I made it!
It's been a long slog and sometimes a hard one, but I've done what I said I would and written about a different film every day throughout October. What better way to celebrate on the 31st, therefore, than with a good old-fashioned campfire myth?
Ghost Rider was one of the films I had in mind when I first created this blog; everybody seemed to dislike it and I could kind of see why, but that hasn't stopped me returning to it again and again over the years, nor from feeling a quick shiver of happiness whenever I notice Channel 5 are showing it on TV of an evening. A quick poll of my comic-book-movie-loving friends suggests that hardly any of them have even seen it, so if you like, you can view this particular entry as my explanation to them of why they've been missing out.
The Ghost Rider character has actually been going for a long time, on and off, first appearing in 1949 in a series of horror-themed Western tales for short-lived and abysmally-named comics house Magazine Enterprises. Back then, he was a spectral figure on the proverbial pale horse, a thousand miles away from the motorcycling, chain-wielding skeleton modern audiences know. Both versions of the character are visually beguiling, and so the movie tries to unite them in a single origin story.
The prologue explains, in live action and animation, how the Ghost Riders were the Mephistopheles' bounty hunters, and how one rider rebelled and ran away with one particular contract, believing it to be to powerful to fall into the Devil's hands. Flash forward 150 years or so, meanwhile, and we're at a carnival in Texas, watching the Amazin' Blazin' Motorcycle Stunt Show. Barton Blaze and his teenage son, Johnny, are talented performers, but Johnny's heart doesn't seem to be quite in it - his focus is firmly on pretty local girl, Roxanne. We find out subsequently that Roxanne's father is planning on sending her away, and the pair of them make plans to elope the following day.
When Johnny returns to the trailer he shares with his father, however, he finds him asleep in his recliner, and the nearby bin contains a crumpled letter informing Barton that his cancer has spread. Grief-stricken, Johnny heads out to the tent where the motorcycles are kept, and there he meets with a sinister figure who makes him an offer he can't refuse.
The good
In the early stages, at least, Ghost Rider is a proper myth - a simple story simply told that you can't help but want to believe in. I was hooked from the second Sam Elliott read the prologue, and the eventual segue into the carnival segment provides a delicious slow burn. Something awful but also sort of awesome is clearly going to happen, but the movie takes its time and lets you savour every second. There's a beautiful spookiness to it, and it suffuses pretty much the entire first half of the movie.
The performances are pretty good, too, in general. Nic Cage lends the title role a real depth and sweetness - his Johnny Blaze is a lunkhead, yes, but also a philosopher, and a showman, and a romantic. It is his love for Roxanne that drives the action, and it's easy to see why she can never entirely resist him even when his behaviour grows increasingly erratic. As Roxanne, meanwhile, Eva Mendez doesn't have that much to do but be alternately spunky and sympathetic, tasks that she pulls off with more or less equal aplomb. Also deserving of credit is Sam Elliott as the Caretaker, whose voice lends the story much of its flavour.
Of course, it's impossible to discuss a film like this without at least mentioning the visual effects. Different people are always going to have different ideas of what looks fake, but for the most part, everything seemed pretty real to me to me. I often have a problem with artificial-looking CGI fire, but nothing here looked obviously animated to the point where I was unable to suspend my disbelief. Probably the best effect, however, was the Australian landscape that stood in for Texas. It lends an aching majesty to what has to be the film's most beautiful scene, where the Rider and his nineteenth-century predecessor race through the desert, slicing it in two with a trail of red-gold flame.
The bad
A common problem with superhero movies is that the villains are more interesting than the heroes - Batman franchise, I'm looking at you here. It's a problem because within the superhero genre at least, an audience that roots for the bad guy is an audience that's going to ultimately go away disappointed. That said, without a charismatic antagonist, a hero might as well be fighting against, I don't know, a snowdrift or something.
As Mephistopheles, Peter Fonda does his best - an initial act of dazzling cruelty sets the tone promisingly enough - but around halfway through, we're thrown a curveball and he becomes more of a sort of gentleman thief. His replacement, Blackheart (Wes Bentley) has some nifty henchmen, but he doesn't have the charisma or the moves to offer any real sense of menace. From the moment he makes his first appearance, the movie slowly starts to sag around the seams. Two hours is a fairly substantial running time for a film like this, and the final payoff just isn't quite spectacular enough to compensate for the gradually diminishing returns.
The verdict
In the end, your enjoyment of Ghost Rider is likely to hinge on two key factors: firstly, your tolerance for Nic Cage in the sort of role he's famous for, and secondly, whether or not you think things (vehicles, people, household objects, scenery) look awesome when they're on fire. I can offer you no further guidance; it's just something you're gonna have to work out for yourselves.
This concludes my participation in the 31 days challenge, but rest assured, the blog will go on. Join me on Monday for a look back at what we've all learned.
As the 31 Days Challenge has drawn on, I'm ashamed to admit I've become increasingly cavalier in my attitude to finding material to cover. I started out with a whole week planned out, and spent ages tracking down just the right films to fulfil my self-imposed restrictions. By this point? If it's on TV before 10pm and draws less than about a seven on the IMDB, it's probably fair game.
That said, when I saw Footloose on the TV schedules yesterday I initially discounted it. I mean, everybody loves Footloose, don't they? Not me, admittedly, because I'd never actually seen it, but it's one of those movies that seems to have woven itself into the fabric of history, not exactly in a cult movie sort of way, but by becoming part of a shared cultural idiom. Everybody remembers it's set in a town where rock and roll is banned, everybody knows that it's about Kevin Bacon's dancing teenager versus John Lithgow's uptight preacher, and everybody recognises the opening sequence with the tapping feet. I, on the other hand, knew of it, knew it would annoy me, and knew, without looking, that it was one of those films like the original Star Wars trilogy that had an inexplicably high IMDB rating because all the people rating it were clearly idiots.
Pickings were slim, though, so I went and looked anyway. 6.4? Damn, nope, couldn't dismiss it on grounds of unwarranted popularity, particularly given that the critic reviews seemed to be equally lukewarm. I gritted my teeth, apologised to my other half and settled in for what I was sure would be another long hard slog.
The good
All my life I've loved films, and all my life I've loved to read about them. What I'm less fond of, however, is surprises, so before I watch a movie I tend to do my research, even if said movie is decades old and showing on a relatively obscure Freeview channel. It's fairly rare, therefore, for a film to confound my expectations.
Footloose, though? Blindsided me almost entirely. I was expecting annoying teenagers, heavy-handed moralising, casual sexism and John Lithgow hamming it up in the same way he would a year later in Santa Claus: The Movie. What I got, on the other hand, was a surprisingly even-handed drama that only occasionally slipped into cheap sensationalism. Granted, the teenagers were sometimes annoying, but isn't that what teenagers are for?
As Ren, Bacon makes for an engaging hero, not so much a rebel as a vaguely baffled advocate for his peers. Oh, and he really does have all the moves. Lithgow, meanwhile, delivers a far more measured performance than I had been expecting, making the Rev. Shaw Moore a surprisingly nuanced and even sympathetic antagonist. The supporting players are generally solid, too, with Chris Penn and a young Sarah Jessica Parker utterly delightful as best friends to the male and female lead respectively. Lori Singer, meanwhile, playing the Reverend's daughter Ariel, provides us with a complex, brave heroine.
Of course, the main thing you want from a film like this is big dance sequences and a happy ending. Beneath its flash, however, Footloose hides some surprisingly sound political credentials - an early scene, for instance, sees Ren challenging a rival not for calling him a pansy, but for the use of the word itself. This isn't a film where the female characters are treated as quota fillers or fashion accessories, either; both Ariel and her mother struggle with their own dreams and regrets, and it is this that lends the story its momentum. My only real complaint in this respect is that it does all look a tiny bit Aryan - no non-white faces here, and nobody who looks less than cover-model pretty.
