Geriaction: drawing pensions and drawing blood, from Taken to Logan

It’s a bafflingly popular action sub-genre right now, and one made popular by an actor who apparently doesn’t care much for action films.  Insufferable portmanteau term ‘Geriaction’ is now the name given to action films featuring older actors.  For modern action, one would expect to see Chrises Pratt, Evans, or Hemsworth, currently in their prime, jumping off buildings and shooting terrorists. But with the action genre currently dominated by superhero adaptations, the non-lycra action fix can be found in the pension queue.

The 1980s saw a distinctly Reaganite movement in action cinema: the exaggerated figures of Stallone and Schwarzenegger as one man armies, defending America from people who were not American.  Hyper-masculine, no emotion, just the mission; individualism writ large. In bullet holes on a wall.  Fast forward to the mid 1990s and the smaller frames of Keanu Reeves (Speed), Nicholas Cage (Con Air, Face/Off), and Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible) were holding their own alongside their exaggerated contemporaries with increasingly bonkers high concept films.  One of the best examples of 90s action (despite my unreserved dislike of the director) was Michael Bay’s The Rock.  The gimmick? Sean Connery as an old action hero (and possibly still James Bond…) who saves the day for the younger guy.

Cut to years later and Stallone makes another Rocky sequel, and it’s not bad at all, banishing the memory of Rocky V.  He then makes Rambo (2008), and then The Expendables (2010).  A passion project, made with tongue edging towards cheek, he assembled the likes of Dolph Lundgren, Micky Rourke, and eventually Schwarzenegger, Norris and Willis, to feature alongside contemporary stars like Jason Statham and Jet Li. Despite some of the worst character names in living memory, and not actually being very good, it’s a massive hit and yields two sequels (and counting, apparently).

At the subtler end of the scale, Harry Brown saw Michael Caine not even attempt to roll back the years, but take out a gang of vicious charvers. This followed Clint Eastwood fine 2008 fable Gran Torino, in which a jaded old man learns to respect another culture and defeats wrong ‘uns as victim rather than victor.  Both films focused on the character and environment rather than how to apply a chokehold or torture a henchman (although they did that, too).

Aiming for more fun was the Liam Neeson vehicle Taken (2008).  Allowing audiences still drunk on the torture porn subgenre to get their kicks, but confuse savagery with quality, it was another huge hit, spawning two sequels and a TV series.  The premise, more grounded that The Expendables’ OTT army-of-one-man-armies, saw Neeson’s retired CIA spook seek bloody revenge on the gangsters who kidnapped his daughter.  It’s also pretty mediocre, but the gimmick of Neeson’s highly skilled badass tearing through the Albanian mafia was irresistible to many.

Neeson, a better actor than his late career suggests, seemingly couldn’t resist the paycheques and went on to star in guff like Unknown, Non Stop, Run All Night, and A Walk Among The Tombstones (which isn’t as bad as the marketing suggested it would be).  The odd grouping of Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren brought a kind of naff comic book twist with RED and RED 2, which we probably could have done without. Richard Gere (The Double) and Kevin Costner (3 Days To Kill) have also got in on the act, with limited success.  The sub-genre in full swing, then started to get bizarrely more interesting as it went on.  A brief history of sub-genre fads will tell you, these things tend to succumb to the law of diminishing returns (postmodern horror, high school comedy, torture porn, found footage, epic fantasy, manchild comedy, anything Adam Sandler made), but Geriaction has recently started to churn out some quality.

Denzel Washington was perhaps an obvious choice to get his own vehicle (albeit one with a blue badge), but when Antoice Fuqua directed him in The Equalizer (2014) it was quite a surprise when the results were actually pretty good! An adaptation of the Edward Woodward TV series, Washington brings his megawatt charisma and a cool efficiency to his retired black ops man-on-a-mission.  The film looks great, had plenty of intrigue and is pleasingly unpleasant where it needs to be.  It’s nothing, though, without Washington’s stoic, OCD killing machine.

To the surprise of just about everybody, though, Keanu Reeves’ John Wick (2014) managed to blend a great hook (somebody wrongs the titular master assassin, who then leaves a trail of bodies in his wake), an actual mythology (the incredibly cool assassin hideout/market The Continental), and some impressive action chops.  The equally good sequel shows that the idea had and still has mileage.  While Reeves, currently 52, may not exactly fit the pensioner model, the premise of ‘Retired Badass Reluctantly Takes One Last Job’ still feels fresh enough to carry the film.

Referring back to my original premise and opening paragraph, the current spandex-happy action trend has added to the Geriaction canon with this year’s Logan.  A sequel to two terrible Wolverine films, and with a protagonist who has been misused in at least half of the X-Men franchise, James Mangold’s film is brutal but melancholic; a fine antidote to constant superhero excess.  It also finally answers the question of how to pose a challenge to a character whose healing factor makes him almost invulnerable: make him old and stop him from healing.  This vulnerability adds a whole extra layer of interest and drama; he’s gone from wild animal to underdog.

