Film Culture - A Mixed Bag

As most of the films reviewed are old then bollocks to your spoilers. If a new film is reviewed then I won't spoil it for you unless it's shite, therefore saving you from having to watch it.

Being Rimmed

What I find really hypocritical is that people can slag off Rebel Moon like it's this uniquely awful film (which it isn't, but I can see why certain people would think that) and yet somehow Pacific Rim gets a free pass from major criticism. I mean, yes, it's not exactly something that has been done before; there is a uniqueness about it in terms of films made anywhere other than Japan, but it is an absolute load of  testosterone fuelled bollocks.

The special effects are awesome. The idea of a giant robot beating a giant monster with a ship is brilliant, but other than that... people complain about Marvel films? This is a Guillermo Del Toro movie; he's a fucking fantasy auteur; his films are usually viewed with wonder and awe even if they're complete manky testicles. This film was also the first to spotlight Charlie Hunnam's complete and utter inability to do accents; his USA accent in this wavers about and sounds vaguely Geordie sometimes and even the Northern Irish he so badly mastered in Rebel Moon. He is also not a very good actor, which begs the question of how he's become such a busy actor. The crazy thing about Pacific Rim is it's actually a comedy; despite untold destruction, loss of life, bonkers violence and the Chinese Kaiju Mafia. I don't think it was intended to be a comedy, mainly because it's absolutely and utterly unfunny, but the double act of Burn Gorman and Charlie Day was so bad, in a comedic kind of way, that no one in their right mind would take it seriously. I mean, if you're going to have a serious sci-fi film, you don't have Laurel and fucking Hardy as your two key scientists...

It's just a long fight scene with some exposition and back story thrown in to pad it out and as I said to the wife; we had Cloverfield in 2008, Godzilla in 2014 and this in 2013, despite big fuck off monsters, giant robots and other stuff I can't be arsed to think about, giant monster movies didn't really take off; even the Godzilla/Kong franchises have largely had a cult following and can't be called box office gold. Big monster films pretty much don't have much going for them after you've had them fight each other or fight giant robots - they're essentially boxing films crossed with Mexican wrestling on acid. Pacific Rim does have Idris Elba delivering his 'Today we're cancelling the apocalypse' speech, which is not Shakespeare and sounds like something someone would say in South London, but other than that it's just a giant robot beating the shit out of a monster with a ship and nowt else.

Connexion Française Un

Classed as one of the all-time classic films, the seminal 1971 movie The French Connection hasn't dated well, although as a snapshot of New York in 1970 it's probably quite accurate. Filmed in an almost documentary style, this is a feature that is stark and grainy with a relatively simple story that unfolds over one hour and forty five minutes.

One of the first things you notice is just how young Gene Hackman looks and just what a callous, racist bigot his character 'Popeye' Doyle is. His partner in the film is Roy Scheider - he of Jaws fame - as 'Cloudy' Russo, who also acts as Popeye's conscious. This isn't a loveable film; filmed throughout the harsh New York winter of 1969/70 it does nothing at all to glamorise police work and instead focuses on just how mundane and boring the job can be and how a lot of police work was done on hunches and gut feelings. Fernando Rey plays 'the French connection' - a Marseilles-based heroin dealer trying to break into the US market, which has had a drought for months. Tony Lo Bianco plays the chameleon like Boca negotiating the deal and it's all directed in a distant, almost uninterested way by the brilliant William Friedkin, which is probably why it feels like a documentary at times. There is no real back story; we don't learn about the characters lives or loves, especially the cops, and the lines are blurred between good and bad guys - such as when the two French dealers are fine dining in a top class French restaurant, while Doyle and Russo are freezing their arses off over the street and grabbing pizza slices and lukewarm coffee.

There is a lot to admire about the film, but ultimately it doesn't deliver a fulfilling ending; for all the meticulous planning, the denouement is half-arsed and the main antagonist escapes and it's probably extremely indicative of what really used to happen in the drug squads of major US cities all the time. It might be a classic, but it no longer feel compelling viewing and from a personal observation, the wife struggled to stay interested in it or awake.

Calling Occupants... 

