog.

Alas, the third act does throw in the odd horror cliché, namely the to-be-expected sequences where previously hapless characters suddenly find A-Team levels of resourcefulness when the story suits them.  This doesn’t really spoil anything, though, and the final denouement is satisfyingly downbeat and low-key, the end leaving a chill without dangling the obligatory sequel threads.

It’s hard to make an effective horror these days. No other genre succumbs to the weight of expectation so much; a disadvantage when the purpose is to shock and surprise.  More so than the found footage and torture porn sub-genres, the loose tropes of the mumblegore movement are more a canvas than a set of formulae. Don’t Breathe, while not as masterpiece, is a fine picture on that canvas.  But painted in blood. By a blind guy.

Mission: Imposspielberg Vol. 2: Hats and Aliens

Having defined what we now know as a blockbuster in Jaws, Steven Spielberg was starting to establish himself as a bankable and talented director; a money machine for the studios.  From 1977 to 1984 he would cement this reputation and in doing so make a series of unforgettable films which defined many a childhood.  He also made 1941 but for the purposes of this, we’ll pretend that didn’t happen.

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind was a favourite of mine when I was a kid, but having watched it again as a 35 year-old kid, something has occurred to me: this is the strangest blockbuster I’ve ever seen!  A Richard Dreyfuss’ Roy Neary sees a UFO and this leads him to have an epiphany/mental breakdown, alienate (pun intended) and drive away his family by sculpting large mountains in and around his house, before turning his back on his planet by leaving with the aliens.  In terms of narrative, it’s pretty far from a classical structure; there is no villain or obstacle per se, save the obstructive  military; the hero, a compelling, driven, obsessed character, is kind of a dick to his family and we forgive him for it.

That said, it’s a wonderfully constructed film with a brilliant performance from the underrated Richard Dreyfuss.  There are classic Spielberg moments: the lights that float over Neary’s car instead of driving around; the mashed potato sculpting; the lost aeroplanes in the desert; that John Williams riff; the mothership.  From the oppressive chaos that marks every scene with Neary’s family to the terrifying abduction of Melinda Dillon’s son, Spielberg captures the feelings many of us cling to from our childhoods: wishing that you could see an alien, and they would come to Earth just for you.

I decided to omit 1941 from my little Spielberg project, because 1941 kind of sucks and I don’t own a copy.  It’s silly, slapstick and farcical, and not in a good way.  Much better suited to the manic energy of stars Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi than the visual imagination of the director. 

Luckily, he moved on and gave the world the gift that keeps on giving in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The 1930s setting has helped ensure that this film simply does not get old.  The hero, too rough hewn and road worn to be a James Bond type but just as indefatigable and  resourceful, is just flawed enough to be real and could not have been cast more perfectly (although was nearly played by Tom Selleck).  The set pieces are still timeless and classic after classic: the temple and boulder roll; the Tibetan bar fight; the Cairo market; the Well of Souls escape (snakes…); the aeroplane fistfight; the truck chase (my personal favourite); and the climactic Nazi melt.  These are peppered with charm and imagination and drive a juggernaut plot, with by the ultimate MacGuffin.  Aside from Indy, it’s filled with great supporting characters (Karen Allen’s tough Marian is still his best companion) and fiendish villains (anyone who says they don’t want to punch Ronald Lacey’s SS officer Toht is lying).  Indiana Jones is not so much a classic and classical cinematic hero, he’s a legend and his first outing still feels like it was made yesterday.

By now established as Hollywood’s go-to guy for blockbusters, Spielberg decided to make something aimed squarely at the kids.  Developing ideas from Close Encounters but instead of obsession, themes of friendship, family and coming of age are the order of the day.  1982’s E.T. is still incredibly sweet, despite the world hardening around it for the ensuing 34 years.  Yes, there are parts of it that haven’t aged terribly well, such as the flying bikes, and the 2002 digital augmentation that blights my copy looks like absolute crap, but E.T. is still steeped in the amazement and awe that have become Spielberg’ hallmark.