And therein lies the appeal of the geriaction subgenre; the underdog bites back.  While the 80s revelled in indestructible super-men, and the 90s in crazy high concept, we now live in an age of franchises and remakes.  It’s a reversal of the 80s trend and a simplification of the 90s, making new franchises along the way; take a man who’s past it or simply doesn’t want it anymore, fuck with his life, light the fuse and walk away.  Like the characters, this has probably now had its day, but it has been a subgenre that has got steadily better with age.

But officially, The Wild Bunch is still the best of the lot.

Mission: Imposspielberg, Vol. 7 - Robots and Predictions

Following up an Oscar winner is apparently a difficult task. Although Scorsese followed up his long overdue win for The Departed with the fine-but-slight Shutter Island, and Inarritu managed to follow Birdman with the small matter of The Revenant, Mr. Spielberg seems to find it harder.  Famously originated as a project for Stanley Kubrick before perceived technical limitations, and then death prevented his vision find its way to the screen, A.I. Artificial Intelligence was burdened from birth.

While the two were apparently friends, Spielberg and Kubrick hardly showed the same worldviews on screen.  Where Spielberg favours classical Hollywood narratives and happy endings, Kubrick’s world is more ambiguous.  It’s hard to imagine, for example, a Spielberg version of Eyes Wide Shut without Cruise, Kidman, and child sharing a sexless embrace against a strong white light, reunited as a family unit.  Kubrick’s Jurassic Park might have ended with Hammond as Dr. Moreau, alone on the island, descending into madness among his creations. Kubrick’s endings tend to leave the audience hanging, as if there’s more to the story existing solely in your imagination; Spielberg on the other hand prefers to present his endings neat packages, normally happy ones tied with a bow. What Kubrick might have made of Brian Aldiss’ source material ‘Super-Toys Last All Summer Long’ is anyone’s guess, so I’ll try to put that aside and focus on what’s on the screen.

It’s probably a bad sign that of his post-Millennium work, this is one of the films I think of watching the least.  On review, it’s not as bad as I remember… for the most part.  And that is quite a caveat, given that the film’s ending ruins much of the good work before it.  Separating Kubrick’s ghost from what’s in the film is hard, and has informed many opinions of the film, but the ending is just inexcusable and feels like concession to a studio putting up a handsome budget, and wanting a Hollywood ending in return.

For an admirably long time, A.I. is a very dark movie. While his trademark broken family unit is largely the main thrust of the plot, Spielberg plays against type, making his obligatory cute kid (Hayley Joes Osment’s android David) both endearing and creepy as he works his way into a tragedy-stricken family.  Over-exposed, grainy photography marks out the early scenes, highlighting David’s artifice against the very real need for love from both him and his adoptive mother Monica (Frances O’Connor).  Some of these scenes are genuinely moving, with David an apparently adequate surrogate until the family’s real son recovers and returns.  Things turn dark as David’s programmed survival mechanism almost results in the son’s drowning, the look of shock on David’s face as he sinks to the bottom of a pool both human and completely alien.

Other scenes that are brutally un-Spielberg include Monica leaving David in the forest; him pleading for mercy from his mother, while she sees the act as a tearful necessity.  The Ministry-soundtracked Flesh Fair, on one hand full of Steam Punk cliché, on the other framed like hideous torture porn, our sympathies lying more with the endangered ‘mechas’ than the baying humans.  Gigolo Joe (Jude Law, doing some of his best work) is an interesting character to thrown into a film about children but highlights that in this nightmarish vision of the future, even sex has become artificial.  Finally, the scene in which David encounters rows of boxes containing more Davids is nothing short of horrible for a character who has at this point gained our sympathies.

But then there’s the ending… Eschewing for a second the cheating (David is apparently the first Mecha with self-awareness and emotions, so how come Joe shows an instinct for self-peservation? I normally hate plot-hole dwellers, but this one bugged me), and how awful the Dr. Know scene is (not even a fleeting reference to Bad Brains…), the ending of this film is truly awful.  A much more effective closing would have been David, sitting in a submerged Coney Island, forever waiting for the Blue Fairy to make him real.  That’s how Kubrick would have ended it, but Spielberg can’t resist the family reunion. So we are subjected to the post-human sequence in which the robot inhabitants of Earth find David in the ice and offer him one day of maternal reunion.  A.I.  is at once an exploration of the nature of love, particularly between mother and child, and admirable for steadfastly refusing to let David lose his innocence), but at the same time it’s horribly saccharine, and he should have learned by now.

For a second sci-fi adaptation on the bounce, Spielberg tackled Phillip K Dick’s Minority Report next.  Much like Hitchcock before him, the populist Spielberg by this stage works with the biggest stars in the world.  The next few years would see him work with Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks (again), and Daniel Craig but first he would pair up with Hollywood’s then-biggest star, Tom Cruise.  An underrated actor in my opinion, Cruise suits the part of framed cop John Anderton down to the ground.