It's been a while since we watched Contact. I asked the wife to buy me the book for Christmas as I used to have it, read it way back when it was released and wanted to read it again. The film won't spoil it because the book is a bit different from the film, which considering it was a late 90s Robert Zemeckis film seemed to struggle a little with the special effects and did another excellent job of showing us all what a monumental fuck up it would be if aliens came to earth and the Yanks were allowed to deal with it. There's this amazing thing about alien contact films that suggests the 'hoisted by their own petard' Americans would seriously consider anyone able to travel here from billions of miles away some how inferior to us or would be scared of their bullets and bombs. I think only Close Encounters of the Third Kind is probably the only big budget 'alien contact' film that hasn't had some American trying to kill an alien, blow up their ship or sabotage events - it's enlightening that filmmakers not only understand this but include it in their films, but if we really aren't alone, we're going to be stone age man compared to visitors and we should probably be a little more humble and less hot headed - James Woods character - Michael Kitz, chief security advisor to the President - in this was the epitome of shoot first and ask questions if we can be arsed.

Jodie Foster plays the astrophysicist who discovers the signal from an alien race while scanning the stars for signs of life and then becomes a bystander as far more 'important' people take over. There's a whole bunch of famous co-stars including James Woods, Matthew McConaughey, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, David Morse, Rob Lowe and Tom Skerritt (reuniting Hurt and Skerritt from Alien) and it's a good film, yet somehow manages to be less warm than the book, which was the brilliant super-astronomer Carl Sagan's only fiction novel. I often wonder what possible directors would make of this if it was made again in the 2020s, because this was obviously hampered by technology both in a studio and in the real world. The way of journeying to the stars was innovative and the scepticism was handled well, but... it needed to be like Independence Day and have fictional politicians and not be set in a world that existed where this didn't happen.

I have to say that however brilliant Jodie Foster is as an actor, she does have this coldness about her that I think didn't lend to her performance as Ellie Arroway, who needed to be warmer and more passionate than she was depicted.

Comedy Balls

Taika Waititi makes comedy films; some are successful, some are hit and miss and some bomb. He became popular with Marvel for his Thor films - one which was excellent and another that was shit. He is the epitome of up and down and his latest film - for Amazon - Next Goal Wins is a heavily fictionalised version of a true story about the American Samoa football team's attempts at... well scoring a goal, let alone winning a football match.

If you know the story of Thomas Rongen - played here by Michael Fassbinder - you'd know that much of the story of this film has been tampered with to make it 'better' and to be fair to Waititi, he literally tells us this right at the beginning of the movie. However, it only sticks to some of the facts, even if it embellishes most of them and makes up  a load of others. Yet it managed to give me more LOL moments than a lot of things over the last few weeks and it certainly is a proper feelgood film that doesn't so much have a happy ending as a fitting one. Fassbinder sort of phones in his performance and as a Dutch American he sounds very Irish at times; I expect most of the Samoan actors were amateurs but they were great and the entire idea of a team of misfits kind of doing this football thing for the pride of their island really works, even if American Samoa had to take on a slight comedy island persona to help make the film flow - which they apparently were not happy about. It isn't a masterpiece, but it is a film that should leave you happy you've watched it. As a football fan there are many liberties taken, but I can live with that because at the end of the film I was glad I watched it. 

Total Relentlessness

Remember Arnie's Total Recall? Well, the 2012 remake with Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel is a much better film, despite what the IMDB rating suggests. This version is an absolutely relentless action sci-fi thriller that really doesn't hang around and whizzes through its near two hour run time like an express train. It's full of dead ends, red herrings and characters you think are important that turn out to be expendable or not as relevant as you might think and unlike the original you get a much more coherent story and a 'wife' who isn't killed off promptly. In this, "Quaid's" wife - Beckinsale - is a relentless killing machine who isn't playing by her orders because she is somehow pissed off with her assignment and then with her boss for giving her this assignment.

There is a slight amount of corniness and it's got a very British feel to it, but the special effects are excellent, the film has a real Bladerunner feel to it and there are a lot more twists and turns than the original, which really did have awful corny moments. Whether Farrell makes a decent action/adventure hero is a difficult one, especially as he's now too old for that kind of role, but he isn't bad in this. In fact, the only actor who I felt struggled was Beckinsale, who you would have thought might have learned something about film acting from her Underpants films... Oh yeah... How silly of me? Some parts I had problems with, but I expect this stayed closer to the book than the 1990 Arnie film; I just wonder why it was made at all. The movie also has cameos from Bill Nighy, Bryan Cranston, John Cho and Bokeem Woodbine, who might have been a bit of a drag... [I thenk ewe, I'm here all the time...]

Self-Importance

Every time I see Jake Johnson I think he's Oscar Isaac's long lost brother and while he's never been in anything I can say I've truly hated, he's also not been in much I really like - apart from Safety Not Guaranteed, which I think is a cracking film and he's really good in that, even if he's playing a self-obsessed arsehole.