The trademark broken family unit is at the forefront here, essential to Elliot’s (Henry Thomas) relationship with E.T., who fills a gap in his life left by an absent father.  Dee Wallace is brilliantly ineffectual as the mother, demonstrating how unnecessary authority figures are to a world where only Elliott and his bond to the alien matter.  It’s a simple story, full of plot holes and silly moments, but as an uncynical film about the joys of being a child and desperately wanting to cling to it even as it flies away, it is absolutely peerless.

With such mileage in the character and following the huge success of Raiders, Indiana Jones was resurrected in 1984 for Temple Of Doom.  Unlike today, sequels were not a given at the time and films like Jaws, Back To The Future, Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones started the trend that now blights cinema: almost any successful film will be given a sequel.

It’s still a cracking film but watched so soon after Raiders, you can tell it’s not quite in the same class.  The ‘Anything Goes’ opening is Spielberg’s homage to classic Hollywood musicals.  Jones’ introduction, white tuxedo and lady on his arm (kind of…), is pure James Bond, mixed with Jones’ slapdash chaos.  Temple is driven by another Macguffin, although much like the rest of the film it’s not quite up to the standard of the first; magic rocks don’t quite carry the same cache as the Ark of the Covenant.  Setting the film a year before Raiders is also a strange move; while the setting is too brief and inconsequential to really impact the film, with hindsight, it takes away some of the edge.

That said, Temple gives some great peril, to the point that the film is actually quite dark.  The plane crash escape, the spike-trap room, the attempted sacrifice of Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw, more scream than character), the conveyor belt fist fight, and the rope bridge escape.  All hugely memorable and loads of fun.  It also offers some of cinema’s great skin crawl moments with the infamous meal and bug cave scenes.  The supporting characters also aren’t as strong as in Raiders, with Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) looking cool and evil but not really doing much; from an audience point of view, I suppose Thuggee cultists aren’t as scary as Nazis.  Willie Scott isn’t fit to polish Marian Ravenwood’s medallion and becomes very grating as the film goes on.

Compared to about 90% of other films, Temple Of Doom is more fun, more exciting and just better.  The only disadvantage is that it had to follow Raiders Of The Lost Ark, which is an impossible feat.  Top men would struggle. Top men.

Mission: Imposspielberg, Vol. 1: Cars and Sharks

Not having children is great.  One of the many perks is being able to do silly things like decide to buy loads of DVDs, arrange them on the shelves chronologically and by director, and then decide on a whim that you want to watch all of somebody’s films.

Steven Spielberg was always my favourite. For as long as I can remember I’ve been mesmerised by the things he puts on screen, the sheer magic he can conjure , and the way he can take you back to your childhood for a couple of hours.  So, ironically, not having a child has allowed me to indulge in some childhood regression by watching every Spielberg film in order, and then writing about them in the time I’m not using to change nappies and pretend to be a normal person.

Here goes nothing…

Not owning (nor knowing how to get) copies of Firelight, Savage or Something Evil, I’ve started with the excellent TV movie Duel.  While I distinctly remember conversations with my parents in which they suggested that the devil himself was driving the truck, that fact that we don’t know the driver’s identity is a stroke of genius.  Dennis Weaver, playing the first of many Spielberg ‘everyman’ characters (named Mann, as it happens), gives a great performance as the not-entirely-likeable hero.  He’s something of a coward, has alienated his wife, and the film suggests early on that he provokes the truck to begin with, but Weaver sells him with enough conviction to carry the film as the sole character.  I’ve always maintained that the film would work with no dialogue at all, such is the strength of the young Spielberg’s direction, using inventive shot choices and eking tension from every possible source.  He certainly could have done without Mann’s internal monologue, which doesn’t always work.  For me, the truck is one of cinema’s best monsters and while you can say that Duel is his audition for Jaws, it’s clear from this that young Spielberg is both talented and evil.

The lesser-known classic The Sugarland Express is next. Starring a young, manic, and absolutely brilliant Goldie Hawn, and William Atherton, who would go on to play the most annoying man in Die Hard, this film is way better than I remember.  It’s beautifully shot, shows much of the flair we’ve come to expect from Spielberg, but this introduces a trope that will recur time and again throughout his career: the fractured family unit.  From Close Encounters, Temple Of Doom, Empire Of The Sun through to aspects of Catch Me If You Can and Bridge Of Spies, the broken and/or surrogate family unit is something he goes back to again and again.  Another thing worth noting here is that Sugarland is a caper so wilfully bizarre and populated by idiots, the Coen brokers have been plundering it from Raising Arizona onwards.  They have taste.