While not destined to go down as a stone cold Spielberg classic, Minority Report is a fine film and does a great many things right. It’s effectively a film noir plot about a man wrongly (or is he?) accused of a murder, the twist being that it hasn’t happened yet and the man is in charge of predictive crime prevention.  Phil K Dick’s ‘what if?’ sci-fi often presents moral quandaries, and high-concept ‘Pre-Crime’ (an agency which uses clairvoyant ‘Precognatives’ to accurately predict murders and stop them before they happen) is a great one.  Spielberg, however, uses it as a jet-fuelled plot catalyst and from the moment Anderton is accused, the film barely comes up for air. And we all know how good Tom Cruise is at running…

Minority Report is shot in a neo-noir style but structured like an Indiana Jones-like chase film; detective drama meets electric set pieces.  Rather than the chiaroscuro style that defined noir, it is awash with over-exposed imagery early on with a focus on shots of eyes and glasses, what can and can’t be seen; it features the strangest (and probably most literal) femme fatale in cinema history (Emily Mortimer’s jittery ‘precog’ Agatha); and it builds to an understated climax, with an accusation rather than a chase or a fist fight.  As blockbusters go, it’s a strange one; noir-ish, but the theme of predetermined guilt makes it almost Hitchcockian (often a stylistic influence on Spielberg).  The high-concept, CGI-heavy sci-fi with a human core (Spielberg’s broken family unit, never more broken than here) is pure Spielberg.

The set pieces are impressive. For example, the scene where Anderton escapes from his own squad is one of the best in Spielberg’s latter work.  He cuts to the family eating dinner before showing the jetpacks crashing through their floor.  He sells the Lexus factory escape without the usual physics-defying jumping and punching.  It’s exciting and just the right side of funny.

Yes, there are problems: Anderton’s drug habit is a little trite and doesn’t quite fit the story; Agatha’s psychic abilities seem to suddenly switch on when a (admittedly pretty cool) set piece requires them; and the ending is ever so slightly on the too-happy side, although he does have the good grace not to oversell it.

He’s yet to venture back into pure sc-fi (and I’d much rather he did than fuck about with animation) and on the strength of these films, he’s still got the visual flair to make it interesting but he’s arguably a bit too optimistic, and not quite cynical enough, to pull it off in a post-Blade Runner and The Matrix world.  Bloody optimist…

Mission: Imposspielberg, Vol 6 - Boats and Bullets

After the relative disappointment of The Lost World, which was at best too light and fluffy to be of any real quality so the director took his eye off the ball, or at worst a cynical cash in, Spielberg got serious.  Amistad is one of the rare Spielberg films that I hadn’t previously seen before embarking on this insane project, and while it’s certainly not one I’ll be reaching for on a Saturday night, it’s important, handsome and well performed. It sits comfortably alongside Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Bridge Of Spies, Munich, and Lincoln as one of his ‘morality in immoral times’ films.

Amistad tells the 1839 story of a mutiny aboard the titular slave ship and the subsequent legal battle over the ownership of the people on board, and therefore the morality of ownership of a person in the context of pre-Revolutionary America.  Djimon Hounsou is on force-of-nature form as Sengbe Pieh, leader of the mutiny and figurehead of the legal case.  It’s a little patronising that he’s pretty much the only of the ‘slave’ population considered intelligent enough to speak at the trial, but Spielberg telegraphs the drama away from such concerns with a focus on how awful slavery was. 

There are strong performances across the board, with a post-A Time To Kill, pre-rom-com apocalypse Matthew McConaughey showing good form and Anthony Hopkins turning in what we now know to be a pretty standard ‘elder statesman’ performance as former president John Quincy Adams.  Oscar nominated at the time, Hopkins is impressive in his impassioned grandstanding, but as courtroom performances go, it’s no better than, say, Kevin Costner in JFK or McConaughey himself in A Time To Kill.  Hounsou is the star, his rage and humanity battling beneath the surface throughout.

No sensible person should need to have the fact that slavery was awful spelled out for them but Spielberg does an admirable job of highlighting the horrors.  We don’t feel remotely bad about the crewmen being murdered by the slaves; we celebrate the freed slaves’ victories; we feel incredulous at their treatment.  It’s such an obvious subject that the whole thing feels a little forced, but there’s skill in the telling of the story.  It’s easily slotted into the Spielberg canon alongside Lincoln as one of his well-meaning but preaching-to-the-choir films.  Yes, you don’t need to hear a passionate argument against slavery in The Land Of The Free, but sometimes passion gets you a lot way.

His career in danger of drying up somewhat in the years post-Schindler’s List, 1999 saw Spielberg rediscover his mojo with Saving Private Ryan.  Holding a special place in my heart as one of the films I remember seeing at Newcastle’s beautiful Odeon cinema before it closed, Ryan marks Spielberg’s 4^th collaboration with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, but the first time Kaminski’s influence was really as great as that of the director.

