The Indefensibles - Year 2

I knew I remembered doing this last year, but apparently I did so at the end of October, to close off the original 31 Days Challenge. Oh well; probably makes more sense to do it at the end of the year, when everybody else is rounding everything else up, too. 

Here, then, is a quick rundown of the best and worst of my viewing year - I hope you've had as much fun as I have.

PRESENTING... THE INDEFENSIBLES!

Best Actor (gender neutral)

Nominees: Ralph Fiennes (Grand Budapest Hotel), JK Simmons (Whiplash), Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), Kristen Wiig (Welcome to Me) Sharlto Copley (Chappie)
Winner: Kristen Wiig, for a stunningly brave performance that actively avoids courting audience sympathy.

Worst Actor (gender neutral)

Nominees: James Marsden (Hop), Mike Jittlov (The Wizard of Speed and Time), Jack Black (Nacho Libre), Steve Martin (Looney Tunes: Back in Action)
Winner: Jack Black, because while James Marsden can't help the configuration of his facial features, Black can sure as shit help that abysmal accent.

Best Movie

Nominees: Mad Max: Fury Road, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Peeping Tom
Winner:  Peeping Tom, for being so very clever on so very many levels. NB: This was an exceptionally hard category to judge. I had about a dozen nominees longlisted and on a different day, any one of the other three films listed above might have taken the honours.

Worst Movie

Nominees: Real Steel, Hop, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Tomorrowland
Winner: Hop, for its complete absence of any even remotely redeeming feature.

Best Soundtrack

Nominees: Hairspray (2007), I Heart Huckabees, Whiplash
Winner: I Heart Huckabees, which combines inventive instrumentation and on-point lyrics to create an experience that weaves itself into the movie's very fabric.

Worst Soundtrack

Nominees: How to be a Serial Killer, The Lorax, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Winner: The Lorax. All of these were bad, but The Lorax was the most offensively loudly bad.

Best Visuals

Nominees: Boxtrolls, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Mad Max: Fury Road
Winner: Mad Max: Fury Road. Endlessly inventive and lyrically beautiful - not bad for an action flick.

Worst Visuals 

Nominees: The Polar Express, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Titan A.E.
Winner: The Polar Express - as big and bleak and barren as the space in Robert Zemeckis' heart where his creative spirit should be.

Pleasantest Surprise

Nominees: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Rollercoaster, Kingsman: The Secret Service
Winner: Kingsman: The Secret Service. Takes what could be a dodgy concept and turns it into an enjoyable and implausibly big-hearted romp.

Biggest Disappointment

Nominees: The Voices, Titan A.E, Crimson Peak
Winner: Crimson Peak, which managed to make incest seem even more embarrassing than in Game of Thrones.

Guiltiest Pleasure 

Nominees: Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Megamind, Death to Smoochy
Winner: Megamind, a kids' cartoon with properly adult emotional literacy. True, there's not that much to be ashamed of here, but Will Ferrell voices the lead role so that will have to do.

Greatest Waste of a Cool Concept

Nominees: Death Becomes her, Toys, Quartet
Winner: Toys. Granted, Small Soldiers subsequently filled the same hole, but this could have been something darker, artsier and altogether classier.

Greatest Waste of Actorly Talent

Nominees: Meryl Streep (Death Becomes her), Michael Gambon (Toys), George Clooney (Tomorrowland)
Winner: Meryl Streep. We all know La Streep isn't averse to slumming it, but here director Robert Zemeckis (again) has done her wrong and should be ashamed of himself.

Most Misunderstood Work of Genius

Nominees: Con Air, Chappie, Funny Bones
Winner: Funny Bones. Whoever marketed this dark and slightly surreal little drama as a comedy has a lot to answer for.

Happiest Ending

Nominees: Hairspray (2007), Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Chappie
Winner: Chappie. Warmed my cockles to toasty perfection.

That's all for 2015, folks - see you next year!

Chappie (2015)

So, I have a confession to make: I never much liked Neill Blomkamp's 2009 fable District 9. There are those who'd argue that this makes me a racist; me, I think that anybody who requires that level of heavy-handed preaching to appreciate the fact that apartheid was a Very Bad Thing might want to examine their own prejudices before they go condemning others. I was left feeling as though Blomkamp had definitely wanted to make some grubbily violent sci-fi but had accidentally picked up the script for a pre-school TV programme about the importance of being nice to people and walking a mile in their shoes, and while it all seemed to make sense at first it soon became patronising on a level that started out as irritating but eventually landed up outright surreal.