Jaws is next, and I don’t really need to explain how good a film it is.  Spielberg understand the cardinal rule of monster movies: the monster is scarier when you don’t see it.  It’s true, your imagination is way worse than anything that you can see on screen.  Keeping the shark hidden does two things: builds the tension in your mind, and hides a limited budget.  The best thing about Jaws is the characters: a social cross section of Richard Dreyfuss’ wealthy shark expert, Roy Scheider’s land-loving middle class cop, and Robert Shaw’s unforgettable working fisherman. They are brilliant together, with chemistry and tension in abundance. The scene where Shaw’s Captain Quint delivers his USS Indianapolis monologue is stunning, and each of them has memorable dialogue.

Jaws is the textbook monster movie, with lessons for generations of directors to come.  It takes its time, particularly during shark attacks, allowing the scenes to breathe and not letting the audience get disoriented like so many films do today with A.D.D editing and emphasis on speed. Spielberg also understands that this isn’t a film about a shark, it’s a film about people faced with difficulty, and it gives you enough of those people to make you like and care about them.  But when the shark attacks do come, they’re bloody, brutal, and still terrifying.

Spielberg would hit all of the right notes again with Jurassic Park, and most of them with War Of The Worlds, but here he wrote the rulebook and in doing so invented the very thing that would define his career for decades to come: the event movie.

Film Review: Cafe Society

When you’re a fan of somebody who’s been around a while, you always harbour the hope that they’ve got one more masterpiece in them.  I remain optimistic that Spielberg has another Jaws in him; Scorsese seems to effortlessly turn out masterpieces like The Wolf Of Wall Street; likewise, the Coen brothers with their ability to find genius in remakes and oddities. While Francis Ford Coppola hasn’t really been great in my lifetime (1980, since you’re asking), Oliver Stone’s mojo has apparently deserted him, likewise Brian DePalma, John Carpenter and Spike Lee, while the likes of Clint Eastwood have an approach which is, let’s say ‘scattershot’.  Can Woody Allen be relied upon for one last Annie Hall, or another Manhattan?  Hell, I’d settle for another Midnight In Paris or Blue Jasmine, and I remain hopeful.

When you’re prolific, it’s natural that you’re going to have a mixed success rate.  When Woody is good, he’s still one of the best; when he’s below par, it can be painfully dull.  Cassandra’s Dream remains one of the worst films I’ve ever had the misfortune to see and it’s hard to believe that the same man who made Annie Hall put his name to it.  That said, John Carpenter made both Halloween and Ghosts Of Mars. Time waits for no man…

Woody’s latest, Café Society does a lot of what he’s really good at, and has some moments that recall his profligate, rambling lulls.  Thankfully, the good parts thoroughly outweigh the bad.

It’s recognisably Woody, from the jazzy score to that typeface on the opening credits.  For the second time, he has cast Jessie Eisenberg as his onscreen proxy, and the setting (the roaring 1920s-30s, this time in Hollywood) is one seen before in Bullets Over Broadway and Midnight In Paris.  This being Woody, though, disillusionment rather than nostalgia is the theme of the day and Hollywood turns out to be empty glamour, a far cry from his beloved New York.

Woody is at his comedic best when he gets a little weird: unexplained time travel from Midnight In Paris, fourth-wall breaking and subtitled thoughts in Annie Hall, Alec Baldwin acting as Eisenberg’s visible-to-only-him spirit guide in To Rome With Love, and pretty much all of Deconstructing Harry.  Café Society isn’t particularly strange but one striking playful touch is Woody casting himself as narrator. He will be acutely aware of what it means for writer/director to appear as omniscient narrator in his own film; Woody goes meta, winking at you through the fourth wall.

Whether it’s a comedic caper or a deadly serious meditation, Allen’s skill is often in finding scenarios through which to pose big questions about love, life and death.  He takes the strands of his characters’ stories, twists them into knots, sometimes nooses, and Café Society offers a typically Allen scenario of unrequited lovers and difficult choices.  It’s as satisfying as any ‘love’ story he’s done, with a bittersweet, wordless ending which recalls the break up scene which ends Manhattan; much his characters sometimes want to and maybe should be together, life is cruel and won’t allow it.