Wrongly criticised for being a dull film bookended by two memorable actions sequences, Ryan’s style became the ubiquitous in WW2 films: imitated but never equalled, the brothers-in-arms quality of the roughly-drawn characters just enough to keep things interesting and make you care about them, and the shaky-camera style nothing short of visceral.  I started Mission: Imposspielberg to remind myself of how I felt about his films years after I first saw them, and I’m happy to report that Ryan has lost none of its power.

The Omaha beach sequence rightly hogged the headlines back in 1999.  As brutal as anything Spielberg has shot before or since, this depiction of the hell of war is heart-in-mouth stuff.  Named characters, led by Tom Hanks’ everyman Cap. Miller, are thrown into the breach on the beach, allowing us to see just enough of them as countless others are slain around them.  Ed Burns’ bland Noo Yawker, Giovanni Ribisi’s moral medic, Barry Pepper’s memorable sniper, and Tom Sizemore’s indestructible grunt are all introduced with the narrative economy befitting an ensemble war movie, all the while chaos reigns around them.

The Brothers In Arms road movie format works well, Matt Damon’s Ryan an increasingly inaccessible MacGuffin (‘Saving Major MacGuffin’, presumably a rejected early draft), while a fine supporting cast (including Ted Danson, Paul Giamatti, Dennis Farina) help to ease things along.  It all builds, of course, to a stunning climactic battle, with a seriously tooled-up German battalion attacking an under-staffed U.S. Army outpost.  Ryan earns his stripes and the respect of the cast, Damon doing good work and, a rising star at the time, well cast as the dutiful GI.

Spielberg’s visual invention is unleashed throughout, but it’s the quiet, subtle moments rather than the grandiose battle scenes that steal the thunder.  A reflection in the window as a military procession arrives at Mrs. Ryan’s house, a captured German troop digging his own grave in silhouette; these are the moments that give the film heart, as well as Tom Hanks’ restrained performance.  His first collaboration with Spielberg, his humanity grounds the film (in a way that, say, Brad Pitt in Fury doesn’t), allowing the quirks of the ensemble cast do their thing, and reminding us that there’s a real person in the middle of the horror.

This is one of my favourite Spielberg films and watching it again after a good few years just reminds me of why.  It absolutely nails everything a war movie should have: a great ensemble cast (like Cross Of Iron, or The Great Escape), dehumanising horrors (The Big Red One, Full Metal Jacket), but a strong human core (Paths Of Glory, The Deer Hunter).  Spielberg’s often maligned, occasionally twee tendency towards soft-focus Hollywood-isms meets his sometimes-seen penchant for the visceral headlong and the results are rightly Oscar-winning.

My Top 10 Albums of 2016 (in no particular order)

Architects – All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us

Legally, I’m probably too old to listen to Brighton’s favourite sons but Architects keep churning out quality albums so it’s hard to ignore them.  2012’s Daybreaker and 2014’s Lost Together // Lost Forever took them to what I assumed was the natural peak of their math/core sound, having wisely ditched the naïve Dillinger-isms of their first couple of records. I was wrong, as I normally am, and AOGHAU is another triumph for British metal.  Here’s hoping they keep it going after the tragic loss of founding member Tom Searle, aged only 28.

Dinosaur Jr. – Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not

J. Mascis’ slacker-grunge combo have always bothered me.  Capable of both genius singles (‘Freak Scene,’ ‘Whatever’s Col With Me,’ or the grunge-era breakthrough ‘Start Choppin’’) and dull shoegaze album tracks, they have always been patchy for me, but with Mascis’ guitar sound, never less than distinctive. Glimpse shows them consistently at their best, with some absolute tunes on show.  Driving rock riffs on ‘Goin Down’ and melancholy melodies on ‘Be A Part’, all cut through by Mascis’ massive guitar tones and sloppy-sounding but actually perfectly pitched solos.  Showing us how it’s done, and we should be grateful for it.

Bob Mould – Patch The Sky

The world’s least rock star-sounding rock star released probably the best rock album of the year.  Former Husker Du and Sugar frontman Mould has always had a knack for marrying punk riffs to glorious melodies and this record saw him produce some of his finest material in ages. Mould’s influence on my record collection is huge and it’s refreshing to hear him release a record so vital after 30-odd years of influencing other musicians to do so. With songs like ‘The End Of Things’, Mould is still showing people how it’s done.

Every Time I Die – Low Teens

I wasn’t a huge fan of 2014 album From Parts Unknown, a (relative) lack of variety married to a muted production left me feeling unsatisfied after 2012’s fine Ex-Lives, but I always have faith in the Buffalo, NY bruisers to keep the quality barometer high. Low Teens boasts everything you’d want from them: Keith Buckley’s articulate lyrical invention; a barrage of riffs; breakneck tempo changes; and more ideas than you can shake a Cancer Bats record at.  Showcasing full throttle hardcore (‘Petal’, ‘Glitches’), epic slower tunes (‘Two Summers’, ‘It Remembers’, ‘Map Change’), chugging riff machines (‘Religion Of Speed’, ‘The Coin Has A Say’) and the downright weird (‘Fear & Trembling’), Low Teens has a bit of everything and it’s all done so well.