This, then, along with some moderately shocking reviews, is why I wasn't in any great hurry to see Chappie. I've not been having much luck with films this Christmas, though (possibly because I've been having such great luck at falling asleep) and after the opening ten minutes of Open Season I knew I couldn't rely on the TV to bring me what I needed. At this time of year, I like my movies sentimental but subversive, and nasty without being too unremittingly bleak. At a pinch, however, I'll cheerfully settle for anything that 1) isn't a cartoon and 2) doesn't feature actors that look as though they've been airbrushed. 

The characters in Chappie definitely don't look as though they've been airbrushed, although they might conceivably have taken a few shots from a passing sandblaster. There's a few faces you might recognise, in any case - Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel as a kindly young scientist, and Hugh Jackman as the sort of sadistically violent bastard that comes as standard with every film that centres around an amiable robot. 

Said robot, the titular Chappie, is played - in vocal and motion capture form - by Sharlto Copley, in what has to be one of the strongest performances I've seen all year. There's nothing new about the trope of a powerful robot with the mind of a child, but Copley is given the space to lay himself bare and display a vulnerability that's always endearing and occasionally flat-out heartbreaking. He receives able support in this from South African rappers Ninja and Yo-Landi as a couple of low-rent gangsters, each of whom have very distinct ideas about how their robotic child should be reared and for what eventual purpose. Despite the guns and the bluster, however, they prove almost as naive as Chappie himself, and things inevitably start to go very badly wrong.

It's at this point that you'd assume that the film would eventually culminate in a Tarantinoesque bloodbath, but you'd only be partly right. Blomkamp has far too much faith in his characters to blow it all by going all Shakespearean in the final act. He manages to find a real humanity in his grubby, scarred protagonists, and I'm not sure I can remember the last time I found myself rooting so hard for a bunch of figments of somebody else's imagination*. What we're left with instead, in fact (spoiler) is something more positive and tender than I could ever have hoped for.

People may tell you that Chappie fails to see the bigger picture, and they're probably right - it doesn't pose many questions about the kind of leadership that results in the sort of near-future dystopia in which the movie is set, and doesn't confront the sort of issues Blomkamp dealt with in District 9 and Elysium. That said, it's an absolutely cracking character piece with charm in spades and a surprising amount of emotional heft - could anybody really ask for a better Christmas present than that?


_{*Okay, I can, it was yesterday, it was The Doctor and River Song and I'd have given half my Christmas dinner if it would've guaranteed them the happy ending they both so richly deserve.}

 

Black Mirror: White Christmas (2014)

Taking a bit of a break from the movies today and covering a TV special instead. It's the season for it, after all - we all have our holiday favourites that worm their way into our lives and become part of our festive consciousness. In twenty minutes or so, I'll be taking a break from writing to watch Famous Fred, Joanna Quinn's glorious adaptation of Posy Simmonds' book, and later today I'll be pulling out my copy of the adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather and eagerly scanning the schedules to see what day I have to get up at stupid o'clock so as not to miss Olive, the Other Reindeer. 

None of these, it has to be said, have a lot in common with the near-future techno-horror that is Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror. There's been a couple of series of this so far, each containing three self-contained stories linked by the central theme of modern life being lived via electronic screens. These are the black mirrors of the title, and they seldom reflect much that we can like about ourselves. Some episodes are darkly funny, some are just dark, and together, they represent what for my money has to be some of the most disturbing material ever to reach the small screen.

When I heard last year that they were making a Christmas special, therefore, my first thought was How on earth are they going to top the one about the Prime Minister fucking the pig? A year later and unwillingly wiser, I now find myself thinking Bloody Hell, I hope this one doesn't come true as well.

Black Mirror: White Christmas starts inside a cottage in the middle of a snowy wasteland, where smooth-talking  Matt (Jon Hamm) and sullen, shell-shocked Potter (Rafe Spall) are preparing to spend Christmas in isolation. Craving conversation that Potter is reluctant to provide, Matt attempts to initiate dialogue by telling him about the days when he used to work as a pick-up artist. 

