Day 31: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

I've been planning on skewering The Nightmare Before Christmas for weeks now, but you know what? My heart's just not in it today. Blame it on burnout, blame it on sleep deprivation, or (most likely) blame it on the fact that I just finished watching the damned thing and I've lost the will to live.

I just don't get what it is about this film that turns grown and otherwise perfectly reasonable women into squealing infants. Sometimes, with films like Mamma Mia! or Titanic, this fills me with a warm glow of smug self-righteousness. When it comes to TNBC,  however, it just leaves me feeling drained and depressed.

Look, it's just an appalling film on pretty much every level, okay? Certain shots are nicely composed, granted, and I have a certain grudging admiration for anybody who chooses to create a full-length stop motion feature, but other than that, I'm honestly not sure I can find a good word to say about it.

So, where do I start? I'll keep things tidy, I think, and divide my objections into two categories: the ethical and the aesthetic.

Looking at the film from an ethical standpoint, it's still hard to know where to begin. The best place is probably the basics, I guess, in that it's about a privileged white manchild who feels misunderstood despite being in charge of an entire world that caters to his every whim. There are precisely two named female characters, one of whom is hopelessly devoted to the good guy and the other of whom is equally hopelessly devoted to the big bad who, I couldn't help but notice, has the only distinctively black voice in the entire production. Oh, and don't get me started on the character of the Mayor, a cowardly type who, at one point, states that he can't be expected to make decisions because he's only an elected official. Do I really need to point out how many shades of wrong that is?

Honestly, though, I could probably forgive TNBC all of this if it wasn't for, well, how do I put this? Pretty much every other damned thing about it. Listen, I know it's a kids' movie, okay? I know that it's generally accepted that subtlety will be lost on the little darlings. I also know that it's a Hallowe'en-themed piece and that certain conventions are meant to be observed. None of this, however, alters the fact that the songs in this piece of dreck make my eardrums want to commit ritual suicide. The music is okay, I suppose, barring the fact that it's largely composed of a few themes repeated and tweaked ad nauseam, but the lyrics are atrocious doggerel residing on a level somewhere beneath those you find in the movie versions of 80's toy tie-in cartoons, and the sense of burning embarrassment I feel on Danny Elfman's behalf colours my feelings towards every other aspect of the piece.

I can see how kids might like the film, with its sanitised spookiness and cutesy clichés, but I think it says something sad about our society when we're prepared to ignore our critical faculties (or not to engage them) for the sake of a hit of nostalgia. Yes, adult life is hard and it sucks sometimes, but even on my worst days, the thought of remaining in a state of permanent semi-infantilisation terrifies me even more.

Day 30: Casino Royale (1967)

With guns, and knives... We're fighting for our lives!

James Bond is a very important part of the UK's cinematic heritage, boys and girls, and I've neglected him for far too long. Mr. B raised this point back in early September when I was starting to draw up a list of films to write about, and he's right, really he is, but I just haven't been able to face it.

I can pinpoint fairly accurately the moment when I lost my taste for Bondage. It was the autumn of 1995 and I was a first year at Durham University, studying French, German, and Russian whilst trying to find a nice boy so I could dispose of my virginity, whose continuing existence was rapidly becoming something of an embarrassment . The first potential candidate was K, whose down-to-earth Blackburn vowels led me to believe (mistakenly) that he was a commoner like me, despite his ability to spend £50 on a necktie without batting an eyelash. He was a bit of an arsehole and I was slightly psychotic, so it was probably for the best that my hymen was the one thing that didn't eventually implode.

While it lasted, though, we made frequent trips to the student film club, which consisted of a screen erected in the college assembly hall and offered newish movies at a reasonable price. I'd always been a fairly avid 007 fan, but as I watched this sequence from Goldeneye and the entire room erupted in derisory laughter, something inside me died and I've never been able to summon up a single iota of enthusiasm for the character since.

When I think about it, I'd actually quite like to go back and watch a bunch of old-school Bond, just not right at the tail end of a marathon month. Mr. B, therefore, ever the pragmatist, suggested I compromised with the 1967 incarnation of Casino Royale, which spoofs spy movies with more grace and dignity than Mike Myers could manage in his wildest dreams. Boasting a stellar cast and crew but also some surprisingly sound politics, it's a joy from the opening titles to the closing credits.

The story bears only minimal relation to the original novel, with David Niven starring as the retired James Bond who's bitterly disappointed by the guns, girls and gadgets ethos that seems to have overtaken the spying game. With rumours of a new band of supervillains back on the loose, however, he's reluctantly forced back onto the job along with a group of accomplices that include the likes of Ursula Andress and Terence Cooper along with Peter Sellers' baccarat book author and Joanna Pettet as Bond's love child from an affair with the Mata Hari. On the opposite side, meanwhile, we have (among others) Deborah Kerr, Orson Welles and Woody Allen.

It's all backed up by a soundtrack written by Burt Bacharach and performed by Herb Alpert, not to mention some truly epic set design. Everything is cheerfully implausible but also implausibly cheerful, with the climactic battle featuring dodgem cars, bubbles, native Americans in warpaint and the French foreign legion.

You'll probably have worked out from that last paragraph whether or not this one's for you; if it's not, I hope you'll forgive me for pitying your joyless existence. Casino Royale is female-friendly, family friendly and generally well-disposed towards anybody who doesn't have a taste for macho prickery. It's also ludicrously over the top, but honestly, that's half the charm (the other half is pure David Niven).

Just be sure to stick around for the end credits in order to enjoy the greatest earworm of your life. 

Day 29: Nacho Libre (2006)

Regular readers may wonder why I'm reviewing a Jack Black comedy today; the answer is that it was on top of the DVD pile when I got in from work yesterday. In truth, I don't loathe Mr. Black as much as some people seem to; he was excellent in School of Rock and I've heard good things about his work in the just-released Goosebumps adaptation.

That said, Nacho Libre definitely isn't one of his best. Apparently based on a true story about a Mexican priest who took up Lucha Libre (Mexican wrestling) to support the orphanage where he worked. 

First things first: I have absolutely nothing against professional wrestling. Quite the opposite, in fact - some of my happiest memories are of watching oily naked guys getting grippy with one another in the ring. Regardless of whether the outcome is decided in advance or not, the athleticism remains the same and I have nothing but respect for these guys who take such ridiculous risks for my entertainment.

None of this, however, alters the fact that Nacho Libre is fundamentally a bit shit.

We'll start with the most obvious thing: Jack Black's accent. I don't care if his character is supposedly only half Mexican; he's lived in the country amongst the locals all his life, so he shouldn't be talking like Speedy Gonzales, end of. It made me cringe every time he was on screen - in other words, 80 percent of the movie.

The film also suffers from that patented variety of Jack Black fatphobia where it's fine to be big so long as you're not a woman of Black's own approximate age. Fat kids? Fine. Fat men? Also fine (take a look at your leading man). Fat, female and otherwise fuckable? Might as well paint a target on your ample backside. I find this to be a particularly disgusting form of objectification, in that it basically designates adult female characters as existing solely to meet Black's standards of physical perfection - standards, I repeat, that he in no way lives up to himself.

And the rest? The alleged comedy is broad, coming from a combination of pratfalls and Mexican accents both real and fake. Basically, if Inspector Clouseau doesn't do it for you then Nacho Libre certainly won't. It was fun to see a handful of real luchadors plying their trade, granted, but Black even ruined that for me by going for a vanity climax that involved some heavy-duty wirework and was an insult to the real professionals involved.

I really wish I'd managed to sleep through the film so that I could've remained awake for episode 4 of The Apprentice, and if that doesn't convey the depths of my distaste then I don't know what else will.
 

Day 28: The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000)

I've been trying to cover all the bases this month but there's one thing I've been woefully short on: movies with no discernible target audience. These tend to be some of my favourites, if only because they carry a particular flavour of weird that you just don't find if somebody's thought to aim a movie at a specific demographic.