Ginger Wildheart – Year Of The Fan Club

Currently in a career renaissance, having discovered crowdfunding, he’s now managed three fine solo albums on the bounce following 100% and Albion, and long may it continue.  Also releasing the 2^nd Hey!Hello! (bubblegum pop with added riffs) record an 3^rd Mutation (art-noise, industrial kinda stuff) record this year, South Shields’ answer to Lennon, McCartney, Kurt Cobain and that Gallagher dickhead is a busy man (and none of them wrote ‘Geordie In Wonderland’…).  Containing by far and away the best tune of the year in ‘Only Henry Rollins Can Save Us Now’, this is as varied as Ginger has ever been. The folky ‘Toxins and Tea’ and ‘The Pendine Incident’, the wistful ‘If You Find Yourself In London Town’ rubbing shoulders with multifaceted epic ‘Don’t Lose Your Tail, Girl’, which sees Ginger paying tribute to positive female influences in his life.  Any album containing the lines “in the grim North East they all laugh at least” and “ok, calm down, let’s get fucking Zen about it,” deserves to sell millions.

Kvelertak – Nattesferd

Having evolved beyond the barmy Black Metal assault of their first album, 2013’s Meir saw them experiment with 70’s stadium rock, and Nattesferd sees them go full retro.  The triple-guitar lineup allows them to layer up their sound, which works to great effect here with melodic leads cutting through riffs that could have come from early Aerosmith or KISS records.  ‘1985’ could easily have come from a Van Halen album (probably 1984) and ‘Svartmesse’ is a Scandinavian earworm.  Within two albums, these Norwegian psychopaths (don’t believe me? See them live.) have gone from blast beats to catchy choruses. Praise be to the Odinson!

Heck – Instructions

The artists formerly known as Baby Godzilla returned with a new name and the same fierce sound.  Somewhere between anything Nirvana did that wasn’t Nevermind, and The Dillinger Escape Plan, Heck are raw, furious, and full of invention.  Punchy, multi-tempo songs build to a brilliant, 16-minute album closer.  Never a dull moment. More, please.

The Fall Of Troy – Ok

Having disappeared after 2009’s In The Unlikely Event, Washington state’s own Muse-on-crack returned in triumphant fashion with Ok.  The title is misleading; far from mediocre, this shows off the full range of Thomas Erak’s extensive guitar skills and the band’s formidable rhythm section. Seemingly impossible riffs welded into catchy, unique tunes like ‘401-K’ and ‘Suck-O-Matic’ with Erak’s manic yelp and slacker croon over the top.  Also, they decided to give the album away for free, making it the year’s best bargain.

Ihsahn – Arktis

Former Emperor man Ihsahn has been churning out solo albums for several years now, and not one of them has interested me.  This, his sixth offering, might change my mind, such is the quality and variety on display.  Not a hint of the symphonic black metal with which he made his name, Arktis is eclectic, exciting collection of tunes covering several genres. Hard to pin down and hard to predict, vocally and musically this is a beautiful experience.

Black Peaks – Statues

Brighton is apparently battling Leeds for the title (given by me) of England’s Seattle, and its latest export, Black Peaks, are destined for greatness.  Part Mastodon, part Reuben (whose singer Jamie Lenman guests on one track), they were a breath of fresh air in 2016.  Downright bizarre riffs, time signatures and textures are cut through by Will Gardner’s versatile vocal delivery.  Songs like ‘Saviour’ and ‘Glass Build Castles’ were complex enough to mark them out as unique, but catchy enough to be Karrang! Radio hits.  Like Marmozets a couple of years back, this is a band with immense promise.

Gig review: The Dillinger Escape Plan, Nottingham Rock City, 21/01/17

It’s never a nice thing when a band you like decide to break up, but when The Dillinger Escape Plan’s guitarist and founder Ben Weinman announced that 2016’s Dissociation album would be their swansong, it made a strange kind of sense.  There were no petty spats, no ‘musical differences’ (read: petty spats) and no embarrassingly public fallouts; they’ve just decided that enough is enough.  Weinman’s reasons made sense: not wanting to keep doing it when people were over it; not wanting to descend into self-parody; not wanting to try to push a pretty extreme band for longer than age would allow.  They wanted to leave dead horses unflogged and I respected that, even though I didn’t really like it.

Cruelly avoiding Newcastle on their farewell tour, we piled into a car and headed to Nottingham’s fine Rock City venue to see them off.  Hard to pigeonhole, Dillinger have had several labels thrown at them and have done their best to avoid them all: math-core, math-metal, metal-core, and whatever other hybrid terms lazy hacks could muster.  At times nodding to the likes of Nine Inch Nails or Faith No More as much as their whatever-core predecessors Botch and Coalesce, Dillinger simply sound like Dillinger.