The drama is brought to life by some fine performances from an against-type Steve Carrell and a revelatory Kristen Stewart, whose restrained turn helps buy back some of the credibility she lost with all of that silly vampire business.  Eisenberg is good at the Allen impersonation and shows some range as his role changes in the latter stages and he grows in confidence. They are supported by an able cast, including the always-excellent Corey Stoll and Blake Lively.

It has flaws.  Sometimes a frustrating trait of Allen’s is that he includes what seems like every idea, every scene he writes, and this can sometimes mean that his films lose focus.  The central love triangle is engaging and rewarding, but is framed by Bobby’s (Eisenberg) extended family.  Typically Allen, much of the humour is derived from the darkest source, in this case Stoll’s gangster brother, Ben and his murderous tendencies.  While some of the family moments are great and funny (he can’t help but throw in a buzzkill philosopher), they also feel like they don’t add much other than jokes, and feel like they’ve been imported from a different, funnier film.  Some of the family scenes, particularly those concerning an angry next door neighbour, slow down the main plot and make the film seem less focused; fun as they are, you’re often left wondering how it affects the main characters.

That said, Café Society is simply satisfyingly Woody.  It’s beautifully shot, features a wonderful jazz score, and has heart and laughs. It’s sweet and bittersweet where it needs to be, and somewhat satisfyingly puts Woody back in New York following a world tour of sorts; a Central Park-set kiss feels like a reunion between director and city.  He’s also written some of his better zingers on favourite Allen subjects of death and Jewishness in years; it’s just a shame they’re all assigned to characters who sometimes seem like they’re in a cameo from another film.

It’s no Annie Hall, it’s no Manhattan, although it shares DNA with both.  It’s not quite on par with Blue Jasmine or the wonderful Midnight In Paris but easily matches and in some places surpasses recent hits Magic In The Moonlight, Whatever Works or Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona. When it comes to enduring writer-directors – and now narrator – I’m not convinced that Allen has another masterpiece tucked away behind those glasses, but I’ll happily keep watching him try.

I Ain't Entertained By No Ghost: a review of the Ghostbusters remake

  

Remakes of good films are unnecessary. By their very definition they are designed to be money makers, riding the memories of a good, successful film all the way to the bank.  The number of sub-standard remakes of good films by far outweighs the good ones.  For every The Departed, Dawn Of The Dead or Ocean’s 11 there are several turkeys: Robocop, Total Recall, Point Break, The Wicker Man, Clash Of The Titans, Assault On Precinct 13, The Taking Of Pelham 123 to name but a few.  The 70s and 80s are the most fertile grounds from which studios plunder, and when they turn their attentions to something that was beloved, then can find themselves taking the brunt of the internet’s fury before a frame is filmed.

The Ghostbusters remake/reboot really shouldn’t have been controversial for any reason other than being surplus to demand.  The level of hyperbole-cum-outright abuse aimed at the film as soon as it was announced was shocking given that the reason for it wasn’t “don’t do this, it’s unnecessary”, it was “women can’t be Ghostbusters.” It’s 2016, FFS; grow up.

Ultimately the casting made sense once the decision was made to go all-female: Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy are two of the world’s most popular comic actors (the latter somewhat inexplicably, but whatever…) and, much like the original’s Ernie Hudson and Harold Ramis, two relative unknowns in Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones make up the roster.  I would have pushed for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, but what do I know?

It opens well, with a decent premise and opening haunted house gambit.  Kristen Wiig’s trying-to-be-a-serious-physicist Erin Gilbert is reluctant and likeable as Wiig always is, but it’s soon sullied by the introduction of McCarthy’s believer/leader Abby Yates and McKinnon’s downright bizarre engineer Holtzmann.  They are both weak characters with too many throwaway lines, moments that don’t work, and gags that don’t land.  At one point it’s implied that Holtzmann is gay but, probably with thoughts of a 12A rating, this is never revisited.  This means we don’t get any unpleasant gently homophobic jokes, nor do we get any of the ‘heavy set women are funny’ gags that seem to have defined McCarthy’s career, but we don’t get much of value from either of them. McKinnon in particular doesn’t seem comfortable with a lot of her material.