What follows is an anthology of sorts, with three short stories linked by segments set within the cottage with our two main protagonists. This sounds a little bit Twilight Zone: The Movie, I guess, and the first section, a hokey and predictable cautionary tale, led me to worry that this might be exactly what I was getting. However, as the rest of the story (and the stories-within-a-story) unfolds, it becomes increasingly obvious that Black Mirror: White Christmas is puzzlebox storytelling of the highest order, every bit as accomplished as the superb Cabin In The Woods, albeit several orders of magnitude nastier. This is world-class knife-twisting, absolutely relentless in the way that each deliciously repellent surprise expands into the next like some sort of glorious fractal of existential terror. Every time, you think it can't possibly get any worse. Every time, it does, and if you're brave enough to turn the lights off while the end credits are still playing you're made of sterner stuff than I am.

It would be easy to conclude that Brooker is, bluntly put, something of a sick fuck. Maybe he is. Maybe surrendering ourselves to the inevitable bulldozing of our private selves by communications technology is the route to a brighter future. Maybe, just maybe, everything really will be okay.

Merry Christmas, everybody. Now FUCK OFF.

 

Death to Smoochy (2002)

We haven't had anything festive yet this year, have we? As I get older and more cynical, even the more subversive Christmas flicks seem to have lost a lot of their appeal. It's funny, really; I never thought I'd ever get bored with The Muppet Christmas Carol, but when I saw it last year I was struck by quite how preachy it was. I doubt it'll stop me watching it again if I see it on the schedules, but another little piece of the magic has gone. Never mind, though; one of the joys of approaching 40 is the realisation that while some of the joys of Christmas may fade, new ones will always come through to replace them.

Technically, Death to Smoochy isn't a Christmas movie. It's set in winter, though, and has its climax at an ice rink, so it always shows up that way on my head. Oh, and it's an absolute blast.

Directed by Danny De Vito, this bleak little comedy has charm in spades and boasts three killer lead performances by Robin Williams, Edward Norton and Catherine Keener. Williams plays Rainbow Randolph, a sleazy, greasy kids' TV star who finds himself suddenly out of work when he gets caught accepting a suitcase full of cash in exchange for giving a young audience member a prominent place on his show. A replacement is found in the form of Smoochy the Rhino, whose creator, squeaky-clean vegan Sheldon Mopes (Norton), can be relied upon not to scare the horses or disgrace the network. Mopes soon finds himself at loggerheads with producer Nora Wells (Keener), however, when his principles collide with her fundamental cynicism. Sounds like the setup for a sweet romcom, doesn't it? Randolph, however, has other ideas...

The reason Death to Smoochy works, I think, has a lot to do with the character of Sheldon Mopes - not sure whether it's the writing or the performance, although I suspect it's probably a bit of both. It would have been easy to make Mopes a bland, saccharine innocent, but instead, we're given a simmering powder keg of a man who struggles with anger issues and values his integrity above all else. It's his honesty that we remember and that the other characters instinctively respond to, and whether picking fake fur for a new costume or teaching kids to howl their frustration to the moon, he's a joy to watch whenever he's on screen. Williams, meanwhile, gets to really cut loose, light-footed and demented but ultimately sympathetic as the desperate Rainbow Randolph. In the middle, meanwhile, is Keener's Nora, whose gradual change of heart provides the film with much of its considerable warmth.

The real reason I love Death to Smoochy, though, is that it's another one of those glorious movies that forgives its fucked-up characters without asking that they change in order to allow those around them to accept them. 

This then brings me, briefly, to Trainwreck, which I saw a week ago and hadn't been planning on covering, but which has stayed with me for longer than I thought it would and for all the wrong reasons. For the vast majority of its runtime it was genuinely brilliant, filthy and unapologetic and the funniest thing I'd seen in years. What a shame, then, to tack on a deeply conservative ending that (spoiler) was basically stolen straight from Grease and felt trite even then, and even within a movie musical. All the goodwill I'd been feeling was destroyed, and then some. Ladies and gents, if you have to change your fundamental nature to make your partner accept you, then it was never you they loved in the first place and you're better off running while you can. #Christmaswisdom


 

Best in Show (2000)

I don't think I've covered a Christopher Guest mockumentary yet, so let's have one now. Not Spinal Tap because we all know all the words already, and not Waiting for Guffman or For your consideration because they're both kind of rubbish. A Mighty Wind isn't; it's well worth a watch and I'll probably write about it another day, but I've seen it a few times before and wasn't in that huge a hurry to revisit. By a process of elimination, then, this leaves us with 2000's Best in Show.

Most of the usual Guest crew are there - Catherine O'Hara, Jane Lynch, Eugene Levy and Michael McKean, to name but a few - this time as participants in an important national dog show. We follow the characters and their dogs through their journeys to the venue and then the finals ring, witnessing interviews and judging sessions as well as occasional candid moments.