Step forward, then, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, because isn't pretty much everybody going to be queueing up to see a live-action remake of a cartoon whose last episode aired in 1964? Oh. Right. Nobody. The film cost a reputed $76 million to make and currently scores 4.1 on the imdb.

Is it really as bad as all that, though?

Probably not, actually. Certainly, I enjoyed TAORAB far more than Looney Tunes: Back in Action - it wasn't half so loud or, crucially, so eager to please. Instead, it stays true to the roots of the original, which people occasionally compared to a radio serial with added animation. Keith Scott's narrator, therefore, provides a nonstop commentary on the onscreen action, constantly pointing out the inherent lunacy of a cartoon moose (voice: also Keith Scott) and flying squirrel (voiced by June Foray; 83 by the time the film was released) trying to save the world from a bunch of generically Slavic spies led by Robert de Niro's Fearless Leader.

It's all good-natured silliness, with the jokes coming as thick and fast as in an Aardman movie, if not quite as funnily. I didn't laugh much, but I certainly smiled a lot. It's smarter than the average family flick, too, and not afraid to wear its intellect on its sleeve.

The main problem, really, is that I just couldn't quite bring myself to care. The original animated series was long before my time; I remember repeats, but only vaguely, and chiefly for the appalling quality of the animation. There may be bigger fans out there - especially on the other side of the Atlantic - but that's still a fairly small market, especially given that the movie is a little too exposition-heavy to make it truly kid-friendly.

I'm not surprised that it bombed, nor am I particularly disappointed. If you ever find yourself bored enough to hunt this one down, however, you might conceivably also be bored enough to enjoy it.

Day 27: Tabloid (2010)

I cannot tell a lie; the daily blog thing is starting to burn me out, just a little. It'd be wonderful to go a day without having to watch any films at all. Still, not long to go now.

In the meantime, yesterday I went for something of a palate cleanser in the form of Errol Morris' Tabloid. It's another documentary, but  a very different beast indeed from the likes of the two I've already covered. Instead, Tabloid does exactly what it says in the title, providing an hour and a half of cheap and dirty thrills for the price of a small sliver of your self-respect.

Back in 1977, the UK was cheerfully scandalised by coverage of the manacled Mormon. The story was media catnip - a former American beauty queen had kidnapped her Mormon ex from his mission and stolen him away to a cottage in darkest Devon, where she shackled him to a bed and apparently did her damnedest to get him to impregnate her, allegedly against his will.

Tabloid is the story of that beauty queen, told in her own words and backed up by interviews with newspapermen who covered the tale. It's a breezy, sleazy tale that delights me every time I watch, chiefly because of the singular charisma of its subject, one Joyce McKinney, who combines the eloquence of a born storyteller with a truly astonishing lack of self-awareness. In her eyes, she's very much the misunderstood heroine of her own life story, and she wants us all to know.

Where it starts getting complicated is that it would be easy to dismiss McKinney as an entertaining fruit loop. To do so, however, would be to label Tabloid a modern incarnation of the Victorian freak show  - conceivably, it might be, although that levels some fairly hefty accusations at both Morris and the viewing audience. When McKinney claims she was simply rescuing her lover from the dangerous cult that had brainwashed him, though, rational thought dictates that we have to have at least some sympathy with her plight. There can be no doubt, either, that she was treated appallingly by the British press, who were even more misogynistic forty years ago than they are now.

Just because somebody is deluded and self-serving, does this make it acceptable for us to point and laugh? I'm honestly not sure. Actually, no, that's untrue; I know the answer, it's just that to state it out loud would be to condemn myself - watching Tabloid as a sad expose of the exploitation of a damaged woman wouldn't be half so viscerally enjoyable.

Thought-provoking stuff...
 

Day 26: The adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

I originally intended to write about Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen last October, back when I didn't know that the blog was going to become a permanent feature and I was trying to write primarily about notorious flops. It didn't make the grade, however, because people just didn't seem to hate it enough. Sure, it was big and expensive, and sure, the box office take wasn't great, but I actually had trouble finding somebody who didn't like it in a quiet sort of way.

Just so we're all on the same page, this would be because Baron Munchausen is absolutely bloody brilliant. 

Gilliam is one of those directors I always feel I should enjoy more than I actually do, possibly because most of his films aren't actually that enjoyable. At his best, he's a visionary; Brazil was an astounding piece of cinema. It was also, however, painfully bleak, a film I was glad to watch once and set aside forever. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus and The Brothers Grimm were both messy to the point of being embarrassing, with only Time Bandits capturing the manic zest of his work with Monty Python.

Munchausen, however, is a joy from the first shot to the last, every frame packed full of the sort of glorious intricacy that can only be achieved with old-school physical effects. True, it's long, and it rambles sometimes, but that's half the pleasure of it - the loosely episodic structure means that if one setting or group of minor characters doesn't appeal to you, another will be along within ten minutes or so. There's an appearance from a young Uma Thurman, while the even younger Sarah Polley shines as one of the least annoying child characters in cinematic history.

In the end, however, it all revolves around the character of the Baron himself, a legendary teller of tall tales. At the start of the film he appears within a city under siege, unwittingly intruding on a play about his own life. Of course, the players have the facts all wrong, and of course, he has to correct them. What follows is a layered narrative where the audience is never sure what is real and what is story, as the Baron fights the Turks, the Angel of Death, and (as embodied by Jonathan Pryce) the forces of logic and bureaucracy. As played by veteran actor John Neville, the Baron is a roguish figure, charmingly irascible and utterly irresistible to women of all ages. It is the Baron's stories that give the city's inhabitants the courage to question authority, and in an ending of heartbreaking poignancy, to discover that the enemy outside the gates might not be what they had thought.

I could go on, of course, but I'd rather not, not when the film contains so many hidden delights. Instead, watch it yourselves, and be transported.

 

Day 25: Super (2010)

Super is another film that's only ever on in the We need to talk about Kevin slot. Time after time I'd see it on the schedules starting at 11pm, which is right when I normally fall asleep. I've been endlessly frustrated by this over the past couple of years, because any film about an inept DIY superhero is a film I absolutely need to see.

The more I read up, the more interesting it all got. Director James Gunn, for instance, had a name I recalled seeing elsewhere, although I couldn't quite place it - turned out it was on the posters for Guardians of the Galaxy. A little wider reading revealed him to be a Troma alumnus, suggesting a career trajectory roughly parallel to that of Peter Jackson. Might Super have been his Heavenly Creatures, the sweet spot between zero-budget splatter and slick studio blockbuster?

Having finally got around to watching the film, my response to this would have to be a conclusive no.

Don't get me wrong, I loved Super, but it was as gruelling a piece of cinema as I've seen in a very long time. It takes all those tricky moral questions that swirl around costumed vigilantes and forces the audience to confront them head-on. While we might cheer at the idea of lonely schizophrenic Frank (Rainn Wilson) donning the mask and tights to rescue his ex-addict wife from the drug dealers who hold her in thrall, when he takes a pipe wrench to a man who fails to observe proper queueing etiquette, things get messier in every sense of the word.

It's a messy film in general, in fact, funny and shocking by turns in a way that makes it deeply uncomfortable to watch. I'm not sure this is a bad thing - honestly, it's probably about time we started thinking more seriously about whether unconventional dress sense entitles a person to become judge, jury and executioner - but the tonal inconsistency isn't enjoyable in anything but the broadest intellectual sense. The levels of gore and violence on display are on a par with anything Tarantino has ever done, but lack the visual artistry that makes Tarantino's work such a delight. Again, perhaps this is a deliberate decision, and perhaps this is a good thing. The problem is that while it might be interesting, it's also repellent, such as where two separate rape scenes are juxtaposed, each with the gender roles reversed.

None of this is unforgivable, with the possible exception of an ending which I can only surmise was tacked on at the request of the (possibly terrified) studio bosses. After well over an hour of brutality, we're given a trite, sentimental resolution that completely fails to address any of the questions that have so pointedly been raised. It's deeply patronising, and utterly undermines the moral complexity of the rest of the film.

Still, it's an interesting watch. I'm a longstanding superhero fan and also an enthusiastic carnivore; Super felt, to me, like an educational visit to an abattoir, leaving me thinking hard about my tastes and whether they could really be justified.