Neither are as poor as Leslie Jones’ walking stereotype subway attendant and late joiner, whose dialogue is appalling throughout, save for one deadpan line delivered in a room full of broken mannequins.  Sadly, other than Wiig, the one saving grace is in Chris Hemsworth’s colossally stupid Kevin.  It’s a shame that in the female-led film, most of the laughs come from a man, but credit to Hemsworth who is brilliantly oblivious to how dense he is.  The few memorable moments in the film are his.

The script and plot recover the tropes you would hope to see in a Ghostbusters film: somebody awakens an ancient evil via a portal to elsewhere; there’s a bureaucratic mayor roadblocking our heroes (a game Andy Garcia, whose “don’t ever call me the Jaws mayor” is probably the best line; there’s a giant ‘thing’ trashing New York; and there’s slime aplenty.  What it doesn’t have is the two minor characters from the original: Rick Moranis’ sympathetic patsy, and Sigourney Weaver’s ‘normal’ character who grounds the whole shebang.  That the remake boasts neither leaves us with four lunatics spouting technobabble and shooting lasers at CGI for much of the narrative, so the whole endeavour feels hollow.

There are some funny moments, mostly from supporting characters and brief gracenotes: Karan Soni’s incompetent delivery man is fun (even if he’s playing the same role he played in Deadpool) and Zach Woods’ terrified tour guide delivers a line from The Exorcist in a nice nod.  One of the better moments comes when the characters scroll through an abusive list of internet comments and dismiss them; it’s a nice, meta touch and as confident as the film ever gets.

Less effective are the cameos which, rather than enhance a nostalgic experience, simply remind you that the original was a much better film.  Billy Murray’s paranormal sceptic is awful and makes you pine for his deadpan delivery in the main cast; Dan Ackroyd’s surly taxi driver delivers that line, Ernie Hudson turns up in a moment that should surprise nobody, and Annie Potts seems to have gone from an awful receptionist to an awful hotel desk clerk.  The Ozzy Osbourne cameo is just an embarrassment.  It feels like the film doesn’t believe in itself and needs these callbacks to validate its own existence.

Remakes are going to happen and there are two ways to get them somewhere approaching right: do something different but leave just enough of the original’s DNA to keep the fans on board (Evil Dead), or know that you’re covering old ground but commit to it (Star Trek Into Darkness knew damn well that it was covering Wrath Of Khan but went with it and enjoyed it). This does neither, and the problem with this slight, weightless and muddled remake is nothing to do with X chromosomes, but more to do with a poor script and a severe lack of confidence.

The Comic Book Bubble Part 2 - Suicide Squad's Self Destruction

One can’t help but feel that the D.C. cinematic universe, while still hugely successful, is stuttering.  Their twin tentpole characters’ throwdown, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, derided in these very pages, threw both their biggest names and a hugely loaded name at audiences.  It turned out to be a glum, moody, largely un-dramatic piece of drama which managed to cram so much content and yet do so little in over two hours.  Following the flawed, muddled Man Of Steel, it didn’t exactly make a statement of intent for D.C’s plans.  Rather than jump straight into their Justice League main event, they’ve decided to go for something a little left field as a spacer.

The cynic in me says that this is their attempt to capitalise on the success of Guardians Of The Galaxy, which pitted a group of charming, mismatched anti-heroes against an actual bad guy.  Character friction, comedy and some genuinely new faces provided an interesting new jigsaw piece in Marvel’s expanding universe.  The irreverent tone, incongruous music and against-the-odds underdog story gave Marvel an unexpected hit.  Could the formula be replicated?

With Suicide Squad D.C/Warner have tried to introduce about a dozen new characters at once, the most familiar of which being one who carries perhaps the most baggage in The Joker.  The late Heath Ledger’s performance, amplified by the addition of the two words before his name, is now considered so definitive as to blow previously definitive performances by Jack Nicholson and Cesar Romero out of the water. It couldn’t possibly be bested, could it?  Although, the film doesn’t give him a chance to prove it, I have no doubt that Jared Leto’s authoritative gangster will be brilliant if they give him something to do other than text and then rescue Magot Robbie’s Harley Quinn.  His inclusion reeks of a marketing decision, because D.C. didn’t have the guts to invest in unknown characters so they have hedged their bets and included their no.1 villain as a support act.