Nothing here is particularly surprising; the characters veer towards the grotesque and there's a few killer lines, mostly coming from Fred Willard as a show commentator or, not unexpectedly, from Guest himself. He plays one Harlan Pepper, a folksy type with a sweet-natured bloodhound and an ability to name every kind of nut from pistachio to red pistachio.

Funnier than A Mighty Wind but not so amusing as Spinal Tap, Best in Show unfortunately lacks the warmth of either. It has a certain meanness of spirit that makes me feel uncomfortable from time to time, particularly when it comes to the gay and lesbian characters - Jane Lynch has seldom been so loveable, but she's still playing an old-fashioned cliche, while John Michael Higgins' gay dog handler Scott is an offensive stereotype straight out of the 1970s.

Would I recommend Best in Show? Certainly. It's a consistently funny look at a world that I'd guess is almost certainly every bit as weird as Guest portrays it. If you're looking for something properly endearing, though, I'd advise you to give this one a miss and go for one of his musically-themed titles instead.

Crimson Peak (2015)

I would like to give you an early Christmas present.

So here is a review of Guillermo Del Toro's film, Crimson Peak,

featuring Sweeney (above) and Arthur (below).

 Arthur would like to start by making a joke.

The joke is about Crimson Peak being a period drama.

This is because it has lots of people in fancy historic dresses, but also because it has lots of messy red splodgy stuff.

Seriously, though, it isn't, it's a horror movie. We think.

Sweeney isn't entirely convinced it's not a comedy, albeit a really, really boring one.

 The movie features Mia Wasikowska dressing like a small child,

And Tom Hiddleston looking very, very thin and quite troubled.

He has sex with his sister, played by Jessica Chastain, but I didn't want to look for a cat picture to illustrate that.

 Arthur thinks the whole thing plays out like a cross between Jane Eyre and the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Sweeney, however, would like to point out that this analogy makes the movie sound a whole lot more awesome than it actually is.

And that despite being sporadically (presumably unintentionally) amusing, it's actually pretty bloody stupid.

 Sorry, Arthur.

Goosebumps (2015)

Not sure why I'd been looking forward to this one so much, given that I was just a shade too old for the Goosebumps books when they came out in the mid-90s. I have a soft spot for kiddie horror, though, and also, thanks to the likes of School of Rock, for Jack Black (which is pretty horrifying in and of itself), so the movie sounded as though it might be an honest-to-goodness good time.

Goosebumps starts with teen Zach (Dylan Minnette) moving from New York to Madison, Delaware and meeting the beautiful Hannah (Odeya Rush). Hannah's father, Mr. Shivers, (Jack Black) is a nervous recluse with some serious anger management issues, and it becomes increasingly obvious that he's hiding something big. It's only when Zach stumbles upon a library of books, however, and notices that each of them are individually locked shut, that he realises how much trouble he might be in.

It all plays out like a holiday special, fast-paced, low-budget and jolly. The two younger leads get the best of the deal, with smart, snappy dialogue that makes them genuinely likeable, if half a decade too old for the source material. Black, meanwhile, is less lucky, getting saddled with a bunch of clunky exposition and then digging himself deeper with one of his truly dreadful comedy accents. 

The effects are passable and the sets are nice, particularly the implausible but gorgeous abandoned funfair. The monsters themselves, meanwhile, are comfortingly nonconvincing, with even Slappy the malevolent ventriloquist's dummy only becoming plausibly threatening in one gorgeous shot that reveals him as the alter ego of author R.L. Stine.

Harmless fun, but if you hate Jack Black (and I wouldn't blame you) you might want to stay away.

 

Tomorrowland (2015)

So, let's have a think about the grand old tradition of movies based on Disney attractions. The first one that comes to mind would probably be Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Forget about all the godawful sequels, if you can, and you might just find yourself remembering a superior action flick with fun performances, clever visuals and a suitably swashbuckling storyline. Face it: you might hate the company, but the movie itself is actually pretty damned good.

Of course, for every Pirates, there's a Country Bears (haven't seen it), a Haunted Mansion (impossibly stupid even when viewed through the haze of hallucination-grade flu) and, inevitably, about a million overlong, overly smug Pirates sequels.

So, where does Brad Bird's Tomorrowland fit in? I've read review after review praising its overwhelming optimism, its positive messages and its engaging characters. I'm all about the positivity and, honestly, I'm also all about the sort of slick visuals you get with an enthusiastic team of creatives and a healthy budget. The movie looked as though it might deliver a healthy dose of cute retrofuturism, and while I'm always going to maintain at least a slight degree of cynicism about anything from the House of Mouse, I held high hopes that it was going to be a blast.