Day 24: Coraline (2009)

Is Coraline really only six years old? It feels as though it's been around for much, much longer, lurking on the edge of my consciousness like a statue in a darkened room.

I was fascinated with it from the moment I heard it was in production. Neil Gaiman, the author of the original novella, isn't always my precise cup of tea but when he's on form, few can match his work for intelligence or charm. His intricate stories, which weave a tapestry of modern life shot through with threads of ancient myth, seemed to mesh perfectly with the stop-motion models I saw in early stills.

With all this established, however, I have to admit that it's only been a couple of years since I saw Coraline for the first time, and that this is because I had to wait until I was having a brave day. I'm skittish around horror movies at the best of times, and somehow, horror movies about and/or intended for kids often feel like the scariest ones of all.

Make no mistake, Coraline is a proper horror film - specifically, an old-school creepfest. We spend probably the majority of the movie establishing the character of Coraline Jones, freshly uprooted from her Michigan home and moved, protesting, to an apartment within a remote elderly house with shades of the Overlook Hotel. 

Benignly neglected by her parents and too smart for her own good, Coraline seeks her own amusement. The neighbours are too weird, though, and the landlord's grandson talks too much. When, therefore, Coraline discovers a tiny door in a remote room, a brief moment of excitement ensues until she finds out that nothing lurks behind it but bricks.

That night, however, when she checks again, she finds a tunnel to an alternate world, with alternate parents and neighbours whose sole aim in life, seemingly, is to find new ways to delight her. Over the nights that follow, Coraline spends more and time at the other end of the tunnel, until her Other Mother finally invites her to stay permanently. All she has to do is sew two black buttons over her eyes...

From hereon out, things get seriously creepy, and if you're squeamish about eyes then you'd best steer clear. For the rest of us, though, there's delicious nastiness, a neat false ending and one or two truly visceral shocks on the way.

None of which goes even halfway to explaining why I love this movie so much. There's no day or week it can't brighten, no matter how burned out I might be on films in general and writing about them in particular. Obviously, the look of it has a major part to play - it's done in production company Laika's house style, with delicate models heavily enhanced by painterly CGI. Nothing else looks like a Laika film, not even another Laika film. Director Henry Selick's work is also highly distinctive, albeit in a more consistent fashion, and it's easy to trace Coraline's lineage back to the likes of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach.

My absolute favourite thing about this one, though, the single quality that raises it to the rank of greatness, is its pacing. It's a beautiful film with a beautiful soundtrack, and the best thing about all of this is that it gives the audience the time to appreciate all that beauty on their own terms. The camera lingers perfectly happily and pans over the gardens or track's Coraline's progress through the house, inviting the audience to savour the staggering amount of hard work that must have gone into creating it all. By immersing us so deeply in Coraline's world, Selick intensifies the horror we feel when it all starts to come apart at the seams. 

According to the imdb, Selick hasn't directed another film since Coraline. I haven't always enjoyed his work in the past, but if this is what he can do when he's on top form, I really hope we'll be seeing more from him soon.

 

Day 23: Matinee (1993)

On a different day, I think I might have rather liked Joe Dante's Matinée, a sweet little comedy set in Florida during the Cuban missile crisis. It's nicely shot, nicely acted and tells its fundamentally endearing story with understated narrative flair. It felt to me like an intensely personal piece, too -  a quick check reveals that during the period when the movie takes place, Dante would have been approximately the same age as the film's main protagonist who, coincidentally, is obsessed with creature features and monster comics.

As I say, on a different day...

Yesterday, however, I cricked my neck, and neck pain always brings out the asshole in me. What should have been cute, therefore, seemed saccharine, and John Goodman's avuncular performance as a B-movie producer came across as way too cuddly and nowhere near sleazy enough.

There's not a lot I feel sure about saying about Matinée, though, because - and I'm guessing here - it belongs to a cinematic idiom of which I have no experience. I suspect it shares DNA with the likes of Explorers, The Goonies and, most recently, Super-8, where (apparently) a group of cutely cinematic boys and the odd token female have excitingly PG-rated adventures and everything resolves at the end in a warm golden sunset of pure nostalgia. It's all good clean fun for small boys and sad middle-aged men, but I just don't get the romance of it and I suspect I never will. 

Matinée spends way too long establishing time, place and mood, and by the time we finally get a sniff of Dante's trademark mischief, it all feels too little, too late. I'd been hoping for some proper anarchy, but when, midway through, the cat fell asleep on my notebook it was all I could do not to follow his excellent example.

Day 22: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

As a longstanding fan of the late Douglas Adams' book/TV series/radio serial/album The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I'm used to the concept of canon being flexible. No two incarnations have ever followed the precise same trajectory, and I liked that; you've got to respect a creator who keeps his fandom on its toes. When the movie version was finally released, therefore, several decades after the original source material, I went in with an open mind, prepared to roll with whatever was thrown at me.

At the time, I remember being deliriously happy that director Garth Jennings hadn't fucked it up entirely. The visuals were cute and inventive, and his version of Trillian (aka The Love Interest) was more interesting than Adams' own interpretation ever was.

This was ten years ago, however; I'm older now, grumpier and I've definitely soured on it. Zooey Deschanel might be good as Trillian but she's still Zooey Deschanel, and I cannot be doing with that sort of relentless cutesiness. Likewise, I'm glad to see Sam Rockwell having matured since his performance as Zaphod, where he succeeds in turning one of modern literature's most enjoyable irritants into something nigh-on unwatchable. 

As for the expected plot deviations? Much as I hate to admit it, I'm not sure they work. The Vogons are joke characters, they don't need more than a cursory backstory, and the whole thing with John Malkovich as Humma Kavula is way, way too laboured to justify the eventual punchline.

With all that said, there are compensations, most of which come in the form of Bill Nighy's world-weary worldbuilder Slartibartfast. His sheer affability is a joy to behold. He features largely, too, in the Magrathea scenes, where we see a factory floor where planets are being built, and the images on screen are as graceful and awe-inspiring as pretty much anything I've ever seen.

Adams' dialogue remains as lively as ever, but honestly? If I hadn't been familiar with the setting I don't think I'd have had a clue what was going on. I really wish the film could have brought the author's work to a whole new generation, but as epitaphs go, this one is mediocre at best.

Day 21: The Rutles: All you need is cash (1978)

This one comes with an apology, as I seem to have slipped up - apparently it's a TV movie, something I only found out when I checked the IMDB this morning. The 76-minute runtime should have been a clue, I suppose, but I was curled up on the sofa after a long, boozy day out and all I was really thinking about was finding something that bore as little resemblance to Meet the Feebles as was humanly possible. I had something specific in mind but I couldn't find it, and The Rutles: All you need is cash was near the top of the DVD pile, so the decision was pretty much made for me.

The Rutles is an early example of the mockumentary genre - it might even be the earliest? It covers similar ground to This Is Spinal Tap, detailing the rise and fall of a fictional rock band. Where Spinal Tap takes its inspiration from the whole hair metal movement, however, The Rutles aims at a much narrower target (think four Liverpudlian moptops who were big in the 60s), and frequently hits it with dazzling precision. 

It's all very watchable if you're into this sort of thing (and I am). The humour is cute, and the obligatory celebrity cameos only add to the charm. Here we have Mick and Bianca Jagger, plus a bunch of Saturday Night Live's  then best and brightest, including Bill Murray, John Belushi and Gilda Radner. 

Still, there won't be anything here you haven't seen before. There's the usual interviews with the band and the people close to them, the faked up news footage and album covers and the usual selection of musical parodies. Where The Rutles differs from most of the competition, however, is in the balance - the comedy here is a shade broader than in most similar movies, while the songs are so eerily accurate that they occasionally show up in my head masquerading as genuine Beatles numbers. Blame Neil Innes for this - he and Eric Idle might both occasionally be irritatingly smug, but my goodness, they have an ear for pastiche. I defy you to listen to what follows without experiencing at least a moment of confusion:

 



Worth a look, if only to see how little mockumentaries have changed over the past 40ish years.