The bad
There's not that much here to dislike, so I won't dwell. That said, and I can't believe I'm saying this, the film could actually have stood to be just a tiny bit shallower.
The problem is that the central premise - a town in the 1980s where music and dancing are banned - is such a ridiculous straw man, that it really requires backup by a proper pantomime villain. Shaw Moore fails to cut it not only because he's clearly crippled by grief and remorse, but, critically, because he's so quick to listen to reason when it comes from the people he loves. I know I'm quite vocal about films that revel in sadistic comeuppances, but by the end of Footloose I was actively rooting for Moore to find happiness. This is something I'd actually praise in a serious drama, but in a teenage dance flick? Convention demands the filthy killjoy bastard lands up spluttering in well-deserved humiliation, preferably whilst covered in something likely to incur a hefty dry-cleaning bill.
So, just so we're clear, careful with this one; it contains real, three-dimensional characters and traces of genuine sensitivity have been detected. You have been warned.
The verdict...
...Will be delivered once I've finished wiping the egg from my face. Footloose is far from perfect, but it has charm, a good heart and a few absolutely great dance sequences. Leave Dirty Dancing in the corner (it's toxic, trust me on this) and bring this one back with you instead.
I love caper movies. Watching the best ones feels like watching the creation of an elaborate origami flower - you can see each individual fold being put into place and while it's all clearly very clever, it's not easy to work out what everything means. As the flower grows, there's ruses and red herrings to theorise about, and an assemblage of charismatic characters to root for. The real joy, however, comes in the anticipation of that very last moment, where the flower blossoms and everything suddenly resolves itself into delicate perfection.
I love movies with Mark Ruffalo in them. Or do I? Certainly, I can't recall ever watching him play a character that didn't make me swoon like a Mills and Boon heroine. It's his voice, I think, and the way he moves, simultaneously diffident and driven. It melts my resistance like a blowtorch, but damned if it doesn't invariably make me feel slightly soiled after the fact. I may rave, therefore, about Avengers Assemble and Now You See Me, but I rarely get the desire to watch them again.
I digress, though. Whilst checking my facts for yesterday's film, I happened to read about The Brothers Bloom. It's a caper movie that stars Mark Ruffalo as well as Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz, both capable and engaging performers with real acting chops. IMDB users rated it 6.9, which is probably at the lower end of average if you look at it in dim lighting with your eyes scrunched up, so I decided it was probably worth a punt.
Bloom tells the story of brothers Stephen (Ruffalo) and Bloom (Brody), who learn to grift as kids while being bounced from foster home to foster home. Bloom, a sensitive soul, is too shy to speak to girls, so Stephen starts devising increasingly elaborate con tricks that allow him to play any role he chooses, including that of the dashing romantic lead. The perfect con, Stephen maintains, is one where all parties receive exactly what they want.
To say much more about the plot would be to risk spoilers. I don't think it's revealing too much, however, to say it revolves around Weisz' wealthy heiress and, inevitably, that one last con.
The good
This is usually the part where I say that the day's film looks gorgeous, and yes, Bloom certainly does. Director Rian Johnson doesn't seem anxious to tie the setting to any particular time period, borrowing visual idiom from film noir and European fairytales as well as modern crime thrillers. It's quirky, yes, but then so's everything else in the film, from the rhyming prologue to the heiress' hobby of collecting hobbies.
Performances? What did you really expect? Johnson's script is in safe hands here. Brody really gets the chance to use his physicality as the lovelorn Bloom, while Weisz' Penelope is as winsome a heroine as you could hope for. Star prize, however, has to go to Rinko Kikuchi as Bang Bang, the boys' assistant, who has maybe a dozen lines in the entire movie but steals entire scenes with a single roll of her eyes. If there is a weak link here (and I'm not saying there was) it would have to be Ruffalo, who doesn't seem entirely at home in a role that fails to capitalise on his trademark intensity.
The bad
Damn, but Johnson wants people to love this film. Most especially, I think, he wants Wes Anderson fans to love it. What the viewer gets, therefore, is a lot of Andersonesque stylings in the costumes and the mannered dialogue, and the rambling plot that never really matters as much as the character quirks.
Except that, well, Bloom is a film about a con, so plot matters. Or is a film about a con that turns out not to be much of a con the biggest con of all? Personally, deprived of that one final fold to bring the flower into focus, I felt as though I'd been conned myself. Sure, the movie is witty and charming, but is it truly intelligent? Probably not. Half an hour after viewing I was left with that same old Ruffalo hangover; the nasty, slimy feeling I get when a film temporarily engages my heart without actually getting anywhere near my brain.
The verdict
The Brothers Bloom is one of the cutest pieces of filmmaking I've seen in a very long time, with engaging characters and a truly intriguing setup. It's a shame, therefore, that after a delightful first hour Johnson goes for sentiment over substance, leading to a conclusion that fails to pack either intellectual or emotional punch.
Today finds me looking at a low-budget, arthouse Britflick - ask me why, and I'll tell you it's because it was one of only a couple of colour films available on iPlayer. I don't have anything against black and white, but I just don't have the knowledge base to be able to provide any sort of coherent frame of reference.
Unfortunately, skimming the IMDB reviews for Kicks, I'm not sure I'll be able to do this one justice, either - it seems to be the sort of film that invites serious, in-depth critique from a bunch of serious, in-depth people, not the sort of people who'd, say, be typing abstractedly at 5.55am with their minds firmly and sulkily on Marvel's latest casting announcement. Ladies and gentlemen, we should not be giving Benedict Cumberbatch acting work because this will only encourage him to act, and then where shall we be? Up to our eyeballs in the twentysomething equivalent of the Directioners, that's where.
...You get my point, I'm sure. Existing reviews of Kicks tend towards the intelligent and knowledgeable, and at this time of morning I don't think I can necessarily offer either. Still, college try, and all that.
Kicks is Lindy Heymann's second feature, and it tells the story of two very different teenage girls with one shared obsession. Nicole (Kerrie Hayes) is from a deprived background; with mostly-absent parents and little in the way of prospects, she seeks solace by dreaming of the players of her local Liverpool football club. Jasmine (Nichola Burley), meanwhile, slightly older and more sophisticated, longs for the glamorous lifestyle of the WAGs - the wives and girlfriends of the millionaire footballers, with their endless cycle of shopping and parties and beauty treatments.
The pair of them bond whilst waiting for player Lee Cassidy to emerge from a training session. Their friendship develops in scenes reminiscent of Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, with Jasmine offering Nicole a glimpse into another world and making it seem almost attainable. Nicole, meanwhile, provides a hideout for them in the form of a static caravan abandoned by her older brother, a serving soldier.
Together, they pursue Cassidy, desperate for any chance of contact with their idol. When chance throws him into their laps, however, what will they do?
The good
This is a beautiful piece of filmmaking that shows Liverpool at its moody best - bleak and dreamlike at once. Long, slow shots of the city seem to turn it into the girls' entire universe. It's a claustrophobic world, though, and the persistently dim lighting acts as a visual manifestation of the protagonists' aching yearning for something brighter.
The soundtrack, too, is pure Liverpool, coming from locals Ladytron. Shimmeringly sinister and suffocatingly oppressive, it forms the film's pounding heartbeat, at times fading almost into nothing before slipping insidiously forth to dominate Kicks' numerous nightclub scenes. Importantly, music is mostly used organically here; while it does cover a couple of montages, I don't recall the it being particularly audible at any other point when it wouldn't have been playing anyway.