Harley Quinn is a tricky one; a potentially interesting arc between her and Joker is undercooked (possibly due to reshoots and studio-imposed cuts), but her anarchic spirit should give the film energy.  But because all of her best lines were in the trailers, she offers very little by way of surprises and in terms of skill set (agile, handy with a baseball bat), one has to wonder why the character would be recruited for ‘Task Force X’ to begin with.  Another great character wasted, although Robbie does well, undulating accent aside.

It’s perhaps natural that headline star Will Smith would steal the film as Deadshot, and while his character is at least given some background it is also lumbered with terrible sub-Bad Boys dialogue.  At one point, I expected him to describe a situation as ‘whack’; that he doesn’t is the only saving grace.  Jai Countney, normally as annoying as a genital rash, manages to raise some smiles with his Boomerang character, who otherwise has nothing to do. Jay Hernandez does good work with the repentant pyrokinetic El Diabolo and his brief back story should have been developed more, but doesn’t really do anything until about an hour in.  Joel Kinnaman, so good in House Of Cards, is a charisma void as team leader Rick Flagg, who tries to play straight man to Deadshot but comes off like a walking rectangle with a goatee.  Slipknot is a waste of space and gets less screen time than I’m giving him here.  Katana could have been great but isn’t given time to, and this leaves Enchantress, who starts off as a really interesting proposition but ends up as Cara Delevingne belly dancing in front of a huge CGI swirl.  None of whom are as bad as Killer Croc who does so little he’s barely worth mentioning.

Logically, then, why would America put together a team of bad guys? What could be so bad as to warrant such a move? The film provides some connective tissue and explains Superman’s post-Dawn Of Justice absence in one sentence within a montage.  Disappointingly, Enchantress turns out to be the main villain, which ironically would have been a good match for the vulnerable-to-magic Superman.  While her ‘spurned Aztec god’ angle is interesting, it boils down to a spur-of-the-moment decision to hate humanity and a devious plan which involves destroying all of the world’s military equipment (I can’t be the only person thinking that this was a good thing, can I?) with the aforementioned CGI swirl, which she calls a machine but is actually floating scrap metal not unlike the world engine from Man Of Steel. 

I’m not normally one to let plot holes ruin my films, but when the film drives directly into them I’ll make an exception.  The good guys win by detonating bombs near two gods who had previously been invincible.  The film betrays its own logic here and you feel cheated by it (the Incubus character had just regrown his own hand, but blow up the floor beneath him and he’s dead…).  In terms of power sets, only Diabolo and Killer Croc are particularly ‘powered’ so the final conflict boils down to 4 of the team being absolutely useless against superpowered enemies; anyone who’s been paying attention could work out how it pans out from a mile away.

The character dynamics are all wrong, too.  Over a post-defeat drink, they go from The Hateful Eight to The Breakfast Club, deciding that they’re family.  Deadshot’s toast to ‘honour among thieves’ comes off as patronising, it’s so obvious.  None of the characters are established well enough for us to believe that they would bond so easily over a couple of gunfights.  So the ensemble fails because we a) don’t know anything about the characters going in and b) aren’t given enough time with any of them to make us invest in them.

David Ayer makes some poor choices with the film as well, although rumour has it there has been studio tomfoolery at work soften the edges.  Starting with a pleasingly comic style (rap sheets up on screen in OTT fonts) while the characters are introduced, this is abandoned and settles down into standard military film tropes.  His set pieces are all very dark and muddled and because it’s characters you don’t especially care about shooting at lumpy CGI humanoids who have had no introduction, it’s really difficult to feel like there’s anything at stake during any of them. 

Most grating, though, are his musical choices.  Trying to capture the irreverent spirit (but none of the charm or charisma) of Guardians Of The Galaxy, seemingly incongruous songs actually become painfully obvious: ‘Sympathy Of The Devil’ plays when we first see El Diabolo, Eminem’s ‘Look Who’s Back’ plays as the team are tooling up, ‘House of The Rising Sun’ plays over the establishing shot of a Louisiana prison, and the opening line of Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ plays while Harley Quinn is released from her cell.  It’s overwhelming sensory overload and really quite distracting.