Day 20: Meet the Feebles (1989)

I'd heard a lot of rumours about Peter Jackson's early work, and I'm pleased sad able to confirm that these are absolutely true. Serves me right for believing an appreciation for the work of Parker and Stone meant I was unshockable, I suppose, because now I have seen things that I will never be able to unsee.

Imagine that John Waters and Quentin Tarantino were Muppets, and that they had sex and somehow managed to make a baby. That baby would be Meet the Feebles, the most relentlessly tasteless piece of cinema I've ever seen (and I've seen Hop).

The viewing experience is hard to describe, but if I was pushed I'd guess that it was probably akin to slowly drowning in a vat full of a mixture of other people's septic bodily fluids; utterly revolting, yes, but some small part of you can't help laughing in incredulity at the sheer unlikely excess of it all.

It would be nice to say I discerned within Feebles the seed (possibly a bad word choice, under the circumstances) of the man who went on to direct Heavenly Creatures and all those Tolkien adaptations, but the only link I really noticed was the same ethos of Go big, or go home.

Feebles was made on a shoestring budget. It looks awful, and the acting and scripting are pretty dire, too. It is, however, completely unlike anything else out there. I'm not ashamed to say that it was too much for me to take, but on balance, I'm glad it's out there.  

Day 19: Fido (2006)

Aww, crap, I said, ten minutes into Andrew Currie's Fido, Someone's decided to remake Edward Scissorhands, but with zombies. Don't get me wrong, I don't loathe Tim Burton in the same visceral way I despise Christopher Nolan, but with the best will in the world he's a bit of an embarrassment, isn't he? I can see why his work appeals to the twelve-year-old set, but when I see university students trotting around with Nightmare Before Christmas backpacks? Awkward...

Let's be honest, on the surface, Fido does carry a lot of Burtonesque trappings. There's the sparkly-clean airbrushed 1950s visuals, the socially isolated young hero, and was there ever really a more Burton-friendly concept than the tale of a boy and his pet zombie? As I settled in to watch, my heart quickly grew heavy at the thought of having to sit through yet another tale of a misunderstood white male who almost loses everything he loves because the world is such a cruel and heartless place when you can't be bothered engaging with it.

Dammit, sometimes it feels good to be wrong. Rather than the treacly cod-fairytale I was expecting, Fido turned out to be a charming little piece of social commentary with more humanity in its 93-minute length than Burton has managed in his entire career thus far.

Credit where it's due; a lot of this is down to Billy Connolly as the titular character, a blue-skinned and entirely nonverbal zombie. Connolly communicates whole worlds of emotion with a sigh and a tilt of the head; his Fido is a laid-back and fundamentally affable individual who doesn't seem particularly interested in chowing down on anybody who doesn't represent a threat to Timmy, his human pal. 

Playing support, meanwhile, we have Carrie-Anne Moss from The Matrix as Timmy's mother, in a role that's a whole lot more interesting than is usually the case in films such as these. Mrs. Robinson starts out as the sort of bog-standard social climber you get in every film about the hidden darkness at the heart of cosy suburbia but becomes the very heart of the movie, growing and changing but never losing track of what matters.

One of the things I loved about Fido is the way that Currie and his team seem to genuinely like people, to the extent where even the neighbourhood pervert Mr Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson) gets a shot at redemption. His final scene in particular gave me a nicer case of the warm fuzzies than I've had in a very long time indeed.

Other than that? The film looks great, and thanks to some really nice pastiche songwriting, it sounds great, too. Blood and gore are kept to a minimum, and what we do get is determinedly cartoonish; unless your kids or grandmother are exceptionally sensitive, nothing here will bother them in the least.  This suited me down to the ground, but if you're in the mood for hardcore zombie action then you might want to look elsewhere - this is a film that values brains far too much to want them splattered all over the wallpaper.

An unexpected delight. 

Day 18: The Sting (1973)

This is going to be another brief one, I suspect, because having seen The Sting I'm not entirely sure I can do it justice. When I sat down to watch it yesterday I did so in anticipation of a few hours of pleasure rather than an easy blog entry, which seemed like a smart idea at the time but now maybe not so much.

I love movies about heists and cons and grifters, but I get the feeling that this is where I should be telling you what the film is about and I honestly couldn't, beyond the basics. Robert Redford stars as Johnny Hooker, a young conman who loses his partner in crime after accidentally grifting the wrong guy. Since by his own admission, he knows nothing about killing, he sets out to get his revenge in the only way he knows how, teaming up with Paul Newman's Henry Gondorff, master of the long con, to milk the murderous Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) for everything he has.

I honestly don't think I've seen a film like this before. It's intelligent and innovative and warm and witty at once, deploying a broad arsenal of tricks to create an atmosphere of romance and mischief that sits well within the depression-era setting. What sticks in my mind are the little things - the costume design, or the beautifully painted interstitials that divide the story into segments so we can keep track of where we are. It all hangs together wonderfully, creating a particularly immersive experience of a sort that you just don't really get any more.

On balance, I think that what I probably loved most about The Sting are the nods to silent film - the chaptered narrative structure, certainly, but also the use of music. Entire scenes are played out without the use of dialogue, accompanied by Marvin Hamlisch's award-winning re-working of Scott Joplin's The Entertainer.

All in all, this one was an eminently watchable delight, and richly deserving of its best picture Oscar. My initial thoughts on this were that it would never have won nowadays because the committee tends to be so much more pedestrian. Even this decade, however, films like The Artist have won, though - heck, this year Birdman got the gong. I haven't seen either of these yet, but as far as I'm aware neither of them are exactly conventional. There is, however, a common thread - showbusiness. The Artist and The Sting are both steeped in silent film lore, and Birdman stars former superhero actor Michael Keaton as, well, a former superhero actor. It's a testament to the essentially onanistic nature of Hollywood, I suppose, but even this is better than nothing if it means that genuine creativity can be rewarded once in a while. 

Day 17: The Watch (2012)

This is Sweeney:

And this is Arthur:

And they're here to tell you about just how much The Watch sucks.

Sweeney says that the first fifteen minutes of it are basically an extended advert for Costco, and that this isn't acceptable even if Costco do treat their employees well:

 
 
And Arthur says the scripting is aimed at the sort of people who find Kevin James films just that little bit too cerebral.

Sweeney says that the soundtrack is aimed at middle-aged men with an emotional age of somewhere between nine and thirteen years:

While Arthur would like to point out that the same applies to every other aspect of the damned movie.

Arthur also wonders what the fuck you were expecting from a Ben Stiller film about a bunch of regular joes fighting aliens in a suburban American setting?

 
Sweeney would also like to take this opportunity to entreat you (and me) not to watch Pixels:

WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE POOR BLACK AND WHITE CATS??

 


 


 
 

Day 16: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

I love the smell of Wes Anderson in the morning. Less so in the evening; it feels too mannered then, and too intricate. In the morning, though, when I'm at my freshest, I'm enchanted by his clipped direction and layered narratives, and the way he uses artifice to smooth the jagged edges of the raw human emotion that tends to lie at the heart of his stories.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is Anderson at his finest, and richly deserving of the four Oscars it won, the five it was nominated for but didn't and, frankly, a bunch it wasn't nominated for at all - How Ralph Fiennes was overlooked for best actor is a particular mystery to me.

I suppose I'd better add the usual disclaimer here - if you haven't liked Wes Anderson's movies before, this probably won't be the one to convert you. He's probably the most distinctive director of our generation, and Grand Budapest Hotel doesn't bring anything stylistically new to the table. He's the master of magic realism, and here this is applied to a tall tale about a legendary hotel concierge, nestled like a rare bird's egg beneath two separate layers of hearsay.

Our eyes and ears for the main story belong to one Zero Moustafa (played as a youth by Tony Revolori), the lobby boy at the titular establishment. He has no education and no experience, but his sole dream seems to be to work at the Grand Budapest and for M. Gustave, the concierge (Ralph Fiennes), this is the only truly relevant point. Gustave is a master of his trade, bringing wealthy customers back summer after summer with his winning combination of charm, sexual favours and a truly superb knack for a well-turned expletive.