Performances are mostly good, with particular credit to Kerrie Hayes - her Nicole is a complex character, but never an incomprehensible one. In the slightly less sympathetic role of Jasmine, Nichola Burley offers solid support. As Lee Cassidy, Jamie Doyle is never entirely convincing, but then, his role is little more than an extended cameo - his function is the same of that of any pop culture idol, a mood board onto which the fans can pin their own fantasies and insecurities.
The bad
What we clearly have here, then, is a fantastic character piece. Does it stand up to closer scrutiny, though? Unfortunately, I'm inclined to say not. Maybe I've watched too much multiplex fodder lately, but I found myself frustrated with Kicks' tonal inconsistencies - it just couldn't decide which damned genre box it wanted to tick. As a thriller, the pacing is simply too slow, while it lets itself down as a drama with a slightly histrionic last act.
The problem is that there's at least three or four interesting stories here, but the film can't decide which it wants to tell and so has a stab at all of them at once. Is it a coming of age drama? Is it a cautionary tale about our obsession with celebrity culture? Is it Kes, or Hard Candy? I'm not suggesting that every film has to fit neatly into its own genre box, but the storytelling here is deeply muddled and not in a deliberate, bait-and-switch sort of way. I genuinely couldn't work out what Heymann was trying to say, leaving me with a final feeling of nagging dissatisfaction.
The verdict
I'm honestly not sure about this one. I started watching hoping for either an interesting drama or a gripping thriller, and ended up feeling as though I'd received neither. My overriding instinct is that this will be one to come back to once Kerrie Hayes has made it big; on the strength of her performance here, I'm sure she will.
Since I started doing this, I've grown to enjoy looking at the Sunday film listings; sure, it's nice to cover movies I know about, but I still enjoy being surprised sometimes. Besides, there's always such a lot to choose from - yesterday, for instance, I could have held off until late and chosen from any number of bad horror films. Dragonball: Evolutions was on, too, but my eyes saw the listing and promptly deleted it from my brain until it was too late and I was already busy doing something else.
Instead, then, today's offering is Tooth Fairy, which is basically a non-seasonal re-write of The Santa Clause. It tells the story of minor-league hockey player Derek Thompson (Dwayne Johnson), whose dreams of being one of the all-time greats were crushed by injury several years previously. Depressed and disillusioned, he basically becomes a professional enforcer, tackling the opposing team's star players and taking them out of the game - a habit which earns him the nickname of the Tooth Fairy.
As might be expected, it's a name that eventually comes back to haunt him when, after getting caught stealing his girlfriend's daughter's tooth money from under her pillow to buy into a poker game, he explains to the girl that there's no such thing. His girlfriend is decidedly unimpressed, but worse is to come, when the following morning he finds a note beneath his own pillow, and it contains not money, but a summons. For the crime of disseminating disbelief, Derek has been sentenced to spend a week as a tooth fairy, wings, sparkle dust and all.
The good
When I selected this movie from the listings, I did so because I knew no matter how bad everything else about it might be, Johnson is one of the most charismatic men on the face of the planet. My reasoning was that he could redeem more or less anything.
Was I right about this? Check the next section down, if you get my drift.
In fact, it was the veterans who carried this one for me. Julie Andrews only seems to get more beautiful as she ages, and Billy Crystal isn't doing badly for himself either. Her senior Fairyland executive and his slightly demented gadget man provided some of the very few high spots in a movie that was otherwise dim in every sense of the word.
I'm not sure what else I can add to the positive column here; there's no particularly glaring sexism or racism, I guess. There's no sizeism at all, either, but that's because with the exception of the slightly saggy Crystal, all the players are perfectly slim and cover-model pretty.
And that's it, really; normally I can find something to enchant me in just about any movie, but sadly this one left me completely cold.
The bad
I doubt that I'll be writing much here that you wouldn't already suspect, to be honest. Tooth Fairy suffers from a so-so script, slightly shoddy effects and the sort of soundtrack that might as well be an operatic aria in terms of the way it relentlessly tells you what's going to happen ten seconds or so before it actually does. All it really needs is a man with an electric cattle prod at your side whispering menacingly whenever he thinks you need to laugh or cry.
What did surprise me, however, was quite what an unlikeable hero Dwayne Johnson proved to be. Now, call me a fangirl if you must, but I don't think the blame for this one lies entirely or even partly on his shoulders. It's just that the character of Derek Thompson was written to be such an unrelenting jerk - okay, we get it, he got burned when he was young and now he's a cynic. This is understood the first time he tells a seven-year-old boy to give up on his dreams. It's not a bad little scene, relatively speaking; it's sort of amusing and sort of sad at once. By the time he's delivered a near-identical speech to more or less every other major character, however, and watched them crumble, it gets hard to shake the feeling that he's just a spiteful asshole who gets off on making people cry. When the inevitable happy ending came around, therefore, I mostly found myself hoping that his girlfriend knew what she was letting herself in for.
The verdict
Is this the worst film I've seen so far this month? Not even close. It's cheap, though, and it's lazy, and ill-thought-out, and vaguely depressing. Your kids deserve better than this, and so do you.
Don't mind me, okay? I'm just sat here wondering whether or not I have the energy to open this entry with a quickie rewrite of the theme from the Brady Bunch TV series. It's tempting, granted, but any time sit down to try something like this I land up looking up and suddenly an hour's gone past and I've written about twenty words, at least five of which I'm not entirely sure about.
Seriously, though, it's just strange the way I know all the lyrics to the Brady Bunch theme, particularly since I don't remember having seen an episode in my life. Was it ever even on British TV? Apparently so, but it was last shown in 1982, when I would've been five years old. One of life's great mysteries, I suppose, albeit not a particularly interesting one.
As far as I can tell, it wasn't a particularly interesting series, either, belonging to that era when US audiences wanted nothing more from their sitcoms than bright colours and simple repetition of catchphrases and life lessons. Of course, I could be talking out of my backside here, in which case, please forgive me? I'm sure I could locate some on YouTube if I was feeling particularly diligent, but I'm just that little bit too frightened as to what I might find.
Anyhow, for the uninitiated, The Brady Bunch was a sitcom that ran from 1969 - 1974. It told the story of widowed Mike Brady and his three sons, and his marriage to Carol Ann Martin, who had three daughters. Interestingly, Carol Ann's former marital status was never disclosed, since the networks were reluctant to have an openly divorced character on mainstream television. The show presented a warm, loving family, with episodes dealing with typical childhood and teenage dilemmas, generally from the point of view of the kids themselves. The original run was followed by a plethora of spin-offs and sequels, but by 1990, no further new material was being produced.
1995's Brady Bunch Movie takes the slightly unusual step of taking the very, very 1970s Brady family and shifting them, unchanged, to 1990s LA. It gives them a fairly generic story of an evil property developer trying to displace them from their beloved family home, and then spends its brisk 90-minute running time riffing on all of the above. The fish-out-of-water elements and the gentle parody meant that this one was something I'd always meant to watch, but somehow it managed to slip beneath my radar for the better part of twenty years. All in all, that 5.9 IMDB rating was the perfect excuse.
The good
I cannot lie, it took me a little while to warm to this one. The Brady Bunch Movie is a send-up, yes, but its preferred method of lampooning seems to involve faithfully copying the old series. The central family themselves, therefore, are as saccharine and sanctimonious as one might (or might not) wish. The performances, too, are highly exaggerated, with every single word and facial expression pushed just a fraction of an inch too far. It's no bad thing and definitely a stylistic decision, but it's not necessarily a style I find easy to appreciate on a personal level.
Before long, however, I was won over by the sheer warmth and good nature of the endeavour. Yes, the Brady family are awful, but they're also awfully endearing - they make it hard not to feel at least a flicker of nostalgia for the good old days, even if we don't remember said days and even if they probably never even existed at all.