I’m pleasantly surprised to see that Rock City, while not filled to capacity, is respectably busy for a band that isn’t exactly easy on the ears.  Apparently preferring Jack Daniels to support bands, we managed to miss one and a half of the supports and arrive midway through Ho99o9’s (pronounced ‘Horror’, apparently) set.  A live drummer and no other instruments that I could see, they were basically two guys stomping around the stage and shouting.  Wikipedia lists them as ‘experimental hip hop’ and when was Wikipedia ever been wrong?  The dense, mostly-bass noise that accompanies the vocals was pretty cool, it’s just a shame that they didn’t bring anyone with them to play it live, and it did get a little repetitive after a while.  Call me old fashioned, but that’s just cheating.

Dillinger, fronted by the impossibly ripped Greg Puciato, walk on to minimal lightshow or fuss and kick into recent single ‘Limerent Death’.  The rolling riff gives way to some NIN-like quiet moments before the accelerating tempo of the ending and some frankly savage screams from Puciato.  ‘Panasonic Youth’ is next, showcasing the breakneck tempo changes and baffling time signatures that make them such a unique prospect.

Puciato has developed into a fine frontman (hard going, since he technically replaced Mike Patton in the band) with a versatile range, which he shows off effortlessly tonight (how many of these [blank]-core bands have the drummer do the clean vocals because the singer can’t?).  Capable of a controlled falsetto, a fierce scream, and a distinctive clean vocal, he’s a ball of energy on stage.  In fact, it’s exhausting just watching them, such is the intensity of the show.  Weinman is a hyperactive presence (probably reflected in his writing style), seemingly unable to play a full song without mounting an amplifier or launching himself across the stage.  Not missing a single note while doing it, by the way.

The set draws from their 20-year career, with 5 songs pulled from Dissociation, and a good selection from the rest.  ‘Milk Lizard’ brings a dirty groove, ‘Black Bubblegum’ and ‘When I Lost My Bet’ are all stop-start rhythms and weird tempos, and the dynamic ‘One Of Us Is The Killer’ is the closest thing they’ll do to a conventional song.  Of their signature skittering ‘math’ songs, ‘Sunshine The Werewolf’ and ‘Farewell, Mona Lisa’ stand out as excellent songs as well as absolute monsters.

They slow it down with the piano-led ‘Mouths Of Ghosts’ before destroying the place with a final rendition of older tune ‘43% Burnt’.

It’s impressive enough that they can even remember such complex, fast and technical songs, but to be so tight and together live shows just what and exceptional band we’re losing.  They’re incredible tonight and as the crowd streams out I don’t think any of us will really appreciate how special they were until later.  Sure, we still have bands like Norma Jean, Car Bomb, Heck, Candiria and (presumably) Converge but good as they are none of them quite have what Dillinger had.

And here’s me already referring to them in the past tense.  Shit.

Citizen Jobs: some thoughts on the "best film ever made"

  

Bloggers, internet critics and also people who actually know what they’re talking about often cite Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) as the greatest film ever made.  Critics, amateur or otherwise, often seem a bit stuck in their ways and nobody has ever been bold enough to suggest that the world, in the ensuing 76 years, has created anything to take its mantle.  Let’s look at a few examples: 2001? Nah: they never take sci-fi seriously.  The Lives Of Others? Nah: they’d never give the title to a foreign-language film. Annie Hall? Nah: they’d never take comedy seriously (really, Adam? Really?).  Avengers Assemble? Well…

Personally, I think there are a few films that I would seriously consider bumping ahead of it on the list: The Godfather (1 or 2), Casablanca, It’s A Wonderful Life, Singin’ In The Rain, 2001, Sunset Boulevard.  The best film ever should be entertaining as well as well made, and in the words of Family Guy, “I just saved you two long, boobless hours” by telling you that Kane’s Rosebud is the name of his childhood sled.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not looking for a favourite film here (The Graduate, thanks for asking, although I do have a Top 5), but one that would be seriously considered the best.  This raises the question of criteria: what makes Citizen Kane the best, and what are we looking for in a contender?

Kane is often lauded, and rightly so, for the following: visual style (use of deep focus, Welles’ command of framing); narrative structure (told out of sequence, largely in flashback, and from multiple perspectives, which may not be entirely reliable); a towering central performance from Welles, unofficially playing newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst as a narcissistic tyrant; themes of the corrupting, dehumanizing influence of power and money, and a portrait of a man with immense cultural influence.

Perhaps we haven’t lauded another best film of all time because it was made in a more innocent time; Kane did technical things with film form and narrative structure that had not been done before so it perhaps gets extra points for originality?  Maybe we just haven’t had a film worthy of the title since.

Well I have a contender, if not a title challenger.  Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs biopic is unlikely to be remembered as a ‘best film of all time’ but for me, it ticks all the boxes Kane receives so much credit for inventing.