For a while, things continue happily enough, until the untimely demise of one particularly happy customer leaves Gustave with a vast inherited fortune and several murderously miffed relatives to contend with. A trip to view the body leaves both Gustave and Zero in a whole world of trouble, and one which will require every single one of the many resources at the truly talented concierges' disposal to escape intact.

It's beautiful to look at (of course) with an impeccably elegant soundtrack (of course) and a script that quietly, bluntly rips your heart open at the fundamental sadness of the human condition. Nobody writes a lost soul like Anderson, but in Gustave he finds a true hero - it took me about two sentences to fall in love with him and I'm sure I can't have been the only one.

For those of us who are already true believers, here's the reassurance you may have been seeking. Yes, you will see Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody, although only the last of these has more than a cameo. This is Fiennes' show, primarily, even if, as a crazed assassin, Willem Dafoe does his damnedest to steal it.

...Listen, just watch the bloody movie already. If you don't like it, fine, you fail at being a human being, but at least you'll have tried.



 

Day 15: Grizzly Man (2005)

An early scene from Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man sees Timothy Treadwell, its subject, smacking a half-grown Alaskan grizzly bear on the nose. Right then, you know there probably won't be a happy ending to be had. I've seen the film before but I wanted to go back to it, possibly because it's the kind of thing that reminds you that no matter how bad it gets, there'll always be somebody in the world more fucked up than you are.

Honestly, I'd always thought of Herzog as pretty fucked up himself - with the best will in the world he tends to show up in my mind as That Director In The Cheerful Sadomasochistic Relationship With Klaus Kinski - but compared to Treadwell he's as sane as a brick, and his thoughtful, kindly narration gives backbone and humanity to a story that almost feels straight out of Aesop's fables.

Before the bears, Treadwell was a jobbing actor and by all accounts something of a restless soul. Friends and acquaintances describe his habit of self-reinvention, as the ordinary boy from a nice middle-class Long Island became a boisterous Australian orphan. He had a tendency to use drugs and alcohol to paper over the cracks, managing this with only moderate success until he narrowly lost out on the role of Woody from Cheers. What followed was not entirely clear but sounded like full-on psychosis, leading him to eventually spend thirteen summers in Alaska's Grizzly Maze, a wilderness whose labyrinth of pathways has been carved out by the bears themselves.

Here, away from humanity, Treadwell was able to carve out the heroic fantasy life he seemed to need, casting himself as the bears' champion even though, by all accounts, numbers were stable and poaching almost nonexistent. We see the footage he films where he speaks to the bears like wayward puppies, and where, when a fly lands on the eye of a recently-deceased fox cub, he chastises the insect for its lack of respect. With his squeaky voice and Prince Valiant haircut, it's impossible not to be reminded of Michael Jackson and the lengths he went to to protect himself from a world that seemed too cruel to tolerate.

Inevitably, something dreadful eventually happens. The exact details remain unknown, but one evening in 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend Amy were ambushed in their tent by a large male bear. What then transpired could only be guessed at by the state of their remains, and from an audio recording on a video camera whose lens cap had not been removed. Herzog doesn't force the audience to listen, but he listens himself, and his reaction left me very glad of this.

In the end, Herzog decides, what saddens him the most is the utter implacability of nature; he looks into the eyes of the bears Treadwell thought were his friends and sees nothing but cold indifference. I believed him, certainly, but what still haunts me is the sort of distress that could lead a person to effectively estrange himself from his own species to fight for such an unnecessary cause. This is a thought-provoking film, beautiful but terribly bleak, and Herzog brings it to life with the touch of an absolute master.

Day 14: The Lost Boys (1987)

...Wait, we're almost halfway through October already?

Browsing the imdb, I'm struck by the lack of serious, thoughtful critique of Joel Schumacher's kiddie horror The Lost Boys. Not, I hasten to add, that I have any to offer myself, but I've always been under the impression that I'm the only person of my generation not to have seen and loved it, so it surprises me that nobody's in any hurry to discuss it in detail.

Except that having seen it, no, it doesn't, not really. This isn't a movie that rewards prolonged contemplation, and it certainly doesn't encourage it. It's style over substance all the way as our teenage heroes discover their new small-town home holds some nasty secrets of the bloodsucking variety. 

Not going to waste too much time on this, because it's one of the shallowest films I've seen in a long while. It plays like an extended music video, with far more emphasis on the staging than on the scripts. I'm not saying it isn't passable entertainment - I was mildly entertained throughout - but less than a day later, I feel as though the whole thing could easily have been condensed into six minutes of storytelling backed up by the extended mix of one kickass tune.

Personally, I thought the visuals were great, although your mileage may vary according to your tolerance of 100 proof, concentrated essence of 80s. I loved the beachside setting (Santa Clara in the movie, Santa Cruz in real life) and I most especially loved the Big Dipper on the boardwalk with its chasing lights. As for the performances, I'm tempted to comment on Kiefer Sutherland's screen presence, but I suspect that any credit I'm giving him for charisma should probably be offered to his outfit instead, or maybe his hairstyle.

The effects are serviceable, and I was mildly impressed by the restraint exercised here - for the first hour, I thought Schumacher was chasing a PG:13 rating. Eventually the action ramps up a little as the vamps begin to meet increasingly messy ends; I watched through my fingers, but then, I'm a screaming coward. The final payoff is cute, too, and even if I didn't laugh at it I definitely remember wanting to.

So, um, yeah. That was that.

Day 13: Welcome to Me (2014)

Thanks to the guys from RedLetterMedia for turning me on to this one - I already knew it was around, but their review helped me decide it was something I really wanted to watch.

Mental health is a sensitive subject at the best of times - by its very definition, it involves psychological distress, and so no matter how a movie might handle it, somebody will always find the portrayals involved upsetting, if not outright offensive. Traditionally, this has been handled in various ways, generally delineated by genre; horror movies tend to pander to the worst fears of the masses and screw what anybody thinks, while wealthier studios making serious dramatic pieces tend to go down the route trodden by the likes of Shine and A Beautiful Mind, romanticising the ugliest truths in the hope there might be an Oscar or two in it for them.

Refreshingly, Welcome to Me is happy to take the middle ground, treating its protagonist Alice Klieg (Kristen Wiig) with compassion even as it acknowledges the damage she inflicts on those around her. As naturally solipsistic as a toddler, Alice lives a quiet life claiming disability benefit and watching Oprah reruns until a lottery win leaves her richer to the tune of $86 million. When she's cut short during a TV slot celebrating her win after the network in question proves squeamish about broadcasting her description of her masturbation habits, she finds herself fired by sudden ambition, and Gabe Ruskin (Wes Bentley) - a kindly individual from a smaller network specialising in infomercials - is the perfect person to help bring her dreams to fruition. 

This, then, is the genesis of the talk show Welcome to Me, a show by Alice Klieg, about Alice Klieg and featuring whatever Alice Klieg wants to talk about at the time. Sometimes it features reenactments from Alice's past and the slights others have inflicted on her, and sometimes she just takes a week or so and uses her training as a veterinary nurse to castrate a few dogs live on camera. Before long, the lawsuits are rolling in and her kindly therapist (Tim Robbins) has disowned her, and eventually even her sweet-natured best friend Gena (Linda Cardellini) is forced to walk away.

For the most part, this is cringe comedy of the highest order. Wiig is utterly believable, carrying the entire movie pretty much solo - top-notch support players like Cardellini, Joan Cusack and Alan Tudyk barely get a look in. It's beautifully shot, too, with lots of subtle compositional tricks that serve the story rather than providing flash for its own sake.

If I had one criticism, it would probably be that the film chickens out at the last minute, wanting to ensure Alice maintains our sympathy despite Wiig's performance having already ensured this. There's a sudden swerve towards maudlin sentiment that feels tacked on and awkward, and unfortunately it happens late enough for it to be one of the impressions that lingers. Still, as niggles go, this is a very minor one relating to a film that manages the tricky feat of being simultaneously uncomfortable, touching and very funny indeed.