Gary Cole and Shelley Long shine as Mike and Carol, the former taking mansplaining to new heights while the latter looks on in wide-eyed adoration and awaits her cue to agree with his every word. The kids are similarly appealing - particular credit goes to Jennifer Elise Cox as Jan, whose every glare and hair-flick are absolutely spot-on.
For a movie about pop culture, the Brady Bunch Movie has dated surprisingly well. It resists the temptation to try too hard to shock either the audience or its central characters, too. Sure, it plays with the family's naiveté in the face of a cynical modern world, but it definitely does so with mischief rather than malice.
The bad
I was hard-pressed to come up with anything I particularly disliked about this one - it was cringeworthy, yes, particularly in the early stages when I was getting into the right headspace, but that's not something I'm prepared to criticise given that cringeworthy is clearly what the filmmakers were aiming for.
Roger Ebert claimed that the modern world it presented was too innocent, and that something more bleak was required; perhaps he was right, but I do think a darker setting would have risked darkening the tone of the movie as a whole and losing the sunny warmth that the team were trying to recapture. I'm not a great fan of cruel humour in general - black humour, yes, but that's something different entirely - and I really liked the fact that this was a film where nobody really got humiliated.
Other complaints seem to be that the film felt a little long, and I think this is harder to dispute. Obviously, there's a certain minimum length that you can expect multiplex audiences to pay for; The Brady Bunch Movie perches right on the edge of it, but it would have been nice to have a little more story to fill it.
The verdict
Here's the story
Of a girl named Sarah
Who wrote stuff about a bunch of different flicks
She thought some were really underrated
Though others made her sick
Here's the story
Of a film named Brady
That the critics greeted largely with dismay
It was about a family from the 70s
In '95 LA
And then one day, Sarah saw the movie
And then took a little time to think it through
And then offered both her readers her final verdict
And told them that on balance "It'll do".
I was born maybe half a decade too late for the Spice Girls to have been of any real interest to me - Wikipedia claims their debut single was released in 1996, although I could've sworn it was a year or two earlier than that. Either way, by that point I was old and cynical, and only liked proper music.* In other words, not really the target audience for Spice World.
I have gleefully continued failing to be its target audience ever since.
I'd love to say that the nagging resentment I hold for them has to do with the particularly nauseating variety of faux-feminism they used to peddle; I'd settle for saying it had to do with the music. The truth, though, is that they knew, through their charity work, the particularly terrifying mother of one of my particularly terrifying exes, and she could never bloody well shut up about the fact. This is why to this day, while I can summon up a vague fondness for the likes of Take That, Steps and even S Club Seven, any mention of the Spice Girls sets my teeth on edge like a professionally-trained jawbone balancer.
Still, I'm a proper feminist, so when my husband told me the film was surprisingly palatable I shrugged and added it to the list.
The plot is very much a rehash of A Hard Day's Night, in that it presents a fictionalized few days in the lives of the girls and their entourage. It's all supposed to be leading up to a big concert at the Royal Albert Hall, but it detours a lot along the way and frequently flies into flat-out fantasy. Richard E. Grant shows up in the same way that he does in a lot of the films I've written about this month, as do a few much-missed British actors such as Bob Hoskins and Richard Briers There's a vague subplot about a pregnant friend (played by Naoko Mori, latterly of Torchwood), but we never really get that much of an idea of who she is or why she matters to the group.
Essentially, it's a bunch of scenes of the girls romping, interspersed with songs.
The good
It's a funny thing: I'm always happy to write about films I love despite their lack of any discernible merit. What about the other sort, though - the ones which are pretty okay but that I just can't quite bring myself to like?
I had a lot of fun star-spotting, certainly, with both the big names and the smaller ones. Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Jennifer Saunders, Elvis Costello and Meat Loaf all make appearances, but did you know that the doctors and nurses in the hospital scenes were played by actors from 90's medical soaps? It's a cute touch, and I'm smiling just to think about it.
I also enjoyed the fact that Geri, the only Spice whose designation didn't describe a personality trait, was given the role of the intellectual of the group, although if I was feeling particularly unkind I could point out that this is a little bit like being the the lively one in a group of sloths.
The musical numbers are well-staged and energetic, and to be honest, so are the comedy interludes. It's just a little like being stuck in a Haribo hailstorm, I guess, and I've never really been that keen on sweets.
The bad
There's nothing I can say here that shouldn't really be prefixed with the word arguably. Arguably there's something a little bit embarrassing about a bunch of grown women referring to themselves as girls, arguably the script is a bit obvious, and if you listen to it with the volume a shade too low, arguably it sounds a bit too much like a Simglish translation of Yellow Submarine.
This wasn't a film that was made to be analysed, though, it was made for the fans to squeal over, and I don't think there's much here to disappoint the true believers.
The verdict
I spent the first half of Spice World carping at my husband, being nitpicky over every single perceived flaw. Somewhere close to the end, though, I had a rather surprising epiphany: namely, that I was having a lot more fun with this than I did when I watched the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer. Not much fun, admittedly, but still a whole lot more.
Spice World isn't for me, but it might be for you; if it is, I certainly won't judge you for that.
*Like Meat Loaf. And Michael Bolton.
Another full day of work for me, so another quickie here.
I've noticed that you don't see much of comedy duo Mitchell and Webb any more. Oh, you see their component parts all the time - David Mitchell has a column in the Guardian, while Robert Webb's voiceovers for the Great Movie Mistakes series seem to be the only thing BBC3 ever shows. As far as I can tell, though, they're not working together any more.
In the mid-noughties, however, they were everywhere - on TV doing their sketch shows, on the radio, on TV again with the sitcom Peep Show, on TV yet again advertising Apple products... you get the picture. Not unnaturally, at the height of their fame, it was decided that they should have a crack at a movie.
The result was Magicians, a short, simple story about a pair of feuding illusionists. The critics weren't keen, and as far as I can tell, neither was anybody else. I still find myself wondering sometimes, though, whether I didn't watch a completely different film to everybody else who seems to have reviewed this one. I first saw it at the cinema, then on DVD, repeatedly, as it became one of my favourite comfort blanket movies, and I honestly can't work out where all the rage is coming from.
Our protagonists are Harry Kane (David Mitchell) and Karl Allen (Robert Webb), friends since childhood, who built up a successful career as stage magicians aided and abetted by their assistant Carol. The prologue shows this in a series of photographs, detailing Harry's marriage to Carol before cutting to Harry discovering her in an act of infidelity with Karl. Shortly afterwards, an equipment failure leads to Carol's untimely demise; the anger and guilt drive Harry and Karl to split their act in the most acrimonious way possible. Years on, however, the lure of fame, fortune and a healthy paycheck brings the pair back together as they return to the competitive magic scene.
The good
I love stage magic, and I have done since I was a kid. Most especially, however, I love movies about stage magic - anything, in fact, that promises a tantalising glimpse into a closed world, no matter how spurious that promise might be. It's natural, therefore, that I was going to be favourably inclined towards Magicians, and that I wouldn't be influenced by bad reviews even from critics I normally trust. I'm glad I saw it that first time, and I've felt that same gladness every time I've seen it since.
Visually, it's nothing special; this one's definitely about the plot and the characters rather than the flash. On the other hand, it's certainly not offensive to the eye; in fact, it's as affectionate towards its location shots as it is towards its characters. As a native Brit, it's lovely to watch a film that recognisably looks like home.
Performances are uniformly charming, aided by a script that never descends into cliche. Everybody has a story to tell, and everybody gets a shot at redemption - even if not everybody chooses to take it. Steve Edge, for instance, is horrifying as unrepentant slimeball Tony White, and his scenes with his estranged son hurt in the best possible way.
Above and beyond all this, however, this is a film in which the audience needs no prior knowledge of British politics to enjoy Peter Capaldi saying fuck. It is a film in which he says fuck often, and with feeling. Moreover, he always says fuck in an easily understandable context; frequently, that context is as simple as his character being an arrogant, irascible jerk. Does mankind really know of any higher pleasure than this?