A visual box of tricks since Shallow Grave, Boyle pulls rabbit out of rabbit out of his virtuoso hat (or should that be ipods out of a roll neck jumper?) to make kinetic and fresh a story that is still in the public consciousness.  Apple’s hits and misses are projected along corridors as characters walk along them; leads Fassbender, Winslet and Catherine Waterston are shot in seemingly impossible reflections in dressing room mirrors as Boyle’s camera dances around them; his shot choices are brilliant, making one-room scenes of people arguing utterly thrilling in a way not seen since 12 Angry Men.  Best of all, though, is a sombre boardroom scene; under lit, with the downpour outside projected in the unlikeliest of places within, it’s a masterful piece of pathetic fallacy.

You’ve all seen biopics, right? They follow a pretty standard format, right? We first see famous person on the eve of a big event, reflecting on their past.  We’re then taken back to see their childhood, fledgling talent, early success, and then the fame years when it all goes to their heads and they alienate their loved ones in a haze of ego and addiction, before final redemption.  It ends with said big event showing that they’ve still got it!  Seen that film once or twice?  Steve Jobs eschews such formula in favour of staging the entire film backstage at three product launches, spanning 14 years.  We see Jobs at various stages of success and relative failure, and his story is told via his relationships to Apple programmer Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) and CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), as well as his sisterly marketing exec Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet).  This allows Boyle to put a huge amount of faith in his audience to follow what’s been happening in the interim and be playful with exposition, and play on Jobs’ incalculable self-belief in the face of good and bad times.

Best of all, though, is that Jobs’ story is grounded by his relationship to ex-partner Chrisann Brennan (Waterston) and the little girl that Jobs denies is their child.  This gives what culd be a very dull story about a computer company a very human and emotional core, and the moments where Jobs opens up to her, breaking his aloof veneer to become a real person for a little while, are truly special.  A biopic, then, that is unconcerned with a start, middle, and end, and while chronological, certainly unconventional.

Written by the peerless Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs is relentlessly paced, with quips and put downs to rival His Girl Friday in its acerbic wit: when challenged on what Jobs actually did for Apple, his priceless response was that he “plays the orchestra”.  Fassbender’s performance as Jobs is not the showy fare that wins Oscars, but has the relentless energy one would expect from a man whose cultural legacy, for better or worse, has changed the world.  While neither a character assassination nor a puff piece, Jobs himself does not come off as a nice man – in his own words, “poorly made” - rather a borderline-Autistic, single-minded man who upsets those who care about him in pursuit of a goal.  Few actors could bring and sustain such energy while still delivering the emotional beats.  As Welles was unafraid to show his Kane as both young idealist and embittered old tyrant, Fassbender plays Jobs at his worst, and as human as he could be.

Steve Jobs even has its own ‘Rosebud’ moment, which is wonderfully underplayed by Boyle.  In a final emotional reveal from Jobs, we find out that he in fact kept and cherished the drawing his daughter did on a prototype Macintosh, despite denying his paternity all along.  Furthermore, the drawing bears a striking resemblance to the design of Jobs’ piece de resistance, the iMac.  We find out, as his daughter does, that he has cared all along.

I doubt for one second that Steve Jobs will ever come up in a conversation about the best film ever made, but when that discussion comes up, even if it’s blogged using a Mac (this wasn’t, by the way), please remember that Danny Boyle’s films does everything Kane does, and better in some places.  So does Kane get extra points for getting there first? Has Boyle, and everyone else since Orson Welles, simply set their camera running on the shoulders of giants?  I’m going to have a listen to my iPod while I decide.

Mission: Imposspielberg, Vol. 5 - Making Lists and Running Away

With the making of both Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, 1993 turned out to be a pretty good year for Spielberg.  Having poked fun at Nazis in the Indiana Jones films, (what better expendable henchman than those responsible for the holocaust?) and 1941, he decided that the subject required a more serious approach.  Adapting Thomas Keneally’s novel Schindler’s Ark, this was clearly as personal a project as Spielberg had undertaken and a chance to tell a story close to his Jewish heritage.  Schindler’s List is also the first of his moral man in an immoral time films, a loose theme he would revisit with Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Lincoln and Bridge Of Spies: the world is going to shit, and somebody has to do the right thing.

For a film set in an ugly time, it’s a beautiful film to watch.  His visual flourishes are nothing short of beautiful at times and his framing, establishing the shifting power relationships between Schindler (Liam Neeson) and Stern (Ben Kingsley – the real hero here) is masterful.  The (mostly) black and while photography adds a certain credibility and a sombre, serious tone.  The few flourishes of colour (some candles, that girl in the red coat), while once hugely effective now seem somehow clichéd and manipulative. 

To cover the bad aspects first, Schindler’s List is an incredibly manipulative film. An argument levelled at Spielberg throughout most of his career; that he pretty much tells you how to feel at all times, is powerfully at play here.  And while you shouldn’t need any encouragement to feel awful that the holocaust happened, and filled with happiness that somebody saved a lot of lives right under Nazi noses, Spielberg telegraphs your emotions right the way through.  Indeed, the closing scenes, including Schindler’s tearful breakdown and the frankly implausible scene where defeated Nazi guards decide to bugger off from duty on hearing the news that Germany has surrendered and a speech from Schindler, are both the most deliberately affecting and least realistic.  And while the film makes clear that Schindler’s intentions were initially to make money from the war, he is never really condemned as a war profiteer, adulterer, nor a member of the Nazi party.