...I suppose I'd better start by saying that I don't hold the cast responsible. Of the three leads, George Clooney and Raffey Cassidy are both great, whilst as main protagonist Casey Newton, Britt Robertson displayed an effortless, artless charm that won me over during the opening scene while she was still only present in voiceover form. Looking at the supporting players, meanwhile, Hugh Laurie manages to entertain as the nominal villain of the piece despite being woefully underwritten, whilst Thomas Robinson lends the younger version of Clooney's jaded inventor a fire and a sweetness that initially seems to set the tone for the entire movie.

The art direction is spot-on, too, as you'd expect from Bird, with his track record for successful animation. It's sleek but colourful, the sets all soaring, curved spires that seem to embody the endless, hopeful reaching of the optimists and dreamers that the film suggests will inherit the earth.

You're probably sensing a but coming, but I'm not going to bother with even that degree of subtlety. 

Bluntly put, Tomorrowland made me feel the sort of deep, existential queasiness that I find difficult to adequately pin down in words. It champions society's elite without even really acknowledging that the rest of the world exists, much less matters. 

Bird posits that the world should belong to the optimists without taking into account that large chunks of society don't have anything to be optimistic about. Sure, Casey always sees the bright side - it's made plain from the film's earliest scenes that she's a genius who succeeds at everything she tries. What reason would she have not to feel confident about her own future? The general suggestion by the end of the movie is that the rest of the world just needs to pull its socks up, an argument that's inevitably made by the people on top when they're trying to justify their position by blaming those underneath. 

This in itself is unpleasant enough, but it's also underpinned by levels of graphic (albeit bloodless) violence that exceeded those in the more overtly action-oriented Avengers: Age of Ultron. It felt almost like a streak of sadism to me, a joy in maiming and destruction that seemed like a confirmation of my gloomier suspicions about the movie in general and its director in particular. If Tomorrowland is a film about our societal and intellectual superiors, shouldn't the climax have involved something a little loftier than punching and explosions?

I could rant at length about the story being a confusing mess, too, but honestly, that's the least of the movie's problems, or the viewer's. Think about it: would you really have wanted Brad Bird to provide a coherent manifesto for the future he clearly dreams of?

Better to be thankful for small mercies, I guess.

 

Inside Out (2015)

I know I said I wasn't going to watch Pixar's Inside Out, but I was having a brave day on Sunday and those don't come along often enough that I can afford to ignore them. I reminded myself that I was free to switch off, therefore, grabbed a cushion to weep into, ignored my misgivings and settled in for the duration.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year you'll know that this one is something of a high-concept job, centred around the emotions who reside in the brain of eleven-year-old Riley and take control of her body and speech according to outside circumstance. Amy Poehler voices the effervescent and ever-so-slightly annoying Joy, who frequently gets frustrated with her opposite number Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith). When they get locked out of the control area, however, other emotions Fear, Anger and Disgust are left in control, and Riley's very identity comes under threat.

It's poignant, of course, and I won't deny that I shed a few tears at the end. What struck me more, however, was how remarkably clever it was, and quite how comforting it might be to somebody of Riley's age. I absolutely loved the central message that nobody can be expected to be happy all the time, and that trying to enforce a state of happiness can actually be unhealthy. I've always preferred to embrace my sadness, so... yeah, I'm right. Good.

It looks great, too - the real world looks drab and clunky compared to Riley's inner life, but that kind of feels like an accurate representation of the way things are. I loved the bright colours and the clever visual flourishes, such as when Joy and Sadness enter the realm of abstraction and then lose their physical dimensions one at a time. It's cute, it's witty and it felt more playful than anything Pixar have done since, well, ever.

No real criticism for this one, except perhaps for some sub-sitcom characterisation when it comes to Riley's parents and most particularly their inner lives. There's a time and a place for stereotyping, though, and with the focus on Riley's complex emotions I can see why Pete Docter didn't want to muddy the waters further.

Anyhow, my honesty island is apparently intact so I won't tell a lie: Inside Out didn't particularly rock my world. I'm not eleven, nor do I have a daughter, so it was never going to pack the devastating emotional punch I've been told it has for people in the target demographic. I was charmed, though, and impressed, and pretty solidly entertained. I really hope that Pixar can maintain this welcome return to form.