The bad
Needs more Capaldi, but then, so does pretty much everything else on the face of this benighted planet.
From what I've read, some people were offended by the sweary bits, but they can.... yeah, you know the rest.
The verdict
A surprisingly gentle, very British comedy with an ending that never fails to brighten my day. One to restore your faith in humanity, and in yourself.
Over three weeks in, and my resolve is starting to weaken. Last night, therefore, I took the night off from my normal viewing schedule, opting for vintage Dr. Who and non-vintage Apprentice, and vowing to find something on the hard drive this morning. Oh, I knew it was a mistake at the time; knew precisely what sort of bad cinematic choices were lying in wait for me. I knew, too, that I'd already covered most of them, and that my options were growing limited.
More than anything, however, I knew that nothing in this world would ever induce me to watch Thor again.
This left me with a couple of alternatives, and for reasons which currently elude me, I plumped for Rock of Ages.
Now, as can be seen from the number of them I've covered already, I'm quite partial to a musical every now and then. Not so much your Lloyd-Webber, admittedly, but show me something a little bit quirky or a little bit rock'n'roll, and you'll certainly get my attention and probably my affection, too.
The noughties trend for jukebox musicals, though, the ones where you take a bunch of pre-existing songs and then work them into a story? Leaves me completely cold, I'm afraid. If watching Mamma Mia is, as I'm led to believe, an essential induction ritual for membership of the Sisterhood, then I'll leave my ovaries at the door, thanks. While I'm aware there are exceptions, for the most part, everything about them seems awkward and contrived, a clumsy attempt at cashing in on people's most treasured memories.
Before I first saw it, however, Rock of Ages looked as though it might have possibilities - after all, it featured the music that I'd built my identity around as a teenager. Add in a cast featuring stalwarts like Paul Giamatti and Bryan Cranston, and I figured that it'd be virtually impossible for me to watch it without having a good time.
The story, such as it is, is classic boy meets girl. She's an aspiring singer fresh off the Greyhound from Tulsa, while he tends bar at one of LA's most famous rock venues. There's a plot where he breaks up with her because thinks she's slept with a rock legend, and another plot where an ambitious local politician wants to close down the venue, and it all plays out precisely as you'd expect. But then, movies like these aren't about the destination, they're about the journey...
The good
The cast appear to do their best with the material they've been given; as the young lovers, Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta are cute and personable even if they do play second fiddle to the grown-ups. Tom Cruise has enormous fun as washed-up rocker Stacee Jaxx, while Russell Brand provides the movie with a much-needed injection of energy every time he's on screen.
Additionally, it's nice that former WWE Superstar Kevin Nash is still getting work from time to time.
The bad
The one thing I never expected when I started writing this blog is that it would occasionally leave me feeling so damned grimy. Not every day, not by any means, but at least once or twice a week I find myself watching something that looked like dumb, innocent fun but lands up filling me with a sense of creeping revulsion that a bunch of human beings thought a bunch of other human beings would find something like that enjoyable.
Rock of Ages is, at its nonexistent heart, a piece of prefabricated corporate drivel that tarnishes the soul of everybody it touches, from the director to the performers to every single hapless viewer. It sucks the joy and the energy from much-loved songs of the 80s, crushing them out of context and twisting them into tortured medleys. It's so anodyne it makes Glee look like The Fall, and so sexless that for this scene, Tom Cruise and Malin Akerman were required to have their genitals surgically removed and replaced with injection-moulded plastic cups.*
What can you say about a film where the sole visible black character runs a strip club, or where the female lead seriously believes her only two career options are waiting tables or dancing in her underwear? Where cliche is ladled upon heaping portions of cliche, so a weak male politician with a taste for corporal punishment has a villainous wife who became uptight and sanctimonious to distance herself from the heartbreak in her own sexually-active past?
It's cheap, it's derivative and not so much misogynistic as downright misanthropic, and it makes me feel really, really bloody tired.
The verdict
Don't go there. Really. Life's too short and you deserve so very much better.
*May not actually be true.
Oh, Danny Boyle, your films are so exciting,
And Shallow Grave was where you made your start.
With Irvine Welsh, you made smack look inviting,
And that was when, was when you won my heart.
And where you lead, there I shall always follow,
If not to multiplex, then DVD,
Though I found Slumdog rather hard to swallow,
The Oscar board would beg to disagree.
If you don't pay up, next week I'll write another verse. I would strongly advise you not to wait the full six weeks.
A Life Less Ordinary was Danny Boyle's first attempt at making it big across the pond. It meant enough to him that he turned down a crack at the Alien franchise, instead returning to the UK to seek out the finance he needed. It was everything we've come to expect from a Danny Boyle movie - visually striking, slightly surreal and unlike anything else he'd ever done before. The critics, however, were unsure, leading Boyle to eventually state in an interview for Film4 that the movie was one of his favourites purely because it wasn't anybody else's.
As might be expected, this one isn't easy to summarise. At heart, however, it's a romcom, albeit rather a twisted one. When Ewan McGregor's down-at-heel dreamer Robert finds himself sacked from his cleaning job and dumped by his girlfriend on the same day, desperation compels him to confront Naville, his former employer. Unfortunately, when he does so, he finds Naville already confronting Celine (Cameron Diaz), his twentysomething daughter and threatening to cut off her inheritance. It's a messy situation, culminating in a kidnapping where it's not entirely certain who's abducting who.
Meanwhile, there's unrest in Heaven, caused primarily by a supreme being who doesn't like the high rates of human heartbreak and divorce. He orders Gabriel to send O'Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo) down to Earth to do something about it, threatening them with permanent exile unless they succeed.
The good
A Life Less Ordinary is that rarest of cinematic beasts: a romantic comedy that I'm capable of watching without wanting to gnaw off my own arm. I suspect what I like most about it is how defiantly weird it is, juxtaposing naive idealism with surprising levels of violence. Make no mistake, this isn't a nice film - well, except for the parts where it is.
What makes it work, I think, is the casting of a bunch of Hollywood's most fundamentally likeable people. Ewan McGregor plays the same good-natured, clueless ingénu he would later harness in Moulin Rouge. Cameron Diaz, meanwhile, has a more complex job with the spoiled and slightly psychotic Celine, but mostly succeeds in convincing us of her basic good intentions. Most importantly, neither of them are averse to making themselves look undignified on camera - a song and dance sequence set to Bobby Darin's Beyond the Sea is a joy to behold, but much of the pleasure of it comes from listening to their defiantly off-key singing.
On the celestial side of things, Holly Hunter is as charming as you'd expect, and Delroy Lindo provides a beautifully gentle foil for her hard-boiled antics; a short scene mid-credits leaves us wondering precisely which couple God was trying to matchmake. Dan Hedaya, too, makes for a wonderful Gabriel, harried and world-weary but always with an eye for his subordinates' welfare.
Every shot, of course, is beautifully lit and composed - this is something we take for granted in Boyle's work. It is in the fantasy scenes, however, that he really comes into his own. Heaven, for instance, is portrayed as an office block of blinding whiteness, the only definition provided by the hands and faces of the angels as they go about their business, while a recurring dream sequence sees McGregor tied to a wheel of fortune made from multicoloured fluorescent tubes. It's absolutely lyrical, helped in no small part by a soundtrack that alternates thumping, pounding techno with sweet Motown gold.
The bad
Let's start with a disclaimer: this is one of my favourite films, and any negativity on my part is purely due to my assuming the role of devil's advocate. That said...