Finally, I can’t go without acknowledging that the entire end sequence is lifted from the finale of Ghostbusters (disappointingly, without marshmallow): team outmatched by a powerful witch with some ropey CGI magic somehow manages to beat her and then one character finds his girlfriend buried under the residue.

I’m not sure whether Suicide Squad is an opportunity missed or an idea half-cooked.  With the talent on board and the source material, it’s just such a shame that none of it managed to gel.  Next time, give The Joker something to do, eh?

The Comic Book Bubble Part 1 - The Trouble With Teamwork

The comic book movie bubble is expanding, and we all know what happens to bubbles when they finish expanding.  From 2002’s Spider-Man, or perhaps even earlier with 1998’s Blade, audiences have lapped up gloriously OTT tales of heroism and the impossible.  There have been lulls and duds, with the likes of Daredevil (2003), Ghost Rider (2007) and Catwoman (2004), but more overwhelming successes than failures with D.C. and Chris Nolan leaving an indelible bat-shaped mark on cinema before Marvel decided to try something big with their Avengers initiative.

And in expansion there is a problem.  Marvel started with one character, Iron Man, facing a relatively minor and contained threat. They had the vision (ok, pun intended there) and ambition to combine their roster and develop crossovers between them.  Other characters were gradually introduced and connections established between them, and within four years Iron Man had became Avengers Assemble with a whole team of characters and interstellar threat.  Huge success and massive profit followed; it was a justified commercial hit and really satisfying to watch, having stayed with the project throughout the whole build up. 

So where does Marvel go from here? Expansion? More characters?  For every surefire hit like Iron Man 3 or Age of Ultron, they throw in a Guardians Of The Galaxy and Ant-Man.  They’re still building towards something and ultimately this will lead to a change in the structure of the films.  So far there have been fairly standard unilateral heroes leading their own films, with the occasional team up.  Eventually, Marvel will be entering realm of the ensemble film more and more often.

It is easy to get these things wrong: with too many characters, somebody always gets short changed, plots become unfocused and enemies become unthreatening in the face of so much power on the good guys’ side, and when all this happens you lose sense of drama.  The three recent Fantastic Four films struggled to balance four characters and keep the whole thing interesting (yeah, they didn’t struggle, they failed), but the biggest offenders have been the X-Men films.  From 2000’s X-Men to this year’s bloated but fun Apocalypse, characters are routinely given almost nothing to do, with Oscar winners like Halle Berry and Jennifer Lawrence shelved in favour of Wolverine. And they now face the problem of where to go now that the heroes have prevented somebody literally destroying the world.  Once the team is made, it’s hard to un-make. Stand alone films would be a risk on the back of under-developed characters, and would prompt quite sensible questions like “why don’t the rest of the X-Men come to help?”

The problem is that with too many characters, we don’t get enough time with anyone to care about them (hence the reliance on Wolverine), and many are reduced to being a power rather than a person.  The benchmark for this is still Avengers Assemble, but this had the advantage of Marvel’s long game planning.  The Assemble audience already knew who everyone was, their characteristics and power sets, and this left much more time for fall outs, conflicts and flashy ways of dispatching alien invaders: the fun stuff.  As superhero ensembles go it’s perfect, and only really approached by this year’s Captain America: Civil War (which again benefits from pre-established characters).

I’ll make a sweeping statement and say that D.C. are playing catch up with Marvel, who gambled first and proved that this superhero lark is highly lucrative and they want to make hay while the sun is still shining, before cape fatigue inevitably sets in.  Marvel have trusted their creatives to do their thing (although Edgar Wright may disagree with that), leaving enough connective tissue between films and TV shows to keep it all together.  D.C. have already ruined their chances of emulating this by separating small screen Arrow and Flash from their cinematic counterparts, and are betting everything on their films.  Chris Nolan’s Batman films were so successful, but detached from any other D.C. properties, the studio couldn’t resist checking the utility belt for more money and re-introducing him into their project.

They don’t have time to do this like Marvel did, and they know it.  D.C. are therefore disadvantaged by two things: their major characters have existing cinematic baggage, which needs to be shed for audiences to accept new versions; and too many new characters to introduce in a really short space of time.  Multiple Batman and Superman franchises mean that while audiences already know the characters, they have to hold up great big signs that say WE’RE STARTING OVER! so people don’t get confused and say “Didn’t Batman retire at the end of The Dark Knight Rises?” They also have to establish unknown (to non-geeks) characters like Aquaman, Cyborg, Flash and eventually Shazam.