What largely keeps the mammoth running time bearable is the quality of the performances on offer.  Liam Neeson, pre-endless wise mentor roles, pre-pre-endless ageing hard man roles, is imperious and makes Schindler powerful, commanding, and determined even as his motives shift throughout.  Ralph Fiennes’ Amon Geoth is a world class shit and could easily have been a pantomime villain in the hands of a lesser actor.  Fiennes’ psychotic beleaguered Nazi commander makes Voldemort look like Hagrid but Fiennes imbues him with a beleaguered, weary realism to a man who randomly shoots prisoners before breakfast; a psychopath, but one under orders from bigger psychopaths.  Best of all, though, is Ben Kingsley’s Itzhak Stern, who brings a quiet humanity to balance Neeson’s grandstanding and Fiennes’ misanthropy.

This is a fine achievement from Spielberg; bottling one of history’s worst atrocities, perhaps too great to comprehend, into a story about one man who did what was in his power about it.  That it gets dewy-eyed is perhaps understandable, given the horrors on display and the director’s personal connection. The whitewashing of Schindler himself is perhaps also understandable given the villainy on display elsewhere and Spielberg’s need for a hero.  The question remains whether such an awful period of history can, or even should, be distilled into a story about one man’s heroic endeavours.  It also makes one wonder how Stanley Kubrick’s aborted Holocaust film, The Aryan Papers, would have handled the subject.  He is said to have expressed relief at not having to go through with it after Spielberg got there first.

Probably needing a rest after such endeavours, Spielberg’s next film would not emerge until 1997, with The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  Taking another Michael Crichton novel, which Spielberg convinced him to write, and jettisoning much of the plot, this ranks among the worst of Spielberg’s films (it’s no 1941, but it’s certainly no Raiders Of The Lost Ark).  A massive fan of the first film, I probably rushed to see this on release.  But with the addition of 20 years’ worth of critical faculties, I can only now see that this is more turkey than T-Rex.

Taking Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm and stripping him of his sardonic wit (and therefore everything that made him interesting), The Lost World throws him onto the island InGen used to breed the dinosaurs for the first Jurassic Park, where he has to save the child he neglected to mention in the first film, and Julianne Moore’s kind of dull scientist ex-Mrs Malcolm.  The 2^nd island concept is good, throwing in an element of the unknown and uncontrolled and playing on the audience’s prior knowledge, but there characters on display are so thinly drawn that we don’t really care what happens to them.  The child, ex-girlfriend and Vince Vaughn’s pointless Greenpeace-type activist are there to a) add peril and b) complete Spielberg’s blueprint faux-family unit.  There was a game keeper in the first film; here, we have an entire hunting party led by Pete Postlethwaite’s (admittedly quite good) Roland Tembo.  As with, say, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, the problem is that none of the characters are sketched out well enough to make us care about them, thus reducing them to raptor food.  Even walking hard-on Ian Malcolm feels like he’s been castrated by concern for his progeny, although Goldblum tries his best.

Structurally, the film suffers as well.  After a rushed introduction to the island, shorn of the sense of awe captured so well in the original, we endure set piece after set piece until just about everyone is dead.  One of these, a literal ciffhanger with a thin pane of glass between Julianne Moore and a watery grave, is actually very good, but the rest of them leave your senses dulled by death after bloody death.  The climax, clearly influenced by King Kong, feels tacked on, with only a few Spielberg gracenotes (T-Rex in a back yard etc.) to save it.  Spielberg’s visual flair is rarely on display, with only the ‘raptors in the long grass’ scene really showcasing his knack for suspense.

The Lost World sorely misses the grounded charisma of Sam Neill, tenacity of Laura Dern, and even the pantomime villainy of Wayne Knight’s Nedry or Martin Ferrero’s slimy lawyer Gennaro.  The best it can muster is Arliss Howard’s Peter Ludlow, whose Mayor-from-Jaws archetype company man isn’t even dislikeable enough for us to care when he’s eaten.  He’s supposed to be Richard Attenborough’s nephew and heir, and Attenborough’s relegation to brief exposition-vendor is an insult to both him and the first film.

To try to figure out why The Lost World fails so badly, you have to look at the first film.  The park was supposed to be a full of fun and wonder, the characters themselves full of awe when they first saw a dino, as was the audience.  When paradise turns into a nightmare, it’s surprising and frightening.  Here, both characters and audience are told that the island is going to be a nightmare from the very start.  That is turns out to be exactly that leaves the whole endeavour somewhat flat and unsurprising. 

Spielberg is capable of so much better, and on the evidence of this, he knew it from the start.

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.