Self Reliance is a film written, directed and starring Johnson and while it's not a bad movie, it also doesn't feel like a fully thought out concept and the predictable bits were very and the other bits were weird but didn't feel weird enough. It's a bit of a curate's egg type of thing... Johnson plays Tommy, a man fast approaching 40 who seems to have a pretty dull life that has a routine that he's happy sticking with. He's two years out of a long time relationship, his family are worried about him and out of the blue US comedian Andy Samberg turns up - playing himself - offering Tommy the chance to change his life by getting involved in a reality TV show that's shown on the Dark Web. All he has to do is survive 30 days without one of the show's hired assassins killing him and he wins a cool million dollars. He even has a loop hole, he has to be alone when he will be killed, so if he can spend all of that time with someone he can't be touched.

The problem is everyone thinks he's lost it; no one wants to spend every waking moment with him and he grows increasingly more paranoid every day as he closes in on 30 days. Are the people stalking him just in his mind; has he imagined everything? Was Andy Samberg really there? Is he really being filmed 24/7 with micro cameras? Is he actually going slowly mad because of his life which seems to be a massive failure? Even the denouement could all be in his head and while there is a final scene that seems to confirm he went through everything by the time we reach it the joke has worn thin and maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. 

Anna Kendrick plays Maddy, a desperately lonely woman who poses as another person in the game, but she finally gets cold feet when they meet an alleged other game player who essentially scares the shit out of her because she thought Tommy was just a needy man who was falling for her and not really on the run from assassins. There's also a number of 'ninjas' in it, people in fancy dress who may or may not be killers and heaps of paranoia and deranged shit. But considering it weighs in at just under 90 minutes you're kind of wishing it ended quicker and not necessarily for a conclusion, more... to just have it end. It actually gets a little boring and a little too needy; like Tommy's problems have transferred into the film and it needs to be liked as much as he does. It kind of fizzles out like a can of coke left open all night; there's little effervescence left when it all concludes.

Lacking in Dungeons not Dragons

I suppose the most memorable thing about last year's Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves was the fact it was such an enjoyable romp; probably the most entertaining fantasy comedy since The Princess Bride (which, I have to admit, I've never had much time for). But as the subhead says, it didn't have many dungeons - none, really. It did have at least two dragons...

Chris Pine, who has never really been any good as anyone other than Captain Kirk (mkII) still felt like his role as Ed could have been done by anyone else, but he was all right. Michelle Rodriguez was also okay as Holga, Ed's right hand woman, with a penchant for small men, but neither lead characters felt like they were the first people approached for their respective roles, I might be wrong, but they did seem like strange bits of casting. However, the film was very good; it went along at a cracking pace, had some genuinely funny bits in it and Hugh Grant is always a good value for money villain, even if he was really just a stooge for Daisy Head's Sofina - a red witch hell bent on revenge for her ancestors.

Essentially it's a film about a band of thieves who try one job that was too big for them and Pine and Rodriguez get caught and slapped into prison, which they escape from and go in search of Pine's daughter and the other members of their band only to discover that Grant's character has become the head of a large kingdom and the daughter has been brainwashed into thinking her father is a shit dad. From this point on it's about retrieving stuff to help them get their revenge on Grant, running across assassins, ghosts of ancestors and a fat dragon in the underworld, which added extra comedy. I have to admit it was enjoyable in a throwaway kind of way, the special effects weren't bad, but some of them weren't brilliant and at just over two hours it might have been a teensy bit too long, but I laughed a few times and didn't feel as though I'd wasted my time at the end, which I count as a win at the moment.

Coming Up...

A slightly pointless subhead because I have no idea what might be released this coming week or so, nor do I know what I'm likely to watch on either the Flash Drive of Doom or the magic TV recorder box thingy. Unlike TV - which you wont be seeing a blog about this week - films tend to be random and very much depend on what we fancy, what we've got and whether things I want to see are out yet. For instance, I'd love to see Godzilla Minus One, it has great reviews, a high IMDB rating and looks really good, but there's absolutely no date for a stream to surface and even if one does I want it to have proper subtitles. Oh and we won't be watching Wonka because modern 'musicals' tend to be a load of shit, even if this film has been rated by 'some' critics (and we all know who that 'some' is...).

We do have last year's animated Spider-Man film to watch, but I get the impression the wife isn't keen, especially as I've had it for six months and she's never said, 'Ooh let's watch that.' There's Napoleon, but frankly I'm in the undecided court about that and Killers of the Flower Moon needs three and a half fucking hours and needs to be riveting. There is a grand total of 39 unwatched films not counting the 15 or so on the TV recorder thing, so it's going to be pot luck between now and the next time this appears (which is likely to be in about two weeks).