Day 12: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

I can still remember what it felt like to leave the cinema after I first saw Guardians of the Galaxy last year. I remember taking the wrong exit from the building and having to navigate my way out via the fire escape, and then I remember thinking about how strange it was that everybody in town seemed so damned smiley (after a couple of minutes, I realized I was smiling at everybody I saw). The only thing I don't remember, in fact, is my feet touching the ground.

To be fair, I'd been waiting on it for a long time. Everything augured well - the flippant trailers, the ludicrously out-of-place seventies soundtrack, the casting of talented comedy actors like Peter Serafinowicz - and I wasn't getting any of my usual pre-Marvel-event-movie alarm bells ringing. Bluntly put, I was predisposed to having fun.

The temptation at this point is to explain why Guardians of the Galaxy is such a great summer popcorn flick. It is - if you haven't seen it already then you really should - but in my view there's a few things that elevate it beyond the point of simply being a damned good time.

First and foremost amongst these is its emotional intelligence. To misquote somebody I can't be bothered looking at, comedy is tragedy plus distance. One way or other, Guardians' characters have all lived pretty horrible lives. This could have been handled in a Sandleresque sort of way, by making them fundamentally unrelatable and encouraging the audience to laugh at them - given that two of our heroes are a sentient raccoon and a walking tree, it would have been an understandable decision and to be honest, before I went in it was sort of what I was expecting. Instead of this, however, we're given some genuinely sensitive storytelling of the show-don't-tell school, whereby we're given brief insights into what they have experienced and then hit with a sight gag or a one-liner long before things have the chance to get too maudlin. This is complemented nicely by the orchestral sountrack, which carries the requisite heft for a sci-fi superhero movie. As big as it is, however, it only ever acts in service of the on-screen action rather than functioning as a cheap way to milk the tears.

None of this, however, is the most interesting thing about Guardians of the Galaxy. Heck, even Peter Serafinowicz isn't the most interesting thing about Guardians of the Galaxy, and he's normally the most interesting thing about pretty much any project he's involved with. Think about it, though: when was the last time you saw a film where the CGI characters felt like the dramatic equals of their live-action counterparts? I bet it wasn't an episode from the Star Wars series, and despite any grudging affection I might feel towards them it probably wasn't a Scooby Doo movie, either. Here, though, Rocket and Groot are just two more parts of the team - sure, they get their share of laughs, but we grieve with them, too. As voiced by Bradley Cooper, Rocket carries the film's emotional climax more or less solo, and at no point does this ever feel anything other than completely natural.

I'm not saying that this is a great movie, because it isn't - not to put too fine a point on it, great movies are seldom this ugly. Barring one or two nicely-choreographed action scenes, the cinematography here is a C+ at best. The film also suffers badly from the lack of a suitably interesting antagonist; Lee Pace's Ronan is too bland and too absent, whilst Yondu (Michael Rooker), although delightful, slots far too easily into the role of comic relief to ever present a convincing threat. As Marvel movies go, though, it's absolutely one of their best, and a small, cynical part of me suspects that this is as good as we're ever likely to get.






 

 

Day 11: Superman (1978)

It's not often that Channel 5 makes me smile. I mean, I watch it sometimes on my own in bed when my self-loathing levels are spiking, but its neverending spewing of hate and bile against anybody too disenfranchised to be able to defend themselves is, frankly, pretty fucking shameful.

Still, whoever's in charge of  the 5 USA schedules evidently isn't an entirely irredeemable human being. It was kind of them to show the original Superman yesterday, on the eleventh anniversary of the death of Christopher Reeve. I was heartbroken when it happened; shockingly, despite having lost two grandparents and an aunt already, the passing of an actor I'd never met felt like my first proper taste of grief. This was Superman, though - and I don't think many will dispute that Reeve was Superman - and if he could cease to exist then it suddenly seemed as though nothing in life was a constant any more. It hurt so much that I couldn't bear to think about the actor or the character, and a movie that had been part of my life since my age could be counted on the fingers of one hand felt as though it had been lost to me forever.

It's a cliche that time is a great healer; in truth, I suspect that in this particular case it was less time and more the sudden glut of moderately watchable superhero flicks. In any case, when I saw Superman on the TV listings yesterday, it felt like the right time to go back and take a look at one of the films that's been responsible for shaping practically my entire lifetime of viewing preferences.

I wasn't expecting it to be great, and it wasn't. It runs nearly two and a half hours, for one thing, and the pacing is what might charitably called leisurely. Something like an hour goes past without even a sniff of action, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I was slightly disturbed to find myself in possession of rather less patience than my single-digit self. Heck, one of the opening scenes confusingly introduces and then promptly dismisses a group of villains who wouldn't reappear until the sequel. Oh, and as Lois Lane, poor Margot Kidder is made to perform a positively Shatneresque spoken word piece as an accompaniment to some of John Williams', ahh, fine orchestral score, a scene which has never, ever ceased to make me want to claw out my eyes and eardrums.

With all that said, Superman's charms are hard to resist. Almost forty years on the effects work holds up just fine, with Reeve looking pretty much as convincing on invisible wires as Iron Man does as an intangible CGI sprite. The bigger set pieces are pretty great, too; I was surprised by a genuinely effective sequence featuring the Golden Gate Bridge. The set design in general is also a delight, from the icy Fortress of Solitude to Lex Luthor's esoterically-furnished lair. Richard Donner was also smart enough to hire a genuinely classy cast, with Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman and even Brando providing able support. 

In the end, though, the film lives and dies by Christopher Reeve's utterly delightful performance. His Superman feels like the better part of all of us, humble and gently humorous to the extent that these, rather than his flight or super speed, become the character's most memorable qualities. He's the definitive Superman - arguably the only remotely interesting one, in fact.

I won't be in any great hurry to return to this one, but when I do go back, it will definitely be with great fondness.

 

 



 

Day 10: Searching for Sugar Man (2012)

In general, I love feature-length documentaries. I've never actually reviewed one, though, possibly because it would feel like cheating to write about something I enjoy so much, particularly when BBC4 makes them so readily available on TV. This was how I found Searching for Sugar Man, as part of the Storyville documentary strand, which could probably provide me with my requisite two articles per week for the next year if I so wished.

The story here is a simple one, told with the minimum of fuss by director Malik Bendjelloul, who remains entirely unobtrusive as he speaks with all parties involved. It concerns the album Cold Fact, which, in the seventies, was as much a part of the sonic landscape in white middle class South Africa as the likes of Abbey Road or Bridge Over Troubled Water. The only difference, in fact, was that Cold Fact  and its originator, one Sixto Rodriguez, remained completely and utterly unknown in any other part of the world. 

As with all the best legends the origins of Cold Fact were shrouded in mist, or perhaps myth - rumour had it that its fame spread via multiple cassette copies of a single vinyl album brought across by somebody's girlfriend from the US to South Africa. And Rodriguez himself? Long dead. Popular opinion ran that he committed suicide on stage - some versions said that he shot himself, others that he set himself alight.

As the owner of a record shop noted for importing copies of the album, Stephen "Sugar" Segerman eventually came to be regarded as the authority on the topic, to the extent that he was asked to write the liner notes for Rodriguez' second album, Coming From Reality. Acutely aware of how little was known about the man, Segerman used the notes to ask for people to come forward if they knew anything about this musical enigma.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and sometimes it isn't; word eventually got as far as one of Rodriguez' daughters, who was able to confirm that rumours of his death had been greatly exaggerated. He was alive and well, working as a carpenter in the same down-at-heel Detroit neighbourhood he had described in Cold Fact, with no idea that his eventual return to South Africa would be on a par with the second coming of Elvis.