Maybe, if I'm totally, utterly, one hundred per cent honest with myself, I can kind of sort of maybe see why the critics thought it was a bit of a mess. Boyle himself has said that he originally envisioned a far more violent film, with the implication being that it was toned down to keep the US sponsors happy. As a result, the tonal shifts are fairly stark - the angels in particular alternate between being comedy gumshoes and genuinely threatening figures.
If anything at all bugged me about A Life Less Ordinary, though, it would have to be one of my least favourite tropes - the one where any act perpetrated by a cute enough girl becomes cute in and of itself. This reaches its nadir early on in the film, where Celine shoots a suitor in the head and it's played for laughs. This is not the behaviour of somebody charmingly idiosyncratic, it's the behaviour of a dangerous criminal, and at least some minor recognition of this fact would have been much appreciated.
The verdict
It's a Danny Boyle film, so it was always going to be interesting, and any flaws only really make it more so. His weirdest work until last year's equally bizarre Trance.
Just a quickie today, as despite my best efforts, my blogging efforts are finally being hampered again by the need to actually go out and earn some money.
So, we have Robert Altman's Pret-A-Porter. I'm typing it without the accents because if I took the time to find them it might necessitate me skipping breakfast, and believe me, you wouldn't like me when I'm hungry. Anyway, imagine if Christopher Guest did a mockumentary about fashion and basically cast every single celebrity he could bribe with flights to Paris plus absolutely everybody else who was already there, and you'll get the general idea.
The critics said it was a mess, Karl Lagerfeld threatened to sue, and the IMDB userbase wasn't too enthralled either. Altman, meanwhile, said it was a silly little film and no big deal, implying that it was drawing an awful lot of attention for something so inconsequential. Could this have been a reference to the fashion industry itself?
The good
This has to be one of the most dazzling casts ever assembled for a single movie. I'm not going to list everybody, but highlights include Sophia Loren, Lauren Bacall and Marcello Mastroianni, plus more recognisable modern names such as Julia Roberts, Stephen Rea and Richard E Grant. It's arguable, of course, whether anybody has more than an extended cameo, but there's definitely fun to be gained from star-spotting as you go along. If fashion happens to be an interest of yours, it gets even better - I noticed Jean-Paul Gaultier and (I think) Linda Evangelista, but I'm fairly sure the film features dozens more big names.
It goes without saying, however there's no point in employing half the world's celebrities if you don't give them anything interesting to do. There's a plot here, or at least half a plot, about a possible murder and the launch of the ready to wear fashion collections that lend the film its name. Mostly, however, this is a character piece, giving us glimpses of the lives of the protagonists and the exclusive world they inhabit.
It works, for the most part, by being consistently engaging. The characters aren't likeable but they're certainly interesting, and I watched with a sort of delighted horror. Altman isn't above stripping them of their dignity, either, as illustrated by a running gag that has the fashion world's highest and mightiest walking through beautifully lit, beautifully composed shots and then stepping in dogshit.
The bad
Pret a Porter is guilty as charged, I suppose. It's slight, yes, and there's not much in the way of a story, and it can be hard to keep track of all the characters if you worry about that sort of thing. I decided early on, however, that I was simply going to enjoy it on a moment-by-moment basis, which seemed to work pretty well - from that point onwards, I didn't have a problem with keeping track of who was who.
Do summer action flicks really have a monopoly on permissible shallowness, though?
The verdict
I hadn't been sure before I watched, but Pret A Porter actually turned out to be something of a treat, as beautiful and witty and shallow and emptyheaded as the industry it simultaneously celebrates and lampoons.
I remember the early episodes of Agents of SHIELD a year or so ago. God, it was a let-down. I'd been hoping to get a look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe from the viewpoint of the ordinary guys; the ones who fight the goons and fix the vehicles and deal with the phenomenal amounts of mess you get when you live in a world infested with superhumans.
What we got, of course, was basically Whedon's voicemail: Hi, I'm not here at the moment, but if you leave a message after the beep I'll get back to you with a group of supertalented, preternaturally witty teen models led by a token charismatic adult played by somebody with a cult fan following. The kids looked the same as the kids in Buffy and Angel and Dollhouse, and I'm not sure I ever felt so old in my life, or so out of touch.
In case the past couple of weeks of entries haven't made it obvious, I like my heroes flawed. Not tragically flawed, which is almost as boring as them being tragically flawless, just... human, I guess, capable of being pompous or selfish or even not terribly good at their jobs. Take Iron Man 3, for instance, as a recent example; there was a lot about it that I loved, but the thing that sent me home smiling all over was the big reveal that Tony Stark's portentous voiceover from the start of the movie was actually being delivered to somebody who'd clearly heard it all before and could barely keep his eyes open.
What's a superhero to do if even their friends and family can't take them seriously? This is the question that confronts the titular characters of 1999's Mystery Men. In a world where top-flight superheroes can rake in megabucks from corporate sponsorship, there's not a lot of room for, say, a guy who hits things with a shovel or a kid who can only turn invisible when nobody's looking. Oh, they might dream of hitting the big time and think about pooling their resources to hire a publicist, but what's the point when Captain Amazing is so successful he's actually put himself out of a job?
The good
First things first: Mystery Men looks amazing. It has that sort of blacklit glow I admired in the likes of Super Mario Bros; the same hypersaturated visuals that get me watching the Scooby Doo movies if I don't think anybody will catch me in the act. There's a vague sort of retrofuturism thing going on, too, although it's never clearly defined; this, combined with the occasional use of Beethoven on the soundtrack, makes me wonder whether somebody on the production crew doesn't have a bit of a thing for A Clockwork Orange - I'm probably way off the mark but it's still a nice thought to entertain.
Performances are variable, but as always, Janeane Garofalo adds wit and class every time she appears onscreen. Kel Mitchell is charming as Invisible Boy, lending a real vulnerability to what could have been a one-note character, while Geoffrey Rush plays villain Casanova Frankenstein, and with a name like that, what more do you need? You probably don't need anything more, in fact, but an extended cameo by Tom Waits as an inventor of non-lethal weaponry is certainly something you'd want.
What I really, really love about Mystery Men, however, is how incredibly goodhearted it is - I mean, we're talking Little Miss Sunshine levels of warmth and acceptance for its characters. It doesn't matter that they're misguided or ridiculous or faintly embarrassing, they're still unique and interesting and deserving of love. Almost all the protagonists have friends or family who care about them; I was particularly struck by the Shoveler's interracial marriage, which isn't emphasized or remarked upon at any point. These are fantastic messages, and the fact that they're actively demonstrated rather than hammered home with dialogue only serves to make them more powerful.
The bad
Unfortunately, the film takes a little too long to get into gear - at two hours, in fact, it's probably a shade too long overall. Appropriately, it spends a long time establishing the characters, but unfortunately, some of said characters just aren't that interesting. Take The Spleen, for instance; perhaps there are people who enjoy Paul Reubens' work, but here he's basically playing an extended fart gag and it gets old long before a skunk starts humping his leg. As the Sphinx, too, Wes Studi manages to edge over onto the wrong side of irritating.
Worse, however, is Ben Stiller's Mr. Furious, if only because he's a joke that doesn't work. He doesn't seem particularly angry or particularly placid, and even when he loses his temper it comes off as rather half-hearted and implausible. Furious is supposed to be a central figure, but when self-doubt overcomes him and he leaves the group, I barely noticed, let alone cared.
The verdict
A flawed but fundamentally lovable film about a bunch of flawed but fundamentally lovable people. It probably won't set your world alight, but if you're in the right mood it might just leave you with a warm glow inside.
So, I had a few paragraphs written up about the fashion for mocking low-budget, low-quality animal horror movies. They were frothily irate paragraphs, laying equal blame at the feet of the filmmakers who produce this dross and the idiots online who think that shrieking with laughter over the top of it is actually going to improve it any. Nobody came out of those paragraphs terribly well - especially not me, since I sounded like a pompous twat.