As if to illustrate my point (not really – I wrote this after watching the film), D.C. have had a go at introducing several characters in one go with Suicide Squad, and the results were… less than super.

The Bourne Appreciation: my review of Jason Bourne

Jason Bourne has returned.  After three genre-defining films and one hilariously bad spin off (The Bourne Misfire, I think was the title) that stunk of cash-cow milking by the studio, Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon have revived their amnesiac anti-Bond for one more bout.  Regular readers (if I have such a thing) will have guessed how I feel about reboots, rehashes and remakes of successful and beloved characters and series (for the benefit of non-regular readers, I’m pretty cynical about them) so the announcement of a further instalment didn’t exactly fill me with excitement.  But with Greengrass and Damon on board following their excellent work on Supremacy and Ultimatum, there was at least some potential.

Stylistically at least, there are no surprises here.  This is not a criticism; Greengrass’ kinetic direction suits Bourne like a hotwired car.  His work on films like United 93 and Captain Phillips has established him as one of Hollywood’s foremost purveyors of nerve-shredding tension.  Jason Bourne sees him employ his hand held documentary style pretty much throughout the whole thing creating a sense of paranoia that suits both the post-Snowden state surveillance themes and the frenetic action scenes.  He knows when and where the reign it in, though, allowing the calmer scenes to tip toe before breaking into a sprint for the set pieces.

These, too are impressive.  One of the best things about Ultimatum in particular is that the set pieces were not simply there for the sake of meeting genre requirements; they served and told the story.  The same is true here almost all the time.  An impressive cat-and-mouse sequence set during a Greek austerity demonstration/riot both establishes and kills characters while getting Bourne back in the game.  There’s a London-set sequence that manages to not repeat Ultimatum’s Waterloo station set piece or feel like a rehash; it’s tense, well choreographed and drives the plot forwards.  The Las Vegas sequence, while sometimes hard to follow, is as good as anything the series has offered until a what should have been a climactic confrontation leads to a car chase which, while impressive, feels tacked on after what precedes it.  It’s Bourne becoming an assassin again after almost 4 films of resistance and doesn’t quite fit.

The Bourne films always cast strongly with the likes of Brian Cox, Clive Owen, Albert Finney, Joan Allen and Chris Cooper all giving strong service.  Here, Tommy Lee Jones’ experienced CIA chief makes you wonder why he’s never featured before and Vincent Cassel is so perfect a fit as the nameless ‘Asset’ it again makes you wonder whether he was in one of the previous films; not necessarily a good thing as this their characters feel a bit like archetypes. It’s Alicia Vikander’s resolute CIA cyber security officer (and Riz Ahmed’s compromised social media guru) who offers something new: she is driven ambition rather than just by-the-numbers spy games;  she makes a genuine attempt to see Bourne’s point of view, and adds a contemporary twist.  Her character’s expertise adds an interesting new layer to the premise: how does one hide when facial recognition software and any CCTV camera in the world could be used to find you? It’s a fresh new challenge for a spy who can beat anyone at fisticuffs, gunplay or driving.

Jason Bourne retains the unrefined, rebellious edge that drove the Bond producers to up their game in the Daniel Craig era, turning their suave secret agent into a cold, insubordinate killer.  Bourne, in Greengrass’ eyes anyway represents a reaction to Bond’s ‘Queen and Country’ ethos.  Seen as an enemy by the very people who trained him, he’s on his own side rather than America’s, with loyalty earned rather by sworn.  Here, the Treadstone program that created Bourne has been replaced by the distinctly fascist sounding Iron Hand.  It’s probably not deliberate, more of a zeitgeist-y consideration, that the CIA’s devious plan (spying on everyone in the world via their online habits), is almost identical to that of Blofeld in latest Bond adventure Spectre.  Evil, it seems, is a matter of perspective when it comes to spies and while I’m one of many people who hope that Bond is reinvented again, I would be happy if this turned out to be Bourne’s noisy, exciting, subversive but kind of slight swansong.