Searching for Sugar Man keeps things consistently intimate, speaking to Rodriguez' family and associates rather than the fans. The visuals are stark and simple, making the most of the fact that large swathes of modern-day Detroit are starting to look like the remnants of a lost civilisation. Occasional animated segments are seamlessly integrated, adding texture to a film that would otherwise simply be a collection of talking heads. And then there's the music itself, smooth, sad, folk rock that plays like a more populist, more mournful Dylan, bringing us into Rodriguez' world in a way that makes it easy to see why disenfranchised South Africans would take him to their hearts. 

This is a gently upbeat film, and one with enough faith in its subject not to bother with cheap emotional manipulation. By the end I felt a renewed confidence in humanity, and in the strength of human nature. All in all, it was a wonderful way to ease myself into the weekend.

Day 9: The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954)

I could spin you a line about how I wanted to compare this to the recent sequel/reboots, but it wouldn't be true; basically, I was looking for something with a runtime of no longer than 95 minutes to fill the tight slot between my return from work and the finals week edition of The Great British Menu. The Belles of St. Trinian's is what was found, and so The Belles of St. Trinian's was what I watched.

My general impression is that the modern incarnation did the original full justice, pretty much. Both the films I've seen are strong ensemble pieces that manage to pack an improbable amount of plot into a pleasingly short package, and both feature a cast that mixes safe hands (Alistair Sim as headmistress Millicent Fritton) with future talent - in the case of Belles, this includes a 16-year-old Barbara Windsor as well as marking an early appearance for Joan Sims.

Raucous but never crude, the story of the Belles centres around a horse racing scam, with the younger girls and the daughter of an Arab Sheikh going up against Fritton's brother and his frequently-expelled daughter. Inevitably, there's also a subplot about funds running out and trying to save the school, whilst the ever-delightful Joyce Grenfell gets involved as an undercover police officer posing as a gym mistress.

It's sweet, it's funny and utterly goodhearted, with Sim the undisputed star - the only wrong note comes in the form of the brownface worn by Fatima, the Sultan's daughter. Is this excusable? Probably not, but there's plenty else here to love. I look forward to catching up on the others in the series as soon as my time's my own again.

Day 8: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

I'm yet to meet anybody who hasn't loved Mad Max: Fury Road. Actually, no, that's only partially true - I haven't met anybody who hasn't loved it, but I've heard about a bunch of men's rights activists who don't believe a movie about cars and post-apocalyptic wastelands should have strong female characters who (spoiler) frequently get one over on their male oppressors. This is the point, however, where I ask myself whether people like this actually count as human, and come to the conclusion that the jury's probably out.

Personally, I thought it was great long before I actually saw it. I was enthralled from the first time I viewed the trailer, dazzled by the sheer excess and the fact that the stuntwork appeared to have been created on-set instead of in a computer. I thought about going to see it at the cinema, even, but that was when I was still hopeful that the newest Fantastic Four iteration wasn't going to stink, and so I decided to save my cash in the hope I'd get to see something frothy and silly in a year when I've really, really needed it.

It wasn't to be, though, so we'll add that to the list of reasons that Fantastic Four sucks ass: It prevented me from seeing a pedal to the metal, old-school blockbuster in the full-size glory it deserves.

So, how do I love thee, Mad Max: Fury Road? Let me count the ways...

1. The cars. Oh, god, the cars. They look like the results of a Scrapheap Challenge special that got bitten by a werewolf. 
2. The people. I love how George Miller isn't afraid to give screentime to people of every gender and size and colour, and how he doesn't measure a woman's character by her appearance.
3. The fact that Max (Tom Hardy) spends a significant chunk of the first part of the movie as a human hood ornament. Not sure whether this is fundamentally hilarious or whether I'm a little bit strange.
4. Nicholas Hoult as Nux. By all accounts, Hoult himself seems to be a bit of a twat, but he has a real knack for taking damaged characters and turning them into heart-stealers. Here he's the brainwashed acolyte of the tyrannical Immortan Joe, and the screen lights up a little whenever he's around.
5. The refreshing lack of gore. Oh, there's a bit of blood splashed around, but Miller keeps it brief and while various characters meet horrible ends, he trusts the audience to know what's happened without being all pornographic about it.
6. Speaking of trusting the audience, another refreshing thing here is the lack of exposition. No gratuitous information dumps, therefore, from characters who explain only what's necessary to whichever other character they happen to be speaking to at the time.
7. The casting. I love that Miller brought back Hugh Keays-Byrne, the villain in the original Mad Max, to play the evil Immortan Joe.
8. The casting. I reall, really love that Miller didn't let Mel Gibson anywhere near the damned project.

As for the film's much discussed feminist subtext? Yes, it's there, and no, I don't think it's in the least bit overstated. In the end, the film is the story of Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa, with Max himself nothing more than a helpful tagalong. Furiosa and the women she allies herself with along the journey are brave and resourceful, natural improvists in a world that requires people to do what they can with whatever's closest to hand.

You'll notice that I haven't really discussed the plot. This isn't because there isn't one, or even because it's particularly irrelevant. Fury Road is far more about evoking a world than telling a story, however - in essence, it's a two-hour chase sequence that only rarely pauses for breath. In other hands (and, arguably, without such solidly coherent stunt work), this might be exhausting or even flat-out boring. Here, however, it's immersive and exhilarating, joining Kingsman on the short but happy list of truly great action movies I've seen this year.

 

Day 7: The Fantastic Four (1994)

...As opposed to the 2005 or 2015 versions. Not that I have anything against the former, I hasten to add, I've just heard repeatedly that the earliest screen incarnation of Marvel's oldest superhero team is the best of a bad bunch. I was also under the mistaken impression that it was directed by Roger Corman, which piqued my interest - checking the imdb I now see that he just has a production credit, but still, it's an interesting name to have attached to a project like this.

To explain: some superheroes are fundamentally cool. Batman is the classic example, of course, but the likes of Spider-Man and Iron Man still have a certain style and drama that work well on the big screen. All of these have mass market appeal. Now, imagine these as points at one end of a line. Moving further down said line, you have Wolverine, and, quite a bit further down, the rest of the X-Men. Travelling still further, we're getting to the point where mainstream audiences just ain't that interested. Superman was marketable once, but now he's just too goody-goody, and I doubt that even Mark Ruffalo could rescue another solo Hulk outing. Are you with me so far? Good. Now, hop into a cab and give the driver your large-denomination note of choice. Climb out, and you'll be right next to the Fantastic Four.

I'm sorry if this sounds uncharitable, but it's just how it is. Stretchy superheroes like Reed Richards are inherently ludicrous, and once you install him at the head of a team, you've basically declared your intent to make either a comedy or a kids' movie. Frankly, trying to make a dark and gritty origin story like whatsisname from Chronicle did this year was always going to be a bit stupid.

To cut a long story short, this is why I think Oley Sassone deserves a little credit for handling such difficult material in such a tonally-appropriate manner. His interpretation of The Fantastic Four is cheap, cheerful and incredibly cheesy, but y'know what? It comes closer to the spirit of the comic than any other film or TV adaptation I've seen. Alex Hyde-White (so stilted and annoying in Biggles: Adventures In Time) makes the perfect Reed Richards/Mr Fantastic, with just the right mixture of bravery and geekiness. The other characters aren't quite so successful, unfortunately - Rebecca Staab's Sue Storm is, almost inevitably, severely underwritten, and Jay Underwood's Johnny Storm (a character intended as a natural irritant) is the wrong shade of annoying. As Ben Grimm, Michael Bailey Smith spends large chunks of the film hidden beneath a pretty effective rubber rock suit; as with most of the leads he's a diabolical actor, but I've always had a thing for the Thing and so I was sort of charmed anyway.

The plot is pretty much what you'd expect, with the four friends gaining their superpowers and defeating their arch-nemesis, Dr. Doom. It's shored up by effects that were hokey by 1994 standards - by 1984 standards, too, for that matter -  and honestly, if you don't enjoy rubbish superhero movies, then there'll be nothing for you to see here and you'd be better off moving on. Me, though? I generally prefer rubbish superhero movies, especially to the dark and glossy sadism that Christopher Nolan's using the genre to peddle these days. The Fantastic Four is cheap, lightweight entertainment, but it has spirit and heart - it felt to me like a natural precursor to the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy. So here's to the guys at the far end of the cool continuum; I'll continue hopping that cab and travelling to see you at every opportunity.