Besides, it's irrelevant, given that Black Sheep is actually pretty nifty.
I first saw this one a few months back, after years of dithering. On the one hand, it was an eco-themed horror comedy featuring killer sheep, so what was not to love? On the other, wet effects came courtesy of Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop, and when it comes to gore I'm a screaming chicken-wuss - it was a title I really wanted to see but just didn't quite dare. Eventually, however, it showed up one Sunday morning on catch-up TV, and I decided I absolutely had to give it a go.
Probably unsurprisingly, the film is set in (and funded by) New Zealand, and deals with a pair of brothers who own a sheep farm. Henry, the younger brother, was always the more natural farmer, but a spiteful prank by his brother, Angus, left him with a phobia that led him to flee to the city. As an adult, Henry returns to the farm on the advice of his therapist in order to let Angus buy out his share. Once there, however, he soon discovers that all his worst nightmares are rapidly becoming true.
The good
File this one under criminally unappreciated. By all rights, this should be a classic of the comedy horror subgenre, bringing the laughs and the shocks with equal ease. If anything, however, it seems to have become a victim of its own success in straddling the genre divide, with horror fans objecting to the levity and the grand guignol levels of gore proving offputting to everybody else.
An alternative explanation might be that gags about farmers fucking sheep have ceased to be funny, but does anybody really believe that? You might just as well say there's nothing amusing about sweary old ladies with guns. Black Sheep provides both with gusto - well, not literally with gusto, since gusto translates to taste, but certainly with bucketloads of enthusiasm.
The enthusiasm is key, I think. At no point do you ever get the impression that anybody was trying to make anything other than a really good comedy horror movie. Our heroes, for the most part, behave reasonably intelligently, except when previously established motivations get in the way - the hippie animal liberationists being naive, for instance, or Henry's phobia causing him to panic. If somebody does something stupid, it's always possible to pinpoint why.
Effects work, too, is entirely appropriate for the subgenre - appealingly wet and with more of an eye for artistry than for realism. The puppetry, when it occurs, is superb, but nobody ever loses sight of the fact that a bunch of sheep in a field staring blankly can be pretty creepy in and of themselves. A bunch of sheep in a field munching on the entrails of the group of business executives they've just bloodily slaughtered, on the other hand, that's entertainment.
It's possible to argue that acting and characterisation are irrelevant to a film of this type; that all that's really required is for the leads to look appealing and hit the right one-liners. As hippie girl Experience and former farmboy Henry respectively, however, Danielle Mason and Nathan Meister are absolutely note-perfect, turning what might have been caricatures into fully-rounded human beings the audience can really root for.
The bad
I honestly can't find much to criticise about this one. If you're not into messy gore and crude humour you might be better finding a different film to watch, but then, you probably knew that already.
The verdict
A joy from start to finish, Black Sheep provides a cheerful thrillride surprisingly free from the genre norms of wilful stupidity and sexual exploitation. You probably actually genuinely need to watch this one, so what are you waiting for?
Over halfway through, and I've already covered far too much fluff. Call it a character flaw, but if I'm going to watch 31 films in 31 days, I tend to instinctively go for the ones with cheap laughs and, where possible, sub 90-minute running times. Perhaps that'll change once the month is over and I move to a bi-weekly schedule, but for now, I need to save time where I can.
Thus far, therefore, I've ignored a lot of misunderstood epics. I have Kevin Costner's Waterworld hanging about waiting for viewing, and it would be criminal of me to get through the month without taking a look at Heaven's Gate. I think about them every day, but then I usually land up picking something shorter, simpler and stupider in order to save myself an hour or two.
Yesterday, however, I decided to be brave, and turned to Dune, David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel. I hadn't been near either the film or the book since I was a kid, and my memories were hazy, but I seemed to remember a beautiful, slightly dreamy piece of science fiction packed densely with memorable characters. After several days of nonstop action, yeah, that was something I could definitely get behind.
The plot is famously complex, so let's stick to the absolute basics. It's a story that's been told countless times, most likely - a young nobleman seeks to avenge the death of his father by leading a revolt amongst the rural underclass. Of course, in this particular case it's played out on an interplanetary scale, and rural underclass refers to a race of desert-dwellers whose very body chemistry is altered by worm dust, but these are just the trappings. So long as you keep your eyes and ears open, it's not a difficult film - true, those who've read the book might be slightly more appreciative of the small details, but I don't doubt the same could be said for Chocolat or Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
The good
Coming back to Dune after more than 20 years away from it, I was astonished by how good it still looked. Sure, the sandworm puppetry was a little obvious in close up, but otherwise? For the most part, it hasn't been dated by its effects in the same way as, say, Jurassic Park. Leaving print quality and creature effects aside, it actually holds up far better than the likes of Starship Troopers. Set design is gorgeous; the indoor scenes are lush and highly detailed, while the desert itself is eerily oppressive and uses clever lighting to create a sense of queasy suffocation. The costumes, too, are glorious, providing a useful reminder of each character's background and role in a story where tribal identity plays a central part.
The performances are solid, if not spectacular - make no mistake, the star of Dune is the world itself, and in the end, the actors are there primarily in service of Frank Herbert's vision. Everybody hits their marks and says their lines with the appropriate level of conviction; more than this would be unnecessary. Kyle MacLachlan makes an appropriately handsome lead, growing convincingly from pampered duke to hardened leader as the story demands. Patrick Stewart, meanwhile, deserves credit for looking and sounding exactly the same thirty years ago as he does today, which does make me wonder whether James MacAvoy's role in the X-Men franchise isn't technically slightly redundant.
And then we come to the storytelling, which seems to be the one part of the film that really drives the critics to distraction. Roger Ebert was quite vehement on the subject, calling the film '...a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless
excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing
screenplays of all time.' Now, Ebert's criticism has always been something of an inspiration to me, but when I read those words I do find myself wondering whether he ever saw anything by, say, Wim Wenders, or even some of the more badly-edited modern blockbusters.
Dune may be complex, but I genuinely don't believe it's confused, unstructured or difficult to understand. The only suggestion I can make is that the use of terminology from the book might prove offputting to some, but each new concept is explained as soon as it gets introduced. If anything, the film might merit criticism for its reliance on heavy chunks of exposition, but I suspect this is simply a consequence of trying to compress the source material into a 2-hour movie.
The bad
As I've just stated, Dune is a big, big story - if it were made today, it would probably receive the standard treatment and be made into two separate and slightly disappointing two-hour movies released at carefully-calculated intervals to maximise box office revenue. The point I'm trying to make here, however clumsily, is that even with verbal screencrawl at the start, expository dialogue throughout and a slightly desperate late-stage montage with voiceover, it still feels as though a lot has been left out. I'm not sure whether or not anything actually suffers, but it does lead to an atmosphere often described as dreamlike by people who were possibly too polite to use the term disjointed. I'd really love to know whether there's a cut out there that runs to three or four hours, as I can't help feeling it might make for an afternoon well spent.
And then there's the things I really could have done without - Baron Harkonnen, for instance, at least as portrayed on screen. I can't remember off the top of my head which details were lifted directly from the book, but he's the sole fat character in the film and the only sexually ambiguous one, and he's presented as a greedy sexual predator with disgusting oozing sores and a preference for young boys. It's an unhelpful stereotype on any number of levels, and makes me feel profoundly uncomfortable.
Worse, however, is unfortunately a concept central to the story of the novel. If you have a tribe of powerful female witches, please, tell me why the leader they've been waiting for for aeons has to be male? I know, I know, it was the 80s and we were far less enlightened back then, but rubbish like this is the reason feminism is so desperately important even today.
Finally, glowy-eyed little girl speaking with big deep adult voice? I'm sorry, but that's just unnecessarily creepy.