Day 6: Peeping Tom (1960)

Finally! This one's been on my cinematic bucket list for absolutely years, but various factors have always got in the way. My own innate cowardice in the face of scary stories, for one thing, not to mention the fact that it's only been readily available since relatively recently. After yesterday, though, I felt as though I could handle anything so long as it didn't come dressed up in ruffles and singing happy tunes.

It's hard to know where to begin with Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, to be honest, such is the extent to which its reputation precedes it. Certain facts are on the record, of course - that on release, it was so reviled that it effectively killed the career of one of the UK's most talented and distinctive directors - but despite having read everything I could find about the film, I still felt as though I was going in blind, with generally high expectations as my general expectation.

Okay, that's not strictly true; I knew the basics - that Peeping Tom was about a voyeuristic killer who filmed each murder, and that he had become this way thanks to his father, an experimental psychologist studying fear in childhood and using his own son as a guinea pig. I knew that the killer's boyhood self was played by Powell's son, and the father was played by Powell himself, although I kind of wished I didn't because even before watching, I found this staggeringly bloody creepy.

This is the thing about Peeping Tom, though; it's more interactive than a film has any right to be. Not in a gadgetry or bells and whistles way, but in the way it forces audience complicity and sends your mind down shady alleyways into some very dark places indeed. Largish chunks of it are viewed through the lens of the killer himself, one Mark Lewis, a softly-spoken and nervously twitchy individual played by Karlheinz Boehm. Lewis is a pitiable figure, certainly, and he tends to incite sympathy in those around him, who know nothing of his murderous secret. 

There is no pleasure for Lewis in killing; instead, it's a compulsion, and when his downstairs neighbour Helen (Anna Massey) is kindly and flirtatious, he seems to want to do everything he can to protect her. Helen's blind mother, meanwhile, played by Maxine Audley, knows that Lewis is an unquiet soul - in one of the film's most powerful scenes, she confronts him in his darkroom and for a short while, it looks as though the tables might be turned. Peeping Tom is not a gentle enough film to use narrative convention to let us off the hook, however, and instead, we are forced to watch as the tragedy unfolds in front of our shocked but fascinated eyes.

Which, I think, is why the critics hated it. The line between fascination and revulsion is a thin one; it's easily blurred, and sometimes it can be improbably hard to tell the one emotion from the other. Film critics watch more films than almost anybody, and so, faced with a piece that implicates the viewer so soundly, perhaps it's natural that they should be the ones to judge it the most harshly. What probably compounds this, too, is that Peeping Tom is so very, very good, with Powell's trademark gorgeous cinematography. The film tells a simple story with expressionistic grace, and uncomfortable as it is to admit as much, I found the viewing experience a thoroughly enjoyable one. There are good or great films that have left me feeling drained and exhausted - Alien, for instance, or Terry Gilliam's Brazil, but this wasn't one of them; and even as the last images faded I found myself planning a repeat viewing in a month or so.

Humans, let's be blunt about this, like to watch. Horror films, traffic accidents, politically-motivated hostage murders. No matter what, where there is spectacle, there will always be an interested audience. I'm not sure what this says about us as a species, other than that we've evolved with our eyesight as our primary sense and that as a survival trait, we're biologically programmed to keep a close eye on anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps this is an uncomfortable truth for some - I honestly don't know. What I'm sure of, however, is that I yearn to see the films Powell might have gone on to make if the mores of the time hadn't left the powers that be so ill-at-ease with their own animal nature.

Day 5: Enchanted (2007)

One of the most important things I've learned since starting this blog over a year ago is that Disney aren't always evil. Well, their films aren't always evil, in any case - I'm reserving judgement as to the company itself. Whilst watching and writing, I've been quietly charmed by the likes of Wreck-It Ralph, Big Hero 6, Into the Woods and The Sorcerer's Apprentice - heck, in some cases I was quite vocally charmed, even.

One of my first thoughts when planning this month's viewing, therefore, was that I wanted to return to Enchanted. Granted, I loathed it on first viewing, but part of the joy of writing this thing is going back to films I haven't enjoyed and finding I was wrong. With my anti-Disney bias weakened, I figured now would be a really good time to revisit a film that an awful lot of people really liked.

Enchanted was meant to be Disney's attempt at gentle self-parody, starring Amy Adams as the all-singing, all-sewing, hyper-girlified princess-in-training Giselle, brought through from the animated land of Andalasia to modern-day New York on the day she's supposed to be marrying a prince (James Marsden) she's known for only one day.

Baffled and distressed, she's brought home by a hard-bitten and newly-engaged divorce lawyer (Patrick Dempsey) at the insistence of his daughter, and soon begins bringing magic into their lives even as they inject a little urban reality into hers. Meanwhile, the Prince and his evil stepmother, queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) have also travelled across from Andalasia to try and find her, albeit with two very different ends in mind.

The concept itself is cute - Disney have long been accused of promoting poor female role models, and of creating characters that are two-dimensional in every sense. In some ways, Enchanted was crying out to be made, if only so the corporation could show at least a modicum of self-awareness. It could have worked - heck, with casting like that it really should have.

The first time I saw the movie, however, I was so intensely irritated by Giselle, the Prince and the walking clichés who surrounded them I could hardly make it through to the end. And, well, unfortunately, my second viewing experience was much the same. It baffles me, because Amy Adams is a talented performer with a bravery and sweetness that raises the tone of almost everything I've ever seen her in. Put her in something that's already cheerful and family-friendly, though, like this or the recent Muppet movie, and she's just way too much, all eyes and teeth and the sort of weapons-grade niceness that you can't help thinking must mask a black belt in passive aggression. Here, perhaps, it's meant to be parodic, or at least a pastiche, but there can be no doubting that audience sympathies are meant to remain firmly on Giselle's side.

As the Prince, meanwhile, we have James Marsden, no slouch himself on the eyes and teeth front. I've enjoyed his work before, once, in the recent Hairspray remake, where he played a smarmy TV presenter, but I find it hard to recall seeing him in any other setting without cringing. Granted, he raised a smile or two towards the end of the film, as the pace slowed and my red mist began to dissipate, and granted, the role was a thankless one, but did he really have to enjoy himself so much?

Quality performers Timothy Spall and Susan Sarandon, meanwhile, were hopelessly hobbled, in the former case by a variety of slightly politically incorrect accents and disguises, and in the latter, by next to no screen time. The wicked queen is supposed to be our main antagonist, but by the time she finally begins to make her presence felt we've only got about fifteen minutes left to go. She's a bloodless villain, too, never radiating the necessary sense of menace.

In the end, I think Enchanted falls prey to the very pitfalls it tries to parody: namely, it's all flash and sparkles, with nary a thought in its pretty, sweet-natured little head. By the end of the film, we don't know any more about Giselle than we did at the beginning, and love interest Robert is just another dark-haired stranger, albeit one with a small daughter and a low-grade cynical streak. Giselle does, inevitably, bring magic into the lives of those around her, and the climactic scene takes place at a charity ball. Question, by the way: do they send out moves lists for the dances beforehand or have rehearsals or something, and if not, why is every dancer perfectly synchronised, including, for that matter, those who come from entirely different universes?

I don't even think Enchanted is a noble failure - to be honest, I think it's as cynical a piece of marketing as I've seen in a while. Leaving aside the heavy product placement and the constant callbacks to other Disney movies, it still peddles the usual pernicious bullshit about real women spending their lives cooking, sewing and singing, all with a smile on their face and a waistline smaller than their neck circumference. Little girls don't need this in their lives, and their mothers certainly bloody don't.

...If you're looking for a role model for your small daughter, however, you could do a lot worse than Summer Hathaway, from Richard Linklater's excellent School of Rock, which I watched yesterday afternoon to wash the Enchanted out of my mouth. Granted, Ms. Hathaway, were she real, would likely be in training right now to be either leader of the Republican party or dictator of a small South American republic, but at least she emphatically cannot sing.