The verdict
After several days of brightly-coloured family fun, this was a really nice change of pace - it provided the grace and elegance that yesterday's movie lacked so badly. Sure, there's a few flaws in pacing and a few new words for the audience to learn, but does this really translate to a bad movie?
Only if you're a bad movie critic, I guess.
I've probably been pushing my luck a little bit lately - watching movies I want to watch but that only fit my stated criteria if I blur the lines a bit. Sure, some of my recently-discussed films haven't exactly received rave reviews, but on the other hand, nobody particularly loathed them, either.
Step up Hudson Hawk, then. Not only is this Bruce Willis vanity project a Razzie winner, it's a Razzie winner that beat off competition from the cinematic debut of Vanilla Ice. Think on that, and think on my willingness to suffer for you lot.
The eponymous Hudson Hawk is a famous cat burglar imprisoned within Sing Sing Correctional Facility, on the Hudson river. On his release he finds himself craving a cappuccino, so his partner Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello) takes him to their old favourite bar to catch him up on the years he's missed. An hour and a half of gentle reminiscences ensue.
Okay, that last sentence was a lie.
Instead, the pair of (mostly) reformed criminals find themselves caught up in a sequence of madcap adventures played out across the US and Europe, at the mercy of the CIA, the Vatican and a truly disturbing set of billionaire twins played by Sandra Bernhardt and Richard E. Grant.
Could this really have been the worst movie of 1991?
The good
If nothing else, Hudson Hawk is pretty much unique. I've been trying to think of other movies to use as reference points, and the best I can come up with is Guardians of the Galaxy meets The Da Vinci Code, which is a concept I personally would find watchable, in a slow-motion train wreck sort of way. On the other hand, if train wreck movies are your bag, why waste time dreaming up bizarre crossovers when you could be watching Unstoppable instead? Upon further reflection, it's not entirely unlike the (similarly reviled) Now You See Me, although it tends to substitute slapstick for the latter movie's overly-sentimental idealism.
Anyway, Hudson Hawk. Unique. Not quite a caper movie, not quite an action flick, not quite a fantasy. The best genre description I'd be prepared to offer would be magic realism, but that's an awfully elegant term for something that plays out like a live-action cartoon. If you want something that plays out like an old-style Looney Tunes short, then this one might actually be a better bet than the likes of Space Jam.
Performances are mostly serviceable; the script and the setting demands a little ham, so ham is what the audience receives. Danny Aiello in particular handles the material well, with a grace and lightness of touch that wouldn't be entirely out of place within the Ocean's Eleven franchise.
The other thing I really loved was the quirk whereby Hawk and Five-Tone timed their thefts to the length of favourite songs, each party judging their progress by quietly singing along. It's a charming concept, albeit one that probably isn't practical if radio comedy I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue is anything to go by.
The bad
This is another one of these films that I really, really wanted to like. I did worry I was having a bad day on first viewing, so I took another look at it this morning. It's too loud, though, and too crude, and the violence has a real sadistic streak that I don't think belongs in a caper movie about a cat burglar.
As the (most obvious) villains, Grant and Bernhardt both grate - it might have been the desired effect, but it didn't make them any easier to watch while I was trying to work out who was on whose side and who was trying to achieve what.
And this, I suppose, is my big complaint about Hudson Hawk: its complete and utter gracelessness. If I'm watching a film about a master thief, I want to be charmed and enthralled, not beaten over the head with a sign consisting of the words I'M SO QUIRKY!!! in six-foot high flashing neon letters.
Michael Lehmann directed the sublime and slightly surreal Heathers, so he should have been a natural with material like this. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong, although the Joel Silver production credit does allow me to make an educated guess.
The verdict
I can visualise a version of Hudson Hawk that might easily have become one of my favourite guilty pleasures. In the end, though, the tonal shifts and general heavy-handedness make this one something I'm happy to set aside.
So, here's my big confession of the day: I have a bit of a phobia about stop-motion animation. I thought it was creepy even before it was used to even creepier effect to permanently traumatise my younger self in the climactic scenes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. To this day, if a film looks as though it might have been made using this technique I can never entirely settle to watching it just in case something unexpectedly nasty happens.
I'm mostly over it now, though, thanks to the enduringly goodhearted work of Aardman Animations. It took a lot of years, but I was gradually able to work my way through the Creature Comforts segments up to Wallace and Gromit and eventually on to Chicken Run. Eventually, I regained my confidence to the point where I'm now able to watch the (non-Aardman-produced) Coraline and only want to run screaming from the room during the really scary bits.
Flushed Away, of course, isn't claymation, although it has been skilfully designed to look that way - plasticene models tend not to work when telling a story with strong aquatic elements. It retains the Aardman house style, however, which will be familiar to anybody who's ever seen any of the Wallace and Gromit shorts. It's not one I've ever found particularly aesthetically appealing, but Aardman's trademark warmth and humour means I always enjoy their work even if I don't always actively seek it out.
The film tells the story of Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman), a pampered pet rat who lives in wealthy Kensington in a literal gilded cage. When a broken drain brings slobbish sewer rat Sid (Shane Richie) abruptly into his life, chaos soon ensues as he finds himself flushed down the toilet and into a mysterious parallel London that exists beneath the city streets. Whilst there, he encounters treasure hunter Rita (Kate Winslet) and wealthy gangster the Toad (Ian McKellen), and inadvertently uncovers a plot that could endanger the entire lower city.
The good
I've added Flushed Away to my list of films not because it wasn't well reviewed - it was - but because I believe that its IMDB user rating of 6.1 is an absolute tragedy. Without a doubt, this is one of the most hectically playful movies I have ever seen, making Airplane look like Solaris by comparison. Its endless visual invention remained unparalleled until the advent of this year's Lego Movie, and the lack of heavy moralising means it continues to be much easier to digest.
Aardman can attract big-name vocal talent these days, and it shows. However, these aren't star turns in the model of Robin Williams' Genie - I would have been hard-pressed to identify any individual voices. What we get instead, then, is everybody bringing their A-games to an effervescent script written by old hands Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.
The story itself is serviceable enough, but never interferes with the nonstop gags, which are designed to appeal to as wide a variety of audiences as possible. There's a neverending stream of pop culture references but they slide down easily, appearing on advertising hoardings or as second-long throwaways. So what if one misses the mark? Blink and you'll have missed several more.
The bad
Nothing here that doesn't fall into the category of minor niggles, really; this is a stunningly, gloriously good film whose chief misstep, I believe, lay in being released less than a year before Pixar's Ratatouille. Make no mistake, Flushed Away is by far the better talking rat movie, but the Disney/Pixar colossus casts both a long shadow and a broad one, and nobody ever remembers the name of the guy who came second. A few years previously, Antz suffered a similar fate at the hands of the anodyne, witless A Bug's Life.
That said, I do get vaguely irritated by that old chestnut whereby a film's entire plot basically consists of a sassy female redeeming a gormless male. It seems to have been the plot of approximately fifty percent of both Hollywood Blockbusters and TV commercials for at least the past decade now. Nobody's suggesting that we should go back to the old days of damsels in distress, but surely there has to be some sort of halfway point where, I don't know, competent individuals of both genders work together to defeat whatever threat the scriptwriters see fit to throw at them?
Oh, and there's the fat issue. Flushed Away contains three chubby characters - The Toad (evil), Rita's father (incompetent) and Sid (a little from column A, a little from column B). I doubt this was high on anybody's actual checklist either as something to do or not to do, but every time a mainstream family film does something like this it functions as a few extra drops in the ocean of anti-fat prejudice.
The verdict
If you haven't seen this one, you probably ought to. Even if animation isn't your thing, this is arguably the single funniest example of the genre and possibly one of the best.
